The Dry Divide

  “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.

  Some of the lessons lasted a full hour, so I had plenty of time to tell Judy about my plan to go into the wheat hauling business. And she had time to tell me what a good place Beaver Valley would be for a man to go into the cattle business.

  Judy and I never did any spooning, but her sister wouldn’t let her help with the dishes, so there wasn’t much for either of us to do right after supper. And it was sort of restful to walk up the lane to the pasture and back in the first cool breeze of evening—just walking along slowly, and watching the stars come out, and talking about hauling wheat or the cattle business.

  10

  Bamboozling Bones

  BY the end of our second week we were so far along that there was no doubt of our finishing the harvest with time to spare. When we were unharnessing Saturday noon I asked the crew, “How would you like to take this afternoon off and go to Oberlin? There’s a barber shop over there that has baths, and I’ve got some business to take care of with the County Clerk.”

  It didn’t take the men two seconds to make up their minds, and by one o’clock we were on our way. Doc sat beside me, all rigged out in his medicine-man clothes, and the crazy part of it was that he’d put on his medicine-man behavior and talk right along with the clothes. Instead of calling me Bud, he called me, “My dear companion,” and he couldn’t open his mouth without orating. Worse than that, he couldn’t keep it closed.

  The main street at Oberlin was crowded with Saturday shoppers, and though I could keep the old Maxwell on the road fairly well, I didn’t trust myself to try parking it in any tight spot. I turned off on a side street, parked where there was plenty of room, then told the fellows, “I brought the checkbook along, and you can draw whatever you’d like, up to a hundred dollars apiece.”

  Jaikus and Old Bill said five dollars would be enough, Gus and Lars just shook their heads, but Doc began rubbing his hands together excitedly. With a sweep of his arm back toward the main street, he orated, “My dear companion, Fortune stretches forth her golden arms to embrace us. Yonder throng eagerly awaits the boon of Doctor J. Holloway Merriweather’s famous Elixir of Longevity. Shall it be denied these good people? Ah, no! You and I will procure from the local apothecary certain chemicals, spirits, and appropriate bottles, repair to the seclusion of some babbling brook, and . . .”

  “You do the repairing, Doc,” I told him. “I’ll be busy all afternoon. Just tell me how much to make your check for.”

  “Oh, fifty will suffice,” he told me grandly. “A mere pittance, but ’twill suffice to establish a lucrative enterprise.”

  I’d no sooner written the check than Doc grabbed it, backed out of the old Maxwell, bowed to us, and announced, “Fortune awaits me, gentlemen. I shall rejoin you anon.” Then he hurried away toward the main street.

  “Well, make the rejoining no later than six o’clock,” I called after him, “if you haven’t already been run out of town by that time. I promised we’d be back for supper and to do the milking.”

  Gus, Lars, Jaikus, and Old Bill decided to get haircuts and baths, then go see a movie, and Paco wanted to stay with me. I could hardly take him, so as we walked back to the corner I told him what the others were going to do, gave him two dollars, and said I thought it would be better if he went along with them. After I’d shown them where the barber’s shop with bath rooms was, I stopped at a drug store, bought a pad of writing paper and two dozen envelopes, then asked where I’d find the County Clerk’s office.

  The Clerk took it for granted that I wanted to lease a place on shares when I told him I’d like to look up the names and addresses of absentee owners of wheat land in the northwestern part of the country. At first he acted a little crusty, and told me he didn’t know of any owners in Beaver Valley who weren’t satisfied with the tenants they already had. But when I told him what I was planning to do, and that I could give the banker in Cedar Bluffs as my reference, he became more than obliging. He gave me maps of half a dozen townships, showing each piece of property and the owner’s name. There wasn’t a piece of land on those maps that he didn’t know, and he outlined in red pencil the ones that had absentee owners and were planted to wheat. Then he looked up the addresses for me, and wrote them on the maps, along with the names of the tenants.

  It was nearly three o’clock before I’d thanked the Clerk for his kindness, and left his office. From there I went to the post office, where there were pens, ink, and a high desk to write at. I had to make three or four fresh starts, and it took me at least half an hour to write the first letter, telling the owner that I had been referred to him by the Decatur County Clerk, that I was equipped to transport grain from his property to the elevator as rapidly as it was thrashed, that my charge would be ten and a half cents a bushel, and that he could assure himself of my honesty and reliability by communicating with the First State Bank of Cedar Bluffs. After I’d signed my name I remembered that most advertising letters had a hooker at the end, so I added a P.S. “I reserve the right to decline any order, and can accept none received later than August 10, 1919.”

  After that first one, the letters took only a few minutes apiece, because the only difference was in the price per bushel. I figured that out by looking at the maps to count the number of miles from the property to the nearest railroad town, then multiplied it by one and a half. It made the letters sound more personal than if I’d written, “a cent and a half per bushel per mile.” Then I put special delivery stamps on the envelopes to make them look more important.

  There was no sense in trying to write to every owner whose address the County Clerk had given me, so I picked out the twenty-three with property ten miles or less from the railroad. It was nearly six o’clock when I finished my letters to the land owners, then I scribbled a note to my mother, telling her where I was, and that I was feeling fine. Just before the post office closed, I bought a penny postal card, addressed it to my older sister, Grace, and wrote on it, “Have found a nickel bush, and am shaking it.” I knew she’d understand what it meant, for when we were kids and found an easy way of making a little money we’d always tell each other that we’d found a nickel bush.

  The crew was waiting at the Maxwell when I got t
here, all except Doc, but no one had seen him. I’d been on the main street enough that I’d have noticed if he’d gathered a crowd there for a medicine pitch, so could only guess that he was making it on some side street. After waiting fifteen or twenty minutes, we drove all around the main part of town, but there was no sign of Doc or a crowd that he might have drawn. There was only one thing left to do, so I parked the car again, and we spread out to hunt for Doc. It was Old Bill who found him. “Doc’s down to the pool hall,” he told me, “sleeping on a row of chairs, and he smells like he’s been into the tanglefoot.”

  Although I’d guessed that Doc might hit the bottle if he had a chance, I hadn’t worried about his doing it in Oberlin, because Kansas was a bone-dry state. But if he’d ever gone to a local apothecary for chemicals, spirits, and bottles, he’d come away with only the spirits. He was completely out, with a half-empty bottle of moonshine peeping from the pocket of his frock coat. With Lars to help me, we sat him up, stashed his bottle, put his hat on his head, and got him to his feet. He was docile as an old sheep till we had him standing, then he threw his chest out and his head back, like a rooster getting ready to crow. With one sweep of his arm he sent me flying, rose to his toes, and bellowed, “Gentlemen, I have a purpose! Show me a man without a purpose, and I will show you . . .”

  Right at that point Doc ran out of wind—and control of his legs. Gus and Lars draped his arms around their shoulders, and carried him, legs dragging helplessly, to the car. Most of the way his head hung as though his neck were broken, but a couple of times he raised it enough to blubber, “Gen’lmen I have a pursos . . .” We poured him onto the floor in the back of the Maxwell, and the fellows held him down with their feet on the way home.

  When I shook Doc awake next morning he didn’t know anything about our having brought him home from town, or what had happened to his fifty dollars, but he did know that he’d had part of a bottle of moonshine left. His eyes were swollen and bloodshot, he held onto his head with both hands, and told me, “I’m an awful sick man, Bud, an awful sick man. I was taken with one of my seizures right after I left you boys. Might have died if I hadn’t got hold of some medicine for it. Lucky I saved enough to get me back on my feet again. Fetch it for me, will you, Bud? It’s in the pocket of my coat.”

  “No, it isn’t,” I told him, “but you’ve still got enough of it in you to float a rowboat. Roust out of that blanket and pull your overalls on; it’s nearly sunrise.”

  “Aw, Bud,” he wailed, “you didn’t heave that bottle out, did you? I’ll never make it through the day without a hair of the dog. I’m apt to be laid up for a week.”

  “I’ll make you a bet,” I told him. “If you’re not ready to go by the time we start for the field, you’ll have another seizure—and Gus and Lars will do the seizing. They lugged you to the car last night, and they can lug you as far as our next stack. Haul those britches on and get a quart of milk into you; that’ll put out some of the fire.” Doc made it, but the stacks he built looked as though they had about as much hangover as he did.

  By Monday morning Doc had worked off the effects of his seizure, and for the next four days we poured wheat into the stacks at a faster clip than we’d ever reached before. Then, about the middle of Friday forenoon, I looked up to see Bones driving across the stubble field. He was coming so fast that his car bounced like a running rabbit, he swung it in a half-circle, pulled alongside the header, and slammed on the brake. Before I could stop the horses, he shouted, “What in Sam Hill have you been up to? I’m getting letters from all over, wanting to know how much hauling equipment you own, and if you’re reliable.”

  “Good!” I said. “What are you telling them?”

  “Telling ’em!” he barked. “What can I tell ’em? Unless you get this job finished by the end of the month you won’t own anything but the clothes on your back.”

  “That’s right,” I told him, “but today is only the 25th, and there are only six more forties to harvest. We could make it by the end of the month if we all had one hand tied behind us.”

  “And what will you have if you do make it?” he shouted. “A bunch of runty little broncs that wouldn’t bring ten dollars apiece, and a couple of worn-out old wagons. How you going to haul wheat with any such outfit as that? Leastways, more than has to be hauled from this place, and you gave Clara your word on that.”

  “Right again,” I said, “except that there will be three worn-out wagons. Did Mrs. Hudson tell you she’s promised the thrashing job to the man with the biggest rig anywhere around here?”

  “Well, what of that?” he asked.

  “Only this,” I told him: “I’ve promised her I’d haul both her share and the landlord’s as fast as it was thrashed, and they’ve given me the job.”

  “Then what you messing around trying to get all these outside jobs for?” he asked angrily. “With no more horses and wagons than you’ve got, you’ll have both hands full and your britches to hold up if you keep your promise to Clara.”

  “That’s more than right,” I told him. “How much will that big rig thrash in a day—in wheat headed as tight as this is?”

  “About fourteen hundred bushel a day,” he told me.

  “That’s about what I figured,” I said. “If you’re not in too big a hurry, let’s do some arithmetic. The crew could stand a little rest this hot morning.”

  As I said it I motioned Paco to watch the header horses, climbed down from my perch, took a screwdriver from the tool box, and scraped a patch of ground smooth with one foot. “What you up to now?” Bones asked irritably.

  “A little arithmetic,” I told him. “I might make some mistakes, so come and help me, will you?”

  We both knelt by the patch I’d scraped bare, with me holding the screwdriver as though it were a pencil. “Now this is the way it looks to me,” I said. “I’ll have twelve horses and three wagons, and if I remember right, you told me I couldn’t haul more than fifty bushels to a load, or make more than two round trips a day from this far out.”

  “Well?” Bones asked.

  Putting down the figures with the screwdriver, I said, “That’s two trips a day for three wagons, equals six, times fifty bushels, equals three hundred, and you say the rig will thrash fourteen hundred a day.”

  “Hmmf! Hmmf!” he sniffed. “Well, Clara’ll have to find herself some more haulers, or I’ll have to find ’em for her.”

  “No,” I told him, “the job is mine and I’ll do my own finding—that is, unless you want to give me some help with it. You tell me these horses are worth only ten dollars apiece; what would it cost me to buy some more just like them?”

  “Nobody but Hudson would waste pasture on this kind of wild cayuses,” he told me. “But, what with harvest about over, a man might pick up some nags for around a hundred dollars a pair.”

  “And how much for secondhand harness and wagons?” I asked.

  “Oh,” he said, “I guess you could pick up some pretty fair harness for around fifty a set, and if you took wagons that needed some fixing up, you might get ’em for somewhere around thirty.”

  “Fine,” I said. “How much a day would it cost me to hire a good pair of horses and a wagon that wouldn’t need fixing up?”

  Bones scowled at me, and said, “Don’t know. There’s no call around here for renting ’em out. County allows three dollars a team for working out road taxes. What in blazes are you trying to scare up outside hauling for, when you’ve got to hire teams and wagons to haul what’s on this place. Why don’t you use your head?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do,” I told him. “And that’s why I think it would be better to buy horses and wagons than to rent them. If your estimate of two trips with fifty bushels to the load is right, I’ll need eleven more wagons and sixteen more horses to handle fourteen hundred bushels a day.”

  He sprang to his feet, and said, “Well, there’s no sense wasting any more time in talking about it. The job’s way too big for you, Son. Even if you had t
he price of eleven more hauling rigs, you’d be a fool to buy ’em. The investment would be way too big for the return. I’d never lend you the money. You haul what you can for Clara with what you’ve got—or will have—and I’ll line up haulers to handle the rest of it.”

  “No, sir,” I told him. “It’s my job and I’m going to handle it all, and a good deal more besides—that is, if you don’t kick things over for me by telling owners I’m not dependable.”

  Bones put a hand on my shoulder, and spoke as though I were his little boy and he was breaking the news about Santa Claus. “Son,” he told me, “there’s nothing I like any better than to see a boy trying to get ahead, but you’ve got to learn to walk before you run. Sure, you’ve done a fine job on this harvesting, better than I’d have believed you could do, but what’s the sense in throwing away what you’ve already made. If you’d try tackling a job such as you’re talking about, you’d only go broke again—and leave every owner that gave you a hauling job in a jackpot. A man’s got to figure things out before he jumps into ’em whole-hog.”

  “That’s why I brought this screwdriver,” I told him, “but I sometimes make mistakes in arithmetic, so I’d appreciate it if you’d watch while I figure it over again. First, let’s figure what the hauling from this place would bring in. There are 1280 acres in two sections, times twenty bushels to the acre, equals 25,600 bushels, times twelve cents, equals $3,072. We’ll put that down over on this side. Then sixteen horses at a hundred dollars a team would be $800. Eight sets of harness at fifty would be $400. Eleven wagons at thirty dollars each would come to $330, and let’s figure that labor and material to rebuild them would cost another $200. That would make a total investment of $1730. Is that right so far?”

  Bones nodded, so I went on, “Now we’ll divide 25,600 by 1400, and that gives us eighteen, the number of days it should take to thrash the crop on this place.”

  “What good does it do you to know that?” Bones asked.