I jumped off Bill’s barge, and he brought it squarely under the elevator just as Hudson finished his turn. His coming in so smoothly seemed to anger Hudson. He lashed his horses and sent the header into the new swath like a wriggling snake, crashing the elevator against the side of the barge, then veering it out far enough to throw the cut grain onto the ground. And with each erratic veer he bawled at Bill to watch what he was doing and keep the barge under the elevator.
I never saw any man take the play away from another so quickly and completely. Old Bill never once looked back at the crazily lurching elevator, or paid the slightest attention to Hudson, but set a course as straight as a taut string, forcing Hudson to fight the rudder and quit flogging his horses in order to keep the stream of wheat flowing into the barge. He cut three short swaths down the field and back to make room for the stackyard, then yelled for Doc’s barge—and my troubles began.
With Doc’s barge under the elevator, Hudson kept straight on toward the far end of the field, a quarter-mile away, and again whipped his horses nearly to a trot. Gus and Lars were evidently afraid Judy would have trouble in catching up to take her turn, and they nearly buried me. Plunging their forks nearly to the floor boards, they heaved, and rolled about half the load off over the low side of the barge. Before I could more than get my fork into it, they’d sent the other half of the load tumbling down, burying me to the waist. They didn’t bother to clean out the barge, but scooped off the bulk of what was left with a few swipes of their forks, and before I could paw my way out of the mess Judy had larruped the old mares into a trot and was halfway out of the stackyard.
Fortunately, Jaikus and Paco weren’t as strong as Gus and Lars, but they scooped wheat out of there fast enough that I couldn’t do much beside dodge the forkfuls. Then Old Bill drove away at a trot, and across the quarter-mile-square field I could see Judy pulling her barge in beside the header while Doc turned back with a heaping load.
It was then I discovered that I didn’t know any more about stacking wheat than a goose knows about knitting mittens. It didn’t handle like hay, wouldn’t bind together in good forkfuls, and was as slippery as wet spaghetti. I had to get the heap spread out into some semblance of a stack before any more was piled onto it, and the only way I could think of doing it was by getting on top and scooping as fast and far as I could in both directions. I was so winded I couldn’t speak when Doc pulled his load alongside, and my stack looked like something that had been left over from a hurricane. There were only two things that saved me: Doc and the greenness of Edgar and Everett.
The boys held their pitchforks as if they were long-handled soup spoons, and with each dab they made at the load they pushed off about as much wheat as a fellow could stuff in his hat. I didn’t stop to look up at them, but kept flailing away with my own fork until Doc caught my eye and motioned me to him. “You’re going at it all wrong, Bud,” he told me quietly. “I’d trade jobs with you only I got my belly full of wheat stacking when I was a kid, and promised myself I’d never do another day’s work that would put callouses on my hands. Don’t try to pitch it like hay. Turn your fork over and use it like you were sweeping deep sand with a broom. Then push it to the outside, but don’t try to tread too close to the edge; it would slip out like hot mush. I’ll let you know how your sides are building; don’t worry too much about ’em. Make your stack about thirty feet long and fifteen wide, and let it round up a little in the middle. Now take it easy; there’s no sense in killing yourself off for this wild man. That’s what he’s trying to do to the whole bunch of us, horses and all. He’s taking twice as much straw as there’s any need for, just to pour the work onto us.”
I ripped into the heap and dragged wheat, as Doc told me where to push it and how to handle it. By the time Judy turned into the yard with her load I had the heap squared out enough that it looked like the beginning of a stack, but the boys weren’t half finished with their unloading. As Judy pulled in behind Doc’s barge, I heard Hudson yell, “Get that barge unloaded and back here! Driver, give them kids a hand!”
I’d been too busy to pay any attention to Hudson, but had an idea he was still at the far end of the field, and was surprised to hear his voice so plainly. When I looked up I found that he had nearly circled the field. The header was standing no more than a couple of hundred yards away, and Old Bill was pulling away from it with his barge loaded high. I’d barely glanced up when Doc shouted back, “No business! I hired out as a driver!”
Doc had no sooner refused than Hudson shouted, “One of you Swedes trade places with one of them kids! I don’t aim to pay for no time when this header ain’t rollin’!”
For maybe ten seconds Gus and Lars mumbled to each other, then started to climb down from the barge, and Lars told Judy, “Ve kvit.”
She caught her breath sharply as he said it, and when I looked up two big tears were brimming in her eyes. I knew well enough why they were there, and I’d promised her I’d do everything I could to keep the crew on the job, so I asked Gus and Lars to wait a minute, then went to the barge. I told them in the simplest words I could find that they could have my day’s pay if they’d stay and each work with one of the boys. They mumbled a few more words in Swedish, then Lars nodded and went to climb on Doc’s barge.
The rest of the forenoon was a series of mad rushes and stops. Hudson drove at the job as if he were trying to harvest the whole two sections in a single day, but the conveyor belts on the header, probably eight or ten years old, couldn’t stand the strain. With the crop having sprung from volunteer seeding, it wasn’t evenly spread over the land. In some places it was thin, but in others thick and rank. Any reasonable man would have kept his horses at a slow walk, and would have raised or lowered his cutter bar so as to take only the heads and three or four inches of straw, but Hudson set his cutter low enough to catch the shortest heads and left it there, putting a terrific strain on the horses and the worn-out old header. Half a dozen times the conveyor belt broke from being overloaded, and each time it took Hudson nearly half an hour to repair it.
The breakdowns were lifesavers for the horses and me, for they gave me time to square my stack into shape, but they were rough on Edgar and Everett. They were the only ones Hudson dared vent his anger on, and from clear across the field I could hear him yelling and swearing at them. I have an idea they had promised each other to finish out the day in spite of anything, but if so Everett broke his promise. At about eleven o’clock, he blew sky high, jumped off the barge with his pitchfork held in both hands, and for a second or two I thought he was going to rush Hudson with it, but he stopped just beyond reach of the whip, shouting that they’d quit and demanded their wages right then. Hudson roared back that they hadn’t earned the grub they’d eaten, then whipped up his horses and drove on.
The boys followed the header for a few yards, shouting that they’d have their attorney take care of Hudson, then they gave up and limped toward the house. Just before we knocked off for noon I saw them hobbling toward the main road, carrying their suitcases and looking as dejected as any pair of boys I’d ever seen. Their leaving was more or less a relief to the rest of us. As far as Gus and Lars were concerned, they’d only been in the way, and as soon as they were gone Hudson cooled down a little, probably convinced that Gus and Lars would go right on doing double work, and that he’d saved himself fourteen dollars a day. Then too, as the horses began to tire he couldn’t keep them at so fast a pace, so the header gave less trouble.
By noon the temperature was above 110°, I was sweating so much that the wheat beards stuck to my back and belly like a swarm of stinging mosquitoes, and the blisters on both hands had broken. Each time Doc came in with a load he scolded at me for going at my job too hard, and told me the easier ways to do it, but I couldn’t pick up the knack well enough to find a minute’s rest without letting my stack get out of shape. Then too, I’d run out of breakfast long before Hudson shouted, “Grub!” from the far end of the field.
I rode in from the s
tack with Judy and Gus, and when we reached the corral Hudson was nowhere in sight. He’d left the header in the middle of the yard, and Paco was unhooking the trace chains. Doc and Bill were unhitching their own teams, and Jaikus was pitching a little dab of wheat into the corral from one of the barges. Judy would have gone right to work at unhitching her team, but I told her to run along, and Gus did the unhitching while I helped Paco with the header teams. All the horses were dripping with sweat, so we didn’t dare let them have much water, but gave each one a dozen swallows or so before putting them into the corral to make out a meal on that dry, bearded wheat straw. When we stripped off their bridles no one would have guessed they were the same broncos we’d harnessed that morning. They were so worked-down and starved that all the fight had gone out of them.
The children were playing near the windmill when we left the corral to wash up for dinner. They stood watching us until we were halfway to them—half curious, half frightened, like four little antelopes—then ran away behind the house. We’d washed and were just starting for the kitchen when Hudson came out. He avoided looking our way, and hurried off toward the header.
Dinner was on the table when we went in—exactly the same things we’d had for supper and breakfast—and Judy was clearing away Hudson’s dirty dishes. She looked up and smiled, started to say something, then stopped with her lips pinched tightly together as if she were having to hold it back. After she’d put on a clean plate and cup she sat down and helped herself to a potato, a biscuit, and some gravy, but she just shook her head when I passed her the platter of boar pork. The other fellows ate it for the same reason I did, but there was hardly a word said during the meal.
We stuffed in as much of the nauseating grub as we could stomach, left the table, and went out to sit in the narrow strip of shade on the north side of the house, glad of the half hour’s rest before it would be time to go back to the field. Hudson was at the header, hammering rivets into the spliced old conveyor belt, and barely let us sit down before he yelled, “Get them horses hitched up! What you loafin’ there fore? I’ve lost time enough a’ready!”
When Hudson yelled the other fellows all looked toward me, so I said, “Let’s do it. If we’d quit now we wouldn’t come out any better than the boys did, and maybe I can get things straightened out by morning. If not, we’ll quit then. Is that fair enough?” No one answered, but they all got to their feet.
No matter how tough a decent farmer may be with his hired help, he’ll give his horses a full hour’s rest at noon. And even though he may be stingy in the table he sets, he’ll see that his horses are well fed and watered. The amount of feed Hudson had sent in from the field wasn’t more than half enough for thirteen horses, and they were fighting each other away from the last few straws when we went to the corral for them.
The afternoon went a little better for the fellows on the barges, but worse than ever for the horses—and it wasn’t too easy for me. I don’t know how hot it might have been that afternoon, but well above 110°, and there wasn’t a breath of air stirring. Fortunately, the drivers carried water jugs, wrapped in a wet sack and hung under the barge. Each time a load came in I must have drunk a pint. I sweated it out almost as fast as I drank it, and the more I sweat the more stinging beards stuck to my skin.
Hudson didn’t waste any time yelling at the barge crews, and they didn’t give him anything he could yell about. Their job, like mine, grew harder as the stack grew taller, but Hudson never had to wait one minute for an empty barge. And except for a few breakdowns, he didn’t wait for anything else. Even if he’d had well-seasoned horses, heavy enough for the oversized header, the pace he was setting would have been nearly enough to kill them. For the ones he was driving it was nothing short of torture, and as they began to slow down he poured the blacksnake onto their backs. By mid-afternoon every horse in the header teams had zebra stripes, but they’d reached the point where they didn’t even jump when the whip hit them, and with each round I noticed that they’d slowed their pace a bit more.
As the sun sunk lower all the spirit drained out of Hudson’s horses. They plodded along like benumbed, half-frozen cattle in a blizzard, too exhausted to pay the least attention to the whip. That was probably all that saved the pitchers and me from keeling over in the heat, for as the horses slowed it gave us time to catch a couple of minute’s rest between each load.
I don’t believe there were a dozen words spoken between the crew that afternoon, except, “Pass the jug, will you?” We’d all made up our minds to see the day through, and we were doing it just about as the header horses were. The sun was just setting, so it must have been about half-past-seven, when Hudson finished the last swath of the quarter-mile-square field, then without a word he turned the header toward the house.
Doc’s barge was the last one in from the field, so we left about a foot of wheat on the floor for horse feed. He pulled in close to the corral fence, and as he and I jumped down to unhook the traces Lars began pitching the horses’ supper over the fence. He’d pitched only three or four forkfuls when Hudson came out of the barn, shouting, “Don’t pitch that in there! Turn them horses out to pasture!” Then he kept straight on to the house.
With it being Saturday night, I could only think that Hudson was going to lay off for Sunday, though few farmers did in harvest time. Even if the horses were going to have a day’s rest, I couldn’t imagine any man in his right mind turning them out to pasture without a feeding of grain, but there was nothing we could do except to follow his orders or quit.
It was dusk by the time we’d unharnessed and turned the horses out to pasture, and a lamp was lighted in the kitchen when we went to the windmill to wash up for supper. I wasn’t surprised when Hudson came out and hurried away toward the barn. It was a relief, as tired as we were, that we wouldn’t have to eat at the same table with him.
Supper—exactly like the other meals—was on the table, and eight places were set, with Hudson’s dirty dishes at one of them. Beyond the half-closed door to the next room a child whimpered, but there was no other sound. We’d barely taken our places when I heard the engine of the old Maxwell roar and backfire. There was a clashing of gears, then the sound of the engine grew fainter and farther away. As before, we ate in silence and left the table as soon as we’d finished. I was too tired to be hungry, but fiddled along so as to be the last to leave. At the doorway I stopped and called quietly, “Judy.”
She came from the other room as quickly as if she’d been waiting for my call, and there was a half-embarrassed, half-frightened look on her face. She didn’t speak until she’d crossed the kitchen and was within a foot or two of me, then she looked up and said huskily, “Bud, I’m sorry, and I’m ashamed, but . . .”
Although I’d had no intention of doing it, I stepped closer and put an arm around her shoulders. “Neither you nor your sister has anything to be sorry for or ashamed of,” I told her, “so stop your worrying. We’re not going to quit tonight, and maybe we’re not going to quit at all, but I’ve got to know where Myron has gone and how long he may be away.”
She turned her face up to me and said, “To Oberlin, to try and get new conveyor belts, and without he has good luck he’ll prob’ly be late. Why do you need to know, Bud?”
“Because I’m going to take Kitten and ride in to see the banker at The Bluffs,” I told her.
She caught a quick, sharp breath, and there was a tinge of terror in her voice when she whispered, “No, Bud! No, you can’t! She’d kill you! Myron’s learned her to be as dirty and sneakin’ as he is. She’s come near to killing three men a’ready, and there ain’t nobody rode her till you did yesterday . . . nobody but Myron, and the only way he can do it is by keeping her scairt of him.”
As I turned to go I told her, “I’ll watch her, Judy, but I’ve got to take her. If I don’t see that banker tonight—and have some luck with him—there won’t be any crew here tomorrow morning. Paco’ll take care of the milking.”
5
Banke
r Bones
WHEN I left the kitchen, after telling Judy I was going to see the banker, the rest of the crew was waiting for me. “You still aiming to ride into town tonight?” Doc asked.
“Right away,” I told him. “I’ve had a couple more ideas during the day, and if I can’t sell them to that banker we’ll get out of here in the morning. I’m not going to stick around to see those horses killed, much as I’d like to help the woman and those little kids.”
“That’s two of us,” Doc said. “Want me to bring the saddle?”
“No,” I said, “I don’t dare risk it. Not that I’m hankering for any more blisters on my tail end, but that little mare flips over awful fast, and I don’t want to be caught in any saddle gear if she does it. You fellows turn in. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
In the starlight I could see Kitten at the far side of the corral when I went in, so I stopped, talking quietly, to let her catch my scent. Horses, particularly mustangs, can tell whether or not a man is afraid by the smell of him, and I think they can tell a lot more: Whether he is angry, irritable, rough, or gentle. I waited a minute or two, mumbling small talk, then snapped one rein above my head. Instantly, Kitten whirled and stood facing me. I had to gamble on whether she’d remember me with hatred or willingness to let me ride her, so I walked straight to her as if I knew her to be the gentlest horse on earth—and she stood for bridling as if she were. I led her out of the corral, watered her, slipped the reins around her neck, and flipped aboard, ready to jump for my life if she reared. She didn’t, but swung into an easy rhythmic lope that any child could have ridden. The ride to town must have taken more than a half hour, but it seemed less, for I had to do some careful thinking on the way.