The last door of them all to open was in a slab house, nearly half a mile from the street.

A washing fluttered on the clothes-line, and the woman who came out of the door carried a round-bottomed hickory-bark basket, such as might hold clothes-pins.

Seeing the invasion, she hurried across the prairie, toward the town.

She was a tall thin woman, not yet thirty, brown and tanned, with a strong masculine face, and as she came nearer one could see that she had a square firm jaw, and great kind gray eyes that lighted her countenance from a serene soul.

Her sleeves rolled far above her elbows revealed arms used to rough hard work, and her hands were red from the wash-tub.