HARVEST OF MY FIRST SEEDING 219 



prairie that the winter snowfall will soon cover 

 the features and face, and almost change the form 

 of the Great ]\Iother ; that after all hill and valley, 

 lake and coulee are just bits of her, and that its own 

 gay, glad, new day of spring is always coming. 



Nancy and I spent delightful hours along the 

 more silent and unfrequented paths of the prairie 

 which stretch and wind along the hills east and west 

 of Fort Qu'Appelle, and between Le Bret and 

 Katepwa and on the western side to that paradise 

 of sportsmen known as the Head of the Lakes. 

 Returning from such an excursion one evening 

 my neighbour tossed me into a fever of anxiety 

 by hinting that in all probability I shouldn't get 

 threshed out at all, as Guy Mazey was threshing his 

 crop and then moving south to a bigger job ; and 

 that no outfit would come out of its way to do my 

 solitary wheat-field, especially when they saw the 

 wild oats in the corner ! 



But on the Sabbath morrow came John McLeay 

 to say all was well. The threshing outfit of one 

 Alan Redcliffe, a farmer who owned many acres 

 on the wheat plain of Wideawake, had promised to 

 come to our corner directly he had threshed out 

 his own crop. The outfit was to move into Danny 

 McLeay's on the evening of the next day, from him 

 it would go to John McLeay, then to me if I were 

 willing. If ! 



No words can make clear how much I owed to 

 John and Danny McLeay in my first seasons. 

 It is true they were relations of Roddy McMahon, 

 who had a quiet way of going after them in every 

 untoward or impossible occasion connected with the 

 well-being of the beasts or the moving of granaries. 



