at her arms. It was hot, and sweat rolled down her forehead.
She wished vaguely that she had remembered to put on her sunbonnet.

Behind her came Unc' Zenas and Aunt Dolcey, setting the sheaves into
compact, well-capped stocks, little rough golden castles to dot this
field of amazing conflict.

And now the reaper had come to the corner. Unc' Zenas straightened
himself and watched anxiously. But his faith in the near horse was
justified--the team turned smoothly, Annie lifted the blade and
dropped it, and they started again, only half visible now across the
tall grain.

Annie's wrists and back ached unbearably, the sweat got in her eyes,
but she drove on. She thought a little of Wes, and how he had looked
when she picked up that butcher knife. She thought of his heavy hand
on her shoulder, and her flesh burned where he had grasped it.

"I'm going to cut this wheat if it kills me." she said over and over
to herself in a queer refrain. "I'm going to cut this wheat if it
kills me!" She thought probably it would. But she drove on.

She made her second corner successfully, and now the sun was at her
back, and that gave her a little ease. This wheat was going to be cut,
and hauled to the thresher, and sold in the market, if she did every
bit of the work herself. She would show Wes Dean! Let him try to stop
her--if he dared!

And there would be money enough for everything the baby might want or
might need. Her child should not be born to poverty and skimping. If
only the sun didn't beat so hard on the back of her neck! If only her
arms didn't ache so!

After countless hours of time she overtook Dolcey and Zenas, and the
old woman divined her chief discomfort. She snatched the sunbonnet off
her own head and handed it up to her.

"Marster in hebben, ef I only had my stren'th!" muttered Zenas as she
went on.

"Angels b'arin' dat chile up wid deir wings," chanted Aunt Dolcey.
Then, descending to more mundane matters, she added a delighted
chuckle: "I knowed she'd rise en shine one dese days. Holler at Marse
Wes she did, name him names, plenty. Yessuh--laid him out!"

"What you s'pose he up to now?" asked Zenas, looking over his
shoulder.

"I dunno--but I bet you he plumb da'nted. Zenas, lak I tol' you--man
may hab plenty debbilment, rip en t'ar, but he'll stan' back whenas a
ooman meks up her min' she stood enough." And Aunt Dolcey had never
heard of Rudyard Kipling's famous line.

"Dat chile might kill he'se'f."