"Yes, I know. You always have. I'll join you later."
Claude would have liked to take Ernest to the hotel for dinner.
He had more than enough money in his pockets; and his father was
a rich farmer. In the Wheeler family a new thrasher or a new
automobile was ordered without a question, but it was considered
extravagant to go to a hotel for dinner. If his father or Bayliss
heard that he had been there-and Bayliss heard everything they
would say he was putting on airs, and would get back at him. He
tried to excuse his cowardice to himself by saying that he was
dirty and smelled of the hides; but in his heart he knew that he
did not ask Ernest to go to the hotel with him because he had
been so brought up that it would be difficult for him to do this
simple thing. He made some purchases at the fruit stand and the
cigar counter, and then hurried out along the dusty road toward
the pumping station. Ernest's wagon was standing under the shade
of some willow trees, on a little sandy bottom half enclosed by a
loop of the creek which curved like a horseshoe. Claude threw
himself on the sand beside the stream and wiped the dust from his
hot face. He felt he had now closed the door on his disagreeable
morning.
Ernest produced his lunch basket.
"I got a couple bottles of beer cooling in the creek," he said.
"I knew you wouldn't want to go in a saloon."
"Oh, forget it!" Claude muttered, ripping the cover off a jar of
pickles. He was nineteen years old, and he was afraid to go into
a saloon, and his friend knew he was afraid.
After lunch, Claude took out a handful of good cigars he had
bought at the drugstore. Ernest, who couldn't afford cigars, was
pleased. He lit one, and as he smoked he kept looking at it with
an air of pride and turning it around between his fingers.
The horses stood with their heads over the wagon-box, munching
their oats. The stream trickled by under the willow roots with a
cool, persuasive sound. Claude and Ernest lay in the shade, their
coats under their heads, talking very little. Occasionally a
motor dashed along the road toward town, and a cloud of dust and
a smell of gasoline blew in over the creek bottom; but for the
most part the silence of the warm, lazy summer noon was
undisturbed. Claude could usually forget his own vexations and
chagrins when he was with Ernest. The Bohemian boy was never
uncertain, was not pulled in two or three ways at once. He was
simple and direct. He had a number of impersonal preoccupations;
was interested in politics and history and in new inventions.
Claude felt that his friend lived in an atmosphere of mental
liberty to which he himself could never hope to attain. After he
had talked with Ernest for awhile, the things that did not go
right on the farm seemed less important. Claude's mother was
almost as fond of Ernest as he was himself. When the two boys
were going to high school, Ernest often came over in the evening
to study with Claude, and while they worked at the long kitchen
table Mrs. Wheeler brought her darning and sat near them, helping
them with their Latin and algebra. Even old Mahailey was
enlightened by their words of wisdom.
Mrs. Wheeler said she would never forget the night Ernest arrived
from the Old Country. His brother, Joe Havel, had gone to
Frankfort to meet him, and was to stop on the way home and leave
some groceries for the Wheelers. The train from the east was
late; it was ten o'clock that night when Mrs. Wheeler, waiting in
the kitchen, heard Havel's wagon rumble across the little bridge
over Lovely Creek. She opened the outside door, and presently Joe
came in with a bucket of salt fish in one hand and a sack of
flour on his shoulder. While he took the fish down to the cellar
for her, another figure appeared in the doorway; a young boy,
short, stooped, with a flat cap on his head and a great oilcloth
valise, such as pedlars carry, strapped to his back. He had
fallen asleep in the wagon, and on waking and finding his brother
gone, he had supposed they were at home and scrambled for his
pack. He stood in the doorway, blinking his eyes at the light,
looking astonished but eager to do whatever was required of him.
What if one of her own boys, Mrs. Wheeler thought.... She
went up to him and put her arm around him, laughing a little and
saying in her quiet voice, just as if he could understand her,
"Why, you're only a little boy after all, aren't you?"
Ernest said afterwards that it was his first welcome to this
country, though he had travelled so far, and had been pushed and
hauled and shouted at for so many days, he had lost count of
them. That night he and Claude only shook hands and looked at
each other suspiciously, but ever since they had been good
friends.
After their picnic the two boys went to the circus in a happy
frame of mind. In the animal tent they met big Leonard Dawson,
the oldest son of one of the Wheelers' near neighbours, and the
three sat together for the performance. Leonard said he had come
to town alone in his car; wouldn't Claude ride out with him?
Claude was glad enough to turn the mules over to Ralph, who
didn't mind the hired men as much as he did.
Leonard was a strapping brown fellow of twenty-five, with big
hands and big feet, white teeth, and flashing eyes full of
energy. He and his father and two brothers not only worked their
own big farm, but rented a quarter section from Nat Wheeler. They
were master farmers. If there was a dry summer and a failure,
Leonard only laughed and stretched his long arms, and put in a
bigger crop next year. Claude was always a little reserved with
Leonard; he felt that the young man was rather contemptuous of
the hap-hazard way in which things were done on the Wheeler
place, and thought his going to college a waste of money. Leonard
had not even gone through the Frankfort High School, and he was
already a more successful man than Claude was ever likely to be.
Leonard did think these things, but he was fond of Claude, all
the same.
At sunset the car was speeding over a fine stretch of smooth road
across the level country that lay between Frankfort and the
rougher land along Lovely Creek. Leonard's attention was largely
given up to admiring the faultless behaviour of his engine.
Presently he chuckled to himself and turned to Claude.
"I wonder if you'd take it all right if I told you a joke on
Bayliss?"
"I expect I would." Claude's tone was not at all eager.
"You saw Bayliss today? Notice anything queer about him, one eye
a little off colour? Did he tell you how he got it?"
"No. I didn't ask him."
"Just as well. A lot of people did ask him, though, and he said
he was hunting around his place for something in the dark and ran
into a reaper. Well, I'm the reaper!"
Claude looked interested. "You mean to say Bayliss was in a
fight?"
Leonard laughed. "Lord, no! Don't you know Bayliss? I went in
there to pay a bill yesterday, and Susie Gray and another girl
came in to sell tickets for the firemen's dinner. An advance man
for this circus was hanging around, and he began talking a little
smart,--nothing rough, but the way such fellows will. The girls
handed it back to him, and sold him three tickets and shut him
up. I couldn't see how Susie thought so quick what to say. The
minute the girls went out Bayliss started knocking them; said all
the country girls were getting too fresh and knew more than they
ought to about managing sporty men and right there I reached out
and handed him one. I hit harder than I meant to. I meant to slap
him, not to give him a black eye. But you can't always regulate
things, and I was hot all over. I waited for him to come back at
me. I'm bigger than he is, and I wanted to give him satisfaction.
Well, sir, he never moved a muscle! He stood there getting redder
and redder, and his eyes watered. I don't say he cried, but his
eyes watered. 'All right, Bayliss,' said I. 'Slow with your
fists, if that's your principle; but slow with your tongue,
too,--especially when the parties mentioned aren't present.'"
"Bayliss will never get over that," was Claude's only comment.
"He don't have to!" Leonard threw up his head. "I'm a good
customer; he can like it or lump it, till the price of binding
twine goes down!"
For the next few minutes the driver was occupied with trying to
get up a long, rough hill on high gear. Sometimes he could
make that hill, and sometimes he couldn't, and he was not able to
account for the difference. After he pulled the second lever with
some disgust and let the car amble on as she would, he noticed
that his companion was disconcerted.
"I'll tell you what, Leonard," Claude spoke in a strained voice,
"I think the fair thing for you to do is to get out here by the
road and give me a chance."
Leonard swung his steering wheel savagely to pass a wagon on the
down side of the hill. "What the devil are you talking about,
boy?"
"You think you've got our measure all right, but you ought to
give me a chance first."
Leonard looked down in amazement at his own big brown hands,
lying on the wheel. "You mortal fool kid, what would I be telling
you all this for, if I didn't know you were another breed of
cats? I never thought you got on too well with Bayliss yourself."
"I don't, but I won't have you thinking you can slap the men in
my family whenever you feel like it." Claude knew that his
explanation sounded foolish, and his voice, in spite of all he
could do, was weak and angry.
Young Leonard Dawson saw he had hurt the boy's feelings. "Lord,
Claude, I know you're a fighter. Bayliss never was. I went to
school with him."
The ride ended amicably, but Claude wouldn't let Leonard take him
home. He jumped out of the car with a curt goodnight, and ran
across the dusky fields toward the light that shone from the
house on the hill. At the little bridge over the creek, he
stopped to get his breath and to be sure that he was outwardly
composed before he went in to see his mother.
"Ran against a reaper in the dark!" he muttered aloud, clenching
his fist.
Listening to the deep singing of the frogs, and to the distant
barking of the dogs up at the house, he grew calmer.
Nevertheless, he wondered why it was that one had sometimes to
feel responsible for the behaviour of people whose natures were
wholly antipathetic to one's own.