The frost killed the grass early, and early in October we had a heavy
rain followed by another freeze, and then a long, calm, warm Indian
summer. The prairie was covered with a dense mat of dry grass which
rustled in the wind but furnished no feed for our stock. It was a
splendid fall for plowing, and I began to feel hope return to me as I
followed my plow around and around the lands I laid off, and watched the
black ribbon of new plowing widen and widen as the day advanced
toward night.
Nothing is so good a soil for hope as new plowing. The act of making it
is inspired by hope. The emblem of hope should be the plow; not the plow
of the Great Seal, but a plow buried to the top of the mold-board in the
soil, with the black furrow-slice falling away from it--and for heaven's
sake, let it fall to the right, as it does where they do real farming,
and not to the left as most artists depict it! I know some plows are so
made that the nigh horse walks in the furrow, but I have mighty little
respect for such plows or the farms on which they are used.
My cattle strayed off in the latter part of October; being tolled off in
this time between hay and grass by the green spears that grew up in the
wet places in the marsh and along the creek. I got uneasy about them on
the twentieth, and went hunting them on one of Magnus Thorkelson's
horses. Magnus was away from home working, and had left his team with
me. I made up my mind that I would scout along on my own side of the
marsh until I could cross below it, and then work west, looking from
every high place until I found the cattle, coming in away off toward the
Gowdy tract, and crossing the creek above the marsh on my way home.
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