But Rob was too full of his own thoughts to notice Harry's mood. He drew a cracker box to the table, reached for a scrap of wrapping paper, and was soon deep in figuring. "Twenty-four, six, thirty. Six tons of alfalfa. How many hundred of barley and wheat and oats will it take to winter the stock on, I wonder?" He thrust his legs out under the table, ran his hands through his hair, and stared at the figuring before him. "Yes, I ought to have three hundred dollars at least, before snow flies," he said. "I will, too, if I stick on the job and nothing happens." "If nothing happens," Harry repeated, with a short laugh. "Does anything ever happen out here, pleasant or otherwise?" "Eh? What's started you off? I mean, if the work goes well and we don't get a setback of some kind. Three hundred dollars will see us through the winter, all right." "'Us!' Don't count me in, please." "Well, you have got a grouch, sis," said Rob, in some surprise. "What's the matter now? I thought you were here for a year. In fact, I was just going to ask you if you don't want to homestead here." "Me? Homestead? Never!" "Why not? I didn't say anything about it before, because I wanted first to see whether you liked it and whether it agreed with you. You're taking hold fine, and I believe we'd make a big thing of it together. There's a hundred and sixty on the coulee just east of the next butte. You've been over it?" "Yes," Harry admitted. She remembered the swale, the strip of green meadow, the springs breaking from the hillside; it did not compare in value with Rob's land, but it was a good "hundred and sixty." For a moment Harry had a vision of herself as a ranch owner: riding a cow pony, planting and selling crops, building up a herd of her own, perhaps. Then came swiftly a picture of herself standing alone in the doorway of the cabin, as she had seen the women standing in their doorways watching the train pass their lonely prairie homes. Yes, it would be that way with her, while Rob was off with Jones or some other man. She shook her head. "I couldn't! I've no money. I can't make any out here. What should I do for clothes and things? It took all I made at home, teaching, to keep me properly dressed." "You wouldn't need such things here; you'd be a lot better off without them, if you're going to wear yourself out getting them. In a few years you'd have a farm worth something--you and I together could do a lot. As it is, some old cow-puncher'll settle it up, or a sheepman'll grubstake a Mex to prove up on it for him, and the sheep'll eat out the whole range. It wouldn't take you long to commute, only fourteen months, and then, if you didn't like it, you could hike back East. Of course it would cost you two hundred dollars to prove up, but you could make that easily by teaching a district school."