Now the settlers began to long for rain. Day after day vast clouds rose
above the horizon, swift and portentous, domed like aerial mountains,
only to pass with a swoop like the flight of silent, great eagles,
followed by a trailing garment of dust. Often they lifted in the west
with fine promise, only to go muttering and bellowing by to the north or
south, leaving the sky and plain as beautiful, as placid, and as dry as
before. The people grew anxious, and some of them became bitter, but the
most of them kept up good courage, feeling certain that this was an
unusual season.
One sultry day, while Rivers was on his way out to the store, he fell to
studying the sky and air. On the prairie, as on the sea, one studies
little else. There was something formidable in every sign. In the west a
prodigious dome of blue-black cloud was rising, ragged at the edge, but
dense and compact at the horizon.
"That means business," Rivers said to himself, and chirped to his team.
The air was close and hot. The southern wind had died away. There was
scarcely a sound in all the landscape save the regular clucking of the
wagon-wheels, the soft, rhythmical tread of the horses' feet, and the
snapping buzz of the grasshoppers rising from the weeds. Far away to the
west lay the blue Coteaux, thirty miles distant, long, low, without
break, like a wall. The sun was hidden by the cloud, and as he passed a
shanty Rivers saw the family eating their supper outside the door to
escape the smothering heat.
He smiled as he saw the gleam of white dresses about the door of the
store. As he drove up, a swarm of impatient folk came out to meet him.
The girls waved their handkerchiefs at him, and the men raised a shout.
"You're late, old man."
"I know it, but that makes me all the more welcome." He heaved the
mail-bag to Bailey. "There's a letter for every girl in the crowd, I
know, for I wrote 'em."
"We'll believe that when we see the letters," the girls replied.
He dismounted heavily. "Somebody put my team up. I'm hungry as a wolf
and dry as a biscuit."
"The poor thing," said one of the girls. "He means a cracker."
Estelle Clayton came out of the store. "Supper's all ready for you, Mr.
Mail-Carrier. Come right in and sit down."
"I'm a-coming--now watch me," he replied, with intent to be funny.
The girls accompanied him into the little living-room.
"Oh, my, don't some folks live genteel? See the canned peaches!"
"And the canned lobster!"
"And the hot biscuit!"
"Sit down, Jim, and we'll pour the tea and dip out the peaches."
Rivers seated himself at the little pine table. "I guess you'd better
whistle while you're dipping the peaches," he said, pointedly.