The wind blew soft and low.

Night on the prairie is always solemn, and to-night the tense anxiety, the strained anticipation of more than two thousand souls invoked a brooding melancholy which it seemed even the stars must feel.
A dog, ominous, lifted his voice in a long, mournful howl which made mothers put out their hands to their babes.

In answer a coyote in the grass raised a high, quavering cry, wild and desolate, the voice of the Far West..