第39章

On the Quien Sabe ranch, in one of its western divisions, near the line fence that divided it from the Osterman holding, Vanamee was harnessing the horses to the plough to which he had been assigned two days before, a stable-boy from the division barn helping him.

Promptly discharged from the employ of the sheep-raisers after the lamentable accident near the Long Trestle, Vanamee had presented himself to Harran, asking for employment.The season was beginning; on all the ranches work was being resumed.The rain had put the ground into admirable condition for ploughing, and Annixter, Broderson, and Osterman all had their gangs at work.Thus, Vanamee was vastly surprised to find Los Muertos idle, the horses still in the barns, the men gathering in the shade of the bunk-house and eating-house, smoking, dozing, or going aimlessly about, their arms dangling.The ploughs for which Magnus and Harran were waiting in a fury of impatience had not yet arrived, and since the management of Los Muertos had counted upon having these in hand long before this time, no provision had been made for keeping the old stock in repair; many of these old ploughs were useless, broken, and out of order; some had been sold.It could not be said definitely when the new ploughs would arrive.Harran had decided to wait one week longer, and then, in case of their non-appearance, to buy a consignment of the old style of plough from the dealers in Bonneville.He could afford to lose the money better than he could afford to lose the season.

Failing of work on Los Muertos, Vanamee had gone to Quien Sabe.

Annixter, whom he had spoken to first, had sent him across the ranch to one of his division superintendents, and this latter, after assuring himself of Vanamee's familiarity with horses and his previous experience--even though somewhat remote--on Los Muertos, had taken him on as a driver of one of the gang ploughs, then at work on his division.

The evening before, when the foreman had blown his whistle at six o'clock, the long line of ploughs had halted upon the instant, and the drivers, unharnessing their teams, had taken them back to the division barns--leaving the ploughs as they were in the furrows.But an hour after daylight the next morning the work was resumed.After breakfast, Vanamee, riding one horse and leading the others, had returned to the line of ploughs together with the other drivers.Now he was busy harnessing the team.At the division blacksmith shop--temporarily put up--he had been obliged to wait while one of his lead horses was shod, and he had thus been delayed quite five minutes.Nearly all the other teams were harnessed, the drivers on their seats, waiting for the foreman's signal.

"All ready here?" inquired the foreman, driving up to Vanamee's team in his buggy.

"All ready, sir," answered Vanamee, buckling the last strap.

He climbed to his seat, shaking out the reins, and turning about, looked back along the line, then all around him at the landscape inundated with the brilliant glow of the early morning.

The day was fine.Since the first rain of the season, there had been no other.Now the sky was without a cloud, pale blue, delicate, luminous, scintillating with morning.The great brown earth turned a huge flank to it, exhaling the moisture of the early dew.The atmosphere, washed clean of dust and mist, was translucent as crystal.Far off to the east, the hills on the other side of Broderson Creek stood out against the pallid saffron of the horizon as flat and as sharply outlined as if pasted on the sky.The campanile of the ancient Mission of San Juan seemed as fine as frost work.All about between the horizons, the carpet of the land unrolled itself to infinity.

But now it was no longer parched with heat, cracked and warped by a merciless sun, powdered with dust.The rain had done its work;not a clod that was not swollen with fertility, not a fissure that did not exhale the sense of fecundity.One could not take a dozen steps upon the ranches without the brusque sensation that underfoot the land was alive; roused at last from its sleep, palpitating with the desire of reproduction.Deep down there in the recesses of the soil, the great heart throbbed once more, thrilling with passion, vibrating with desire, offering itself to the caress of the plough, insistent, eager, imperious.Dimly one felt the deep-seated trouble of the earth, the uneasy agitation of its members, the hidden tumult of its womb, demanding to be made fruitful, to reproduce, to disengage the eternal renascent germ of Life that stirred and struggled in its loins.

The ploughs, thirty-five in number, each drawn by its team of ten, stretched in an interminable line, nearly a quarter of a mile in length, behind and ahead of Vanamee.They were arranged, as it were, en echelon, not in file--not one directly behind the other, but each succeeding plough its own width farther in the field than the one in front of it.Each of these ploughs held five shears, so that when the entire company was in motion, one hundred and seventy-five furrows were made at the same instant.

At a distance, the ploughs resembled a great column of field artillery.Each driver was in his place, his glance alternating between his horses and the foreman nearest at hand.Other foremen, in their buggies or buckboards, were at intervals along the line, like battery lieutenants.Annixter himself, on horseback, in boots and campaign hat, a cigar in his teeth, overlooked the scene.

The division superintendent, on the opposite side of the line, galloped past to a position at the head.For a long moment there was a silence.A sense of preparedness ran from end to end of the column.All things were ready, each man in his place.The day's work was about to begin.