THE FIELD OF AMBER GOLD

A remarkable story wherein the poignant drama of man’s eternal battle with the forces of Nature is impressively brought out: by the author of “Captain Jack” and “At Bay.”

John Grahame walked with shoulders stooped, head bent forward and down, until he was peering out at the storm through the half-inch slit between the visor of his cap and the top of a sheepskin collar. When he left the little prairie town of Barliton, two hours before, the sun had been shining, and although it was thirty below, he anticipated nothing worse than a cold drive, ending as usual by the big coal stove where he rocked and read the papers aloud to Jane as she prepared his supper. But he had covered little more than half of the fifteen miles to his home when a blue-gray wall of clouds arose in the west and came on with the terrifying speed of the genuine Dakota blizzard. There were several inches of loose snow on the ground, and John knew what the wind would do to those powdery flakes.

He looked about him and considered. There were two or three farms within sight, and he was minded to try and reach one ahead of the storm, but then he thought of Jane. He could see her standing, as thousands of pioneer women had stood before, her face pressed against the frost-laden glass, looking anxiously out into the impenetrable wall of whirling snow, and praying the God of Storms to guide her lover safely through; he thought of the wind and the stoves that might burn all too fiercely, and with this vision of fire came decision: he must go through.

Grahame settled his cap and pulled the earlaps well down over the sides of his face; he unbuttoned his heavy double-breasted overcoat and buttoned it again so that the opening would be downwind instead of against it; he turned up the wide collar and buttoned the tab across the front; and from a box of groceries and other supplies he took an extra pair of knitted gloves and put them on under his mittens. When the storm was almost upon him, he slipped from the load and began to walk. He was ready, but none too soon. Little whirlwinds were already lifting the light snow in small spirals which wandered aimlessly here and there, and when the blue wall passed under and obscured the sun, it seemed to him that the thermometer dropped ten degrees, so cold and piercing was the wind. From ahead came a low moaning which grew louder and louder—and then the storm struck.

The team at once stopped and began cramping the sled as they tried to back into the wind. Stepping up onto the tongue, Grahame placed a hand on the hip of either horse and spoke to them. His voice was lost in the rush of the wind, but they felt his touch, and it steadied them. They obeyed his pull on the line and turned into the wind again. There came a rippling of mighty muscles beneath his hand. The sharp steel calks bit deep into snow and ice, and the front runners were wrenched back into the road, and again the long steel shoes took up their whining song of protest against the cold.

For two long hours Grahame had been floundering beside the sled. Several times when he felt himself becoming chilled, he walked in deep snow until nearly exhausted; then he placed one hand on the box and allowed the team to pull him forward. He could see little of the horses and nothing on either side; nor did he look, for his eyes were fixed on the silver-white ribbon of hard-packed snow beneath the runner at his feet. The presence of that narrow sleigh track meant the difference between life and death. If he held it, he was safe; if he lost it even for a moment, it might mean the end.

The blinding white of late afternoon changed to the gray of sunset, and still the big team fought on. Their breath came in rapid puffs of white vapor, while long slender icicles hung from their nostrils. Grahame’s eyelashes froze to the lower lids and he rubbed them apart with his mitten. His collar had become a mass of ice, and a double handful of snow had driven through the tiny opening to pack solidly around his throat. Little by little the cold was driving through his clothing as well. He felt it first in his fingers, and he beat them against his sides, but the motion seemed to pump cold air up his sleeves for he felt it under his arms. The team stopped, and Grahame went to investigate. There was a dark shadow ahead, which as he approached resolved itself into another team and sled, evidently going the same way as himself; but the team had stopped and swung the tongue around until they stood back to the storm. The spring seat had fallen from its place, and now dangled from one clamp. In the bottom of the box was the huddled body of a man—a man whom he vaguely recognized by his strangely scarred face as Fred Kinear, a newcomer in the neighborhood.

A hasty examination convinced Grahame that life was not extinct, and he set about the only course that might save the flickering spark. Working as fast as was possible with half-numb fingers, he unharnessed and turned loose the stranger’s team. Trying to force them against the storm to a place they did not know would be worse than useless, and once free from sled and harness, they would drift with the storm until they found shelter in a coulee or behind a hill. Pulling the pin from the eveners, he changed his own team to the other sled.

Even as he worked, the last vestige of daylight faded and the atmosphere around him became a vast area of rushing, stinging, impenetrable gray. But one hope remained. The horses, if left to themselves, might face the blizzard and take him home. He knew it was not more than a mile and a half or two miles at the most. It was only a chance, but at any rate there was no alternative. In a few minutes the game would be played, and won or lost.

Climbing into the sled, he sacrificed the last chance of life, should the team fail him, by taking off his sheepskin-lined overcoat and wrapping it around the unconscious man below. Grasping the lines, he swung the free ends across the hips of his team with all the force the wind allowed him. They wrenched the front runners around and headed into the wind. Again the lines cut into the air, and the horses broke into a trot. Once more came the stinging whistle of leather, and they broke into a run. The wind seared Grahame’s flesh like hot iron, and he threw one arm before his face. Realizing the futility of trying to guide his horses over a road he could not see, he dropped the lines to the bottom of the box and pinned them with his feet.

Time and again the horses floundered into deep snow and Grahame’s hopes sank to zero, only to come up again as he felt the sled again lunge forward on the hard-packed road. Gaining confidence as the minutes passed, he leaned forward and talked to the team as a mother croons to her child. Then he begged and cursed and cheered them by turns. In his excitement he forgot the wind and the snow and the pain—forgot even the menace of death itself. A thought flashed before his mind of the book he had been reading only the night before. What in hell did Ben Hur know about the real article? Here was a race against the forces of nature when life itself was the stake. He laughed aloud, and with the laugh came a lurch to one side, a crash and the wild scream of broken wire, and splinters of a gate-post flew in his face. The sled slowed down on bare ground, only to lunge forward toward a black shadow ahead. An instant later he caught a fleeting vision of an orange glow, outlining the figure of a woman.

Some fifteen years before and far to the south and east, Fred Kinear had grown to early manhood. From one of the parental strains, he had inherited length, breadth and a certain degree of thickness—not the thickness of surplus flesh, but rather the depth of chest and shoulder to which nature anchors the muscles of strong men. Another strain, perhaps, had endowed him with a sunny disposition and the ability to make friends and to hold fast to those he made. Socially he was a success, because like most really strong men to whom the Creator has given a level head as well, he regarded his muscular power as a trust and drew from it the supreme confidence in himself that automatically lifts men of his type above the bully class.

As a boy Kinear was one of those who must know how every mechanical contrivance operates. His most cherished possessions were the alarm clocks and the dollar watches other people had thrown away, for the first stage of development in the natural mechanic is the desire to take things apart, followed after a time by the second stage, wherein he tries to put them together again. The purely analytic stage is common to most boys, but the synthetic period is reached only by the genuine mechanic. At the time his schoolmates were dreaming of laurels to be won in the realms of poetry, Fred was out in the backyard monkeying with a toy steam engine, and when they reached the period of vacations spent on tennis court and lake with racket and banjo, Fred was shoveling coal into a squat, puffy thing that was very hot and greasy, and had adopted the monkey wrench and oilcan as constant companions.

After he was graduated from high school, he wanted to go to college. Unfortunately for him, he was not a member of the banjo gang. What he got he had to earn, and so he found a job firing in the boiler room of a light plant. One day a boiler exploded and they carried him to a hospital on a stretcher, with a white cloth over his face. Weeks afterward, he was allowed to sit up; a little later he could move around, and still later the bandages were taken from his head. The surgeon who had patched up his face was very proud of his work, but his pride was based on his accomplishment in light of the materials he had to work with, and brought small consolation to Fred Kinear when they first brought him a mirror. What he saw was a face, it was true, but not his face nor did it bear a likeness to any face he had ever seen before. One ear was little more than a gnarled button; cheeks and chin were a series of white scars, ridged and seamed; his nose was partly gone; his eyelids were too small and fiery red, and his upper lip was drawn up in a snarl which would endure forever.

There came long hours when Kinear fought with all his might for courage to face the world again—a long uphill fight; but in the end he found a measure of peace, for he knew that after all, he was still Fred Kinear in spite of what the mirror claimed. The steam might have seared his face beyond recognition, but it had not touched his brain, and certainly his soul was intact. He was still a human being, and as such would go forth and take up his work where he had left off.

Finally one sunny day Fred left the hospital. At the corner where he waited for a street-car, a small boy came along, to stop and gaze in awe at the disfigured man. Others joined him, and soon a ring of young faces surrounded him. Kinear had a sense of humor great enough to overcome, in a measure, the bitterness of this experience, and he laughed, or at least he intended to laugh, but it was only a matter of spirit and vocal cords, because the lips did not respond, and he saw the young faces shrink back in fear at what, to them, was merely a horrible noise. Kinear never laughed again.

In the car, when he asked a question of the conductor, and under the stimulus of a terrible effort to enunciate clearly, his face twisted itself into a horrible caricature, someone laughed, and thenceforth he spoke only when it became necessary. He sat down on the long seat, and a young woman made an involuntary movement away from him. That cut deep, and his self-consciousness now caused him to misinterpret smiles and nods among the other passengers. The steam that scarred his face was as nothing compared to the manifestations of fear and ridicule and scorn that he saw, or imagined he saw; and a new process began within him. Where before it had been only the flesh that had suffered, now his very soul began to blight and shrivel, drawing in and away from the scarred shell of his body until he became a machine, driven by his mentality only. People who knew him said that from that day on, he became a soulless automaton, with a heart of iron, an emotionless, heartless creature of flesh and blood, asking sympathy of none and granting even as he received. Whether these things were true or not, the fact remained that Fred Kinear had ceased to exist as such, and from then on he was known as Scarface, or sometimes as Ironheart.

In the home of John Grahame, the man whom they knew as Ironheart lay under the care of Jane and the country doctor they had called in from Barliton. During the days immediately following the blizzard there had been times when it seemed they were waging a useless fight. This strange, silent man who suffered without complaint and who received their ministrations without thanks or comment, hovered very near the shadows. Hour after hour, for many days and nights, Jane sat beside the stricken man and did as the doctor or her own intuitions directed. Sometimes the doctor took her place, and when he could not come and she became exhausted from her long vigil, Grahame left his work and sat by the sick man while she rested.

In the end their efforts were rewarded. Slowly but surely their patient retraced his steps over the shadow trail and began his climb to health and when the day came that he was well enough to leave them, they knew no more of him than on the night Grahame had carried his unconscious form into his house. Beyond the fact that he had been in the country only a little time, their knowledge was limited to the scant gleanings of their observations, and they were limited enough. Speaking only in answer to their questions, and then in as few words as was possible, he had invited no confidences and had given none. When he left, he thanked Grahame with a nod of the head and turned to Jane. They both thought for a moment that he was going to say something, for the merest trace of an expression came to his eyes, but neither were able to read the message they carried. It seemed that the tortured muscles of his face and eyelids were incapable of transmitting whatever went on behind them. Turning abruptly, he stepped into his sleigh and rode away.

Grahame’s face grew hard and angry.

“Talk about gratitude, there isn’t even decency in his make-up!”

Jane, with instinct guided by a woman’s intuition, felt vaguely that her patient had tried to express a feeling of some kind. Why he had failed she could not understand, but she answered John’s angry criticism quietly:

“I am sure that is untrue, John. There is something we don’t understand.” And as she saw John about to make another angry rejoinder: “John, it isn’t worth our quarreling about. He is gone at any rate, and we have done our duty. You know Mother would say that is all we should think of, anyway—‘a sense of duty well done.’”

“Mighty poor reward, I should call that. What are you trying to do? Make yourself out as sort of a saint?”

“No, John. But there is no need for you to be plain cross, is there? The first minute we are alone, too! I’ll wish him back again if you keep this up.”

“Jane, for heaven’s sake don’t wish that on us. I didn’t mean to be cross. Come on out to the barn with me and have a look-see at the new little bossies.”

“I’ll do it. I haven’t been out there for ages, seems to me.”

But the story went the round of the neighborhood that they had been offered neither pay nor thanks for their care, and from then on the name of Ironheart was used to the exclusion of any other. The name of Fred Kinear was nearly forgotten.

John Grahame stood in a pile of wheat up to his knees. He had exhausted every resource. The walls of the granary bulged until the nails were popping. His stock could not get into the barn because the doors were blocked with wheat, and now Jane had been driven from the house, and wheat was flowing from the windows in amber streams. In desperation he strove to extricate himself from the rapidly growing pile. It had reached his waist and was still climbing. He tried to shout, and threw a last frantic look around in search of help. Apparently he was doomed to die under a deluge of prosperity, for there was no one in sight. And then he saw something which brought to him a wave of consolation. From the rollway of his root cellar he saw feet protruding, feet that waved and threshed around in the wheat to no avail. He recognized them, pair by pair, as the feet of his creditors buried headfirst in their own collections. One pair he recognized as belonging to his grocery and dry goods merchant, and he felt a tinge of sorrow; another belonged to his banker, the man who had made him mortgage everything on the place, excepting only his wife and dog; this time his gaze was coldly critical. The third pair belonged to the hardware man who had sold Jane that incubator that wouldn’t incubate and the separator that wouldn’t separate, the man who had made him mortgage his milch cows to buy a binder; and again his gaze was unsympathetic. Lastly he spied a fourth pair, which belonged to a real-estate dealer, a man who had sold him one hundred and sixty acres of gumbo, and he positively gloated over the man’s predicament. But his joy was short-lived. The wheat had reached his chin. He put forth all the strength he had in him, in a last frantic effort. It was futile. Another rush of golden grain buried him ten feet beneath its suffocating bulk, and he could breathe no more. There were shooting stars and crimson fires and all the rest of that horrid crew, even to the ringing of bells, but the bells sounded muffled and far away, because the alarm clock was covered with a pillow. John Grahame sat up in bed. It was five o’clock.

The transition from nightmare to actuality did not bring the relief he had a right to expect. The room was cold, and a wind that spoke eloquently of further discomforts out of doors moaned along the eaves. A carefully shaded night lamp in another room cast an all-too-feeble ray through the open door, and by its ineffective light, Grahame sat on the edge of the bed and began to dress.

Kindling a fire in the range, he used the reservoir for a footrest and laced his shoes while the fire was growing hot enough to ignite a bucket of lignite. Pulling on overshoes, sheepskin overcoat, a fur cap and gloves, he threaded the milk pail over his arm and took the lantern in the same hand. Picking up the slop pail with the other, he stepped out on the back stoop. A cold wind smote him, and the yard was a dirty gray from drifting spirals of snow and dust. The windmill, apparently unable to make up its mind which way the wind was blowing, swung from side to side and reminded him that the turntable needed oil; the pull-out wire clanged harshly against the angle iron frame. A rooster, resenting the disturbance, crowed long and loud.

As Grahame crossed to the pigpen, he looked to the east, and the sun seemed to be coming up under a canopy decorated with streamers of crimson. The hogs were sluggish, and came forth doubtfully, one at a time, but when he hung the pail and lantern on a post and opened the granary door, they lost their indecision and came out with a rush.

Passing the windmill, he threw it into gear and went on to the barn, where a long series of nickers and the lowing of a cow greeted him as he entered. From the feed-bin, he carried oats until the nickering changed to the crunching sound of horses eating, and the peculiar snapping, sucking sound of feeding cows. He milked and hung the pail on a peg while he walked to the edge of the field he was plowing. The ground was a little stiff, but not enough, he decided, to stop his work; so he went back to the barn and harnessed six horses.

When he was halfway back to the house, Jane opened the door and called to breakfast. He detected the odor of frying ham and quickened his pace. She met him at the door, anxious to know if it had frozen enough to interfere with the plowing, but John reassured her.

“The ground is a little stiff, but the horses can make it all right. I have no time to waste, you know, if I am to seed the whole hundred acres to wheat.”

“If you should be a little late, don’t you suppose you could put the rest into flax? It’s a better money crop anyway, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but there are too many weeds for flax. It’s got to be wheat, but if we get even a fair crop of wheat we can meet the mortgage on the home place anyway.”

“We are going to get a crop this year. I feel it in my bones.”

“Yep, your bones said the same thing last year, if I remember right; but I didn’t see any crop, did you?”

“No, of course not; but listen, John: we can’t have a failure every year. There’s got to be a change sometime.”

“True as preaching; but if you are talking to brace up my courage, honey girl, you just don’t have to. My courage is up and coming. I’ll work sixteen hours a day, but I’ll get that wheat in at the right time. Does that make you feel easier?”

John sat down to a carefully prepared breakfast of ham, eggs and pancakes. There was but little conversation at the table. The men who raise the nation’s bread have but little time for talk. In twenty minutes John was out again, hitching the six horses to the gang-plow, four abreast across the tongue, and a lead team ahead.

Driving out through the yard, he came to the stubble; and half a mile to the westward he could just see a small piece of fluttering white fixed to a pole. Farther along was another, and at the end of a mile was a third. Maneuvering his team until the three stakes were in line, he drove to the edge of the field. Leaning to one side in his seat, he could see the stakes in line between the horses; then he kicked a lever, and the sharp lay-points dropped to the ground and slipped gently beneath the surface. There came the popping sound of sharp lays in roots and the whirring sound of knife-like coulters; and the stubble, shivering slightly, rose along the moldboards, to turn smoothly and fall bottom-side up, leaving a double furrow of black dirt behind the plow.

Half a mile down the field, Grahame stopped to throw the first stake across the plow. Sighting by the remaining pair, he finally came to the last one, and so out on to the section line. Behind him, a slender black line stretched away into the distance as true as a steel tape.

The second round was easier, for one horse of the lead team and one on the tongue were able to follow the furrow. Taking advantage of this, Grahame hung his handful of lines on the plow-levers while he walked behind and stamped some of the cold out of his joints. At his heels came old Shep, his assistant herder, on the lookout for mice, while behind the dog fluttered a flock of hardy blackbirds watching for worms turned out by the plow.

Five times before dinner and five times in the afternoon Grahame’s plow sliced its way out and back across the field. For the first few rounds he was busy making minor adjustments in the plow and harness, but after that there was nothing to do but ride until he was stiff and then to walk until he was tired. Some days it rained—if not enough to stop the plow, then just enough to make life miserable for horses and man. Sometimes the field was half obscured by snow-squalls or sleet. More often a hot sun started hard oil running from the axles and brought flecks of foam under the horses’ collars.

When Grahame and Jane had put in their first crop, fortune had favored them. A favorable season with steadily rising prices, enabled them to put up a good set of buildings and buy another quarter section, although purchasing the second, called for a mortgage on the first. A second good crop paid up a part of the mortgage on the land, bought additional stock and purchased the machinery they needed; and—then came the deluge. First certain impractical men then in power at the State capitol caused the golden stream of credit to be dammed—gold that had always flowed from the East to carry the farms from crop to crop. People in the East who had money to invest became frightened. They saw or thought they saw a great State crumbling to pieces in the hands of long-haired dreamers. Local banks, unable to borrow, could not lend; and worse yet, they had to collect. Next came the war, with prices which looked high and felt high, but still were below the cost of production. The Government thoughtfully put a price limit on wheat but allowed the price of machinery, twine and leather to climb as high as willing and able profiteers could push them. Lastly came years of drouth, until at the time when this story opens, Grahame had staked his last cent. One good crop would go far toward saving him. Another failure meant the loss of all he had.

Day after day he moved up and down the field, and the black streak grew wider and wider. Sometimes he changed to the drill and seeded what he had plowed, and meanwhile there came the soft rains of early spring, soaking up the thirsty earth. In time the first land plowed became a long band of blue-green. When the wheat was in, he changed to oats and finally to a few acres of spelts for hog feed. June came, and half of it passed, leaving the fields shimmering in the heat of the noonday sun or waving in the cool breezes that followed the frequent showers. Grahame greased the moldboards of the plow to prevent rusting and then went fishing. He needed a few days of rest before haying began.

One afternoon toward the end of June, Grahame, who had just finished cultivating the potatoes, was spraying them with Paris green. It had been an unusually hot day, without a breath of wind, and the air hung heavy and oppressive. Absorbed in his work, he noticed nothing unusual until there came a faint tremor of the air, a low, vibrant thing, half sound, half jar. Straightening up, he looked around to find the western horizon a tumbled mass of threatening clouds. There was a long fork of light, and again came the low murmur, although a little louder than before.

Grahame had long ago learned to fear storms which came up on apparently still air, and his first thought was of hail. He tried to dismiss the fear as foolish, because it was too early in the season for hailstorms. As a precautionary measure, however, he went to the pasture and drove in his stock. As he came back, Jane was working with the turkeys and young chickens. It took the combined efforts of both to find and drive in the last turkey hen, and by that time the clouds were well above their heads. On their crest was a long white billow rolling over and over, from which shot out streamers of white vapor to fall behind in long trailing lines. Behind the crests were the dreaded streaks of green, crossed and recrossed by jagged lines of crimson fire. Then came a black wall of water sweeping toward them across the fields, while the roar of thunder had become continuous.

In the house they worked fast shutting windows and getting ready for wind and rain if for nothing worse. The wall of water came on, shutting out mile after mile of fields, crossed the section line on their west and came up through the wheat. With awful force it struck. A roar, a crash and darkness. The house writhed and groaned, but it held fast to its foundation. Sheets of water ran from the eaves, and the yard became an electrically illuminated lake. For ten minutes it continued unabated, and then the roar fell away to little more than a whisper.

It was the crucial time, and Grahame held his breath. A glance had shown him that the buildings were all intact, and his hopes began to rise. Just then came the forerunner of doom. Something hit the roof like the tap from a small sledge. Running to the window, they saw the water in the yard spurting up as though from shells in a naval engagement. From the lungs of Grahame came the sigh of a man who recognizes defeat. Nothing on God’s green earth could save them now. All was lost, his wheat, his home, his stock, everything gone. Pieces of ice from the size of a pea to big three-cornered chunks larger than hens’ eggs were splashing and bobbing about the yard. With no wind, they were doing little harm, but Grahame drew no comfort from that, for he knew all too well what was behind them, and soon it came. Another roar, another crash. The battering on walls and roof, the splitting of siding and shingles, the breaking of glass and roaring of wind produced pandemonium.

Of the two west windows, they chose one and held pillows against the glass. The other crashed in with a shower of splintered panes, leaving an opening for icy projectiles that pounded across the room to pile up on the opposite wall. For a time the screen on the window they were guarding held, but in the end it gave way and only the pillows saved them from another deluge. When the last pane of glass had been battered out, they stuffed the pillows farther in and reinforced them with other bedding. And then suddenly it seemed as though a divine Protector had thrust forth a shield and covered the house. The tumult ceased as abruptly as it had begun. The quiet was oppressive. The wind dropped to a breeze and a burst of sunlight illuminated the field of wheat before them. There was nothing but a sea of mud.

For many minutes Grahame stood leaning against the battered window. His head rested against his arm, and his whole body sagged in an attitude of utter despondency. Only those who have known what it is to have the results of long hours of work and hope dashed to nothing by the lash of fire or storm can realize the agony of this man who suddenly found himself bereft of the foundation upon which all of his hopes were builded, and face to face with ruin. He was a strong man, as all of his kind must be who wrest a living from Mother Earth, but this last, the greatest blow of all, had been a hard one. The spark of resistance had been all but beaten out.

In the hour of supreme discouragement it is usually the woman who revives first. Jane saw and understood the force of their calamity as well as John himself; but within her she carried the indomitable faith of the pioneer—the faith which endured, over mountains and deserts, through bitter cold and choking dust, to build an empire under the war-clubs of Apache and Sioux. Jane’s first thought was for the man at the window, and soon Grahame felt her arm across his shoulder and the gentle touch of her hand on his hair.

For a long time she too rested her elbow on the empty sash and gazed out on the scene of desolation. Before her eyes stretched a hundred acres of blue-gray mud. Not a living thing in sight, not a plant or weed! At the last thought an expression of grim satisfaction flashed across her face. At least the weeds had gone too. Behind the drill a drift of hailstones was slowly melting in the sun, and the thawing ice brought a renewed tang of spring to the air. It seemed as though the season was just beginning again, and as she looked down along the pasture fence, she almost expected to see a blue bank of wild crocus, just as she had less than two months ago.

From the drill to the field and back to the drill again her eyes wandered, and though she was hardly aware of seeing either, the laws of suggestion came subconsciously into operation. Slowly at first, and then with gathering force, an idea took possession of her mind, and with it came a new expression of hope. She turned with an eager gasp to the man at her side.

“John, I’ve thought of something.”

She saw his face then. It was gray and haggard, but she shook his arm again.

“John, that field is as clean as summer fallowing. Why not put it into flax and try once more?”

For a while Grahame revolved the idea in his head and then dismissed it with: “Too late.”

“No, it isn’t. I know it isn’t too late. Lots of people put flax in the last of June and win out. If we happened to have plenty of rain and no early frost, we might make it too. It’s worth trying, anyway.”

For a moment Grahame toyed with the thought. He raised his head and looked out over the field. Certainly there never was a finer seed-bed than that looked. Flax sowed then would have a flying start of the weeds even if the weeds started again, because it would germinate and grow faster than any of them. With plenty of moisture it stood a good chance to get ahead of the fall frosts. Gradually his face cleared, and he too looked out upon the world with an expression of new hope. He straightened and started to say something, but the words died in his throat. He bowed his head again.

“No money, no credit!” he groaned.

“Oh, John, don’t say it. You have credit.”

“There isn’t a thing left on the place I could put up for security, and who’d be fool enough to lend me money for seedflax so late in the season? No—no use! We’re beaten, and that’s the end of it.”

For a while Jane returned to her study of the ice-swept field, but she did not show the discouragement of her husband. Instead the light of a strong resolution grew in her eyes, and soon he felt her hand on his arm again.

“John, I’ve thought of something else. I still have the hundred dollars you gave me so I could go to the hospital when—that is, this fall. Let’s take that and buy the seed. It will be enough and some left over for groceries. If we get a crop, there’ll be plenty of money for me, and if we shouldn’t—well, I can get along just as so many other women do. Come, John—come! We must hurry. There’s no time to lose.”

John’s head had come up again, and he turned to the indomitable little woman beside him and gathered her into his arms. And so a woman did what her pioneer sisters have done a thousand times before, and what women will do a thousand times in years to come. She drew from that seemingly inexhaustible well of courage, and inspired in her man the strength and determination to try just once more—and then once again.

Long after dark, that same night, Jane heard the rumble of Grahame’s wagon and went to the gate to meet him.

Climbing up on the wheel and holding her lantern down into the box, she saw the light reflected on the oily amber surface of flax. Lifting a handful, she watched it slip between her fingers. It felt cool and smooth and clean. Somehow there came to her, with its velvety touch, a new hope and faith, the faith which makes all things possible to those who must win success only by trying again and again.

On the long ride home with the flax John had had ample time for thought, and he came to realize what Jane’s faith and courage had meant to him that day, and what it would mean in the anxious days to come, and he tried to give expression to the thought.

“You sure are the best little crutch any lame man could have, honey girl.”

“Lame man! Don’t say it! You’re not a lame man!”

“Not physically, I’ll admit but—Jane, where did you get all your courage? You’re like a rubber ball. Punch you in one place, and you bob out in another. Now, me, if I’m punched in, any place, I stay punched in, I guess.”

Jane laughed, but she recognized his troubled thought under his levity.

“You’re unjust to yourself, John. This is the difference between us. You have all the care and worry. You have the responsibility, not only of your own future— which, if you were alone, would bother you not at all—but also the responsibility of my future and—our children’s future. Don’t you know that the fear of failure is what takes the courage out of a man? What you have to learn is how to forget to be afraid; and you know you will never lose your crutch, so what does the rest matter?”

“It doesn’t matter at all, honey. Nothing matters as long as we have each other.... Get up on the seat with me and ride to the granary. I’m tired and hungry too.”

“Oh, John, and I have kept you here gabbling all this time! No, I’ll run into the house and have something nice and hot for your supper by the time you’ve unhitched.”

Next morning Grahame went over the field and debated with himself whether it would be better to disk or not before hitching on to the drill, but in the end he decided that the disking would dry out the soil and that with the additional time it would take, would do more to lessen his chances than the few weeds that might survive.

In midafternoon of the fourth day Grahame was coming down the last lap of the final round. Ahead of him the six big horses forged steadily on, dragging the twelve-foot drill step by step toward home. From under his feet he could hear the musical sound of thin disks cutting the surface, and the jingle of many small chains dragging on the ground to cover the tiny furrows, while from each spout of the machine a miniature cascade of flax sifted down through a rubber pipe and dropped gently between the disks. At the end of the field he lifted the disks from the ground and turned for a last look over the field. There stretched an even hundred acres of newly seeded grain. Whether or not he and Jane were to keep the farm home in which they had staked so many golden dreams was a secret locked in the bosom of the freshly sown field, but he would not worry, would not be afraid: he would take Jane’s counsel to heart.

That night Jane awoke to hear the soft pattering of rain on the roof. She touched her husband, and together they looked from each window in turn. It was the same in every direction—not a star in sight, but just a lowering canopy of slate-gray clouds from which came the long slanting lines of life-giving moisture. John turned exultantly to his wife:

“Well, honey, we win the first round anyway.”

A few days later they saw the miracle of germinating grain. In seemingly endless rows, and but a few inches apart, the soil was breaking and lifting into tiny ridges, and in some places there were delicate leaves showing under scale-like canopies of soil. Every morning and every evening they made the same pilgrimage, watching the little plants break through and stand erect, the long lines like so many miniature evergreens. In two weeks the field was green again, and Grahame’s flaxfield became the Mecca of neighbors and real-estate men who wished to show a perfect stand.

There came now another lull during which Grahame and Jane replanted as much of their garden as they thought would have time to mature before the frost. Later came the haying, and in addition to the wild hay John cut and stacked, before turning under the stubble, the scattering growth of oats and spelts which had come up in wake of the storm. With no early harvest to take up his time, he helped around the neighborhood, for while there was no cash in it for him, there was always a day coming when he would need help himself.

One day in early August, when Jane and Grahame went to the field, they found the deep green was fading to a lighter shade, and the next morning, under a warm burst of sunshine, the flax had turned to an ocean of waving blue. Acre after acre, away into the West until their vision was lost amid the dancing heat waves, were countless millions of tiny blue blossoms nodding in the sun. Fleecy clouds threw light shadow-areas which moved slowly across the field, and currents of air, passing here and there, sent shimmering paths of alternating blue and green before their eyes. Again Grahame’s arm tightened about his wife, and this time he chuckled as he announced: “Round Number Two, and we’ve won again.”

“How long before it will be out of danger, John?”

“Depends on the weather. Say a month—six weeks, perhaps.”

“That’s a long time,” said Jane wistfully.

“Here, don’t you lose your grip, little wife. Where’d we land if you gave up, I’d like to know?”

Jane laughed. “Oh, I’m not losing my grip. I’m only getting a fresh start; but John, as the danger gets nearer and nearer, it takes a lot of nerve never to be afraid, doesn’t it?”

“You bet it does, honey; but me—I’m learning a lot these days. A man doesn’t have to flunk entirely because he is knocked out once. Let’s forget it and go fishing.”

And there was no need for worry. September came without frost following a season of ample moisture. The blue petals had withered long ago, and in their place had come tiny green bolls. That was the danger period, and night after night John had watched the thermometer, for the slightest trace of frost would destroy the delicate bolls and plunge their hopes once more into discouragement; but no frost came, and he watched the little grains pass from milk to dough and at last harden to the point where they were safe. Then came a time of windy weather and clear skies when the field slowly turned to gold and then brown, and the day arrived when Jane and Grahame stood and listened to the dry, metallic, rasping sound of ripe grain. He took off his hat and threw it out on the grain. The serried ranks of stems hardly bent, and the hat rode buoyantly above the field. That was a sign of twenty bushels to the acre! They returned to the house, too happy even to talk, and Grahame went to work on the big “header” or “push-binder,” as it is sometimes called by virtue of the fact that the horses are behind instead of in front of the cutting and binding mechanism.

There are two ways of cutting flax. One is to take off the binder attachment and allow the grain to pass to the carrier and be dumped in windrows. The other is to cut it like other grain and shock it. Grahame had decided to go to the additional expense of tying it, as he explained to Jane:

“Because it is so late in the season, there is a chance of snow before we can get it threshed. Even heavy rains would damage it. If it is shocked, you can see how we can save more of it than we could if it’s lying on the ground. It will cost more, but it’s worth it.”

“Yes, I see that; but—it’s a lot of work to put a hundred acres of grain into shocks.”

“Well, I have the time, and I can work—none better.”

And so early next morning he hitched his six horses to the big binder and drove to the field. When the sickle had almost reached the grain, he tilted the platform so the knife would work five or six inches above the ground. Then he kicked another lever, and the whole machine sprang to life, and the twelve-foot knife began its tireless sawing motion through the guards. The platform and elevator canvases began their endless revolutions, to the accompaniment of much flapping of free ends, while a multitude of chains and sprockets added their whirr and rumble to the ensemble.

As the long knife touched and slipped beneath the flax, the slender stems quivered, then leaped into the air, to be met by the impact of the reel-slats and fall in a long line on the platform canvas, to be swept to the left and in between the elevator canvases. Emerging at the top, they fell forward and down until upraised arms stopped their progress. The long ribbon of grain was fed into the binder, and the packer arms drove it into a solid bundle. When the pressure become too great, a long needle from below, carrying a piece of twine drew it tight through a notch in a disk which already had carried the twine back, thus forming a loop. Now three small steel fingers grasped the twine and revolved once, tying a knot. An instant later another disk revolved and brought a small knife uppermost, to cut the twine just beyond the knot. Then two more arms whirred overhead and kicked the finished bundle down upon the carrier.

On the last day of the cutting Grahame had not been feeling well, and when the long obstinate streak of grain had finally dwindled to nothing and he turned toward home, he realized that something was decidedly wrong. He had dropped the traces and begun to unhitch when a wave of dizziness sent him leaning against the binder frame for support. With a strong man’s disregard and contempt for sickness, he attempted to go on with his task, but his strength gave out altogether, and he slipped to the ground in a heap.

After a while Jane, wondering at his long delay, came from the house in search of him. Frightened, she dropped to her knees and holding his head in her lap tried to coax him back to consciousness. Once he opened his eyes and murmured something about being knocked out in the last round, and lapsed again into unconsciousness.

It is not necessary to dwell on Jane’s ride to the nearest telephone nor the long fight the doctor and the sympathetic neighbors helped her put up before Grahame was out of danger. Influenza and pneumonia ran their course day after day, sapping the last ounce of strength from the body of a once strong man, until he lay a mere shadow of himself.

One evening Jane stood at the window, looking out over the field of flax. It had never been shocked, for there had been no one to do the work. Fortunately there had been no rain, and the bundles, remaining dry, had not sprouted, but now Jane was worried. The wind had blown from the east for several days, and now as she glanced toward the west she saw a long, low, slate-colored cloud moving along the horizon. She could not repress a shudder of fear. Of course it might pass with a shower or two, but so late in the fall, she had little hope. Apparently the stage was set for a genuine snowstorm, and if the flax were once covered, it would probably remain covered until spring.

In spite of the extra work incident to John’s sickness, Jane had left no stone unturned in her efforts to find a threshing rig. She had seen or written every thresherman who ordinarily operated in their neighborhood, only to meet with one disappointment after another. What little crop the hailstorm had left, locally, had been stacked, and the men who owned the big machines had moved farther away to get the cream of the threshing before returning to do their own work. Meanwhile, time had worn on, bringing nearer and nearer the inevitable day when storm clouds would close in and drop a mantle of snow to enshroud the grave of their last hope.

Sick at heart, Jane turned from the window. She had done all she could. If snow came, they were out of luck, that was all. Once during the evening she thought of Ironheart. She knew his rig was somewhere to the north of them, and that it was one of the survivors of the big steam rigs which had of late given way before the small neighborhood gas outfits. With his twelve or fourteen teams and the big separator, he could clean them up in one long day’s work. For a moment a ray of hope dawned in her breast. She thought of the hours she had spent nursing Ironheart back to health. If there were an ounce of gratitude left in that shriveled shell, he would surely help. Then she saw him again as he looked the morning he had left them, cold, cynical, apparently thankless for all she had done; and the spark of hope flickered and died.

At last, worn out by work and worry, Jane went to bed, but just as she was losing consciousness, an idea came to her. If it didn’t snow during the night, she would go to the nearest rig and offer them half the crop if they would come in and thresh it, at once. She woke Grahame, and they discussed it, pro and con, finally deciding there was no other course open to them. Meanwhile the night wind sang its melancholy way around the house, and once the feeble light from the night lamp showed them a single snowflake melting against the windowpane.

Sometime later Jane heard John’s voice calling to her; and awakening, she saw him propped up on his elbow and straining his eyes out into the darkness. As she moved slightly, he cautioned her: “Listen!”

From somewhere out of the night came a low rumbling sound that rose and fell, accompanied by a steady throb-throb as though some monster were breathing fast and deep; far up the road they could see a slender streamer of sparks drifting with the wind.

Minutes passed. The rumbling became louder, and now they could hear the clatter of heavy gears running loose, on the downhill grade. Suddenly they saw, illuminated by the sparks, three plumes of steam climb into the air, and came the wild, high shriek of a steam whistle, once, twice, thrice.

“Good God,” exclaimed Grahame, “it’s a threshing outfit calling for water.”

There could be no doubt whatever. It was a threshing rig coming down the road that passed their house. Could it be possible that someone was coming to help them? The thought came to Grahame and Jane at the same time, but it seemed too wildly impossible to mention. They could see plainly now, for the engine was almost abreast of the house, and behind it came the great bulk of a separator, lumbering along with its gaunt arms outlined against the sky, while still farther back was the low squat body of the cook-car, followed by an extra water tank and then a long line of horses and racks stretching away into the gloom.

When the engine was almost to the gate, Grahame reached out and grasped his wife’s hand. In a moment they would know, and they dared not breathe. The front of the boiler was even with the gate. It was passing. Then when their last wild hope seemed about to be dashed to the ground, the engine swung in a wide turn and came straight toward them. The house seemed to tremble on its foundation, and the exhaust echoed shrilly from the empty hayloft. Now the big machine was passing beneath their window. The fire door clanged; a lurid glow lit up the engine’s platform; and Jane caught a momentary glimpse of the man at the throttle: it was Ironheart the thankless.

Jane lighted a lantern and made ready to do her part, and there was much to do. She must leave John alone while she rode about the neighborhood to notify the men who had promised to help. She was nearly ready when a knock sounded at the door and she opened it to find a young man on the threshold.

“Is this Mrs. Grahame?” he inquired. At Jane’s nod, he continued:

“The boss told me to say that he had made all the arrangements and you will have nothing to do. We have all had supper, and the cook-car will be here for breakfast.”

“Thank you very much, and thank Mr. Kinear for me,” replied Jane. “And please tell him I will have teams here to take the grain and—”

“I was supposed to tell you about that too,” he broke in. “The boss sent his car down here ahead and notified everybody that we should start at daybreak. He has two trucks himself, and there are two more working with the rig, so he thought that maybe, as long as Mr. Grahame won’t be able to do much work this winter, he had better send the flax right to the elevator from the machine, leaving only what you will want for seed here. Good night,” he said, and turned to go, then came back again: “Another thing, I was to tell you that if enough teams turned up to help on the long haul, he is going to thresh right here in the yards so you can have the straw for feed and for windbreak this winter.”

Never in all her life had Jane experienced such a feeling of intense gratitude as that which swept over her when she realized that there was no worry, nothing for her to do but care for her husband; and back in his room, she talked and watched by turns until the light in the haymow was blown out and she knew the men were asleep—all but the man on the water tank, who sat slouched forward in his seat, wrapped in the folds of a heavy sheepskin coat.

A breeze came from the east, and she was thankful, for it meant the flax would be dry enough to thresh at daybreak. Sometimes, after a quiet night, it would be too tough to thresh until near noon the next day.

John reached out and took his wife’s hand.

“Kind of looks, honey, as though we might win the last round, after all.”

An hour later Jane could hear the rattle of gears running loose on the downhill slope, and in a few minutes the big engine turned in at the gate. Halfway across the yard it stopped, and a man ran back to pull the pin between separator and tender. Then the engine came on with only the separator. At the expense of much snorting and chugging, the cumbersome separator was finally wheeled into position, where it settled with a thud into the holes already dug for its hind wheels. The engine then cut loose, and turning so as to face the separator, backed toward the house far enough to allow for the long drive-belt; there it stopped, and soon the yard was quiet again except for the low whine of imprisoned steam.

Throughout the remainder of the night Grahame and Jane alternately fought for sleep and watched from the window for the dreaded change in the weather. Clouds were scudding across the sky, and there was a feeling of rain or snow in the air. Rain so late in the season would in all probability turn to snow, and so one was as bad as the other. Few people can realize the suspense John and his wife were called upon to bear during those hours of darkness, but there is an end to the longest night, and an hour before daylight came the faint tinkle of an alarm clock and a man from the cook-car went to the engine; reaching up into the cab he grasped a cord, and there followed the long, clear blasts of the whistle. As if in answer a feeble light flickered through the cracks of the haymow door; another flashed in the cook-car, and far out on the prairie other lights came out one by one, each marking the location of a farm from which help was coming.

Presently from every direction across the field came wagons to join those already in the flax. The first ones loaded, pulled in and ranged themselves in a double line on each side of the engine. Ironheart climbed the separator and gave a signal. The engineer opened the cylinder cocks and eased his reverse back. Then he tapped lightly on the throttle, and the big engine moved slowly, very slowly back, lifting and stretching the drive-belt until it was drawn taut and hung in the air, slapping and chafing itself where it crossed. Another signal, and the reverse was pushed ahead, the throttle opened slowly again and the engine glided into almost silent motion.

The quivering belt began to move back and forth. The separator too came to life, starting reluctantly with many protesting groans and squeaks; but gathering speed, these sounds gradually ceased, and it took up a heaving, shaking motion that ejected spurts of dust from every joint and crevice, filling the air with a yellow haze which hung in dense clouds about the machine.

Beginning with a low hum, the separator’s tone arose gradually to a whirr and thence in a crescendo to a high-pitched droning whine, steadily, monotonously, on and on.

All through the day the big machine kept up its ceaseless whine. Several times snow-squalls swept by, and one or two crossed the field, but it had grown colder during the day and the dry snow did little or no damage.

When darkness came, the field was clear, but still long lines of wagons awaited their turn to unload. Under the magic touch of dusk men appeared as grotesque shadows, gnomes, silhouetted against the skyline. Behind the separator a veritable mountain of straw arose to pinnacled peaks and towers, whose members occasionally toppled over and slid down the stack only to be rebuilt higher than ever. The exhaust from the engine merged into a steady roar, while a scarlet flame glowed steadily under the spark-arrester on the smokestack. The separator became a vibrant, roaring shadow. Its whine and moan were higher and louder than ever in contrast to the silence of the night; above it still towered the figure of a man, distorted almost beyond recognition by the darkness and dust clouds, but still the directing genius of it all.

Finally, the last bundle passed into the hungry maw, and a moment later the weigher tripped for the last time. The high whine began to fall away—lower and lower until it became a gentle rumble, a purr, a long-drawn-out sigh, and silence broken only by the gentle hiss of steam.

Grahame expected Ironheart would come to the house for a settlement, but an hour went by before the same young man who had talked to Jane the night before came to the door. Up in Grahame’s room he took from his pocket a bunch of storage-tickets and laid them on the bed.

“The boss says there are two thousand bushels at the elevator in Barliton, and four hundred and eighty here in the granary.”

Grahame made a hasty mental calculation—two thousand, four hundred and eighty bushels at two dollars and sixty-five a bushel—

When Grahame had collected his scattered senses, he turned to the young man and said:

“Did Mr. Kinear tell you what the bill was? I can’t give him a check, but I can indorse enough of these tickets over to him to meet it.”

Before Grahame had finished, his caller was through the door and his voice came back as curt and terse as the voice of Ironheart himself:

“There is no bill.”

The wind moaned along the eaves, and the whistling rasp of snow sounded against the siding, but within there were warmth and happiness, for Grahame and Jane had won the last round.

Miles up the road, a great black hulk lumbered through the night, and as it moved, occasional flashes of lurid light from the fire door illumined the expressionless face of the strange, silent man who held his hand on the throttle and watched the snow-swept road ahead.