sell it. The Potters had even made him a proposition. His mind, freed of the ranch books, had uncoiled like a spring. He slept late, ate hugely, even began to ride a little. There was not a saddle on the ranch big enough for him, so he sent to town for one, picked out a big quiet mare that could carry him, and with Herbert along to open gates and close them again, would amble about the fields so that he could again sleep late and eat hugely.
It was harvest time. The second crop of alfalfa was in blossom and thick with purple blooms, and when the wind struck the rye it bent before it like waves of a yellow surf. Already the oats and wheat were dead ripe and golden in the sun, Jake watched these experiments of his with anxious eyes. Thank God it was not a grasshopper year, but there was still hail to be feared for the standing crops and rain after they were cut. Sometimes he even rode the mower himself, driving four horses abreast, and stopping now and then by the wagon for a drink of tepid water from the jug there.
He knew that Henry Dowling had no faith in his farming plans, and that he was thinking of selling, but he never told his wife. If the Potters bought he would have to go. Sitting there on the old reaper, his thin hard-bitten body lurching over the rough ground, he mutely prayed—for a good crop, for a decent cattle market, for no hail or rain; and cursed the horses out of pure habit as he did so.
When the old separator had lurched and jolted into the wheat fields, he watched the stream of grain as if it had been gold, and when one day Henry drew up by it and watched it, he was almost pitiable in his excitement.
"Thirty-five bushels to the acre, if there's one!" he said.
Henry however was watching the men feeding the machine. It looked like good exercise; it ought to give a man an appetite. He slid down off his horse and picked up a fork.
"Think I'll do my daily dozen," he said, almost gayly.
It was hard work, much harder than he had expected, but after that every day he came down to the fields and got in the way, and listened because he had to to Jake's hopes and boastings.
