By this time the black army of the heavens had rolled up overhead and a few big frog-like drops of rain began to fall, throwing up little clouds of dust, as a rifle bullet might. I trundled out a couple of tubs, in the hope of catching a little soft water. It wasn't until later that I realized the meaning of Olga's mild stare of reproof. For the next moment the downpour came, and with it the wind. And such wind! There had been nothing to stop its sweep, of course, for hundreds and hundreds of miles, and it hit us the same as a hurricane at sea hits a liner. The shack shook with the force of it. My two wash-tubs went bounding and careening off across the landscape, the chicken-coop went over like a nine-pin, and the air was filled with bits of flying timber. Olga's wagon, with the hay-rack on top of it, moved solemnly and ponderously across the barnyard and crashed into the corral, propelled by no power but that of the wind. My sweet-pea hedges were torn from their wires, and an armful of hay came smack against the shack-window and was held there by the wind, darkening the room more than ever.
Then the storm blew itself out, though it poured for two or three hours afterward. And all the while, although I exulted in that play of elemental force, I was worrying about my Dinky-Dunk, who was away for the day, doing what he could to arrange for some harvest hands, when the time for cutting came. For the wheat, it seems, ripens all at once, and then the grand rush begins. If it isn't cut the moment it's ripe, the grain shells out, and that means loss. Olga has been saying that the wheat on the Cummins section will easily run forty bushels to the acre and over. It will also grade high, whatever that means. There are six hundred and forty acres of it in that section, and I've just figured out that this means a little over twenty-five thousand bushels of grain. Our other piece on the home ranch is a larger tract, but a little lighter in crop. That wheat is just beginning to turn from green to the palest of yellow. And it has a good show, Olga says, if frost will only keep off and no hail comes. Our one occupation, for the next few weeks, will be watching the weather.
_Sunday the Thirteenth_
Percy and Mrs. Watson drove over to see how we'd all weathered the storm. They found the chicken-coop once more right side up, and everything ship-shape. Percy promptly asked where Olga was. I pointed her out to him, breast-high in the growing wheat. She looked like Ceres, in her big, new, loose-fitting blue waist, with the noonday sun on her yellow-gold head and her mild ruminative eyes with their misted sky-line effect. She always seems to fit into the landscape here. I suppose it's because she's a born daughter of the soil. And a sea of wheat makes a perfect frame for that massive, benignant figure of hers.
I looked at Percy, at thin-nosed, unpractical Percy, with all his finicky sensibilities, with his high fastidious reticences, with his effete, inbred meagerness of bone and sinew, with his distinguished pride of distinguished race rather running to seed. And I stood marveling at the wisdom of old Mother Nature, who was so plainly propelling him toward this revitalizing, revivifying, reanimalizing, redeeming type which his pale austerities of spirit could never quite neutralize. Even Dinky-Dunk has noticed what is taking place. He saw them standing side by side in the grain. When he came in he pointed them out to me, and merely said, "_Hermann und Dorothea_!" But I remembered my Goethe well enough to understand.
_Monday the Twenty-eighth_
I woke Dinky-Dunk up last night crying beside him in bed. I just got to thinking about things again, how far away we were from everything, how hard it would be to get help if we needed it, and how much I'd give if I only had you, Matilda Anne, for the next few weeks.... I got up and went to the window and looked out. The moon was big and yellow, like a cheese. And the midnight prairie itself seemed so big and wide and lonely, and I seemed such a tiny speck on its face, so far away from every one, from God himself, that the courage went out of my body like the air out of a tire. Dinky-Dunk was right; it is life that is taming me.
I stood at the window praying, and then I slipped back into bed. Dinky-Dunk works so hard and gets so tired that it would take a Chinese devil-gong to waken him, once he's asleep. He did not stir when I crept back into bed. And that, as I lay there wide awake, made me feel that even my own husband had betrayed me. And I _bawled_. I must have shaken the bed, for Dinky-Dunk finally did wake up. I couldn't tell him what was the matter. I blubbered out that I only wanted him to hold me. He took me in his arms and kissed my wet eyelids, hugging me up close to him, until I got quieter. Then I fell asleep. But poor Dinky-Dunk was awake when I opened my eyes about four, and had been that way for hours. He was afraid of disturbing me by taking his arm from under my head. To-day he looks tired and dark around the eyes. But he was up and off early. There is so much to be done these days! He is putting up a grub-tent and a rough sleeping-shack for the harvest "hands," so that I won't be bothered with a lot of rough men about the house here. I'm afraid I'm an encumbrance, when I should be helping. But they seem to be taking everything out of my hands.
_Saturday the Second_
I love to watch the wheat, now that it's really turning. It waves like a sea and stretches off into the distance as far as the eye can follow it. It's as high as my waist, and sometimes it moves up and down like a slowly breathing breast. When the sun is low it turns a pure Roman gold, and makes my eyes ache. But I love it. It strikes me as being glorious, and at the same time pathetic--I scarcely know why. I can't analyze my feelings. But the prairie brings a great peace to my soul. It is so rich, so maternal, so generous. It seems to brood under a passion to give, to yield up, to surrender all that is asked of it. And it is so tranquil. It seems like a bosom breathed on by the breath of God.
_Wednesday the Sixth_
It is nearly a year, now, since I first came to Casa Grande. I can scarcely believe it. The nights are getting very cool again and any time now there might be a heavy frost. If it should freeze this next week or two I think my Dinky-Dunk would just curl up and die. Poor boy, he's working so hard! I pray for that crop every night. I worry about it. Last night I dreamt it was burnt up in a prairie-fire and woke up screaming for wet blankets. Dinky-Dunk had to hold me until I got quiet again. I asked him if he loved me, now that I was getting old and ugly. He said I was the most beautiful thing God ever made and that he loved me in a deeper and nobler way than he did a year ago. Then I asked him if he'd ever get married again, if I should die. He called me silly and said I was going to live to be eighty, and that a gasoline-tractor couldn't kill me. But he promised I'd be the only one, whatever happened. And I believe him. I know Dinky-Dunk would go in black for a solid year, if I _should_ die, and he'd never, never marry again, for he's the sort of Old Sobersides who can only love one woman in one lifetime. And I'm the woman, glory be!
_Tuesday the Twelfth_
Harvest time is here. The stage is cleared, and the last and great act of the drama now begins. It's a drama with a stage a thousand miles wide. I can hear through the open windows the rattle of the self-binders. Olga is driving one, like a tawny Boadicea up on her chariot. She said she never saw such heads of wheat. This is the first day's cutting, but those flapping canvas belts and those tireless arms of wood and iron won't have one-tenth of Dinky-Dunk's crop tied up by midnight. It is very cold, and Olie has lugubriously announced that it's sure going to freeze. So three times I've gone out to look at the thermometer and three times I've said my solemn little prayer: "Dear God, please don't freeze poor Dinky-Dunk's wheat!" And the Lord heard that prayer, for a Chinook came about two o'clock in the morning and the mercury slowly but steadily rose.
_Thursday the Fourteenth_
I had a great deal to talk about to-day. But I can't write much.... I'm afraid. I dread being alone. I wish I'd been a better wife to my poor old gold-bricked Dinky-Dunk! But we are what we are, character-kinks and all. So when he understands, perhaps he'll forgive me. I'm like a cottontail in the middle of a wheat-patch with the binders going round and round and every swathe cutting away a little more of my covering. And there can't be much more hiding away with my secret. But I shall never openly speak of it. The binder can cut off my feet first, the same as Olie's did with that mother-rabbit which stood trembling over her nest of young. Why must life sometimes be so ruthlessly tragic? And why, oh, why, are women sometimes so absurd? And why should I be afraid of what every woman who would justify her womanhood must face? Still, I'm afraid!