had gone with him, that it must droop like a plantain leaf in the hot sun, to revive no more, if mischance should prevent his return.
Summer was beginning to concentrate its powers on the gray, buffalo-grass region west of Dodge. Inside the boxcar office Dr. Hall found the heat intolerable from midday onward well into the night, although Little Jack Ryan protested cheerfully, even hopefully, that this was only a little sip of a sample. Wait till the latter days of July, and from then on to October, he said, with what seemed a pride in the man-killing rigors of those blazing, quivering, long white days.
Out of gratitude for Dr. Hall's ministrations to Mrs. Ryan, Jack had contrived an awning from an old tent which made a little thumbnail of shade before the office door. Here, in spite of his conspicuosity in the eyes of all who traversed Custer Street between depot and square, Dr. Hall regularly planted a chair of afternoons, and took what comfort he could from a book.
The never-ceasing southwest wind had begun to blow harder, coming hot and shriveling from the grates of whatever inferno bred it to blast and torture the Kansas plains. It felt at times, along about three o'clock of a cloudless afternoon, that it would almost singe the hair. Wild sunflowers by the roadside hung despondently, the gray bunch-grass stood sere and brittle. On what had been the cattle range until a little while past, now dotted by plank huts of homesteaders, a vast transformation had fallen. The refreshing rills which had sparkled down the old buffalo trails a few weeks earlier, promising water in abundance, had dried up to the last drop; their hard-baked beds were cracked.
