"That's what they used to ask when we came to Manitoba," said his father. "And there were years when I doubted the answer myself. Some parts were froze out year after year, and they're among the best in the country now, and never think of frost. The same thing'll happen out there, and we might as well be in the game."
To do him justice, it was not altogether the desire for more wealth that prompted Harris, It was the call of new land; the call he had heard and answered in the early eighties; the old appetite that had lain dormant for a quarter of a century, but was still in his blood, waiting only a suggestion of the open spaces, a whiff from dry grass on the wind-swept plains, the zigzag of a wagon-trail streaking afar into the horizon, to set it tingling again. The thought of homesteading revived rich old memories—memories from which the kindly years had balmed the soreness and the privation and the hardship, and left only the joy and the courage and the comradeship and the conquering. It was the call of the new land, which has led the race into every clime and flung its flag beneath every sky, and Harris's soul again leaped to the summons.
So this morning father and son were especially anxious that not a moment of their ploughing weather should be lost, and it was particularly aggravating when the hired man's long delay resulted in a bubbling sputter followed by a dry hiss from the injector, warning the engineer that the water-tank was empty. Allan shot an anxious glance down the road to the coulee, but the water team was not in sight. Seizing the whistle cord, he sent its peremptory summons into the air. Harris looked up from the ploughs, and the two exchanged frowns of annoyance. But the water stood high in the glass, and Allan did not reduce the speed, although he cut the link action another notch to get every ounce of advantage from the expansion. Down the field they went, the big iron horse shouldering itself irresistibly along, while the ploughs left their dozen furrows of moist, fresh soil, and the blackbirds hopped gingerly behind. But the water went down, down in the glass, and still there was no sign of a further supply. Allan again cut the air with his whistle, and at length, with a muttered imprecation, he slammed the throttle shut and jumped from the engine.
His father ran up from the ploughs. "What do you think of that?" the younger man exclaimed. "Jim must have had trouble. Bogged, or broke a tongue, or something. Never fell down like that before."
"Keep a keen eye on your fire," said Harris, "and I'll go down and see what's wrong with him." So the farmer strode off across the ploughed field. The delay annoyed him, and he felt unreasonably cross with Travers. As he plodded on through the heavy soil his temper did not improve, and he was talking to himself by the time he came upon Travers, giving his team their wind at the top of the hill leading up from the creek.
"What kept you?" he demanded when he came within a rod of the wagon.
"Here's the outfit shut down waiting for water, and you—"
"I'm sorry, Mr. Harris—"
"That ain't what I asked you. You can't make steam with sorrow. What have you been foolin' about?"
"I haven't been fooling. As to what delayed me—well, you're delaying me now. Better jump on and ride up with me."
"So you won't tell me, eh? You think you can do what you like with my team and my time, and it's none of my business. We'll see whose business it is."