Courting Miss Hattie (11 page)

"What they're doing now," Reed had told her, eagerness flooding through his voice, "is drilling wells and cutting irrigation canals so they can utilize the acres that don't sit next to a river or stream."

He glanced quickly at Harm for confirmation. Their matching smiles made them look like schoolboys who'd found themselves locked in the candy store. "Do you know what that means, Miss Hattie?" Reed said. "It means we could eventually put most all of this farm into rice, acres and acres of rice."

Hattie tried to imagine it. Acres and acres of rice growing where they now had cotton. It was difficult to believe.

"And with the move toward irrigation and more mechanization," Harm went on, "it means more rice per man-hour. Miss Hattie, it's actually possible to have two, maybe three hundred acres under cultivation without needing fifty men to work it."

"And there's more," Reed said, sliding his chair closer to Hattie as if letting her in on a well-kept secret. "Farmers down there are talking about building their own rice mills. They're saying that the mills in
New Orleans
are a monopoly and that it's possible to build a small mill close to home that can do enough business to make a profit."

"And marketing," Harm added. "The farmers are thinking of doing away with the rice broker and selling their milled rice directly. Using the railroads for shipping is just a task to be learned. You needn't pay someone to do it for you."

Hattie listened in awe and fascination at the exciting new business she had surprisingly found herself a part of. It was exhilarating to be on the ground floor of a commercial venture. "So are we building our own mill?" she asked the two young men.

They stared back at her, dumbfounded. After a moment, Harm looked at Reed as Reed settled back in his chair. He paused to get a grip on the facts of the situation. "It takes money to build a mill, Miss Hattie," he said, trying to hold their collective ambitions within the realm of reality.

"I've got money saved, Reed. You know that."

"I've also got some money," he said. "And I suspect Harm has a bit put by to."

"Not much," the younger man admitted.

Reed continued. "I need mine to buy this land, and you're already risking a good portion of yours, Miss Hattie, with the crop." Smiling at his partners, Reed spoke optimistically, but kept one foot firmly planted in pragmatism. "There's no sense in us getting ahead of ourselves. We won't need a mill unless we can grow a crop."

Harm chuckled, nodding in agreement.

"Of course we can grow a crop," Hattie said, scoffing at the suggestion of failure. "We have two very bright, hardworking young men who are carefully doing their homework. And one very thrifty older woman who is going to be out there every day nagging you both to blue blazes!"

That was exactly how it was, Hattie thought as she watched Reed and the strutting boar approach. She was certain that the rice field would succeed, and she intended to be a part of it.

They were all eager to get started, but Hattie's sow had come fertile. She was not about to miss the extra cash they could make from a litter of shoats that summer. Reed had readily agreed with her, and that morning he'd headed over to
Whimsley's
place to get the young Hampshire boar she wanted to breed back to her sow.

"I thought you were bringing him in the wagon," she called as he neared the yard.

"Miss Hattie, this has got to be the stupidest, most stubborn pig that God ever put on this earth." Reed punctuated this harsh appraisal with a sharp snap of the willow switch on the boar's
foreflank
. He was attempting to turn him into the yard, but the recalcitrant animal was determined to resist his best interest.

Hattie went to Reed's assistance, and the hog was finally persuaded to enter the yard.

"There were five grown men," Reed said, "trying to get that stupid hunk of spoiled sausage into the wagon, and he just refused to go." Reed's temper was so near the surface, Hattie found it amusing. "So I made him walk the entire way. And serves him right, I think," he added, as if he had actually won a battle of wills with the large male swine.

The boar began running up and down the outside of the pigsty fence, slobbering, snapping his jaws, and making strange barking noises.

"He sure is ranting," Hattie said. She had little experience with boars and generally disliked them. They were lazy, difficult, and usually bad-tempered. But unfortunately, they were essential for pig breeding.

Reed shook his head in exasperation. "I swear he smelled that sow two miles up the road."

"Reed!"

"Excuse me, Miss Hattie," he said politely, "but it's the truth. I thought I was going to have to shoot that crazy boar before I got him to understand we were heading in the right direction."

Hattie felt suffused with embarrassment, but she tamped it down for the sake of expediency and practicality. "Well, let's get on with it. Anything to stop that caterwauling."

"Is the sow ready?"

She pointed toward the far end of the pigsty. "I've got her tied up between the other side of the
hoghouse
and the fence."

Reed nodded and, brandishing his willow switch, headed for the boar. "Come on, Romeo, your dreams are about to come true."

"'Romeo'?"

He raised his hands in a helpless gesture. "That's what
Whimsley
calls him." A naughty smile spread across his face. "This is, however, his first opportunity to prove it."

Hattie attempted to maintain a calm expression, but she was unable to control a blush.

Reed saw it and couldn't resist teasing her. "Why don't you go tend to yon Juliet, and we will chaperone the courting couple."

Lifting her chin, Hattie replied in a similarly prim and haughty tone. "The young lady's name is Mabel, and I will thank you to instruct your protégé in the proper decorum of a gentleman."

Reed's laughter followed her as she headed for the love nest she had prepared for Mabel.

Because domesticated boars had been bred so large, the mating of purebred hogs literally required outside support. Hattie had tied Mabel into a corner of the pigsty and surrounded her on three sides with hay bales. With this protective buffer, no matter how boisterous the huge, ungainly boar might become, Mabel would be safe from being tipped over and trampled, a fate that had befallen more than one unlucky sow.

Making the loud, sad love-grunts of a sow in heat, Mabel was a pitiful creature to behold. Hattie stroked her silky black snout and scratched her gently behind the ears. "Now, Mabel, everything is going to be fine," she said. "Reed has brought you a nice young friend, and he's going to give you lots of little piglets."

The racket of the boar making his less than graceful entrance into the
hogpen
captured her attention.

"Dammit, Romeo, get in there!"

Hearing the frustration in Reed's voice, Hattie looked up to see him trying valiantly to lead Romeo in the right direction. "This is the stupidest pig I've ever seen in my life!" he called to Hattie. "Come on, Romeo, she's over this way, you dumb
porkchop
!"

Hattie couldn't help but smile at the clumsy, reluctant lover and his exasperated tutor. "Over here, Romeo," she said. "Your ladylove is this way!"

As if suddenly getting the picture, Romeo made a mad dash toward Mabel. He squealed horrible bass sounds as he sniffed and rooted the ground around her,
then
gave what could only be described as a cry of triumph as he violently mounted the sow.

"No!" Reed yelled, and ran forward.

Mabel squealed wildly and struggled, desperate to get away. Her cries were obviously from pain, and Hattie was frightened at their intensity. "What's wrong?" she asked.

He didn't even look up as he furiously slapped Romeo's back with the willow switch. "Get down! Get down!"

"Reed, what is it?" she shouted over the plaintive wails of the sow.

Looking up at her, he was at a loss for words. His face and neck turned bright red with embarrassment. Without answering, he continued his angry assault on the young boar.

"What is going
on?"
Hattie's voice clearly expressed panic as Mabel's cries continued unabated.

"He's—" Reed hesitated, looking back down at the pigs, "he's got his…
He's not…" Speechless, he turned away from Hattie and continued trying to get the boar's attention.

Frightened for Mabel, Hattie quickly climbed over the fence to see for herself what was amiss. An outraged glance at the entangled swine revealed the problem. In his urgency and inexperience, Romeo had embedded himself deeply into poor Mabel's rectum.

Gasping with shock, Hattie stood immobile for an instant,
then
rushed to the edge of the pigsty where the
yardbroom
was propped against the fence. Grabbing it, she raced back to Mabel's rescue. Raising the broom high over her head, she brought it down with a sharp crack across the shoulders of young Romeo.

Squealing with pain and surprise, the boar retreated momentarily before the need to mate overcame his fear. It was enough. This time he found the proper geography, and Mabel's screams of terror changed, if not to sighs of contentment at least to grunts of appreciation.

Standing near the copulating swine, Hattie took a deep breath. She was almost painfully aware of the indelicacy of what had just occurred and of Reed standing beside her. Deciding that the less said about the incident the better, she turned to him, intending to ask him to watch over Mabel while she attended to other tasks in the house.

She never uttered the words. Reed was obviously not flustered and shamefaced as she was. He was clutching his sides, trying to hold in the hilarity that threatened to burst out of control. Seeing her staring at him wide-eyed, he lost the battle and howled with laughter.

"Stop it!" Hattie told him. "Stop it right now." Still, she couldn't control the smile that curved her own lips.

Laughing so hard he could barely stand, Reed drifted backward until he was leaning against the fence. He bent forward as he struggled for breath.

"Reed! It is not a bit funny," Hattie said, but found
herself
beginning to succumb to unbridled amusement. "That stupid pig could have injured Mabel. He…
Well, he…
Oh, Reed, shut up!" Her face as red as a tomato in summertime, Hattie fought in vain against the irresistible impulse to laugh. After a moment, the sound of her warm throaty giggles brightened the barnyard.

Every time she almost had control of herself, she would look at Reed and begin again. Staggering to the fence, she, too, braced herself against the wood slats, her ability to stand now dangerously in question.

It was only natural that when Reed opened his arms, she stepped into his embrace, and they held each other as they laughed. Trying to restore order time and time again, Hattie would take a deep breath and struggle for control, only to have Reed say one word—"Romeo," "stupid," or "
yardbroom
"—and the hysterical laughter would begin again.

Finally, as their laughter dissolved to giddy smiles, Hattie became aware of her arms on Reed's shoulders and his hands clasped at the small of her back.

Reed also noticed their position. As he gazed down into her laughing eyes, an unexpected feeling of rightness and contentment swept through him.

Hattie, now aware of the inappropriateness of their embrace, shrugged slightly to loose herself. To her surprise, Reed pulled her tightly against him. He released her immediately, but her eyes widened in shock. Had Reed hugged her? Glancing at his face, she couldn't read his expression at all. Surely not, she told herself. She had imagined it.

Of course, she must have imagined it. But was she imagining the zing of fire that now surged through her veins?

 
CHAPTER
 
7