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.