It was a long field, and if he had earned a dollar for every time he had traversed its length, during the last ten years, he would have been a rich man.  He could have walked it blindfolded.  It was fallow ground, already plowed, disked, rolled, and now the last stage was to harrow it, loosening the soil, conserving the moisture.

Morgan, far to the other side of this section, had the better of the job, for his harrow was a new machine and he could ride while driving the horses.  But Kurt, using an old harrow, had to walk.  The four big horses plodded at a gait that made Kurt step out to keep up with them.  To keep up, to drive a straight line, to hold back on the reins, was labor for a man.  It spoke well for Kurt that he had followed that old harrow hundreds of miles, that he could stand the strain, that he loved both the physical sense and the spiritual meaning of the toil.

Driving west, he faced a wind laden with dust as dry as powder.  At every sheeted cloud, whipping back from the hoofs of the horses and the steel spikes of the harrow, he had to bat his eyes to keep from being blinded.  The smell of dust clogged his nostrils.  As soon as he began to sweat under the hot sun the dust caked on his face, itching, stinging, burning.  There was dust between his teeth.

Driving back east was a relief.  The wind whipped the dust away from him.  And he could catch the fragrance of the newly turned soil.  How brown and clean and earthy it looked!  Where the harrow had cut and ridged, the soil did not look thirsty and parched.  But that which was unharrowed cried out for rain.  No cloud in the hot sky, except the yellow clouds of dust!

On that trip east across the field, which faced the road, Dorn saw pedestrians in twos and threes passing by.  Once he was hailed, but made no answer.  He would not have been surprised to see a crowd, yet travelers were scarce in that region.  The sight of these men, some of them carrying bags and satchels, was disturbing to the young farmer.  Where were they going?  All appeared outward bound toward the river.  They came, of course, from the little towns, the railroads, the cities.  At this season, with harvest-time near at hand, it had been in former years no unusual sight to see strings of laborers passing by.  But this year they came earlier, and in greater numbers.

With the wind in his face, however, Dorn saw nothing but the horses and the brown line ahead, and half the time they were wholly obscured in yellow dust.  He began thinking about Lenore Anderson, just pondering that strange, steady look of a girl’s eyes; and then he did not mind the dust or heat or distance.  Never could he be cheated of his thoughts.  And those of her, even the painful ones, gave birth to a comfort that he knew must abide with him henceforth on lonely labors such as this, perhaps in the lonelier watches of a soldier’s duty.  She had been curious, aloof, then sympathetic; she had studied his face; she had been an eloquent-eyed listener to his discourse on wheat.  But she had not guessed his secret.  Not until her last look—­strange, deep, potent—­had he guessed that secret himself.