Hiram Strong was not likely to forget that long and arduous night. It was impossible to force the horse out of a walk, for the drifts were in some places to the creature's girth.
He stopped at the house for a minute and roused Mrs. Atterson and Old Lem and sent them over to help the unhappy Dickersons.
He was nearly an hour getting to the crossroads store. There were lights and revelry there. Some of the lingering crowd were snowbound for the night and were making merry with hard cider and provisions which Schell was not loath to sell them.
Pete was one of the number, and Hiram sent him home with the news of his mother's serious hurt.
He forced the horse to take him into town to Dr. Broderick. It was nearly two o'clock when he routed out the doctor, and it was four o'clock when the physician and himself, in a heavy sleigh and behind a pair of mules, reached the Dickerson farmhouse.
The woman had not returned to consciousness, and Mrs. Atterson remained through the day to do what she could. But it was many a tedious week before Mrs. Dickerson was on her feet again, and able to move about.
Meanwhile, more than one kindly act had Mother Atterson done for the neighbors who had seemed so careless of her rights. Pete never appeared when either Mrs. Atterson or Sister came to the house; but in his sour, gloomy way, Sam Dickerson seemed to be grateful.
Hiram kept away, as there was nothing he could do to help them. And he saw when Pete chanced to pass him, that the youth felt no more kindly toward him than he had before.
“Well, let him be as ugly as he wants to be—only let him keep away from the place and let our things alone,” thought Hiram. “Goodness knows! I'm not anxious to be counted among Pete Dickerson's particular friends.”
Thanksgiving came on apace, and every one of the old boarders of Mother Atterson had written that he would come to the farm to spend the holiday. Even Mr. Peebles acknowledged the invitation with thanks, but adding that he hoped Sister would not forget he must “eschew any viands at all greasy, and that his hot water was to be at 101, exactly.”
“The poor ninny!” ejaculated Mother Atterson. “He doesn't know what he wants. Sister only poured it out of the teakettle, and he had to wait for it to cool, anyway, before he could drink it.”
But it was determined to give the city folk a good time, and this determination was accomplished. Two of Sister's turkeys, bought and paid for in hard cash by Mother Atterson, graced the long table in the sitting-room.
Many of the good things with which the table was laden came from the farm. And, without Hiram and Sister, and Old Lem Camp, Mrs. Atterson made even Fred Crackit understand, these good things had not been possible!
But the Crawberry folk, as a whole, were much subdued. They had missed Mother Atterson dreadfully; and, really, they had felt some affection for their old landlady, after all.
After dinner Fred Crackit, in a speech that was designed to be humorous, presented a massive silver plated water-pitcher with “Mother Atterson” engraved upon it. And really, the old lady broke down at that.
“Good Land o' Goshen!” she exclaimed. “Why, you boys do think something of the old woman, after all, don't ye?
“I must say that I got ye out here more than anything to show ye what we could do in the country. 'Specially how it had improved Sister. And how Hiram Strong warn't the ninny you seemed to think he was. And that Mr. Camp only needed a chance to be something in the world again.
“Well, well! It wasn't a generous feeling I had toward you, mebbe; but I'm glad you come and—I hope you all had enough gravy.”
So the occasion proved a very pleasant one indeed. And it made a happy break in the hard work of preparing for the winter.
The crops were all gathered ere this, and they could make up their books for the season just passed.
But there was wood to get in, for all along they had not had wood enough, and to try and get wood out of the snowy forest in winter for immediate use in the stoves was a task that Hiram did not enjoy.
He had Henry to help him saw a goodly pile before the first snow fell; and Mr. Camp split most of it and he and Sister piled it in the shed.
“We've got to haul up enough logs by March—or earlier—to have a wood sawing in earnest,” announced Hiram. “We must get a gasoline engine and saw, and call on the neighbors for help, and have a sawing-bee.”
“But what will be the use of that if we've got to leave here in February?” demanded Mrs. Atterson, worriedly. “The last time I saw that Pepper in town he grinned at me in a way that made me want to break my old umbrel' over his dratted head!”
“I don't care,” said Hiram, sullenly. “I don't want to sit idle all winter. I'll cut the logs, anyway, and draw 'em out from time to time. If we have to leave, why, we have to, that's all.”
“And we can't tell a thing to do about next year till we know what Pepper is going to do,” groaned Mrs. Atterson.
“That is very true. But if he doesn't exercise his option before February tenth, we needn't worry any more. And after that will be time enough to make our plans for next season's crops,” declared Hiram, trying to speak more cheerfully.
But Mrs. Atterson went around with clouded brow again, and was heard to whisper, more than once, something about “Mr. Damocles's sword.”
Despite Hiram Strong's warning to his employer when they started work on the old Atterson Eighty, that she must expect no profit for this season's, work, the Christmas-tide, when they settled their accounts for the year, proved the young fellow to have been a bad prophet.
“Why, Hiram, after I pay you this hundred dollars, I shall have a little money left—I shall indeed. And all that corn in the crib—and stacks of fodder, beside the barn loft full, and the roots, and the chickens, and the pork, and the calf——”
“Why, Hiram! I'm a richer woman to-day than when I came out here to the farm, that's sure. How do you account for it?”
Hiram had to admit that they had been favored beyond his expectations.
“If that Pepper man would only come for'ard and say what he was going to do!” sighed Mother Atterson.
That was the continual complaint now. As the winter advanced all four of the family bore the option in mind continually. There was talk of the railroad going before the Legislature to ask for the condemnation of the property it needed, in the spring.
It seemed pretty well settled that the survey along the edge of the Atterson Eighty would be the route selected. And, if that was the case, why did Pepper not try to exercise his option?
Mr. Strickland had said that there was no way by which the real estate man's hand could be forced; so they had to abide Pepper's pleasure.
“If we only knew we'd stay,” said Hiram, “I'd cut a few well grown pine trees, while I am cutting the firewood, have them dragged to the mill, and saw the boards we shall need if we go into the celery business this coming season.”
“What do you want boards for?” demanded Henry, who chanced to be home over Christmas, and was at the house.
“For bleaching. Saves time, room, and trouble. Banking celery, even with a plow, is not alone old-fashioned, and cumbersome, but is apt to leave the blanched celery much dirtier.”
“But you'll need an awful lot of board for six acres, Hiram!” gasped Henry.
“I don't know. I shall run the trenches four feet apart, and you mustn't suppose, Henry, that I shall blanch all six acres at once. The boards can be used over and over again.”
“I didn't think of that,” admitted his friend.
Henry was eagerly interested in his selected studies at the experiment station and college, and Abel Pollock followed his son's work there with growing approval, too.
“It does beat all,” he admitted to Hiram, “what that boy has learned already about practical things. Book-farming ain't all flapdoodle, that's sure!”
So the year ended—quietly, peacefully, and with no little happiness in the Atterson farmhouse, despite the cloud that overshadowed the farm-title, and the doubts which faced them about the next season's work.
They sat up on New Year's eve to see the old year out and the new in, and had a merry evening although there were only the family. When the distant whistles blew at midnight they went out upon the back porch to listen.
It was a dark night, for thick clouds shrouded the stars. Only the unbroken coverlet of snow (it had fallen that morning) aided them to see about the empty fields.
In the far distance was the twinkle of a single light—that in an upper chamber of the Pollock house. Dickersons' was mantled in shadow, and those two houses were the only ones in sight of the Atterson place.
“And I was afraid when we came out here that I'd be dead of loneliness in a month—with no near neighbors,” admitted Mother Atterson. “But I've been so busy that I ain't never minded it——
“What's that light, Hiram?”
Her cry was echoed by Sister. Behind the bam a sudden glow was spreading against the low-hung clouds. It was too far away for one of their out-buildings to be afire; but Hiram set off immediately, although he only had slippers on, for the corner of the barnyard fence.
When he reached this point he saw that one of the fodder stacks in the cornfield was afire. The whole top of the stack was ablaze.
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” cried Sister, who had followed him. “What can we do?”
“Nothing,”, said Hiram. “There's no wind, and it won't spread to another stack. But that one is past redemption, for sure!”
Hiram hastened back to the house and put on his boots. But he did not wade through the snow to the fodder stack that was burning so briskly. He merely made a detour around it, at some yards distant. Nowhere did he see the mark of a footprint.
How the stack had been set afire was a mystery. Hiram had stacked the fodder himself, with the help of Sister, who had pitched the bundles up to him. The young farmer did not smoke, and he seldom carried matches loose in his pockets.
Therefore, the idea that he had dropped a match in the fodder and a field mouse, burrowing for some nubbin of corn, had come across the match, nibbled the head, and so set the blaze, was scarcely feasible.
Yet, how else had the fire started?
When daylight came Hiram could find no footprint near the stack—only his own where he had circled it while it was blazing.
It was the stack nearest to the Dickerson line. Hiram, naturally, thought of Pete.
Since Mrs. Dickerson's sickness, Mother Atterson had been back and forth to help her neighbor, and whenever Sam Dickerson saw Hiram he was as friendly as it was in the nature of the man to be.
Hiram could not believe that Pete's father would now countenance any of his son's meannesses; yet when the young farmer went along the line fence, he saw fresh tracks across the Dickerson fields, and discovered where the person had stood, on the Dickerson side of the fence opposite the burned fodder stack.
But these footprints were all of three hundred feet from the stack, and there was not a mark in the snow upon Hiram's side of the fence, saving his own footprints.
“Maybe somebody merely ran across to look at the blaze. But it's strange I did not see him,” thought Hiram.
He could not help being suspicious, however, and he prowled about the stacks and the barns more than ever at night. He could not shake off the feeling that the enemy in the dark was at work again.
January passed, and the fatal day—the tenth of February—drew nearer and nearer. If Pepper proposed to exercise his option he must do it on or before that date.
Neither Hiram nor Mrs. Atterson had seen the real estate man of late; but they had seen Mr. Strickland, and on the final day they drove to town to meet Pepper—if the man was going to show up—in the lawyer's office.
“I wouldn't trouble him, if I were you,” advised the lawyer. “But if you insist, I'll send over for him.”
“I want to know what he means by all this,” declared Mrs. Atterson, angrily. “He's kept me on tenter-hooks for ten months, and there ought to be some punishment for the crime.”
“I am afraid he has been within his rights,” said the lawyer, smiling; but he sent his clerk for the real estate man, probably being very well convinced of the outcome of the affair.
In came the snaky Mr. Pepper. The moment he saw Mrs. Atterson and Hiram he began to cackle.
“Ye don't mean to say you come clean in here this stormy day to try and sell that farm to me?” asked the real estate man. “No, ma'am! Not for no sixteen hundred dollars. If you'll take twelve——”
Mrs. Atterson could not find words to reply to him; and Hiram felt like seizing the scoundrel by the scruff of his neck and throwing him down to the street. But it was Mr. Strickland who interposed:
“So you do not propose to exercise your option?”
“No, indeed-y!”
“How long since did you give up the idea of purchasing the Atterson place?” asked the lawyer, curiously.
“Pshaw! I gave up the idee 'way back there last spring,” chuckled Pepper.
“You haven't the paper with you, have you, Mr. Pepper?” asked Mr. Strickland, quietly.
The real estate man looked wondrous sly and tapped the side of his nose with a lean finger.
“Why, I tore up that old paper long ago. It warn't no good to me,” said Pepper. “I wouldn't take the farm at that price for a gift,” and he departed with a sneering smile upon his lips.
“And well he did destroy it,” declared Mr. Strickland. “It was a forgery—that is what it was. And if we could have once got Pepper in court with it, he would not have turned another scaly trick for some years to come.”
The relief to the minds of Hiram Strong and Mrs. Atterson was tremendous.
Especially was the young farmer inspired to greater effort. He saw the second growing season before him. And he saw, too, that now, indeed, he had that chance to prove his efficiency which he had desired all the time.
The past year had cost him little for clothing or other expenses. He had banked the hundred dollars Mrs. Atterson had paid him at Christmas.
But he looked forward to something much bigger than the other hundred when the next Christmas-tide should come. Twenty-five per cent of all the profit of the Atterson Eighty during this second year was to be his own.
The moment “Mr. Damocles's sword”, as Mother Atterson had called it, was lifted the young farmer jumped into the work.
He had already cut enough wood to last the family a year; now he got Mr. Pollock, with his team of mules, to haul it up to the house, and then sent for the power saw, asked the neighbors to help, and in less than half a day every stick was cut to stove length.
As he had time Hiram split this wood and Lem Camp piled it in the shed. Hiram knocked together some extra cold-frames, too, and bought some second-hand sash.
And he had already dug a pit for a twelve-foot hotbed. Now, a twelve-foot hotbed will start an enormous number of plants.
Hiram did not plan to have quite so much small stuff in the garden this year, however. He knew that he should have less time to work in the garden. He proposed having more potatoes, about as many tomatoes as the year before, but fewer roots to bunch, salads and the like. He must give the bulk of his time to the big commercial crop that he hoped to put into the bottom-land.
He had little fear of the river overflowing its banks late enough in the season to interfere with the celery crop. For the seedlings were to be handled in the cold-frames and garden-patch until it was time to set them in the trenches. And that would not be until July.
He contented himself with having the logs he cut drawn to the sawmill and the sawed planks brought down to the edge of the bottom-land, and did not propose to put a plow into the land until late June.
Meanwhile he started his celery seed in shallow boxes, and when the plants were an inch and a half, or so, tall, he pricked them out, two inches apart each way into the cold-frames.
Sister and Mr. Camp could help in this work, and they soon filled the cold-frames with celery plants destined to be reset in the garden plat later.
This “handling” of celery aids its growth and development in a most wonderful manner. At the second transplanting, Hiram snipped back the tops, and the roots as well, so that each plant would grow sturdily and not be too “stalky”.
Mrs. Atterson declared they were all celery mad. “Whatever will you do with so much of the stuff, I haven't the least idee, Hiram. Can you sell it all? Why, it looks to me as though you had set out enough already to glut the Crawberry market.”
“And I guess that's right,” returned Hiram. “Especially if I shipped it all at once.”
But he was aiming higher than the Crawberry market. He had been in correspondence with firms that handled celery exclusively in some of the big cities, and before ever he put the plow into the bottom-land he had arranged for the marketing of every stalk he could grow on his six acres.
It was a truth that the family of transplanted boarding house people worked harder this second spring than they had the first one. But they knew how better, too, and the garden work did not seem so arduous to Sister and Old Lem Camp.
Mrs. Atterson had a fine flock of hens, and they had laid well after the first of December, and the eggs had brought good prices. She planned to increase her flock, build larger yards, and in time make a business of poultry raising, as that would be something that she and Sister could practically handle alone.
Sister's turkeys had thrived so the year before that she had saved two hens and a handsome gobbler, and determined to breed turkeys for the fall market.
And Sister learned a few things before she had raised “that raft of poults,” as Mother Atterson called them. Turkeys are certainly calculated to breed patience—especially if one expects to have a flock of young Toms and hens fit for killing at Thanksgiving-time.
She hatched the turkeys under motherly hens belonging to Mother Atterson, striving to breed poults that would not trail so far from the house; but as soon as the youngsters began to feel their wings they had their foster-mothers pretty well worn out. One flock tolled the old hen off at least a mile from the house and Hiram had some work enticing the poults back again.
There was no raid made upon her turkey coops this year, however. Pete Dickerson was not much in evidence during the spring and early summer. Mrs. Atterson went back and forth to the neighbors; but although whenever Hiram saw the farmer the latter put forth an effort to be pleasant to him, the two households did not well “mix”.
Besides, during this busiest time of the year, when the crops were getting started, there seemed to be little opportunity for social intercourse. At least, so it seemed on the Atterson place.
They were a busy and well contented crew, and everything seemed to be running like clockwork, when suddenly “another dish of trouble”, as Mother Atterson called it, was served them in a most unexpected manner.
Hiram was coming up from the barn one evening, long after dark, and had just caught sight of Sister standing on the porch waiting for him, when a sudden glow against the dark sky, made him turn.
The flash of fire passed on the instant, and Sister called to him:
“Oh, Hiram! did you see that shooting-star?”
“You never wished on it, Sis,” said the young farmer.
“Oh, yes I did!” she returned, dancing down the steps to meet him.
“That quick?”
“Just that quick,” she reiterated, seizing his arm and getting into step with him.
“And what was the wish?” demanded Hiram.
“Why—I won't ever get it if I tell you, will I?” she queried, shyly.
“Just as likely to as not, Sister,” he said, with serious voice. “Wishes are funny things, you know. Sometimes the very best ones never come true.”
“And I'm afraid mine will never come true,” she sighed. “Oh, dear! I guess no amount of wishing will ever bring some things to pass.”
“Maybe that's so, Sis,” he said, chuckling. “I fancy that getting out and hustling for the thing you want is the best way to fulfill wishes.”
“Oh, but I can't do that in this case,” said the girl, shaking her head, and still speaking very seriously as they came to the porch steps.
“Maybe I can bring it about for you,” teased Hiram.
“I guess not,” she said. “I want so to be like other girls, Hiram! I'd like to be like that pretty Lettie Bronson. I'm not jealous of her looks and her clothes and her good times and all; no, that's not it,” proclaimed Sister, with a little break in her voice.
“But I'd like to know who I really be. I want folks, and—and I want to have a real name of my own!”
“Why, bless you!” exclaimed the young fellow, “'Sister' is a nice name, I'm sure—and we all love it here.”
“But it isn't a name. They call me Sissy Atterson at school. But it doesn't belong to me. I—I've thought lots about choosing a name for myself—a real fancy one, you know. There's lots of pretty, names,” she said, reflectively.
“Cords of 'em,” Hiram agreed.
“But, you see, they wouldn't really be mine,” said the girl, earnestly. “Not even after I had chosen them. I want my very own name! I want to know who I am and all about myself. And”—with a half strangled sob—“I guess wishing will never bring me that, will it, Hiram?”
Never before had the young fellow heard Sister express herself upon this topic. He had no idea that the girl felt her unknown and practically unnamed existence so strongly.
“I wouldn't care, Sis,” he said, patting her bent shoulders. “We love you here just as well as we would if you had ten names! Don't forget that.
“And maybe it won't be all a mystery some day. Your folks may look you up. They may come here and find you. And they'll be mighty proud of you—you've grown so tall and good looking. Of course they will!”
Sister listened to him and gave a little contented sigh. “And then they might want to take me away—and I'd fight, tooth and nail, if they tried it.”
“What?” gasped Hiram.
“Of course I would!” said the girl. “Do you suppose I'd give up Mother Atterson for a dozen families—or for clothes—and houses—or, or anything?” and she ran into the house leaving the young farmer in some amazement.
“Ain't that the girl of it?” he muttered, at last. “Yet I bet she is in earnest about wanting to know about her folks.”
And from that time Hiram thought more about Sister's problem himself than he had before. Once, when he went to Crawberry, he went to the charitable institution from which Mother Atterson had taken Sister. But the matron had heard nothing of the lawyer who had once come to talk over the child's affairs, and the path of inquiry seemed shut off right there by an impassable barrier.
However, this is ahead of our story. On this particular night Hiram washed at the pump, and then followed Sister in to supper.
Before they were half through Mr. Camp suddenly started from his chair and pointed through the window.
Flames were rising behind the barn again!
“Another stack burning!” exclaimed Hiram, and be shot out of the door, seizing a pail of water, hoping that he might put it out.
But the stack was doomed. He knew it the moment he saw the extent of the blaze.
He kept away from it, as he had before; yet he did not expect to pick up any trail of the incendiary near the stack.
“Twice in the same place is too much!” declared the young farmer, glowing with wrath. “I'm going to have this mystery explained, or know the reason why.”
He left Mr. Camp to watch the burning fodder, to see that sparks from the stack did no harm, and lighting his lantern he went along the line fence again.
Yes! there were the footprints that he had expected to find. But the burning stack was even farther from the fence than the first one had been—and there were no marks of feet in the soft earth on Mrs. Atterson's side of the boundary.
Hiram crawled through the wires, and followed the plain foot-marks back to the Dickerson sheds. He lost them there, of course, but he knew by the size of the footprints that either Sam Dickerson or his oldest son had been over to the line fence.
“And that shooting-star!” considered Hiram. “There was something peculiar about that. I wonder if there wasn't a shooting star, also, away back there at New Year's when our other stack of fodder was burned?”
He loitered about the sheds for a few moments. It appeared as though all the Dickersons were indoors. Nobody interfered with him.
Of a sudden Hiram began to sniff an odor that seemed strange about a cart-shed. At least, no wise farmer would have naphtha, or gasoline, in his outbuildings, for it would make his insurance invalid.
But that was the smell Hiram discovered. And he was not long in finding the cause of it.
Back in a dark corner, upon a beam, lay a big sling-shot—one of those that boys swing around their heads with a stone in the heel of it, and then let go one end to shoot the missile to a distance.
The leather loop was saturated with the gasoline, and it had been scorched, too. The smell of burning, as well as the smell of gasoline, was very distinct.
Hiram took the sling-shot with him, and went up to the Dickerson house.
He had got along so well with the Dickersons for these past months that he honestly shrank from “starting anything” now. Yet he could not overlook this flagrant piece of malicious mischief. Indeed, it was more than that. Two stacks had already been burned, and it might be some of the outbuildings—or even Mrs. Atterson's house—next time!
Besides, Hiram felt himself responsible for his employer's property. The old lady could not afford to lose the fodder, and Hiram was determined that both of the burned stacks should be paid for in full.
He looked through the window of the Dickerson kitchen. The family was around the supper table-Mr. and Mrs. Dickerson, Pete, and the children, little and big. It was a cheerful family group, after all. Rough and uncouth as the farmer was, Dickerson likely had his feelings like other people. Instead of bursting right in at the door as had been Hiram's intention, and accusing Pete to his face, the indignant young fellow hesitated.
He hadn't any sympathy for Pete, not the slightest. If he gave him—or the elder Dickerson—a chance to clear up matters by making good to Mrs. Atterson for what she had lost, Hiram Strong decided that he was being very lenient indeed.
He stepped quietly onto the porch and rapped on the door. Then he backed off and waited for some response from within.
“Hullo, Mr. Strong!” exclaimed the farmer, coming himself to the “door. Why! is that your stack burning?”
“Yes, sir,” said Hiram, quietly.
“Another one!”
“That is the second,” admitted Hiram. “But I don't propose that another shall be set afire in just the same way.”
Sam Dickerson stepped suddenly down to the young farmer's level, and asked:
“What do you mean by that? Do you know how it got afire?”
Hiram held out the sling-shot in the light of his lantern.
“A rag, saturated with gasoline, was wrapped around a pebble, then set afire, and stone and blazing rag were shot from our line fence into the fodderstack.
“I found the footprints of the incendiary on New Year's morning at the same place. And I'll wager a good deal that your son Pete's boots will fit the footprints over there at the line now!”
Sam Dickerson's face had turned exceedingly red, and then paled. But he spoke very quietly.
“What are you going to do with him, Mr. Strong?” he asked. “It will be five years for him at least, if you take it to court—and maybe longer.”
“I don't believe, Mr. Dickerson, that you have upheld Pete in all the mean tricks he has played on me.”
“Indeed I haven't! And since I got a look at myself—back there when the wife was hurt——”
Sam Dickerson's voice broke and he turned away for a moment so that his visitor should not see his face.
“Well!” he continued. “You've got Pete right this time—no doubt of that. I dunno what makes him such a mean whelp. I'll lambaste him good for this, now I tell you. But the stacks——”
“Make him pay for them out of his own money. Mrs. Atterson ought not to lose the stacks,” said Hiram, slowly.
“Oh, he'll do that, anyway, you can bet!” exclaimed Dickerson, with conviction.
“I don't believe that sending a boy like him to jail will either improve his morals, or do anybody else any good,” observed Hiram, reflectively.
“And it'll jest about finish his mother,” spoke Sam.
“That's right, too,” said the young farmer. “I tell you. I don't want to see him—not just now. But you do what you think is best about this matter, and make Peter pay the bill—ten dollars for the two stacks of fodder.”
“He shall do it, Mr. Strong,” declared Sam Dickerson, warmly. “And he shall beg your pardon, too, or I'll larrup him until he can't stand. He's too big for a lickin', but he ain't too big for me to lick!”
And the elder Dickerson was as good as his word. An hour later yells from the cart shed denoted that Pete was finally getting what he should have received when he was a younger boy.
Before noon Sam marched the youth over to Mrs. Atterson. Pete was very puffy about the eyes, and his cheeks were streaked with tears. Nor did he seem to care to more than sit upon the extreme edge of a chair.
But he paid Mrs. Atterson ten dollars, and then, nudged by his father, turned to Hiram and begged the young farmer's pardon.
“That's all right, etc.,” said Hiram, laying his hand upon the boy's shoulder. “Just because we haven't got on well together heretofore, needn't make any difference between us after this.
“Come over and see me. If you have time this summer and want the work, I'll be glad to hire you to help handle my celery crop.
“Neighbors ought to be neighborly; and it won't do either of us any good to hug to ourselves any injury which we fancy the other has done. We'll be friends if you say so, Peter—though I tell you right now that if you turn another mean trick against me, I'll take the law into my own hands and give you worse than you've got already.”
Pete looked sheepish enough, and shook hands. He knew very well that Hiram could do as he promised.
But from that time on the young farmer had no further trouble with him.
Meanwhile Hiram's crops on the Atterson Eighty grew almost as well this second season as they had the first. There was a bad drouth this year, and the upland corn did not do so well; yet the young farmer's corn crop compared well with the crops in the neighborhood.
He had put in but eight acres of corn this year; but they had plenty of old corn in the crib when it came time to take down this second season's crop.
It was upon the celery that Hiram bent all his energies. He had to pay out considerable for help, but that was no more than he expected. Celery takes a deal of handling.
When the long, hot, dry days came, when the uplands parched and the earth fairly seemed to radiate the heat, the acres of tender plants which Hiram and his helpers had just set out in the trenches began to wilt most discouragingly.
Henry Pollock, who did all he could to aid Hiram on the crop, shook his head in despair.
“It's a-layin' down on you, Hiram—it's a-layin' down on you. Another day like this and your celery crop will be pretty small pertaters!”
“And that would be a transformation worthy of the attention of all the agricultural schools, Henry,” returned the young farmer, grimly laughing.
“You got a heart—to laugh at your own loss,” said Henry.
“There isn't any loss—yet,” declared Hiram.
“But there's bound to be,” said his friend, a regular “Job's comforter” for the nonce.
“Look here, Henry; you'd have me give up too easy. 'Never say die!' That's the farmer's motto.”
“Jinks!” exclaimed young Pollock, “they're dying all around us just the same—and their crops, too. We ain't going to have half a corn crop if this spell of dry weather keeps on. And the papers don't give us a sign of hope.”
“When there doesn't seem to be a sign of hope is when the really up-to-date farmer begins to actually work,” chuckled Hiram.
“And just tell me what you're going to do for this field of wilted celery?” demanded Henry.
“Come on up to the house and I'll get Mother Atterson to give us an early supper,” quoth Hiram. “I'm going to town and I invite you to go with me.”
Henry had got used by this time to Hiram's little mysteries. But this seemed to him a case where man had done all that could be done for the crop, and without Providential interposition, “the whole field would have to go to pot”, as he expressed it.
And in his heart the young farmer knew that the outlook for a paying crop of celery right then was very small indeed. He had done his best in preparing the soil, in enriching it, in raising the sets and transplanting them—up to this point he had brought his big commercial crop, at considerable expense. If the drouth really “got” it, he would have, at the most, but a poor and stunted crop to ship in the Fall.
But Hiram Strong was not the fellow to throw up his hands and own himself beaten at such a time as this. Here was an obstacle that must be overcome. The harder the problem looked the more determined he was to solve it.
The two boys drove to town that evening and Hiram sought out a man who contracted to move houses, clean cisterns and wells, and various work of that kind. He knew this man had just the thing he needed, and after a conference with him, Hiram loaded some bulky paraphernalia into the light wagon—it was so dark Henry could not see what it was—and they drove home again.
“I'd like to know what the Jim Hickey you're about, Hiram,” sniffed Henry, in disgust. “What's all this litter back here in the wagon?”
“You come over and give me a hand in the morning—early now, say by sun-up—and you'll find out. I want a couple of husky chaps like you,” chuckled Hiram. “I'll get Pete Dickerson to work against me.”
“If you do, you tell Pete he'll have to work lively,” said Henry, with a grin. “I don't know what it is you want us to do, but I reckon I can keep my end up with Pete, from hoein' 'taters to cuttin' cord-wood.”
“You can keep your end up with him, can you?” chuckled Hiram. “Well! I bet you can't in this game I'm going to put you two fellows up against.”
“What! Pete Dickerson beat me at anything—unless it's sleeping?” grunted Henry, with vast disgust. “I'll keep my end up with him at anything.”
And the more assured he was of this the more Hiram was amused. “Come on over early, Henry,” said the young farmer, “and I'll show you that there's at least one thing in which you can't keep your end up with Pete.”
His friend was almost angry when he started off across the fields for home; but he was mighty curious, too. That curiosity, if nothing more, would have brought him to the Atterson house in good season the following morning.
Already, however, Hiram and Pete—with the light wagon—had gone down to the riverside. Henry hurried after them and reached the celery field just as the red face of the sun appeared.
There had been little dew during the night and the tender transplants had scarcely lifted their heads. Indeed, the last acre set out the day before were flat.
On the bank of the river, and near that suffering acre, were Hiram and Pete Dickerson. Henry hurried to them, wondering at the thing he saw upon the bank.
Hiram was already laying out between the celery rows a long hosepipe. This was attached to a good-sized force-pump, the feedpipe of which was in the river. It was a two-man pump and was worked by an up-and-down “brake.”
“Catch hold here, Henry,” laughed Hiram. “One of you on each side now, and pump for all you're worth. And see if I'm not right, my boy. You can't keep your end up with Pete at this job; for if you do, the water won't flow!”
Henry admitted that he had, been badly sold by the joke; but he was enthusiastic in his praise of Hiram's ingenuity, too.
“Aw, say!” said the young farmer, “what do you suppose the Good Lord gave us brains for? Just so as to keep our fingers out of the fire? No, sir! With all this perfectly good and wet water running past my field, could I have the heart to let this celery die? I guess not!”
He had a fine spray nozzle on the pipe and the pipe itself was long enough so that, by moving the pump occasionally, he could water every square foot of the big piece. And the three young fellows, by changing about, went over the field every other day in about four hours without difficulty.
By and by the celery plants got rooted well; they no longer drooped in the morning; before the drouth was past the young farmer had as handsome a field of celery as one would wish. Indeed, when he began to ship the crop, even his earliest crates were rated A-1 by the produce men, and he bad no difficulty in selling the entire crop at the top of the market, right through the season.
The garden paid a profit; the potatoes did even better than the year before, and Hiram harvested and sold seventy-five dollars' worth while the price for new potatoes was high.
He shipped most of his tomatoes this year, for he could not pay attention to the local market as he had the first season; but the tomato crop was a good one.
They raised to eight weeks and sold, during the year, five pair of shoats, and Mrs. Atterson bought a grade cow with her calf by her side, for a hundred dollars, and made ten pounds of butter a week right through the season.
Old Lem Camp, looking ten years younger than when he came to the farm, muscular and brown, did all the work about the barns now, milked the cows, and relieved Hiram of all the chores.
Indeed, with some little help about the plowing and cultivating, Hiram knew very well that Mrs. Atterson and Old Lem could run the farm another year without his help.
Of course, the old lady could not expect to put in any crop that would pay her like the celery; for when they footed up their books, the bottom-land had yielded, as Hiram had once prophesied to Mr. Bronson over four hundred dollars the acre, net.
Twenty-four hundred dollars income from six acres; and the profit was more than fifty per cent. Indeed, Hiram's share of the profit amounted to three hundred and seventy dollars.
With his hundred dollar wage, and the money he had saved the previous season, when the crops were harvested this second season, the young farmer's bank book showed a balance of over five hundred dollars to his credit.
“I'm eighteen years old and over,” soliloquized the young farmer. “And I've got a capital of five hundred dollars. Can't I turn that capital some way go as to give me a bigger—a broader—chance?
“Thus far I've been a one-horse farmer; I want to be something better than that. Now, there's no use in my hanging around here, waiting for something to turn up. I must get a move on me and turn something up for myself.”
During this year Hiram had not seen much of Mr. Bronson, or Lettie. They had gone back to the West over the summer vacation, and when Lettie had returned for her last year at St. Beris, her father had not come on until near Thanksgiving.
Hiram had spoken with Lettie several times during the fail, and he thought that she had vastly improved in one way, at least.
She could not be any prettier, it seemed to him; but her manner was more cordial, and she always asked after Sister and Mrs. Atterson, and showed that her interest in him was not a mere surface interest.
One day, when Hiram had been shipping some of the last of his celery, Lettie met him on the street near the Scoville railroad station. Hiram was in his high boots, and overalls; and Lettie was with two of her girl friends.
But the girl stopped him and shook hands, and told him that her father had arrived and wanted to see him.
“We want you to come to dinner Saturday evening, Hiram. Father insists, and I shall be very much disappointed if you do not come.”
“Why, that's very kind of you, Miss Lettie,” responded the young farmer, slowly, trying to find some good reason for refusing the invitation. He was determined not to be patronized.
“Now, Hiram! This is very important. We want you to meet somebody,” said Lettie, her eyes dancing. “Somebody very particular. Now! do say you'll come like a good boy, and not keep me teasing.”
“Well, I'll come, Miss Lettie,” he finally agreed, and she gave him a most charming smile.
Lettie's two friends had waited for her, very much amused.
“I declare, Let!” cried one of them—and her voice reached Hiram's ears quite plainly. “You do have the queerest friends. Why did you stop to speak to that yokel?”
“Hush! he'll hear you,” said Miss Bronson; yet she smiled, too. “So you think Hiram is a yokel, do you?”
“Hiram!” repeated her friend. “Goodness me! I should think the name was enough. And those boots—and overalls!”
“Well,” said Lettie, still amused, “I've seen my own father in just such a costume. And you know very well that he is a pretty good looking man, dressed up.”
“But Let! your father's never a farmer$” gasped the other girl.
“Why not?”
“Oh, she's just joking us,” laughed the third girl. “Of course he's a farmer—he owns half a dozen farms. But he's the kind of a farmer who rides around in his automobile and looks over his crops.”
“Well, and this young man may do that—in time,” said Lettie. “At least, my father believes Hi is aimed that way.”
“Nonsense!”
“He doesn't look as though he had a cent,” said the third girl.
“He is putting away more money of his very own in the bank than any boy we know, who works. Father says so,” declared Lettie. “He says Hi has done wonderfully well with his crops this year—and he is only raising them on shares.
“Let me tell you, girls, the farmer is coming into his own, these days. That is a great saying of father's. He believes that the man who produces the food-stuffs for the rest of the world should have a satisfactory share of the proceeds of their sale. And that is coming, father says.
“Farmers don't have to half starve, and be burdened by mortgages and ignorance, any longer. The country sections are waking up. With good schools and good roads, and the grange, and all, many rural districts are already ahead of the cities in the things worth while.”
“Listen to Let lecture!” sniffed one of her friends.
“All right. You wait. Maybe you'll see that same young fellow—Hi Strong—come through this town in his own auto before you graduate from St. Beris.”
“Pshaw!” exclaimed the other. “If I do I'll ask him for a ride,” and the discussion ended in a laugh.
Perhaps, however, had Hiram heard all Lettie had said he would not have been so doubtful in regard to fulfilling his promise about taking dinner with Mr. Bronson and his daughter on Saturday evening.
To tell the truth, the more he thought of it, the more he shrank from the ordeal. Once he had hoped Mr. Bronson would be the one to show him the way out of the backwater of Crawberry. Hiram had not forgotten how terribly disappointed he had been when he could not find the gentleman's card in the sewer excavation.
And later, when Mr. Bronson had suggested that he leave Mrs. Atterson and come to him to work, Hiram feared that he had missed an opportunity that would never be offered him again. His contract was practically over with his present employer, and Hiram's ambition urged him to desire greater things in the farming line.
It might be in Mr. Bronson's power to aid the young farmer right along this line. The gentleman owned farms in the Middle West that were being tilled on up-to-date methods, and by modern machinery. Hiram desired very strongly to get upon a place of that character. He wished to learn how to handle tools and machinery which it would never pay a “one-horse farmer” to own. But how deeply had the gentleman been offended by Hiram's refusal to come to work for him when he gave him that opportunity? That was a question that bit deep into the young farmer's mind.
When he went to the Bronson's house on Saturday, in good season, Mr. Bronson met him cordially, in the library.
“Well, my boy, they all tell me you have done it!” exclaimed the Westerner.
“Done what?” queried Hiram.
“Made the most money per acre for Mrs. Atterson that this county ever saw. Is that right?”
“I've succeeded in what I set out to do,” said Hiram, modestly.
“And I did not believe myself that you could do it,” declared the gentleman. “And it's too bad, too, that I was a Doubting Thomas,” added Mr. Bronson, his eyes beginning to dance a good deal like Lettie's.
“You see, Hiram, I had it in my mind when I took this place to get a young men from around here and teach him something of my ways of work, and finally take him back West with me.
“I have several farms that are paying me good incomes; but good farm-managers are hard to get. I wanted to train one—a young man. I ran against a promising lad before you came to the Atterson place; but I lost track of him.
“Had you been willing to leave Mrs. Atterson and come to me,” continued Mr. Bronson, “I believe I could have licked you into shape last season so that you would have suited me very well,” and he laughed outright.
“But now I want you to meet my future farm-manager. He is the very fellow I wanted before I offered the chance to you. I reckon you'll be glad to see him——”
While he was talking, Mr. Bronson had put his hand on Hiram's shoulder, and urged him down the length of the room. They had come to a heavy portiere; Hiram thought it masked a doorway.
“Here is the fellow himself,” exclaimed Bronson suddenly.
The curtain was whisked away. Hiram heard Lettie giggling somewhere in the folds of it. And he found himself staring straight into a long mirror which reflected both himself and the laughing Mr. Bronson.
“Hiram Strong!” spoke the Westerner, admonishingly, “why didn't you tell me long ago that you were the lad who turned my horses out of the ditch that evening back in Crawberry?”
“Why—why——”
“His fatal modesty,” laughed Lettie, appearing and clapping her hands.
“I guess it wasn't that,” said Hiram, slowly. “What was the use? I would have been glad of your assistance at the time; but when I found you I had already made a contract with Mrs. Atterson, and—what was the use?”
“Well, perhaps it would have made no difference. When I had dug up the fact that you were the same fellow whom I had looked for at Dwight's Emporium, it struck me that possibly the character that old scoundrel gave you had some basis in fact.
“So I said nothing to you after you had refused to break your contract. That, Hiram, was a good point in your favor. And what that little girl at your house has told Lettie about you—and the way Mrs. Atterson speaks of you, and all—long since convinced me that you were just the lad I wanted.
“Now, Hiram, I believe you know a good deal about farming that I don't know myself. And, at any rate, if you can do what you have done with a run-down place like the Atterson Eighty, I'd like to see what you can do with a bigger and better farm.
“What do you say? Will you come to me—if only for a year? I'll make it worth your while.”
And that Hiram Strong did not let this opportunity slip past him will be shown in the next volume of this series, entitled: “Hiram in the Middle West; Or, A Young Farmer's Upward Struggle.”
He was sorry to leave Mrs. Atterson at Christmas time; but the old lady saw that it was to Hiram's advantage to go.
“And good land o' Goshen, Hiram! I wouldn't stand in no boy's way—not a boy like you, leastways. You've always been square with me, and you've given me a new lease of life. For I never would have dared to give up the boarding house and come to the farm if it hadn't been for you.
“This is your home—jest as much as it is Sister's home, and Old Lem Camp's. Don't forgit that, Hiram.
“You'll find us all here whenever you want to come back to it. For I've talked with Mr. Strickland and I'm going to adopt Sister, all reg'lar, and she shall have what I leave when I die, only promising to give Mr. Camp a shelter, if he should outlast me.
“Sister's folks may never look her up, and she may never git that money the institution folk think is coming to her. But she'll be well fixed here, that's sure.”
Indeed, taking it all around, everybody of importance to the story seemed to be “well fixed”, as Mother Atterson expressed it. She herself need never be disturbed by the vagaries of boarders, or troubled in her mind, either waking or sleeping, about the gravy—save on Thanksgiving Day.
Old Lem Camp and Sister were provided for by their own exertions and Mrs. Atterson's kindness. The Dickersons—even Pete—had become friendly neighbors. Henry Pollock had waked up his father, and they were running the Pollock farm on much more modern lines than before.
And Hiram himself was looking ahead to a scheme of life that suited him, and to a chance “to make good” on a much larger scale than he had on the Atterson Eighty where, nevertheless, he had made the soil pay.