Cotton-picking was over, and the Beechams tided themselves over
with odd jobs till spring came and they could move on to steadier
work. This time they were going up into Colorado to work in the
beets.
"And high time!" said Grandma. "We've lived on mush and milk so
long we're getting the color of mush ourselves; and our clothes
are a caution to snakes."
"But we'll be lucky if the brakebands of the auto last till we
get over the mountains," said Daddy.
The spring drive up through Texas was pleasant, between
blossoming yellow trees and yuccas like wax candles and pink
bouquets of peach trees and mocking birds' songs.
The mountain pass between New Mexico and Colorado was beautiful,
too, and exciting. In places it was a shelf shoved against the
mountain, and Jimmie said it tickled his stomach to look down on
the tops of other automobiles, traveling the loop of road below
them. Even Carrie, riding haughtily in her trailer, let out an
anguished bleat when she hung on the very edge of a curve. And
the Reo groaned and puffed.
Up through Colorado they chugged; past Pike's Peak; through
Denver, flat on the plain with a blue mountain wall to its west;
on through the farmlands north of it to the sugar-beet town which
was their goal.
Beyond the town stood an adobe village for beetworkers on the
Lukes fields, where the Beechams were to work.
"Mud houses," Dick exclaimed, crumbling off a piece of mud
plaster thick with straw.
"Like the bricks the Israelites made in Egypt," said Grandpa;
"only Pharaoh wanted them to do without the straw."
"It's a Mexican village," observed Grandma. "I'd feel like a cat
in a strange garret here. And not a smidgin of shade. That shack
off there under the cottonwood tree looks cooler."
"It's a chicken-coop!" squealed Rose-Ellen as they walked over to
it. "Gramma wants to live in a chicken-coop!"
"It's empty. And it'd be a sight easier to clean than some
places where humans have lived," Grandma replied stoutly.
So the Beechams got permission to live in the farmer's old
chicken-coop. It had two rooms, and the men pitched the tent
beside it for a bedroom. They had time to set up "chicken-housekeeping,"
as Rose-Ellen called it, before the last of May, when beet work
began. They made a pretty cheerful place of this new home;
though, of course, it had no floor and no window glass, and sun
and stars shone in through its roof, and the only running water
was in the irrigation ditch. Even under the glistening
cottonwood tree it was a stifling cage on a hot day.
They were all going to work, except Jimmie and Sally. It would
take all of them, new hands that they were, to care for the
twenty acres they were to work. Mr. Lukes said that children
under sixteen were not supposed to be employed, but of course
they could always help their parents. Daddy said that was one
way to get around the Child Labor Law.
So the Beechams were to thin the beets and hoe them and top them,
beginning the last of May and finishing in October, and the pay
would be twenty-six dollars an acre. The government made the
farmers pay that price, no matter how poor the crop was.
"Five hundred and twenty dollars sounds like real money!" Daddy
rejoiced.
"Near five months, though," Grandma reckoned, "and with prices
like they are, we're lucky to feed seven hungry folks on sixty
dollars a month. And we're walking ragbags, with our feet on the
ground. And them brakebands--and new tires."
"Five times sixty is three hundred," Rose-Ellen figured.
"You'll find it won't leave more than enough to get us on to the
next work place," Grandpa muttered.
It was lucky the chicken-coop was in sight of their acres.
Before she left home in the early morning, Grandma saw to it that
there was no fire in the old-new washtub stove, and that Sally's
knitted string harness was on, so that she could not reach the
irrigation ditch, and that Carrie was tethered.
The beets, planted two months ago, had come up in even green
rows. Now they must be thinned. With short-handled hoes the
grown people chopped out foot-long strips of plants. Dick and
Rose-Ellen followed on hands and knees, and pulled the extra
plants from the clumps so that a single strong plant was left
every twelve inches.
The sun rose higher and hotter in the big blue bowl of sky.
Rose-Ellen's ragged dress clung to her, wet with sweat, and her
arms and face prickled with heat. Grandma looked at her from
under the apron she had flung over her head.
"Run and stretch out under the cottonwood awhile," she said. "No
use for to get sunstroke."
Rose-Ellen went silently, thankfully. It was cooler in the shade
of the tree. She looked up through the fluttering green leaves
at the floating clouds shining in the sun. Jimmie hobbled around
her, driving Sally with her knitted reins, but they did not keep
their sister awake. The sun was almost noon-high when she opened
her eyes, and she hurried guiltily back to the beets.
She had never seen such a big field, its green and brown stripes
waving up and down to the skyline. It made her ache to think
that five Beechams must take out these extra thousands of
three-inch plants; and after that, hoe them; and after that. . . .
Her knees were so sore that night that Grandpa bought her
overalls. He got her and Dick big straw hats, too, though it was
too late to keep their faces from blistering. All the Beechams
but Grandma wore overalls. She couldn't bring herself to it. That
night she made herself a sunbonnet out of an old shirt, sitting
close to a candle stuck in a pop bottle.
[Illustration: Rose-Ellen and Dick]
"I clean forgot to look over the beans and put them to soak," she
said wearily, from her bed.
Rose-Ellen scooped herself farther into her layer of straw. She
ought to offer to get up and look over those beans, but she
simply couldn't make herself.
"It seems like I can't stay up another ten minutes," Grandma
excused herself, "after the field work and redding up and such.
But we're getting like all the rest of them, buying the groceries
that we can fix easiest, even though they cost twice as much and
ain't half as nourishing. And when you can't trade at but one
place it's always dearer. . . ."
Mr. Lukes had guaranteed their account at the store, because of
the pay due them at the end of the season. So they went on
buying there, even though its prices were high and its goods of
poor quality, because they did not have money to spend anywhere
else.
When the thinning was done, they must begin all over again,
working with the short-handled hoes, cutting out any extra
plants, loosening the ground. By that time they were more used to
the work; and in July came a rest time, when all they needed to
do was to turn the waters of the big ditch into the little
ditches that crinkled between the rows. It was lucky there was
irrigation water, or the growing plants would have died in the
heat, since there had been little rain.
Rose-Ellen loved to watch the water moving through the fields as
if it were alive, catching the rosy gold of sunset in its zigzag
mirrors. She missed the Eastern fireflies at night; otherwise
the evenings were a delight. Colorado sunsets covered the west
with glory, and then came quick coolness. Dry as it was, the
cottonwood leaves made a sound like refreshing rain, and the
cicadas hummed comfortably. All the Beechams stayed outside till
far into the night, for the chicken-house was miserably hot at
the end of every day.
"The Garcias' and Martinezes' houses are better if they are mud
and haven't any shade," Rose-Ellen told Grandma. "The walls are
so thick that inside they're like cool caves."
She and Dick had made friends in the Mexican village with Vicente
Garcia and her brother Joe, and with Nico Martinez, next door to
the Garcias', and her brothers. Even when they all picked beans
in the morning, during the vacation from sugar beets, there were
these long, cool evenings for play.
Grandma complained. "I don't know what else to blame for Dick's
untidy ways. Hair sticking up five ways for Christmas, and
fingernails in mourning and the manners of a heathen. I'm afraid
that sore on his hand may be something catching. Those Garcias
and Martinezes of yours . . . !"
"The Garcias maybe, but not the Martinezes," Rose-Ellen objected.
"Gramma, you go to their houses sometime and see."
One evening Grandma did. Jimmie had come excitedly leading home
the quaintest of all the babies of the Mexican village, Vicente
Garcia's little sister. He had found her balancing on her
stomach on the bank of the ditch. Three years old, she was, and
slim and straight, with enormous eyes and a great tangle of
sunburned brown curls. Her dress made her quainter still, for it
was low-necked and sleeveless, and came to her tiny ankles so
that she looked like a child from an old-fashioned picture.
Grandma and Rose-Ellen and Jimmie walked home with her, and
Grandma's eyes widened at sight of the two-roomed Garcia house.
Ten people lived and slept, ate and cooked there, and it looked
as if it had never met a broom or soapsuds.
The Martinez home was different, perfectly neat, even to the
scrubbed oilcloth on the table. Afterwards Grandma said the
bottoms of the pans weren't scoured, but she couldn't feel to
blame Mrs. Martinez, with five young ones besides the new baby to
look after. When the Beechams went home, Mrs. Martinez gave them
a covered dish of _enchiladas_.
Even Grandma ate those enchiladas without hesitation, though they
were so peppery that she had to cool her mouth with frequent
swallows of water. They were made of tidily rolled _tortillas_
(Mexican corn-cakes, paper-thin), stuffed with meat and onion and
invitingly decorated with minced cheese and onion tops. They
looked, smelled and tasted delicious.
In turn, Grandma sent biscuits, baked in the Dutch oven Grandpa
had bought her. Grandma had always been proud of her biscuits.
In July the Mexican children took Dick and Rose-Ellen to the
vacation school held every summer in one of the town churches.
The Beechams were not surprised at Nico's dressed-up daintiness
when she called for them. Grandma said she was perfect, from the
ribbon bows on her shining hair to the socks that matched her
smart print dress. But it was surprising to see Vicente come
from the cluttered, dirty Garcia rooms, almost as clean and sweet
as Nico, though with nails more violently red.
The Beechams found it a problem to dress at all in their
chicken-apartment. Dick tried to get ready in one room and
Rose-Ellen in the other, and everything she wanted was in his
room and everything he wanted in hers. Their small belongings
had to be packed in boxes, and all the boxes emptied out to find
them. Clean clothes--still unironed, of course--had to be hung
up, and they could not be covered well enough so flies and
moth-millers did not speck them.
"I do admire your Mexican friends," Grandma admitted grudgingly,
"keeping so nice in such a hullabaloo."
"They are admire-able in lots of ways," Rose-Ellen answered. "I
never knew anyone I liked much better than Nico. And the
Mexicans are the very best in all the art work at the vacation
school. I think the Japanese learn quickest."
"Do folks treat 'em nice?" asked Grandma.
"In the school," Rose-Ellen told her. "But outside school they
act like even Nico had smallpox. They make me sick!"
Rose-Ellen spoke both indignantly and sorrowfully. That very day
the three girls had come out of the church together, and had
paused to look over the neat picket fence of the yard next the
church. It seemed a sweet little yard, smelling of newly cut
grass and flowers. Trees rose high above the small house, and
inside the fence were tall spires of delphinium, bluer than the
sky.
[Illustration: Looking over the fence]
"The flowers iss so pretty," said Nico.
"And on the porch behind of the vines is a chicken in a gold
cage," cried Vicente.
Rose-Ellen folded her lips over a giggle, for the chicken was a
canary.
Just then a head popped up behind a red rosebush. The lady of the
house was gathering flowers, and she held out a bunch to
Rose-Ellen.
"Don't prick yourself," she warned. "Are you the one they call
Rose-Ellen?"
"Yes, ma'am," said Rose-Ellen, burying her nose in the flowers.
"I had a little sister named Rose-Ellen," the woman said gently.
"You come play on the grass sometime, and we'll pick flowers for
your mother."
"And can Nico and Vicente come, too?" Rose-Ellen asked. "They're
my best friends."
The woman looked at Nico and Vicente with cold eyes. "I can't ask
_all_ the children," she answered.
"Thank you, ma'am," Rose-Ellen stammered. When they were out of
sight down the road, she threw the roses into the dust. Nico
snatched them up again.
"I wouldn't go there--I wouldn't go there for ten dollars,"
Rose-Ellen declared. Vicente looked at her with wise deep eyes.
"I could 'a' told you," she said, shrugging. "American ladies,
they mostly don't like Mexican kids. I don't know why."
October came. It was the time for the topping of the beets. The
Martinez family went back to Denver for school. The Garcias
stayed; their children would go into the special room when they
returned, to have English lessons and to catch up in other
studies--or rather, to try to catch up.
"But me, always I am two years in back of myself," Vicente
regretted one day, "even with specials room. Early out of school
and late into it, for me that makes too hard."
Now Farmer Lukes went through the Beechams' acres, lifting the
beets loose by machine. Rose-Ellen could not believe they were
beets-great dirt-colored clods, they looked. Not at all like the
beets she knew.
Topping was a new job. With a long hooked knife the beet was
lifted and laid across the arm, and then, with a slash or two,
freed of its top. The children followed, gathering the beets
into great piles for Mr. Lukes's wagon to collect.
Vicente and Joe did not make piles; they topped; and Joe boasted
that he was faster than his father as he slashed away with the
topping knife.
"It looks like you'd cut yourself, holding it on your knee like
you do!" Grandma cried as she watched him one day.
"Not me!" bragged Joe. "Other kids does." The beet tops fell
away under his flashing knife.
From the beet-dump the beets were taken to the sugar factory a
few miles away, where they were made into shining white beet
sugar. ("And that's another thing I never even guessed!" thought
Rose-Ellen. "What hard work it takes to fill our sugar bowls!")
Sometimes at night now a skim of ice formed on the water bucket
in the chicken-house. Goldenrod and asters were puffs of white;
the harvest moon shone big and red at the skyline, across miles
of rolling farmland; crickets fiddled sleepily and long-tailed
magpies chattered. One clear, frosty night Grandpa said, "Hark!
the ducks are flying south. Maybe we best follow."