help. Yet Block found himself strangely at a loss: he hesitated, then tried for reasonableness, “No one can do anythingwithout other people’s co-operation. And we all want to live at peace together. That is best.” Herb stared at the ground. Block turned to the truck.
Herb said abruptly, “That was the trouble with the cows this morning! I heard the bell running like mad—was that Thom running them off the field? Wiens, doesn’t that kid of yours know how to chase stock—winding ’em with a full belly of green oats? The old brindle was sick at milking.” Herb worked himself up quickly as he saw them about to leave. Foot on the running board, Block paused, scar darkening.
“You keep your stock where it belongs and it won’t get winded.” He hesitated, as the two others climbed into the cab. “Get a sod roof on that hole of a barn. And drain it. You’re ruining your horses’ feet.”
Herb watched the truck vanish, cursing silently. In his thinking Thom appeared the culprit. He had egged Wiens on—last year the old man had been pliable enough. And once the Deacon was involved—That he’d mention those hogs! There wouldn’t be a cent left.
He kicked viciously at a soft cow-dropping near his feet, and walked towards the house. The litter of pigs grunted away as he neared. Before he entered, he slammed his filthy boot against the single gate-post that had no fence to support.
CHAPTER SIX
Grosser Gott, wir loben Dich!
Herr, wir preisen Deine Staerke!
Morning sunlight sprayed through the reaching branches of the trees, hung wispy with hay clawed from homeward passing racks. New day triumphed in Thom like the song in his throat:
Vor Dir neigt die Erde sich
Und bewundert Deine Werke
.
He looked back, balancing on the jolting rack, hands loose on the reins. Pa and Hal would not be coming for an hour. He liked the next line, both for the words and for the music which went up and up to the peak of exaltation; there was no one but the pricked-eared horses and the wilderness and Almighty God to hear:
Wie Du warst vor aller Zeit
,
So—
and he held it, like a trumpet, his chest in the cool morning steel-bound, feeling the song reach beyond the raucous banging of wheels on rocks into each body cell-tip,
—bleibst Du-u in Ewigkeit!
“Come on, let’s go. Hey!” and he chirruped with a laugh and a flip of the reins; the horses caught the trot with three shakes of their heads and ran with amazing silence through the muffling sand up a ridge-side. Without thinking he cried, “Let the mountains
shout
for joy!” because the morning said it to him. But there were no mountains here, rather great clothed ridges from which, over the poplar-tips that faded to willows below him, he could see the open of the hay meadow where stacks sprawled like stubby caterpillars. He had never seen mountains that he could remember, though his father said he had seen the Urals from their village in Russia. Somewhere in Isaiah it spoke of valleys shouting for joy, but mountains seemed better: the picture arose in his mind of a monstrous mass opening its craw in an abysmal bellow of recognition to its Conceiver. He grinned, thinking of yesterday afternoon’s Bible lesson, one that had even impressed Marie Moosomin and Jackie Labret, concerning Elijah shivering in his cave. The meadowlark tipping the post was best of all. Its song floated as he passed.
The Wiens’ farm being nearest the haymeadow, Thom knew he should have been out first, but he was not; Pete had rattled by while he was coming out to hook up. Star andDuster now trotted in the wagon-tracks across the Block lease to the next quarter north, which Wiens had leased for the past ten years. Farther north and south other Mennonite families had land for haying, so that in the middle of summer half the people of Wapiti and Beaver districts laboured the length of Eight Mile Lake putting up their winter feed. Thom could hear the clatter of Pete’s mower cutting into the last
Herb said abruptly, “That was the trouble with the cows this morning! I heard the bell running like mad—was that Thom running them off the field? Wiens, doesn’t that kid of yours know how to chase stock—winding ’em with a full belly of green oats? The old brindle was sick at milking.” Herb worked himself up quickly as he saw them about to leave. Foot on the running board, Block paused, scar darkening.
“You keep your stock where it belongs and it won’t get winded.” He hesitated, as the two others climbed into the cab. “Get a sod roof on that hole of a barn. And drain it. You’re ruining your horses’ feet.”
Herb watched the truck vanish, cursing silently. In his thinking Thom appeared the culprit. He had egged Wiens on—last year the old man had been pliable enough. And once the Deacon was involved—That he’d mention those hogs! There wouldn’t be a cent left.
He kicked viciously at a soft cow-dropping near his feet, and walked towards the house. The litter of pigs grunted away as he neared. Before he entered, he slammed his filthy boot against the single gate-post that had no fence to support.
CHAPTER SIX
Grosser Gott, wir loben Dich!
Herr, wir preisen Deine Staerke!
Morning sunlight sprayed through the reaching branches of the trees, hung wispy with hay clawed from homeward passing racks. New day triumphed in Thom like the song in his throat:
Vor Dir neigt die Erde sich
Und bewundert Deine Werke
.
He looked back, balancing on the jolting rack, hands loose on the reins. Pa and Hal would not be coming for an hour. He liked the next line, both for the words and for the music which went up and up to the peak of exaltation; there was no one but the pricked-eared horses and the wilderness and Almighty God to hear:
Wie Du warst vor aller Zeit
,
So—
and he held it, like a trumpet, his chest in the cool morning steel-bound, feeling the song reach beyond the raucous banging of wheels on rocks into each body cell-tip,
—bleibst Du-u in Ewigkeit!
“Come on, let’s go. Hey!” and he chirruped with a laugh and a flip of the reins; the horses caught the trot with three shakes of their heads and ran with amazing silence through the muffling sand up a ridge-side. Without thinking he cried, “Let the mountains
shout
for joy!” because the morning said it to him. But there were no mountains here, rather great clothed ridges from which, over the poplar-tips that faded to willows below him, he could see the open of the hay meadow where stacks sprawled like stubby caterpillars. He had never seen mountains that he could remember, though his father said he had seen the Urals from their village in Russia. Somewhere in Isaiah it spoke of valleys shouting for joy, but mountains seemed better: the picture arose in his mind of a monstrous mass opening its craw in an abysmal bellow of recognition to its Conceiver. He grinned, thinking of yesterday afternoon’s Bible lesson, one that had even impressed Marie Moosomin and Jackie Labret, concerning Elijah shivering in his cave. The meadowlark tipping the post was best of all. Its song floated as he passed.
The Wiens’ farm being nearest the haymeadow, Thom knew he should have been out first, but he was not; Pete had rattled by while he was coming out to hook up. Star andDuster now trotted in the wagon-tracks across the Block lease to the next quarter north, which Wiens had leased for the past ten years. Farther north and south other Mennonite families had land for haying, so that in the middle of summer half the people of Wapiti and Beaver districts laboured the length of Eight Mile Lake putting up their winter feed. Thom could hear the clatter of Pete’s mower cutting into the last
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