Kurt then outlined Anderson’s plan, which was received by the foreman with eager approval and the assurance that the neighbor farmers would rally to his call.

Kurt found his nearest neighbor, Olsen, cutting a thin, scarcely ripe barley.  Olsen was running a new McCormack harvester, and appeared delighted with the machine, but cast down by the grain prospects.  He did not intend to cut his wheat at all.  It was a dead loss.

“Two sections—­twelve hundred an’ eighty acres!” he repeated, gloomily.  “An’ the third bad year!  Dorn, I can’t pay the interest to my bank.”

Olsen’s sun-dried and wind-carved visage was as hard and rugged and heroic as this desert that had resisted him for years.  Kurt saw under the lines and the bronze all the toil and pain and unquenchable hope that had made Olsen a type of the men who had cultivated this desert of wheat.

“I’ll give you five hundred dollars to help me harvest,” said Kurt, bluntly, and briefly stated his plan.

Olsen whistled.  He complimented Anderson’s shrewd sense.  He spoke glowingly of that magnificent section of wheat that absolutely must be saved.  He promised Kurt every horse and every man on his farm.  But he refused the five hundred dollars.

“Oh, say, you’ll have to accept it,” declared Kurt.

“You’ve done me good turns,” asserted Olsen.

“But nothing like this.  Why, this will be a rush job, with all the men and horses and machines and wagons I can get.  It’ll cost ten—­fifteen thousand dollars to harvest that section.  Even at that, and paying Anderson, we’ll clear twenty thousand or more.  Olsen, you’ve got to take the money.”

“All right, if you insist.  I’m needin’ it bad enough,” replied Olsen.

Further conversation with Olsen gleaned the facts that he was the only farmer in their immediate neighborhood who did not have at least a little grain worth harvesting.  But the amount was small and would require only slight time.  Olsen named farmers that very likely would not take kindly to Dorn’s proposition, and had best not be approached.  The majority, however, would stand by him, irrespective of the large wage offered, because the issue was one to appeal to the pride of the Bend farmers.  Olsen appeared surprisingly well informed upon the tactics of the I.W.W., and predicted that they would cause trouble, but be run out of the country.  He made the shrewd observation that when even those farmers who sympathized with Germany discovered that their wheat-fields were being menaced by foreign influences and protected by the home government, they would experience a change of heart.  Olsen said the war would be a good thing for the United States, because they would win it, and during the winning would learn and suffer and achieve much.