When the matter was concluded, Darley Champers rose to his feet.
“I want to say one thing,” he began doggedly. “I give you the chance. Don’t never blame me because you are too green to know what’s good for you. You are the only green things here, though. And don’t forget, there ain’t a man of you can get out of here on your own income or on your own savin’s. Not a one. You’re all locked into this valley an’ the key’s in purgatory. An’ I’d see you all with the key before I’d ever lift a finger to help one of you, and not a one of you can help yourselves.”
With these words Champers left the company and rode away up the trail toward civilization and safety.
In the silence that followed, Pryor Gaines said:
“Friends, let us not forget that this is the Sabbath day on the prairie as in the crowded city. Let us not leave until we ask for His blessing in whose sight no sparrow falls unnoticed.”
And together the little band of resolute men and women offered prayer to Him whose is the earth and the fulness, or the emptiness, thereof.
Four days and nights went by. On the fifth morning at daybreak the cool breeze that sweeps the prairies in the early dawn flowed caressingly along the Grass River valley. The settlers rose early. This was the best part of the day, and they made use of it. 98
“You poor Juno!” Virginia Aydelot said, as she leaned against the corral post in the morning twilight, and patted the mare gently.
“You and I are ’plains-broke’ for certain. We don’t care for hot winds, nor cold winds, nor prairie fire, nor even a hailstorm, if it would only come. Never mind, old Juno, Asher has the greenest fields of all the valley because he hasn’t stopped plowing. That’s why you must keep on working. Maybe it will rain today, and you’ll get to rest. Rain and rest!”
She looked toward the shadowy purple west, and then away to the east, decked in the barbaric magnificence of a plains sunrise.