THE BABY TORNADO
Hiram had not lost sight of the fact that Yancey Battick's wheat had
promised to be better than any of that planted on Sunnyside, to say the
least; and although since his rather serious experience with Battick
and his gun he had barely nodded to the strange man in passing the old
Pringle homestead, Hiram had been very curious as to how Battick's crop
was coming on.
While Mr. Bronson's binder was at Sunnyside Hiram offered Battick the
use of the machine.
"Of course, I will drive it myself, so nobody else need know anything
about your crop," Hiram said.
"Very kind of you, Mr. Strong," said Battick, but in such a way that
Hiram was not at all sure whether the man was still suspicious or not.
"But I am going to reap that field with a sickle. I always do. This
seed wheat is too precious to waste with a binder. I cradle it by hand
and shall thrash it with a flail, too. That wheat which you happened
to see in my house was harvested in the same way; and then it was all
winnowed and selected by hand, grain by grain."
"Some job!"
"But worth it if I can once get a sufficient quantity to interest a big
seed house."
"I presume so," agreed Hiram. "How does your wheat stand the dry
weather?"
"I take it you have not been over to see it of late?"
"I can assure you I have not crossed the line fence since you showed
me so plainly how you felt toward even innocent trespassers," Hiram
rejoined stiffly.
Battick gave him a sidewise glance and said nothing for a moment. He
was leaning, smoking his pipe, on his sagging front gate.
"Come on down to the field and take a look at my wheat, Mr. Strong,"
said the man at last, and only because Hiram saw that it was such an
exertion for Yancey Battick to give the invitation did the youth accept.
They walked down past the old house, and Hiram saw that Battick had now
made plank shutters to all his lower windows which fitted flush with
the frames and were barred on the inside. He certainly had prepared to
withstand a siege!
It seemed silly. Surely the man's troubles must have turned his brain.
Yet when Hiram considered what Battick had suffered of wrong and
disappointment, he did not altogether blame him, sane or not.
"And this wheat is a wonder!" the young farmer thought.
He said it aloud when he came in sight of the field in question. It was
not more than an acre in extent, and he presumed it was the best spot
on the little farm which Miss Pringle had sold Battick along with the
old homestead.
The undulating field of grain was shoulder high and was now all of a
wonderful golden hue. Such a field of golden luxuriance Hiram had never
before seen. The wheat was of a bearded variety, the awns very stiff
and long, while the ear itself was the fullest and longest Hiram had
ever seen.
"It is a picture! A picture!" he declared with enthusiasm.
Yancey Battick's leathery face lit up as might the face of an artist
who heard his masterpiece praised. His gloomy eyes glowed. There was
even a smile trembling on his lips as he said:
"You are right, Mr. Strong. It is one of the finest pictures ever
painted by Nature. A field of wheat, when you consider it, is the most
wonderful thing to contemplate on this, our western hemisphere. Next
to rice, it is the grain most depended upon as the staple of human
consumption. And when used in its entire, or whole, state it has no
rival for nourishment and health.
"An entire rationing of a people with rice may, some medical men claim,
nourish the germ of leprosy; we know that badly cured corn is the start
of the dreaded pelagra. But wheat--even when refined and bleached until
its goodness is all but wasted--brings no disease in its train save
indigestion and that quite an unnecessary result of its use. Ground as
a whole grain and properly baked, we need not even fear indigestion.
More and more is the bread made from wheat becoming the Staff of Life."
"You certainly have a variety here," Hiram said, carefully examining
one of the ears, "that might well be named that when you put it on the
market, Mr. Battick."
"Named what?"
"'Staff of Life Wheat,' you know," Hiram said, smiling.
"A good suggestion, Mr. Strong--a cracking good suggestion," declared
Battick, with some enthusiasm. "I'll bear that in mind."
"And can I have one of these heads, Mr. Battick?" Hiram asked.
"Frankly, I'd like to show it to Mr. Bronson."
The man started, reddened, and glared at the young farmer sharply
again. His easily roused suspicion was immediately awakened. But Hiram
looked at him steadily--unwinkingly. Battick's gaze finally fell.
"You know how I feel about it, Mr. Strong. Your Mr. Bronson may be an
all right man; but it was just such men as he appears to be who robbed
me of my Mortgage Lifter Oats."
"He won't rob you, I guarantee," Hiram said shortly.
Meanwhile Battick plucked several of the long plants and handed them to
Hiram.
"You won't find their like around this part of the country, that is
sure," the proud owner of the new wheat said. "If I had better land on
which, this coming fall, to plant the grain I have, I should feel the
time was ripe next season to sound some seedsman."
"I hope you will make a fortune out of it, Mr. Battick," said Hiram
with earnestness.
"No fear!" bitterly returned the man. "But I mean to try. Of course,
Mr. Strong, I'd just as soon you wouldn't show that grain to everybody."
"I understand."
"Or tell the folks around here where you got it."
"Trust me," rejoined the young man.
After he had left Battick, however, he thought of something. There was
probably one person in the neighborhood--or of the neighborhood--who
knew about Battick's wheat and about Battick's former ill-fated
attempts to make something out of breeding seed.
Should he turn back and speak to Battick about Adam Banks? Ad had gone
away. Hiram had heard that after the night of the dance at Sunnyside
the fellow had gone to another county and was working on a farm.
"Let sleeping dogs lie," muttered the young farm manager. "And Ad Banks
is a dog all right."
The twenty acres of the Sunnyside farm along the county road, and on
which Hiram had made his experiment in underdraining, was now in shape
for replanting. There had been no rain, but if a farmer did not have
hope--and especially hope in helpful weather conditions--there would
be few crops planted. The twenty acres were made into a smooth and
good seed bed; but when he went upon it with the Percherons and the
grain-drill the dust rose and floated in a stifling cloud across the
field.
"I am afraid that a part of my bone meal is drifting off this field
with the dust," he told Orrin. "Loose as ashes, by jinks! But if I can
get the seed in and covered deep, and if a rain comes--"
He had stopped every other spout of the drill and filled the boxes
alternately with silage corn and cowpeas. The drill had to be arranged
in a particular way to sow these large grains properly.
The corn was of a low-growing variety and the ears would be pretty
sure to glaze in seventy-five days. The cowpeas, rich in nitrogen
and a soil improver almost unsurpassed, would be at their best
condition--green-podded and with the leaves still clinging to the
vines--when the corn was ready to cut. Harvested together, shredded and
blown into the silo, this crop should pretty well fill that huge tank.
There were now on Sunnyside nearly forty head of yearlings and
two-year-olds. Mr. Bronson picked up all the strays about his other
farms and brought them to Hiram. The Sunnyside pastures were in good
condition, and now all the young cattle were far down in the river-lots
getting sleek and fat at practically no expense to their owner.
Hiram desired to have plenty of the right kind of feed for them the
coming winter. And the next year he hoped to feed the herd almost
altogether at the barns so as to conserve a greater proportion of the
fertilizer which the cattle made.
Yes, Hiram desired to see that silo filled, and with just such
succulent silage as would make the herd of young cattle put on flesh
at a cheap rate. He got the twenty acres planted, and the Saturday
afternoon he finished the job, thunder heads gathered in the west and
south, threatening a tempest if nothing more.
Dolan and MacComb were pretty well along with the new house now. In
fact, by hastening the erection of that building the carpenters had
neglected the completion of the silo, although Hiram had spoken of this
neglect on several occasions.
Of course, he had no authority over the contractors or their men; but
the iron hoops and cable-stays for the silo not having been at hand
when the walls of the tank were completed and the roof on, the gang had
been taken off the silo job and had not gone back to finish it.
When Hiram and Orrin drove the sweating team of Percherons back to the
yard with the drill the carpenters had picked up their tools for the
day and were getting ready to depart in a big auto-bus for Plympton.
They all went home over Sunday, and besides Hiram and Orrin Post only
one farm laborer and a boy remained on Sunnyside over the week-end.
Even the cook went home, and the four remaining on the farm had to make
out as well as they could with amateur cooking until Monday morning.
"Everything is all right at the house, Mr. Strong," said the boss
carpenter to Hiram. "The windows are in and the roof is tight at last.
If it rains it can't do us any harm."
"Say!" exclaimed the young farmer. "How about if a big wind came up?
Those clouds over yonder look ugly."
"Oh, no baby tornado is going to do the house any damage," declared the
boss, following his men into the bus.
"How about the silo? Suppose something happens to it?"
"Oh, that'll be all right. Anyway, it is too late to put those bands on
now."
"Or the wire stays?" cried Hiram as the automobile started.
"Pshaw! You are an old Betty, Hi Strong!" sang out one of the
carpenters as the machine rolled out of the yard. "I don't believe it
will rain enough to lay the dust."
However, that prophecy went by the board before Hiram and his helpers
got the chores done at Sunnyside that evening. They ran for the shack
as the big drops of water began to fall. The drops soon turned to
sheets of wind-driven rain that slatted against the walls of the shed
like sleet.
In the midst of the supper preparations Orrin opened the door to look
out. He stared through the thinning rain toward the south.
"She's letting up, boys," he said confidently, and then turned to look
across the road and up the hillside. Immediately his voice changed and
the cry he uttered was one of positive fear.
"What's the matter?" Hiram shouted, and all of them darted out of the
door.
The moment the old man, Blodger by name, looked over the shoulder of
the hill he threw up his hands and shrieked:
"It's coming! Tornado! The wind'll change and come from the
north--right from the North Pole--in a minute. There!"
For an instant it was calm and the rain ceased. Then, with a whistle
and roar and the sudden writhing of the branches in the wood, the
tornado came. It might be only a "baby," but to Hiram's mind the
funnel of black cloud sweeping down upon Sunnyside seemed a full-grown
wind-storm indeed.