Oh, the hatred that began to grow—spread and take roots in the breast of this man of the prairie toward the man who had wilfully and deliberately wronged him, wrecked that which was most sacred to him. The days came and went, but that evil, twisting, warping hatred remained; it grew, it continued to grow until his very existence became a burden and a misery. No days were happy days to him. From the moment he awakened in the morning until he was lost in slumbers in the evening, Jean Baptiste knew no peace. While that perpetrator of his unhappiness waited impatiently in Chicago with plans to grind and humiliate him further, this man began to formulate plans also. With all the bitter hatred in his soul against the cause of his unhappiness, his plans were not the plans of "getting even," but merely to see his wife where no subtle influences could hamper her or warp her convictions and reason. He knew that to write to her would be but to prove useless. The letters would be examined and criticized by those around her. He knew that sending her money would be only regarded as an evidence of weakening on his part, and if he was to deal, weakness must have no place. So as to how he might see his wife, and give her an opportunity to appreciate duty, became his daily determination.

The great steam tractor, breaking prairie on his sister's homestead was diligently at its task, and while it turned over from twenty to thirty acres of wild sod each day, it also ate coal like a locomotive. So to it he was kept busy hauling coal over the thirty-five miles from Colome. On the land he was having broken (for he had teams breaking prairie in addition to the tractor) he had arranged to sow flaxseed. For two years preceding this date, crops had been perceptibly shorter, due to drought. Therefore seeds of all kind had attained a much higher price than previously. Flaxseed that he had raised and sold thousands of bushels of in years gone by for one dollar a bushel he was now compelled to pay the sum of $3.00 a bushel therefor.

So with a steam tractor hired at an average cost of $60 a day; with extra men in addition to be boarded; and with hauling the coal for the tractor himself such a distance and other expenses, Jean Baptiste, unlike his august-father-in-law, had little time or patience to sit around consuming his time and substance perpetrating a game of spite.