Now, artificial grasses are seldom sown on the prairie where usually the natural product grows only a few inches high, and as building logs are scarce, implements are often kept just where they last were used. It was therefore necessary to seek hay worth cutting in a dried-out slough, or swamp, and next to find the mower, which might lie anywhere within a radius of four miles or so. We came upon them both together, the mower lying on its side, red with rust, amid a stretch of waist-high grass. The latter was harsh and wiry, heavy-scented with wild peppermint, and made ready for us by the sun.
There were, however, preliminary difficulties, and I had worked myself into a state of exasperation before the rusty machine could be induced to run. After a vigorous hammering and the reckless use of oil the pair of horses were at last just able to haul it, groaning vehemently, through the dried-up swamp. I was stripped almost to the skin by this time, the dust that rose in clouds turned to mire upon my dripping cheeks and about my eyes, while bloodthirsty winged creatures hovered round my head.
"This," said Foreman Thorn, as he wiped the red specks from his face and hands, "is going to be a great country. We can raise the finest insects on the wide earth already. The last time I was down to Traverse a man came along from somewhere with a gospel tent, and from what he said there wasn't much chance for anyone to raise cattle. He'd socked it to us tolerable for half-an-hour at least, when Tompson's Charlie gets up and asks him: 'Did you ever break half-thawn sod with oxen?' 'No, my man; but this interruption is unseemly,' says he. 'It's not a conundrum,' says Charlie. 'Did you ever sleep in a mosquito muskeg or cut hay in a dried-out slough?' and the preacher seeing we all wanted an answer, shakes his head. 'Then you start in and try, and find out that there are times when a man must talk or bust, before you worry us,' says Charlie. But who's coming along now?"
I had been too busy to pay much attention to the narrative or to notice a rattle of wheels, and I looked up only when a wagon was drawn up beside the slough. A smooth-shaven man, with something familiar about his face, sat on the driving-seat smiling down at me.