I
They were threshing on Farmer Jennings's place when Daddy made his very
characteristic appearance. Milton, a boy of thirteen, was gloomily
holding sacks for the measurer, and the glory of the October day was
dimmed by the suffocating dust, and poisoned by the smarting beards and
chaff which had worked their way down his neck. The bitterness of the
dreaded task was deepened also by contrast with the gambols of his
cousin Billy, who was hunting rats with Growler amid the last sheaves of
the stack bottom. The piercing shrieks of Billy, as he clapped his hands
in murderous glee, mingled now and again with the barking of the dog.
The machine seemed to fill the world with its snarling boom, which
became a deafening yell when the cylinder ran empty for a moment. It was
nearly noon, and the men were working silently, with occasional glances
toward the sun to see how near dinner-time it was. The horses, dripping
with sweat, and with patches of foam under their harness, moved round
and round steadily to the cheery whistle of the driver.
The wild, imperious song of the bell-metal cog-wheel had sung into
Milton's ears till it had become a torture, and every time he lifted his
eyes to the beautiful far-off sky, where the clouds floated like ships,
a lump of rebellious anger rose in his throat. Why should he work in
this choking dust and deafening noise while the hawks could sail and
sweep from hill to hill with nothing to do but play?
Occasionally his uncle, the feeder, smiled down upon him, his face black
as a negro, great goggles of glass and wire-cloth covering his merry
eyes. His great good-nature shone out in the flash of his white teeth,
behind his dusky beard, and he tried to encourage Milton with his smile.
He seemed tireless to the other hands. He was so big and strong. He had
always been Milton's boyish hero. So Milton crowded back the tears that
came into his eyes, and would not let his uncle see how childish he was.
A spectator riding along the road would have remarked upon the lovely
setting for this picturesque scene--the low swells of prairie, shrouded
with faint, misty light from the unclouded sky, the flaming colors of
the trees, the faint sound of cow-bells, and the cheery sound of the
machine. But to be a tourist and to be a toiler in a scene like this are
quite different things.
They were anxious to finish the setting by noon, and so the feeder was
crowding the cylinder to its limit, rolling the grain in with slow and
apparently effortless swaying from side to side, half buried in the
loose yellow straw. But about eleven o'clock the machine came to a
stand, to wait while a broken tooth was being replaced, and Milton fled
from the terrible dust beside the measuring spout, and was shaking the
chaff out of his clothing, when he heard a high, snappy, nasal voice
call down from the straw-pile. A tall man, with a face completely masked
in dust, was speaking to Mr. Jennings:--
"Say, young man, I guess you'll haf to send another man up here. It's
poorty stiff work f'r two; yes, sir, poorty stiff."
"There, there! I thought you'd cry 'cavy,'" laughed Mr. Jennings. "I
told you it wasn't the place for an old man."
"Old man," snarled the figure in the straw. "I ain't so old but I can
daown you, sir,--yessir, condemmit, yessir!"
"I'm your man," replied Jennings, smiling up at him.
The man rolled down the side of the stack, disappearing in a cloud of
dust and chaff. When he came to light, Milton saw a tall, gaunt old man
of sixty years of age, or older. Nothing could be seen but a dusty
expanse of face, ragged beard, and twinkling, sharp little eyes. His
color was lost, his eyes half hid. Without waiting for ceremony, the men
clenched. The crowd roared with laughter, for though Jennings was the
younger, the older man was a giant still, and the struggle lasted for
some time. He made a gallant fight, but his breath gave out, and he lay
at last flat on his back.
"I wish I was your age, young man," he said ruefully, as he rose. "I'd
knock the heads o' these young scamps t'gether,--yessir!--I could do it,
too!"
"Talk's a good dog, uncle," said a young man.
The old man turned on him so ferociously that he fled.
"Run, condemn yeh! I own y' can beat me at that."
His face was not unpleasant, though his teeth were mainly gone, and his
skin the color of leather and wrinkled as a pan of cream. His eyes had a
certain sparkle of fun that belied his rasping voice, which seemed to
have the power to lift a boy clean off his feet. His frame was bent and
thin, but of great height and breadth, bony and tough as hickory. At
some far time vast muscles must have rolled on those giant limbs, but
toil had bent and stiffened him.
"Never been sick a day 'n my life; no, sir!" he said, in his rapid,
rasping, emphatic way, as they were riding across the stubble to dinner.
"And, by gol! I c'n stand as long at the tail of a stacker as any man,
sir. Dummed if I turn my hand for any man in the state; no, sir; no,
sir! But if I do two men's works, I am goin' to have two men's
pay--that's all, sir!"
Jennings laughed and said: "All right, uncle. I'll send another man up
there this afternoon."
The old man seemed to take a morbid delight in the hard and dirty
places, and his endurance was marvellous. He could stand all day at the
tail of a stacker, tirelessly pushing the straw away with an indifferent
air, as if it were all mere play.
He measured the grain the next day, because it promised to be a noisier
and dustier job than working in the straw, and it was in this capacity
that Milton came to know and to hate him, and to associate him with
that most hated of all tasks, the holding of sacks. To a twelve-year-old
boy it seems to be the worst job in the world.
All day, while the hawks wheel and dip in the glorious air, and the
trees glow like banks of roses; all day, while the younger boys are
tumbling about the sunlit straw, to be forced to stand holding sacks,
like a convict, was maddening. Daddy, whose rugged features, bent
shoulders, and ragged cap loomed through the suffocating, blinding dust,
necessarily came to seem like the jailer who held the door to freedom.
And when the dust and noise and monotony seemed the very hardest to
bear, the old man's cackling laugh was sure to rise above the howl of
the cylinder.
"Nem mind, sonny! Chaff ain't pizen; dust won't hurt ye a mite." And
when Milton was unable to laugh, the old man tweaked his ear with his
leathery thumb and finger.
Then he shouted long, disconnected yarns, to which Milton could make
neither head nor tail, and which grew at last to be inaudible to him,
just as the steady boom and snarl of the great machine did. Then he fell
to studying the old man's clothes, which were a wonder to him. He spent
a good deal of time trying to discover which were the original sections
of the coat, and especially of the vest, which was ragged and yellow
with age, with the cotton batting working out; and yet Daddy took the
greatest care of it, folding it carefully and putting it away during the
heat of the day out of reach of the crickets.
One of his peculiarities, as Mrs. Jennings learned on the second day,
was his habit of coming to breakfast. But he always earned all he got,
and more too; and, as it was probable that his living at home was
frugal, Mrs. Jennings smiled at his thrift, and quietly gave him his
breakfast if he arrived late, which was not often.
He had bought a little farm not far away, and settled down into a mode
of life which he never afterward changed. As he was leaving at the end
of the third day, he said:--
"Now, sir, if you want any bootcherin' done, I'm y'r man. I don't turn
m' hand over f'r any man in the state; no, sir! I c'n git a hawg on the
gambrils jest a leetle quicker'n any other man I ever see; yes, sir; by
gum!"
"All right, uncle; I'll send for you when I'm ready to kill."