again, and worked on until
daylight faded and the stars twinkled out one by one above the dewy
prairie. The scent of wild peppermint hung heavy in the cool air, which
came out of the north exhilarating like wine, while the birch twigs sang
strange songs to us as we drove the teams to the stable through the litter
of withered leaves. An hour's work followed before we had made all
straight there, and it was with a proud feeling of possession that at
last I patted the neck of one of the horses, while the nervous creature
looking up at me with understanding eyes rubbed its head against my
shoulder.

When the stove was lighted we drank green tea and ate more flapjacks which
Harry had badly burned. I remember that when he handed me the first cup he
said, "We haven't got champagne, and we don't want whiskey, but this is a
great day for both of us. Well, here's luck to the plowing and increase to
the seed, and, whether it's success or failure, what we have started we'll
see through together!"

Half ashamed of display of sentiment, I clinked the cracked cup against
his own, and Harry leaned forward toward me with a smile that could not
hide the light of youthful enthusiasm in his eyes, graceful, in spite of
the mold of the plowing on his fretted garments. Then he choked and
spluttered, for the hot fluid scalded him, and a roar of laughter saved
the situation. Made as it was over a cup of very smoky tea, that compact
was carried out faithfully under parching heat and bitter cold, in the
biting dust of alkali and under the silence of the primeval bush. For an
hour we lounged smoking and chatting in ox-hide chairs, watching the red
glow from the range door flicker upon the guns and axes on the wall, or
the moonlight broaden across the silent grass outside each time it faded,
until the mournful coyotes began to wail along the rim of the prairie and
we crawled up a ladder into the little upper room, where in ten minutes we
were fast asleep on hard wooden couches covered with skins. I remember
that just before I sank into oblivion a vision of a half-mile length of
golden wheat floated before my heavy eyes, with Grace Carrington standing,
sickle in hand, beside it. Her dress was of the color of the ear-bent
stems, her eyes as the clear ether above, and the sickle was brighter than
any crescent moon. Then it all changed. Powdery snow eddied through the
withered stubble, and, against a background of somber firs that loomed
above it, the