n as a driver of one of the gang ploughs, then at work on his division.

The evening before, when the foreman had blown his whistle at six
o'clock, the long line of ploughs had halted upon the instant, and the
drivers, unharnessing their teams, had taken them back to the division
barns--leaving the ploughs as they were in the furrows. But an hour
after daylight the next morning the work was resumed. After breakfast,
Vanamee, riding one horse and leading the others, had returned to
the line of ploughs together with the other drivers. Now he was busy
harnessing the team. At the division blacksmith shop--temporarily put
up--he had been obliged to wait while one of his lead horses was shod,
and he had thus been delayed quite five minutes. Nearly all the other
teams were harnessed, the drivers on their seats, waiting for the
foreman's signal.

"All ready here?" inquired the foreman, driving up to Vanamee's team in
his buggy.

"All ready, sir," answered Vanamee, buckling the last strap.

He climbed to his seat, shaking out the reins, and turning about, looked
back along the line, then all around him at the landscape inundated with
the brilliant glow of the early morning.

The day was fine. Since the first rain of the season, there had been no
other. Now the sky was without a cloud, pale blue, delicate, luminous,
scintillating with morning. The great brown earth turned a huge flank to
it, exhaling the moisture of the early dew. The atmosphere, washed clean
of dust and mist, was translucent as crystal. Far off to the east, the
hills on the other side of Broderson Creek stood out against the pallid
saffron of the horizon as flat and as sharply outlined as if pasted on
the sky. The campanile of the ancient Mission of San Juan seemed as fine
as frost work. All about between the horizons, the carpet of the land
unrolled itself to infinity. But now it was no longer parched with heat,
cracked and warped by a merciless sun, powdered with dust. The rain had
done its work; not a clod that was not swollen with fertility, not a
fissure that did not exhale the sense of fecundity. One could not take
a dozen steps upon the ranches without the brusque sensation that
underfoot the land was alive; roused at last from its sleep, palpitating
with the desire of reproduction. Deep down there in the recesses of
the soil, the great heart throbbed once more, thrilling with passion,
vibrating with desire, offering itself to the caress of the plough