Part 8

By five o’clock in the morning we were at the chores, and were hungry enough when the summons came to breakfast at a little after six. There is, in certain forms of it, a cheerlessness in farm-life the gloom of which would be difficult to heighten. The call to breakfast came from the kitchen, which was a shed-like annex to the small, decaying, wooden farm-house. The farmer, the hired man, and I washed ourselves at the kitchen-door, then passed from the clear sunlight into a room whose smoke-blackened walls were hung round with kitchen utensils. The air was hot and dense with the fumes and smoke of cooking. A slovenly woman stood over the stove, turning potatoes that were frying in a pan, while, at the same time, she scolded two ragged children, who sat at the table devouring the food with their eyes.

Scarcely a word was spoken during the meal, until, near its close, the farmer’s wife quite abruptly—as though resuming an interrupted conversation—broke into further account of a horse-thief, whose latest escapade had been not far away, but those whereabouts remained unknown. The very obvious point of which was that, however her husband had been imposed upon, my efforts to pass as an honest man had not met with unqualified success with her. In such manner the breakfast was saved from dulness, and I was sure that the parting guest was heartily speeded when my stint was done.

There is a high exhilaration in a day’s walk, even in the heat of July. The feeling of abounding life that comes with the opening day after sound sleep and abundant food, when one is free from care, and there are twelve hours of daylight ahead for leagues of delightful country, is like the pulse of a kingly sport. From higher points of rolling land I could see far over the squares marked by the regularly recurring roads that intersect one another at right angles at intervals of a mile. The farm-houses stood hidden each in a small grove, with the wheel of a windmill invariably whirling above the tree-tops, and with here and there a long winding line of willows and stunted oaks marking the course of a stream.

It was but twelve miles to Humboldt, and I stopped there only long enough to ask the way to Fort Dodge. The roads were as deserted as on the day before, and I was some distance past Humboldt before I fell in with a single farmer.

He came rumbling down the road, sitting astride the frame of a farm wagon from which the box had been removed. The fine dust was puffing like white smoke about his dangling legs, while the massive harness rattled over the big-jointed frames of the horses.

“You may as well ride,” he called, as he overtook me, and I lost no time in getting on behind.

More fruitful as a field of conversation even than the weather were the crops at that season. I had picked up a smattering of the lingo, and we were soon commenting on the abundant yield of hay, and the fair promise of rye and wheat, and the favorable turn that the unbroken heat had given to the prospects of the corn, in the hope that it held, in spite of the late planting, of its ripening before the coming of the frost. But, for all the good outlook, the farmer was far from cheerful. I suspected the cause of his depression and avoided it from fear of embarrassment to myself, while yet I wished to hear his views about the situation. When they came, they were what I anticipated:

A good hay crop? Yes, there could hardly be a better, but of what use was hay that rotted in the fields before you could house it, for want of hands? And this was but the beginning of the difficulty.

The whole harvest lay ahead, and the advancing summer brought no solution of the problem of “help.” He was very graphic in his account of the year-around need of men that grows acutest in midsummer, and I did not escape the embarrassment that I feared; for, when he pressed me to go to work for him, I could only urge weakly that I felt obliged to hurry on. He was glad to be rid of me at the parting of our ways, a little farther down the road, where he turned to the unequal struggle on his farm, while I walked on at leisure in the direction of Fort Dodge.

A heave of the great plain raised me presently to a height, from which, far over the roll of the intervening fields, with the warm sunlight on their varying growths, I could see the church spires in the town surrounded almost by wooded hills, with the Des Moines River flowing among them. The air was full of the distant clatter of mowing machines, which carries with it the association of stinging heat and the patient hum of bees and the fragrance of new hay.

As I descended into the next hollow there came driving toward me a young farmer. He was seated on a mower, his eyes fixed on the wide swath cut by the machine in its course just within a zigzag rail fence that flanked the road. The green timothy fell before the blade in thick, soft, dewy widths that carpeted the meadow. A chance glance into the road discovered me, and he brought the horses to a stand. As he pushed back his hat from his streaming forehead, I could see that he was young, but much worn with care and overwork.

“Will you take a job with me?” he asked, and the wonder of it was the greater, since that whole region has through it a strong Yankee strain, and men of such stock are sore pressed when they come to the point without preliminaries.

Again I had to resort to a feeble excuse of necessity to go farther; but, curious as to the response, I ventured an inquiry about the local demand for men.

“Oh, everyone needs men,” the farmer rejoined impatiently, as, tightening the reins and adjusting his hat, he started the horses, anxious, evidently, to drown further idle talk in the sharp noise of the swift-mowing knives.

In the river valley I was not long in finding a lane which disappeared among a scattered growth of stunted trees in the direction of a rocky bluff that marked the bed of the stream. Every day’s march brought some chance of a bath, and, at times, I was fortunate enough to fall in with two or three in thirty miles, and nothing could be more restful or refreshing in a long walk, or a better preventive against the stiffness that is apt to accompany it. Here I could both bathe and swim about, and when I regained the highway, it was almost with the feeling of vigor of the early morning.

The main-travelled road did not lead me, as I expected, into Fort Dodge, but to an intersection of two roads, a little west of the town. Instead of going eastward into the city, I turned to the west, in the direction of Tara, a small village on a branch of the Rock Island Railway. The setting sun was shining full in my face, but no longer with much effect of heat. As I hurried on in the fast cooling air, the way led by an abrupt descent into a ravine, where flowed a small tributary of the Des Moines among rocks and sheer banks, forming a striking contrast with the rolling prairie. It was but a break in the plain. From the top of the opposite bank, the land stretched away again in undulating surface, with much evidence of richness of soil and the wealth of the farmers.

Not without exception, however; for, at nightfall, I was nearing a small house, through whose coating of white paint the blackened weather-boards appeared with an effect of much dilapidation. When I entered the garden, passing under low shade-trees, I met a sturdy Irishman, bare-headed, and in his shirtsleeves, whose thin white hair and beard alone suggested advancing years.

There was no difficulty in dealing with him. He was not in need of a hired man, but was perfectly willing that I should have supper and breakfast at his home and a bed in the barn on the terms of a morning stint. Accordingly, I followed light-heartedly into the kitchen, where, in the dim light, I saw his wife and a married daughter, with her son, a lad of six or eight.

Supper was ready; with every mark of kindly hospitality, the farmer’s wife, a motherly body with an ill-defined waist, made ready for me at the table, moving lightly about, in spite of age and bulk, in bare feet, that appeared from under the skirt of a dark print dress with an apron covering its ample front. A lamp was lighted, and from the vague walls there looked down upon us the faces of saints in bright-colored prints. A kitchen clock ticked on the mantel-shelf, and a kettle was singing on an iron stove that projected half way into the room. We supped on tea and bread and hard biscuits, while the farmer questioned me about the crops along the day’s route, and his wife heaved deep sighs and broke into a muttered “The Lord bless us!” when I owned to having walked some thirty-five miles since morning.

I was charmed with my new acquaintances. There was no embarrassment in being with them, and nothing of restraint or gloom in their home. After supper I pumped the water for the stock, and helped with the milking. When the chores were done, I asked leave to go to bed. A heavy quilt and pillow were given to me, and, spreading them upon the hay, I slept the sleep of a child.

The cows had been milked in the morning and were about to be driven to pasture, when there arose a difficulty in separating from its mother a calf that was to be weaned. The calf had to be penned in the shed, while the old cow went afield with the others. To imprison it, however, proved no easy undertaking. With the agility of a half-back, it dodged us all over the cow-yard, encouraged by the calls of its mother, from the lane, and it evaded the shed-door with an obstinacy that was responsible for adding materially to the content of the old man’s next confession.

For some time his wife stood by, her bare feet in the grass, her arms akimbo, and her gray hair waving in the morning breeze, as, with unfeigned scorn, she watched our baffled manœuvres. She could not endure it long.

“I’ll catch the beast,” she shouted presently in richest brogue; and, true to her word, by a simple strategy, she surprised the little brute and had it by a hind leg before it suspected her nearness.

But capture was no weak surrender on the part of the calf. For its dear life it kicked, and the picture of the hardy old woman, shaken in every muscle under the desperate lunges of the calf, as, clinging with both hands to its leg, she called to us with lusty expletives, to help her before she was “killed entirely,” is one that lingers gleefully in memory. The old man winked at me his infinite appreciation of the scene, and between us we relieved his panting wife and soon housed the calf.

When my work was done, and I had said good-by to the family, whose hospitality I had so much enjoyed, I set out for Gowrie, which was twenty odd miles away. At Tara I found that, to avoid a long détour, I must take to the railway as far, at least, as Moorland, the next station on the line. Walking the track was sometimes a necessity, but always an unwelcome one. It is weary work to plod on and on, over an unwavering route, where an occasional passing train mocks one’s slow advance, and where, for miles the only touch of human nature is in a shanty of a section-boss, with ragged children playing about it, and a haggard woman plying her endless task, while a mongrel or two barks after one, far down the line.

At Moorland I resumed the highway, and held to it with uneventful march, until, within a mile or two of Gowrie, two men in a market-wagon overtook me and offered me a lift into the village.

To me the notable event of the day was a drive of several miles with a farmer, in the afternoon. He had been to the freight station in Gowrie, to get there a reaper, which had been ordered out from Chicago. The machine, in all the splendor of fresh paint, lay in the body of the wagon, while he sat alone on the high seat in front.

When, at his invitation, I climbed up beside him, I was delighted with the first impression of the man. In the prime of life and of very compact figure, his small dark eyes, that were the brighter for contrast with a swarthy complexion, moved with an alertness that denoted energy and force. Individuality was stamped upon him and showed itself in the trick of the eye, and in every tone of his voice.