Wheat and the Harvest
The early seventies were years of swift change on the Middle Border. Day
by day the settlement thickened. Section by section the prairie was
blackened by the plow. Month by month the sweet wild meadows were fenced
and pastured and so at last the colts and cows all came into captivity,
and our horseback riding ceased, cut short as if by some imperial
decree. Lanes of barbed wire replaced the winding wagon trails, our
saddles gathered dust in the grain-sheds, and groves of Lombardy poplar
and European larch replaced the tow-heads of aspen and hazel through
which we had pursued the wolf and fox.
I will not say that this produced in me any keen sense of sorrow at the
time, for though I missed our horse-herds and the charm of the open
spaces, I turned to tamer sports with the resilient adaptability of
youth. If I could not ride I could at least play baseball, and the
swimming hole in the Little Cedar remained untouched. The coming in of
numerous Eastern settlers brought added charm to neighborhood life.
Picnics, conventions, Fourth of July celebrations--all intensified our
interest, and in their increasing drama we were compensated, in some
degree at least, for the delights which were passing with the prairie.
Our school-house did not change--except for the worse. No one thought of
adding a tree or a vine to its ugly yard. Sun-smit, bare as a nose it
stood at the cross-roads, receiving us through its drab door-way as it
had done from the first. Its benches, hideously hacked and thick with
grime, were as hard and uncomfortable as when I first saw them, and the
windows remained unshaded and unwashed. Most of the farm-houses in the
region remained equally unadorned, but Deacon Gammons had added an "ell"
and established a "parlor," and Anson Burtch had painted his barn. The
plain began to take on a comfortable look, for some of the trees of the
wind-breaks had risen above the roofs, and growing maples softened the
effect of the bleak expanse.
My mother, like most of her neighbors, still cooked and served meals in
our one living room during the winter but moved into a "summer kitchen"
in April. This change always gave us a sense of luxury--which is
pathetic, if you look at it that way. Our front room became suddenly and
happily a parlor, and was so treated. Mother at once got down the rag
carpet and gave orders for us to shake out and bring in some clean straw
to put under it, and when we had tacked it down and re-arranged the
furniture, it was no longer a place for muddy boots and shirt-sleeved
shiftlessness, it had an air of being in perpetual Sabbath leisure.
The Garlands were not so poor as all this would seem to imply, for we
were now farming over three hundred acres of land and caring for a herd
of cattle and many swine. It merely meant that my father did not feel
the need of a "best room" and mother and Harriet were not yet able to
change his mind. Harriet wanted an organ like Mary Abby Gammons, mother
longed for a real "in-grain" carpet and we all clamored for a spring
wagon. We got the wagon first.
That bleak little house is clearly defined in my mind at this moment.
The low lean-to kitchen, the rag-carpeted sitting room with its two
chromos of _Wide Awake_ and _Fast Asleep_--its steel engraving of
General Grant, and its tiny melodeon in the corner--all these come back
to me. There are very few books or magazines in the scene, but there are
piles of newspapers, for my father was an omnivorous reader of all
things political. It was not a hovel, it was a pioneer cabin persisting
into a settled community, that was all.
During these years the whole middle border was menaced by bands of
horse-thieves operating under a secret well-organized system. Horses
disappeared night by night and were never recovered, till at last the
farmers, in despair of the local authorities, organized a Horse Thief
Protective Association which undertook to pursue and punish the robbers
and to pay for such animals as were not returned. Our county had an
association of this sort and shortly after we opened our new farm my
father became a member. My first knowledge of this fact came when he
nailed on our barn-door the white cloth poster which proclaimed in bold
black letters a warning and a threat signed by "the Committee."--I was
always a little in doubt as to whether the horse-thieves or ourselves
were to be protected, for the notice was fair warning to them as well as
an assurance to us. Anyhow very few horses were stolen from barns thus
protected.
The campaign against the thieves gave rise to many stirring stories
which lost nothing in my father's telling of them. Jim McCarty was agent
for our association and its effectiveness was largely due to his swift
and fearless action. We all had a pleasant sense of the mystery of the
night riding which went on during this period and no man could pass with
a led horse without being under suspicion of being either a thief or a
deputy. Then, too, the thieves were supposed to have in every community
a spy who gave information as to the best horses, and informed the gang
as to the membership of the Protective Society.
One of our neighbors fell under suspicion at this time and never got
clear of it. I hope we did him no injustice in this for never after
could I bring myself to enter his house, and he was clearly ostracized
by all the neighbors.
* * * * *
As I look back over my life on that Iowa farm the song of the reaper
fills large place in my mind. We were all worshippers of wheat in those
days. The men thought and talked of little else between seeding and
harvest, and you will not wonder at this if you have known and bowed
down before such abundance as we then enjoyed.
Deep as the breast of a man, wide as the sea, heavy-headed,
supple-stocked, many-voiced, full of multitudinous, secret, whispered
colloquies,--a meeting place of winds and of sunlight,--our fields ran
to the world's end.
We trembled when the storm lay hard upon the wheat, we exulted as the
lilac shadows of noon-day drifted over it! We went out into it at noon
when all was still--so still we could hear the pulse of the transforming
sap as it crept from cool root to swaying plume. We stood before it at
evening when the setting sun flooded it with crimson, the bearded heads
lazily swirling under the wings of the wind, the mousing hawk dipping
into its green deeps like the eagle into the sea, and our hearts
expanded with the beauty and the mystery of it,--and back of all this
was the knowledge that its abundance meant a new carriage, an addition
to the house or a new suit of clothes.
Haying was over, and day by day we boys watched with deepening interest
while the hot sun transformed the juices of the soil into those stately
stalks. I loved to go out into the fairy forest of it, and lying there,
silent in its swaying deeps, hear the wild chickens peep and the wind
sing its subtle song over our heads. Day by day I studied the barley as
it turned yellow, first at the root and then at the neck (while the
middle joints, rank and sappy, retained their blue-green sheen), until
at last the lower leaves began to wither and the stems to stiffen in
order to uphold the daily increasing weight of the milky berries, and
then almost in an hour--lo! the edge of the field became a banded ribbon
of green and yellow, languidly waving in and out with every rush of the
breeze.
Now we got out the reaper, put the sickles in order, and father laid in
a store of provisions. Extra hands were hired, and at last, early on a
hot July morning, the boss mounted to his seat on the self-rake
"McCormick" and drove into the field. Frank rode the lead horse, four
stalwart hands and myself took "stations" behind the reaper and the
battle was on!
Reaping generally came about the 20th of July, the hottest and dryest
part of the summer, and was the most pressing work of the year. It
demanded early rising for the men, and it meant an all day broiling over
the kitchen stove for the women. Stern, incessant toil went on inside
and out from dawn till sunset, no matter how the thermometer sizzled. On
many days the mercury mounted to ninety-five in the shade, but with wide
fields all yellowing at the same moment, no one thought of laying off. A
storm might sweep it flat, or if neglected too long, it might "crinkle."
Our reaper in 1874 was a new model of the McCormick self-rake,--the
Marsh Harvester was not yet in general use. The Woods Dropper, the
Seymour and Morgan hand-rake "contraptions" seemed a long way in the
past. True the McCormick required four horses to drag it but it was
effective. It was hard to believe that anything more cunning would ever
come to claim the farmer's money. Weird tales of a machine on which two
men rode and bound twelve acres of wheat in ten hours came to us, but
we did not potently believe these reports--on the contrary we accepted
the self-rake as quite the final word in harvesting machinery and
cheerily bent to the binding of sheaves with their own straw in the good
old time-honored way.
No task save that of "cradling" surpassed in severity "binding on a
station." It was a full-grown man's job, but every boy was ambitious to
try his hand, and when at fourteen years of age I was promoted from
"bundle boy" to be one of the five hands to bind after the reaper, I
went to my corner with joy and confidence. For two years I had been
serving as binder on the corners, (to keep the grain out of the way of
the horses) and I knew my job.
I was short and broad-shouldered with large strong hands admirably
adapted for this work, and for the first two hours, easily held my own
with the rest of the crew, but as the morning wore on and the sun grew
hotter, my enthusiasm waned. A painful void developed in my chest. My
breakfast had been ample, but no mere stomachful of food could carry a
growing boy through five hours of desperate toil. Along about a quarter
to ten, I began to scan the field with anxious eye, longing to see
Harriet and the promised luncheon basket.
Just when it seemed that I could endure the strain no longer she came
bearing a jug of cool milk, some cheese and some deliciously fresh
fried-cakes. With keen joy I set a couple of tall sheaves together like
a tent and flung myself down flat on my back in their shadow to devour
my lunch.
Tired as I was, my dim eyes apprehended something of the splendor of the
shining clouds which rolled like storms of snow through the deep-blue
spaces of sky and so, resting silently as a clod I could hear the chirp
of the crickets, the buzzing wings of flies and the faint, fairylike
tread of smaller unseen insects hurrying their way just beneath my ear
in the stubble. Strange green worms, grasshoppers and shining beetles
crept over me as I dozed.
This delicious, dreamful respite was broken by the far-off approaching
purr of the sickle, flicked by the faint snap of the driver's whip, and
out of the low rustle of the everstirring lilliputian forest came the
wailing cry of a baby wild chicken lost from its mother--a falling,
thrilling, piteous little pipe.
Such momentary communion with nature seemed all the sweeter for the work
which had preceded it, as well as that which was to follow it. It took
resolution to rise and go back to my work, but I did it, sustained by a
kind of soldierly pride.
At noon we hurried to the house, surrounded the kitchen table and fell
upon our boiled beef and potatoes with such ferocity that in fifteen
minutes our meal was over. There was no ceremony and very little talking
till the hid wolf was appeased. Then came a heavenly half-hour of rest
on the cool grass in the shade of the trees, a siesta as luxurious as
that of a Spanish monarch--but alas!--this "nooning," as we called it,
was always cut short by father's word of sharp command, "Roll out,
boys!" and again the big white jugs were filled at the well, the horses,
lazy with food, led the way back to the field, and the stern contest
began again.
All nature at this hour seemed to invite to repose rather than to labor,
and as the heat increased I longed with wordless fervor for the green
woods of the Cedar River. At times the gentle wind hardly moved the
bended heads of the barley, and the hawks hung in the air like trout
sleeping in deep pools. The sunlight was a golden, silent, scorching
cataract--yet each of us must strain his tired muscles and bend his
aching back to the harvest.
Supper came at five, another delicious interval--and then at six we all
went out again for another hour or two in the cool of the
sunset.--However, the pace was more leisurely now for the end of the day
was near. I always enjoyed this period, for the shadows lengthening
across the stubble, and the fiery sun, veiled by the gray clouds of the
west, had wondrous charm. The air began to moisten and grow cool. The
voices of the men pulsed powerfully and cheerfully across the narrowing
field of unreaped grain, the prairie hens led forth their broods to
feed, and at last, father's long-drawn and musical cry, "Turn OUT! All
hands TURN OUT!" rang with restful significance through the dusk. Then,
slowly, with low-hung heads the freed horses moved toward the barn,
walking with lagging steps like weary warriors going into camp.
In all the toil of the harvest field, the water jug filled a large
place. It was a source of anxiety as well as comfort. To keep it cool,
to keep it well filled was a part of my job. No man passed it at the
"home corner" of the field. It is a delightful part of my recollections
of the harvest.
O cool gray jug that touched the lips
In kiss that softly closed and clung,
No Spanish wine the tippler sips,
No port the poet's praise has sung--
Such pure, untainted sweetness yields
As cool gray jug in harvest fields.
I see it now!--a clover leaf
Out-spread upon its sweating side!--
As from the sheltering sheaf
I pluck and swing it high, the wide
Field glows with noon-day heat,
The winds are tangled in the wheat.
The swarming crickets blithely cheep,
Across the stir of waving grain
I see the burnished reaper creep--
The lunch-boy comes, and once again
The jug its crystal coolness yields--
O cool gray jug in harvest fields!
My father did not believe in serving strong liquor to his men, and
seldom treated them to even beer. While not a teetotaler he was strongly
opposed to all that intemperance represented. He furnished the best of
food, and tea and coffee, but no liquor, and the men respected him for
it.
The reaping on our farm that year lasted about four weeks. Barley came
first, wheat followed, the oats came last of all. No sooner was the
final swath cut than the barley was ready to be put under cover, and
"stacking," a new and less exacting phase of the harvest, began.
This job required less men than reaping, hence a part of our hands were
paid off, only the more responsible ones were retained. The rush, the
strain of the reaping gave place to a leisurely, steady, day-by-day
garnering of the thoroughly seasoned shocks into great conical piles,
four in a place in the midst of the stubble, which was already growing
green with swiftly-springing weeds.
A full crew consisted of a stacker, a boy to pass bundles, two drivers
for the heavy wagon-racks, and a pitcher in the field who lifted the
sheaves from the shock with a three-tined fork and threw them to the man
on the load.
At the age of ten I had been taught to "handle bundles" on the stack,
but now at fourteen I took my father's place as stacker, whilst he
passed the sheaves and told me how to lay them. This exalted me at the
same time that it increased my responsibility. It made a man of me--not
only in my own estimation, but in the eyes of my boy companions to whom
I discoursed loftily on the value of "bulges" and the advantages of the
stack over the rick.
No sooner was the stacking ended than the dreaded task of plowing began
for Burton and John and me. Every morning while our fathers and the
hired men shouldered their forks and went away to help some neighbor
thrash--("changing works") we drove our teams into the field, there to
plod round and round in solitary course. Here I acquired the feeling
which I afterward put into verse--
A lonely task it is to plow!
All day the black and shining soil
Rolls like a ribbon from the mold-board's
Glistening curve. All day the horses toil,
Battling with savage flies, and strain
Their creaking single-trees. All day
The crickets peer from wind-blown stacks of grain.
Franklin's job was almost as lonely. He was set to herd the cattle on
the harvested stubble and keep them out of the corn field. A little
later, in October, when I was called to take my place as corn-husker, he
was promoted to the plow. Our only respite during the months of October
and November was the occasional cold rain which permitted us to read or
play cards in the kitchen.
Cards! I never look at a certain type of playing card without
experiencing a return of the wonder and the guilty joy with which I
bought of Metellus Kirby my first "deck," and slipped it into my pocket.
There was an alluring oriental imaginative quality in the drawing on the
face cards. They brought to me vague hints of mad monarchs, desperate
stakes, and huge sudden rewards. All that I had heard or read of
Mississippi gamblers came back to make those gaudy bits of pasteboard
marvellous.
My father did not play cards, hence, although I had no reason to think
he would forbid them to me, I took a fearsome joy in assuming his bitter
opposition. For a time my brother and I played in secret, and then one
day, one cold bleak day as we were seated on the floor of the granary
playing on an upturned half-bushel measure, shivering with the chill,
our fingers numb and blue, the door opened and father looked in.
We waited, while his round, eagle-gray eyes took in the situation and it
seemed a long, terrifying interval, then at last he mildly said, "I
guess you'd better go in and play by the stove. This isn't very
comfortable."
Stunned by this unexpected concession, I gathered up the cards, and as I
took my way to the house, I thought deeply. The meaning of that quiet
voice, that friendly invitation was not lost on me. The soldier rose to
grand heights by that single act, and when I showed the cards to mother
and told her that father had consented to our playing, she looked grave
but made no objection to our use of the kitchen table. As a matter of
fact they both soon after joined our game. "If you are going to play,"
they said, "we'd rather you played right here with us." Thereafter rainy
days were less dreary, and the evenings shorter.
Everybody played Authors at this time also, and to this day I cannot
entirely rid myself of the estimations which our pack of cards fixed in
my mind. _Prue and I_ and _The Blithedale Romance_ were on an equal
footing, so far as our game went, and Howells, Bret Harte and Dickens
were all of far-off romantic horizon. Writers were singular, exalted
beings found only in the East--in splendid cities. They were not folks,
they were demigods, men and women living aloof and looking down
benignantly on toiling common creatures like us.
It never entered my mind that anyone I knew could ever by any chance
meet an author, or even hear one lecture--although it was said that they
did sometimes come west on altruistic educational journeys and that they
sometimes reached our county town.
I am told--I do not know that it is true--that I am one of the names on
a present-day deck of Author cards. If so, I wish I could call in that
small plow-boy of 1874 and let him play a game with this particular
pack!
The crops on our farms in those first years were enormous and prices
were good, and yet the homes of the neighborhood were slow in taking on
grace or comfort. I don't know why this was so, unless it was that the
men were continually buying more land and more machinery. Our own
stables were still straw-roofed sheds, but the trees which we had
planted had grown swiftly into a grove, and a garden, tended at odd
moments by all hands, brought small fruits and vegetables in season.
Although a constantly improving collection of farm machinery lightened
the burdens of the husbandman, the drudgery of the house-wife's
dish-washing and cooking did not correspondingly lessen. I fear it
increased, for with the widening of the fields came the doubling of the
harvest hands, and my mother continued to do most of the housework
herself--cooking, sewing, washing, churning, and nursing the sick from
time to time. No one in trouble ever sent for Isabelle Garland in vain,
and I have many recollections of neighbors riding up in the night and
calling for her with agitated voices.
Of course I did not realize, and I am sure my father did not realize,
the heavy burden, the endless grind of her toil. Harriet helped, of
course, and Frank and I churned and carried wood and brought water; but
even with such aid, the round of mother's duties must have been as
relentless as a tread-mill. Even on Sunday, when we were free for a part
of the day, she was required to furnish forth three meals, and to help
Frank and Jessie dress for church.--She sang less and less, and the
songs we loved were seldom referred to.--If I could only go back for one
little hour and take her in my arms, and tell her how much I owe her for
those grinding days!
Meanwhile we were all growing away from our life in the old Wisconsin
Coulee. We heard from William but seldom, and David, who had bought a
farm of his own some ten miles to the south of us, came over to see us
only at long intervals. He still owned his long-barrelled rifle but it
hung unused on a peg in the kitchen. Swiftly the world of the hunter was
receding, never to return. Prairie chickens, rabbits, ducks, and other
small game still abounded but they did not call for the bullet, and
turkey shoots were events of the receding past. Almost in a year the
ideals of the country-side changed. David was in truth a survival of a
more heroic age, a time which he loved to lament with my father who was
almost as great a lover of the wilderness as he. None of us sang "O'er
the hills in legions, boys." Our share in the conquest of the west
seemed complete.
Threshing time, which was becoming each year less of a "bee" and more of
a job (many of the men were mere hired hands), was made distinctive by
David who came over from Orchard with his machine--the last time as it
turned out--and stayed to the end. As I cut bands beside him in the dust
and thunder of the cylinder I regained something of my boyish worship of
his strength and skill. The tireless easy swing of his great frame was
wonderful to me and when, in my weariness, I failed to slash a band he
smiled and tore the sheaf apart--thus deepening my love for him. I
looked up at him at such times as a sailor regards his captain on the
bridge. His handsome immobile bearded face, his air of command, his
large gestures as he rolled the broad sheaves into the howling maw of
the machine made of him a chieftain.--The touch of melancholy which even
then had begun to develop, added to his manly charm.
One day in late September as I was plowing in the field at the back of
the farm, I encountered a particularly troublesome thicket of weeds and
vines in the stubble, and decided to burn the way before the coulter. We
had been doing this ever since the frost had killed the vegetation but
always on lands after they had been safeguarded by strips of plowing. On
this particular land no fire had been set for the reason that four large
stacks of wheat still stood waiting the thresher. In my irritation and
self-confidence I decided to clear away the matted stubble on the same
strip though at some distance from the stacks. This seemed safe enough
at the time for the wind was blowing gently from the opposite direction.
It was a lovely golden day and as I stood watching the friendly flame
clearing the ground for me, I was filled with satisfaction. Suddenly I
observed that the line of red was moving steadily against the wind and
_toward_ the stacks. My satisfaction changed to alarm. The matted weeds
furnished a thick bed of fuel, and against the progress of the flame I
had nothing to offer. I could only hope that the thinning stubble would
permit me to trample it out. I tore at the ground in desperation, hoping
to make a bare spot which the flame could not leap. I trampled the fire
with my bare feet. I beat at it with my hat. I screamed for help.--Too
late I thought of my team and the plow with which I might have drawn a
furrow around the stacks. The flame touched the high-piled sheaves. It
ran lightly, beautifully up the sides--and as I stood watching it, I
thought, "It is all a dream. It can't be true."
But it was. In less than twenty minutes the towering piles had melted
into four glowing heaps of ashes. Four hundred dollars had gone up in
that blaze.
Slowly, painfully I hobbled to the plow and drove my team to the house.
Although badly burned, my mental suffering was so much greater that I
felt only part of it.--Leaving the horses at the well I hobbled into the
house to my mother. She, I knew, would sympathize with me and shield me
from the just wrath of my father who was away, but was due to return in
an hour or two.
Mother received me in silence, bandaged my feet and put me to bed where
I lay in shame and terror.
At last I heard father come in. He questioned, mother's voice replied.
He remained ominously silent. She went on quietly but with an eloquence
unusual in her. What she said to him I never knew, but when he came up
the stairs and stood looking down at me his anger had cooled. He merely
asked me how I felt, uncovered my burned feet, examined them, put the
sheet back, and went away, without a word either of reproof or
consolation.
None of us except little Jessie, ever alluded to this tragic matter
again; she was accustomed to tell my story as she remembered it,--"an
'nen the moon changed--the fire ran up the stacks and burned 'em all
down--"
When I think of the myriads of opportunities for committing mistakes of
this sort, I wonder that we had so few accidents. The truth is our
captain taught us to think before we acted at all times, and we had
little of the heedlessness which less experienced children often show.
We were in effect small soldiers and carried some of the
responsibilities of soldiers into all that we did.
While still I was hobbling about, suffering from my wounds my uncles
William and Frank McClintock drove over from Neshonoc bringing with them
a cloud of strangely-moving revived memories of the hills and woods of
our old Wisconsin home. I was peculiarly delighted by this visit, for
while the story of my folly was told, it was not dwelt upon. They soon
forgot me and fell naturally into discussion of ancient neighbors and
far-away events.
To me it was like peering back into a dim, dawn-lit world wherein all
forms were distorted or wondrously aggrandized. William, big,
black-bearded and smiling, had lost little of his romantic appeal.
Frank, still the wag, was able to turn hand-springs and somersaults
almost as well as ever, and the talk which followed formed an absorbing
review of early days in Wisconsin.
It brought up and defined many of the events of our life in the coulee,
pictures which were becoming a little vague, a little blurred. Al Randal
and Ed Green, who were already almost mythical, were spoken of as living
creatures and thus the far was brought near. Comparisons between the old
and the new methods of seeding and harvest also gave me a sense of
change, a perception which troubled me a little, especially as a wistful
note had crept into the voices of these giants of the middle border.
They all loved the wilderness too well not to be a little saddened by
the clearing away of bosky coverts and the drying up of rippling
streams.
We sent for Uncle David who came over on Sunday to spend a night with
his brothers and in the argument which followed, I began to sense in him
a spirit of restlessness, a growing discontent which covered his
handsome face with a deepening shadow. He disliked being tied down to
the dull life of the farm, and his horse-power threshing machine no
longer paid him enough to compensate for the loss of time and care on
the other phases of his industry. His voice was still glorious and he
played the violin when strongly urged, though with a sense of
dissatisfaction.
He and mother and Aunt Deborah sang _Nellie Wildwood_ and _Lily Dale_
and _Minnie Minturn_ just as they used to do in the coulee, and I forgot
my disgrace and the pain of my blistered feet in the rapture of that
exquisite hour of blended melody and memory. The world they represented
was passing and though I did not fully realize this, I sensed in some
degree the transitory nature of this reunion. In truth it never came
again. Never again did these three brothers meet, and when they said
good-bye to us next morning, I wondered why it was, we must be so widely
separated from those we loved the best.