CHAPTER XXI. THE WELCOME TEMPEST
To some youths this matter of the option would have been such a clog that they would have lost interest and slighted the work. But not so with Hiram Strong.
He counted this day a lost one, however; he hated to leave the farm for a minute when there was so much to do.
But the next morning he got the plow into the four-acre corn lot; and he did nothing but the chores that week until the ground was entirely plowed. Then Henry Pollock came over and gave him another day's work and they finished grubbing the lowland.
The rubbish was piled in great heaps down there, ready for burning. As long as the rain held off, Hiram did not put fire to the bush-heaps.
But early in the following week the clouds began to gather in a quarter for rain, and late in the afternoon, when the air was still, he took a can of coal oil, and with Sister and Mr. Camp, and even Mrs. Atterson, at his heels, went down to the riverside to burn the brush heaps.
“There's not much danger of the fire spreading to the woods; but if it should,” Hiram said, warningly, “it might, at this time of year, do your timber a couple of hundred dollars' worth of damage.”
“Goodness me!” exclaimed Mother Atterson. “It does seem ridiculous to hear you talk that a-way. I never owned nothin' but a little bit of furniture before, and I expected the boarders to tear that all to pieces. I'm beginning to feel all puffed up and wealthy.”
Hiram cut them all green pineboughs for beaters, and then set the fires, one after another. There were more than twenty of the great piles and soon the river bottom, from bend to bend, was filled with rolling clouds of smoke. As the dusk dropped, the yellow glare of the fire illuminated the scene.
Sister clapped her hands and cried:
“Ain't this bully? It beats the Fourth of July celebration in Crawberry. Oh, I'd rather be on the farm than go to heaven!”
They had brought their supper with them, and leaving the others to watch the fires, and see that the grass did not tempt the flames to the edge of the wood, Hiram cast bait into the river and, in an hour, drew out enough mullet and “bull-heads” to satisfy them all, when they were broiled over the hot coals of the first bonfire to be lighted.
They ate with much enjoyment. Between nine and ten o'clock the fires had all burned down to coals.
A circle of burned-over grass and rubbish surrounded each fire. There seemed no possibility that the flames could spread to the mat of dry leaves on the side hill.
So they went home, a lantern guiding their feet over the rough path through the timber, stopping at the spring for a long, thirst-quenching draught.
The sky was as black as ink. Now and again a faint flash in the westward proclaimed a tempest in that direction. But not a breath of wind was stirring, and the rain might not reach this section.
A dull red glow was reflected on the clouds over the river-bottom. When Hiram looked from his window, just as he was ready for bed, that glow seemed to have increased.
“Strange,” he muttered. “It can't be that those fires have spread. There was no chance for them to spread. I—don't—understand it!”
He sat at the window and stared out through the darkness. There was little wind as yet; it was a fact, however, that the firelight flickered on the low-hung clouds with increasing radiance.
“Am I mad?” demanded the young farmer, suddenly leaping up and drawing on his garments again. “That fire is spreading.”
He dressed fully, and ran softly down the stairs and left the house. When he came out in the clear the glow had not receded. There was a fire down the hillside, and it seemed increasing every moment.
He remembered the enemy in the dark, and without stopping to rouse the household, ran on toward the woods, his heart beating heavily in his bosom.
Slipping, falling at times, panting heavily because of the rough ground, Hiram came at last through the more open timber to the brink of that steep descent, at the bottom of which lay the smoky river-bottom.
And indeed, the whole of the lowland seemed filled with stifling clouds of smoke. Yet, from a dozen places along the foot of the hill, yellow flames were starting up, kindling higher, and devouring as fast as might be the leaves and tinder left from the wrack of winter.
The nearest bonfire had been a hundred yards from the foot of this hill. His care, Hiram knew, had left no chance of the dull coals in any of the twenty heaps spreading to the verge of the grove.
Man's hand had done this. An enemy, waiting and watching until they had left the field, had stolen down, gathered burning brands, and spread them along the bottom of the hill, where the increasing wind might scatter the fire until the whole grove was in a blaze.
Not only was Mrs. Atterson's timber in danger, but Darrell's tract and that lying beyond would be overwhelmed by the flames if they were allowed to spread.
On the other side, Dickerson had cut his timber a year or two before, clear to the river. The fire would not burn far over his line. Whoever had done this dastardly act, Dickerson's property would not be damaged.
But Hiram lent no time to trouble. His work was cut out for him right here and now—and well he knew it!
He had brought the small axe with him, having caught it up from the doorstep. Now he used it to cut a green bough, and then ran with the latter down the hill and set upon the fire-line like a madman.
The smoke, spread here and there by puffs of rising wind, half choked him. It stung his eyes until they distilled water enough to blind him. He thrashed and fought in the fumes and the murk of it, stumbling and slipping, one moment half-knee deep in quick-springing flames, the next almost overpowered by the smudge that rose from the beaten mat of leaves and rubbish.
It was a lone fight. He had to do it all. There had been no time to rouse either the neighbors, or the rest of the family.
If he did not overcome these flames—and well he knew it—Mother Atterson would arise in the morning to see all her goodly timber scorched, perhaps ruined!
“I must beat it out—beat it out!” thought Hiram, and the repetition of the words thrummed an accompaniment upon the drums of his ears as he thrashed away with a madman's strength.
For no sane person would have tackled such a hopeless task. Before him the flames suddenly leaped six feet or more into the air. They overtopped him as they writhed through a clump of green-briars. The wind puffed the flame toward him, and his face was scorched by the heat.
He lost his eyebrows completely, and the hair was crisped along the front brim of his hat.
Then with a laughing crackle, as though scorning his weakness, the flames ran up a climbing vine and the next moment wrapped a tall pine in lurid yellow.
This pine, like a huge torch, began to give off a thick, black smoke. Would some wakeful neighboring farmer, seeing it, know the danger that menaced and come to Hiram's help?
For yards he had beaten flat the flames and stamped out every spark. Behind him was naught but rolling smoke. It was dark there. No flames were eating up the slope.
But toward Darrell's tract the fire seemed on the increase. He could not catch up with it. And this solitary, sentinel pine, ablaze now in all its head, threatened to fling sparks for a hundred yards.
If the wind continued to rise, the forest was doomed!
His green branch had burned to a crisp. He had lost his axe in the darkness and the smoke, and now he tore another bough, by main strength, from its parent stem.
Hiram Strong worked as though inspired; but to no purpose in the end. For the flames increased. Puff after puff of wind drove the fire on, scattering brands from the blazing pine; and now another, and another, tree caught. The glare of the conflagration increased.
He flung down the useless bough. Fire was all about him. He had to leap suddenly to one side to escape a burst of flame that had caught in a jungle of green-briars.
Then, of a sudden, a crash of thunder rolled and reverberated through the glen. Lightning for an instant lit up the meadows and the river. The glare of it almost blinded the young farmer and, out of the line of fire, he sank to the earth and covered his eyes, seared by the sudden, compelling light.
Again and again the thunder rolled, following the javelins of lightning that seemed to dart from the clouds to the earth. The tempest, so long muttering in the West, had come upon him unexpectedly, for he had given all his attention to the spreading fire.
And now came the rain—no refreshing, sweet, saturating shower; but a thunderous, blinding fall of water that first set the burning woods to steaming and then drowned out every spark of fire on upland as well as lowland.
It was a cloudburst—a downpour such as Hiram had seldom experienced before. Exhausted, he lay on the bank and let the pelting rain soak him to the skin.
He did not care. Half drowned by the beating rain, he only crowed his delight at the downpour. Every spark of fire was flooded out. The danger was past.
He finally arose, and staggered through the downpour to the house, only happy that—by a merciful interposition of Providence—the peril had been overcome.
He tore off his clothing on the stoop, there in the pitch darkness, and crept up to his bedroom where he rubbed himself down with a crash-towel, and finally tumbled into bed and slept like a log till broad daylight.
CHAPTER XXII. FIRST FRUITS
For the first time since they had come to the farm, Hiram was the last to get up in the house. And when he came down to breakfast, still trembling from the exertion of the previous night, Mrs. Atterson screamed at the sight of him.
“For the good Land o' Goshen!” she cried. “You look like a singed chicken, Hiram Strong! Whatever have you been doing to yourself?”
He told them of the fight he had had while they slept. But he could talk about it jokingly now, although Sister was inclined to snivel a little over his danger.
“That Dickerson boy ought to be lashed—Nine and thirty lashes—none too much—This sausage is good—humph!—and pancakes—fit for the gods—But he'll come back—do more damage—the butter, yes I I want butter—and syrup, though two spreads is reckless extravagance—Eh? eh? can't prove anything against that Dickerson lout?-well, mebbe not.”
So Old Lem Camp commented upon the affair. But Hiram could not prove that the neighbor's boy had done any of these things which pointed to a malicious enemy.
The young farmer began to wonder if he could not lay a trap, and so bring about his undoing.
As soon as the ground was in fit condition again (for the nights rain had been heavy) Hiram scattered the lime he had planned to use upon the four acres of land plowed for corn, and dragged it in with a spike-toothed harrow.
Working as he was with one horse alone, this took considerable time, and when this corn land was ready, it was time for him to go through the garden piece again with the horse cultivator.
Sister and Lem Camp, both, had learned to use the man-weight wheel-hoe, and the fine stuff was thinned and the weeds well cut out. From time to time the young farmer had planted peas—both the dwarf and taller varieties—and now he risked putting in some early beans—“snap” and bush limas—and his first planting of sweet corn.
Of the latter he put in four rows across the garden, each, of sixty-five day, seventy-five day, and ninety day sugar corn—all of well-known kinds. He planned later to put in, every fortnight, four rows of a mid-length season corn, so as to have green corn for sale, and for the house, up to frost.
The potatoes were growing finely and he hilled them up for the first time. He marked his four-acre lot for field corn—cross-checking it three-feet, ten inches apart. This made twenty-seven hundred and fifty hills to the acre, and with the hand-planter—an ingenious but cheap machine—he dropped two and three kernels to the hill.
This upland, save where he had spread coarse stable manure, was not rich. Upon each corn-hill he had Sister throw half a handful of fertilizer. She followed him as he used the planter, and they planted and fertilized the entire four acres in less than two days.
The lime he had put into the land would release such fertility as remained dormant there; but Hiram did not expect a big crop of corn on that piece. If he made two good ears to the hill he would be satisfied.
He had knocked together a rough cold-frame, on the sunny side of the woodshed, to fit some old sash he had found in the barn. Into the rich earth sifted to make the bed in this frame, he transplanted tomato, egg-plant, pepper and other plants of a delicate nature. Early cabbage and cauliflower had already gone into the garden plot, and in the midst of an early and saturating rain, all day long, he had transplanted table-beets into the rows he had marked out for them.
This variety of vegetables were now all growing finely. He sold nearly six dollars' worth of radishes in town, and these radishes he showed Mrs. Atterson were really “clear profit.” They had all been pulled from the rows of carrots and other small seeds.
There were several heavy rains after the tempest which had been so Providential; the ground was well saturated, and the river had risen until it roared between its banks in a voice that could be heard, on a still day, at the house.
The rains started the vegetation growing by leaps and bounds; weeds always increase faster than any other growing thing.
There was plenty for Hiram to do in the garden, and he kept Sister and Old Lem Camp busy, too. They were at it from the first faint streak of light in the morning until dark.
But they were well—and happy. Mother Atterson, her heart troubled by thought of “that Pepper-man,” could not always repress her smiles. If the danger of losing the farm were past, she would have had nothing in the world to trouble her.
The hundred eggs she had purchased for five dollars had proven more than sixty per cent fertile. Some advice that Hiram had given her enabled Mrs. Atterson to handle the chickens so that the loss from disease was very small.
He knocked together for her a couple of pens, eight feet square, which could be moved about on the grass every day. In these pens the seventy, or more, chicks thrived immensely. And Sister was devoted to them.
Meanwhile the old white-faced cow, that had been a terror to Mother Atterson at the start, had found her calf, and it was a heifer.
“Take my advice and raise it,” said Hiram. “She is a scrub, but she is a pretty good scrub. You'll see that she will give a good measure of milk. And what this farm needs is cattle.
“If you could make stable manure enough to cover the cleared acres a foot deep, you could raise almost any crop you might name—and make money by it. The land is impoverished by the use of commercial fertilizers, unbalanced by humus.”
“Well, I guess You know, Hiram,” admitted Mrs. Atterson. “And that calf certainly is a pretty creeter. It would be too bad to turn it into veal.”
Hiram did not intend to raise the calf expensively, however. He took it away from its mother right at the start, and in two weeks it was eating grass, and guzzling skimmed milk and calf-meal, while the old cow was beginning to show her employer her value.
Mrs. Atterson bought a small churn and quickly learned that “slight” at butter-making which is absolutely essential if one would succeed in the dairy business.
The cow turned out to pasture early in May, too; so her keep was not so heavy a burden. She lowed some after the calf; but the latter was growing finely under Hiram's care, and Mrs. Atterson had at least two pounds of butter for sale each week, and the housekeeper at the St. Beris school paid her thirty-five cents a pound for it.
Hiram gradually picked up a retail route in the town, which customers paid more for the surplus vegetables—and butter—than could be obtained at the stores. He had taught Sister how to drive, and sometimes even Mrs. Atterson went in with the vegetables.
This relieved the young farmer and allowed him to work in the fields. And during these warm, growing May days, he found plenty to do. Just as the field corn pushed through the ground he went into the lot with his 14-tooth harrow and broke up the crust and so killed the ever-springing weeds.
With the spikes on the harrow “set back,” no corn-plants were dragged out of the ground. This first harrowing, too, mixed the fertilizer with the soil, and gave the corn the start it so sadly needed.
Busy as bees, the four transplanted people at the Atterson farmhouse accomplished a great deal during these first weeks of the warming season. And all four of them—Mrs. Atterson, Sister, Old Lem, and Hiram himself—enjoyed the work to the full.
CHAPTER XXIII. TOMATOES AND TROUBLE
Hiram Strong had decided that the market prospects of Scoville prophesied a good price for early tomatoes. He advised, therefore, a good sized patch of this vegetable.
He had planted in the window boxes seed of several different varieties. He had transplanted to the coldframe strong plants numbering nearly five hundred. He believed that, under garden cultivation, a tomato plant that would not yield fifty cents worth of fruit was not worth bothering with, while a dollar from a single plant was not beyond the bounds of probability.
It was safe, Hiram very well knew, to set out tomato plants in this locality much before the middle of May; yet he was willing to take some risks, and go to some trouble, for the sake of getting early ripened tomatoes into the Scoville market.
As Henry Pollock had prophesied, Hiram did not see much of his friend during corn-planting time. The Pollocks put nearly fifty acres in corn, and the whole family helped in the work, including Mrs. Pollock herself, and down to the child next to the baby. This little toddler amused his younger brother, and brought water to the field for the workers.
Other families in the neighborhood did the same, Hiram noticed. They all strained every effort to put in corn, cultivating as big a crop as they possibly could handle.
This was why locally grown vegetables were scarce in Scoville. And the young farmer proposed to take advantage of this condition of affairs to the best of his ability.
If they were only to remain here on the farm long enough to handle this one crop, Hiram determined to make that crop pay his employer as well as possible, although he, himself, had no share in such profit.
Henry Pollock, however, came along while Hiram was making ready his plat in the garden for tomatoes. The young farmer was setting several rows of two-inch thick stakes across the garden, sixteen feet apart in the row, the rows four feet apart. The stakes themselves were about four feet out of the ground.
“What ye doin' there, Hiram?” asked Henry, curiously. “Building a fence?”
“Not exactly.”
“Ain't goin' to have a chicken run out here in the garden, be ye?”
“I should hope not! The chickens on this place will never mix with the garden trucks, if I have any say about it,” declared Hiram, laughing.
“By Jo!” exclaimed Henry. “Dad says Maw's dratted hens eat up a couple hundred dollars' worth of corn and clover every year for him-runnin' loose as they do.”
“Why doesn't he build your mother proper runs, then, plant green stuff in several yards, and change the flock over, from yard to yard?” “Oh, hens won't do well shut up; Maw says so,” said Henry, repeating the lazy farmer's unfounded declaration-probably originated ages ago, when poultry was first domesticated.
“I'll show you, next year, if we are around here,” said Hiram, “whether poultry will do well enclosed in yards.”
“I told mother you didn't let your chickens run free, and had no hens with them,” said Henry, thoughtfully.
“No. I do not believe in letting anything on a farm get into lazy habits. A hen is primarily intended to lay eggs. I send them back to work when they have hatched out their brood.
“Those home-made brooders of ours keep the chicks quite as warm, and never peck the little fellows, or step upon them, as the old hen often does.”
“That's right, I allow,” admitted Henry, grinning broadly.
“And some hens will traipse chicks through the grass and weeds as far as turkeys. No, sir! Send the hens back to business, and let the chicks shift for themselves. They'll do better.”
“Them there in the pens certainly do look healthy,” said his friend. “But you ain't said what you was doin' here, Hiram, setting these stakes?”
“Why, I'll tell you,” returned Hiram. “This is my tomato patch.”
“By Jo!” ejaculated Henry. “You don't want to set tomatoes so fur apart, do you?”
“No, no,” laughed Hiram. “The posts are to string wires on. The tomatoes will be two feet apart in the row. As they grow I tie them to the wires, and so keep the fruit off the ground.
“The tomato ripens better and more evenly, and the fruit will come earlier, especially if I pinch back the ends of the vine from time to time, and remove some of the side branches.”
“We don't do all that to raise a tomato crop. And we'll put in five acres for the cannery this year, as usual,” said Henry, with some scorn.
“We run the rows out four feet apart, like you do, throwing up a list, in fact. Then father goes ahead with a stick, making a hole for the plant every three feet, so't they'll be check-rowed and we can cultivate them both ways—and we all set the plants.
“We never hand-hoe 'em—it don't pay. The cannery isn't giving but fifteen cents a basket this year—and it's got to be a full five-eighths basket, too, for they weigh 'em.”
Hiram looked at him with a quizzical smile.
“So you set about thirty-six hundred and forty plants to the acre?” he said.
“I reckon so.”
“And you'll have five acres of tomatoes?”
“Yep. So Dad says. He has contracted for that many. But our plants don't begin to be big enough to set out yet. We have to keep 'em covered nights.”
“And I expect to have about five hundred plants in this patch,” said Hiram, smiling. “I tell you what, Henry.”
“Huh?” said the other boy. “I bet I take in from my patch—net income, I mean—this year as much as your father gets at the cannery for his whole crop.”
“Nonsense!” cried Henry. “Maybe Dad'll make a hundred, or a hundred and twenty-five dollars. Sometimes tomatoes run as high as thirty dollars an acre around here.”
“Wait and see,” said Hiram, laughing. “It is going to cost me more to raise my crop, and market it, that's true. But if your father doesn't do better with his five acres than you say, I'll beat him.”
“You can't do it, Hiram,” cried Henry. “I can try, anyway,” said Hiram, more quietly, but with confidence. “We'll see.”
“And say,” Henry added, suddenly, “I was going to tell you something. You won't raise these tomatoes—nor no other crop—if Pete Dickerson can stop ye.”
“What's the matter with Pete now?” asked Hiram, troubled by thought of the secret enemy who had already struck at him in the dark.
“He was blowing about what he'd do to you down at the crossroads last evening,” said Henry. “He and his father both hate you like poison, I expect.
“And the fellers down to Cale Schell's are always stirrin' up trouble. They think it is sport. Why, Pete got so mad last night he could ha' chewed tacks!”
“I have said nothing about Pete to anybody,” said Hiram, firmly.
“That don't matter. They say you have. They tell Pete a whole lot of stuff just to see him git riled.
“And last night he slopped over. He said if you reported around that he put fire to Mis' Atterson's woods, he'd put it to the house and barns! Oh, he was wild.”
Hiram's face flushed, and then paled.
“Did Pete try to bum the woods, Hiram?” queried Henry, shrewdly.
“I never even said I thought so to you, have I?” asked the young farmer, sternly.
“Nope. I only heard that fire got into the woods by accident, when I was in town. Somebody was hunting through there for coon, and saw the burned-over place. That's all the fellers at Cale's place knew, too, I reckon; but they jest put it up to Pete to mad him.”
“And they succeeded, did they?” said Hiram, sternly.
“I reckon.”
“Loose-mouthed people make more trouble in a community than downright mean ones,” declared Hiram. “If I have any serious trouble with the Dickersons, like enough it will be because of the interference of the other neighbors.”
“But,” said Henry, preparing to go on, “Pete wouldn't dare fire your stable now—after sayin' he'd do it. He ain't quite so big a fool as all that.”
But Hiram was not so sure. He had this additional trouble on his mind from this very hour, though he never said a word to Mrs. Atterson about it.
But every night before he went to bed be made around of the outbuildings to make sure that everything was right before he slept.
CHAPTER XXIV. “CORN THAT'S CORN”
Hiram caught sight of Pepper in town one day and went after him. He knew the real estate man had returned from his business trip, and the fact that the matter of the option was hanging fire, and troubling Mrs. Atterson exceedingly, urged Hiram go counter to Mr. Strickland's advice.
The lawyer had said: “Let sleeping dogs lie.” Pepper had made no move, however, and the uncertainty was very trying both for the young farmer and his employer.
“How about that option you talked about, Mr. Pepper?” asked the “youth. Are you going to exercise it?”
“I've got time enough, ain't I?” returned the real estate man, eyeing Hiram in his very slyest way.
“I expect you have—if it really runs a year.”
“You seen it, didn't you?” demanded Pepper.
“But we'd like Mr. Strickland to see it.”
“He's goin' to act for Mrs. Atterson?” queried the man, with a scowl.
“Oh, yes.”
“Well, he'll see it-when I'm ready to take it up. Don't you fret,” retorted Pepper, and turned away.
This did not encourage the young farmer, nor was there anything in the man's manner to yield hope to Mrs. Atterson that she could feel secure in her title to the farm. So Hiram said nothing to her about meeting the man.
But the youth was very much puzzled. It really did seem as though Pepper was afraid to show that paper to Mr. Strickland.
“There's something queer about it, I believe,” declared the youth to himself. “Somewhere there is a trick. He's afraid of being tripped up on it. But, why does he wait, if he knows the railroad is going to demand a strip of the farm and he can get a good price for it?
“Perhaps he is waiting to make sure that the railroad will condemn a piece of Mrs. Atterson's farm. If the board should change the route again, Pepper would have a farm on his hands that he might not be able to sell immediately at a profit.
“For we must confess, that sixteen hundred dollars, as farms have sold in the past around here, is a good price for the Atterson place. That's why Uncle Jeptha was willing to give an option for a month—if that was, in the beginning, the understanding the old man had of his agreement with Pepper.
“However, we might as well go ahead with the work, and take what comes to us in the end. I know no other way to do,” quoth Hiram, with a sigh.
For he could not be very cheerful with the prospect of making only a single crop on the place. His profit was to have come out of the second year's crop—and, he felt, out of that bottom land which had so charmed him on the day he and Henry Pollock had gone over the Atterson Place.
Riches lay buried in that six acres of bottom. Hiram had read up on onion culture, and he believed that, if he planted his seed in hot beds, and transplanted the young onions to the rich soil in this bottom, he could raise fully as large onions as they did in either Texas or the Bermudas.
“Of course, they have the advantage of a longer season down there,” thought Hiram, “and cheap labor. But maybe I can get cheap labor right around here. The children of these farmers are used to working in the fields. I ought to be able to get help pretty cheap.
“And when it comes to the market—why, I've got the Texas growers, at least, skinned a little! I can reach either the Philadelphia or New York market in a day. Yes; given the right conditions, onions ought to pay big down there on that lowland.”
But this was not the only crop possibility be turned over in his mind. There were other vegetables that would grow luxuriantly on that bottom land—providing, always, the flood did not come and fulfill Henry Pollock's prophecy.
“Two feet of water on that meadow, eh?” thought Hiram. “Well, that certainly would be bad. I wouldn't want that to happen after the ground was plowed this year, even. It would tear up the land, and sour it, and spoil it for a corn-crop, indeed.”
So he was down a good deal to the river's edge, watching the ebb and flow of the stream. A heavy rain would, over night, fill the river to its very brim and the open field, even beyond the marshy spot, would be a-slop with standing water.
“It sure wouldn't grow alfalfa,” chuckled Hiram to himself one day. “For the water rises here a good deal closer to the surface than four feet, and alfalfa farmers declare that if the springs rise that high, there is no use in putting in alfalfa. Why! I reckon just now the water is within four inches of the top of the ground.”
If the river remained so high, and the low ground so saturated with water, he knew, too, that he could not get the six acres plowed in time to put in corn this year. And it was this year's crop he must think about first.
Even if Pepper did not exercise his option, and turn Mrs. Atterson out of the place, a big commercial crop of onions, or any other better-paying crop, could only be tried the second year.
Hiram had got his seed corn for the upland piece of the man who raised the best corn in the community. He had tried the fertility of each ear, discarded those which proved weakly, or infertile, and his stand of corn for the four acres, which was now half hand high, was the best of any farmer between the Atterson place and town.
But this corn was a hundred-and-ten-day variety. The farmer he got it of told him that he had raised a crop from a piece planted the day before the Fourth of July; but it was safer to get it in at least by June fifteenth.
And here it was past June first, and the meadow land had not yet been plowed.
“However,” Hiram said to Henry, when they walked down to the riverside on Sunday afternoon, “I'm going ahead on Faith—just as the minister said in church this morning. If Faith can move mountains, we'll give it a chance to move something right down here.”
“I dunno, Hiram,” returned the other boy, shaking his head. “Father says he'll git in here for you with three head and a Number 3 plow by the middle of this week if you say so—'nless it rains again, of course. But he's afeared you're goin' to waste Mrs. Atterson's money for her.”
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” quoted Hiram, grimly. “If a farmer didn't take chances every year, the whole world would starve to death!”
“Well,” returned Henry, smiling too, “let the other fellow take the chances—that's dad's motter.”
“Yes. And the 'chancey' fellow skims the cream of things every time. No, sir!” declared the young fellow, “I'm going to be among the cream-skimmers, or I won't be a farmer at all.”
So the plow was put into the bottom-land Wednesday—and put in deep. By Friday night the whole piece was plowed and partly harrowed.
Hiram had drawn lime for this bottom-land, proposing to use beside only a small amount of fertilizer. He spread this lime from his one-horse wagon, while Henry drag-harrowed behind him, and by Saturday noon the job was done.
The horses had not mired at all, much to Mr. Pollock's surprise. And the plow had bit deep. All the heavy sod of the piece was covered well, and the seed bed was fairly level—for corn.
Although the Pollocks did not work on Saturday afternoon, Hiram did not feel as though he could stop at this time. Most of the farmers had already planted their last piece of corn. Monday would be the fifteenth of the month.
So the young farmer got his home-made corn-row marker down to the river-bottom and began marking the piece that afternoon.
This marker ran out three rows at each trip across the field, and with a white stake at either end, the youth managed to run his rows very straight. He had a good eye.
In this case he did not check-row his field. The land was rich—phenomenally rich, he believed. If he was going to have a crop of corn here, he wanted a crop worth while.
On the uplands the farmers were satisfied with from thirty to fifty baskets of ear-corn to the acre. If this lowland was what he believed it was, Hiram was sure it would make twice that.
And at that his corn crop here would only average twenty-five dollars to the acre—not a phenomenal profit for Mrs. Atterson in that.
But the land would be getting into shape for a better crop, and although corn is a crop that will soon impoverish ground, if planted year after year on the same piece, Hiram knew that the humus in this soil on the lowland was almost inexhaustible.
So he marked his rows the long way of the field—running with the river.
One of the implements left by Uncle Jeptha had been a one-horse corn-planter with a fertilizer attachment. Hiram used this, dropping two or three grains twenty-four inches apart, and setting the fertilizer attachment to one hundred and fifty pounds to the acre.
He was until the next Wednesday night planting the piece. Meanwhile it had not rained, and the river continued to recede. It was now almost as low as it had been the day Lettie Bronson's boating party had been “wrecked” under the big sycamore.
Hiram had not seen the Bronsons for some weeks, but about the time he got his late corn planted, Mr. Bronson drove into the Atterson yard, and found Hiram cultivating his first corn with the five-tooth cultivator.
“Well, well, Hiram!” exclaimed the Westerner, looking with a broad smile over the field. “That's as pretty a field of corn as I ever saw. I don't believe there is a hill missing.”
“Only a few on the far edge, where the moles have been at work.”
“Moles don't eat corn, Hiram.”
“So they say,” returned the young farmer, quietly. “I never could make up my mind about it.
“I'm sure, however, that if they are only after slugs and worms which are drawn to the corn hills by the commercial fertilizer, the moles do fully as much damage as the slugs would.
“You see, they make a cavity under the corn hill, and the roots of the plant wither. Excuse me, but I'd rather have Mr. Mole in somebody else's garden.”
Mr. Bronson laughed. “Well, what the little gray fellows eat won't kill us. But they do spoil otherwise handsome rows. How did you get such a good stand of corn, Hiram?”
“I tested the seed in a seed box early in the spring. I wouldn't plant corn any other way. Aside from the hills the moles have spoiled, and a few an old crow pulled up, I've got no re-planting to do.
“And replanted hills are always behind the crop, and seldom make anything but fodder. If it wasn't for the look of the field, I'd never re-plant a hill of corn.
“Of course, I've got to thin this—two grains in the hill is enough on this land.”
Mr. Bronson looked at him with growing surprise.
“Why, my boy, you talk just as though you had tilled the ground for a score of years. Who taught you so much about farming?”
“One of the best farmers who ever lived,” said Hiram, with a smile. “My father. And he taught me to go to the correct sources for information, too.”
“I believe you!” exclaimed Mr. Bronson. “And you're going to have 'corn that's corn', as we say in my part of the country, on this piece of land.”
“Wait!” said Hiram, smiling and shaking his head.
“Wait for what?”
“Wait till you see the corn on my bottom-land—if the river down there doesn't drown it out. If we don't have too much rain, I'm going to have corn on that river-bottom that will beat anything in this county, Mr. Bronson.”
And the young farmer spoke with assurance.