I soon found there was more than that to know about firing a straw-burner, but these were the essentials. At times when the straw was still damp after rain I had my troubles, and some mornings, until I could raise enough steam to use the forced draft, Sally, as I called our engine, would be as cantankerous as any kitchen stove when the wind swirls over the roof the wrong way. But I soon learned how to take her moods, and before the season was half gone I began to feel a strange sort of affection for this great, greasy lump of metal as the drone of its exhaust played a monotonous lullabye in my ears and the whiff of steam and tallow lent an additional tang to the edge of my fireman's appetite. The goddess of steam began in some subtle way to draw me into her embrace, and I came to understand how it is that once a steam engineer, always a steam engineer. "None of those temperamental things for me," said Thompson one day when the first gasoline tractor I had ever seen went slowly coughing by. "Sally may be a bit mussy and old fashioned, but she has a hell of a punch in her elbow." Just then a damp sheaf from the bottom of a stook went in crosswise, and the automatic governor valve flew open. Sally snorted in indignation and the force of her exhaust drew my fire up into the flues as she threw double her normal horse-power into her driving-rod. "Humph!" said Alec, patting the throttle lever affectionately. "I'd like to see one of those coughin' critters chew on a cud like that!" So the threshing season wore on. We ate in a cook-car, slept in a "caboose," and worked from dawn until dark. Sometimes, to finish a "set" we would burn a straw pile and work by its light after the stars were out in the heavens. Although the work was hard and dirty it was the sort of dirt that is neither offensive nor unhealthful, and there was a certain reckless good-fellowship among the gang that made the time pass pleasantly enough. There were fights on a couple of occasions, when some one brought liquor out from town; one of the men had an arm broken under a belt, and all of us had a scare one day when the field we were working in caught fire from a spark from the engine, but these were mere incidents in a routine of hard work from dawn until dark, and afterwards. At nights the prairie was lit up with the orange-red glow of burning straw piles, their fan-shaped reflections thrust high in the heavens, while the jingle of trace-chains, the rumble of wagons, and the plaintive steam whistles which came through the gloaming from other outfits than our own brought a strange sense of the worthiness of work well done. Tired and prodigiously hungry we would attack the cook-car, and then presently crawl to our bunks and to sleep.