“Don’t you think it is all made up to those others?” she asked.
“In one sense—yes,” said the girl. “Of course, one can see that all effort must have its idealistic aspect, and there may be men who find their compensation in the thrill of the fight, and the knowledge of work well done when they rest at night. Still, I fancy most of them only toil to eat, and their views are not revealed to us. We are, you see, women—and we live at Silverdale.”
Her aunt smiled again. “How long is it since the plough crossed the Red River, and what is Manitoba now? How did those mile furrows come there, and who drove the road that takes the wheat out through the granite of the Superior shore? It is more than their appetites that impelled those men, my dear. Still, it is scarcely wise to expect too much when one meets them, for though one could feel it is presumptuous to forgive its deficiencies, the Berserk type of manhood is not conspicuous for its refinement.”
For no apparent reason Maud Barrington evaded her aunt’s gaze. “You,” she said dryly, “have forgiven one of that type a good deal already, but, at least, we have never seen him when the fit was upon him.”
Miss Barrington laughed. “Still, I have no doubt that, sooner or later, you will enjoy the spectacle.”
Just then a light wagon came up behind them, and when one of the hired men helped them in they swept out of the cool shade into the dust and glare of the prairie, and when, some little time later, with the thud of hoofs and rattle of wheels softened by the bleaching sod, they rolled down a rise, there was spread out before them evidence of man’s activity.
Acre by acre, gleaming chocolate brown against the grey and green of the prairie, the wheat loam rolled away, back to the ridge, over it, and on again. It was such a breadth of sowing as had but once, when wheat was dear, been seen at Silverdale, but still across the foreground, advancing in echelon, came lines of dusty teams, and there was a meaning in the furrows they left behind them, for they were not ploughing where the wheat had been. Each wave of lustrous clods that rolled from the gleaming shares was so much rent from the virgin prairie, and a promise of what would come when man had fulfilled his mission and the wilderness would blossom. There was a wealth of food stored, little by little during ages past counting, in every yard of the crackling sod to await the time when the toiler with the sweat of the primeval curse upon his forehead should unseal it with the plough. It was also borne in upon Maud Barrington that the man who directed those energies was either altogether without discernment, or one who saw further than his fellows and had an excellent courage, when he flung his substance into the furrows while wheat was going down. Then, as the hired man pulled up the wagon, she saw him.
A great plough with triple shares had stopped at the end of the furrow, and the leading horses were apparently at variance with the man who, while he gave of his own strength to the uttermost, was asking too much from them. Young and indifferently broken, tortured by swarming insects, and galled by the strain of the collar, they had laid back their ears, and the wickedness of the bronco strain shone in their eyes. One rose almost upright amidst a clatter of harness, its mate squealed savagely, and the man who loosed one hand from the headstall flung out an arm. Then he and the pair whirled round together amidst the trampled clods in a blurred medley of spume-flecked bodies, soil-stained jean, flung-up hoofs, and an arm that swung and smote again. Miss Barrington grew a trifle pale as she watched, but a little glow crept into her niece’s eyes.
The struggle, however, ended suddenly, and hailing a man who plodded behind another team, Witham picked up his broad hat, which was trampled into shapelessness, and turned towards the wagon. There was dust and spume upon him, a rent in the blue shirt, and the knuckles of one hand dripped red, but he laughed as he said, “I did not know we had an audience, but this, you see, is necessary.”
“Is it?” asked Miss Barrington, who glanced at the ploughing. “When wheat is going down?”