"He's trying to make it so hard for me that I'll be glad to go back to school.

And I want to show Bill that I'm not afraid of work." You see, there was enough truth in this to keep Whitey's conscience from aching.
"All right," said Steele.

"More hands mean quicker work and more money.
But I never heard of an Injun wanting to work before." "Tame Injun," Injun said solemnly, which was as near a joke as he ever came in the years Whitey knew him.
This work came under the head of what a fellow doesn't really have to do, and everybody knows the difference between that and labor that a fellow does have to do--about the same difference that there is between work and fun.

The threshing-machine was run by horse power.

You remember Felix, the jack that Whitey rode across the prairie, and Felix's job of turning the little grinding-mill?
The horses had the same sort of job, except that there were teams of them, revolving around a central pivot, that furnished the power that worked the great machine in whose maw sheaves of wheat were fed, to come out as grain.
Injun and Whitey's jobs were to hold the sacks into which the grain fell.