board, that will hold a couple of
willow-baskets, end to end. Then I can nest Poppsy and Pee-Wee in
these two baskets, right under my nose, with little Dinkie beside me
in the seat, and drive from one end of the ranch to the other and see
that the work is being done, and done right. The Lord knows how I'll
get back to the shack in time to rustle the grub--but we'll manage, in
some way.

The Twins have been doing better, the last week or two. And I rather
dread the idea of weaning them. If I had somebody to look after them I
could, I suppose, get a breast-pump and leave their mid-morning and
mid-afternoon luncheons in cold-storage for them, and so ride my
tractor without interruption. I remember a New York woman who did
that, left the drawn milk of her breast on ice, so that she might gad
and shop for a half-day at a time. But the more I think it over the
more unnatural and inhuman it seems. Yet to hunt for help, in this
busy land, is like searching for a needle in a hay-stack. Already, in
the clear morning air, one can hear the stutter and skip and cough of
the tractors along the opalescent sky-line, accosting the morning sun
with their rattle and tattle of harvests to be. And I intend to be in
on the game.

_Sunday the Second_

I'm too busy to puddle in spilt milk or worry over things that are
past. I can't even take time to rhapsodize over the kitchen-cabinet to
which Whinnie put the finishing touches to-day at noon, though I know
it will save me many a step. Poor old Whinnie, I'm afraid, is more a
putterer than a plowman. He's had a good deal of trouble with the
tractor, and his lame foot seems to bother him, on account of the long
hours, but he proclaims he'll see me through.

Tractor-plowing, I'm beginning to discover, isn't the simple operation
it sounds, for your land, in the first place, has to be staked off and
marked with guidons, since you must know your measurements and have
your headlands uniform and your furrows straight or there'll be a
woeful mix-up before you come to the end of your job. The great
trouble is that a tractor can't turn in its own length, as a team of
horses can. Hence this deploying space must be wasted, or plowed later
with horses, and your headlands themselves must be wide enough for the
turning radius of your tractor. Some of the ranchers out here, I
understand, even do their tractor-plowing in the form of a series of
elongated figure-eights, begin