Steadily the crimson ball rose as if a mighty power were forcing it reluctantly from the molten center of the earth. For a few seconds it seemed balanced atop the motionless sea of wheat that stretched away in front of us. Then majestically it sailed free of its anchorage, spilling its light across the silent, sweltering divide. And as if it had been waiting only for the moonlight, a gentle breeze sprang up to rustle the bearded heads of the wheat with a hushed, whispering sound.
As the moon had risen the only sounds had been the occasional clink of dishes being washed in the kitchen, or the stamp of a horse’s hoof in the corral. But with the rising of the breeze the oppressive burden of the heat, and the silence were broken. Far away to the south a coyote voiced his lonesome, wailing evening song. Locusts and crickets tuned their shrill fiddles in the wheat fields, a colt whinnied from the pasture, and from right behind us a cow bellowed; the long, low bawl of a milker distressed by an overfull udder. With the silence violated, Doc turned toward me, and asked, “How your blisters doing, Bud? Going to be in shape for handling a pitchfork tomorrow?”
“That won’t bother the blisters that are biting me worst,” I told him. “It’s ten years since I’ve ridden a horse bareback.”
Doc chuckled, and asked, “Seen any rock salt around?”
“There’s a block at the end of the pasture lane,” I told him.
“Let’s go get a chunk of it,” he said. “You’ll need to harden those hands or you’ll set them to bleeding by noontime.”
We’d just gotten to our feet when Mrs. Hudson came out of the kitchen doorway, two milk buckets in her hands, and started for the milking pen. Her shoulders sagged wearily, as though the buckets were already full and the child she carried were burdensome. I hadn’t milked a cow since before the war, but I’d never minded milking, so I told Doc, “You go ahead and get the salt; I’ll give the lady a hand with the milking. She looks beat out.”
As we turned away Paco stood for a moment between us, confused by the conversation he couldn’t understand, then followed at my heels as though he were a puppy. As I neared Mrs. Hudson, I said, “I’m Bud, one of the harvest hand, and I like to milk. Would you mind if Paco and I did it tonight?”
At the sound of my voice she jumped as if frightened, then stopped and turned toward me, with the moonlight full on her face. For a second or two she stood looking bewildered, her mouth partly open as if she wanted to speak but couldn’t think of the words. She wet her lips nervously, and half stammered, “I guess it would be . . . all right. I guess Myron wouldn’t . . .”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t mind,” I told her. “I’m a pretty fair milker, and I’ll be careful with your cows.”
Without a word, she handed me the buckets and hurried back to the house.
I couldn’t be given a straight A for gallantry on my offer to do the milking. I hadn’t half filled the cavity inside me with pork and potato, and milk was the only thing on the place that was on my diet list. At most ranches I could have made out with raw eggs, but there wasn’t a hen on the Hudson place. As soon as I’d milked a quart from my first cow I drank it, and Paco followed suit. He was a faster milker than I, or got cows that didn’t give as much. I’d just started my third when he finished his, stood up, and carried his bucket away toward the gate. There was no reason to hurry, so I pushed my hat back, leaned my forehead against the cow’s side, and listened to the rhythmic music of the milk streams. The last strippings were tinkling into the bucket when a quiet voice behind me said, “You’re Bud, the one that rode Kitten, ain’t you?”
The voice startled me, for I’d never guessed I wasn’t alone. But I knew whose voice it would be, and didn’t want to show I was startled, so I turned my head slowly, looked up, and said, “Yes, Judy, I’m Bud. And if Kitten is that nice little mare, I’m the one who rode her, why?”
“I reckoned I ought to tell you,” she said, “Myron’s awful mad at you. Nobody but him has ever rode Kitten before, and he’s always swore nobody ever could.”
“I don’t doubt his swearing,” I told her as I rose and moved a step nearer, “but I don’t think he’s mad at me any more.”
Her back was toward the moon, so I couldn’t see her face, but she turned it up toward mine and said, “That’s ’cause you don’t know Myron. He don’t forget his mads, and he’ll get you . . . one way or another. He gets everybody, sooner or later. He’s got Sis tied hand and foot. She wouldn’t dast leave him now . . . even if she could.”
Judy seemed in no hurry to go, and I didn’t want her to. Raising my voice barely enough for Paco to hear, I called him to me, passed him my bucket of milk and, in the best Spanish I could muster, told him to take it to the house, and to wait to turn the separator for the señora.
As he moved away, Judy looked up at me and asked in an awed whisper, “You Mex?”
“No,” I told her, “mostly Scotch and English, way back. I learned to talk the lingo a little when I was a kid, working on a cattle ranch in Colorado.”
“That where you learned to ride?” she asked.
“Mm-hmm,” I said, “but tell me more about Myron. Isn’t he a bit cracked in the head?” As I said it I slipped my arm inside hers, and she didn’t pull away, so I led her toward the platform where Doc and Paco and I had been sitting when the moon rose.
“Not exactly cracked,” she said, “but any more it seems like he’s sore at everybody.”
I waited till we were seated side by side, then asked, “What’s the matter with him? He acted sore at the whole bunch of us before I ever got onto Kitten.”
I didn’t take my arm out from under Judy’s, but let it slip down so that our hands came together, and she didn’t take hers away. “Well,” she said, “it goes clean back to the time he first come courting Sis, and Paw drove him off . . . told him he wouldn’t never amount to nothing ’cause he was rough on stock. Myron, he was working for old man Macey then, got fired the next day. He blamed it onto Paw and told him he’d get even, and he did, too.”
“How, Judy?” I asked.
“Getting Sis to run off with him, that’s how,” she told me. “He had Kitten then; had her when he come riding into Beaver Valley looking for a job. Well, when he got fired he was gone away for a week or two, and when he come back he was leading Vixen, almost a spittin’ image of Kitten, only she wasn’t mean and ornery. She was the one ought to have been named Kitten—just as clever as a baby kitten. Sis fell in love with Vixen, and run away with Myron to get her. She’s been paying for it ever since.”
“They couldn’t have run far,” I said. “Isn’t that Beaver Valley where the little town sits at the bottom of the divide?”
“Uh-huh, that’s Cedar Bluffs,” she said, “where I live in the summertimes. In the winters I go to high school over to Oberlin, and get my keep for doing dishes and minding the baby for a lady. Her husband’s in the bank over there, but Myron hates him, ’cause he won’t let him have no more money. There won’t none of the bankers. That’s why he’s having to fix that old header now.”
As Judy spoke I saw Doc coming down the lane toward us, so when she’d finished I called to him quietly, “Did you find the salt, Doc? I’ll be along in a few minutes.”
“Okay, Bud,” he called back just as quietly, “I’ll get some brine ready for those blisters,” then he kept straight on.
Judy had half risen when I called to Doc, but I’d drawn her back beside me. As soon as he’d passed she started to rise again, and said, “I’d best go in now. Sis might worry.”
I could hear the whine of the separator from the kitchen, so I told her, “Wait till Paco finishes the separating. She won’t worry while she’s busy with the milk. Besides, you haven’t told me yet about her running away with Myron. Was that when they came up here?”
I hadn’t sat in the moonlight with a girl for a long, long time, and Judy’s hand was soft in mine, so when I drew her back beside me that second time I drew her closer. She didn’t really pull away, just ooched over a little, leaving
two or three inches between us—and I liked her better for it. She sat for a moment, looking up the golden pathway the moonlight made across the wheat field, then said, “Uh-uh, not up here. This would have been too close to home, and Paw would have come to fetch her back. They run off to the sand hills, up in Nebraska, but Myron didn’t do no good up there so they come back . . . right at the beginning of harvest, it was . . . the week before Marthy was born. All they had was Kitten and Vixen . . . and a filly foal out of each one of ’em . . . not even saddles . . . and Sis rode all that ways bareback . . . and her within a week of her time.”
There was a catch in her voice as she said the last few words, but it didn’t seem right to have any sadness that evening—not there in the moonlight—so to take her mind off her sister I said, “That’s a shame, Judy, but you were going to tell me how Myron got the way he is.”
“Well, that’s when it started,” she said, “Paw, he was awful mad, and cussed Myron out, and told him again that he wouldn’t never amount to nothing. And Myron cussed Paw back, and told him he’d show him . . . and right under his own nose, too . . . and for a little bit it looked like he was going to do it. Myron ain’t lazy. He hired out for a harvest hand to the banker over to Marion . . . that’s on the Nebraska side of the line . . . and the banker liked the way he worked, and let him have a quarter section to farm on halvers. It was a good quarter, too, up there on the first bench, but it didn’t have no house on it, so Myron put up a little soddy . . . no more’n ten feet square, and him and Sis went down there to live . . . with nothing but a straw bunk and a coal oil stove.”
“How could he farm a quarter section with two little ponies like Kitten?” I asked.
“He couldn’t,” she told me, “and that’s when his bad trouble started. The banker left him have money to buy a heavy team and seed wheat, and a secondhanded disk and seeder, and he didn’t take no mortgage—only on the next year’s crop. But Myron didn’t buy no seed, and didn’t plant no crop—leastways not on that quarter. That’s when he bought Lucy and Lilly, the two bay mares out there in the corral. They were sure a fine team then; Lucy didn’t get foundered till that winter—left her stand out when she was sweated up. And he bought two new sets of harness, and a brand new wagon, and disk, and seeder . . . and a couple of cows with heifer calves. Myron was flying high then. Guess he was trying to show Paw and the banker that he was smarter than them. He brought all the stuff across the state line, and mortgaged it to a banker over to Oberlin—the one I mind the baby and wash dishes for his wife when I’m going to school—and he used the mortgage money to pay a year’s cash rent for a half section west of The Bluffs, so he wouldn’t have to share crop with nobody.”
While Judy had been talking I’d heard the separator whir to a stop. Then Paco came out to the corner of the house, stood for a moment or two, and went on toward the barn. I knew Judy should have gone in, but I was interested in her story—and I liked sitting there in the moonlight with her, so I asked, “Didn’t the first banker sue Myron and take the crop on the place west of The Bluffs?”
“Oh, he sued him,” she said, “but he couldn’t get the crop . . . what there was of it. You see, as soon as Myron got the lease he mortgaged the crop to Bones—he’s the banker over to Cedar Bluffs—to raise money for seed and a couple more cows and horses.”
“Oh,” I said, “then that banker got the crop.”
“No,” she told me, “he didn’t, neither. Paw says the Lord took it away from Myron on account of him trying to be a thief. Him and Sis—she was proud then, and stout as lots of men—worked night and day till deep frost come, getting two hundred and sixty acres of wheat planted. The next spring they put the other sixty into corn. Wore the horses, all six of ’em, down to skin and bones. Then, just when the wheat was making heads, the hail hit ’em. The streak wasn’t no more than half a mile wide and two long, but it beat all their wheat and most of the corn back into the ground. The rest of it didn’t amount to much . . . just enough to eke ’em through the winter.
“Bones, he took the two new horses and cows so’s to get something out of his mortgage, and the banker over to Oberlin took the wagon and disk and seeder. They’d have took the rest of the stock too, only Lucy was a’ready foundered, the cows was too thin to sell, and nobody wants ornery little mustangs. That’s when Myron turned sour on everybody. He figured like they’d tromped on him when he was down, and he’s been hunting for somebody to tromp on ever since. There ain’t a banker up or down the valley but he’s tangled with, and the both of ’em lose every time.”
“Well, if they lose every time how can he keep going?” I asked.
She hunched her shoulders a particle and said, “By taking what’s left. With wheat as high as it is now the owners will let anybody take land on shares before leaving it lie fallow, and no farmer that can get anything else will take land way up here. Before this one, the last big crop on this divide was the year Sis and Myron got hailed out. Every year till now they’ve had a failure and got kicked off the place they was on, then had to move higher onto the divide.”
For half a minute she sat silently, looking down at our hands, that held us together and yet apart, then said wistfully, “They’d have been rich by now—the war coming on and wheat going up the way it has, and all—if Myron hadn’t tried to outsmart the banker over to Marion. That quarter section he put ’em on has raised thirty bushels of wheat to the acre ever since. Their half would have fetched near onto five thousand dollars every year, but Myron, he couldn’t be satisfied to be a quarter-section farmer. His trouble is he rares at it too hard, and expects everybody else to . . . and he tries to be smarter’n he is . . . and his word ain’t good.
“He’s took on more land with every move, as fast as the colts grew big enough to wear harness—they’re all out of Kitten and Vixen, her mate that Sis married him for, and that died last winter—and Myron keeps ’em so mean and ornery the bankers daresn’t foreclose on ’em. This year he’s got two sections in wheat and a quarter in corn. That’s why nothing is ready for harvest. Sis has been too poorly this spring to help with the corn, and being a’ready mortgaged to the neck and in trouble with all the bankers, Myron couldn’t get a loan to hire help. Working alone, it took him till June to get the last of the corn planted, and with this hot wind coming on he’d have lost it before harvest was over if he didn’t get it disk hoed. He finished last night, but that’s Myron for you; he always bites off a bigger chunk than he can chew, then blames somebody else if it chokes him.”
There were still a few things that puzzled me, so I asked, “If the bankers wouldn’t make him a loan for hiring help to put in a hundred and sixty acres of corn, why did they loan him enough for help to plow and seed twelve hundred and eighty acres of wheat? He couldn’t have done that alone.”
“He didn’t, and they didn’t,” she told me. “There wasn’t an acre of it neither plowed nor seeded. Last year’s crop was so poor it wasn’t worth harvesting, so it was left standing in the fields. That’s how Myron got the place. Then him and Sis hogged it back in—you know, disking both ways across it—and it took ’em till freeze-up to get it done. It’s a miracle they got a volunteer crop like this one, and it’ll be a bigger miracle if they get it harvested before it shatters or the hail gets it.”
She sat silently for a few seconds, just looking off across the moonlit fields, then said, almost in a whisper, “I hope the Lord don’t let nothing happen to it. It would be awful hard on Sis and the children. This is the first time they’ve had better’n a soddy to live in . . . and there ain’t no place to move to after you get kicked off the top of the divide.”
Although I knew Judy had no idea she was doing it, what she’d really told me was that we’d hired out to a man who didn’t have a dime with which to pay our wages, and who was crooked enough that he’d try to beat us out of the money even if he did have it. Of course, I had no way of knowing how big the mortgages and judgments against his crop might be, or if the laws of Kansas would
let them stand ahead of wage claims. But that was nothing to worry Judy with. “Don’t you worry about it, Judy,” I told her. “Unless Myron goes out of his way to pick a fight, and I don’t think he will, I’ll do all I can to help get this crop harvested, and to keep the crew on the job.”
She turned her face toward mine, her eyes warm in the soft light, the breeze stirring a chestnut brown lock that lay across her forehead, and her lips parted slightly as if she were going to speak. When she didn’t, I bent my face closer to hers, but she sprang to her feet as if frightened, and there was a touch of tremble in her voice as she told me quickly, “I got to go now . . . Bud. Sis’ll be worried.” Then she scampered away to the house like a startled quail.
Hudson left the header just as I reached the barn, and when I went around to our camp Gus and Lars were snoring in their tent. Edgar and Everett had spread miscellaneous clothing atop the blackened heap of straw, and were sleeping there, stripped to their B.V.D’s. Old Bill and Jaikus were wrapped in their blankets, and asleep on their straw mattresses. Paco lay on the naked mattress beside them, still fully dressed, with his sombrero hiding his face from the moonlight. Doc sat apart from the others, dozing, though not asleep. I hadn’t made a sound as I came around the barn, but he raised his head and asked, “Conquest?”
“No,” I told him, “not even a goodnight kiss. She’s a nice little girl, and from what she tells me your guess isn’t too far wrong on Hudson, except that he’s no drunk.”