“It doesn’t matter at all, honey. Nothing matters as long as we have each other.... Get up on the seat with me and ride to the granary. I’m tired and hungry too.”
“Oh, John, and I have kept you here gabbling all this time! No, I’ll run into the house and have something nice and hot for your supper by the time you’ve unhitched.”
Next morning Grahame went over the field and debated with himself whether it would be better to disk or not before hitching on to the drill, but in the end he decided that the disking would dry out the soil and that with the additional time it would take, would do more to lessen his chances than the few weeds that might survive.
In midafternoon of the fourth day Grahame was coming down the last lap of the final round. Ahead of him the six big horses forged steadily on, dragging the twelve-foot drill step by step toward home. From under his feet he could hear the musical sound of thin disks cutting the surface, and the jingle of many small chains dragging on the ground to cover the tiny furrows, while from each spout of the machine a miniature cascade of flax sifted down through a rubber pipe and dropped gently between the disks. At the end of the field he lifted the disks from the ground and turned for a last look over the field. There stretched an even hundred acres of newly seeded grain. Whether or not he and Jane were to keep the farm home in which they had staked so many golden dreams was a secret locked in the bosom of the freshly sown field, but he would not worry, would not be afraid: he would take Jane’s counsel to heart.
That night Jane awoke to hear the soft pattering of rain on the roof. She touched her husband, and together they looked from each window in turn. It was the same in every direction—not a star in sight, but just a lowering canopy of slate-gray clouds from which came the long slanting lines of life-giving moisture. John turned exultantly to his wife:
“Well, honey, we win the first round anyway.”
A few days later they saw the miracle of germinating grain. In seemingly endless rows, and but a few inches apart, the soil was breaking and lifting into tiny ridges, and in some places there were delicate leaves showing under scale-like canopies of soil. Every morning and every evening they made the same pilgrimage, watching the little plants break through and stand erect, the long lines like so many miniature evergreens. In two weeks the field was green again, and Grahame’s flaxfield became the Mecca of neighbors and real-estate men who wished to show a perfect stand.
There came now another lull during which Grahame and Jane replanted as much of their garden as they thought would have time to mature before the frost. Later came the haying, and in addition to the wild hay John cut and stacked, before turning under the stubble, the scattering growth of oats and spelts which had come up in wake of the storm. With no early harvest to take up his time, he helped around the neighborhood, for while there was no cash in it for him, there was always a day coming when he would need help himself.
One day in early August, when Jane and Grahame went to the field, they found the deep green was fading to a lighter shade, and the next morning, under a warm burst of sunshine, the flax had turned to an ocean of waving blue. Acre after acre, away into the West until their vision was lost amid the dancing heat waves, were countless millions of tiny blue blossoms nodding in the sun. Fleecy clouds threw light shadow-areas which moved slowly across the field, and currents of air, passing here and there, sent shimmering paths of alternating blue and green before their eyes. Again Grahame’s arm tightened about his wife, and this time he chuckled as he announced: “Round Number Two, and we’ve won again.”
“How long before it will be out of danger, John?”