Chapter 321: The Machine That Challenged the Horses Part 2

While Hollen's mechanics tore into the wheels at Plant One, Ernest went out to learn the business of farming.

He didn't want textbook theories or government pamphlets. He wanted real numbers. Arthur arranged a meeting with Sir Edmund Harcourt, an estate owner out west who farmed hundreds of acres of grain. Harcourt kept dozens of workhorses and occasionally hired massive steam engines to help with the autumn harvest.

When Ernest arrived at the estate, Harcourt met them by the barns. He was a broad, sunburnt man in his fifties with dirt on his boots—someone who actually walked his own fields.

"Lord Teucher," Harcourt said, shaking his hand firmly. "Word travels fast. People say you're trying to put my horses out of work."

"Not necessarily," Ernest said with a smile. "I'm just trying to see where a motor might help."

Harcourt led them into his farm office, cleared away a stack of grain receipts, and opened his ledgers.

The numbers told a brutal story. A horse wasn't just an upfront purchase; it was a constant, everyday drain. Hay, oats, stabling, leather harnesses, vet bills, blacksmith work, and the wages for teamsters to guide them. Worse, twenty percent of the estate's best acreage went straight into growing feed for the animals that worked it.

"Horses eat whether it rains or shines," Harcourt said frankly. "They eat when the ground is frozen solid and there's no work to do. But a horse doesn't burn imported fuel, Lord Teucher. And when it gets old, it makes manure for the soil. If your machine breaks down, it just sits there rusting."

"A fair point," Ernest admitted. "A tractor only makes sense if it can work more than two weeks during plowing season."

"Exactly," Harcourt said. "If I buy an engine, it needs to pull seed drills, drag hay wagons, run the threshing drum, and pump water from the lower ditch. It has to earn its keep eighty to a hundred days a year, minimum."

Later that week, Ernest and Arthur visited a small village meeting hall. Here, there were no wealthy estate owners—just smallholders farming twenty or thirty acres apiece.

The men sat around a wood stove, smelling of pipe smoke and damp wool. They looked at the sketches of the Fieldmaster with deep suspicion.

"How much will it cost?" an older farmer asked bluntly.

"We don't have a final sticker price yet," Ernest answered honestly. "But it will cost more than a team of horses."

A dry chuckle went through the room. "Then why on earth would any of us buy one?"

"That's what I came to ask you," Ernest said.

The room softened. They had expected an arrogant salesman from the city; instead, the young nobleman was asking them how they managed their work.

For an hour, they talked about the sheer frustration of spring planting. One man had lost his best horse to colic right at plowing time. Another explained how three straight days of rain had turned his soil to soup, leaving him only forty-eight hours to turn the earth before the seed had to go down. He hadn't had enough horses to beat the clock, and his harvest had been ruined.

The old farmer leaned forward, tapping his pipe against the stove. "Lord Teucher, I don't give a damn about fancy gears. All I care about is whether my ground is plowed before the rain comes. If your machine can do that, I'll happily pay to have it in my field. But I don't need to own the thing. I just need the work done."

On the train ride home, Arthur stared out the window into the dark.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Ernest asked.

"The old man was right," Arthur said quietly. "Small farmers will never buy a machine like this. They don't have the spare gold, and they don't have enough acreage to justify it."

"So where does that leave us?"

Arthur looked over, a sharp smile touching his lips. "We don't sell the tractor to every farmer. We sell it to contractors—men who buy two or three machines, hire good drivers, and plow fields for a fee. Or we sell to village cooperatives who share one."

Ernest nodded slowly. "We aren't just selling iron. We're selling time."

Three weeks later, the modified Fieldmaster rolled back out onto Thomas Bell's farm.

The machine looked tougher now. The rear wheels sported open, widely spaced cleats. Heavy iron discs were bolted to the wheel hubs, the tow hitch hung low under the frame, and sheet-metal guards shielded the spinning belts.

Thomas Bell walked around it, tapping a cleat with the toe of his boot. "Looks meaner."

"Let's see if it works," Ernest said.

The driver cracked the throttle. The engine caught with a hollow, rhythmic thrum: chuff, chuff, chuff, chuff.

He dropped the plow into the ground, let the clutch out smooth, and the steel wheels dug in. The soil curled up behind the blades in two clean, dark ribbons.

Ten yards. Twenty. Fifty.

No spinning. No bogging down. Mud flaked cleanly off the open cleats instead of packing tight. The engine hummed right along, keeping its pace without a hitch.

Bell watched, his eyes wide. His teenage sons ran along the edge of the furrow, cheering.

By afternoon, they had tested the Fieldmaster on an old harrow to break up clods, hitched it to a loaded grain wagon, and backed it up to the barn. There, Hollen slipped a long leather belt over the tractor's side pulley and connected it to Bell's grain grinder.

The driver engaged the pulley clutch. The belt hummed into a blur, and inside the barn, the grinder roared to life, churning grain into fine meal without a single hand turning a crank.

Bell stood frozen between the tractor and the barn door, staring at the spinning belt.

"It can power the barn machinery?" Bell asked, his voice hushed. "Just sitting there?"

"Anything that takes a belt," Hollen said with a grin. "Grinders, water pumps, threshers, saws."

Bell shook his head in pure disbelief. "It isn't just an iron horse, is it? It's a whole powerhouse on wheels."

That evening, over dinner in their garden, Ernest told his wife, Eleanor, about the trials. He described Bell's sons running beside the tractor and Arthur's plan to sell the machines to village cooperatives.

Eleanor listened patiently, pouring them both tea. "Will it actually help the small farms, Ernest? Or will it just make the wealthy landlords richer?"

Ernest looked at her.

"Because the people who work the hardest," she said gently, "are usually the ones who can least afford the things that would save their backs."

Ernest reached across the small table and took her hand. "That's why we're building the contractor program first. So a man with twenty acres can hire it for an afternoon and save his harvest, without going into debt to buy the iron."

She gave him a warm, steady smile. "Then I hope you build a thousand of them."

By the end of the month, the first small run of six production Fieldmasters was approved at Plant One. The plan was modest: send the machines out to real estates, contractors, and farming co-ops, train their drivers properly, and learn from every broken bolt and leaky gasket.

Early one morning, the very first field-ready tractor was strapped down onto a flatbed railway car.

Ernest and Hollen stood on the wooden platform, hands shoved into their pockets, watching the steam locomotive build pressure. The tractor looked raw and rugged in its dark grey paint, sitting quietly on its cleated wheels.

"Think it holds up out there?" Hollen asked.

Ernest watched the steam rise into the cold autumn sky. "It will work, Hollen."

"Without breaking?"

"Oh, it'll break plenty," Ernest said with a soft laugh. "And then we'll make it better."

The train whistle blew, sharp and loud, and the flatcar began to roll westward toward the open fields.

Ernest pulled out his small pocket notebook. On a clean page, he wrote:

A nation cannot move forward if its cities live in tomorrow while its fields are trapped in yesterday.

He snapped the book shut and watched the train disappear around the bend.