Apparently from mother earth herself they had come,
autochthonous. Almost unbelieving, the spectator blinked his eyes; then,
as came swift understanding, instinctively he shielded the woman in his
arms from the sight, from the knowledge. Not a sound came to his ears
from over the prairie: not a single call for help. That black swarm
simply arose, there was a brief, sharp struggle, almost fantastic
through the curling heat waves; then one and all, the original dark
figure, the score of others, disappeared--as suddenly as though the
earth from which they came had swallowed them up. Look as he might, the
spectator could catch no glimpse of a moving object, except the
green-brown grass carpet glistening under the afternoon sun.
Yet a moment longer the man stood so; then, his own face as pale as had
been that of coward Hans Mueller, he leaned against the lintel of the
door.
"Yes, we're too late now, Margaret," he echoed.
CHAPTER II
FULFILMENT
The log cabin of Settler Rowland, as a landmark, stood forth. Barred it
was--the white of barked cotton-wood timber alternating with the brown
of earth that filled the spaces between--like the longitudinal stripes
of a prairie gopher or on the back of a bob-white. Long wiry slough
grass, razor-sharp as to blades, pungent under rain, weighted by squares
of tough, native sod, thatched the roof. Sole example of the handiwork
of man, it crowned one of the innumerable rises, too low to be dignified
by the name of hill, that stretched from sky to sky like the miniature
waves on the surface of a shallow lake.
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