They were able to thresh enough wheat to repay their debt of six
hundred bushels and keep an additional three hundred of seed for
the following year. The remaining seven hundred and fifty they
sold at twenty-five cents a bushel by hauling them to Fort
Scott--thirty miles distant. Each trip meant ten dollars, but to
the Wades, to whom this one hundred and eighty-seven dollars--the
first actual money they had seen in over a year--was a fortune,
these journeys were rides of triumph, fugitive flashes of glory
in the long, gray struggle.

That Fall they paid the first installment of two hundred dollars
on their land and Martin persuaded his mother to give and
Robinson to take a chattel on their two horses, old Brindle, her
calf and the pigs, that other much-needed implements might be
bought. Mrs. Wade toiled early and late, doing part of the chores
and double her share of the Spring plowing that Martin, as well
as Nellie, could attend school in Fallon.

"I don't care about goin'," he had protested squirmingly.

But on this matter his mother was without compromise. "Don't say
that," she had commanded, her voice shaken and her eyes bright
with the intensity of her emotion; "you're goin' to get an
education."

And Martin, surprised and embarrassed by his mother's unusual
exhibition of feeling, had answered, roughly: "Aw, well, all
right then. Don't take on. I didn't say I wouldn't, did I?"

He was twenty-three and Nellie sixteen when, worn out and broken