Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/296

 went the first waiting sheaves of wheat; the thresher roared and shook, the men in the growing light, forks in hand, bent, straightened, pitched; the belt writhed, the jaws crunched, the brown wheat kernels flowed from the side of the machine like blood. But it was not blood, it was bread. Bread for the world.

There was competition among the separators, scattered over fifty thousand acres of wheat, and so there were hours when life for Tom narrowed down to the slats that climbed endlessly in front of him, to the fork in his hand and the incessant bend, straighten, pitch of his job. When his boot bothered him he took it off, and the wheat stubble cut his foot and hurt him painfully.

But at night, unable to sleep for very weariness, he would lie awake and think about wheat. Maybe Jake had been right after all. Wheat was king now, not cattle. He and his kind were through, or nearly through. They would hold on for awhile, but the end was in sight.

He did not go home that first week-end, but on the second Saturday he filled up the Ford and started back. It was threatening rain, and he made all the haste possible. But it was after dark before he halted the car near the house and stared at it in amazement. There was a lamp lighted inside.

Never once did he doubt that it was Kay. He left the machine where it stood and fairly ran to the kitchen door. But when he flung it open, it was Clare Hamel who stood busy over the kitchen stove.