Fruits of the Earth Read Online Free PDF

straightened and listened. “By jingo!” he exclaimed.
    â€œWhat is it?” Ruth asked; for she, too, had caught a faint pulsation in the air.
    â€œThe ditchers,” Abe said. “Come on!” And, turning, he ran for the yard, leaving Ruth behind.
    The sun was almost setting; and as they passed through the gate where Abe had waited, they saw, straight west, little puffs of steam and smoke rising into the clear evening air.
    â€œIt is the ditching machine,” Abe said. “They’ll get past here after all this summer. I’ll hitch up to-morrow; we’ll have a look at them.”
    He took Ruth’s arm and, bending down to kiss her, led her back to the field where they rogued for another hour till it was too dark to distinguish weeds from grain. The weeds Abe piled in the margin, at right angles to a rope which he had brought and by the help of which he swung the huge bundle on his back. Thus, through the dusk, they returned to the yard where Abe kindled a fire with chips from the wood pile, smothering the flames with the green weeds till they disengaged a dense, acrid smoke which dispelled the increasingly troublesome mosquitoes. Ruth brought two chairs from the shack; and they sat down in the smudge, Abe in the thickest of it, Ruth near the margin.
    They had been sitting there for half an hour, Abe yawning with that abandon which comes from overwhelming drowsiness, when, from the trail beyond the fence, a voice sounded across: “Seen the ditchers?”
    Abe and Ruth gave a start. “Yes,” Abe said. “Heard and seen them.”
    â€œBoth?”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œThey’re working on both lines,” said Hall’s voice. “They’re nearer on the south line.”
    â€œCome,” Abe said to Ruth; and again he took her arm.
    â€œDo you mean to say they work at night?” Abe asked at the gate.
    Hall laughed and spat. “They had better. They’ve contracted to finish the work before freeze-up.”
    The bright glare of a headlight was visible against the dark sky from which the pallor of the sunset had vanished; andfarther south a second similar light pointed eastward, less brightly, for these three humans were not in the line of its focus.
    â€œThat there machine,” Hall said, pointing ineffectively with a chewed-off pipe-stem, “is two miles south. It’s the bigger one; they work three steam-shovels there; that’s why they’ve overtaken this here devil. They’ve shipped in two carloads of forriners, Ukarainians, dodgast them. I was thinking of asking fer a job my own self. But the white man don’t stand a chancet in this country any longer.”
    â€œThat reminds me,” Abe said. “I’m going to build a granary. You can get a job right here.”
    â€œAll right, bo’. What about that there house you were talking of?”
    â€œI’ll get you the house. Trouble is, I’ll have to owe you the money it costs. You have to sign under oath that the house is yours.”
    Hall chuckled. “So long as I gets my money when I pull out.”
    â€œYou don’t need to pull out till you’ve got it.”
    â€œThat’s so. It’s all right then. I’m danged if I stays on this prairie a day longer than I’ve got to.”
    Three, four miles to the west, lights shifted, crossing the pointed finger of the headlight. The night seemed to intensify into a more palpable blackness; and the pulse of the engine ceased. Startlingly, two or three of the movable lights were reversed, pointing converging beams backward, against the face of the machine that was straddling the ditch it excavated. Magically, it seemed drawn nearer.
    â€œSomething wrong,” Hall said, spitting. “Lighting up for repairs.”
    They stood and stared but could not, of course, see what was going on. The second outfit was visibly forging ahead.Whenever Abe looked away for a