Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/268

 In these rides about the country tributary to Damascus, Hall often met the young settler Holbrook, who had come into that virgin land to grow the seed of kafir corn.

Holbrook was working as a sort of agrarian evangelist, trying to induce his neighbors to plant a few acres each of the grain then almost unknown to Kansas, since become so popular as the dependable drouth crop. He was offering the seed on the condition of repayment in kind, three bushels for one. Many were accepting, yet doubtfully, with little faith in a grain that could be planted in June and brought to maturity with little rain, as its sponsor claimed. Little patches of green were to be seen here and there, where the kafir had come up, undeterred by the hot wind, hearty and heartening in that place of failing hope.

Dr. Hall was returning from one of these distant calls on a Sunday evening something more than a week after the raid, bent toward melancholy by the scene he had left, the father of a large family down with typhoid, and in a bad way. The poor fellow was driving his team in his delirium, heedless of the pathetic assurance of his worn, sunken-eyed wife that the horses were turned out, and he was lying in bed, and everything was all right. It was such an unreasonable assurance that Hall did not wonder at its failure to quiet the sufferer's unrest.

The doctor was speculating, as he rode slowly toward town, on what would be the fate of this family if the man should die, and he was a strong, rough-modeled fellow, such as commonly fall to that insidious disease. He was thinking of this, and the great hunger that must urge a man away from the chances of employment with a certain reward, even though scant, into this life of hazard