p
cities and threading the continent with steel, we are feeding the world
on the best and cleanest wheat known to hungry man. And on these clear
and opaline mornings when I see the prairie-floor waving with its
harvest to be, and hear the clack and stutter of the tractor breaking
sod on the outer quarter and leaving behind it the serried furrows of
umber, I feel there is something primal and poetic in the picture,
something mysteriously moving and epic....

The weather has turned quite warm again, with glorious spring days of
winy and heart-tugging sunlight and cool and starry nights. In my
spare time I've been helping Whinnie get in my "truck" garden, and
Peter, who has reluctantly forsaken the windmill and learned to run
the tractor, is breaking sod and summer-fallowing for me. For there is
always another season to think of, and I don't want the tin-can of
failure tied to my spirit's tail. As I say, the days slip by. Morning
comes, fresh as a new-minted nickel, we mount the treadmill, and
somebody rolls the big red ball off the table and it's night again.
But open-air work leaves me healthy, my children grow a-pace, and I
should be most happy.

But I'm not.

I'm so homesick for something which I can't quite define that it gives
me a misty sort of ache just under the fifth rib. It's just three
weeks now since Dinky-Dunk has ventured over from Casa Grande. If this
aloofness continues, he'll soon need to be formally introduced to his
own offspring when he sees them.

Now that I have Peter out working on the land, I can safely give a
little more time to my household. But meals are still more or less a
scramble. Peter has ventured the opinion that he might get a Chinaman
for me, if he could have a week off to root out the right sort of
Chink. But I prefer that Peter sticks to his tractor, much as I need
help in the house.

My new hired man is still a good deal of a mystery to me, just as I
seem to remain a good deal of a mystery to him. I've been asking myself
just why it is that Peter is so easy to get along with, and why, in
some indescribable way, he has added to the color of life since coming
to Alabama Ranch. It's mostly, I think, because he's supplied me with
the one thing I had sorely missed, without being quite conscious of it.
He has been able to give me mental companionship, at a time when my
mind was starving for an idea or two beyond the daily drudgery of
farm-work. He has given a fillip to existence, lo