and for her to draw a draft on the Bank of Calias, and come home. The telegram was not answered.
Next morning my sister left for Kansas, and that afternoon a heavy downpour of rain fell all over Megory county and as far west as Victor, but north of Kitten, where I had my flax crop, there was scarcely sufficient rain to lay the dust. On that day the hot winds set in and lasted for seven weeks, the wind blowing steadily from the south all the while.
I had never before, during the seven years, suffered to any extent from the heat, but during that time I could not find a cool place. The wind never ceased during the night, but sounded its mournful tune without a pause. Then came a day when the small grain in Tipp county was beyond redemption, and rattled as leaves in November. The atmosphere became stifling, and the scent of burning plants sickening.
My flax on the sod, which was too small to be hurt at the beginning of the drouth, began to need rain, and reports in all daily papers told that the great heat wave and the drouth in many places were worse than in Tipp county. All over the western and northern part of the state, were localities where it had not rained that season. Potatoes, wheat, oats, flax, and corn, in the western part of the state, had not sprouted, and, it was said, in a part of Butte county, where seed had been sown four inches deep the year before, there had not been enough rain since to make it sprout.
The government had spent several million dollars damming the Belle Fourche river for the purpose of irrigation, and the previous autumn, when it had
