I’d wanted to talk to Henry the previous night, but as determined as I was, he seemed equally determined to avoid me. He’d gone to bed at the same time as Mother and Daddy. Now was my chance.

“I followed you and the judge to the courthouse and listened through the window,” I told Henry, deciding it was best to just blurt it out. The only sign he gave that he’d even heard what I said was the way his mouth tightened. “Do you think he’s right? Could he really take the farm?”

“This is their game—I don’t even know the rules I’m playing by. Maybe Judge Nagle just said he’d take the farm to scare me. He seems as desperate as we are, so I guess that’s possible. I just don’t even know who to talk to. We can’t afford a lawyer of our own. I don’t even have a copy of the contract.”

“So what do we do?” I asked, feeling queasy. Henry brought his horse to a stop and swung down to the ground. He fetched a small spade from the tool kit he kept on his saddle, and in silence, he started to dig—sending dust flying all over the withered plants in the field. Less than half the seeds had germinated that year, and most of the plants that did died before they even formed seed heads. Our fields contained row after row of patchy and deformed brown stalks. Even the weeds were unusually sparse that year—all the soil seemed able to produce was the occasional patch of Russian thistle or bull nettle. The dead thistles rolled all over the fields in the dust storms, getting stuck on the wire and providing a framework for the dust to settle on, until every fence had disappeared beneath a mound of dirt.

“What are you doing?” I asked Henry, but he kept on digging. He dug until his brow was covered in grime from dust and sweat, until his face was red with exertion. I knew that there was no resistance in the soil. And that didn’t change even as Henry dug down twelve inches…two feet…and farther and farther he went, until he was standing in a hole.

After a while, I swung off my horse and stepped closer, touching his shoulder gently to get his attention. Henry looked at me, his eyes wild with panic and rimmed red with sweat and irritation from the dust, and maybe some tears. This wasn’t like Henry—he was usually calm as a cucumber, even when he’d messed up.

“Look at this,” he said, his voice breaking. “Just look at it, Lizzie. They say that there was damp soil all over these high plains, down at the three-feet mark. It didn’t matter how dry the season was—the moisture was always there. But look at this. Just look at it.”