Page:Micheaux - The Conquest, The Story of a Negro Pioneer (1913).djvu/327

 large part of those that lived—few were fit for the market, they were so thin—were sold to eastern speculators at gift prices, due to the fact that rough feed was not to be had.

The heavy snows that covered the entire country, from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic, and the bitter cold weather that followed, made shipping hazardous. Therefore, the rural districts suffered in every way. Snow continued to fall and the cold weather held forth, until it was to be seen, when warm weather arrived, the change would be sudden, and floods would result, such was the case.

It was a year of coincidences; the greatest drouth known for years, followed by the coldest winter and the heaviest snows, and these in turn by disastrous floods, will live long in memory.

To me the days were long, and the nights lonely. The late fall rains kept my flax growing until winter had set in, and snow fell before it was all harvested. All I could see of my crop was little white elevations over the field. There was no chance to get it threshed. My capital had all been exhausted, and it was a dismal prospect indeed. I used to sit there in my wife's lonely claim-house, with nothing else to occupy my mind but to live over the happy events connected with our courtship and marriage, and the sad events following her departure.

During my life on the Little Crow, I had looked forward joyfully to the time when I should be a husband and father, with a wife to love, and a home of my own. This had been so dominant in my mind, that when I thought it over, I could not clearly realize the present situation. I lived in a sort of stupor and my very existence seemed to be a dread-