282 WHEAT AND WOMAN 



This sounds well, and comes out well under the 

 satisfactory conditions of board and residence for 

 man and horses, barring oats. But he told me after- 

 wards that he had a rough and uncomfortable time, 

 and found there was little if anything in it ; and I 

 have always found it to be the cheapest way of 

 breaking new land, and getting it put in shape for 

 crops, providing you have a breaker who really 

 knows the work — one who has won the knowledge 

 through much experience. 



On the last day but one I drove over to Indian 

 Head to look for a man. I had left it until rather 

 late, and in the end I had to drive the eighteen 

 miles in a gale. A gale at this season of the year 

 means that you hold on to your seat and the lines, 

 and trust yourself to the discretion of your horse, 

 with eyes shut fast against a merciless cloud of soil, 

 blown by the wind from the seed-beds which line 

 the way on either side of every road allowance 

 between Wideawake and Indian Head. I arrived 

 in the spick-and-span little wheat town with a face 

 that was literally, but so completely, black that it 

 marked one as hailing from another race, rather than 

 as being a member of the great unwashed. I had 

 to decline the printed invitation to take a bath 

 at the Imperial Hotel for the sum of fifty cents, 

 because of the message of the clock, and immediately 

 after the midday meal I set out to find a man. I 

 could hear of none anywhere. At the livery barns, 

 in the hotels and stores there was the same tale of 

 the numbers who had been work-seeking yesterday, 

 and the other numbers who would most certainly 

 come off the work-seeker's train on the morrow. 

 I had given up the quest as hopeless, when I caught 



