The Desert of Wheat. Zane Grey

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СКАЧАТЬ knew all the workmen except one. Silas Warner, an old, gray-headed farmer, had been with her father as long as she could remember.

      "Whar you goin', lass?" he called, as he halted to wipe his red face with a huge bandana. "It's too hot to run the way you're a-doin'."

      "Oh, Silas, it's a grand morning!" she replied.

      "Why, so 'tis! Pitchin' hay hyar made me think it was hot," he said, as she tripped on. "Now, lass, don't go up to the wheat-fields."

      But Lenore heard heedlessly, and she ran on till she came to the uncut alfalfa, which impeded her progress. A wonderful space of green and purple stretched away before her, and into it she waded. It came up to her knees, rich, thick, soft, and redolent of blossom and ripeness. Hard tramping it soon got to be. She grew hot and breathless, and her legs ached from the force expended in making progress through the tangled hay. At last she was almost across the field, far from the cutters, and here she flung herself, to roll and lie flat and gaze up through the deep azure of sky, wonderingly, as if to penetrate its secret. And then she hid her face in the fragrant thickness that seemed to force a whisper from her.

      "I wonder—how will I feel—when I see him—again. … Oh, I wonder!"

      The sound of the whispered words, the question, the inevitableness of something involuntary, proved traitors to her happy dreams, her assurance, her composure. She tried to burrow under the hay, to hide from that tremendous bright-blue eye, the sky. Suddenly she lay very quiet, feeling the strange glow and throb and race of her blood, sensing the mystery of her body, trying to trace the thrills, to control this queer, tremulous, internal state. But she found she could not think clearly; she could only feel. And she gave up trying. It was sweet to feel.

      She rose and went on. Another field lay beyond, a gradual slope, covered with a new growth of alfalfa. It was a light green—a contrast to the rich darkness of that behind her. At the end of this field ran a swift little brook, clear and musical, open to the sky in places, and in others hidden under flowery banks. Birds sang from invisible coverts; a quail sent up clear flutelike notes; and a lark caroled, seemingly out of the sky.

      Lenore wet her feet crossing the brook, and, climbing the little knoll above, she sat down upon a stone to dry them in the sun. It had a burn that felt good. No matter how hot the sun ever got there, she liked it. Always there seemed air to breathe and the shade was pleasant.

      From this vantage-point, a favorite one with Lenore, she could see all the alfalfa-fields, the hill crowned by the beautiful white-and-red house, the acres of garden, and the miles of orchards. The grazing and grain fields began behind her.

      The brook murmured below her and the birds sang. She heard the bees humming by. The air out here was clear of scent of fruit and hay, and it bore a drier odor, not so sweet. She could see the workmen, first those among the alfalfa, and then the men, and women, too, bending over on the vegetable-gardens. Likewise she could see the gleam of peaches, apples, pears and plums—a colorful and mixed gleam, delightful to the eye.

      Wet or dry, it seemed that her feet refused to stay still, and once again she was wandering. A gray, slate-colored field of oats invited her steps, and across this stretch she saw a long yellow slope of barley, where the men were cutting. Beyond waved the golden fields of wheat. Lenore imagined that when she reached them she would not desire to wander farther.

      There were two machines cutting on the barley slope, one drawn by eight horses, and the other by twelve. When Lenore had crossed the oat-field she discovered a number of strange men lounging in the scant shade of a line of low trees that separated the fields. Here she saw Adams, the foreman; and he espied her at the same moment. He had been sitting down, talking to the men. At once he rose to come toward Lenore.

      "Is your father with you?" he asked.

      "No; he's too slow for me," replied Lenore. "Who are these men?"

      "They're strangers looking for jobs."

      "I.W.W. men?" queried Lenore, in lower voice.

      "Surely must be," he replied. Adams was not a young, not a robust man, and he seemed to carry a burden of worry. "Your father said he would come right out."

      "I hope he doesn't," said Lenore, bluntly. "Father has a way with him, you know."

      "Yes, I know. And it's the way we're needing here in the Valley," replied the foreman, significantly.

      "Is that the new harvester-thresher father just bought?" asked Lenore, pointing to the huge machine, shining and creeping behind the twelve horses.

      "Yes, that's the McCormack and it's a dandy," returned Adams. "With machines like that we can get along without the I.W.W."

      "I want a ride on it," declared Lenore, and she ran along to meet the harvester. She waved her hand to the driver, Bill Jones, another old hand, long employed by her father. Bill hauled back on the many-branched reins, and when the horses stopped the clattering, whirring roar of the machine also ceased.

      "Howdy, miss! Reckon this 's a regular I.W.W. hold-up."

      "Worse than that, Bill," gaily replied Lenore as she mounted the platform where another man sat on a bag of barley. Lenore did not recognize him. He looked rugged and honest, and beamed upon her.

      "Watch out fer yer dress," he said, pointing with grimy hand to the dusty wheels and braces so near her.

      "Let me drive, Bill?" she asked.

      "Wal, now, I wisht I could," he replied, dryly. "You sure can drive, miss. But drivin' ain't all this here job."

      "What can't I do? I'll bet you—"

      "I never seen a girl that could throw anythin' straight. Did you?"

      "Well, not so very. I forgot how you drove the horses. … Go ahead. Don't let me delay the harvest."

      Bill called sonorously to his twelve horses, and as they bent and strained and began to bob their heads, the clattering roar filled the air. Also a cloud of dust and thin, flying streams of chaff enveloped Lenore. The high stalks of barley, in wide sheets, fell before the cutter upon an apron, to be carried by feeders into the body of the machine. The straw, denuded of its grain, came out at the rear, to be dropped, while the grain streamed out of a tube on the side next to Lenore, to fall into an open sack. It made a short shift of harvesting.

      Lenore liked the even, nodding rhythm of the plodding horses, and the way Bill threw a pebble from a sack on his seat, to hit this or that horse not keeping in line or pulling his share. Bill's aim was unerring. He never hit the wrong horse, which would have been the case had he used a whip. The grain came out in so tiny a stream that Lenore wondered how a bag was ever filled. But she saw presently that even a tiny stream, if running steadily, soon made bulk. That was proof of the value of small things, even atoms.

      No marvel was it that Bill and his helper were as grimy as stokers of a furnace. Lenore began to choke with the fine dust and to feel her eyes smart and to see it settle on her hands and dress. She then had appreciation of the nature of a ten-hour day for workmen cutting eighteen acres of barley. How would they ever cut the two thousand acres of wheat? No wonder many men were needed. Lenore sympathized with the operators of that harvester-thresher, but she did not like the dirt. If she had been a man, though, that labor, hard as it was, would have appealed to her. Harvesting the grain was beautiful, whether in the old, slow method of threshing or with one of these modern man-saving machines.

      She СКАЧАТЬ