Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/190

 "Who knows?" the man replied, "I keep the young men at work, I see that the oxen are changed when one falls. Maybe the men who measure the wheat can tell."

Here was a divided, a vague, opinion. One thought it might be a hundred quintales, another scoffed this, putting his estimate at fifty.

"Call it seventy-five quintales, although I don't believe it can be done," said Juan. "It must be winnowed, it must be run through sieves, even the little stones must be picked out of it by hand, before it can go to the mill. Look at this wheat I have threshed, Padre Ignacio; clean enough as it is to go into the hopper, except for this chaff, which a breath will blow away."

"I fear the method is too slow, although superior in other respects, I will admit. At the end of harvest, Juan, we have nine or ten of these threshing-places going every day; we make short work of it. But with this little stick—who can tell?"

"An ordinary man can thresh six or seven quintales in a day, Padre Ignacio. Put fifty at work"

"Don Geronimo!" Cristóbal warned, touching Juan's arm.

Don Geronimo had approached unseen until that moment by any of the interested spectators. With his arrival there was a general scurrying back to their duty among the Indians, who cringed as they ran in expectation of the bite of Don Geronimo's whip. The mayordomo reined up at the edge of