These early Spring days were busy ones for Hiram Strong. The mornings were frosty and he could not get to his fencing work until midforenoon. But there were plenty of other tasks ready to his hand.
There were two south windows in the farmhouse kitchen. He tried to keep some fire in the stove there day and night, sleeping as he did in Uncle Jeptha's old bedroom nearby.
Before these two windows he erected wide shelves and on these he set shallow boxes of rich earth which he had prepared under the cart shed. There was no frost under there, the earth was dry and the hens had scratched in it during the winter, so Hiram got all the well-sifted earth he needed for his seed boxes.
He used a very little commercial fertilizer in each box, and planted some of the seeds he had bought in Crawberry at an agricultural warehouse on Main Street.
Mrs. Atterson had expressed the hope that he would put in a variety of vegetables for their own use, and Hiram had followed her wishes. When the earth in the boxes had warmed up for several days he put in the long-germinating seeds, like tomato, onions, the salads, leek, celery, pepper, eggplant, and some beet seed to transplant for the early garden. It was too early yet to put in cabbage and cauliflower.
These boxes caught the sun for a good part of the day. In the afternoon when the sun had gone, Hiram covered the boxes with old quilts and did not uncover them again until the sun shone in the next morning. He had decided to start his early plants in this way because he hadn't the time at present to build frames outside.
During the early mornings and late afternoons, too, he began to make the small repairs around the house and outbuildings. Hiram was handy with tools; indeed, a true farmer should be a good mechanic as well. He must often combine carpentry and wheelwrighting and work at the forge, with his agricultural pursuits. Hiram was something better than a “cold-iron blacksmith.”
When it came to stretching the wire of the pasture fence he had to resort to his inventive powers. There are plenty of wire stretchers that can be purchased; but they cost money.
The young farmer knew that Mrs. Atterson had no money to waste, and he worked for her just as he would have worked for himself.
One man working alone cannot easily stretch wire and make a good job of it without some mechanism to help him. Hiram's was simple and easily made.
A twelve-inch section of perfectly round post, seven or eight inches through, served as the drum around which to wind the wire, and two twenty-penny nails driven into the side of the drum, close together, were sufficient to prevent the wire from slipping.
To either end of the drum Hiram passed two lengths of Number 9 wire through large screweyes, making a double loop into which the hook of a light timber chain would easily catch. Into one end of the drum he drove a headless spike, upon which the hand-crank of the grindstone fitted, and was wedged tight.
In using this ingenious wire stretcher, he stapled his wire to post number one, carried the length past post number two, looped the chain around post number three, having the chain long enough so that he might tauten the wire and hold the crankhandle steady with his knee or left arm while he drove the holding staple in post number two. And so repeat, ad infinitum.
After he had made this wire-stretcher the young fellow got along famously upon his fencing and could soon turn his attention to other matters, knowing that the cattle would be perfectly safe in the pasture for the coming season.
The old posts he collected on the wagon and drew into the dooryard, piling them beside the woodshed. There was not an overabundant supply of firewood cut and Hiram realized that Mrs. Atterson would use considerable in her kitchen stove before the next winter, even if she did not run a sitting room fire for long this spring.
Using a bucksaw is not only a thankless job at any time, but it is no saving of time or money. There was a good two-handed saw in the shed and Hiram found a good rat-tail file. With the aid of a home-made saw-holder and a monkey wrench he sharpened and set this saw and then got Henry Pollock to help him for a day.
Henry wasn't afraid of work, and the two boys sawed and split the old and well-seasoned posts, and some other wood, so that Hiram was enabled to pile several tiers of stove-wood under the shed against the coming of Mrs. Atterson to her farm.
“If the season wasn't so far advanced, I could cut a lot of wood, draw it up, and hire a gasoline engine and saw to come on the place and saw us enough to last a year. I'll do that next winter,” Hiram said.
“That's what we all ought to do,” agreed his friend.
Henry Pollock was an observing farmer's boy and through him Hiram gained many pointers as to the way the farmers in that locality put in their crops and cultivated them.
He learned, too, through Henry who was supposed to be the best farmer in the neighborhood, who had special success with certain crops, and who had raised the best seedcorn in the locality.
It was not particularly a trucking community; although, since Scoville had begun to grow so fast and many city people had moved into that pleasant town, the local demand for garden produce had increased.
“It used to be a saying here,” said Henry, “that a bushel of winter turnips would supply all the needs of Scoville. But that ain't exactly so now.
“The stores all want green stuff in season, and are beginning to pay cash for truck instead of only offering to exchange groceries for the stuff we raise. I guess if a man understood truck raising he could make something in this market.”
Hiram decided that this was so, on looking over the marketing possibilities of Scoville.
There was a canning factory which put up string beans, corn, and tomatoes; but the prices per hundred-weight for these commodities did not encourage Hiram to advise Mrs. Atterson to try and raise anything for the canneries. A profit could not be made out of such crops on a one-horse farm.
For instance, the neighboring farmers did not plant their tomato seeds until it was pretty safe to do so in the open ground. The cannery did not want the tomato pack to come on until late in August. By that time the cream of the prices for garden-grown tomatoes had been skimmed by the early truckers.
The same with sweet corn and green beans. The cannery demanded these vegetables at so late a date that the market-price was generally low.
These facts Hiram bore in mind as he planned his season's work, and especially the kitchen garden. This latter he planned to be about two acres in extent—rather a large plot, but he proposed to set his rows of almost every vegetable far enough apart to be worked with a horse cultivator.
Some crops—for instance onions, carrots, and other “fine stuff”—must be weeded by hand to an extent, and if the soil is rich enough rows twelve or fifteen inches apart show better results.
Between such rows a wheelhoe can be used to good advantage, and that was one tool—with a seed-sowing combination—that Hiram had told Mrs. Atterson she must buy if he was to practically attend to the whole farm for her. Hand-hoeing, in both field and garden crops, is antediluvian.
Thus, during this week and a half of preparation, Hiram made ready for the uprooting of Mrs. Atterson from the boarding house in Crawberry to the farm some distance out of Scoville.
The good lady had but one wagon load of goods to be transferred from her old quarters to the new home. Many of the articles she brought were heirlooms which she had stored in the boarding house cellar, or articles associated with her happy married life, which had been shortened by her husband's death when he was comparatively a young man.
These Mrs. Atterson saw piled on the wagon early on Saturday morning, and she had insisted upon climbing upon the seat beside the driver herself and riding with him all the way.
The boarders gathered on the steps to see her go. The two spinster ladies had already taken possession, and had served breakfast to the disgruntled members of Mother Atterson's family.
“You'll be back again,” prophesied Mr. Crackit, shaking the old lady by the hand. “And when you do, just let me know. I'll come and board with you.”
“I wouldn't have you in my house again, Fred Crackit, for two farms,” declared the ex-boarding house keeper, with asperity.
“I hope you told these people about my hot water, Mrs. Atterson,” croaked Mr. Peebles, from the step, where he stood muffled in a shawl because of the raw morning air.
“If I didn't you can tell 'em yourself,” returned she, with satisfaction.
And so it went—the good-byes of these unappreciative boarders selfish to the last! Mother Atterson sighed—a long, happy, and satisfying sigh—when the lumbering wagon turned the first corner.
“Thanks be!” she murmured. “I sha'n't care if they don't have a driblet of gravy at supper tonight.”
Then she shook herself and stared straight ahead. On the very next corner—she had insisted that none of the other people at the house should observe their flitting—stood two figures, both forlorn.
Old Lem Camp, with a lean suit-case at his feet, and Sister with a bulging carpetbag which she had brought with her months before from the charity institution, and into which she had stuffed everything she owned in the world.
Their faces brightened perceptibly when they beheld Mrs. Atterson perched high beside the driver on the load of furniture and bedding. The driver drew in his span of big horses and the wheels grated against the curb.
“You climb right in behind, Mr. Camp,” said the good lady. “There's room for you up under the canvas top—and I had him spread a mattress so't you can take it easy all the way, if you like.
“Sister, you scramble up here and sit in betwixt me and this man. And do look out—you're spillin' things out o' that bag like it was a Christmas cornucopia. Come on, now! Toss it behind us, onto them other things. There! we'll go on—and no more stops, I hope, till we reach the farm.”
But that couldn't be. It was a long drive, and the man was good to his team. He rested them at the top of every hill, and sometimes at the bottom. They had to stop two hours for dinner and to “breathe 'em,” as the man said.
At that time Mother Atterson produced a goodsized market basket—her familiar companion when she had hunted bargains in the city—and it was filled with sandwiches, and pickles, and crackers, and cookies, and a whole boiled fowl (fowl were cheaper and more satisfying than the scrawny chickens then in market) and hard-boiled eggs, and cheese, with numbers of other less important eatables tucked into corners of the basket to “wedge” the larger packages of food.
The four picnicked in the sun, with the furniture wagon to break the keen wind, passing around hot coffee in a can, from hand to hand, the driver having built a campfire to heat the coffee beside the country road.
But after that stop—for they were well into the country now—there was no keeping Sister on the wagon-seat. She had learned to drop down and mount again as lively as a cricket.
She tore along the edge of the road, with her hair flying, and her hat hanging by its ribbons. She chased a rabbit, and squirrels, and picked certain green branches, and managed to get her hands and the front of her dress all “stuck up” with spruce gum in trying to get a piece big enough to chew.
“Drat the young'un!” exclaimed Mother Atterson. “I can see plainly I'd never ought to brought her, but should have sent her back to the institution. She'll be as wild as Mr. March's hare—whoever he was—out here in the country.”
But Old Lem Camp gave her no trouble. He effaced himself just as he had at the boarding house supper table. He seldom spoke—never unless he was spoken to; and he lay up under the roof of the furniture wagon, whether asleep, or no, Mrs. Atterson could not tell.
“He's as odd as Dick's hat-band,” the ex-boarding house mistress confided to the driver. “But, bless you! the easiest critter to get along with—you never saw his beat. If I'd a house full of Lem Camps to cook for, I'd think I was next door to heaven.”
It was dusk when they arrived in sight of the little house beside the road in which Uncle Jeptha Atterson had lived out his long life. Hiram had a good fire going in both the kitchen and sitting room, and the lamplight flung through the windows made the place look cheerful indeed to the travelers.
“My soul and body!” croaked the good lady, when she got down from the wagon and Hiram caught her in his arms to save her from a fall. “I'm as stiff as a poker—and that's a fact. But I'm glad to get here.”
Hiram's amazement when he saw Sister and Old Lem Camp was only expressed in his look. He said nothing. The driver of the wagon backed it to the porch step and then took out his team and, with Hiram's help, led them to the stable, fed them, and bedded them down for the night. He was to sleep in one of the spare beds and go back to town the following day.
Mother Atterson took off her best dress, slipped into a familiar old gingham and bustled around the kitchen as naturally as though she had been there all her life.
She fried ham and eggs, and made biscuit, and opened a couple of tins of peaches she had brought, and finally set before them a repast satisfying if not dainty, and seasoned with a cheerful spirit at least.
“I vum!” she exclaimed, sitting down for the first time in years “at the first table.” “If this don't beat Crawberry and them boarders, I'm crazy as a loon. Pour the coffee, Sister—and don't be stingy with the milk. Milk's only five cents a quart here, and it's eight in town. But, gracious, child! sugar don't cost no less.”
Old Lem Camp sat beside Hiram, as he had at the boarding-house table. He had scarcely spoken since his arrival; but now, under cover of the talk of Mother Atterson, the driver of the furniture van, and Sister, he began one of his old-time monologues:
“Old, old—nothing to look forward to—then the prospect opens up—just like light breaking through the clouds after a storm—let's see; I want a piece of bread—bread's on Sister's side—I can reach it—hum! no Crackit to-night—fool jokes—silly fellow—ah! the butter—Where's the butterknife?—Sister's forgotten the butter-knife—no! here 'tis—That woman's an angel—nothing less—an angel in a last season's bonnet and a shabby gown—Hah! practical angels couldn't use wings—they'd be in the way in the kitchen—ham and eggs—gravy—fit for gods to eat—and not to worry again where next week's victuals are to come from!”
Hiram noted all the old mail said, and the last phrase enlightened him immensely as to why Old Lem Camp was so “queer.” That was the trouble on the old man's mind—the trouble that had stifled him, and made him appear “half cracked” as the boarding-house jester and Peebles had said.
Lem Camp, too old to ever get another job in the city, had for five years been worrying from day to day about his bare existence. And evidently he saw that bogie of the superannuated disappearing in the distance.
After the truck driver had gone to bed, and Camp himself, and Sister had fallen asleep over the last of the dish-wiping, Mother Atterson confided in Hiram, to a degree.
“Now, this gal can be made useful. She can help me in the house, and she can help outside, too.
“She's a poor, unfortunate creature—I know and humbly is no name for her looks! But mebbe we can send her to the school nearby, and she ought to get some color in her face if she's out o' doors some—and some flesh on her skinny body.
“I don't know as I could get along without Sister,” ruminated Mother Atterson, shaking her head.
“And as for Lem Camp—bless you! he won't eat more'n a fly, and who else would give him houseroom? Why, Hiram, I just had to bring him with me. If I hadn't, I'd felt just as conscience-stricken as though I'd moved and left a cat behind in an empty house!”
Mother Atterson had breakfast the next morning by lamplight, because the truckman wanted to make an early start.
Hiram had already begun early rising, however, for the farmer who does not get up before the sun in the spring needs must do his chores at night by lantern-light. The eight-hour law can never be a rule on the farm.
But Sister was up, too, and out of the house, running as wild as a rabbit. Hiram caught her in the barnyard trying to clamber on the cow's back to ride her about the enclosure. Sister was afraid of nothing that lived and walked, having all the courage of ignorance.
She found that she could not in safety clamber over the pig-lot fence and catch one of the shoats. Old Mother Hog ran at her with open mouth and Sister came back from that expedition with a torn frock and some new experience.
“I never knew anything so fat could run,” she confided to Hiram. “Old Missus Poundly, who lived on our block, and weighed three hundred pounds, couldn't run, I bet!”
Mr. Camp was not disturbed by Mrs. Atterson, but was allowed to sleep as long as he liked, while she kept a little breakfast hot for him and the coffeepot on the back of the stove.
The old lady became interested at once in all Hiram had done toward beginning the spring work. She learned about the seed in the window boxes (some of them were already breaking the soil) about watering them and covering them properly and immediately took those duties off Hiram's hands.
“If Sister an' me can't do the light chores around this place and leave you to 'tend to the bigger things, then we ain't no good and had better go back to the boarding house,” she announced.
“Oh, Mis' Atterson! You wouldn't go back to town, would you?” pleaded Sister. “Why, there's real hens—and a cow that will give milk bimeby, Hi says—and a horse that wiggles his ears and talks right out loud when he's hungry, for I heard him—and pigs that squeal and run, an' they're jest as fat as butter——”
“Well, to stay here we've all got to work, Sister,” declared her mistress. “So get at them dishes now and be quick about it. There's forty times more chores to do here than there was back in Crawberry—But, thanks be! there ain't no gravy to worry about.”
“And there ain't no boarders to make fun of me,” said Sister, thoughtfully. Then, she announced, after some rumination: “I like pigs better than I do boarders Mis' Atterson.”
“Well, I should think you would!” exclaimed that lady, tartly. “Pigs has got some sense.”
Hiram laughed at this. “You'll find the pigs demanding gravy, just the same—and very urgent about it they are, too,” he told them.
But he was glad to give the small chores over into their hands, and went to work immediately to prepare for putting in the early crops.
He had already cleared the rubbish off the piece of ground selected for the garden, and had burned it. He hauled out stable manure from the barnyard and gave an acre and a half of this piece of land a good dressing.
The other half-acre was for early potatoes, and he wished to put the manure in the furrow for them, so did not top dress that strip of land. The frost was pretty well out of the ground by now; but even if some remained, plowing this high, well-drained piece would do no harm. Beside, Hiram was eager to get in early crops.
It was a still, hazy morning when he geared the old horse to the plow and headed him into the garden piece. He had determined to plow the entire plot at once, and instead of plowing “around and around” had paced off his lands and started in the middle, plowing “gee” instead of “haw”.
This system is a bit more particular, and hard for the careless plowman; but it overcomes that unsightly “dead-furrow” in the middle of a field and brings the “finishing-furrow” on the edge. This insures better surface drainage and is a more scientific method of tillage.
The plow was rusty and the point was not in the very best condition; but after the first few rounds the share was cleaned off, and it began to slip through the moist earth and roll it over in a long, brown ribbon behind him.
Hiram Strong clung to the plow handles, a rope-rein in each hand, and watched the plow and the horse and the land ahead with an eye as keen as that of a river-pilot.
As the strip of turned earth grew wider and longer Sister ran out to see him work. She watched the plow turn the mulch into the furrow and lay the brown, greasy mold upon it, with wide-open eyes.
“Why!” cried she, “wouldn't it be nice if we could go right along with a plow and bury our past like that—cover everything mean and nasty up, and forget it! That institution they put me in—and the old woman I lived with before that, who drank so much gin and beat me—and the boarders—and that boy who used to pull my braids whenever he met me—My that would be fine!”
“I reckon that is what Life does do for us,” returned Hiram, thoughtfully, stopping at the end of the furrow to mop his brow and let the old horse breathe. “Yes, sir! Life plows all the experience under, and it ought to enrich our future existence, just as this stuff I'm plowing under here will decay and enrich the soil.”
“But the plow don't turn it quite under in spots,” said Sister, with a sigh. “Leastways, I can't help remembering the bad things once in a while.”
There were certain other individuals who found out very soon that Hiram was plowing, too. Those were the hens. There were not more than fifteen or twenty of the scrubby creatures, and they began to follow the plow and pick up grubs and worms.
“I tell you one thing that I've got to do before we put in much,” Hiram told the ex-boarding house mistress at noon.
“What's that, Hi? Don't go very deep down into my pocket, for it won't stand it. After paying my bills, and paying for moving out here, I ain't got much money left—and that's a fact!”
“It won't cost much, but we've got to have a yard for the hens. Hens and a garden will never mix successfully. Unless you enclose them you might as well have no garden in that spot where I'm plowing.”
“There warn't but five eggs to-day,” said Mrs. Atterson. “Mebbe we'd better chop the heads off 'em, one after the other, and eat 'em.”
“They'll lay better as it grows warmer. That henhouse must be fixed before next winter. It's too draughty,” said Hi. “And then, hens can't lay well—especially through the winter—if they haven't the proper kind of food.”
“But three or four of the dratted things want to stay on the nest all the time,” complained the old lady.
“If I was you, Mrs. Atterson,” Hiram said, soberly, “I'd spend five dollars for a hundred eggs of well-bred stock.
“I'd set these hens as fast as they get broody, and raise a decent flock of biddies for next year. Scrub hens are just as bad as scrub cows. The scrubs will eat quite as much as full-bloods, yet the returns from the scrubs are much less.”
“I declare!” exclaimed Mrs. Atterson, “a hen's always been just a hen to me—one's the same as another, exceptin' the feathers on some is prettier.”
“To-night I'll show you some breeders' catalogs and you can think the matter over as to what kind of a fowl you want,” said the young farmer.
He went back to his job after dinner and kept steadily at work until three o'clock before there came a break. Then he saw a carriage drive into the yard, and a few moments later a man In a long gray coat came striding across the lot toward him.
Hiram knew the gentleman at once—it was Mr. Bronson, the father of the girl he had saved from the runaway. To tell the truth, the boy had rather wondered about his non-appearance during the days that had elapsed. But now he came with hand held out, and his first words explained the seeming omission:
“I've been away for more than a week, my boy, or I should have seen you before. You're Hiram Strong, aren't you—the boy my little girl has been talking so much about?”
“I don't know how much Miss Lettie has been talking about me,” laughed Hiram. “Full and plenty, I expect.”
“And small blame to her,” declared Mr. Bronson. “I won't waste time telling you how grateful I am. I had just time to turn that boy of Dickerson's off before I was called away. Now, my lad, I want you to come and work for me.”
“Why, much as I might like to, sir, I couldn't do that,” said Hiram.
“Now, now! we'll fix it somehow. Lettie has set her heart on having you around the place.
“You're the second young man I've been after whom I was sure would suit me, since we moved on to the old Fleigler place. The first fellow I can't find; but don't tell me that I am going to be disappointed in you, too.”
“Mr. Bronson,” said Hiram, gravely, “I'm sorry to say 'No.' A little while ago I'd have been delighted to take up with any fair offer you might have made me. But I have agreed with Mrs. Atterson to run her place for two seasons.”
“Two years!” exclaimed Mr. Bronson.
“Yes, sir. Practically. I must put her on her feet and make the old farm show a profit.”
“You're pretty young to take such responsibility upon your shoulders, are you not?” queried the gentleman, eyeing him curiously.
“I'm seventeen. I began to work with my father as soon as I could lift a hoe. I love farm work. And I've passed my word to stick to Mrs. Atterson.”
“That's the old lady up to the house?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But she wouldn't hold you to your bargain if she saw you could better yourself, would she?”
“She would not have to,” Hiram said, firmly, and he began to feel a little disappointed in his caller. “A bargain's a bargain—there's no backing out of it.”
“But suppose I should make it worth her while to give you up?” pursued Mr. Bronson. “I'll sound her a bit, eh? I tell you that Lettie has set her heart on having you, as we cannot find another chap whom we were looking for.”
Now, Hiram knew that this referred to him; but he said nothing. Besides, he did not feel too greatly pleased that the strongest reason for Mr. Bronson's wishing to hire him was his little daughter's demand. It was just a fancy of Miss Lettie's. And another day, she might have the fancy to turn him off.
“No, sir,” spoke Hiram, more firmly. “It is useless. I am obliged to you; but I must stick by Mrs. Atterson.”
“Well, my lad,” said the Westerner, putting out his hand again. “I am glad to see you know how to keep a promise, even if it isn't to your advantage. And I am grateful to you for turning that trick for my little girl the other day.”
“I hope you'll come over and see us—and I shall watch your work here. Most of these fellows around here are pretty slovenly farmers in my estimation; I hope you will do better than the average.”
He went back across the field and Hiram returned to his plowing. The young farmer saw the bay horses driven slowly out of the yard and along the road.
He saw the flutter of a scarf from the carriage and knew that Lettie Bronson was with her father; but she did not look out at him as he toiled behind the old horse in the furrow.
However, there was no feeling of disappointment in Hiram Strong's mind—and this fact somewhat surprised him. He had been so attracted by the girl, and had wished in the beginning so much to be engaged by Mr. Bronson, that he had considered it a mighty disappointment when he had lost the Westerner's card.
However, his apathy in the matter was easily explained. He had taken hold of the work on the Atterson place. His plans were growing in his mind for the campaign before him. His interest was fastened upon the contract he had made with the old lady.
His hand was, literally now, “to the plow”—and he was not looking back.
He finished the piece that day, and likewise drew out some lime that he had bought at Scoville and spread it broadcast upon all the garden patch save that in which he intended to put potatoes.
Although it is an exploded doctrine that the application of lime to potato ground causes scab, it is a fact that it will aid in spreading the disease. Hiram was sure enough—because of the sheep-sorrel on the piece—that it all needed sweetening, but he decided against the lime at this time.
As soon as Hiram had drag-harrowed the piece he laid off two rows down the far end, as being less tempting to the straying hens, and planted early peas—the round-seeded variety, hardier than the wrinkled kinds. These pea-rows were thirty inches apart, and he dropped the peas by hand and planted them very thickly.
It doesn't pay to be niggardly with seed in putting in early peas, at any rate—the thicker they come up the better, and in these low bush varieties the thickly growing vines help support each other.
This garden piece—almost two acres—was oblong in shape. An acre is just about seventy paces square. Hiram's garden was seventy by a hundred and forty paces, or thereabout.
Therefore, the young farmer had two seventy-yard rows of peas, or over four hundred feet of drill. He planted two quarts of peas at a cost of seventy cents.
With ordinary fortune the crop should be much more than sufficient for the needs of the house while the peas were in a green state, for being a quick growing vegetable, they are soon past.
Hiram, however, proposed putting in a surplus of almost everything he planted in this big garden—especially of the early vegetables—for he believed that there would be a market for them in Scoville.
The ground was very cold yet, and snow flurries swept over the field every few days; but the peas were under cover and were off his mind; Hiram knew they would be ready to pop up above the surface just as soon as the warm weather came in earnest, and peas do not easily rot in the ground.
In two weeks, or when the weather was settled, he proposed planting other kinds of peas alongside these first two rows, so as to have a succession up to mid-summer.
Next the young farmer laid off his furrows for early potatoes. He had bought a sack of an extra-early variety, yet a potato that, if left in the ground the full length of the season, would make a good winter variety—a “long keeper.”
His potato rows he planned to have three feet apart, and he plowed the furrows twice, so as to have them clean and deep.
Henry Pollock happened to come by while he was doing this, and stopped to talk and watch Hiram. To tell the truth, Henry and his folks were more than a little interested in what the young farmer would do with the Atterson place.
Like other neighbors they doubted if the stranger knew as much about the practical work of farming as he claimed to know. “That feller from the city,” the neighbors called Hiram behind his back, and that is an expression that completely condemns a man in the mind of the average countryman.
“What yer bein' so particular with them furrers for, Hiram?” asked Henry.
“If a job's worth doing at all, it's worth doing well, isn't it?” laughed the young farmer.
“We spread our manure broadcast—when we use any at all—for potatoes,” said Henry, slowly. “Dad says if manure comes in contact with potatoes, they are apt to rot.”
“That seems to be a general opinion,” replied Hiram. “And it may be so under certain conditions. For that reason I am going to make sure that not much of this fertilizer comes in direct contact with my seed.”
“How'll you do that?” “I'll show you,” said Hiram.
Having run out his rows and covered the bottom of each furrow several inches deep with the manure, he ran his plow down one side of each furrow and turned the soil back upon the fertilizer, covering it and leaving a well pulverized seed bed for the potatoes to lie in.
“Well,” said Henry, “that's a good wrinkle, too.”
Hiram had purchased some formalin, mixed it with water according to the Government expert's instructions, and from time to time soaked his seed potatoes two hours in the antiseptic bath. In the evening he brought them into the kitchen and they all—even Old Lem Camp—cut up the potatoes, leaving two or three good eyes in each piece.
“I'd ruther do this than peel 'em for the boarders,” remarked Sister, looking at her deeply-stained fingers reflectively. “And then, nobody won't say nothin' about my hands to me when I'm passin' dishes at the table.”
The following day she helped Hiram drop the seed, and by night he had covered them by running his plow down the other side of the row and then smoothed the potato plat with a home-made “board” in lieu of a land-roller.
It was the twentieth of March, and not a farmer in the locality had yet put in either potatoes, or peas. Some had not as yet plowed for early potatoes, and Henry Pollock warned Hiram that he was “rushing the season.”
“That may be,” declared the young farmer to Mrs. Atterson. “But I believe the risk is worth taking. If we do get 'em good, we'll get 'em early and skim the cream of the local market. Now, you see!”
“Old Lem Camp,” as he had been called for so many years that there seemed no disrespect in the title, was waking up. Not many mornings was he a lie-abed. And the lines in his forehead seemed to be smoothing out, and his eyes had lost something of their dullness.
It was true that, at first, he wandered about the farmstead muttering to himself in his old way—an endless monologue which was a jumble of comment, gratitude, and the brief memories of other days. It took some time to adjust his poor mind to the fact that he had no longer to fear that Poverty which had stalked ever before him like a threatening spirit.
Gratitude spurred him to the use of his hands. He was not a broken man—not bodily. Many light tasks soon fell to his share, and Mrs. Atterson told Hiram and Sister to let him do what he would. To busy himself would be the best thing in the world for the old fellow.
“That's what's been the matter with Mr. Camp for years,” she declared, with conviction. “Because he passed the sixty-year mark, and it was against the practise of the paper company to keep employees on the payroll over that age, they turned Lem Camp off.
“Ridiculous! He was just as well able to do the tasks that he had learned to do mechanically as he had been any time for the previous twenty years. He had worked in that office forty years, and more, you understand.
“That's the worst thing about a corporation of that kind—it has no thought beyond its 'rules.' Old Mr. Bundy remembered Lem—that's all. If he hadn't so much stock in the concern they'd turn him off, too. I expect he knows it and that's what softened his heart to Old Lem.
“Now, let Lem take hold of whatever he can do, and git interested in it,” declared the practical Mrs. Atterson, “and he'll show you that there's work left in him yet. Yes-sir-ree-sir! And if he'll work in the open air, all the better for him.”
There was plenty for everybody to do, and Hiram would not say the old man nay. The seed boxes needed a good deal of attention, for they were to be lifted out into the air on warm days, and placed in the sun. And Old Lem could do this—and stir the soil in them, and pull out the grass and other weeds that started.
Hiram had planted early cabbage and cauliflower and egg-plant in other boxes, and the beets were almost big enough to transplant to the open ground. Beets are hardy and although hair-roots are apt to form on transplanted garden beets, the transplanting aids the growth in other ways and Hiram expected to have table-beets very early.
In the garden itself he had already run out two rows of later beets, the width of the plot. Bunched beets will sell for a fair price the whole season through.
Hiram was giving his whole heart and soul to the work—he was wrapped up in the effort to make the farm pay. And for good reason.
It was “up to him” to not alone turn a profit for his employer, and himself; but he desired—oh, how strongly!—to show the city folk who had sneered at him that he could be a success in the right environment.
Besides, and in addition, Hiram Strong was ambitious—very ambitious indeed for a youth of his age. He wanted to own a farm of his own in time—and it was no “one-horse farm” he aimed at.
No, indeed! Hiram had read of the scientific farming of the Middle West, and the enormous tracts in the Northwest devoted to grain and other staple crops, where the work was done for the most part by machinery.
He longed to see all this—and to take part in it. He desired the big things in farming, nor would he ever be content to remain a helper.
“I'm going to be my own boss, some day—and I'm going to boss other men. I'll show these fellows around here that I know what I want, and when I get it I'll handle it right!” Hiram soliloquized.
“It's up to me to save every cent I can. Henry thinks I'm niggardly, I expect, because I wouldn't go to town Saturday night with him. But I haven't any money to waste.
“The hundred I'm to get next Christmas from Mrs. Atterson I don't wish to draw on at all. I'll get along with such old clothes as I've got.”
Hiram was not naturally a miser; he frequently bought some little thing for Sister when he went to town—a hair-ribbon, or the like, which he knew would please the girl; but for himself he was determined to be saving.
At the end of his contract with Mrs. Atterson he would have two hundred dollars anyway. But that was not the end and aim of Hiram Strong's hopes.
“It's the clause in our agreement about the profits of our second season that is my bright and shining star,” he told the good lady more than once. “I don't know yet what we had better put in next year to bring us a fortune; but we'll know before it comes time to plant it.”
Meanwhile the wheel-hoe and seeder he had insisted upon Mrs. Atterson buying had arrived, and Hiram, after studying the instructions which came with it, set the machine up as a seed-sower. Later, after the bulk of the seeds were in the ground, he would take off the seeding attachment and bolt on the hoe, or cultivator attachments, with which to stir the soil between the narrower rows of vegetables.
As he made ready to plant seeds such as carrot, parsnip, onion, salsify, and leaf-beet, as well as spring spinach, early turnips, radishes and kohlrabi, Hiram worked that part of his plowed land over again and again with the spike harrow, finally boarding the strips down smoothly as he wished to plant them. The seedbed must be as level as a floor, and compact, for good use to be made of the wheel-seeder.
When he had lined out one row with his garden line, from side to side of the plowed strip, the marking arrangement attached to his seeder would mark the following lines plainly, and at just the distance he desired.
Onions, carrots, and the like, he put in fifteen inches apart, intending to do all the cultivating of those extremely small plants with the wheel-hoe, after they were large enough. But he foresaw the many hours of cultivating before him and marked the rows for the bulk of the vegetables far enough apart, as he had first intended, to make possible the use of the horse-hoe.
Meanwhile he spike-harrowed the potato patch, running cross-wise of the rows to break the crust and keep down the quick-springing weed seeds. The early peas were already above ground and when they were two inches high Hiram ran his 14-tooth cultivator—or “seed harrow” as it is called in some localities—close to the rows so as to throw the soil toward the plants, almost burying them from sight again. This was to give the peas deep rootage, which is a point necessary for the quick and stable growth of this vegetable.
In odd moments Hiram had cut and set a few posts, bought poultry netting in Scoville, and enclosed Mrs. Atterson's chicken-run. She had taken his advice and sent for eggs, and already had four hens setting and expected to set the remainder of the of the eggs in a few days.
Sister took an enormous interest in this poultry-raising venture. She “counted chickens before they were hatched” with a vengeance, and after reading a few of the poultry catalogs she figured out that, in three years, from the increase of Mother Atterson's hundred eggs, the eighty-acre farm would not be large enough to contain the flock.
“And all from five dollars!” gasped Sister. “I don't see why everybody doesn't go to raising chickens—then there'd be no poor folks, everybody would be rich—Well! I expect there'd always have to be institutions for orphans—and boarding houses!”
The new-springing things from the ground, the “hen industry” and the repairing and beautifying of the outside of the farmhouse did not take up all their attention. There were serious matters to be discussed in the evening, after the others had gone to bed, 'twixt Hiram and his employer.
There was the five or six acres of bottom land—the richest piece of soil of the entire eighty. Hiram had not forgotten this, and the second Sunday of their stay at the farm, after the whole family had attended service at a chapel less than half a mile up the road, he had urged Mrs. Atterson to walk with him through the timber to the riverside.
“For the Land o' Goshen!” the ex-boarding house mistress had finally exclaimed. “To think that I own all of this. Why, Hi, it don't seem as if it was so. I can't get used to it. And this timber, you say, is all worth money? And if I cut it off, it will grow up again——”
“In thirty to forty years the pine will be worth cutting again—and some of the other trees,” said Hiram, with a smile.
“Well! that would be something for Sister to look forward to,” said the old lady, evidently thinking aloud. “And I don't expect her folks—whoever they be—will ever look her up now, Hiram.”
“But with the timber cut and this side hill cleared, you would have a very valuable thirty acres, or so, of tillage—valuable for almost any crop, and early, too, for it slopes toward the sun,” said the young farmer, ignoring the other's observation.
“Well, well! it's wonderful,” returned Mrs. Atterson.
But she listened attentively to what he had to say about clearing the bottom land, which was a much more easily accomplished task, as Hiram showed her. It would cost something to put the land into shape for late corn, and so prepare it for some more valuable crop the following season.
“Well, nothing ventured, nothing have!” Mrs. Atterson finally agreed. “Go ahead—if it won't cost much more than what you say to get the corn in. I understand it's a gamble, and I'm taking a gambler's chance. If the river rises and floods the corn in June, or July, then we get nothing this season?”
“That is a possibility,” admitted Hiram.
“Go ahead,” exclaimed Mother Atterson. “I never did know that there was sporting blood in me; but I kinder feel it risin', Hi, with the sap in the trees. We'll chance it!”
Occasionally Hiram had stepped down to the pasture and squinted across to the water-hole. The grass was not long enough yet to turn the cow into the field, so he was obliged to make these special trips to the pasture.
He had seen nothing of the Dickersons—to speak to, that is—since his trouble with Pete. And, of a sudden, just before dinner one noon, Hiram took a look at the pasture and beheld a figure seemingly working down in the corner.
Hiram ran swiftly in that direction. Half-way there he saw that it was Pete, and that he had deliberately cut out a panel of the fence and was letting a pair of horses he had been plowing with, drink at the pool, before he took them home to the Dickerson stable.
Hiram stopped running and recovered his breath before he reached the lower corner of the pasture. Pete saw him coming, and grinned impudently at him.
“What are you doing here, Dickerson?” demanded the young farmer, indignantly.
“Well, if you wanter keep us out, you'd better keep up your fences better,” returned Pete. “I seen the wires down, and it's handy——”
“You cut those wires!” interrupted Hiram, angrily.
“You're another,” drawled Pete, but grinning in a way to exasperate the young farmer.
“I know you did so.”
“Wal, if you know so much, what are you going to do about it?” demanded the other. “I guess you'll find that these wires will snap 'bout as fast as you can mend 'em. Now, you can put that in your pipe an' smoke it!”
“But I don't smoke.” Hiram observed, growing calm immediately. There was no use in giving this lout the advantage of showing anger with him.
“Mr. Smartie!” snarled Pete Dickerson. “Now, you see, there's somebody just as smart as you be. These horses have drunk there, and they're going to drink again.”
“Is that your father yonder?” demanded Hiram, shortly.
“Yes, it is.”
“Call him over here.”
“Why, if he comes over here, he'll eat you alive!” cried Pete, laughing. “You don't know my dad.”
“I don't; but I want to,” Hiram said, calmly. “That's why you'd better call him over. I have got pretty well acquainted with you, and the rest of your family can't be any worse, as I look at it. Call him over,” and the young farmer stepped nearer to the lout.
“You call him yourself!” cried Pete, beginning to back away, for he remembered how he had been treated at his previous encounter with Hiram.
Hiram seized the bridles of the work horses, and shook them out of Pete's clutch.
“Tell your father to come here,” commanded the young farmer, fire in his eyes. “We'll settle this thing here and now.
“These horses are on Mrs. Atterson's land. I know the county stock law as well as you do. You cut this fence, and your cattle are on her ground.
“It will cost you a dollar a head to get them off again—if Mrs. Atterson wishes to demand it. Now, call your father.”
Pete raised a yell which startled the long-legged man striding over the hill toward the Dickerson farmhouse. Hiram saw the older Dickerson turn, stare, and then start toward them.
Pete continued to beckon, and began to yell:
“Dad! Dad! He won't let me have the hosses!”
Sam Dickerson came striding down to the waterhole—a lean, long, sour-looking man he was, with a brown face knotted into a continual scowl, and hard, bony hands. Yet Hiram was not afraid of him.
“What's the trouble here?” growled the farmer.
“He's got the hosses. I told you the fence was down and I was goin' to water 'em——”
“Shut up!” commanded his father, eyeing Hiram. “I'm talking to this fellow: What's the trouble here?”
“Your horses are on Mrs. Atterson's land,” Hiram said, quietly. “You know that stock which strays can be held for a dollar a head—damage or no damage to crops. I warn you, keep your horses on your own land.”
“That's your fence; if you don't keep it up, who's fault is it if my horses get on your land?” growled Dickerson, evidently making the matter a personal one with Hiram.
“Your boy here cut the wires.”
“No I didn't, Dad!” interposed Pete.
Quick as a flash Hiram dropped the bridle reins, sprang for Pete, seized him in a wrestler's grip, twisted him around, and tore from his pocket a pair of heavy wire-cutters.
“What were you doing with these in your pocket, then?” demanded Hiram, disdainfully, tossing the plyers upon the ground at Pete's feet, and stepping back to keep the restless horses from leaving the edge of the water-hole.
Sam Dickerson seemed to take a grim pleasure in his son's overthrow. He growled:
“He's got you there, Pete. You'd better stop monkeyin' around here. Pick up them bridles and come on.”
He turned to depart without another word to Hiram; but the latter did not propose to be put off that way.
“Hold on!” he called. “Who's going to mend this fence, Mr. Dickerson?”
Dickerson turned and eyed him coldly again.
“What's that to me? Mend your own fence,” he said.
“Then I shall take these horses up to our barn. You can come and settle the matter with Mrs. Atterson—unless you wish to pay me two dollars here and now,” said the young farmer, his voice carrying clearly to where the man stood upon the rising ground above him.
“Why, you young whelp!” roared Dickerson, suddenly starting down the slope.
But Hiram Strong neither moved nor showed fear. Somehow, this sturdy young fellow, in the high laced boots, with his flannel shirt open at the throat, raw as was the day, his sleeves rolled back to his elbows, was a figure to make even a more muscular man than Sam Dickerson hesitate.
“Pete!” exclaimed the farmer, harshly, still eyeing Hiram. “Run up to the house and bring my shotgun. Be quick about it.”
Hiram said never a word, and the horses, yoked together, began to crop the short grass springing upon the bank of the water-hole.
“You'll find out you're fooling with the wrong man, you whippersnapper!” promised Dickerson.
“You can pay me two dollars and I'll mend the fence; or you can mend the fence and we'll call it square,” said Hiram, slowly, and evenly. “I'm a boy, but I'm not to be frightened with a threat——”
Pete's long legs brought him flying back across the fields. Nothing he had done in a long while pleased him quite as much as this errand.
Hiram turned, jerked at the horses' bridle-reins, turned them around, and with a sharp slap on the nigh one's flank, sent them both trotting up into the Atterson pasture.
“Stop that, you rascal!” cried Dickerson, grabbing the gun from his hopeful son, and losing his head now entirely. “Bring that team back!”
“You mend the fence, and I will,” declared Hiram, unshaken.
The angry man sprang down to his level, flourishing the gun in a way that would have been dangerous indeed had Hiram believed it to be loaded. And as it was, the young farmer was very angry.
The right was on his side; if he allowed these Dickersons, father and son, to browbeat him this once, it would only lead to future trouble.
This thing had to be settled right here and now. It would never do for Hiram to show fear. And if both of the long-legged Dickersons pitched upon him, of course, he would be no match for them.
But Sam Dickerson stumbled and almost fell as he reached the edge of the water-hole, and before he could recover himself, Hiram leaped upon him, seized the shotgun, and wrenched it from his hands.
He reversed the weapon in a flash, clubbed it, and raised it over his head with a threatening swing that made Pete yell from the top of the bank:
“Look out, Dad! He's a-goin' ter swat yer!”
Sam tried to scramble out of the way. But down came the gun butt with all the force of Hiram's good muscle, and—the stock was splintered and the lock shattered upon the big stone that here cropped out of the bank.
“There's your gun—what's left of it,” panted the young farmer, tossing the broken weapon from him. “Now, don't you ever threaten me with a gun again, for if you do I'll have you arrested.
“We've got to be neighbors, and we've got to get along in a neighborly manner. But I'm not going to allow you to take advantage of Mrs. Atterson, because she is a woman.
“Now, Mr. Dickerson,” he added, as the man scrambled up, glaring at him evidently with more surprise than anger, “if you'll make Pete mend this fence, you can have your horses. Otherwise I'm going to 'pound' them according to the stock law of the county.”
“Pete,” said his father, briefly, “go get your hammer and staples and mend this fence up as good as you found it.”
“And now,” said Hiram, “I'm going home to gear the horse to the wagon, and I'll drive over to your house, Mr. Dickerson. From time to time you have borrowed while Uncle Jeptha was alive quite a number of tools. I want them. I have made inquiries and I know what tools they are. Just be prepared to put them into my wagon, will you?”
He turned on his heel without further words and left the Dickersons to catch their horses, and to repair the fence—both of which they did promptly.
Not only that, but when Hiram drove into the Dickerson dooryard an hour later he had no trouble about recovering the tools which the neighbor had borrowed and failed to return.
Pete scowled at him and muttered uncomplimentary remarks; but Sam phlegmatically smoked his pipe and sat watching the young farmer without any comment.
“And so, that much is accomplished,” ruminated Hiram, as he drove home. “But I'm not sure whether hostilities are finished, or have just begun.”
“The old Atterson place” as it was called in the neighborhood, began to take on a brisk appearance these days. Sister, with the help of Old Lem Camp, had long since raked the dooryard clean and burned the rubbish which is bound to gather during the winter.
Years before there had been flower beds in front; but Uncle Jeptha had allowed the grass to overrun them. It was a month too early to think of planting many flowers; but Hiram had bought some seeds, and he showed Sister how to prepare boxes for them in the sunny kitchen windows, along with the other plant boxes; and around the front porch he spaded up a strip, enriched it well, and almost the first seeds put into the ground on the farm were the sweet peas around this porch. Mother Atterson was very fond of these flowers and had always managed to coax some of them to grow even in the boarding-house back yard.
At the side porch she proposed to have morning-glories and moon-flowers, while the beds in front would be filled with those old-fashioned flowers which everybody loves.
“But if we can't make our own flower-beds, we can go without them, Hi,” said the bustling old lady. “We mustn't take you from your other work to spade beds for us. Every cat's got to catch mice on this place, now I tell ye!”
And Hiram certainly was busy enough these days. The early seeds were all in, however, and he had run the seed-harrow over the potato rows again, lengthwise, to keep the weeds out until the young plants should get a start.
Despite the raw winds and frosts at night, the potatoes had come up well and, with the steadily warming wind and sun, would now begin to grow. Other farmers' potatoes in the vicinity were not yet breaking the ground.
Early on Monday morning Henry Pollock appeared with bush-axe and grubbing hoe, and Hiram shouldered similar tools and they started for the river bottom. It was so far from the house that Mrs. Atterson agreed to send their dinner to them.
“Father says he remembers seeing corn growing on this bottom,” said Henry, as they set to work, “so high that the ears were as high up as a tall man. It's splendid corn land—if it don't get flooded out.”
“And does the river often over-ran its banks?” queried Hiram, anxiously.
“Pretty frequent. It hasn't yet this year; there wasn't much snow last winter, you see, and the early spring floods weren't very high. But if we have a long wet spell, as we do have sometimes as late as July, you'll see water here.”
“That's not very encouraging,” said Hiram. “Not for corn prospects, at least.”
“Well, corn's our staple crop. You see, if you raise corn enough you're sure of feed for your team. That's the main point.”
“But people with bigger farms than they have around here can raise corn cheaper than we can. They use machinery in harvesting it, too. Why not raise a better paying crop, and buy the extra corn you may need?”
“Why,” responded Henry, shaking his head, “nobody around here knows much about raising fancy crops. I read about 'em in the farm papers—oh, yes, we take papers—the cheap ones. There is a lot of information in 'em, I guess; but father don't believe much that's printed.”
“Doesn't believe much that's printed?” repeated Hiram, curiously.
“Nope. He says it's all lies, made up out of some man's head. You see, we useter take books out of the Sunday School library, and we had story papers, too; and father used to read 'em as much as anybody.”
“But one summer we had a summer boarder—a man that wrote things. He had one of these dinky little merchines with him that you play on like a piano, you know——”
“A typewriter?” suggested Hiram, with a smile.
“Yep. Well, he wrote stories. Father learnt as how all that stuff was just imaginary, and so he don't take no stock in printed stuff any more.”
“That man just sat down at that merchine, and rattled off a story that he got real money for. It didn't have to be true at all.
“So father soured on it. And he says the stuff in the farm papers is just the same.”
“I'm afraid that your father is mistaken there,” said Hiram, hiding his amusement. “Men who have spent years in studying agricultural conditions, and experimenting with soils, and seeds, and plants, and fertilizers, and all that, write what facts they have learned for our betterment.
“No trade in the world is so encouraged and aided by Governments, and by private corporations, as the trade of farming. There is scarcely a State which does not have a special agricultural college in which there are winter courses for people who cannot give the open time of the year to practical experiment on the college grounds.
“That is what you need in this locality, I guess,” added Hiram. “Some scientific farming.”
“Book farming, father calls it,” said Henry. “And he says it's no good.”
“Why don't you save your money and take a course next winter in some side line and so be able to show him that he's wrong?” suggested Hiram. “I want to do that myself after I have fulfilled my contract with Mrs. Atterson.
“I won't be able to do so next winter, for I shall be on wages. You're going to be a farmer, aren't you?”
“I expect to. We've got a good farm as farms go around here. But it seems about all we can do to pay our fertilizer bills and get a living off it.”
“Then why don't you go about fitting yourself for your job?” “asked Hiram. Be a good farmer—an up-to-date farmer.
“No fellow expects to be a machinist, or an electrician, or the like, without spending some time under good instructors. Most that I know about soils, and fertilizers, and plant development, and the like, I learned from my father, who kept abreast of the times by reading and experiment.
“You can stumble along, working at your trade of farming, and only half knowing it all your life; that's what most farmers do, in fact. They are too lazy to take up the scientific side of it and learn why.
“That's the point—learn why you do things that your father did, and his father did, and his father before him. There's usually good reason why they did it—a scientific reason which somebody dug out by experiment ages ago; but you ought to be able to tell why.”
“I suppose that's so,” admitted Henry, as they worked on, side by side. “But I don't know what father would say if I sprung a college course on him!”
“I'd find out,” returned Hiram, laughing. “You'd better spend your money that way than for a horse and buggy. That's the highest ambition of most boys in the country.”
The labor of bushing and grubbing these acres of lowland was no light one. Hiram insisted that every stub and root be removed that a heavy plow could not tear out. They had made some progress by noon, however, when Sister came down with their dinner.
Hiram built a campfire over which the coffee was re-heated, and the three ate together, Sister enjoying the picnic to the full. She insisted on helping in the work by piling the brush and roots into heaps for burning, and she remained until midafternoon.
“I like that Henry boy,” she confided to Hiram. “He don't pull my braids, or poke fun at me.”
But Sister was developing and growing fast these days. She was putting on flesh and color showed in her cheeks. They were no longer hollow and sallow, and she ran like a colt-and was almost as wild.
The work of clearing the bottom land could not be continued daily; but the boys got in three full days that week, and Saturday morning. Henry, did not wish to work on Saturday afternoon, for in this locality almost all the farmers knocked off work at noon Saturday and went to town.
But when Henry shouldered his tools to go home at noon, Sister appeared as usual with the lunch, and she and Hiram cut fishing rods and planned to have a real picnic.
Trout and mullet were jumping in the pools under the bank; and they caught several before stopping to eat their own meal. The freshly caught fish were a fine addition to the repast.
They went back to fishing after a while and caught enough for supper at the farmhouse. Just as they were reeling up their lines the silence of the place was disturbed by a strange sound.
“There's a motorcycle coming!” cried Sister, jumping up and looking all around.
There was a bend in the river below this bottom, and another above; so they could not see far in either direction unless they climbed to the high ground. For a minute Hiram could not tell in which direction the sound was coming; but he knew the steady put-put-put must be the exhaust of a motor-boat.
It soon poked its nose around the lower turn. It was a good-sized boat and instantly Hiram recognized at least one person aboard.
Miss Lettie Bronson, in a very pretty boating costume, was in the bow. There were half a dozen other girls with her—well dressed girls, who were evidently her friends from the St. Beris school at Scoville.
“Oh, oh! what a pretty spot!” cried Lettie, on the instant. “We'll go ashore here and have our luncheon, girls.”
She did not see Hiram and Sister for a moment; but the latter tugged at Hiram's sleeve.
“I've seen that girl before,” she whispered. “She came in the carriage with the man who spoke to you—you remember? She asked me if I had always lived in the country, and how I tore my frock.”
“Isn't she pretty?” returned Hiram.
“Awfully. But I'm not sure that I like her yet.”
Suddenly Lettie saw Hiram and the girl beside him. She started, flushed a little, and then gave Hiram a cool little nod and turned her gaze from him. Her manner showed that he was not “down in her good books,” and the young fellow flushed in turn.
“I don't know as we'd better try to make the bank here, Miss,” said the man who was directing the motor-boat. “The current's mighty sharp.”
“I want to land here,” said Lettie, decidedly. “It's the prettiest spot we've seen—isn't it, girls?”
Her friends agreed. Hiram, casting a quick eye over the ruffled surface of the river, saw that the man was right. How well the stream below was fitted for motor-boating he did not know; but he was pretty sure that there were too many ledges just under the surface here to make it safe for the boat to go farther.
“I intend to land here-right by that big tree!” commanded Lettie Bronson, stamping her foot.
“Well, I dunno,” drawled the man; and just then the bow of the boat swung around, was forced heavily down stream by the current, and slam it went against a reef!
The man shot off the engine instantly. The bow of the boat was lodged on the rock, and tip-tilted considerably. The girls screamed, and Lettie herself was almost thrown into the water, for she was standing.
But Hiram noted again that Lettie Bronson did not display terror. While her friends were screaming and crying, she sat perfectly quiet, and for a minute said never a word.
“Can't you back off?” Hi heard her ask the boatman.
“Not without lightening her, Miss. And she may have smashed a plank up there, too. I dunno.”
The Western girl turned immediately to Hiram, who had now come to the bank's edge. She smiled at him charmingly, and her eyes danced. She evidently appreciated the fact that the young farmer had her at a disadvantage—and she had meant to snub him.
“I guess you'll have to help me again, Mr. Strong,” she said. “What will we do? Can you push out a plank to us, or something?”
“I'm afraid not, Miss Bronson,” he returned. “I could cut a pole and reach it to the boat; but you girls couldn't walk ashore on it.”
“Oh, dear! have we got to wade?” cried one of Lettie's friends.
“You can't wade. It's too deep between the shore and the boat,” Hiram said, calmly.
“Then—then we'll stay here till the tide rises and dr-dr-drowns us!” wailed another of the girls, giving way to sobs.
“Don't be a goose, Myra Carroll!” exclaimed Lettie. “If you waited here for the tide to rise you'd be gray-haired and decrepit. The tide doesn't rise here. But maybe a spring flood would wash you away.”
At that the frightened one sobbed harder than ever. She was one of those who ever see the dark side of adventure. There was no hope on her horizon.
“I dunno what you can do for these girls,” said the man. “I'd git out and push off the boat, but I don't dare with them aboard.”
But Hiram's mind had not been inactive, if he was standing in seeming idleness. Sister tugged at his sleeve again and whispered:
“Have they got to stay there and drown, Hi?”
“I guess not,” he returned, slowly. “Let's see: this old sycamore leans right out over them. I can shin up there with the aid of the big grapevine. Then, if I had a rope——”
“Shall I run and get one?” demanded Sister, listening to him.
“Hullo!” exclaimed Hiram, speaking to the man in the boat.
“Well?” asked the fellow.
“Haven't you got a coil of strong rope aboard?”
“There's the painter,” said the man.
“Toss it ashore here,” commanded Hiram.
“Oh, Hiram Strong!” cried Lettie. “You don't expect us to walk tightrope, do you?” and she began to giggle.
“No. I want you to unfasten the end of the rope. I want it clear—that's it,” said Hiram. “And it's long enough, I can see.”
“For what?” asked Sister.
“Wait and you'll see,” returned the young farmer, hastily coiling the rope again.
He hung it over his shoulder and then started to climb the big sycamore. He could go up the bole of this leaning tree very quickly, for the huge grapevine gave him a hand-hold all the way.
“Whatever are you going to do?” cried Lettie Bronson, looking up at him, as did the other girls.
“Now,” said Hiram, in the first small crotch of the tree, which was almost directly over the stranded launch, “if you girls have any pluck at all, I can get you ashore, one by one.”
“What do you mean for us to do, Hiram?” repeated Lettie.
The young farmer quickly fashioned a noose at the end of the line—not a slipnoose, for that would tighten and hurt anybody bearing upon it. This he dropped down to the boat and Lettie caught it.
“Get your head and shoulders through that noose, Miss Bronson,” he commanded. “Let it come under your arms. I will lift you out of the boat and swing you back and forth—there's none of you so heavy that I can't do this, and if you wet your feet a little, what's the odds?”
“Oh, dear! I can never do that!” squealed one of the other girls.
“Guess you'll have to do it if you don't want to stay here all night,” returned Lettie, promptly. “I see what you want, Hiram,” she added, and quickly adjusted the loop.
“Now, when you swing out over the bank, Sister will grab you, and steady you. It will be all right if you have a care. Now!” cried Hiram.
Lettie Bronson showed no fear at all as he drew her up and she swung out of the boat over the swiftly-running current. Hiram laid along the tree-trunk in an easy position, and began swinging the girl at the end of the rope, like a pendulum.
The river bank being at least three feet higher than the surface of the water; he did not have to shift the rope again as he swung the girl back and forth.
Sister, clinging with her left hand to the grapevine, leaned forward and clutched Lettie's hand. When she seized it, Sister backed away, and the swinging girl landed upright upon the bank.
“Oh, that's fun!” Lettie cried, laughing, loosing herself from “the loop. Now you come, Mary Judson!”
Thus encouraged they responded one by one, and even the girl who had broken down and cried agreed to be rescued by this simple means. The boatman then, after removing his shoes and stockings and rolling up his trousers, stepped out upon the sunken rock and pushed off the boat.
But it was leaking badly. He dared not take aboard his passengers again, but turned around and went down stream as fast as he could go so as to beach the boat in a safe place.
“Now how'll we get back to Scoville?” cried one of Lettie's friends. “I can never walk that far.”
Sister had dropped back, shyly, behind Hiram, when he descended the tree. She had aided each girl ashore; but only Lettie had thanked her. Now she tugged at Hiram's sleeve.
“Take 'em home in our wagon,” she whispered.
“I can take you to Scoville—or to Miss Bronson's—in the farm wagon,” Hiram said, smiling. “You can sit on straw in the bottom and be comfortable.”
“Oh, a straw ride!” cried Lettie. “What fun! And he can drive us right to St. Beris—And think what the other girls will say and how they'll stare!”
The idea seemed a happy one to all the girls save the cry-baby, Myra Carroll. And her complaints were drowned in the laughter and chatter of the others.
Hiram picked up the tools, Sister got the string of fish, and they set out for the Atterson farmhouse. Lettie chatted most of the way with Hiram; but to Sister, walking on the other side of the young farmer, the Western girl never said a word.
At the house it was the same. While Hiram was cleaning the wagon and putting a bed of straw into it, and currying the horse and gearing him to the wagon, Mrs. Atterson brought a crock of cookies out upon the porch and talked with the girls from St. Beris. Sister had run indoors and changed her shabby and soiled frock for a new gingham; but when she came down to the porch, and stood bashfully in the doorway, none of the girls from town spoke to her.
Hiram drove up with the farm-wagon. Most of the girls had accepted the adventure in the true spirit now, and they climbed into the wagon-bed on the clean straw with laughter and jokes. But nobody invited Sister to join the party.
The orphan looked wistfully after the wagon as Hiram drove out of the yard. Then she turned, with trembling lip, to Mother Atterson: “She—she's awfully pretty,” she said, “and Hiram likes her. But she—they're all proud, and I guess they don't think much of folks like us, after all.”
“Shucks, Sister! we're just good as they be, every bit,” returned Mrs. Atterson, bruskly.
“I know; mebbe we be,” admitted Sister, slowly. “But it don't feel so.”
And perhaps Hiram had some such thought, too, after he had driven the girls to the big boarding school in Scoville. For they all got out without even thanking him or bidding him good-bye—all save Lettie.
“Really, we are a thousand times obliged to you, Hiram Strong,” she said, in her very best manner, and offering him her hand. “As the girls were my guests I felt I must get them home again safely—and you were indeed a friend in need.”
But then she spoiled it utterly, by adding:
“Now, how much do I owe you, Hiram?” and took out her purse. “Is two dollars enough?” This put Hiram right in his place. He saw plainly that, friendly as the Bronsons were, they did not look upon a common farm-boy as their equal—not in social matters, at least.
“I could not take anything for doing a neighbor a favor, Miss Bronson,” said Hiram, quietly. “Thank you. Good-day.”
Hiram drove back home feeling quite as depressed as Sister, perhaps. Finally he said to himself:
“Well, some day I'll show 'em!”
After that he put the matter out of his mind and refused to be troubled by thoughts of Lettie Bronson, or her attitude toward him.
Spring was advancing apace now. Every day saw the development of bud, leaf and plant. Slowly the lowland was cleared and the brush and roots were heaped in great piles, ready for the torch.
Hiram could not depend upon this six acres as their only piece of corn, however. There was the four-acre lot between the barnyard and the pasture in which he proposed to plant the staple crop.
He drew out the remainder of the coarse manure and spread it upon this land, as far as it would go. For enriching the remainder of the corn crop he would have to depend upon a commercial fertilizer. He drew, too, a couple of tons of lime to be used on this corn land, and left it in heaps to slake.
And then, out of the clear sky of their progress, came a bolt as unexpected as could be. They had been less than a month upon the farm. Uncle Jeptha had not been in his grave thirty days, and Hiram was just getting into the work of running the place, with success looming ahead.
He had refused Mr. Bronson's offer of a position and had elected to stick by Mrs. Atterson. He had looked forward to nothing to disturb the contract between them until the time should be fulfilled.
Yet one afternoon, while he was at work in the garden, Sister came out to him all in a flurry.
“Mis' Atterson wants you! Mis' Atterson wants you!” cried the girl. “Oh, Hiram! something dreadful's going to happen. I know, by the way Mis' Atterson looks. And I don' like the looks o' that man that's come to see her.”
Hiram unhooked the horse at the end of the row and left Sister to lead him to the stable. He went into the house after knocking the mud off his boots.
There, sitting in the bright kitchen, was the sharp-featured, snaky-looking man with whom Hiram had once talked in town. He knew his name was Pepper, and that he did something in the real estate line, and insurance, and the like.
“Jest listen to what this man says, Hiram,” said Mrs. Atterson, grimly.
“My name's Pepper,” began the man, eyeing Hiram curiously.
“So I hear,” returned the young farmer.
“Before old Mr. Atterson died we got to talking one day when he was in town about his selling.”
“Well?” returned Hiram. “You didn't say anything about that when you offered twelve hundred for this place.”
“Well,” said the man, stubbornly, “that was a good offer.”
Hiram turned to Mrs. Atterson. “Do you want to sell for that price?”
“No, I don't, Hi,” she said.
“Then that settles it, doesn't it? Mrs. Atterson is the owner, and she knows her own mind.”
“I made Uncle Jeptha a better offer,” said Mr. Pepper, “and I'll make Mrs. Atterson the same—sixteen hundred dollars. It's a run-down farm, of course——”
“If Mrs. Atterson doesn't want to sell,” interrupted Hiram, but here his employer intervened.
“There's something more, Hi,” she said, her face working “strangely. Tell him, you Pepper!”
“Why, the old man gave me an option on the place, and I risked a twenty dollar bill on it. The option had—er—a year to run; dated February tenth last; and I've decided to take the option up,” said Mr. Pepper, his shrewd little eyes dancing in their gaze from Hiram to the old lady and back again.
Now, a rattlesnake is poisonous, but he gives fair warning; a swamp moccasin lies in wait for the unwary and strikes without sign or sound. Into Hiram Strong's troubled mind came the thought that Mr. Pepper was striking like his prototype of the swamps.
A snaky sort of a man was Mr. Pepper—sly, a hand-rubber as he talked, with a little, sickly grin playing about his thin, mean mouth. When he opened it Hiram almost expected to see a forked tongue run out.
At least, of one thing was the young farmer sure: Mr. Pepper was no more to be trusted than a serpent. Therefore, he did not take a word that the man said on trust.
He recovered from the shock which the statement of the real estate man had caused, and he uttered no expression of either surprise, or trouble. Mrs. Atterson he could see was vastly disturbed by the statement; but somebody had to keep a cool bead in this matter.
“Let's see your option,” Hiram demanded, bruskly.
“Why—if Mrs. Atterson wishes to see it——”
“You show it to Hi, you Pepper-man,” snapped the old lady. “I wouldn't do a thing without his advice.”
“Oh, well, if you consider a boy's advice material——”
“I know Hi's honest,” declared the old lady, tartly. “And that's what I'm sure you ain't! Besides,” she added, sadly, “Hi's as much interested in this thing as I be. If the farm's got to be sold, it puts Hi out of a job.”
“Oh, very well,” said the real estate man, and he drew a rather soiled, folded paper from his inner pocket.
He seemed to hesitate the fraction of a second about showing the paper. It increased Hi's suspicion—this hesitancy. If the man had a perfectly good option on the farm, why didn't he go about the matter boldly?
But when he got the paper in his own hands he could see nothing wrong with it. It seemed written in straight-forward language, the signatures were clear enough, and as he had seen and read Uncle Jeptha's will, he was quite sure that this was the old man's signature to the option which, for the sum of twenty dollars in hand paid to him, he agreed to sell his farm, situated so-and-so, for sixteen hundred dollars, cash, same to be paid over within one year of date.
“Of course,” said Hiram, slowly, handing back the paper—indeed, Pepper had kept the grip of his forefinger and thumb on it all the time—“Of course, Mrs. Atterson's lawyer must see this before she agrees to anything.”
“Why, Hiram! I ain't got no lawyer,” exclaimed the old lady.
“Go to Mr. Strickland, who made Uncle Jeptha's will,” Hiram said to her. Then he turned to Pepper:
“What's the name of the witness to that old man's signature?”
“Abel Pollock.”
“Oh! Henry's father?”
“Yes. He's got a son named Henry.”
“And who's the Notary Public?”
“Caleb Schell. He keeps the store just at the crossroads as you go into town.”
“I remember the store,” said Hiram, thoughtfully.
“But Hiram!” cried Mrs. Atterson, “I don't want to sell the farm.”
“We'll be sure this paper is all straight before you do sell, Mrs. Atterson.”
“Why, I just won't sell!” she exclaimed. “Uncle Jeptha never said nothing in his will about giving this option. And that lawyer says that in a couple of years the farm will be worth a good deal more than this Pepper offers.”
“Why, Mrs. Atterson!” exclaimed the real estate man, cheerfully, “as property is selling in this locality now, sixteen hundred dollars is a mighty good offer for your farm. You ask anybody. Why, Uncle Jeptha knew it was; otherwise he wouldn't have given me the option, for he didn't believe I'd come up with the price. He knew it was a high offer.”
“And if it's worth so much to you, why isn't it worth more to Mrs. Atterson to keep?” demanded Hiram, sharply.
“Ah! that's my secret—why I want it,” said Pepper, nodding. “Leave that to me. If I get bit by buying it, I shall have to suffer for my lack of wisdom.”
“You ain't bought it yet—you Pepper,” snapped Mrs. Atterson.
“But I'm going to buy it, ma'am,” replied he, rather viciously, as he stood up, ready to depart. “I shall expect to hear from you no later than Monday.”
“I won't sell it!”
“You'll have to. If you refuse to sign I'll go to the Chancery Court. I'll make you.”
“Well. Mebbe you will. But I don't know. I never was made to do anything yet. By no man named Pepper—you can take that home with you,” she flung after him as he walked out and climbed into the buggy.
But whereas Mrs. Atterson showed anger, Hiram went back to work in the field with a much deeper feeling racking his mind. If the option was all right—and of course it must be—this would settle their occupancy of the farm.
Of course he could not hold Mrs. Atterson to her contract. She could not help the situation that had now arisen.
His Spring's work had gone for nothing. Sixteen hundred dollars, even in cash, would not be any great sum for the old lady. And she had burdened herself with the support of Sister—and with Old Lem Camp, too!
“Surely, I can't be a burden on her. I'll have to hustle around and find another job. I wonder if Mr. Bronson would take me on now?”
But he knew that the Westerner already had a man who suited him, since Hiram had refused the chance Bronson offered. And, then, Lettie had shown that she felt he had not appreciated their offer. Perhaps her father felt the same way.
Besides, Hiram had a secret wish not to put himself under obligation to the Bronsons. This feeling may have sprung from a foolish source; nevertheless it was strong with the young farmer.
It looked very much to him as though this sudden turn of circumstances was “a facer”. If Mrs. Atterson had to sell the farm he was likely to be thrown on his own resources again.
For his own selfish sake Hiram was worried, too. After all, he would be unable to “make good” and to show people that he could make the old, run-down farm pay a profit to its owner.
But Hiram Strong couldn't believe it.
The more he milled over the thing in his mind, the less he understood why Uncle Jeptha, who was of acute mind right up to the hour of his death, so all the neighbors said, should have neglected to speak about the option he had given Pepper on the farm.
And here they were, right in the middle of the Spring work, with crops in the ground and—as Mrs. Atterson agreed—it would be too late to go hunting a farm for this present season.
But Hiram kept to work. He had Sister and Old Lem Camp out in the garden, hand-weeding and thinning the carrots, onions, and other tender plants. That Saturday he went through the entire garden—that part already planted—with either the horse cultivator, or his wheel-hoe.
In planting parsnips, carrots, and other slow-germinating seeds, he had mixed a few radish seed in the seeding machine; these sprang up quickly and defined the rows, so that the space between rows could be cultivated before the other plants had scarcely broke the surface of the soil.
Now these radish were beginning to be big enough to pull. Hiram brought in a few bunches for their dinner on Saturday—the first fruits of the garden.
“Now, I dunno why it is,” said Mrs. Atterson, complacently, after setting her teeth in the first radish and relishing its crispness, “but this seems a whole lot better than the radishes we used to buy in Crawberry. I 'spect what's your very own always seems better than other folks's,” and she sighed and shook her head.
She was thinking of the thing she had to face on Monday. Hiram hated to see them all so downhearted. Sister's eyes were red from weeping; Old Lem Camp sat at the table, muttering and playing with his food again instead of eating.
But Hiram felt as though he could not give up to the disaster that had come to them. The thought that—in some way—Pepper was taking an unfair advantage of Mother Atterson knocked continually at the door of his mind.
He went over, to himself, all that had passed in the kitchen the day before when the real estate man had come to speak with Mrs. Atterson. How had Pepper spoken about the option? Hadn't there been some hesitancy in the fellow's manner—in his speech, indeed? Just what had Pepper said? Hiram concentrated his mind upon this one thing. What had the man said?
“The option had—er—one year to run.”
Those were the fellow's very words. He hesitated before he pronounced the length of time. And he was not a man who, in speaking, had any stammering of tongue.
Why had he hesitated? Why should it trouble him to state the time limit of the option?
Was it because he was speaking a falsehood?
The thought stung Hiram like a thorn in the flesh. He put away the tool with which he was working, slipped on a coat, and started for Henry Pollock's house, which lay not more than half a mile from the Atterson farm, across the fields.