Then the young lad stretched out his hand with frank good-nature. “I’m Harry Lorraine, premium pupil on this most delectable homestead. You’re clearly fresh out from England, and I’m sure we’ll be good friends,” he said. “Coombs? Well, Jim Marvin is right. I’ve set him down in my own mind as a defaulting deacon, or something of the kind. Did my guardian out of a hundred and fifty as premium, with duck, brant-goose, and prairie-chicken shooting thrown in—and he sees I’ve never time to touch a gun. However, I’m learning the business; and in spite of his quite superfluous piety he can farm, in a get-all-you-can-for-nothing kind of way.”
“He can’t, just because of that same,” broke in the prairie-born. “I’m sick of this talking religion, but you’ll see it written plain on furrow and stock that when the Almighty gives the good soil freely He expects something back, and not a stinting of dumb beasts and land to roll up money in the bank. Take all and give nothing don’t pan 40 out worth the washing, and that man will get let down of a sudden some cold day. Hallo! here’s the blamed old reprobate coming.”
Coombs slid through the stable with a cat-like gait and little eyes that noticed everything, while Harry leaned against a stall defiantly sucking at his pipe, and I wondered whether I was expected to be working at something.
“Idleness does not pay in this country, Lorimer,” he said, with a beatific air. “Diligence is the one road to success. There is a truss of hay waiting to go through the cutter. Harry, I notice more oats than need be mixed with that chop.”
He went out, and Harry laughed as he said, “Always the same! Weighs out the week’s sugar to the teaspoonful. But you look tired. If you feed I’ll work the infernal chopper.”
So for a time I fed in the hay, while Harry swung up and down at the wheel, slender and debonair in spite of his coarse blue garments, with merry brown eyes. He was younger than I, and evidently inferior in muscle; but, as I know now, he had inherited a spirit which is greater than mere bodily strength. No man had a truer comrade than I in Harry Lorraine, and the friendship which commenced in the sod stable that night when I was travel-worn and he cut the hay for me will last while we two remain on this earth, and after, hallowed in the survivor’s memory, until—but, remembering Coombs, I know that silence is often reverence, and so leave Grace’s clean lips to voice the eternal hope.
We went back for family prayers, when Coombs read a chapter of Scripture; and he read passably well, though, for some reason, his tone jarred on me, while Harry fidgeted uneasily. Now I think it would jar even more forcibly. A hard life face to face with wild nature, among fearless, 41 honest men, either by land or sea, induces, among other things, a becoming humility. There are times, out on the vast prairie, when, through glories of pearl and crimson, night melts into day, or up in the northern muskegs, where the great Aurora blazes down through the bitter frost, when one stands, as it were, abashed and awe-stricken under a dim perception of the majesty upholding this universe. Then, and because of this, the man with understanding eyes will never be deceived by complacent harangues on sacred things from such as Coombs who never lend a luckless neighbor seed-wheat, and oppress the hireling. Much better seemed Jasper’s answer when Harry once asked him for twenty acres’ seed: “Take half that’s in the granary, if you want it. Damnation! why didn’t you come before?”
We retired early, Harry and I, to sleep in the same room, with the rusty stove-pipe running through it; and we rose, I think, at four o’clock; while an hour later the feet of the big plow-oxen were trampling the rich loam where the frost had mellowed the fall back-setting. We worked until nine that night, and I had words with Coombs when he gave me directions about plowing. We do not get our land for nothing in Lancashire, and so learn to work the utmost out of every foot of it. However, I do not purpose to dilate upon either disc-harrows or breaking prairie, nor even the cutting of wild hay—which harsh and wiry product is excellent feeding—for all these matters will be mentioned again. Still, as spring and summer rolled away, I gathered experience that saved me a good deal of money, and I felt at least an inch less round the waist and another broader round the shoulders.
Then one Saturday evening, when the northwest blazed with orange and saffron flame, I lay among the tussocks of whispering grass reading for the third or fourth time a few well-worn letters from Cousin Alice. Acre by acre 42 the tall wheat, changing from green to ochre, rippled before me; and, had its owner’s hand been more open, it would have been a splendid crop. Marvin, Harry, and I had plowed for and sown it, because Coombs despised manual labor, and confined himself chiefly to fault-finding. It struck me that if we could do this for another we could do even more for ourselves. My agreement expired at harvest, and already the first oats were yellowing. Coombs’ voice roused me from a pleasant reverie, wherein I sat once more with Alice beside the hearth in England.
“It’s not dark yet, and there’s the wire waiting for the paddock fence,” he said. “I regret to see you addicted to loafing. And Mrs. Coombs has no water left for the kitchen.”