The dawn sky turned rosy, there was enough light to begin the reaping. Ase turned the team into the wheat field and released a lever. The gears ground, the knives clicked, a wide swathe opened behind, a tawny road through a golden sea. The bundlers followed on foot, gathering the sheaves and stacking them. The sun was above the horizon and Ase had made his second turn when he heard the threshing machine make its sputtering starts. It spit and stopped, spit and stopped. Jim Wilson’s crew began loading the sheaves of wheat on the hay rick. The threshing machine caught with roar, the steam whistled, the chugging settled down to a steady rhythm. For an hour Ase cut his swathes, the bundlers stacked, the loads of sheaves were taken to the busy maw of the threshing machine, the chaff blew far an
