Farmer Boy (7 page)

The very next Saturday, Star and Bright obeyed him perfectly. He did not need to crack the whip, because they obeyed his shout. But he cracked it anyway; he liked to.

That Saturday the French boys, Pierre and Louis, came to see Almanzo. Pierre's father was Lazy John, and Louis' father was French Joe.

They lived with many brothers and sisters in the little houses in the woods, and went fishing and hunting and berrying; they never had to go to school. But often they came to work or play with Almanzo.

They watched while Almanzo showed off his calves in the barnyard. Star and Bright were behaving so well that Almanzo had a splendid idea.

He brought out his beautiful birthday hand-sled, and with an auger he bored a hole through the cross-piece between the runners in front. Then he took one of Father's chains, and a lynch-pin from Father's big bobsled, and he hitched up the calves.

There was a little iron ring underneath their yoke in the middle, just like the rings in big yokes. Almanzo stuck the handle of his sled through this ring, as far as the handle's little cross-piece. The cross-piece kept it from going too far through the ring. Then he fastened one end of the chain to the ring, and the other end he wound around the lynch-pin in the hole in the cross-bar, and fastened it.

When Star and Bright pulled, they would pull the sled by the chain. When they stopped, the sled's stiff handle would stop the sled.

“Now, Louis, you get on the sled,” Almanzo said.

“No, I'm biggest!” Pierre said, pushing Louis back. “I get first ride.”

“You better not,” said Almanzo. "When the calves feel the heft, they're liable to run away. Let Louis go first because he's lighter."

“No, I don't want to,” Louis said.

“I guess you better,” Almanzo told him.

“No,” said Louis.

“Be you scared?” Almanzo asked.

“Yes, he's scared,” Pierre said.

“I am not scared,” Louis said. “I just don't want to.”

“He's scared,” Pierre sneered.

“Yes, he's scared,” Almanzo said.

Louis said he was not either scared.

“You are, too, scared,” Almanzo and Pierre said.

They said he was a fraidy-cat. They said he was a baby. Pierre told him to go back to his mamma. So finally Louis sat carefully on the sled.

Almanzo cracked his whip and shouted, “Giddap!”

Star and Bright started, and stopped. They tried to turn around to see what was behind them.

But Almanzo sternly said, “Giddap!” again, and this time they started and kept on going. Almanzo walked beside them, cracking his whip and shouting “Gee!” and he drove them clear around the barnyard. Pierre ran after the sled and got on, too, and still the calves behaved perfectly. So Almanzo opened the barnyard gate.

Pierre and Louis quickly got off the sled and Pierre said:

“They'll run away!”

Almanzo said, “I guess I know how to handle my own calves.”

He went back to his place beside Star. He cracked his whip and shouted, “Giddap!” and he drove Star and Bright straight out of the safe barnyard into the big, wide, glittering world outside.

He shouted, “Haw!” and he shouted, “Gee!”

and he drove them past the house. He drove them out to the road. They stopped when he shouted “Whoa!”

Pierre and Louis were excited now. They piled onto the sled, but Almanzo made them slide back.

He was going to ride, too. He sat in front; Pierre held on to him, and Louis held onto Pierre. Their legs stuck out, and they held them stiffly up above the snow. Almanzo proudly cracked his whip and shouted, “Giddap!”

Up went Star's tail, up went Bright's tail, up went their heels. The sled bounced into the air, and then everything happened all at once.

“Baw-aw-aw!” said Star. “Baw-aw-aw-aw!”

said Bright. Right in Almanzo's face were flying hoofs and swishing tails, and close overhead were galumphing hindquarters. “Whoa!” yelled Almanzo. “Whoa!”

“Baw-aw!” said Bright. “Baw-aw-aw!” said Star. It was far swifter than sliding downhill.

Trees and snow and calves' hindlegs were all mixed up. Every time the sled came down Almanzo's teeth crashed together.

Bright was running faster than Star. They were going off the road. The sled was turning over.

Almanzo yelled, “Haw! Haw!” He went headlong into deep snow, yelling, “Haw!”

His open mouth was full of snow. He spit it out, and wallowed, scrambled up.

Everything was still. The road was empty. The calves were gone, the sled was gone. Pierre and Louis were coming up out of the snow. Louis was swearing in French, but Almanzo paid no atten-tion to him. Pierre sputtered and wiped the snow from his face, and said:

“Sacre bleu! I think you say you drive your calves. They not run away, eh?”

Far down the road, almost buried in the deep drifts by the mound of snow over the stone fence, Almanzo saw the calves' red backs.

“They did not run away,” he said to Pierre.

“They only ran. There they be.”

He went down to look at them. Their heads and their backs were above the snow. The yoke was crooked and their necks were askew in the bows.

Their noses were together and their eyes were large and wondering. They seemed to be asking each other, “What happened?”

Pierre and Louis helped dig the snow away from them and the sled. Almanzo straightened the yoke and the chain. Then he stood in front of them and said, “Giddap!” while Pierre and Louis pushed them from behind. The calves climbed into the road, and Almanzo headed them toward the barn. They went willingly.

Almanzo walked beside Star, cracking his whip and shouting, and everything he told them to do, they did. Pierre and Louis walked behind. They would not ride.

Almanzo put the calves in their stall and gave them each a nubbin of corn. He wiped the yoke carefully and hung it up; he put the whip on its nail, and he wiped the chain and the lynch-pin and put them where Father had left them. Then he told Pierre and Louis that they could sit behind him, and they slid downhill on the sled till chore-time.

That night Father asked him:

“You have some trouble this afternoon, son?”

“No,” Almanzo said. “I just found out I have to break Star and Bright to drive when I ride.”

So he did that, in the barnyard.

he days were growing longer, but the cold was more intense. Father said:

“When the days begin to lengthen The cold begins to strengthen.”

At last the snow softened a little on the south and west slopes. At noon the icicles dripped. Sap was rising in the trees, and it was time to make sugar.

In the cold mornings just before sunrise, Almanzo and Father set out to the maple grove.

Father had a big wooden yoke on his shoulders and Almanzo had a little yoke. From the ends of the yokes hung strips of moosewood bark, with large iron hooks on them, and a big wooden bucket swung from each hook.

In every maple tree Father had bored a small hole, and fitted a little wooden spout into it.

Sweet maple sap was dripping from the spouts into small pails.

Going from tree to tree, Almanzo emptied the sap into his big buckets. T h e weight hung from his shoulders, but he steadied the buckets with his hands to keep them from swinging. When they were full, he went to the great caldron and emptied them into it.

The huge caldron hung from a pole set between two trees. Father kept a bonfire blazing under it, to boil the sap.

Almanzo loved trudging through the frozen wild woods. He walked on snow that had never been walked on before, and only his own tracks followed behind him. Busily he emptied the little pails into the buckets, and whenever he was thirsty he drank some of the thin, sweet, icy-cold sap.

He liked to go back to the roaring fire. He poked it and saw sparks fly. He warmed his face and hands in the scorching heat and smelled the sap boiling. Then he went into the woods again.

At noon all the sap was boiling in the caldron.

Father opened the lunch-pail, and Almanzo sat on the log beside him. They ate and talked. Their feet were stretched out to the fire, and a pile of logs was at their backs. All around them were snow and ice and wild woods, but they were snug and cosy.

After they had eaten, Father stayed by the fire to watch the sap, but Almanzo hunted wintergreen berries.

Under the snow on the south slopes the bright-red berries were ripe among their thick green leaves. Almanzo took off his mittens and pawed away the snow with his bare hands. He found the red clusters and filled his mouth full. The cold berries crunched between his teeth, gushing out their aromatic juice.

Nothing else was ever so good as wintergreen berries dug out of the snow.

Almanzo's clothes were covered with snow, his fingers were stiff and red with cold, but he never left a south slope until he had pawed it all over.

When the sun was low behind the maple-trunks, Father threw snow on the fire and it died in sizzles and steam. Then Father dipped the hot syrup into the buckets. He and Almanzo set their shoulders under the yokes again, and carried the buckets home.

They poured the syrup into Mother's big brass kettle on the cook-stove. Then Almanzo began the chores while Father fetched the rest of the syrup from the woods.

After supper, the syrup was ready to sugar off.

Mother ladled it into six-quart milk-pans and left it to cool. In the morning every pan held a big cake of solid maple-sugar. Mother dumped out the round, golden-brown cakes and stored them on the top pantry shelves.

Day after day the sap was running, and every morning Almanzo went with Father to gather and boil it; every night Mother sugared it off. They made all the sugar they could use next year. Then the last boiling of syrup was not sugared off; it was stored in jugs down cellar, and that was the year's syrup.

When Alice came home from school she smelled Almanzo, and she cried out, “Oh, you've been eating wintergreen berries!”

She thought it wasn't fair that she had to go to school while Almanzo gathered sap and ate wintergreen berries. She said:

“Boys have all the fun.”

She made Almanzo promise that he wouldn't touch the south slopes along Trout River, beyond the sheep pasture.

So on Saturdays they went together to paw over those slopes. When Almanzo found a red cluster he yelled, and when Alice found one she squealed, and sometimes they divided, and sometimes they didn't. But they went on their hands and knees all over those south slopes, and they ate wintergreen berries all afternoon.

Almanzo brought home a pailful of the thick, green leaves, and Alice crammed them into a big bottle. Mother filled the bottle with whisky and set it away. That was her wintergreen flavoring for cakes and cookies.

Every day the snow was melting a little. The cedars and spruces shook it off, and it fell in blobs from the bare branches of oaks and maples and beeches. All along the walls of barns and house the snow was pitted with water falling from the icicles, and finally the icicles fell crashing.

The earth showed in wet, dark patches here and there. The patches spread. Only the trodden paths were still white, and a little snow remained on the north sides of buildings and woodpiles.

Then the winter term of school ended and spring had come.

One morning Father drove to Malone. Before noon he came hurrying home, and shouted the news from the buggy. The New York potato-buyers were in town!

Royal ran to help hitch the team to the wagon, Alice and Almanzo ran to get bushel baskets from the woodshed. They rolled them bumpity-bump down the cellar stairs, and began filling them with potatoes as fast as they could. They filled two baskets before Father drove the wagon to the kitchen porch.

Then the race began. Father and Royal hurried the baskets upstairs and dumped them into the wagon, and Almanzo and Alice hurried to fill more baskets faster than they were carried away.

Almanzo tried to fill more baskets than Alice, but he couldn't. She worked so fast that she was turning back to the bin while her hoopskirts were still whirling the other way. When she pushed back her curls, her hands left smudges on her cheeks. Almanzo laughed at her dirty face, and she laughed at him.

“Look at yourself in the glass! You're dirtier than I be!”

They kept the baskets full; Father and Royal never had to wait. When the wagon was full, Father drove away in a hurry.

It was mid-afternoon before he came back, but Royal and Almanzo and Alice filled the wagon again while he ate some cold dinner, and he hauled another load away. That night Alice helped Royal and Almanzo do the chores. Father was not there for supper; he did not come before bedtime. Royal sat up to wait for him. Late in the night Almanzo heard the wagon, and Royal went out to help Father curry and brush the tired horses who had done twenty miles of hauling that day.

The next morning, and the next, they all began loading by candle-light, and Father was gone with the first load before sunrise. On the third day the potato-train left for New York City. But all Father's potatoes were on it.

“Five hundred bushels at a dollar a bushel,” he said to Mother at supper. “I told you when potatoes were cheap last fall that they'd be high in the spring.”

That was five hundred dollars in the bank.

They were all proud of Father, who raised good potatoes and knew so well when to store them and when to sell them.

“That's pretty good,” Mother said, beaming.

They all felt happy. But later Mother said:

“Well, now that's off our hands, we'll start house-cleaning tomorrow, bright and early.”

Almanzo hated house-cleaning. He had to pull up carpet tacks, all around the edges of miles of carpet. Then the carpets were hung on clothes-lines outdoors, and he had to beat them with a long stick. When he was little he had run under the carpets, playing they were tents. But now he was nine years old, he had to beat those carpets without stopping, till no more dust would come out of them.

Everything in the house was moved, everything was scrubbed and scoured and polished. All the curtains were down, all the feather-beds were outdoors, airing, all the blankets and quilts were washed. From dawn to dark Almanzo was running, pumping water, fetching wood, spreading clean straw on the scrubbed floors and then helping to stretch the carpets over it, and then tacking all those edges down again.