A local shower fell over part of the country in the last days of May, wetting the ground perhaps an inch deep, and then hot winds began with the first day of June. For thirty days following, not a drop of rain fell on the earth. The heat became so intense that breathing was made difficult, and when the fourth of July arrived, not a kernel of corn that had been planted that spring, had sprouted. The small grain crops had been burned to a crisp, and disaster hung over the land. Everywhere there was a panic. From the West, people who had gone there three and four years before were returning panic stricken; the stock they were driving—when they drove—were hollow and gaunt and thin. Going hither the years before they had presented the type of aggressive pioneers. But now they were returning a tired, gaunt, defeated army. All hopes, all courage, all manhood gone, they presented a discouraging aspect.

From Canada on the north, to Texas on the south, the hot winds had laid the land seemingly bare. Everywhere cattle were being sold for a trifle, as there was no grass upon which they could feed.

To the north and the south, the east and the west in the country of our story, ruin was in the wake. Foreclosures became the order, and suits were minute affairs. From early morn to early morn again, the hot winds continued, and the air was surcharged with the smell of burning plants.

And with the hero of our story, he saw his hopes sink with the disaster that was around him; he saw his holdings gradually slipping from him, and after some time became resigned to the inevitable.

So it came to pass that another change came into his life, hence another epoch in the unusual life was his.

CHAPTER II

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THE FORECLOSURE

EARLY in July when the drought had burned the crops to a crisp, and plant life was beyond redemption, the Banks, Trust and Insurance Companies holding notes secured by mortgages against the land and stock of Jean Baptiste began proceedings for a foreclosure. He read with the cold perspiration upon his forehead the notices that appeared in the papers. Attachments were filed against all he personally possessed in Gregory County, as well as in Tripp County. The fact that he had not had his sister's homestead transferred to him, and that she had just made proof that summer, was a relief to him now, and with a sigh he laid down the newspapers containing the notices.