EMMONS COUNTY - Phooey barked at the muffled thud, thud, thud.

The noise was coming from a gloved hand, which knocked on his door. It was cold outside.

Horses milled around in a nearby corral. You could see the breath leaving their nostrils. Someone had plowed a path through the snow from the long and winding drive, past the corral, to the front door of the farm house.

Thud, thud, thud.

Again with the barking. Very pointed. Phooey really let her rip.

He wasn't used to visitors. Not a lot of strangers get lost enough to wind up at Leo Kuntz's place.

It's tucked in the rolling hills east of Linton, in the shadow of the very rural St. Michael's church.

The turn is marked by a pathetic field of shriveled yellow corn stalks, bent over by a winter's worth of hard north wind. Word has it, because of last year's drought, that field was one of the better-looking ones in the area. But the farmer didn't even bother with it, figuring it wasn't worth the gas.

When the door finally opened, it was Frank Kuntz who appeared, slightly bent over, holding Phooey by the collar with one hand. "Come in," he said. "Don't mind Phooey." His lips must have moved, but they were completely covered by his bushy, salt-and-pepper mustache. His eyes crinkled and his ears lifted, so you knew he was smiling.

Kuntz led the way to the kitchen, and Phooey - named after the realization that a promise was broken and the dog wasn't, in fact, housebroken - followed and curled up under the table. The kitchen smelled like coffee. The thin walls did their best to hold back the cold.

Frank is Leo's brother. They've been ranching near Linton for 30 years, and have taken over the Nokota horse operation started in the late 1970s by their father. In all those years, even during the extended drought of the late 1980s, it was never as dry as it was last year, Kuntz said.

"It was tough," he said. "It cost more money and made extra work. For a one-year time period, it's as bad as anything I can remember."

That was the consensus last year, too, at a series of drought meetings held in south-central and southwestern North Dakota. Linton hosted one of those meetings in August, which was attended by Gov. John Hoeven and a good number of farmers, ranchers and downtown businessmen.

Mayor Tim Volk said that day in August was the busiest Main Street had been in quite some time.

"The biggest thing you notice around here is the traffic," Volk said 10 days ago, at Linton's city hall. "There's so many fewer cars. No one's in town, and it shows. The business people around here depend on farming, because this is an ag community. People are being more conservative with their money. They're saving it for hay and other needs."

Hay is a sore subject for many ranchers. Surpluses were scarce in western North Dakota, as rainfall amounts fell up to more than 5 inches below normal. Drought status starts at 2 inches less than average.

The Kuntz brothers have had to buy 40 percent more hay this winter than in a normal year, because they weren't able to grow enough last summer. Frank Kuntz drove his little Ford Escort to all of the small towns in the area, stopping at convenience stores and cafes to look for fliers from anyone advertising hay for sale. He had to travel to Gackle and Jud to cut a lot of his feed from CRP, and even that took government intervention.

Kuntz is paying $20 to $55 more per ton for his hay this year than last.

On top of that, many ranchers last year made less money in the sales ring. Because of a feed shortage, they were forced to sell at lower prices than they would fetch if their animals were older and heavier.

The situation was different on the Kuntz ranch. They say the rare Nokota horses are descended from an American Indian breed that once ran these Plains. Of the thousand Nokotas in the world, the Kuntzes keep about 700 on their spread.

"It would be nice to sell down, but we refuse to do that," Kuntz said. "If we did, all that work we did would be for nothing. Someone needs to keep the herd going. We have the majority of the herd that's left in the world here. We don't have a lot of choices."

Probably every farmer and rancher impacted by the drought has a unique situation. What happened in Bowman last year was different than how things went in Turtle Lake. And, in many ways, it was the same.

"The drought will hurt the town," Linton's Mayor Volk said. "The problem is, we were already struggling to keep going."

That might sound like a familiar refrain in many small North Dakota towns.

Throughout the spring and summer, the Tribune will revisit last year's drought - and keep track of conditions this growing season - to see how it affects the lives and livelihoods of people in the western part of the state.

To give a good representation, the paper will look at five towns: Bowman, Linton, Mott, Turtle Lake and Watford City.

Readers can find an interactive map online, at www.bismarcktribune.com/lookoftheland, that will be updated with weather information for those places each week. As new stories are added to the series, photos of a farmer or rancher near the five towns will be uploaded to the same map.

Though the National Weather Service office in Bismarck says droughts - like periods of wetness - tend to run in cycles, it could rain this year. It could pour.

Might as well hope for the best.

Frank Kuntz did, standing outside his brother's house, Phooey running in circles behind him. He looked out at the fields, the depths of their valleys diminished by all the snow. In that snow, there was promise.

"It's nice out here. It's going to be a mess - muddy and all that - but I can't think of any better mess to have right now," Kuntz said. "We've got to stay optimistic out here, or we might as well quit."

(Reach reporter Tony Spilde at 250-8260 or tony.spilde@bismarcktribune.com.)