She did hope, though, Dad would not act too depressed over the situation. To her surprise her father received Charley’s news quite philosophically. “Well, you knew it might happen. You should have been prepared for it. Though that doesn’t mean I am not truly sorry about it, my boy. By the way, Mr. Hoskins told me tonight to get word to you, Charley, to come into the store tomorrow. He has something he wants to say to you.”
“What, I wonder?” Charley shrugged his shoulders. “It sure can’t be anything agreeable.”
Both curiosity and misgiving fretted Sayre a good part of the next day. “What did Mr. Hoskins want you for?” she asked as soon after her brother’s homecoming as she tactfully could.
Charley was as little his genial self tonight as he had been last night. For all that, he was different. There was something hard, almost stubborn, in tonight’s depression. Although plainly not in a talkative mood, he answered Sayre’s question readily enough, “To give me a job.”
“Mr. Hoskins—gave you—a job!” Sayre paused in the act of taking the potatoes from the stove, and stood stock-still, frying-pan high in the air.
Was Charley joking? He didn’t look like it. Still, there wasn’t in his manner any of the elation that usually accompanied one of his announcements of new work.
The boy nodded. “On the hay baler. Working Saturdays and a day or two each week when some of his regular men have to lay off to tend to home crops. I’ll lose some school, but not so much that I can’t make it up.”
“But—full days? And Saturdays? You can’t. There’s football.”
“Football’s got to go.”
“It can’t. You’re captain.”
“Not any more. I resigned this afternoon.”
“Charley Morgan! You didn’t!” Sayre set the frying-pan of potatoes back on the stove. The grease began to sputter again violently, its bacony odor wafting more strongly through the room. Presently spirals of black smoke began to arise and thicken; the cook paid no attention to them. “Why, the whole school will have it in for you. They’ll say you quit to spite Frank Hoskins. Or rather, because you won’t play on a team with him. Goodness only knows what they will say.”
“They’ll have to say it then.” Charley picked up the empty water pail, pulled open the door, and left the room.
Sayre, catching a glimpse of his vanishing back, knew by the way he moved that she had failed him. “Charley,” she called in contrition.
The boy pretended not to hear. Could Sayre have known all that Charley had been through earlier that afternoon, her contrition would have been greater. His nerves were still raw from the resentment of the coach (Mr. Kitchell was full-time agriculture teacher now and no longer had anything to do with the athletics), and from the amazed and outraged indignation of the boys of the team. The worst of it was that Charley had no blame for any of them. Instead he sympathized with them so much that he had offered little in excuse for himself.
To Mr. Kitchell alone the boy had poured forth his heart. “All summer I kept kidding myself into believing I was coming back to school this fall to please Dad and Sayre. They’re set, of course, on my graduating in June. But I didn’t. I came back to play football. And all the while I knew I hadn’t any business to play. That I ought to work more outside and earn more. Now, if I’m going to work at all, I’ve got to quit playing. I hate quitting like thunder, you bet. And yet—Well, in a way, I’m sort o’ glad, too.
“You see, Mr. Kitchell, it’s like this. You haven’t any idea how hard Sayre works. She’s wonderful, Sayre is, the way she manages and looks after all us. And it’s hard with so little money to do with, and her so crazy to get back to school this fall with the part-time bunch. I never used to think much about things like that, but here—lately—” Charley had paused in embarrassment. “Aw—well,” he had concluded sheepishly, “Somehow I can’t feel right any more letting a girl pack more of the family load than I do.”
“I can’t argue against that, Charley.” Mr. Kitchell’s tone had warmed the boy through and through.
How that man did understand all about the ways a fellow felt. He hadn’t even added that in fairness to the school, the coach, and the whole football squad Charley should have come to his present conclusion some time before.
“Personally, though, I’m sorry,” the teacher had gone on. “I’d hoped football would rub down edges between you and Frank. Make you real team mates again. For there’ll be other team work for you two boys this school year, you know.”
Over Charley’s troubled, mobile face had flashed the light of a new interest. “You mean the stock-judging team? You really think I can make it?”
“From what I know of you two boys, I’m expecting both you and Hoskins to make it.”
Charley had laughed to hide his sudden boyish gratification. Here was comfort of a kind for which he had not dared hope: that an inexperienced young farmer like him should make the stock-judging team, that picked group of five boys, chosen on merit and promise from among the animal husbandry pupils. Mr. Kitchell would give that picked bunch hard, intensive out-of-school training to fit them to enter grueling contests with other teams. Practically every high school that taught agriculture had such a team nowadays, and yearly the contests among schools were becoming keener and of more widespread public interest. To win a place on the stock-judging team meant another chance for Charley to win honor for his school, and community prestige for himself. How Frank Hoskins would hate the opportunity’s coming to Charley! There was new triumph in that thought. Still, was he never to escape anywhere from Frank Hoskins’ rivalry? Shadows fell once more over the boy’s face.
“It’s fate, I guess, Hoskins and me, I mean. We seem bound to get into each other’s way at everything we do. He’s even putting in a few hours a week, when he can get them, on the baler. Learning the whole alfalfa business, so folks say, the way his dad’s so determined he’ll do.”
When at supper that night the family was discussing Charley’s new job, Mr. Morgan showed at once that his attitude toward it was very different from Sayre’s. “That’s what I call generous. Right after a big rumpus with his son that’s held the boy up to shame in the community, Mr. Hoskins gives you work. With times what they are, too, with the poor hay crop, and the Government rulings, and all. Every day here lately there’s been man after man in the store asking for any kind of a job at any pay. I hope you showed your appreciation, son.”
“I tried to, Dad. At first I felt kind o’ like you about it. But that was before I went out to Mr. Cowan’s to get a little work in on my crops. Mr. Hansen was there. He brought me home.”
“What has Mr. Hansen to do with it?”
Charley bit into a slice of bread spread with wild chokecherry butter. “Says ’twas Mr. Cowan got me that job, without even asking for it, too. Just by letting it be known he was trying to find me one, he made Mr. Hoskins give it to me.”
“That’s a queer statement. Mr. Hoskins is far too important and independent a man to be swayed like that by anybody.”
“You’re wrong there, Dad. Everybody knows Mr. Hoskins, o’ course. And Mr. Cowan’s so awful reserved nobody really knows him. I don’t, even after living in his house all summer. Just the same, he’s a power. Mr. Hansen says Mr. Hoskins is afraid of him.”
“Nonsense. Why should he be?”
“I asked Nels that, myself. He wouldn’t answer straight out. Just kept chuckling in that way he has. And dropping hints about what a good politician Mr. Hoskins is. And about how he sure needs just now to do favors for people with good stand-ins with the federal government and the reclamation service. Then he told me I’d better make a thorough job of reading today’s Clarion. He said he’d told you to be sure to bring a paper home.”
While her father went to search his coat pocket for eyeglasses and newspaper, Sayre cleared a space on the table and pushed the lighted kerosene lamp near the clearing. Then she hovered close to her father’s side as, reseated, he combed the four very black-typed pages of Upham�
��s weekly news sheet.
“Here it is, children.” Mr. Morgan pivoted his forefinger triumphantly on an obscure spot. “This must be what Mr. Hansen meant.”
A dark young head bent over the father’s shoulder on each side. Four dark blue eyes scanned simultaneously the indicated lines. They were only a few insignificant-looking rows of formal statement among the court notices. But as Charley and Sayre, having read them, began to realize their meaning, they loomed so large that the twins’ eyes bulged and their voices sharpened with excitement.
“Does it mean he’s got to pay up to the Government for all the back construction charges and everything else that isn’t paid, on all three of these land holdings?” questioned Sayre.
“Not exactly,” Charley said. “It means the Government’s suing him in the federal courts for payment of the money. Checking him up for trying to dead-beat out of it, I guess. Isn’t that it, Dad?”
“It says—” scarcely less excited but much more troubled than his children, Mr. Morgan began judicially to half-quote—“that three federal suits have been filed against Franklin M. Hoskins for unpaid construction charges and other Government indebtedness on three different holdings of land in the Pawaukee Reclamation Project. One is for seven thousand dollars. One is for six thousand dollars. One is for four thousand two hundred dollars. And all three accounts must be settled entirely before eight months from date or the land relinquished. It’s queer,” the perplexed man pondered in conclusion. “The Government couldn’t have had time yet to consider Mr. Hoskins’ requests for delay.”
“It’s a funny place, seems to me, to put anything as important as all that,” came Sayre’s comment.
Charley shook his black head with sagacity. “Not when it’s that kind of news about the community’s leading citizen. The Clarion knows well enough what would happen to it if it once got Mr. Hoskins jumping on its neck.”
Needless to say that newspaper item furnished a topic for talk for many days.
“Is Mr. Hoskins much crushed?” was one of Sayre’s early inquiries of her father the next evening.
“Not at all. On the contrary, he’s quite cheerful. He’s explained the matter again and again in the store today. Says he’s not at all worried. That those suits are just test cases against three holdings of his in different parts of this section of the Pawaukee. One is his home farm right at the edge of Upham. What the Government wants is to bring to light in the courts all the actual data in these irrigation project situations. Getting conditions thoroughly sifted and aired that way ought really to strengthen the landholders’ position, Mr. Hoskins thinks.
“It’ll cost him something, though, for lawyers’ fees and such. Means he’ll have to sell most of his hay this year in the early market, where prices are always much lower than they are later. After he’s just gone to the expense of building that new warehouse for storing hay, too.”
10
With the Balers
The big Hoskins baler with its crew, going its annual fall round of Pawaukee hay farms, came of course to Parsons’ eighty. To feed all those men at noon was no light task. Sayre was tired when the third morning came. Just the same it was nice having Charley at home again.
She shivered as, softly closing her bedroom door, she tiptoed into the kitchen. It wasn’t easy to get up so early after a hard day’s work. The balers did put in such long hours. Still she wouldn’t have to feed them again. By ten o’clock they would be through baling that part of the Parsons hay that belonged to Mr. Hoskins.
She opened the drafts of the stove and shook down the banking ashes as cautiously as she could. There was no sense in waking Dad and Hitty. Charley she’d probably have to call. She hovered a moment within the feeble warmth. Then as the fire began to glow into new life, she turned to the table and began stealthily to beat up pancake batter.
Suddenly the first shafts of sunshine broke through the window nearest her. She felt them gleam over her bent head. Oh, it was wonderful to live where the very first sunshine of the day could get in at you; in a place, too, where the sun really did shine almost every day. She did love it, even though the work was heavy.
She loved, too, this dear, funny room. Her eye flitted appraisingly first over the half that was compactly arranged kitchen with Hitty’s and her tiny bedroom partitioned off it at one end. Then over the half that was cheery living-room, white-curtained, bright with the scarlet bloom of thriving geranium plants, homey with filled bookshelves and Dad’s old easy chair near the table with the lamp.
The door into Dad and Charley’s bedroom, partitioned off the living-room, creaked open cautiously. Charley emerged in stocking feet, shoes in his hand. Sayre threw him a greeting smile. It was the third morning straight she had not had to call him.
At the stove she let spoonfuls of batter splash onto the hot griddle. Then she broke eggs into the sizzling grease in the frying-pan, and turned to set a pitcher of milk on the table at Charley’s place.
What was that sound outside, punching so sharply through the crisp air? The heavily rattling approach of an empty motor-truck. No, not quite empty; at least it didn’t sound that way. It was clattering up the driveway now. There, it had passed the house and was speeding beyond.
Sayre shoved a plate heaped with hot cakes toward Charley, and hurried to peer through the kitchen window. “What’s Frank Hoskins doing here this morning? Isn’t this the Saturday of the Hubble-Upham game? Arriving before any of the rest of the crew, too?”
“Frank?” Over Charley’s sleepily cheerful face a cloud gathered. He knew how heartily the crew boss had come to dislike the days when he and Frank Hoskins appeared together. “Probably work a few hours, and quit. He’s privileged. Football team doesn’t leave till the twelve-thirty.”
“What’s he bringing the truck for?”
“Haul hay to the baler, I suppose. No, we moved that baler last night out where the rest of the hay is. He must have the scales. They sent for ’em from the warehouse yesterday. He likes to cart ’em about, set ’em up, and snoop around a little while he’s doing it. Makes him important—proprietor’s son, you know.”
“Then why’s he driving way out in the back of the field behind the second cutting? There aren’t any bales out there to weigh. All the undelivered ones are up front.”
“There’ll be plenty in the back field before long. What d’you s’pose we moved the baler for?”
Near the front of the seventeen-acre alfalfa field of the Parsons eighty, where three days before had stood the big stack of the first cutting, now lay sprawled, or neatly piled, clutters and rows of bales. They were those of the Parsons-Hoskins hay crop, which still remained to be delivered to the Hoskins warehouse. The baler itself had been hauled close to what was left of the stack of the second cutting, a mere seven or eight tons. It should not take long this morning to complete the Parsons-Hoskins job.
When that should be done there would remain of the fifty-odd tons of alfalfa hay that the Parsons eighty had produced, according to Morgan reckoning, only what belonged to the Morgans themselves. This was the two small stacks that Dad, with such help as Charley and the neighbors could give him, had managed to put up for their own use from those two semi-detached corner acres off the big field.
These two acres had produced beautiful crops, more hay than the Morgans were likely to need. Dad had suggested it might be well to have a little of it baled, if the crew boss would stop to do it while the balers were on the place.
“He won’t,” Charley had announced with confidence, and Sayre had felt relieved.
Of course there was, too, the scrub hay which those five half-alkali acres along the weedy south ditch had struggled to produce. But that crop was so meager and inferior that no one, at least so the Morgans believed, had given any thought as to what was to be done with it. It would make good bedding for the stock.
The Saturday housework went fast that morning. Outside from across the empty distances Sayre heard the first coughs and sputters of the gasoline engi
ne. Then came its steady chug as the baler went into action. For a long time it kept up unbroken its rhythmic, explosive chatter, and Sayre found herself timing her tasks to its measures. Too busy herself to stop to take in details, she was still pleasantly aware of the bustling activity without, some of which occasionally approached and passed the house. She saw none of the outside workers to speak to, though, until she had got as far as giving Hitty her bath in the wash-tub in the middle of the kitchen floor. It was then that Charley thrust open the kitchen door, stuck in his head, and announced to Sayre’s back in a voice so curt it made her jump. “The men will be here to dinner.”
“Again? Today? I can’t have ’em. I’ve nothing to feed ’em. There isn’t a thing to eat in—”
She had twirled around on her knees. Charley was pulling the door to as abruptly as he had thrust it open. But she caught one glimpse of his departing face. That glimpse made her gasp. “Why, he’s angry! He’s awfully angry! I never saw him look like that before in all my life. I never thought he could. It isn’t baling part of our own hay that’s made him as mad as that.”
She began rubbing the bath towel so hard over Hitty’s rosy flesh that the child cried out, “Your wipe’s hurting me.”
Repentant, Sayre hurried the little girl into her clothes, her own mind planning all the while. “I’ve got to kill some of my precious chickens, I suppose. There are beans enough. And I can manage some custard pies. But there’s only a little bread. It’ll have to be biscuits, and those men can eat such an awful lot.”
Sayre tidied up the kitchen, with ears anxiously alert. Through the window she had just opened to rid the kitchen of the hot bath vapors came the sound of angry, high-pitched voices. Those booming tones were Frank Hoskins’, she knew. And those clear, ringing ones were Charley’s. She stood, listening, but except that one voice grew more deeply strident, and the other more determined, she could distinguish nothing. Just as their duet reached a crescendo, into it fell a few sharp accents of command. They did not at once bring silence.
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