He'd been overwhelmed when Emma gave him the $600 and told him that, at last, he could have his farm. He still could not understand how she had saved such a vast sum; Joe had never earned $600 in any one year. But every penny of it, everything they had, represented the combined sweat and toil, and almost the life's blood, of Emma and himself. Joe thought of Nick Johnson. He, too, had had a farm financed by Elias and he'd lost a crop. The next year he lost another, and Elias had taken everything except the clothes the Johnsons wore on their backs. Now hopeless and defeated, Nick Johnson was again a hired man and his courage was so broken that he never would be anything else. Joe thought of Emma's cherished household goods, the few things his children owned, of the mules, the cows, everything upon which Elias had no claim. For a moment he had a savage urge to smash his fist into the banker's face, and Elias must have sensed it for he took a backward step. Joe bit his words off and spat them out, "Elias, you can take a long running jump into the nearest duck pond." Without looking back and without entering the store, he turned and strode through the darkness toward his house. A man who turned his back on the land almost turned his back on God too. But one who risked everything his family had was not a man at all. Joe entered the house. Emma was sewing at the table and she looked up, and concern flooded her eyes. "Was there nobody at the store?" "I didn't go. I met Elias." Emma waited expectantly. For a short space Joe strode up and down the floor. Then he turned to face her. "Elias offered to carry us another year. All he wants is a mortgage on everything that isn't already mortgaged to him." Emma gaped, and Joe said quickly, "I told him to--I told him no." She half rose out of her chair. "Joe, maybe you should have--" "No!" he interrupted almost fiercely. "I won't do it! We're in debt as far as we're ever going to be! Some things will remain ours!" There was a short silence while both pursued their own thoughts. Emma turned a worried face to him. "Do you think you can make another crop?" Joe looked at Emma and then he looked beyond her. Outside the night was black, but in his mind's eye he could clearly see the ravaged fields. In his muscles he could feel the ache of the plowing and the planting of the new crop. In the pit of his stomach he could already feel the pain and rage that he would feel if the new crop should be destroyed by frost. Emma waited, and then she got to her feet with an anxious haste. "Pete Domley will pay for the seed, Joe. Barbara and I can help with the planting." Now suddenly he didn't want to comfort her any more, nor to bolster up her hopes about the new crop. This was a time for facing facts. "Emma," he said, and his lips felt dry and tight with the effort to control himself. "Emma, there's free land for the taking in the west."