bore fruit in the
community many years later.

And so the first summer wore away and the first harvest was at hand.
Any disappointment which had been occasioned by backward conditions
earlier in the season was effaced by the wonderful crop which now
crowned the efforts of the pioneers. On their finest Eastern farms
they had seen nothing to equal the great stand of wheat and oats
which now enveloped them, neck-high, whenever they invaded it. The
great problem before the settlers was the harvesting of this crop. It
was a mighty task to attempt with their scythes, but there was no
self-binder, or even reaper, within many miles.

Finally Morrison solved the problem for the whole community by
placing an order, at a fabulous figure, for a self-binder from the
United States. It was a cumbrous, wooden-frame contrivance, guiltless
of the roller bearings, floating aprons, open elevators, amid sheaf
carriers of a later day, but it served the purpose, and with its aid
the harvest of the little settlement was safely placed in sheaf. The
farmers then stacked their grain in the fields, taking care to plough
double fire-guards, with a burnt space between, as a precaution,
against the terrifying fires which broke over the prairie as soon as
the September frosts had dried the grass. A community some twenty
miles to the eastward boasted a threshing mill, and arrangements were
made for its use after it had discharged the duties of its own
locality. The machine was driven by horse-power, and in the dawn of
the crisp November mornings the crescendo of its metallic groan could
be heard for miles across the brown prairie. It, too, with its hand
feed, its open straw-carriers, its low-down delivery, which
necessitated digging a hole in the frozen earth to accommodate the
bags, and its possible capacity of six hundred bushels a day, bears
mean comparison with its modern successor; but it threshed grain at a
lower cost per bushel, and threw less into the straw than has ever
been accomplished by the mighty steam and gasoline inventions which
have displaced it.

When Harris's threshing was done he found he had six hundred bushels
of wheat and seven hundred bushels of oats in cone-shaped piles on
his fields. The roads were fine and hard, and no snow had yet fallen,
so he determined to begin at once with the marketing of his wheat.
His last cent had been spent months before; indeed, it had been only
through the courtesy of the storekeeper at Plai