CHAPTER XVI
STRAWS
It was spring. The sagebrush had turned from gray to green and the delicate pink of the rock roses showed here and there on the hillsides. The crisp rattle of cottonwood leaves was heard when the wind stirred through the gulches, and along the water course the drooping plumes of the willows were pale green and tender. It was the season of hope, of energy revived and new ambitions—the months of rejuvenation, when the blood runs faster and the heart beats higher.
But, alas, the joyful finger of spring touched the citizens of Prouty lightly. Worn out and jaded with the strain of a hard winter and waiting for something to happen, they did not feel their pulses greatly accelerated by mere sunshine. It took more than a rock rose and a bussy willow to color the world for them. June might as well be January, if one is financially embarrassed.
The suspicion was becoming a private conviction that when Prouty acquired anything beyond a blacksmith shop and a general merchandise store it got more than it needed. Conceived and born in windy optimism, it had no stamina. The least observant could see that, like a fiddler crab's, the progress of the town was backward. But these truths were admitted only in moments of drunken candor-or deepest depression, for to hint that Prouty had no future was as treasonable as criticising the government in a crisis. So the citizens went on boasting with dogged
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