A DEAL IN WHEAT


I. THE BEAR--WHEAT AT SIXTY-TWO

As Sam Lewiston backed the horse into the shafts of his backboard and
began hitching the tugs to the whiffletree, his wife came out from the
kitchen door of the house and drew near, and stood for some time at the
horse's head, her arms folded and her apron rolled around them. For a
long moment neither spoke. They had talked over the situation so long
and so comprehensively the night before that there seemed to be nothing
more to say.

The time was late in the summer, the place a ranch in southwestern
Kansas, and Lewiston and his wife were two of a vast population of
farmers, wheat growers, who at that moment were passing through a
crisis--a crisis that at any moment might culminate in tragedy. Wheat
was down to sixty-six.

At length Emma Lewiston spoke.

"Well," she hazarded, looking vaguely out across the ranch toward the
horizon, leagues distant; "well, Sam, there's always that offer of
brother Joe's. We can quit--and go to Chicago--if the worst comes."

"And give up!" exclaimed Lewiston, running the lines through the torets.
"Leave the ranch! Give up! After all these years!"