Harding looked about as they crossed a stretch of grass that had turned white and dry. The sunset was red and angry, but above the horizon the sky was a hard, dark blue that threatened wind. Everything was very still now, but the men knew the breeze would rise again soon after daybreak. They said nothing for a time after they stopped beside the wheat.
The soil was thinly covered with sand, and the tall blades had a yellow, shriveled look, while the stems were bent and limp. Harding gathered a few and examined them. They were scored with fine lines as if they had been cut by a sharp file.
"Not serious yet, but the grain won't stand for much more of this."
"That's so," Devine agreed. "The sand hasn't got far in, but I guess it will work right through unless we have a change. If not, there'll be trouble for both of us this fall."
"Sure," said Harding curtly. "Bring the horse, Fred, and we'll drive on to the rise."
They presently alighted where the plain merged into a belt of broken country, dotted with clumps of scrub birch and poplar. It rolled in ridges and hollows, but the harsh grass which thinly covered its surface had shriveled and left bare banks of sand, which lay about the slopes in fantastic shapes as they had drifted. Harding stooped and took up a handful. It was hot and felt gritty. The broken ground ran on as far as he could see, and the short, stunted trees looked as if they had been scorched. Glowing red in the dying sunset, the desolate landscape had a strangely sinister effect.
"The stuff's as hard and sharp as steel," he said, throwing down the sand. "There's enough of it to wipe out all the crops between Allenwood and the frontier if the drought lasts."
"What we want is a good big thunderstorm. This blamed sand-belt's a trouble we never reckoned on."
"No," said Harding. "I took a look at it when I was picking my location, but there was plenty of grass, and the brush was strong and green. Guess they'd had more rain the last two or three years. I figured out things pretty carefully—and now the only set-back I didn't allow for is going to pull me up! Well, we must hope for a change of weather; there's nothing else to be done."
He turned away with a gloomy face, and they walked back to the rig. Harding had early seen that Beatrice would not be an easy prize. It was not enough, entrancing as it was, to dream over her beauty, her fastidious daintiness in manners and thought, her patrician calm, and the shy tenderness she now and then showed for him. The passionate thrill her voice and glance brought him—spurred him rather—to action. First of all, he must work and fight for her, and he had found a keen pleasure in the struggle. One by one he had pulled down the barriers between them; but now, when victory seemed secure, an obstacle he could not overcome had suddenly risen. All his strength of mind and body counted for nothing against the weather. Beatrice could not marry a ruined man; it was unthinkable that he should drag her down to the grinding care and drudgery that formed the lot of a broken farmer's wife. He was helpless, and could only wait and hope for rain.