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out as soon as he’d buckled the crouper. “Colt’s awful high-strung. Got to handle him gentle, elseways you’d never get a harness on him. Been spoilt by them cussed worthless hired hands. Don’t none of ’em understand a high-strung hoss critter. Now you run fetch the snath and scythe out the carriage house whilst I’m hitching the hosses to the mowing machine.”
    I’d never even heard of a snath, let alone knowing what it was, and I didn’t think I’d heard right that time. “What is it you want me to get?” I asked.
    “Snath and scythe! Snath and scythe!” Grandfather shouted. “Why don’t you listen when I speak to you?”
    “I did listen,” I said, “but I don’t know what a snath is.”
    “Great thunderation!” Grandfather hollered. “Don’t know what a snath is! Don’t know much of nothing, do you? Didn’t your father learn you nothing about farming?”
    “Father taught me plenty about farming, and about handling horses, too,” I said, “but we never had anything called a snath.”
    Grandfather dropped both hands to his sides, and just stood looking at me for a minute. When he spoke, his voice was as gentle as a woman’s. “Gorry sakes alive, Ralphie! Your old grampa’ll learn you how to farm. Poor boy! Tarnal shame Charlie died afore he had you half fetched up. Awful good man, Charlie. Shame Mary had to lose him when there’s so cussed many worthless men in the world. Now you run along and fetch the snath and scythe.”
    I knew what a scythe was all right. Father used to have one when we lived on the ranch. When I got to the carriage house, there was a scythe about like Father’s hanging on the far wall. I took it down and looked all around to see if I could find anything that might be a snath. I was still trying when Grandfather called, “Ralphie, what’s keeping you? We ain’t got all day!” I grabbed up a broken whetstone, took the scythe, and hurried down behind the barn where he was shouting, “Whoa! Whoa, back!” at the horses.
    From the corner of the barn, I could see Grandfather down on his hands and knees behind the yella colt. The colt was the off horse—the one on the right-hand side of the pair—the cutter bar of the mowing machine was down, and, if the team had started up, Grandfather would have been right in the path of the knives. I began to run, but the crooked scythe handle kept bouncing around on my shoulder, and I was afraid I might startle the horses, so I had to slow down. Grandfather looked up just when I was back to a walk, and shouted, “What in time and tarnation ails you? Dawdling away the whole day when there’s work to be done! What kept you?”
    “I couldn’t find the snath,” I called back.
    I was getting close enough that Grandfather didn’t have to shout, but he snapped, good and loud, “Couldn’t find it! Couldn’t find it! What in thunder you got over your shoulder?”
    Of course, by that time I knew it had to be something to do with the scythe, so I asked, “Is it a part of the scythe?”
    Grandfather stood up on his knees, with his hands drooped in front of his chest—just the way a prairie dog stands by his hole—and he looked up at me as if I were some kind of a strange animal. “Gorry sakes alive!” he said at last. “How did ever a boy grow up to your age and know so little? Poor boy! It’s a good thing Mary sent you. Your old grampa’ll learn you to be a man. Snath is the handle; scythe is the blade that goes on it.”
    Grandfather had the buckskin’s tug wired to the singletree with a piece of rusty old barbed wire. It was so brittle that one strand had cracked where the sharp bend came, and an end three feet long was trailing on the ground. He grabbed the trailing piece in both fists, and bent it back and forth till it broke, leaving an eight-inch spike sticking out with a barb at the end.
    “That won’t work very well, will it?” I asked. “One strand is already broken, and the dragging end will ball hay up in