STORM IN TEXAS
29
the beams and the rafters, the while they shriek m a red mad rage.
In the morning five houses and a dozen windmills had been blown
down, and every window-pane in town had been shattered. The streets
were littered with chicken feathers, cinders,
~o.tton,
and aged yellow news–
papers. Yet there had been not a drop of rain.
On the Terry ranch twenty cattie were lost during this storm. Big
Boone came into the ranch house in the very worst of it and ordered the
men to round up the cattle before it was too late. When we refused,
fearing to become sand-blinded, he discharged the four standing nearest
him.
Two days later Wayne Hafey, foreman of the branding unit, took
sick of the heat while at work; and, because he was given no medical aid,
died on the bunk where he. lay.
There was much dissatisfaction after that, and news of the trouble
was echoed in town by the complaints of the railroading men there. Yet
none of us quit when pay day came. There are too few other jobs to
be had. We contented ourselves by saying, "Times'll get better pretty
mn now, and then we can be a bit more indepenclent. Times are bound
to
get better pretty soon now. They just can't get any worse."
In September the heat wave was broken by three days of steady rain.
The days were tolerable then; they are cool now. But times are not
better. The men speak of striking. They are living on jerked beef,
croton coffee and sour bread.
Yes, the nights are cool now, and in the mornings one is wakened
refreshed by a light breeze blowing from up the river. Yet the grumbling
has
not ceased, somehow. The men do their work
as
always, but they are
thinl.ing of young Wayne Hafey, how he died because no doctor came
out to the ranch house. . . •
1\nd we are thinking, too, of what we will do if what people are
saying about another war comes true.
