"There are supplies and money coming from the East right now," Jim Shirley declared. "A hunting party crossed south two days ago. I was down on lower Plum Creek searching for firewood, and I met them. They said we might get help from Wykerton if we went up right away." "Well, you are Mr. Swift, Jim," one of the men exclaimed. "If you knew it two days ago, why in thunder didn't you report. We'd have made a wooden horse gallop to Wykerton before night." "How'd I round up the neighborhood? I didn't get home till nearly noon today. And, besides, they said Darley Champers has the distributing of the supplies and money, and he's putting it where it will do the most good, not giving to everybody alike, he says." A sudden blankness fell upon each face, as each recalled the last words of Champers when he left them on the Sabbath day in August. "Well, you said a wooden horse could have galloped up to Wykerton." Jim Shirley tried to speak cheerfully. "A horse of iron might, too, but who's got a critter in Grass River Valley right now that could make a trip like that? Mine couldn't. It took me two days and a half to haul up a load of stuff, mostly sunflower stalks, that I gathered down south." "Aydelot's black mare could do it if anything could," Pryor Gaines declared, trying to speak cheerfully, yet he was the least able to meet the hardships of that season. "Yes, maybe," Shirley commented. "She's a thoroughbred, and they finally win, you know. But knowing what you do, who of you wants to face Darley Champers?" Again a hopeless despair filled the hearts of the little company. Todd Stewart clinched his hands together. The husband of the sick woman set his jaws like iron. Pryor Gaines turned his face away and offered no further word. Asher Aydelot sat looking out across the prairie, touched to silvery beauty by the pitying moonlight, and Jim Shirley bowed his head and said nothing. "I will go to Wykerton," Virginia Aydelot's soft voice broke the silence. "I'll take Juno and go tomorrow morning. If Darley Champers refuses me, he would do the same to you." "Oh, Mrs. Aydelot, will you go? Can you try it? Do you think you could do it?" The questions came from the eager settlers. "We'll try it, Juno and I," Virginia replied. "Thoroughbreds, both of 'em," Jim Shirley murmured under his breath, and Pryor Gaines' face expressed the things he could not say. "I believe that is the best thing to do," Asher Aydelot declared. Then the settlers said good night, and sought their homes. As Virginia Aydelot rode away in the early morning, the cool breeze came surging to her out of the west. The plains were more barren than she had ever seen them before, but the sky above them had lost nothing of its beauty. No color had faded from the eastern horizon line, no magnificence had slipped away from the sunset. "'The heavens declare the glory of God,'" Virginia said to herself. "Has He forgotten the earth which is His also?"