HARVEST OF MY FIRST SEEDING 223 



coat, and a dressing-case for a pillow. It says 

 something for prairie chores as well as prairie air 

 that I did sleep, to wake with the first shadow of 

 dawn, and I served my fifteen guests with porridge, 

 sausages, and fried potato, scones, and treacle on 

 the stroke of 6 a.m. 



My kind " aide," however, was no better ; I 

 thought she was on the verge of illness, and insisted 

 on her going home before noon. Through two 

 days I roasted joints, and occasionally dropped 

 them, fried beef-steak and bacon, peeled potatoes, 

 made scones and puddings, served my guests and 

 washed up without daring to pause for a moment. 

 The men of the outfit were wonderfully pleasant 

 and considerate as they always are, and Roddy 

 McMahon milked, hauled water, bucked wood, 

 made the tea and poured it out, and proved that 

 his power of resource did not begin and end on the 

 land. 



The harvest was not encouraging, although dis- 

 tributed in three granaries it looked a great deal 

 more than it proved itself eventually at the elevators. 

 I paid for the threshing of one thousand two hundred 

 bushels, but it yielded only seven hundred and 

 eighty bushels at the elevators, where all but the 

 first four loads was heavily docked in grade and 

 in weight for smut and wild oats — and, of course, 

 my seed grain. Over and above the seed grain I 

 used was forty bushels which I had cleaned and did 

 not need. I sold this at South Qu'Appelle in August 

 as No. I Northern for a dollar a bushel without 

 dockage, precisely the same wheat as the bulk 

 which had just passed as No. 2 Northern with, I 

 should think, the heaviest dockage within the 



