Explore "By Right of Purchase" by Harold Bindloss on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It was growing dusk, of a thick, hot evening, when Leland at last pulled up his jaded horses, and, turning in the iron saddle, raised his hand in signal. Behind him, a drawn-out line of machines and plodding teams were moving on at measured distances, binder after binder, half-hidden by the tall oats that went down before them with a harsh crackle. Where they passed, men toiled hard among the flung-out sheaves, and the trampling of weary horses, rasp and tinkle of the knives, and the clash of the binders' wooden arms rang far across the great dusky plain. The sounds of strenuous activity had risen since the sun first crept up above the vast sweep of grass, and continued through the burning heat of the day; but now they ceased suddenly, and men, stripped to coarse blue shirt and trousers of dusty jean, wiped their dripping faces, and straightened their aching backs before they loosed the teams.
Their hoarse voices came up to Leland, with the clatter of flung-down poles and the tramp of horses among the stubble, as he got down from his binder.