“We’d best wait a little longer, then.”

* * * * *

Though it seemed that half the day had wheeled by already, by seven o’clock we rode a-field, and the less experienced of us were hard at it, tossing up bundles to the loaders, who placed them swiftly here and there till the waggons were packed tight and piled high.

I pitched up bundles from below, to an old man of sixty, who wore a fringe of grey beard, like a Mennonite.

“I don’t see why Bonton ever hired you,” he remarked unsympathetically, peering over the top at me from his high-piled load.  Several times I had missed the top and the bundle of wheat had tumbled back to me again....

“I can’t be reaching out all the time to catch your forkfuls.”

“Just give me time till I learn the hang of it.”

I was better with the next load.  The waggons came and went one after the other ... there was a light space of rest between waggons.  It was like the rest between the rounds of a prizefight.

From the cloudless sky the sun’s heat poured down in floods.  A monotonous locust was chirr-chirr-chirring from a nearby cottonwood ... and in the long hedge of Osage oranges moaned wood doves....

By noon I had achieved a mechanical swing that helped relieve the physical strain, a swinging rhythm of the hips and back muscles which took the burden off my aching and weaker arms.

That afternoon, late, when the old man drove his waggon up to me for the hundredth time it seemed, he smiled quizzically.

“Well, here you are still, but you’re too skinny to stand it another day ... better draw your two bucks from the boss and strike out for Laurel again.”

—­“that so, Daddy!” and I caught three bundles at once on the tines of my fork and flung them clear to the top, and over.  They caught the old man in the midriff....  I heard a sliding about and swearing ... the next moment he was in a heap, on the ground ... on the other side of the waggon.

“What th’ hell did ye do that for?”

I looked innocent.  “Do what?”

—­“soak me in the guts with three bundles to onct an’ knock me off’n the top of the load?”

“Ever since morning you’ve been kidding me and telling me I went too slow for you....  I thought I’d speed up a bit.”

After surveying me scornfully for a minute, he mutely reascended the load, and we finished the job in silence together....

We laboured on after sunset till the full moon swung over the tree-tops.

* * * * *

Usually they did not use the cook-shack much ... it was used while on the road from one wheat farm to another.  Usually the farmers’ wives and daughters in the valleys and on the hillsides vied with each other as to heaping food before the threshers ... every morning saw mountains of pancakes ... bacon ... eggs ... ham ... beefsteak ... we laboured like giants, ate like hogs, slept like senseless stocks.