DOG DAYS, GRAIN HARVEST, AND A TRULY LUCRETIAN TEMPEST
After haying came grain harvest. There were three acres of wheat, four
of oats, an acre of barley, an acre of buckwheat and an acre and
three-fourths of rye to get in. The rye, however, had been harvested
during the last week of haying. It ripened early, for it was the Old
Squire's custom to sow his rye very early in the spring. The first work
which we did on the land, after the snow melted, was to plough and
harrow for rye. With the rye we always sowed clover and herdsgrass seed
for a hay crop the following year. This we termed "seeding down;" and
the Old Squire liked rye the best of all grain crops for this purpose.
"Grass seed 'catches' better with rye than oats, or barley, or even
wheat," he was accustomed to say.
When we harvested the grain, he would be seen peering into the stubble
with an observant eye, and would then be heard to say, "A pretty good
'catch' this year," or, "It hasn't 'caught' worth a cent."
It was not on more than half the years that we secured a fair wheat
crop. Maine is not a State wholly favorable for wheat; yet the Old
Squire persisted in sowing it, year by year, although Addison often
demonstrated to him that oats were more profitable and could be
exchanged for flour. "But a farmer ought to raise his bread-stuff," the
old gentleman would rejoin stoutly. "How do we know, too, that some
calamity may not cut off the Western wheat crop; then where should we
be?"
It is a pity, perhaps, that Eastern farmers do not generally display the
same independent spirit.
But the Old Squire himself finally gave up wheat raising. Gram and the
girls found fault with our Maine grown wheat flour, because the bread
from it was not very white and did not "rise" well. The neighbors had
Western flour and their bread was white and light, while ours was darker
colored and sometimes heavy, in spite of their best efforts.
No farmer can hold out long against such indoor repinings, but the Old
Squire never came to look with favor on Western flour; he admitted that
it made whiter bread, but he always declared that it was not as
wholesome! The fact was that it seemed to him to be an unfarmerlike
proceeding, to buy his flour. For the same reason he would never buy
Western corn for his cattle.
"When I cannot raise fodder enough for my stock, I'll quit farming," he
would exclaim, when his neighbors told him of the corn they were buying.
As a matter of fact, the old gentleman lived to see a good many of his
neighbors' farms under mortgage, and held a number of these papers
himself. It was not a wholly propitious day for New England farmers when
they began buying Western corn, on the theory that they could buy it
cheaper than they could raise it themselves. The net result has been
that their profits have often gone West, or into the pockets of the
railway companies which draw the corn to them.
Another drawback to wheat raising in Maine is the uncertain weather at
harvest time. Despite our shrewdest inspection of the weather signs, the
wheat as well as the other grain would often get wet in the field, and
sometimes it would lie wet so long as to sprout. Sprouted wheat flour
makes a kind of bread which drives the housewife to despair.
"Oh, this dog-days weather!" the Old Squire would exclaim, as the grain
lay wet in the field, day after day, or when an August shower came
rumbling over the mountains just as we were raking it up into windrows
and tumbles.
I had never heard of "dog days" before and was curious to know what sort
of days they were. "They set in," the Old Squire informed me, "on the
twenty-fifth of July and last till the fifth of September. Then is when
the Dog-star rages, and it is apt to be 'catching' weather. Dogs are
more liable to run mad at this time of year, and snakes are most
venomous then." Such is the olden lore, and I gained an impression that
those forty-two days were after a manner unhealthy for man and beast.
Near the middle of August that summer there came the most terrific
thunder shower which I had ever witnessed. Halse, Addison and Asa Doane
had mowed the acre of barley that morning, and after dinner we three
boys went out into the field to turn the swaths, for the sun had been
very hot all day. It was while thus employed that we saw the shower
rising over the mountains to the westward and soon heard the thunder. It
rose rapidly, and the clouds took on, as they rolled upward, a peculiar
black, greenish tint.
It was such a tempest as Lucretius describes when he says,--
"So dire and terrible is the aspect of Heaven, that one might think all
the Darkness had left Acheron, to be poured out across the sky, as the
drear gloom of the storm collects and the Tempest, forging loud
thunderbolts, bends down its black face of terror over the affrighted
earth."
Gramp called us in, to carry a few cocks of late-made hay into the barn
from the orchard, and then bade us shut all the barn doors and make
things snug. "For there's a tremendous shower coming, boys," he said.
"There's hail in those clouds."
We ran to do as he advised, and had no more than taken these
precautions when the shower struck. Such awful thunder and such bright,
vengeful lightning had, the people of the vicinity declared, never been
observed in that town, previously. A bolt came down one of the large
Balm o' Gilead trees near the house, and the thunder peal was absolutely
deafening. Wealthy hid herself in the parlor clothes-closet, and Gram
sat with her hands folded in the middle of the sitting-room. Just before
the clouds burst, it was so dark in the house that we could scarcely see
each others' faces. A moment later the lightning struck a large
butternut tree near the calf-pasture wall, across the south field,
shivering it so completely that nearly all the top fell; the trunk, too,
was split open from the heart.
In fact, the terrific flashes and peals indicated that the lightning was
descending to the earth all about us. Two barns were struck and burned
in the school district adjoining ours. Rain then fell in sheets, and
also hail, which cut the garden vegetables to strings and broke a number
of windows. This tempest lasted for nearly an hour, and prostrated the
corn and standing grain very badly. An apple tree was also up-rooted,
for there was violent wind as well as lightning and thunder.
Next morning we were obliged to leave our farm work and repair the roads
throughout that highway district, for the shower had gullied the hills
almost beyond belief. Altogether it had done a great amount of damage on
every hand.
At supper that night, after returning from work on the highway, the Old
Squire suddenly asked whether any of us had seen the colts, in the
pasture beyond the west field, that day.
No one remembered having seen them since the shower, though we generally
noticed them running around the pasture every day. There were three of
them, two bays and a black one. The two former were the property of men
in the village, but Black Hawk, as we called him, belonged to us.
"After supper, you had better go see where they are," the Old Squire
said to us.
Addison and I set off accordingly. The pasture was partly cleared, with
here and there a pine stub left standing, and was of about twenty acres
extent. We went up across it to the top of the hill, but could not find
the colts. Then we walked around by the farther fence, but discovered no
breach in it and no traces where truant hoofs had jumped over it. It was
growing dark, and we at length went home to report our ill-success.
"Strange!" the Old Squire said. "We must look them up." But no further
search was made that night.
"Is that a hawk?" Halstead said to me, while he and I were out milking a
little before sunrise next morning. "Don't you see it? Sailing round
over the colt pasture. Too big for a hawk, isn't it?"
A large bird was wheeling slowly above the pasture, moving in lofty
circles, on motionless wings.
"I'll bet that's an eagle!" Halse cried. "Can't be a hawk. We couldn't
see a hawk so far off."
Suddenly the bird seemed to pause on wing a moment, then descended
through the air and disappeared just over the crest of the ridge.
Perhaps it was fancy, but we thought we heard the roar of its wings.
"Came down by that high stub!" exclaimed Halstead. "Pounced upon
something there! I'll run in and get the shotgun. The folks aren't up
yet. We'll go over. Perhaps we can get a shot at it."
Addison had gone on an errand to the Corners that morning. Halstead got
the gun, and setting down our milk pails, we ran across the field, and
so onward to the pasture. "'Twas near that stub," whispered Halse, as we
began to see the top of it over the crest of the ridge. We peeped over.
Down in the hollow at the foot of the stub was the great bird, flapping
and tugging at something--one, two, three animals, lying stretched out
on the ground! The sight gave us a sudden shock.
"The colts!" exclaimed Halse, forgetting the eagle. "Dead!"
The big bird raised its head, then rose into the air with mighty flaps
and sailed away. We watched it glide off along the ridge, and saw it
alight in an oak, the branches of which bent and swayed beneath its
weight.
"All dead!" cried Halstead, gazing around. "Isn't that hard!"
The eagle had been tearing at their tongues, which protruded as they lay
on the ground. There was a strong odor from the carcasses.
"Been dead some time," Halse exclaimed. "What killed them?"
We examined them attentively. Not the slightest mark, nor wound, could
be detected. But a lot of fresh splinters lay at the foot of the pine
stub, close by them.
"Must have been lightning," I said, glancing up. "That's just what it
was! They were struck during that big shower."
We went to the house with the unwelcome tidings. At first the folks
would scarcely believe our account. Then there were rueful looks.
"Ah, those pine stubs ought to have been cut down," exclaimed the Old
Squire. "Dangerous things to be left standing in pastures!"
Later in the day we took shovels and went to the pasture, with Asa
Doane, to bury the dead animals. While this was going on, the eagle came
back and sailed about, high overhead.
"Leave one carcass above ground," said Asa. "That old chap will light
here again. You can shoot him then, or catch him in a trap."
So we left Black Hawk unburied, and bringing over an old fox-trap,
fastened a large stick of wood to it and set it near. During the day we
saw the eagle hovering about the spot, also a great flock of crows,
cawing noisily, and next morning when we went over to see if any of them
had got into the trap, both trap and stick were gone.
"Must have been the eagle," said Addison. "A crow could never have
carried off that trap!" But as neither trap nor eagle was anywhere in
sight, we concluded that we had lost the game.
Several days passed, when one morning we heard a pow-wow of crows down
in the valley beyond the Little Sea. A flock of them were circling about
a tree-top, charging into it.
"Owl, or else a raccoon, I guess," said Addison. "Crows are always
hectoring owls and 'coons whenever they happen to spy one out by day."
Thinking that perhaps we might get a 'coon, we took the gun and went
down there. But on coming near, instead of a raccoon, lo! there was our
lost eagle, perched in the tree-top, with a hundred crows scolding and
flapping him. He saw us, and started up as if to fly off, but fell back,
and we heard a chain clank.
"Hard and fast in that trap!" exclaimed Addison. The stick and trap had
caught among the branches. The big bird was a prisoner. We wished to
take him alive, but to climb a tall basswood, and bring down an eagle
strong enough to carry off a twelve-pound clog and trap, was not a feat
to be rashly undertaken. Addison was obliged to shoot the bird before
climbing after him. It was a fine, fierce-looking eagle, measuring
nearly six feet from tip to tip of its wings. Its beak was hooked and
very strong, and its claws an inch and a half long, curved and
exceedingly sharp.
Addison deemed it a great prize, for it was not a common bald eagle,
but a much darker bird. After reading his Audubon, he pronounced it a
Golden Eagle and wrote a letter describing its capture, which was
published in several New York papers. Gramp gave him all the following
day to "mount" the eagle as a specimen. In point of fact, he was nearer
three days preparing it. It looked very well when he had it done. I
remember only that its legs were feathered down to the feet.