He crushed her hand to his hot lips.

“You make me—­ashamed.  I won’t give—­up,” he said, brokenly.  “And when I’m over—­there—­in the trenches, I’ll think—­”

“Dorn, listen to this,” rang out Anderson.  “We’ll fool that I.W.W. gang....It’s a-goin’ to rain.  So far so good.  To-morrow you take this cake of phosphorus an’ ride around all over the country.  Show it an’ tell the farmers their wheat’s goin’ to burn.  An’ offer them whose fields are already ruined—­that fire can’t do no more harm—­offer them big money to help you save your section.  Half a hundred men could put out a fire if one did start.  An’ these neighbors of yours, some of them will jump at a chance to beat the I.W.W....  Boy, it can be done!”

He ended with a big fist held aloft in triumph.

“See!  Didn’t I tell you?” murmured Lenore, softly.  It touched her deeply to see Dorn respond to hope.  His haggard face suddenly warmed and glowed.

“I never thought of that,” he burst out, radiantly.  “We can save the wheat....  Mr. Anderson, I—­I can’t thank you enough.”

“Don’t try,” replied the rancher.

“I tell you it will rain,” cried Lenore, gaily.  “Let’s walk out there—­watch the storm come across the hills.  I love to see the shadows blow over the wheat.”

Lenore became aware, as she passed the car, that Nash was glaring at her in no unmistakable manner.  She had forgotten all about him.  The sight of his jealous face somehow added to her strange exhilaration.

They crossed the road from the house, and, facing the west, had free prospect of the miles of billowy hills and the magnificent ordnance of the storm-clouds.  The deep, low mutterings of thunder seemed a grand and welcome music.  Lenore stole a look at Dorn, to see him, bareheaded, face upturned, entranced.  It was only a rain-storm coming!  Down in the valley country such storms were frequent at this season, too common for their meaning to be appreciated.  Here in the desert of wheat rain was a blessing, life itself.

The creamy-white, rounded edge of the approaching clouds came and coalesced, spread and mushroomed.  Under them the body of the storm was purple, lit now and then by a flash of lightning.  Long, drifting veils of rain, gray as thin fog, hung suspended between sky and earth.

“Listen!” exclaimed Dorn.

A warm wind, laden with dry scent of wheat, struck Lenore’s face and waved her hair.  It brought a silken, sweeping rustle, a whispering of the bearded grain.  The soft sound thrilled Lenore.  It seemed a sweet, hopeful message that waiting had been rewarded, that the drought could be broken.  Again, and more beautiful than ever before in her life, she saw the waves of shadow as they came forward over the wheat.  Rippling, like breezes over the surface of a golden lake, they came in long, broken lines, moving, following, changing, until the whole wheat-field seemed in shadowy motion.