But Gearheart was not so slow-witted. He had had sisters and girl cousins, and knew "the symptoms," as Mrs. Green would have put it. He noticed that when Flaxen read her letters to them there was one which she carefully omitted. He knew that this was the letter which meant the most to her. He saw how those letters affected her, and thought he had divined in what way. One day when Flaxen, after reading her letters, sprang up and ran into her bedroom, her eyes filled with sudden tears, Gearheart crooked his finger at Ans, and they went out to the barn together. It was nearly one o'clock on an intolerable day peculiar to the Dakota plain. A frightfully hot, withering, and powerful wind was abroad. The thermometer stood nearly a hundred in the shade, and the wind, so far from being a relief, was suffocating because of its heat and the dust it swept along with it. The heavy-headed grain and russet grass writhed and swirled as if in agony, and dashed high in waves of green and yellow. The corn-leaves had rolled up into long cords like the lashes of a whip, and beat themselves into tatters on the dry, smooth spot their blows had made beneath them; they seemed ready to turn to flame in the pitiless, furnace-like blast. Everywhere in the air was a silver-white, impalpable mist, which gave to the cloudless sky a whitish cast. The glittering gulls were the only living things that did not move listlessly and did not long for rain. They soared and swooped, exulting in the sounding wind; now throwing themselves upon it, like a swimmer, then darting upward with miraculous ease, to dip again into the shining, hissing, tumultuous waves of the grass. Along the roads prodigious trains of dust rose hundreds of feet in the air, and drove like vast caravans with the wind. So powerful was the blast that men hesitated about going out with carriages, and everybody watched feverishly, expecting to see fire break out on the prairie and sweep everything before it. Work in the fields had stopped long before dinner, and the farmers waited, praying or cursing, for the wheat was just at the right point to be blighted. As the two men went out to the shed side by side, they looked out on the withering wheat-stalks and corn-leaves with gloomy eyes. "Another day like this, an' they won't be wheat enough in this whole county to make a cake," said Anson, with a calm intonation, which after all betrayed the anxiety he felt. They sat down in the wagon-shed near the horses' mangers. They listened to the roar of the wind and the pleasant sound of the horses eating their hay, a good while before either of them spoke again. Finally Bert said sullenly: "We can't put up hay such a day as this. You couldn't haul it home under lock an' key while this infernal wind is blowin'. It's gittin' worse, if anythin'."