The valley of gold

The east wind blew furiously, beating gray sheets down the streaming panes. Along the village street flowed a turbid torrent, the squalid wash of an "old-timer-three-days'-blow" from the Great Lakes. Threshing was hung up. Every wheel was stopped for a thousand miles across the prairies. Sparrow's pool-room was a cavern of smoke. Through the blue-ringed mists of tobacco moved the unkempt silhouettes of boisterous threshermen. Suddenly over the hu...