Mr. Thomson's eyes showed a growing interest. "All right," he said, after a moment. "Any man that can finish a season with Keefer is good enough for me. Put the bulls in the stable and give me a hand with this expander."
Thomson was a bachelor who did a little farming while he was putting in his residence duties on a homestead, but his principal industry and interest in life was in his threshing machine. He must have it perfect to the last bolt and belt-lace, although his shack was a musty affair that gave me the creeps after Marjorie's immaculate cleanliness and even after our own housekeeping performances in Keefer's granary. We stayed with him for a number of days at a nominal rate of wages, helping with the repairs to his engine and separator while waiting for the wheat to harden in the stook.
When at last we were ready for the field Thomson's homestead presented a scene of great animation. He had gathered a gang of men and horses about him; had hired a cook and stocked the cook-car, and had laid in a supply of oil and repairs. Thomson was his own engineer, and it had been decided that I should be fireman, while Jack drove the oxen on a bundle team. After the first day or two I found the work not so hard as stooking although the hours were even longer. I would be in the field at four o'clock in the morning firing up that old straw-burner in order to have enough steam to whistle at six, and I was the last to leave the outfit at night.
Thompson had impressed me with my duties at the start. "Keep one eye on the steam gauge and the other on the water glass, and both on the lookout for fire," he said, "and that's about all you need to know."
I soon found there was more than that to know about firing a straw-burner, but these were the essentials. At times when the straw was still damp after rain I had my troubles, and some mornings, until I could raise enough steam to use the forced draft, Sally, as I called our engine, would be as cantankerous as any kitchen stove when the wind swirls over the roof the wrong way. But I soon learned how to take her moods, and before the season was half gone I began to feel a strange sort of affection for this great, greasy lump of metal as the drone of its exhaust played a monotonous lullabye in my ears and the whiff of steam and tallow lent an additional tang to the edge of my fireman's appetite. The goddess of steam began in some subtle way to draw me into her embrace, and I came to understand how it is that once a steam engineer, always a steam engineer.
"None of those temperamental things for me," said Thompson one day when the first gasoline tractor I had ever seen went slowly coughing by. "Sally may be a bit mussy and old fashioned, but she has a hell of a punch in her elbow." Just then a damp sheaf from the bottom of a stook went in crosswise, and the automatic governor valve flew open. Sally snorted in indignation and the force of her exhaust drew my fire up into the flues as she threw double her normal horse-power into her driving-rod.
"Humph!" said Alec, patting the throttle lever affectionately. "I'd like to see one of those coughin' critters chew on a cud like that!"
So the threshing season wore on. We ate in a cook-car, slept in a "caboose," and worked from dawn until dark. Sometimes, to finish a "set" we would burn a straw pile and work by its light after the stars were out in the heavens. Although the work was hard and dirty it was the sort of dirt that is neither offensive nor unhealthful, and there was a certain reckless good-fellowship among the gang that made the time pass pleasantly enough. There were fights on a couple of occasions, when some one brought liquor out from town; one of the men had an arm broken under a belt, and all of us had a scare one day when the field we were working in caught fire from a spark from the engine, but these were mere incidents in a routine of hard work from dawn until dark, and afterwards. At nights the prairie was lit up with the orange-red glow of burning straw piles, their fan-shaped reflections thrust high in the heavens, while the jingle of trace-chains, the rumble of wagons, and the plaintive steam whistles which came through the gloaming from other outfits than our own brought a strange sense of the worthiness of work well done. Tired and prodigiously hungry we would attack the cook-car, and then presently crawl to our bunks and to sleep.
It was the middle of October, and there was a crisp tang in the air night and morning, before we again hit the trail for Fourteen and Twenty-two. During all this time we had had no word from our homes, as there was no one to carry mail in or out, and it was with anxious and eager hearts that we hurried Buck and Bright along the homeward winding trail.
On the second day, as we were bowling along at the two-and-a-half mile an hour clip which Buck and Bright considered the limit of furious driving Jack drew my attention to a speck on the horizon ahead of us. It grew rapidly, and although there was no mirage this time to bring our visitor down from heaven, we soon were able to discern the scarlet uniform of the Mounted Police. It came along at the smart trot to which the police horse is educated, and in half an hour Harold Brook drew up beside us.