"Felicia must come home at once," she cried. "There's a big sand storm coming. Dick is getting the stock under cover as fast as he can." The men dropped their tools hurriedly and looked up the valley. A great gray cloud was approaching so rapidly that as they gazed they caught the sound of its increasing roar. The sky, which had been sapphire of an unusual translucence that morning, turned all in a moment to a sullen red gray. There was a dry rattle of lizards and horned toads scuttling into the roots of grease wood and cactus. "You mustn't try to go home, Charley," exclaimed Roger. "But I must! Dick and his alfalfa! He _can't_ be alone!" But Dick was destined to spend the day in solitude. With a very Niagara of sound the sand storm struck the camp. Charley and Felicia ran for the living tent where the men shortly joined them. They closed the flaps and settled to a day of discomfort. The engine house would have been more comfortable than the tent but it was too cumbered with machinery now to be used as a sitting room. There was no work that could be done indoors. The heat was stifling, a hundred and six the thermometer over the washstand trunk reported. The tent rocked and bellied, bellied and flapped with reverberations like drum-beats. Felicia was frightened at first and hid her head in Charley's lap. Charley herself was white-lipped, less, Ernest thought, from fear of the storm than from that vague apprehension about Dick that never seemed to leave her. For a time Roger sat scowling with impatience, then Felicia's fear moved him and calling the child to him he began to tell her of the old swimming pool. The others listened and laughed and when Felicia begged for more, Gustav told a charming tale of his own Bavarian childhood. And he and Ernest sang together some tender folk songs which Felicia insisted on learning. While Gustav and Ernest undertook this pleasant task Charley and Roger talked. At Charley's request, Roger brought out his blue prints and explained the plant to her. He felt his impatience lifting as he talked. Explaining his work always seemed to increase his critical vision. New ideas came flooding, and he pulled out his note book, feeling that after all the day was not entirely wasted. So, in spite of the bitter taste of alkali in their mouths and its sting in their eyes, in spite of the breathless burning heat, the morning passed cheerfully. They even managed to satisfy their hunger with canned beef and canned brown bread. They had washed down the last of the unsavory lunch with the tepid, nauseously alkaline water from the olla when a gust of wind of tremendous proportions tore open the door flap and filled the room with a blinding swirl of sand. At the same moment there was a fearful crash from without, followed by the sound of breaking glass. Leaving Charley to refasten the door flap, the three men bolted toward the absorber.