Poor Montana! Burned, scorched to ashes from four summers of drought, and no rain in six months! Everywhere the people told us the same story. The rivers and streams were dry as bones. “Don’t stop here for water” was a familiar sign. We met hundreds of families driving out, in old “prairie-schooners,” with all their household furniture and their cattle. These poor souls had to find water for their cattle and themselves. They had tried to raise crops, and were literally driven out. The children looked pinched and starved. The women and men were the color of leather, tanned by the scorching sun of the plains, the dust, and the dry, hot winds. They had lost everything. Their faces were pathos personified. It wrung your heart to see them. We always slowed down and waved to them, and often stopped and talked. It was rare to get a smile from even the children. When we would give some little kiddie an orange, it was the pathetic mother who tried to smile. Before we had covered the four hundred miles across the state, our faces were burned, our lips so dry and cracked that they bled, and our eyes nearly burned out of our heads. Yet we had but a few days of it, and they had suffered for four summers! At night we would soak our hands and faces in cold cream, but the next night they were quite as bad. The dust was from six to eight inches deep, and the roads were either through sand or chucky. We know now why Lohr named his song “My Little Gray Home in the West.” It could not possibly have been any other color. A dozen times we thought our springs were gone. The road looked like a level stretch of dust; then down you would go to the bottom of a chuck-hole with a thud that made your teeth chatter. The cattle looked as starved as the people. We came to one valley that had been irrigated, and for a mile or so the crops were green. The ditch was full of water--real _wet_ water. Horses and cows, dogs and people were standing in it. We filled our radiator and bottles and laved our hands and faces. Germs or no germs, we drank our fill. In half an hour or less your throat and mouth would be as dry as ashes, and your thirst was insatiable. We found that fruit, especially oranges and pears, quenched the thirst better than water; so we always kept plenty of fruit in the car. The going was so bad that we did not reach Miles City until late. After leaving Fargo, each morning we had taken the precaution to wire ahead for reservations, always adding “driving,” so, if we were belated, the rooms would still be held for us. We had been told that the Olive Hotel at Miles City was the only poor hotel on the route. Everyone had given it a black eye. We had mentioned it to the manager at the Jordan Annex in Glendive. “I think you will find it very comfortable. Our company has taken it over and refurnished it.” When we were sending our usual morning wire, he very politely said that it would be _his_ pleasure to notify them of our coming.