Will could scarcely wait to begin spring plowing. Only then would it seem that the work on the place was really under way. He saw the frost ooze out of the broken sod and the heavy rolling clouds lose their frozen firmness. Twice he made an attempt to start the hand-plow and found the ground not ready. And then on a morning, with the prairie-lark calling to him, he started. Abbie took the baby in her arms and went out, with Mack toddling by her side. Gyp, the young dog of nondescript breeding which they had brought with them, ran frantically about, chasing some little flying thing. Abbie constantly darted a look near Mack, never allowing him more than a few feet from her, the fear of the deadly rattle-snake always with her.

Usually undemonstrative, Will slipped an arm around Abbie. Serious and reticent, he seldom voiced his deepest feelings. But now he spoke them:

“It’ll be a pull, Abbie-girl, but some day you’ll see I was right. The furrows will go everywhere up and down these rolling hills. Bigger plows than mine will roll them back. There’ll maybe be a town here,” he pointed to the limitless horizon, “and a village there. Omaha will be a big center. The little capital village of Lincoln will grow. It’s bound to come. Not to-day,—nor to-morrow, but some other day and some other to-morrow. You’ll live to see a fine capitol building and schools and stores and churches and nice homes.”

Prophetic words! A town lies here and a village there. Huge tractors turn a half dozen furrows in one trip across the fields. Omaha and Lincoln are great centers for commercial, industrial and educational interests. Where once the Indian pitched his tepee for a restless day, there are groupings of schools and churches and stores and homes. And Abbie Deal lived to see the beginnings of the tall majestic tower of the most beautiful capitol of them all lift its white shaft to the sky,—a capitol unashamed of its native products, into whose marble artistry have gone the buffalo and the corn and the goldenrod.

Will stood a moment, a little abashed at his emotion, so that immediately he said lightly, “Well, here goes.”

The first loam turned back, clean-cut with the sharp knife of the plowshare, mellow, black as a crow’s wing. A fringe of coarse grass held fast to the heavy soil, as though the two could not be parted after all these wild, free centuries together,—the grass maiden clinging to the breast of her prairie lover.

Abbie turned abruptly and went into the house with the babies. Inside she cried a little into the long roller towel,—she did not know just why. Then she pulled herself together. “This will never do. There’s no time for idle tears. If I am to do my share in all that Will thinks he sees, I must get a good dinner for him.” The man at the plow, the woman at the stove,—it was symbolic.