Читать книгу The Smoking Flax - Robert James Campbell Stead - Страница 7

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Reed awakened with the sun pouring in upon him. His arm, reaching under the blankets beside him, found the place empty, and he sprang up from his pillow. In the gravel nearby he saw Cal bending over a fire.

“Hello, Daddy X!” he cried. “Why didn’t you call me? What luck for breakfast?”

“Big doings, Reed; big doings! Come and see.”

The boy clambered out of the car and ran to the spot where Cal, frying pan in hand, leaned over his little fire. An appetizing odor came up from something grilling on the hot metal.

“Smells scrumptious,” Reed approved. “What is it, Daddy X?”

“A secret. Listen. Hold down your head. Let me whisper.Wild duck!”

“Wild duck? How? But you said we mustn’t shoot them; you said it was against the law?”

“The law allows an exception for explorers threatened with starvation. We are explorers, Reed, threatened with starvation—if we don’t get something to eat. And on top of that, when this fine drake a-lit on the river just at daybreak it was too much for an empty stomach, Reed.”

“But I didn’t hear you shoot?”

“You are a sound sleeper. Conscience sits light on a young stomach, as well as on an empty one. Now, have your dip. It’s cold, but safe, if you stay near the shore.”

With a sudden contortion of his arms the boy emerged from his nightdress. There was a gleam of sunlight on his lithe little body as he plunged into the stream. He came up sputtering and shaking.

“O-o-w-h!” he shouted. “You said it was cold, and you were right!” The boy was jumping about on the gravel. “O-o-w-h!—Where’s the towel?”

“Try a sun rub, Reed. It’s better for you, and saves laundry.”

The boy raced up and down the bank, rubbing his body with his hands as he went. In a minute or two the morning sun and air had whipped him clean and dry.

After breakfast: “How’s Ante this morning? Have you called the roll?”

“Ante lope, please. No, sir, the roll has not been called.”

“Very well. Sergeant, call the roll.”

Brisk and business-like, Reed plunged into the tool kit for the tire gauge and made a quick examination of the wheels while Cal measured their oil and gasoline resources. Then he presented himself with a salute.

“Front left, sixty; rear left, sixty-five; front right, sixty; rear right, fifty.”

Cal returned the salute. “Fifteen pounds fatigue duty for rear right.”

“Yes, sir!”

More business with the gasoline tank. Then:

“Sergeant, our advance is cut off!”

“General! How cut off?”

“No gasoline.”

“No gasoline!”

“Just a drop—perhaps a quart. Sergeant, you are a practical man. We have gasoline enough for five miles, and oil enough for fifteen miles; how far can we go?”

“Twenty miles!”

“Good! Let us be off!”

But on the way up the long hill out of the valley Reed slipped from his happy world of make-belief. “What are we going to do for gasoline, Daddy X?” he ventured. “You gave your last money to the man who pulled us out of the mud.”

“Yes. We are in a bad way. We have neither money nor gasoline. What do we do when we have neither money nor gasoline?”

“Write a story. Oh, Daddy X, write the story of the oak and the elm!”

But Cal shook his head. The youngster was thinking of the recourse Cal had had to newspapers in the cities they had come through; he was generally able to sell some kind of “story” to buy gasoline and food.

“No newspaper market here,” he had to say.

“Isn’t there a paper in Plainville?”

“A country paper. But country papers don’t buy stories, usually. The editor writes his own, or acquires them by means of a long pair of shears and a paste-pot. No, Sergeant, the army must go to work.”

“Where? On a farm?”

“On a farm. On the first farm we come to. Certainly on a farm within five miles.”

“Oh, goodie!”

“A tremendous word for a sergeant, I must say,” said the general, severely.

They were up on the rolling prairie again, bowling through a country tufted with groves of small poplars and willows. Presently a trail led off to the left through a gate in a wire fence and lost itself amidst the poplars. Cal brought his car to a stop.

“Consultation of staff,” he announced. “Doubtless that trail leads to a farm-yard. Shall we go in?”

“We are out of gasoline?”

“Almost.”

“And food?”

“Almost.”

“And money?”

“Quite.”

“Let us go in.”

“Very good, Sergeant.”

He turned the wheels to the left and the rickety car contorted itself strangely but successfully down into the ditch and up again. The gate was open and they rumbled along a trail threading its way among the poplars. Suddenly it broadened into an open space and they found themselves in the midst of a village of farm buildings. There was a scurrying of poultry out of their way and much chatter from a flock of geese more than half disposed to hostility. Cal brought his car to an abrupt stop, wedged between an obstreperous steer and the corner of a log building.

Around the corner of the building, from the eastward, came the shadow of a man, grotesque and squatty on the hard-packed earth of the barnyard. In immediate pursuit of the shadow came the substance; six feet and sixty years of substance; broad-chested substance under a blue cotton shirt and blue duck overalls held in precarious position by a pair of red leather suspenders with two ruptured eyelets; the whole surmounted by a large, ruddy, and not ill-natured face, fringed about the ears with a pleasant tangle of grey hairs and topped with a submissive lump of straw hat.

“Whoa, Eliza!” he exclaimed. “Jumpin’jack rabbits, who have we here?”

“Two hired men,” said Cal. “You weren’t expecting us?”

“Not as you’d notice it. Whose hired men?”

“Yours.”

The farmer removed the twisted accumulation from his head and harrowed his scalp with his thick fingers. “Well, I’ll be danged,” he confided at last. “I admit bein’in Plainville last night an’havin’a bit more formalin than was good for me, but I don’t have no recollection of hirin’a man an’a boy an’a tin Lizzie. What is the deal?”

The farmer’s partial confession opened an unexpected channel for Cal’s quick wits. “Forty dollars a month for me, during the season,” he said; “the boy gets his board and goes to school, and Lizzie makes herself useful about the farm if you furnish the gasoline.”

The thick fingers gently continued their harrowing, while a twinkle of amusement lit up the broad, red face.

“Not so bad,” he confided. “I was afraid I might have sold you the farm, or got you engaged to Minnie, or traded off the wife’s spaniel, or something serious like that. Well, Jackson Stake is a man that stands by his bargain. But one thing,” he added, with an apparent twinge of apprehension; “nothin’o’this to the wife. She’s a suspeecious creature, is the wife. I think she doubts all was well at Plainville last night. Not a word o’it to her. I’ll tell her I met you just the now on the road and hired you, an’that’s all there’s to it. I can use another man all right, an’the boy can go to school, but you’ll have to sleep in a grainery. As for Lizzie, you can pasture her out. I drive a Dodge.”

Cal already knew something of the jealousies peculiar to owners of different makes of cars, and wondered whether the farmer’s remark was to be taken as an indication of snobbery or a piece of harmless information. Aloud: “Good. Lead us to the granary, and let us get to work.”

“Give ’er the juice,” said Jackson Stake, and as Cal drew the car by him the farmer hopped on to the running-board with the agility of a boy of twenty. “To the right, around the pig pen. Gee! Gee! Don’t you know gee from haw? To the right. Look out for the sow! Look out for the hay rack! Look out for the wagon tongue! There, the frame caboose, straight ahead.”

Cal steamed straight ahead toward the “caboose,” speeding up as he went, and brought the car to a sudden stop a yard from the door. The old man lurched forward with a jerk but did not lose his grip. “Jumpin’jack rabbits! If you’re as quick a starter as you are a stopper we’ll get along fine.... This is it.”

They got out and inspected “it.” It was a frame building, twelve by fourteen feet; one thickness of drop siding nailed to two-by-four studs; floored with shiplap; roofed with shingles; a door in one end, a window, which could be removed, in the other. A heap of old sacks with a musty smell; a heap of old harness with a leathery smell; an old fanning-mill without any smell. Three sacks of screenings, up-ended and open-mouthed; probably chicken feed. The screenings had been strewed somewhat generously about the floor, and in a corner, where the rain had got in, had taken root and were sending thin, fungusy stalks groping up the board wall. The theory that the screenings were chicken feed was suddenly supported by a commotion in the farm-yard. An old rooster, on sentry-go, observing the granary door open, had given the “cook-house call,” and the barnyard poultry were sweeping down upon them from every direction like cavalry in a charge, shedding superfluous feathers as they came. They were into the fortress, among everybody’s feet, dabbing with terrific velocity, before the garrison had time to drop the portcullis.

“Hist! Hist! Shoo!” cried Jackson Stake, making a great swipe with his foot which caught a rooster on the wish-bone and sent him somersaulting under Antelope. “Hungry heathens! Who’d think they were fed an hour ago? Strike me! but I never could see how a four-pound hen could eat a bushel of wheat without wabblin’.”

By united efforts they stemmed the charge and cleared the battle ground. “Well, this is it,” the farmer repeated, when the door had been closed on the last invader. “You can dump this stuff in the hay shed, an’the wife’ll give you a broom an’a mop, if you’re fastid’ous. Got your own blankets?”

Cal nodded.

“Good! Now I’ll go up to the house an’sort of break it gently. You know what it is to cook for two more mouths. Dang it, I don’blame ’er. If there’s any doggonder job than a farmer’s it’s a farmer’s wife’s. In about ten minutes she’ll be prepared for the worst, an’you bump in then to borrow the broom. Mind, now, give me ten minutes!” And the old farmer was off houseward, pursued by a scouting detachment from the poultry yard.

Cal and Reed exchanged looks which began seriously, and ended simultaneously in an outbreak of laughter. “But he didn’t hire us last night, Daddy X,” the boy protested, when his sides were settled.

“And I didn’t say he did, if you noticed,” Cal returned. “Just a bit of good luck, and when Fate hands you a bit of good luck, don’t question her too closely. Now, let’s wrestle this stuff out of here. Let me see—that’s the hay shed over there beyond the pig pen.”

Cal took an observation of the position. It was evident that in the laying out of this ramble of structures on Jackson Stake’s homestead no town planner had been employed. Most of the buildings were of logs, and the obvious theory was that the logs were hauled in winter and dumped wherever chance dictated, and in the spring a building was put up wherever the logs happened to lie. One larger building, which might, in a pinch, be called a barn, elbowed off a swarm of lesser brethren crowding in about its feet, much as Jackson Stake warded off the chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, and young pigs which pursued him on his perambulations about the yard. Except for the house, which was of boards and stood a little to one side, the cardinal points of the compass had been blandly disregarded. Everywhere were buildings, pointing in every direction, in all states of repair and disrepair, with gaping doors yawning in the morning sunshine, housing, no doubt, all sorts of strange quadrupeds. The place gave promise of enormous interest.

The granary which was to be their home was built on two logs or skids, roughly pointed, so that it could be hauled beside the “set” at threshing time and filled direct from the separator. It seemed to have been left just at the spot where the loitering of the horses had overbalanced the persistence of their driver. It pointed nowhere in particular. Nearby, and similarly pointed, was another granary, its exact double. It gave signs of habitation, as over the door, scrawled with brown paint on the side of an apple box, was the legend, “Dinty Moore.”

Cal absorbed these general facts as he loaded the sacks and harness into the Ford for transportation to the hay shed. When this was done they went up to the house, assuming that Jackson Stake would now have completed his preliminary overtures. The house stood a little to the north of the principal cluster of buildings; it was a four-cornered box with a roof, and a chimney at each end of the roof. The door was in the centre of the eastern side, and in reaching the door from the barnyard one made a detour around a water barrel which had leaked somewhat copiously at the southeastern corner. This detour, however, could not be accomplished in a wide and curving movement; some sharp angles were necessary to avoid collapse over the pile of stove wood which occupied the right front of the prospect. A hewn block of wood served as a doorstep, with a fragment of plough-share nailed to one end as a boot scraper. Dexterous footwork over a washtub and sundry minor utensils landed Cal and Reed safely upon the step.

The door was open, and their shadow, falling inwards, announced their presence. Jackson Stake was seated in a big chair, prodding his pipe with a straw from the kitchen broom, while Mrs. Stake wrestled an ample armful of dough on the wooden table. “This is the missus,” said the farmer, without rising. “She’ll be glad to see you.”

“I’d be a heap gladder to see a woman,” said Mrs. Stake, severely, without looking up from her dough. “You men are all alike; seem to think there’s no limit to the mouths a woman can fill. Jackson can always get another man or two, whether he needs him or not, but I can’t get a woman, not for the soul or sake o’me. Come in!”

She was tall and square, big boned and not over fleshed. As she kneaded the dough the muscles of her arms rose and fell like those of a man. With a knife she severed a section, moulded it skillfully into shape, and tucked it into a pan with a twin brother. With all her brusqueness there was a touch of something akin to tenderness as she patted it into place. She crossed the floor with quick, straight strides and set it to rise on a board bridging two chairs beside the oven. Then as she looked up, “Hello? Where’d the boy come from?”

“He’s mine.”

“Yours? Did you hire him, too, Jackson?” Apparently Jackson’s courage had failed him before he got this far in his revelation. “Yours, did you say?” again to Cal. “Yours and whose?”

“Mine—adopted. My sister’s,” Cal explained.

Mrs. Stake looked at Reed and Reed looked at Mrs. Stake, and as they looked all the woman’s sternness melted into an expression very human and motherly. “Come on in, Son,” she said. “I know you’re hungry. Boys o’eight or nine are always hungry. I’ve raised three, an’I know.”

She broke a bun from a fine fresh brown panful just out of the oven and placed it in the boy’s hand. Then she turned to her kneading. “It’s not that I mind work,” she confided in the dough; “what I mind is everlastin’work, mornin’, noon an’night; never done. The men can get help, even when they don’partic’lar need it, but the women just have to plug alone. There’s Minnie, now; if she’d stuck to the farm—— But she bolted. I dunno as I blame her. Some days I’m blame near boltin’myself. Well, what d’ye want?” to Cal, who still stood framed in the doorway.

“A broom and a mop, if you please,” Cal answered.

“For what?”

“To brush up the granary a bit.”

Mrs. Stake regarded Cal with some curiosity. “Partic’lar, ain’t ye? Well, I dunno but it’s a good idea.” She rubbed the dough from her hands and filled a pail with hot water. From behind the door she produced a broom and a mop, and severely handed the lot to Cal, who thanked her and started for the granary. At the corner by the leaky water barrel he was arrested by her sharp voice calling him.

“You’ll be sendin’the boy to school,” she called, “an’I’ll wager his clo’es is more holy than righteous. Bring ’im in to-night an’I’ll darn ’em up.”