"Times are getting worse every day," one man observed. "No rain since the tenth of May, and the prettiest stand of wheat I ever saw, burned to a half-yield or less before cutting time. I'd counted on wheat for my living this year." "It's the same if you'd had corn, Bennington," Jim Shirley observed. "I was polishing my crown for a Corn King Festival this fall. I don't believe I'll harvest fifteen bushels to the acre." "Fifteen bushels!" another neighbor exclaimed. "Fifteen ears to the row a section long would encourage me, Darley Champers told me when I took up my claim, if I'd plant a grove or two, that in three years the trees would be so big that rainfall would be abundant. You all know my catalpa woods is a wonder," he added with a wink. Darley Champers himself had just come down the trail and was entering the door. "Well, come over our way if you are on the hunt for prosperity," Todd Stewart interposed. "Grass River isn't living up to its name any better than our creek; isn't any fuller of weeds than our brook is of--shale. I did lose the trail in your river this morning, though. The weeds are nearly up to the pony's flanks. Think of the fertility of a river bed that will grow weeds three feet high and two shades more yellow green than the dead grass on the bank. If there's a drop of water in our creek for twenty miles, I'd go get it and have Brother Gaines analyze it to make sure it wasn't resin." "You do well to see the humor of the situation, Stewart," Pryor Gaines began, with the cheery tone of a man who believes in hope. "I don't see that that helps any," Bennington, the first speaker, broke in dolefully. "Joking isn't going to give us food and clothes and fuel till crop time comes again--if it ever does." "I'm not suffering for extra clothes. What I wear now is a burden," Todd Stewart declared. "Well, gentlemen." Darley Champers took the floor. "What are you going to do? That's what brought me here today. I knowed I'd find you all here. When I sent some of you fellows into this blasted Sahara, I was honest. I thought Grass River was a real stream, not a weed patch and a stone outcrop. I'd seen water in it, as I can prove by Aydelot. Remember, when we met down by the bend here, one winter day?" "Yes, I remember," Asher replied. "Well, I just come by there and there ain't a drop of water in that deep bend, no more'n in my hat." Champers plumped his hat down on the floor with the words. "And the creek, on Stewart's testimony, is a blasted fissure in the earth." "I always said when that bend went dry, I'd leave the country, but I can't," Jim Shirley said doggedly. "Why not?" Champers inquired. "Because I can't throw away the only property I have in the world, and I haven't the means to get away, let alone start up anywhere else." "We're all in the same boat," Bennington declared.