As she went about her household tasks that morning, Alida noticed things as she had never noticed them before. A sunbeam came through the shutterless window of the house and writhed and quivered on the wall as if it were a live thing. She read a warning in this, and in the color of the sun, that was red, like blood, and in the whirr of the grasshoppers, that was sinister and threatening. The creeks had dried, and their slimy beds crept along the willows like sluggish snakes. Gaunt range-cattle bellowed in their thirst, and the parched earth crackled beneath the sun that hung above the house like a flaming disk. Sometimes she sank beneath the burden of it; then she would wring her hands and call on God to help them; they were beyond human power. She and Jim were alone all the morning; they did not again refer to what they knew would happen. He read his old paper and she put her house in order. She did it with especial care. It was meet to have things seemly in the house of the dead. And every time she glanced at Jim she repressed the desire to fling herself on his breast and cry out the anguish that consumed her. At noon she brought the children home to dinner, and afterwards Jim taught them to throw the lasso and played buffalo with them. Alida did not trust herself to watch them; she stayed in the kitchen and saw the sunbeam grow pale with the waning of the day, the day whose minutes dragged like lead, yet had rushed from her, leaving her the night to face. At sundown she cooked supper, but she no longer knew what she did. A crazy agility had taken possession of her and she spun about the kitchen, doing the same errand many times, finding herself doing always something different from that she had set about doing. The molten day was burning itself out like a fever; hot gusts of air beat up from the earth, but the woman who waited felt chilled to the marrow, and took a cloak down from a peg and wrapped it about her while she waited for the biscuit to bake. At supper they sat down together, the man and his wife and their three children. The children were in fine spirits from the fun they had had that afternoon. Never had daddy been so nice to them. He had taught Topeka to throw the lasso so well that she had caught the cat once and little Jim twice; and daddy had played he was a buffalo and had charged them all with his head down, till they screamed in terror. But daddy seemed more quiet through the meal, and once mother started up and cried: “What’s that?” She ran to the door with her hand pressed to her side, but daddy called after her: “Don’t you know the cowards better than that? They’ll wait for nightfall.” But these things had not worried the children, with their heads full of playing buffalo and throwing the lariat.