Page:The Cabin at the Trail's End.djvu/21

winters, an’ no more fierce hot summers lak we had in Sangamon County, Illinois.”

Martha was herself again. “Aren’t we the lucky ones?” she triumphed. “We've all had the fever and ague stewed out of us in the dry heat of the plains. I know in my heart that Esther Amelia couldn’t have lived through another cold winter. Didn’t Doctor Spears say she couldn’t stand another attack of lung fever? I couldn’t bear to lose another.” Martha’s eyes filled with tears. She was thinking of little Clarissa May, the baby who had died the winter before with the terrible lung fever, a form of pneumonia that attacked the children of the Middle-Western states winter after winter in spite of all that doctors and frantic mothers could do.

Quick to change a sorrowful subject, Uncle Adzi dug his heel deeply into the sod and, reaching down, picked up a handful of the crumbling black soil for her inspection. “Look at this here rich black sile,” he demanded. “Here we kin raise real craps, an’ we kin sell whut we raise, too, er trade hit fer nedcessities. There hain’t no drought, ner grasshoppers, ner turrible hailstorms here. An’ the panic o’ thirty-seven didn’t reach out here. The Pacific Ocean’ll always furnish a outlet fer craps. Hain’t I allus said so?”

“John is a hard worker and a good manager,” said Martha, “and the boys’ll soon be able to do men’s work. You keep up the chores so well, and make so many things for the cabin, so we are sure to get ahead here if we can just keep our spirits up until we get a foothold.”