From the cloudless sky the sun's heat poured down in floods. A monotonous locust was chirr-chirr-chirring from a nearby cottonwood ... and in the long hedge of Osage oranges moaned wood doves.... By noon I had achieved a mechanical swing that helped relieve the physical strain, a swinging rhythm of the hips and back muscles which took the burden off my aching and weaker arms. That afternoon, late, when the old man drove his waggon up to me for the hundredth time it seemed, he smiled quizzically. "Well, here you are still, but you're too skinny to stand it another day ... better draw your two bucks from the boss and strike out for Laurel again." --"that so, Daddy!" and I caught three bundles at once on the tines of my fork and flung them clear to the top, and over. They caught the old man in the midriff.... I heard a sliding about and swearing ... the next moment he was in a heap, on the ground ... on the other side of the waggon. "What th' hell did ye do that for?" I looked innocent. "Do what?" --"soak me in the guts with three bundles to onct an' knock me off'n the top of the load?" "Ever since morning you've been kidding me and telling me I went too slow for you.... I thought I'd speed up a bit." After surveying me scornfully for a minute, he mutely reascended the load, and we finished the job in silence together.... We laboured on after sunset till the full moon swung over the tree-tops. * * * * * Usually they did not use the cook-shack much ... it was used while on the road from one wheat farm to another. Usually the farmers' wives and daughters in the valleys and on the hillsides vied with each other as to heaping food before the threshers ... every morning saw mountains of pancakes ... bacon ... eggs ... ham ... beefsteak ... we laboured like giants, ate like hogs, slept like senseless stocks. I climbed to my bed in the haymow that first night. It was chill enough for the use of my blanket. I drowsed off, to wake with a jump of all my body from a dream that a giant was pressing down on me, that he had my legs doubled up over me and was breaking them into my breast.... The cramps.... I stood up and rubbed my legs till the taut tendons softened and stretched ... but when I dared bend them the littlest, the tautening and drawing twisted them again. And so I suffered half the night through, till, in wrathful agony, I stumbled to the watering trough and stood naked-white in the flood of the full moon, rubbing the icy water over my body.... The dutiful house dogs ... barking furiously, the two of them rushed at my apparition as I stood up in the trough and splashed. They embayed me as a quarry. I jumped out of the trough and threw stones at them. They backed from my attack and bit at the stones. I stepped back in the water and rubbed myself more. The dogs squatted on their haunches at a safe distance and bayed lugubriously at me and the moon in common.