They lived on boiled potatoes and
bacon, suffering like prisoners--jailed innocently. He hovered about the
stove, feeding it twisted bundles of hay till he grew yellow with the
tanning effect of the smoke, while Blanche cowered in her chair,
petulant and ungenerous.
The winter deepened. There were many days when the sun shone, but the
snow slid across the plain with a menacing, hissing sound, and the sky
was milky with flying frost, and the horizon looked cold and wild; but
these were merely the pauses between storms. The utter dryness of the
flakes and the never-resting progress of the winds kept the drifts
shifting, shifting.
"This is what you've dragged me into!" Blanche burst out, one desolate
day after a week's confinement to the house. "This is your fine
home--this dug-out! This is the climate you bragged about. I can't stay
here any longer. Oh, my God, if I was only back home again!" She rose,
and walked back and forth, her shawl trailing after her. "If I'd had any
word to say about it, we never'd 'a' been out in this God-forsaken
country.
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