The silence answered him. Yes, they had heard and also remembered. Who that had heard could forget? First had come the June freeze and then a dry summer with a shortage of grazing. But no one had worried; probably, after such a cold summer there would be an open winter. When all the grazing was gone they would drive the stock out to Shoshone and buy hay. So they planned. Alas! Before the grazing was quite gone the snow came--and stayed. And while they waited for a break in the bad weather in which to move out, the "big snow" came and shut them in--shut their cattle in to slow starvation. As Mrs. Robinson related it twenty-five years afterward the tears streamed down her cheeks. "It like to broke pa's heart," she said; "him havin' to set inside and watch them pore dumb critters waitin' to be fed and finally layin' down to die. Time and again we tried to drive 'em across the foothills into the hay country, but 'twa'n't no use. Out of two hundred head all we saved was one cow. Every stockman on the prairie lost his herd, and some was ruined for good and all. We never went into another winter without hay, I tell ye." It was a cruel experience, but Harry was not a person to let another's misfortune shake her faith in her own enterprise. As she looked toward her brother a characteristic expression came across her face: the expression that meant obstinate, good-natured determination. She was saying to herself: "We're not going to fail. We're not. I think we can make cattle pay on borrowed money, and I'm going to borrow it." But she said no more to Rob, for she felt that it was best to let him think the matter over by himself. That he was doing so during the next few days was evident from the tension in the air whenever cattle were mentioned. She hoped that Ludlum would come before the effect of Garnett's advice had worn off, and, as the days passed, she grew uneasy. It was a relief from the constant suspense when one morning Rob asked her to help him round up his cows. Half a dozen starved-looking steers had come down the draw during the night, and when he dogged them off his own herd had followed them. Harry needed no urging. With Rob and Garnett to teach her she had learned to ride well, and could even, with the help of 'Thello, round up their own cattle very creditably. There was nothing that she enjoyed more than to be out on a June morning, with a lively horse beneath her, the sage-scented breeze sweeping past, the meadow larks calling across the sky, the miles of blue swale and the cloud shadows racing ahead of her. At such moments the horizon was hers; hers, too, the splendor and greatness of life.