He winced. ``Hettie, they didn't sell you,'' he said miserably. ``They knew I was a good sharecrop farmer back in Carolina, but out West was a chance to build a real farm of our own. They thought it would be a chance for you to make a life out where nobody will be thought any better than the next except for just what's inside of them. Without money or property, what would you have had at Baton Rouge?''

``I might have starved, but at least I wouldn't be fried to a crisp and soaked with dirt!''

He darkened under his heavy burn. His blue eyes sought the shimmering sea of haze ahead.

To his puzzlement, there suddenly was no haze. The valley lay clear, and open to the eye, right up to the sharp limbed line of gaunt, scoured hills that formed the horizon twenty miles ahead.

Then he noticed the clouds racing upon them -- heavy, ominous, leaden clouds that formed even as they sliced over the crests of the surrounding hills. He had never seen clouds like them before, but he had the primitive feel of danger that gripped a man before a hurricane in Carolina.

He hollered hoarsely, ``Hang on!'' and goaded the oxen as he yelled. He wanted to turn them, putting the wagon against the storm. Too late, he realized that in turning, he had wheeled them onto a patch of sandy ground, instead of atop a grade or ridge.

He swung up over the wheel. ``You had better get inside,'' he warned her.