Farmer Boy (10 page)

A farmer near Malone had sold a team the week before, and kept the money in his house. That night robbers broke into his house while he was asleep. They tied up his wife and children, and they beat him almost to death, to make him tell where the money was hidden. They took the money and got away. The sheriff was looking for them.

“I wouldn't be surprised if that horse-buyer had a hand in it,” Father said. “Who else knew we had money in the house? But it couldn't be proved. I made inquiry, and he was at the hotel in Malone last night.”

Mother said, she would always believe that Providence had sent the strange dog to watch over them. Almanzo thought perhaps he stayed because Alice fed him.

“Maybe he was sent to try us,” Mother said.

“Maybe the Lord was merciful to us because we were merciful to him.”

They never saw the strange dog again. Perhaps he was a poor lost dog and the food that Alice gave him made him strong enough to find his way home again.

Now the meadows and pastures were velvety with thick grass, and the weather was warm. It was time to shear sheep.

On a sunny morning Pierre and Louis went with Almanzo into the pasture and they drove the sheep down to the washing-pens. The long pen ran from the grassy pasture into the clear, deep water of Trout River. It had two gates opening into the pasture, and between the gates a short fence ran to the water's edge.

Pierre and Louis kept the flock from running away, while Almanzo took hold of a woolly sheep and pushed it through one gate. In the pen Father and Lazy John caught hold of it. Then Almanzo pushed another one through, and Royal and French Joe caught it. The other sheep stared and bleated, and the two sheep struggled and kicked and yelled. But the men rubbed their wool full of brown soft-soap and dragged them into the deep water.

There the sheep had to swim. The men stood waist-deep in the swift water, and held on to the sheep and scrubbed them well. All the dirt came out of their wool and floated downstream with the soap suds.

When the other sheep saw this, every one of them cried, “Baa-aa-aa, baa-aa-aa!” and they all tried to run away. But Almanzo and Pierre and Louis ran yelling around the flock, and brought it back again to the gate.

As soon as a sheep was clean, the men made it swim around to the end of the dividing fence, and they boosted it up the bank into the outer side of the pen. The poor sheep came out bleating and dripping wet, but the sun soon dried it fluffy and white.

As fast as the men let go of one sheep, Almanzo pushed another into the pen, and they caught it and soaped it and dragged it into the river.

Washing sheep was fun for everybody but the sheep. The men splashed and shouted and laughed in the water, and the boys ran and shouted in the pasture. The sun was warm on their backs and the grass was cool under bare feet, and all their laughter was small in the wide, pleasant stillness of the green fields and meadows.

One sheep butted John; he sat down in the river and the water went over his head. Joe shouted:

“Now if you had soap in your wool, John, you'd be ready for shearing!”

When evening came, all the sheep were washed. Clean and fluffy-white, they scattered up the slope, nibbling the grass, and the pasture looked like a snowball bush in bloom.

Next morning John came before breakfast, and Father hurried Almanzo from the table. He took a wedge of apple pie and went out to the pasture, smelling the clover and eating the spicy apples and flaky crust in big mouthfuls. He licked his fingers, and then he rounded up the sheep and drove them across the dewy grass, into the sheepfold in the South Barn.

Father had cleaned the sheepfold and built a platform across one end of it. He and Lazy John each caught a sheep, set it up on the platform, and began cutting off its wool with long shears. The thick white mat of wool peeled back, all in one piece, and the sheep was left in bare pink skin.

With the last snick of the shears the whole fleece fell on the platform, and the naked sheep jumped off it, yelling, “Baa-aa-aa!” All the other sheep yelled back at the sight, but already Father and John were shearing two more.

Royal rolled the fleece tightly and tied it with twine, and Almanzo carried it upstairs and laid it on the loft floor. He ran upstairs and down again as fast as he could, but another fleece was always ready for him.

Father and Lazy John were good sheep-shearers.

Their long shears snipped through the thick wool like lightning; they cut close to the sheep, but never cut its pink skin. This was a hard thing to do, because Father's sheep were prize Merinos.

Merinos have the finest wool, but their skin lies in deep wrinkles, and it is hard to get all the wool without cutting them.

Almanzo was working fast, running upstairs with the fleeces. They were so heavy that he could carry only one at a time. He didn't mean to idle, but when he saw the tabby barn-cat hurrying past with a mouse, he knew she was taking it to her new kittens.

He ran after her, and far up under the eaves of the Big Barn he found the little nest in the hay, with four kittens in it. The tabby cat curled herself around them, loudly purring, and the black slits in her eyes widened and narrowed and widened again. The kittens' tiny pink mouths uttered tiny meows, their naked little paws had wee white claws, and their eyes were shut.

When Almanzo came back to the sheepfold, six fleeces were waiting, and Father spoke to him sternly.

“Son,” he said, “see to it you keep up with us after this.”

“Yes, Father,” Almanzo answered, hurrying.

But he heard Lazy John say:

“He can't do it. We'll be through before he is.”

Then Father laughed and said:

'That's so, John. He can't keep up with us."

Almanzo made up his mind that he'd show them. If he hurried fast enough, he could keep up. Before noon he had caught up with Royal, and had to wait while a fleece was tied. So he said:

“You see I can keep up with you!”

“Oh no, you can't!” said John. "We'll beat you.

We'll be through before you are. Wait and see."

Then they all laughed at Almanzo.

They were laughing when they heard the dinner horn. Father and John finished the sheep they were shearing, and went to the house. Royal tied the last fleece and left it, and Almanzo still had to carry it upstairs. Now he understood what they meant. But he thought:

“I won't let them beat me.”

He found a short rope and tied it around the neck of a sheep that wasn't sheared. He led the sheep to the stairs, and then step by step he tugged and boosted her upward. She bleated all the way, but he got her into the loft. He tied her near the fleeces and gave her some hay to keep her quiet. Then he went to dinner.

All that afternoon Lazy John and Royal kept telling him to hurry or they'd beat him. Almanzo answered:

“No, you won't. I can keep up with you.”

Then they laughed at him.

He snatched up every fleece as soon as Royal tied it, and hurried upstairs and ran down again.

They laughed to see him hurrying and they kept saying:

“Oh no, you won't beat us! We'll be through first!”

Just before chore-time, Father and John raced to shear the last two sheep. Father beat. Almanzo ran with the fleece, and was back before the last one was ready. Royal tied it, and then he said:

“We're all through! Almanzo, we beat you! We beat you!” Royal and John burst into a great roar of laughter, and even Father laughed.

Then Almanzo said:

“No, you haven't beat me. I've got a fleece upstairs that you haven't sheared yet.”

They stopped laughing, surprised. At that very minute the sheep in the loft, hearing all the other sheep let out to pasture, cried, “Baa-aa-aa!”

Almanzo shouted: "There's the fleece! I've got it upstairs and you haven't sheared it! I beat you!

I beat you!"

John and Royal looked so funny that he couldn't stop laughing. Father roared with laughter.

“The joke's on you, John!” Father shouted.

“He laughs best who laughs last!”

That was a cold, late spring. The dawns were chilly, and at noon the sunlight was cool. The trees unfolded their leaves slowly; the peas and beans, the carrots and corn, stood waiting for warmth and did not grow. When the rush of spring's work was over, Almanzo had to go to school again. Only small children went to the spring term of school, and he wished he were old enough to stay home. He didn't like to sit and study a book when there were so many interesting things to do.

Father hauled the fleeces to the carding-machine in Malone, and brought home the soft, long rolls of wool, combed out straight and fine.

Mother didn't card her own wool any more, since there was a machine that did it on shares. But she dyed it.

Alice and Eliza Jane were gathering roots and barks in the woods, and Royal was building huge bonfires in the yard. They boiled the roots and the bark in big caldrons over the fires, and they dipped the long skeins of wool thread that Mother had spun, and lifted them out on sticks, all colored brown and red and blue. When Almanzo went home from school the clothes-lines were hanging full of colored skeins.

Mother was making soft-soap, too. All the winter's ashes had been saved in a barrel; now water was poured over them, and lye was dripping out of a little hole in the bottom of the barrel. Mother measured the lye into a caldron, and added pork rinds and all the waste pork fat and beef fat that she had been saving all winter. The caldron boiled, and the lye and the fat made soap.

Almanzo could have kept the bonfires burning, he could have dipped the brown, slimy soap out of the caldron and filled the tubs with it. But he had to go back to school.

He watched the moon anxiously, for in the dark of the moon in May he could stay out of school and plant pumpkins.

Then in the chill, early morning he tied a pouch full of pumpkin seeds around his waist and went to the cornfield. All the dark field had a thin green veil of weeds over it now. The small blades of corn were not growing well because of the cold.

At every second hill of corn, in every second row, Almanzo knelt down and took a thin, flat pumpkin seed between his thumb and finger. He pushed the seed, sharp point down, into the ground.

It was chill work at first, but pretty soon the sun was higher. The air and the earth smelled good, and it was fun to poke his finger and thumb into the soft soil and leave the seed there to grow.

Day after day he worked, till all the pumpkins were planted, and then he begged to hoe and thin the carrots. He hoed all the weeds away from the long rows, and he pulled the little feathery carrot-tops, till those that were left stood two inches apart.

He didn't hurry at all. No one had ever taken such pains with carrots as he did, because he didn't want to go back to school. He made the work last till there were only three more days of school; then the spring term ended and he could work all summer.

First he helped hoe the cornfield. Father plowed between the rows, and Royal and Almanzo with hoes killed every weed that was left, and hoed around each hill of corn. Slash, slash went the hoes all day, stirring the earth around the young shoots of corn and the first two flat leaves of the pumpkins.

Two acres of corn Almanzo hoed, and then he hoed two acres of potatoes. That finished the hoeing for a while, and now it was strawberry-time.

Wild strawberries were few that year, and late, because frost had killed the first blossoms. Almanzo had to go far through the woods to fill his pail full of small, sweet, fragrant berries.

When he found them clustered under their green leaves, he couldn't help eating some. He snipped off the green twigs of wintergreen and ate them, too. And he nibbled with his teeth the sweet-sour woodsorrel's stems, right up to their frail lavender blossoms. He stopped to shy stones at the frisking squirrels, and he left his pail on the banks of streams and went wading, chasing the minnows. But he never came home till his pail was full.

Then there were strawberries and cream for supper, and next day Mother would make strawberry preserves.

“I never saw corn grow so slowly,” Father worried. He plowed the field again, and again Almanzo helped Royal to hoe the corn. But the little shoots stood still. On the first of July they were only four inches high. They seemed to feel that danger threatened them, and to be afraid to grow.

It was three days to Independence Day, the fourth day of July. Then it was two days. Then it was one day, and that night Almanzo had to take a bath, though it wasn't Saturday. Next morning they were all going to the celebration in Malone.

Almanzo could hardly wait till morning. There would be a band, and speeches, and the brass cannon would be fired.

The air was still and cold that night, and the stars had a wintry look. After supper Father went to the barns again. He shut the doors and little wooden windows of the horses' stalls, and he put the ewes with lambs into the fold.

When he came in, Mother asked if it was any warmer. Father shook his head.

“I do believe it is going to freeze,” he said.

“Pshaw! surely not!” Mother replied. But she looked worried.

Sometime in the night Almanzo felt cold, but he was too sleepy to do anything about it. Then he heard Mother calling:

“Royal! Almanzo!” He was too sleepy to open his eyes.

“Boys, get up! Hurry!” Mother called. “The corn's frozen!”

He tumbled out of bed and pulled on his trousers. He couldn't keep his eyes open, his hands were clumsy, and big yawns almost dislocated his jaw. He staggered downstairs behind Royal.

Mother and Eliza Jane and Alice were putting on their hoods and shawls. The kitchen was cold; the fire had not been lighted. Outdoors everything looked strange. The grass was white with frost, and a cold green streak was in the eastern sky, but the air was dark.

Father hitched Bess and Beauty to the wagon.

Royal pumped the watering-trough full. Almanzo helped Mother and the girls bring tubs and pails, and Father set barrels in the wagon. They filled the tubs anid barrels full of water, and then they walked behind the wagon to the cornfield.