One of Ours
Book I: On Lovely Creek
Chapter XIV
Ralph and his father moved to the new ranch the last of August, and Mr.
Wheeler wrote back that late in the fall he meant to ship a carload of grass
steers to the home farm to be fattened during the winter. This, Claude saw,
would mean a need for fodder. There was a fifty-acre corn field west of the
creek,—just on the sky-line when one looked out from the west windows of the
house. Claude decided to put this field into winter wheat, and early in
September he began to cut and bind the corn that stood upon it for fodder. As
soon as the corn was gathered, he would plough up the ground, and drill in the
wheat when he planted the other wheat fields.
This was Claude's first innovation, and it did not meet with approval. When
Bayliss came out to spend Sunday with his mother, he asked her what Claude
thought he was doing, anyhow. If he wanted to change the crop on that field, why
didn't he plant oats in the spring, and then get into wheat next fall? Cutting
fodder and preparing the ground now, would only hold him back in his work. When
Mr. Wheeler came home for a short visit, he jocosely referred to that quarter as
"Claude's wheat field."
Claude went ahead with what he had undertaken to do, but all through
September he was nervous and apprehensive about the weather. Heavy rains, if
they came, would make him late with his wheat-planting, and then there would
certainly be criticism. In reality, nobody cared much whether the planting was
late or not, but Claude thought they did, and sometimes in the morning he awoke
in a state of panic because he wasn't getting ahead faster. He had Dan and one
of August Yoeder's four sons to help him, and he worked early and late. The new
field he ploughed and drilled himself. He put a great deal of young energy into
it, and buried a great deal of discontent in its dark furrows. Day after day he
flung himself upon the land and planted it with what was fermenting in him, glad
to be so tired at night that he could not think.
Ralph came home for Leonard Dawson's wedding, on the first of October. All
the Wheelers went to the wedding, even Mahailey, and there was a great gathering
of the country folk and townsmen.
After Ralph left, Claude had the place to himself again, and the work went on
as usual. The stock did well, and there were no vexatious interruptions. The
fine weather held, and every morning when Claude got up, another gold day
stretched before him like a glittering carpet, leading. . . ? When the question
where the days were leading struck him on the edge of his bed, he hurried to
dress and get down-stairs in time to fetch wood and coal for Mahailey. They
often reached the kitchen at the same moment, and she would shake her finger at
him and say, "You come down to help me, you nice boy, you!" At least he was of
some use to Mahailey. His father could hire one of the Yoeder boys to look after
the place, but Mahailey wouldn't let any one else save her old back.
Mrs. Wheeler, as well as Mahailey, enjoyed that fall. She slept late in the
morning, and read and rested in the afternoon. She made herself some new
house-dresses out of a grey material Claude chose. "It's almost like being a
bride, keeping house for just you, Claude," she sometimes said.
Soon Claude had the satisfaction of seeing a blush of green come up over his
brown wheat fields, visible first in the dimples and little hollows, then
flickering over the knobs and levels like a fugitive smile. He watched the green
blades coming every day, when he and Dan went afield with their wagons to gather
corn. Claude sent Dan to shuck on the north quarter, and he worked on the south.
He always brought in one more load a day than Dan did,—that was to be expected.
Dan explained this very reasonably, Claude thought, one afternoon when they were
hooking up their teams.
"It's all right for you to jump at that corn like you was a-beating carpets,
Claude; it's your corn, or anyways it's your Paw's. Them fields will always lay
betwixt you and trouble. But a hired man's got no property but his back, and he
has to save it. I figure that I've only got about so many jumps left in me, and
I ain't a-going to jump too hard at no man's corn."
"What's the matter? I haven't been hinting that you ought to jump any harder,
have I ?"
"No, you ain't, but I just want you to know that there's reason in all
things." With this Dan got into his wagon and drove off. He had probably been
meditating upon this declaration for some time.
That afternoon Claude suddenly stopped flinging white ears into the wagon
beside him. It was about five o'clock, the yellowest hour of the autumn day. He
stood lost in a forest of light, dry, rustling corn leaves, quite hidden away
from the world. Taking off his husking-gloves, he wiped the sweat from his face,
climbed up to the wagon box, and lay down on the ivory-coloured corn. The horses
cautiously advanced a step or two, and munched with great content at ears they
tore from the stalks with their teeth.
Claude lay still, his arms under his head, looking up at the hard, polished
blue sky, watching the flocks of crows go over from the fields where they fed on
shattered grain, to their nests in the trees along Lovely Creek. He was thinking
about what Dan had said while they were hitching up. There was a great deal of
truth in it, certainly. Yet, as for him, he often felt that he would rather go
out into the world and earn his bread among strangers than sweat under this
half-responsibility for acres and crops that were not his own. He knew that his
father was sometimes called a "land hog" by the country people, and he himself
had begun to feel that it was not right they should have so much land,—to farm,
or to rent, or to leave idle, as they chose. It was strange that in all the
centuries the world had been going, the question of property had not been better
adjusted. The people who had it were slaves to it, and the people who didn't
have it were slaves to them.
He sprang down into the gold light to finish his load. Warm silence nestled
over the cornfield. Sometimes a light breeze rose for a moment and rattled the
stiff, dry leaves, and he himself made a great rustling and crackling as he tore
the husks from the ears.
Greedy crows were still cawing about before they flapped homeward. When he
drove out to the highway, the sun was going down, and from his seat on the load
he could see far and near. Yonder was Dan's wagon, coming in from the north
quarter; over there was the roof of Leonard Dawson's new house, and his
windmill, standing up black in the declining day. Before him were the bluffs of
the pasture, and the little trees, almost bare, huddled in violet shadow along
the creek, and the Wheeler farm-house on the hill, its windows all aflame with
the last red fire of the sun.