"Plant more crops."
"The frost will get them."
"That's a chance I take."
"I'm sorry," Elias said. "I'm really sorry, and I know you're worried
about me. You don't have to worry. You're a good farmer and a man of
your word, and you're honest. I'll take another note until next fall."
"On what?" Joe asked.
Elias Dorrance's shrug was half seen in the night. "Your mules, your
harness, your wagon, your livestock, your household goods. You can cover
it."
For a moment Joe stood blankly, the offer not even registering. Then a
slow anger that mounted by leaps and bounds grew within him.
He'd been overwhelmed when Emma gave him the $600 and told him that, at
last, he could have his farm. He still could not understand how she had
saved such a vast sum; Joe had never earned $600 in any one year. But
every penny of it, everything they had, represented the combined sweat
and toil, and almost the life's blood, of Emma and himself. Joe thought
of Nick Johnson.
He, too, had had a farm financed by Elias and he'd lost a crop. The next
year he lost another, and Elias had taken everything except the clothes
the Johnsons wore on their backs. Now hopeless and defeated, Nick
Johnson was again a hired man and his courage was so broken that he
never would be anything else. Joe thought of Emma's cherished household
goods, the few things his children owned, of the mules, the cows,
everything upon which Elias had no claim. For a moment he had a savage
urge to smash his fist into the banker's face, and Elias must have
sensed it for he took a backward step. Joe bit his words off and spat
them out,
"Elias, you can take a long running jump into the nearest duck pond."
Without looking back and without entering the store, he turned and
strode through the darkness toward his house. A man who turned his back
on the land almost turned his back on God too. But one who risked
everything his family had was not a man at all. Joe entered the house.
Emma was sewing at the table and she looked up, and concern flooded her
eyes.
"Was there nobody at the store?"
"I didn't go. I met Elias."
Emma waited expectantly. For a short space Joe strode up and down the
floor. Then he turned to face her.
"Elias offered to carry us another year. All he wants is a mortgage on
everything that isn't already mortgaged to him."