Dry Divide (10 page)

“It might,” he told me after a minute's thinking. “It just about might go twenty. The rest we've cut wouldn't make it.”

That gave me the opening I needed. I looked down the table to Mrs. Hudson, and told her, “That doesn't mean that the crop will average out to less than twenty bushels. You see, we've been jumping around over both sections, harvesting the forties that were most apt to shatter. What we've cut so far was the driest and thinnest on the ground, so it will yield the least. I'm afraid some of it will go as little as twelve bushels to the acre. What do you think, Doc?”

“Might be,” he told Mrs. Hudson, “but that's behind us now. I don't believe there's much left that won't run eighteen. Most of it looks to me like it would make the low twenties, some as much as twenty-five, and there are a few spots that will go as high as forty. Ought to average out a good full twenty.”

Mrs. Hudson forgot her discomfort as soon as we began talking about the crop. “I'll bet I know some of them places that will run forty bushel,” she told us. “There was patches on both these sections last year that was good enough to pay out for harvesting and thrashing, but the tenant figured that by the time he'd split with the owner he'd come out the loser, so he left it all stand. There was places I seen the seed laying thick on the ground when I disk . . .”

She cut off in the middle of the word, evidently not wanting us to know she'd done a good deal of the disking, so I asked “What type of wheat is this?”

“Turkey red,” she told me. “Dark, hard Turkey red. The best there is. The owner furnished the seed for the tenant before us paid a premium for it, over to the Oberlin Co-op.”

I managed to get Lars and Gus into the conversation a bit by asking them what kind of wheat was grown in Minnesota, when harvest time would begin there, and whether they used binders or headers. Even the children lost most of their uneasiness as soon the conversation began rolling. Their table manners weren't the best, and they often used fingers for forks, but once they got started they stowed the grub away in good shape, and Judy mothered them like a hen with a brood of chickens. “Them peas are a'most as good as if they come right out of a garden. Try some of 'em Marthy, you'll like 'em,” or “Leave me cut that side meat for you, Sally. That old knife you've got is about as sharp on one end as it is on the other.”

Before the meal was over I'd got Jaikus to tell us one of his stories about the old sod, and Old Bill to tell us how a man went about training a trotting horse for the race track. I could see that the older girls were listening to every word, but neither of them had ever looked toward our end of the table. I wanted to break the ice for them, but couldn't think how to do it until Old Bill told about training trotting horses. Every noon I'd been whittling away at my little wooden horse as we rested after dinner, and I'd finished it the previous noon. As soon as Bill had completed his story, I looked down the table, and asked, “Do you like horses, Marthy?”

She jumped as if I'd hurt her when I spoke her name, and Judy had to remind her that my question called for an answer. Still more than half frightened, Martha peeked at me, and said, “Not . . . not if they're ornery ones . . . that will tromp people.”

“I've got one that will never tromp anybody,” I told her, “because she can never get her feet off the ground. Her name is Fanny, and I used to ride her when I was about as old as you are, but she's only that tall.” I held my fingers out to show about six inches, and asked, “Would you like to have her?”

The other fellows had seen me whittling, so they knew what I was talking about, but Judy, her sister, and the children looked as puzzled as if they thought I'd suddenly gone out of my mind. I let them puzzle a few seconds, and then told Martha, “You won't be able to ride her, because she's whittled out of a stick of wood, but you might be able to make a harness for her with some string. Would you like to have her?”

Martha thought it over for a few seconds, peeked up again, and asked, “What would she cost? I got three pennies.”

“All right,” I told her. “You get me the three pennies and I'll go get old Fanny for you. That's just about what my old Fanny was worth, but I never had another horse I liked so much.”

When I brought the little carving back from the barn the men were sitting in the shade beside the house and the children were clustered just inside the kitchen doorway. Judy and her sister had been clearing the table, but stopped to come and see what I'd brought. Martha forgot all about being afraid of me when she saw the little wooden horse. She almost danced a jig as she held her three pennies out, took the little piece in both hands, looked into its face, and rubbed its smooth back against one cheek.

Judy and her sister looked almost as excited as the children, and Judy asked in an awed voice, “Where'd you get her, Bud? How come you to bring her with you?”

“I didn't,” I told her. “I whittled her out of an old chunk of two-by-six I found in the barn. I've whittled them ever since I was Marthy's age. When I get hold of a good piece of hardwood I'm going to carve one of a two-year-old gelding that's out in the pasture.”

“That's Kitten's last colt,” Mrs. Hudson told me, “and he's so ornery that even Myron couldn't do nothing with him. It's a pity he wasn't out of Vixen. He'd sure have made a fine colt, and not the killer kind neither.”

Judy had already told me which of the horses were Kitten's colts, and which were Vixen's. Those from Vixen were larger, and inclined to slow down toward the end of a hard day. But those from Kitten never seemed to tire, never slowed down, and though they were manageable under careful handling, they never lost one spark of their fire. We'd been working the smallest pair of them full days on the header, because they were still too wild for barge use, and they were thriving on it. There would have been no sense in telling Mrs. Hudson that everything I liked in them had come straight from Kitten, so I just said, “Well, it's time we were getting back to work. Can I count on you to do the cooking for us, so we can have Judy full time in the field?”

“For my part, you sure can,” she told me, “but you'll be getting the worst of the deal, what with five mouths to feed.”

“It's the other way around,” I told her. “I'll be way ahead by having all of Judy's time in the field.” When I turned away they both looked as happy as the youngsters did with the little wooden horse.

9

New Fields to Reap

T
HE
second break in our routine came at noon on our first Sunday. We'd just finished dinner, and were sitting in the shade of the house, when Bones drove into the yard and motioned me to him. “Looks like you been raising hob around here,” he told me. “What did you do, put on some extra help?”

“No,” I said, “I've got the same crew I started with.”

“Thought I counted nineteen stacks as I drove in,” he said. “How many acres do you aim to put into each one? Thrashers don't like it if you make 'em too small. Lose too much time in moving a rig from one stackyard to another.”

“Twenty acres,” I said. “Some of them may be a little small where the stand was light.”

“Twenty acres!” he said, and scowled at me. “Do you know how big twenty acres is, Son?”

“Yes, sir,” I told him, “an eighth by a quarter of a mile.”

“Hmmf! That's right,” he said, “but you haven't cut any three hundred and eighty acres.”

“About three-ninety, as near as I can figure it,” I told him, “but we've jumped around and cut the easiest stuff first.”

That time he looked at me suspiciously, and demanded, “What you doing that for? I won't let Clara pay you two dollars an acre unless you finish the whole job.”

“I understand that,” I told him; “it was part of our deal. We've been jumping around to catch the forties where the crop's the driest and most apt to shatter.”

“Who told you to do that?” Bones asked, less brusquely.

“No one,” I said, “but that's the way I'd do it if it were my own crop. We've cut a swath along each quarter-section line, so we have roadways, and don't knock down any standing grain when we move from one field to another.”

“Well, I'll be doggoned!” he said with a big grin. “Thought you were a green horn in wheat country. Climb in and let's look about a bit. This old buggy's got a turned-up exhaust pipe, so we won't set a fire by driving through the fields.”

With our having harvested forty-acre squares here and there on both sections, the whole place had somewhat the appearance of a new subdivision—the scattered stacks of yellow wheat looking like newly-built houses that hadn't yet been painted, and the swaths we'd cut between the forties marking off the streets. As Bones turned the car off the roadway and headed down the swath at the far end of the corral, he asked, “Where did you start harvesting? I'd like to take a look at the stuff.”

“The forty at the corner of this section was first,” I told him. “Hudson cut it, and took more straw than I've been taking. That's why the stacks are so much larger.”

“Never mind that. Let's see the first one you cut,” he said.

When we reached the forty we'd cut Monday forenoon, Bones wandered around it until he'd found a patch, maybe fifteen feet square, where I hadn't been quick enough in lowering the cutter bar. The straw was no more than eight inches tall, and before I could set the bar low enough I'd cut the heads in two, leaving the lower half on the stubble. I didn't want him to think I'd been wasting grain all week, so I said, “I was pretty green at running the header when we cut this forty, and the horses hadn't simmered down enough to pull steady. You won't find it so bad on the forties we've cut in the last few days.”

“Where'd you learn to run a header?” he asked sharply.

“Over in that draw,” I told him, pointing toward the hollow where we'd cut our horse feed. “The first few rounds look as if a blind man had cut it with a pair of dull sheep shears.”

“I know what you mean,” he said, “I've seen whole sections that looked the same way.” He looked me up and down from head to foot, then said, “You're a light-weight for running a header. Don't you have any beefy man in the crew that could do it?”

“Yes,” I told him, “three of them, but one's a better stacker than I am, and the other two are my best pitchers. Besides, I like to handle my own horses when they're working as hard as these header horses have to.”

I caught myself as soon as I'd said, “my own horses,” and Bones caught me, too. He grinned and said, “By the looks of things, they will be, so you might as well call 'em yours now. This patch of half-cut head doesn't worry me, but the stubble in this field does. You were changing the height of the cut every few feet, and heaving on a lift boom all day will strain the guts out of a big, stout man, leave alone a skinny kid. If you're set on doing the heading yourself, why don't you set the bar low enough to catch all the heads and let it go at that?”

“If I did that,” I told him, “we'd have so much straw to handle that we couldn't cut more than forty acres a day, and the load on the horses would be too heavy. We've rigged the boom with a counterweight, so it's easy to raise and lower, and I've already toughened up enough that the job doesn't bother me.”

“Hmmf! Looks like it,” he said, “but I didn't come out here to tell you how to run your job. I came to see how much shattering there'd been, and to get some idea of what Clara might hope to get out of her crop. I can't see much shattering on this forty.”

“No, this one wasn't bad,” I told him, “but there's one that was. We should have taken it right after this one, but didn't get at it till Thursday. With this hot wind blowing, I'm afraid there's a good deal of it on the ground. Every time a barge was unloaded the floor would be red with grain.”

“How many more you had like that?” he asked quickly.

“None,” I said, “and I don't think we'll have any more. I have a man here who knows wheat pretty well, and we've been watching ahead more closely since Thursday.”

“Let's take a look at that bad one,” Bones said, and hurried back to the car.

He spent maybe ten minutes walking around that forty. “Not bad,” he said at last. “Not enough on the ground to make seed for next year. If this is the worst you strike, Clara's going to be in luck. Let's take a look at the stacks.”

The two stacks on that forty were the smallest we had. Bones examined them as though he were looking for a bird's nest, then grabbed a handful, and asked, “You Scotch?”

“Some of my folks were,” I told him.

“Thought so! You're sure stingy with the straw you take.”

“Did you see any cut heads left in this field?” I asked.

“No. No,” he said, “but you've sure got these heads skinned off tight. The thrasher's going to like this. He'll get danged near as much wheat as straw out of these stacks.”

“I don't think so,” I told him. “The kernels on this forty ran pretty small, and they weren't well filled out.”

He laid a wheat head on one palm, rubbed it with the other, and blew the chaff away, then stepped back, evidently trying to gage the size of the stacks. “Hmmf! Won't run over twelve bushel to the acre,” he said, with the corner of his mouth turned down.

“That's what my man, Doc, figured it would run,” I told him.

“Must be a good man,” he said, “knows his wheat all right. What does he figure the whole crop will average?”

“A shade better than twenty bushels to the acre,” I said.

“Doubt it! Doubt it'll come close. Not from what I've seen so far. Let's go look at the rest of it.”

We spent more than two hours, going to each stack, and wading through the uncut grain on each forty. Bones must have rubbed a thousand heads of wheat on his palms, blown the chaff away, then examined the kernels. By the time we left each field or pair of stacks, he'd tell me what he thought that forty would average. Then, when we were through and had started back toward the house, he said, “That man of yours is all right. I'd go along with his guess that both sections will average out a good full twenty bushels to the acre.”

“What is wheat bringing this year?” I asked.

“Dollar ninety-eight at the elevator yesterday,” he told me. “That's for number one, dark, hard; and most of what's still standing will run number one. The rest will run number two, at about a dollar ninety.”

I didn't say any more, because I was doing a little figuring, and Bones knew it. “Working it out in your head?” he asked.

“Roughly,” I said. “If I've figured right, it's about a fifty-thousand-dollar crop.”

“Not for Clara,” he told me. “As near as I can find out—what with interest, and court costs, and one thing and another—Hudson was in the hole about nine thousand. Then half the crop will go to the owner, and there'll be the harvesting, and thrashing, and hauling her share; that'll run up to maybe six thousand, so, if all goes well, she could come out with ten thousand clear. That would leave her raise those children in town, where they could go to a good school. Might do more than that for her. There's many a good man, ones who would make those little kids a mighty fine father, that wouldn't back away from a widow woman with ten thousand in the bank.”

I wasn't a bit surprised to hear that Hudson had been nine thousand dollars in the hole, but the figure of six thousand for getting the crop harvested, thrashed, and half of it hauled to the elevator seemed way out of line. I turned it over in my head a couple of times, then said, “Thrashing must be pretty expensive around here, or you must be off on your figure of six thousand. The harvesting will cost only twenty-five hundred and sixty.”

“It's not the harvesting or thrashing,” he told me; “it's the hauling. It's a good eight miles to the elevator, and it costs a cent and a half a bushel a mile to get wheat hauled—that is, if you get a hauler that will keep up with the machine. Of course, a man can dump it on the ground, and haul it himself when he has time, but only a fool would do that. Too much chance of getting it rained on, lots of extra work to scooping it up again, and the elevator will dock you at least a dime a bushel if there's any dirt in it.”

For the last several days I'd been trying to figure out what I'd do with the horses when harvest was over, and I thought maybe I'd found the answer. By doing a little arithmetic in my head, I came up with a figure slightly over three thousand dollars for hauling the crop from those two sections. I went over the arithmetic a second time, then asked, “Do most of the owners who lease out their land hire their share of the crop hauled?”

“Sure!” he told me, half irritably. “How would they haul it themselves? Most of 'em live in Denver, Omaha, or Kansas City.”

I waited another minute, and said, “I suppose you know most of the owners . . . and their addresses.”

“A few,” he said, “but the place to get that kind of information is from the County Clerk, over to Oberlin.” Then he suddenly saw through what I was driving at, grinned, and said, “Aiming to put those little broncos to work when harvest is over, eh?”

“Could be,” I said, grinning back.

“Well,” he said, “you'll have both hands full to do the hauling from this place, and Clara'll want you to do it. It'll take four of those little broncs to haul a fifty-bushel load over these roads, and they can't make more than two trips a day from this far out.”

“How long does the thrashing season run?” I asked him.

“About two months,” he told me.

“And how long should it take for the job on this place?” I asked.

“Maybe three weeks,” he said. “What you getting at?”

“Well,” I said, “that would give me a chance to do a good deal of hauling for other owners before and after this job, wouldn't it?”

“Hmmf! That's right,” he said. “Hadn't thought of that. I'll write to a couple of owners for you in the morning, but don't bite off more than you can chew.”

I barely had time to thank Bones before we reached the house, then he went in to talk with Mrs. Hudson, and I went to our camp behind the barn. It was already so late there was little use in going back to the field, so I told the crew, “Let's take the rest of the day off. We're far enough ahead that I'm not worried about finishing by the end of the month, and if I give the header a good overhauling today we might get through another week without a breakdown. You fellows take it easy and get some rest.”

By supper time I had the old header in pretty good shape again, and as I worked I had lots of time to think about going into the wheat hauling business.

The next week rolled along as though we'd been living and harvesting together all our lives. I think Mrs. Hudson liked her place at the end of the table, and we liked her cooking. The children, and even the dogs, lost their fear, and each day we put more than fifty acres of wheat in the stacks.

Every noon of that week Judy gave me a lesson in driving the old Maxwell, so I'd be able to make hurry-up trips to Oberlin when we had a breakdown and needed repair parts. It's a good thing that she took me out to the middle of a stubble field for my first lesson. There was a half-turn play in the steering wheel, I always turned it too far and too fast, and the more trouble I had in steering the harder I was inclined to push down on the gas pedal. It probably came from my boyhood habit of bracing my feet against the dashboard when I had to pull on the reins. Whatever it came from, it didn't work worth a dime. Anyone seeing that field from a distance would have though there was a dustdevil whirling through it, and I'll swear there were times when the old Maxwell was spinning as fast.