Charley turned away stiffly and wearily to where his coat lay.
Mr. Hansen began to count. “Von. Two. T’ree. Four—” When he reached ten, he called the numeral out in a loud voice, adding, “All right. You lick, Sharley. In fair fight.”
Sayre drew a long breath and looked away.
The next thing she knew all was confusion again. Charley was lying flat on the ground, face downward. Frank’s big bulk was on top of him, kicking and pounding. For only an instant, though. The crowd was surging into the cleared space, carrying Sayre with it. She saw numerous hands grab Frank’s shoulders and waist, and literally tear him, struggling, kicking, and biting back at them, off Charley’s body. They shook him roughly, passing him from one eager hand to another. Suddenly the struggling Frank collapsed in his captors’ hands. He broke into noisy, helpless sobbing.
The sight was distressing to Sayre. She felt ashamed for Frank, embarrassed that she saw him. At the same time, to her own immense surprise, he aroused in her a sort of scornful pity.
Did he in Charley, too? Was it that which made Charley turn to the crowd, almost angrily, and cry out, “Oh, lay off him, fellows!”
The effect was prompt, and Mr. Hansen took advantage of it. Stepping into the center of the ring, he beckoned to both contestants. “Here, you two boys. Shake hands now like good sports, and be done vid dis dirty business.”
Charley’s expression changed and set. “No.” He spoke with that same controlled steadiness he had at Sayre’s arrival. “Not with a fellow who’s been stealing from a girl because she threatens to beat him at his latest game.”
Mr. Hansen did not abandon his efforts. “All right. Look here, Frank Hoskins. Be a man and speak out de trut’ vedder it dam you or not. Be you or ain’t you de fellow vat’s been fishing two nights ago for Sayre Morgan’s poults?”
Frank’s answer was an immediate roar. “No, I’m not! What’s more—except on that inspection trip with Mr. Kitchell, I haven’t been within a mile of the Parsons place for more’n two weeks.”
Somebody in the crowd laughed; then another. But on the whole the effect was a bated silence, marked with uncertainty. The crowd was watching Charley. He had his eyes on Frank, studying his swollen face. What Charley saw evidently satisfied him, for he stepped up to his late antagonist and thrust out his hand. “All right, Hoskins. Guess I’ll take your word for it.”
But Frank was blubbering again. Lurching away from Charley he thrust both big hands behind him and locked them, swallowed hard two or three times (Sayre could see his Adam’s apple working up and down his throat) and gave voice to a long, sobbing bellow, “Not—on—your—damn—life!”
“Boys, what does all this mean?”
The crowd parted like the River Jordan before the Israelites and Mr. Kitchell stood in the ring. Nobody answered his question. Looking only at the two culprits, he asked another, “Who started this fight?”
Charley, head high, looked straight at the teacher. Then he glanced toward Frank, plainly offering the latter the first chance to speak.
“Well, Frank?” the teacher repeated.
Frank half lifted his sullen face. “Charley Morgan,” he muttered.
“Dat’s a lie! I have seen de whole t’ang.”
Frank swung himself around toward Nels Hansen. “It’s no lie. This fight didn’t start today.”
“I’d like to speak to you, Mr. Hansen.” The teacher turned, looked out over the throng, and raised his voice authoritatively. “It’s time this crowd broke up. A number of you fellows are overdue on the football field. That includes you, Hoskins. And you, Morgan.”
Sayre, starting to move away with the obedient crowd, was stopped by Mr. Hansen. “Sayre, you vait a minute. I have somet’ang I vant to show you.”
So she stood and watched. How she did want to mother Charley. And how well she knew she must not! Only he did look so bruised and so battered. Surely he wasn’t fit for football practice tonight, above all on a squad with that detestable Frank Hoskins on it. Men were such queer creatures—so hard and unfeeling. Even the best of them, like Mr. Kitchell. For a moment she nursed her resentment of the teacher’s seeming heartlessness. Then Charley was lost to her sight, so completely was he surrounded as he moved away by devoted boys.
The situation of Frank Hoskins was entirely different. Sayre’s eye could follow Frank the whole distance of the field, for except for a half-dozen rather straggling followers he limped away alone. Once again to her own surprise Sayre felt for him a pang of scornful pity. Not because he looked even more bruised and battered than Charley. She was mean enough to be glad of that. It was his loneliness that touched her. Although his one-time ascendancy had never been a matter of real popularity, and had been steadily declining ever since Charley’s arrival in the school’s groups, never before had Sayre known him to suffer so complete and so public a desertion.
“Please come vid me, Mr. Keetchell. And you, too, Sayre.” Mr. Hansen was moving in the opposite direction from the crowd toward Ole Larsen’s home acres. “I vas right down here,” the man indicated the spot, “in Ole Larsen’s ditch vid de vater run out, because Ole, he said to me, I vish you’d look and see, Nels, vat ails my intake. It ain’t vorking right.
“I’d got Sharley Morgan to help me look von minute because he’s good at dat. But he don’t stay. He’s got to go practice football. So he yumps out of de ditch and starts valking across dis pasture. And I stays in, low down vere nobody can’t see me from up. In a minute I hears some feet besides Sharley’s, and dey stop, and somebody say, ‘Look here, Sharles Morgan. I’ve been vatchin’ for a shance to speak to you alone all day. I’ve got somet’ang to say to you. You’re to stop telling your dirty lies about me all over dis here community!’
“I know right avay it vas Lumpy Hoskins. Maybe he ain’t sounding mad! But Sharley Morgan ain’t sounding so much mad as if Frank ain’t fit to speak to, ven he says back, ‘You’re dead wrong. I ain’t told a single lie, or trut’ eider about you. For two days I ain’t so much as spoke your name.’
“‘Maybe not,’ Frank says. ‘You tell your lies coward style, by insinuation, you dirty skunk.’
“Den Sharley get vite. I vas peeking out from dat ditch. He says low down, kerplunk like a bullet, ‘I ain’t mentioned your name. I don’t say t’angs I don’t absolutely know. But von day I’m going to know a lot. And ven I do—‘
“Den dat Frank out vid his fist and lands Sharley von right in de mouth. Sharley turns around so quick de udder fellow don’t hardly know it. He slings off his hat, and he slings off his coat, and he slings off his shirt, and he says, cool and mad—not hot and mad like de udder fellow—‘All right. If fight’s vot you vant, ve’ll fight.’
“And dat’s de vay, Mr. Keetchell, dis fight come on. Dere vas a crowd in a minute, but dose two boys don’t know it. Dey vas too hard at it. For two kids, dat vas von pretty fight. Frank is bigger and stronger dan Sharley. But he ain’t so quick. And he’s too mad. He don’t use his head good like dat cool Sharley. Never would I t’ank dat Sharley vould be so cool.”
“And you didn’t try to stop the business?”
Mr. Hansen’s slow voice took on its dull monotone. “Ole Larsen’s pasture ain’t school property, Mr. Keetchell. I t’ank maybe all de boys know dat. I ain’t believing in fights. I don’t like ’em for boys. But stopping dat fight vouldn’t have done no good. It’s been coming too long a time. Dey better have it out, I t’ank, vid me here to see fair play; maybe it vill clear de air. So ven de big boys clear a space around ’em, and make de udders keep avay from it, I yumps right in, and I says, ‘I know a fair fight, and I’m de referee.’ And de big boys say, ‘You bet you are, Mr. Hansen, and ve’re back of you.’ And so, dey fight, and Sharley Morgan lick.”
“And nothing’s settled. And the feeling between the two boys, not to mention the effect on the whole school, is worse than ever.”
“Maybe yess. Maybe no. Anyvay, here is vat I vould show you.” They had reached Ole Larsen’
s back yard. “I got it from Ole Larsen’s biggest boy, de von vat’s in part-time Ag class vid you, Sayre, and vorks sometimes for Mr. Hoskins. He vas fall plowing. Today Mr. Hoskins tells him to manure first before he plows. And he digs dis up from vere it vas deep down in de manure pile. He gives it to me. But I don’t say nutting about vat I t’ank even to Ole Larsen’s boy. Anyvay, he’s de kind vat talks a plenty. I vait to show it first to you and Sayre.”
The teacher took the dirty, stiff, bedraggled, brown-feathered form that Mr. Hansen held out to him, and inspected it closely under Sayre’s following, dilated eyes.
“There’s no doubt about it, I’m afraid. Is there, Sayre?” Mr. Kitchell spoke with solemn inflection.
“Oh, no, Mr. Kitchell. I’m sure there isn’t.”
The teacher handed the object back to Mr. Hansen. “It’s Sayre’s would-be prize cockerel poult, all right, two days dead.”
9
A New Job
Certainly somebody “talked a plenty.” By night the whole story of the fight had spread over town and was sending runners out in all directions into the community. In close pursuit sped the news of the unearthing and identification of the dead poult, plus all its accompanying insinuations. And during the next few days other details were added, some true, others entirely imaginary. On one point, however, the gossipers were of one mind: that it was a shame that Sayre’s turkeys should have been interfered with.
That school circles should buzz busily about the friction and affairs of two prominent pupils was natural enough. But that town and countryside should show so much partisan interest in the quarrel of two mere high school boys was a surprise to Sayre. “It’s all because one’s a Hoskins,” she told herself, “and he isn’t on top.”
Frank was plainly not on top at school according to Charley’s accounts. “All the feelings the fellows have had of not liking him even when they knuckled under to him seem to be coming out. Everybody calls him Lumpy right to his face. Of course the nickname’s not so much; it’s that everybody knows how he hates it. And it’s the way, too, the fellows hand it out. Frank doesn’t dare hand anything back, either. If he did he’d be all messed up with fights, and he knows it.
“Rene Osgood’s one person, though, who sure sticks up for him. I can’t help liking her for the way she does it, sort of the-rest-of-you-may-go-to-the-devil way. Rene’s catty, all right, when she wants to be, but she’s no fair-weather friend.”
Whether or not the boys received school reprimand and penalty for that fight Sayre never learned. What she did know was that with the general public Charley’s was the popularity of the victor. People praised him for the championship of his sister’s rights, for his skill as a fighter, and for the generosity of his treatment of Frank. There was no doubt, too, that the gossip concerning Mr. Hoskins, which ever since the water users’ meeting had burned more or less under cover like an inextinguishable fire in a ship’s hold, was giving to the story of his son’s treachery toward the young Morgans a local importance which it would not otherwise have had.
Besides that, the fight between Charley and Frank had happened to occur at just about the time Charley’s second vocational agriculture project was becoming a matter of general public knowledge. That second school project was, of course, the boy’s five acres of field peas.
It proved a creditable success for an inexperienced boy. Still it was not so outstanding that it would of itself have been a matter of general comment. Frank Hoskins’ pea crop, for instance, nearly equaled Charley’s. Only, Frank was as sulkily mum about the methods by which he had raised it as Charley was pleasantly talkative.
It was Nels Hansen, really, who gave Charley’s peas their publicity. He reported the yield everywhere—it was one hundred and seventy-eight bushels; declared it of just the right seed-pea variety and quality, and began sending farmers to Charley to bargain for the peas as seed before they were out of the pod.
The way Mr. Hansen was pushing Charley troubled Sayre a little. Not that the kindly Norwegian misrepresented anything. Only, publicity came too easily to Charley, anyway; it was not altogether good for him.
It soon began to seem to the girl as if almost every day somebody were reporting to her having seen Charley in town answering farmers’ questions about those peas. How could Charley, with all he had to do, have time to be in town so frequently? He must be talking too much about himself. Nobody was gladder than she over what he had done. Still, he had had an unusual chance. Mr. Cowan’s farm was an exceptionally good one; besides, its soil had been treated from the beginning just as it should be.
It did not occur to the girl for some time that Mr. Hansen’s purpose might be publicity not so much for Charley as for the treatment of his field; and that Charley, the boy of earlier spreader fame, was an easy one to center such publicity about.
Naturally Charley was proud of his crop. But Sayre did hope people were not making him cocky over just one pretty successful farming experience.
Then one day in town she herself saw and overheard Charley, and her fears vanished. He was in front of the post-office among a group of men whose bearing showed plainly their liking for the genial, unselfconscious boy who was so obligingly answering their questions.
Sayre at the time had stopped a little distance away to speak to Rene and Frank, who, walking together, had been about to pass her. Queer how differently she felt toward that pair now that Charley had “licked” Frank. Not exactly friendly, to be sure, but willing enough to be on outwardly pleasant terms with them, and trying to show them so. She didn’t even mind Frank’s pompous, half-sullen aloofness any more; it rather amused her. And the valiant way Rene’s cryptic chatter was trying to cover up Frank’s sulky unresponsiveness and the whole awkward situation was arousing her sympathy. For all that, she was not so much listening to Rene as straining to catch the whiffs of Charley’s talk which the persistent swirling of the Wyoming wind brought to her ears.
“Oh, yes, they’re good seed peas,” she heard him say once. “But then I had a swell field on a swell farm. Belonging to a man who’s raised seed peas before. Had him right handy, too, to consult when I needed. That field? Sure, Mr. Cowan’s treated it right.”
And again with a laughing negation in his voice. “No, I don’t deserve even that credit. Oh, yes, I did all the work on my own responsibility, of course. Have to in vocational Ag. But where would I have been if Mr. Kitchell hadn’t showed me where to turn to study out all I needed to know, where to get on to the right kind of seed and the best methods of planting and irrigating and all that, the way they’re recommended by the State Experiment Station for our kind of land?”
Charley’s words died down in a lull of the wind. Suddenly a big gust swept a dust cloud up the street, flapped Sayre’s skirts out into a sail in front of her, and forced her onward away from Frank and Rene. It also brought distinctly to her hearing, as it must have also to Frank’s and Rene’s, Charley’s emphatic tones.
“You bet I did. Or rather, Mr. Cowan had it done last fall. The season’s last alfalfa crop plowed under, well down into the soil where it could decay—green manure, you know. And it sure did the business. When this whole community wakes up and learns—”
So that was the way Charley was talking around town. Sayre went home not only relieved, but highly pleased, and all unprepared for what was to come on the next afternoon.
At five o’clock she had just come up out of the root cellar, humming a tune, and carrying a pan of potatoes to be fried for supper. She paused, as she so often did, to draw a full breath of the nipping autumn air. How stimulating it was! Breathing it made a sort of queen out of a person. She giggled a little happily at the absurdity of the thought. A queer kind of queen she was, one who felt keyed up all the time with eagerness for the very homeliest kind of work.
Then the exultant breath fell. The giggle died, smothered by an old, old dread. Who was that coming up the driveway? Dad? She could catch but a glimpse of the figure. But she knew only too well that kind of
step—that droop of the head. “What’s gone wrong, now?” she thought desperately, and stepped farther to one side to get a better view.
Instantly the old dread became a new one. For that figure wasn’t Dad at all. It was Charley. And not in all her life before had she believed Charley could ever look so much like Dad as that.
“What’s he coming home for now? He ought to be practicing football. Maybe he’s sick. Of course he’s bummed a ride.” She uttered none of these thoughts. Just stood, clutching the pan of potatoes, and waiting until Charley had come within speaking distance.
He saw her. “Lost my job,” he muttered with a sort of defiant despondency, and passed her to enter the house.
She followed him. She had herself in hand now.
The kitchen was warmly fragrant with newly baked bread. Five crisp brown loaves lay cooling on the table where Sayre had turned them from their pans only a few minutes before. Beside them stood a bowl of dried-apple sauce, flecked with raisins and flavored with spice. The food meant a supper Charley loved, but he failed to recognize its presence even by a sniff.
“How’d it happen, Chuck?” Sayre was trying to be cheerful and sympathetic. She noted, too, with relief that Charley did not look the least bit like Dad now. That resemblance must have been an imaginary notion. Still, its recollection clung.
Charley’s answer was mechanically uttered. “Mr. Cowan’s old man’s back.”
Sayre hesitated. “And the job Mr. Cowan said he’d get you if he had to lay you off?”
“Never mentioned it. Me, either, you bet. Too darn proud to when he didn’t.”
“Was—was he displeased with you, Chuck?” Sayre ventured again.
“Not to show. Acted mighty decent. Only—well I know darn well I haven’t been giving him the time I’d ought since school started. What with football and—and—everything.”
“And with too much hanging around town being pleasant,” Sayre’s thought supplemented. A weight tumbled from her heart nevertheless. If Charley had got where he realized things like that for himself she was no longer afraid for him.
The Young Adult Award-Winners Megapack Page 111