The mid-September day had been intensely hot, but the light air was beginning to flow a bit refreshingly out of the sky. A gray cloud-wave, creeping tide-like up from the southwest, was tempering the afternoon glare. In all the landscape the only object to hold the eye was a prairie schooner drawn by a team of hard-mouthed little Indian ponies, and followed by a free-limbed black mare of the Kentucky blue blood. Asher Aydelot sat on the wagon seat holding the reins. Beside him was his wife, a young, girlish-looking woman with large dark eyes, abundant dark hair, a straight, aristocratic nose, and well-formed mouth and chin. The two, coming in from the East on the evening before, had reached the end of the stage line, where Asher's team and wagon was waiting for them. The outfit moved slowly. It had left Carey's Crossing at early dawn and had put twenty-five miles between itself and that last outpost of civilization. "Why don't you let the horses trot down this hill slope, Asher?" The woman's voice had the soft accent of the South. "Are you tired, Virgie?" Asher Aydelot looked earnestly down at his wife. "Not a bit!" The bright smile and vigorous lift of the shoulders were assuring. "Then we won't hurry. We have several miles to go yet. It is a long day's run from Carey's to our claim. Wolf County is almost like a state. The Crossing hopes to become the county seat." "Why do they call that place Carey's Crossing?" Mrs. Aydelot asked. "It was a trading post once where the north and south trail crossed the main trail. Later it was a rallying place for cavalry. Now it's our postoffice," Asher explained. "I mean, why call it Carey? I knew Careys back in Virginia." "It is named for a young doctor, the only one in ten thousand miles, so far as I know." "And his family?" Virginia asked. "He's a bachelor, I believe. By the way, we aren't going down hill. We are on level ground." Mrs. Aydelot leaned out beyond the wagon bows to take in the trail behind them. "Why, we are right in a big saucer. All the land slopes to the center down there before us. Can't you see it?" "No, I've seen it too often. It is just a trick of the plains--one of the many tricks for the eye out here. Look at the sunflowers, Virgie. Don't you love them?" Virginia Aydelot nestled close to her husband's side and put one hand on his. It was a little hand, white and soft, the hand of a lady born of generations of gentility. The hand it rested on was big and hard and brown and very strong looking.