WORK BEGINS
"I'd keep my eye on that fellow Banks if he continues to hang around
here," said Mr. Bronson. "He means you ill."
"And perhaps would do something to cause trouble. Perhaps I should have
taken him on," Hiram Strong said thoughtfully.
"I should say not! You did just right. You read him aright. His prime
failings are drink and laziness. Just warn him off the premises if he
bothers you. He's been in trouble and is not locally liked. Mr. Banks
spared the rod in Adam's case, sure enough.
"Now, Hiram, to get back to ditching. You don't mean to leave open
ditches through that field, do you? I can't stand a ditch bank--always
growing up in wild cherry and poison oak and such worthless trees and
vines. Besides, open ditches interfere with tillage most abominably."
"That is farthest from my thought, Mr. Bronson."
"But tiling--"
"I figure to underdrain with something much cheaper than tile," the
young farmer declared.
"What are you going to use?"
Hiram pointed across the road at Miss Pringle's patch of scorched
woodland. The underbrush and sprouts were beginning to show that faint
blur of green that announces the coming of spring growth; but the trees
were gaunt looking and black.
"I've bought as many as I can use of those scorched trees at ten cents
apiece," Hiram explained.
"For the land's sake!" exclaimed Mr. Bronson, quoting Miss Pringle, but
looking puzzled, too.
"Exactly. For the land's sake. For the improvement of that twenty
acres--or such of it as needs draining."
"But--Hiram--my dear fellow--"
"I am not starting something that I cannot put over, Mr. Bronson,"
laughed Hiram. "Nor is it a brand new idea of my own. I have seen
timber in the rough employed in underdraining more than once. My father
used to do it when the man who owned the farm father worked would not
listen to the expense of tiles."
"Ha! I acknowledge the corn," replied Mr. Bronson.
"I am not criticising you, Mr. Bronson. You are preparing this farm
for a sale. You wish to put it in as good shape as possible at as small
expense as possible."
"Right, young man."
"So we will put in a drain that will answer every purpose of tiling for
a few years. In very low, wet ground logs laid in a ditch, and covered,
will last twenty years--sometimes forty. On this upland the life of the
timber I mean to use will not be so long."
"But it is fire-killed."
"That makes no difference. I've been over there and looked at it. You
couldn't knock any of those trees down. The fire went through there
only last year. They are not punky."
"I suppose not."
"And we shall be killing two birds with one stone--getting cheap
drainage and likewise wiping out a very ugly spot right across the road
from your new house."
"That is so. And you are getting the timbers cheap enough, if they are
any good. I wouldn't have had the heart to offer Miss Pringle such a
price."
"It is more than anybody else would have given her," Hiram declared,
smiling. "And it is worth all you are paying for it to have those
unsightly sticks chopped down."
"Guess you are right, Hiram."
"The logs will serve the purpose we want them for very well indeed.
We'll lay two in the bottom of the ditch, six inches or so apart, and
a third log on top to cover the aperture. Earth packed down upon them
will soon form a firm culvert into which all the superfluous water will
drain.
"I'll put a man into Miss Pringle's patch with an axe and soon knock
down everything that is standing. The whole patch will be covered with
green by midsummer."
"Smart boy, Hiram!" exclaimed Mr. Bronson. "Will you snake the logs
right across the road into the wheat field?"
"As soon as the ditches are begun and you send up that pair of
Percherons you promised me. I can't do that work with Jerry."
"You shall have the Percherons in a few days. They are a well mated
pair and young. By the way, your disc-plow, harrow, check-row planter,
and the mowing machine are on the siding at Pringleton. I'll send a
truck over for them tomorrow. We don't want any demurrage charges
piling up on us."
"Good! I want to see those things on the big floor of the barn," cried
Hiram, his eyes beaming.
"I'd better send up a machinist to help you set them up, hadn't I?"
"No, sir. Leave it to me. I must learn to put together every machine
that comes onto the place. There are always instructions sent with the
implements from the factory. The time may come, right in the middle of
a job of importance, that the machine will balk. I've got to know all
about it. Do you see?"
"I see. And you are right, I guess."
"Mr. Bronson, seems to me I'll be just about made when I sit up on that
plow and chirrup to those Percherons. I've tramped along in the furrow
behind one or two horses for so many years--Well!"
Mr. Bronson laughed. "While I've ridden a plow and other farm tools
so much that I hate to get up on one," he said. "They say it's mighty
good exercise for a sluggish liver to ride 'em over hobbly ground.
Ah, my boy! you've got the best of it, for you are young. You've got
enthusiasm."
"Why, so have you, Mr. Bronson," cried Hiram. "Only it is enthusiasm of
a different kind from mine. Otherwise you would not buy farms and put
them into shape for other men to run."
"Maybe that is merely business."
Before night Orrin Post was quite in his right mind. Abigail had been
making broth and porridge for him, for now that his fever was reduced
Miss Pringle's idea of nursing seemed to be to stuff the patient with
food.
"She will kill me with kindness," the young man said to Hiram. "I hope
I shall not have to lie here long."
"Miss Pringle is awfully good," the young farm manager said stoutly. "I
do not know what we would have done without her."
"I don't know what I would have done without you, Mr. Strong. She's
told me how you thought I had smallpox, and yet picked me up and
brought me here."
"You've got the cart before the horse," chuckled Hiram. "I got you up
here from that shed before I discovered that you were breaking out in
such shape. How did you get to the shed?"
"I haven't a very clear remembrance of it," confessed Orrin Post. "I
felt pretty bad."
"Had you traveled far?"
"I had a job with a farmer all winter at Roundspring. But I was taken
down with this fever and he told me I had better go because he was
afraid his children would catch it. I couldn't blame him--much. So I
started west."
"Wasn't there any place they would take you in? No hospital?"
"I didn't happen to stop at a hospital," said Orrin Post dryly.
"And nobody offered to do anything for you?"
"I do not remember that any one did. I was kind of flighty the last day
or two, I guess."
"Were you heading for home?" asked Hiram.
"If I was I didn't know it," Post said with a faint laugh.
"But where is your home?"
"Anywhere I hang up my hat."
"Really?"
"I'm giving it to you straight."
"And no friends?"
"You are the best friend I ever had," declared the young man, with
sudden emotion. "Nobody ever put himself out for me before that I can
remember."
"Oh, don't make too much of what little I have done," Hiram urged.
"Where do you go from here?"
"I haven't the first idea. I'll get out as soon as I can--"
"If you say that I'll take your clothes away," declared Hiram promptly.
"You've got to eat many a gallon of Miss Pringle's broth and porridge
before you get a chance to leave Sunnyside."
"'Sunnyside,'" repeated Orrin Post wistfully. "Is that the name of this
farm, Mr. Strong?"
"Yes."
"It must be a pleasant place."
"I don't know that myself yet," laughed Hiram, "I have been here so
short a time."
And for the next few days Hiram Strong was so busy that he was not at
all sure whether or not he would like it himself at Sunnyside Farm.
He set a gang of a dozen men to ditching in the twenty acre lot. He
could have made much better time with a ditching machine; but of course
it would not have paid to hire such an implement for this small job.
He had been all over the wheat field and had made a mental plan of what
he wished to do before a spadeful of earth was thrown. He proposed
running a ditch the entire length of the field, through the middle and
parallel with the road on which the twenty-acre piece bordered. On the
wetter portion of the piece he proposed having transverse ditches every
hundred feet. Where the land seemed naturally better drained he would
have the cross ditches dug less frequently.
The county ditch beside the road was deep enough and clean enough to
carry off an immense volume of water. The natural drainage of the land
was toward the road; therefore nobody could complain of his using the
county ditch as he intended.
With a cross-cut saw they fitted the logs to match at the intersection
of the ditches and there he laid a cap of heavy planking which chanced
to be about the place. Any bit of rough lumber answered this purpose.
As fast as the timbers were laid they covered them, tamping the earth
over them firmly and leaving a very slight ridge through the field.
Snaking the logs across the field did not damage the wheat much, for
Hiram made the driver of the horses follow a single path--that of the
main ditch--both coming and going.
The man Hiram had hired to cut the timber was very dexterous with the
axe, but after the first day he raised decided objections to working in
the half-burned area. He was smutted from head to foot and looked like
a charcoal burner.
"I am sorry," the young farm manager told him, "if you find the work
different from what you supposed it to be. I told you plainly enough
what I wanted you for."
"Let some of the other fellows take their turn in that patch, and I'll
do a little digging. That's clean work," said the man.
"No. I hired you because I was told you were a good axman. I hired the
other men for ditching. You can chop better than you can ditch, and the
others can use a spade better than an axe; I want the most I can get
for my money."
"Well, I suppose that's fair enough," agreed the man grudgingly. "But
what my wife will say when she sees this jumper will be a plenty."
He was in no better mood the second day; and that afternoon Hiram saw
Adam Banks stroll along the road and go upon the burned-over piece
to speak to the woodchopper. There was not so much tree cutting done
during the next hour, and it vexed the young farm manager.
"It seems, as Mr. Bronson suggested, that I am bound to have trouble
with that fellow, whether I hire him or not," Hiram reflected.