September and October passed before the surveyors, long looked for, came through, and three months dragged out their slow length before the pre-emptors could file and escape from their claims.
By the first of November the wonder had gone out of the life of the settlers. One by one the novelties and beauties of the plain had passed away or grown familiar. The plover and blackbird fell silent. The prairie-chicken's piping cry ceased as the flocks grew toward maturity, and the lark and cricket alone possessed the russet plain, which seemed to snap and crackle in the midnight frost, and to wither away in the bright midday sun.
Many of the squatters by this time had spent their last dollar, and there was little work for them to do. Each man, like his neighbor, was waiting to "prove up." They had all lived on canned beans and crackers since March, and they now faced three months more of this fare. Some of them had no fuel, and winter was rapidly approaching.
The vast, treeless level, so alluring in May and June, had become an oppressive weight to those most sensitive to the weather, and as the air grew chill and the skies overcast, the women turned with apprehensive faces to the untracked northwest, out of which the winds swept pitilessly cold and keen. The land of the straddle-bug was gray and sad.
One day a cold rain mixed with sleet came on, and when the sun set, partly clear, the Coteaux to the west rose like a marble wall, crenelated and shadowed in violet, radiant as the bulwarks of some celestial city; but it made the thoughtful husband look keenly at the thin walls of his cabin and wonder where his fuel was to come from. In this unsheltered land, where coal was high and doctors far away, winter was a dreaded enemy.
The depopulation of the newly claimed land began. Some of the girls went back never to return; others settled in Boomtown, with intent to visit their claims once a month through the winter; but a few, like the Burkes, remained in their little shanties, which looked still more like dens when sodded to the eaves. The Clayton girls flitted away to Wheatland, leaving the plain desolately lonely to Bailey. One by one the huts grew smokeless and silent, until at last the only English-speaking woman within three miles was old Mrs. Bussy, who swore and smoked a pipe, and talked like a man with bronchitis. She was not an attractive personality, and Mrs. Burke derived little comfort from her presence.
Willard was away a great deal teaming, working desperately to get something laid up for the winter. The summer excursion, with its laughter, its careless irresponsibility, had become a deadly grapple with the implacable forces of winter. The land of the straddle-bug had become a menacing desert, hard as iron, pitiless as ice.
Now the wind had dominion over the lonely women, wearing out their souls with its melancholy moanings and its vast and wordless sighs. Its voices seemed to enter Blanche Burke's soul, filling it with hunger never felt before. Day after day it moaned in her ears and wailed about the little cabin, rousing within her formless desires and bitter despairs. Obscure emotions, unused powers of reason and recollection came to her. She developed swiftly in sombre womanhood.
Sometimes Mrs. Bussy came across the prairie, sometimes a load of land-seekers asked for dinner, but mainly she was alone all the long, long days. She spent hours by the window watching, waiting, gazing at the moveless sod, listening to the wind-voices, companioned only by her memories. She began to perceive that their emigration had been a bitter mistake, but her husband had not yet acknowledged it, and she honestly tried not to reproach him for it. Nevertheless, she had moments of bitterness when she raged fiercely against him.
Little things gave her opportunity. He came home late one day. She greeted him sullenly. He began to apologize: