At night the threshermen, too weary for talk, crept into the
loft of a barn, slept until daylight and then began another day of
heartbreaking toil. On Sunday morning they went for a swim in some creek
and in the afternoon sat in a barn or under the trees of an orchard
sleeping or indulging in detached, fragmentary bits of talk, talk that
never rose above a low, wearisome level. For hours they would try to
settle a dispute as to whether a horse they had seen at some farm during
the week had three, or four, white feet, and one man in the crew never
talked at all, sitting on his heels through the long Sunday afternoons and
whittling at a stick with his pocket knife.
The threshing outfit with which Sam worked was owned by a man named Joe,
who was in debt for it to the maker and who, after working with the men
all day, drove about the country half the night making deals with farmers
for other days of threshing. Sam thought that he looked constantly on the
point of collapse through overwork and worry, and one of the men, who had
been with Joe through several seasons, told Sam that at the end of the
season their employer did not have enough money left from his season of
work to pay the interest on the debt for his machines and that he
continually took jobs for less than the cost of doing them.
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