The balance of the summer was an unending haze of work. Emaline was intense, a thin lash of anger. She didn’t scold or reprimand Jake any further, unless you counted the set of her shoulders, the pressed line of her lips, the way her black eyes flashed when she told him to leave the horses alone and get back to fixing fence. She even got a hoe in his hand and made him scrape weeds from her garden until the blisters broke and bled. If he faltered at all, she would remind him that she was putting in days just as long and hard as his. The fences were strung taut again, the sagging barn door fixed with new hinges. She got him to train the collie pups so they could be sold and insisted the irrigation had to be done the right way. When the ditch rider came through at two o’clock in the morning to signal that he was about to let loose a head of water, they had to be ready, working up to their knees in the heavily alkaline water to plug gopher holes, set canvas dams, divert the water to the right field, siphon it to row after row of corn or sugar beets or let it seep through the alfalfa field. They worked until their backs ached and their hands were cracked, ignoring the hard little deerflies that left tiny cuts wherever they bit. When the irrigation water got to the crops, it worked magic. The corn grew, the sugar beets recovered. The crop was going to be late, but as long as the frost held off they would have something to market. With the dryland crops, they could do nothing but pray for rain and the rain did not come. The wind did not blow quite as much, the dusters eased a bit, but the drought was as bad as ever. The barley died, the oats died, the pasture appeared to be on the verge of turning to desert forever. Half the cattle were sold while there was still enough alfalfa left from the first cutting to keep the ribs from showing through their hide, but the remainder were barely scraping through.