There was, however, a reason for this lack of enterprise. Winnipeg lives by its trade in wheat, selling at a profit to the crowded East, and scattering its store-goods broadcast across the prairie. Just then, however, the world appeared to possess a sufficiency of wheat and flour, and the great mills were grinding half-time or less, while it happened frequently that Western farmers, caught by the fall in values, could not meet their bills. When this happens, there is always trouble from the storekeepers and dealers in implements who have supplied them throughout the year. Carrie caught the despondent tone, wondering why she did so, since she felt that it would not have impressed her a little while ago. Perhaps it was because she had then looked upon the toilers with an uncomprehending pity that was half disdain, and she had since gained not only sympathy but appreciation. She stopped outside the newspaper office where a big placard was displayed.
"Smitten Dakota wails," it read. "Crops devastated. Thunder and hail. Ice does the reaping in Minnesota."
"Oh," she said. "I must have a paper."
Eveline Annersly smiled a little. It was between the hours of issue, and the wholesale office did not look inviting, but Carrie went in, and a clerk, who gazed at the very dainty lady with some astonishment, gave her a paper.
"Now," she said, "we will go on to the depôt. I must sit down and read the thing."
By the time she had mastered the gist of it, the big train was rolling out with her amidst a doleful clanging of the locomotive bell. It was momentous enough. The hail, which now and then sweeps the Northwest, had scourged the Dakotas and part of Minnesota, spreading devastation where it went. Meteorologists predicted that the disturbance would probably spread across the frontier. Carrie laid down the paper and glanced out with a little shudder of apprehension at the sliding prairie, into which town and wires and mills were sinking. She was relieved to see that there hung over it a sweep of cloudless blue.
"There are hundreds ruined, and whole crops destroyed," she said. "Perhaps the men who sowed them worked as hard as Charley. It would be dreadful if it came to us."
"I am afraid it would," said Eveline Annersly. "Still, I don't think it would have troubled you when you first came out. That is not so very long ago, is it?"
Carrie smiled. "I think I have grown since then," she said.