THE STORY OF A PLOUGH 159 



better get on to that first. If it comes rain it will 

 be too sticky for the plough in the summer -fallow. 

 I'll just get the breaking-plough right here, and then 

 I can shift on to the breaking come rain. There's 

 another five acres we can get in on the west — a tidy 

 little bit of land ; it will make a good field of that 

 ten-acre stretch across the slough." 



I congratulated myself on having the right sort 

 of man for the land in spite of his superiority to 

 chores, of which he frankly informed me. At the 

 same time I felt that I could not afford to pay a 

 man at the rate of three dollars a day right through 

 the working season, especially since I had to buy 

 feed. 



" You see how I am placed," I exclaimed, when 

 I paid him his salary for the seeding month. " If 

 I had plenty of oats and hay I shouldn't worry, 

 or even if I hadn't bought the fourth horse, but as 

 things are I feel I ought not to be hiring horses." 



" I guess you've no call to worry about any more 

 hay ; that last load we got wasn't much good to the 

 horses anyway. I'll get on out after supper with the 

 mower, and get in a load of prairie-wool." 



Orthodox hay consists of the long grasses cut 

 from the sloughs of the prairie ; prairie-wool is 

 the shorter, finer herbage of the prairie proper. 

 Cutting and gathering this would mean too much 

 labour, but in spring-time, when feed has arrived at 

 its vanishing-point, one is only too glad of the 

 opportunity to gather prairie-wool, and horses 

 appreciate and thrive on it wonderfully well. 



In gathering the prairie-wool my helper blessed 

 the mower and cursed the rake — implements I 

 had purchased as a bargain for fifty dollars ; but it 



