Nothing is so good a soil for hope as new plowing.  The act of making it is inspired by hope.  The emblem of hope should be the plow; not the plow of the Great Seal, but a plow buried to the top of the mold-board in the soil, with the black furrow-slice falling away from it—­and for heaven’s sake, let it fall to the right, as it does where they do real farming, and not to the left as most artists depict it!  I know some plows are so made that the nigh horse walks in the furrow, but I have mighty little respect for such plows or the farms on which they are used.

My cattle strayed off in the latter part of October; being tolled off in this time between hay and grass by the green spears that grew up in the wet places in the marsh and along the creek.  I got uneasy about them on the twentieth, and went hunting them on one of Magnus Thorkelson’s horses.  Magnus was away from home working, and had left his team with me.  I made up my mind that I would scout along on my own side of the marsh until I could cross below it, and then work west, looking from every high place until I found the cattle, coming in away off toward the Gowdy tract, and crossing the creek above the marsh on my way home.  This would take me east and west nearly twice across Vandemark Township as it was finally established.

I expected to get back before night, but when I struck the trail of the stock it took me away back into the region in the north part of the township back of Vandemark’s Folly, as we used to say, where it was not settled, on account of the slew and the distance from town, until in the ’seventies.  Foster Blake had it to himself all this time, and ran a herd of the neighbors’ stock there until about 1877, when the Germans came in and hemmed him in with their improvements, making the second great impulse in the settlement of the township.

2

There was a stiff, dry, west wind blowing, and a blue haze in the air.  As the afternoon advanced, the sun grew red as if looked at through smoked glass, burning like a great coal of fire or a broad disk of red-hot iron.

There was a scent of burning grass in the air when I found my herd over on Section Eight, about where the cooperative creamery and store now stand.  The cattle seemed to be uneasy, and when I started them toward home, they walked fast, snuffing the air, and giving once in a while an uneasy, anxious falsetto bellow; and now and then they would break into a trot as they drew nearer to the places they knew.  The smell of smoke grew stronger, and I knew there was a prairie fire burning to the westward.  The sun was a deeper red, now, and once in a while almost disappeared in clouds of vaporous smoke which rolled higher and higher into the sky.  Prairie chickens, plover and curlew, with once in a while a bittern, went hurriedly along to the eastward, and several wolves crossed our path, trotting along and paying no attention to me or the cows; but stopping from time to time and looking back as if pursued from the west.