The Valley of Gold Author:David Howarth Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill BOUQUETS THE month of October sped swiftly away in one long attack on oceans of stooks amid the blue blaze of cloudless skies. The threshers were havin... more »g a run of " great weather " as the blank fields and the piles of straw averred. The matter of the McClure-Pullar wager had of course leaked out and become the one thrilling feature of the annual wind-up. Aside from the two gangs there was a keenly interested and, alas, gaming public. The sympathy of the plains went to Ned Pullar; the odds to Rob McClure. Jack Butte had become an inhuman sphinx. Into Jack's elevator had come the steady stream of grain from the contending mills but to no one had he divulged the respective records. No system of tapping his books had yet succeeded. This was due to the fact that Jack Butte was an irreproachable and resourceful stakeholder. As rare evidence of his unique qualifications he had sworn the secrecy of every farmer threshed by the rivals. It was a tribute to the sporting public that with but three days to run only one man knew of the interesting situation. The Valley Outfit was resting. Ned Pullar was oiling-up and cleaning his engine during the dinner interim. Every bit of brass about her was gleaming gold while the friction surfaces shone clean like new silver. The " Old Lady " had established a personal reputation in the Valley as a " mighty good engine," and her engineer was justly proud of her. To Ned she had become a living thing. Mounting on the footboard he grasped the throttle. During the pounding grind of the past month he had formed the habit of communing with this thing of power that he controlled with so masterful a hand. As his eyes read gauge and water-glass with satisfaction he spoke to the engine, addressing her not by word of mouth but with the voice of his refle...« less