One of Ours
Book I: On Lovely Creek
Chapter II
Claude and his mules rattled into Frankfort just as the calliope went
screaming down Main street at the head of the circus parade. Getting rid of his
disagreeable freight and his uncongenial companions as soon as possible, he
elbowed his way along the crowded sidewalk, looking for some of the neighbour
boys. Mr. Wheeler was standing on the Farmer's Bank corner, towering a head
above the throng, chaffing with a little hunchback who was setting up a
shell-game. To avoid his father, Claude turned and went in to his brother's
store. The two big show windows were full of country children, their mothers
standing behind them to watch the parade. Bayliss was seated in the little glass
cage where he did his writing and bookkeeping. He nodded at Claude from his
desk.
"Hello," said Claude, bustling in as if he were in a great hurry. "Have you
seen Ernest Havel? I thought I might find him in here."
Bayliss swung round in his swivel chair to return a plough catalogue to the
shelf. "What would he be in here for? Better look for him in the saloon." Nobody
could put meaner insinuations into a slow, dry remark than Bayliss.
Claude's cheeks flamed with anger. As he turned away, he noticed something
unusual about his brother's face, but he wasn't going to give him the
satisfaction of asking him how he had got a black eye. Ernest Havel was a
Bohemian, and he usually drank a glass of beer when he came to town; but he was
sober and thoughtful beyond the wont of young men. From Bayliss' drawl one might
have supposed that the boy was a drunken loafer.
At that very moment Claude saw his friend on the other side of the street,
following the wagon of trained dogs that brought up the rear of the procession.
He ran across, through a crowd of shouting youngsters, and caught Ernest by the
arm.
"Hello, where are you off to?"
"I'm going to eat my lunch before show-time. I left my wagon out by the
pumping station, on the creek. What about you?"
"I've got no program. Can I go along?"
Ernest smiled. "I expect. I've got enough lunch for two."
"Yes, I know. You always have. I'll join you later."
Claude would have liked to take Ernest to the hotel for dinner. He had more
than enough money in his pockets; and his father was a rich farmer. In the
Wheeler family a new thrasher or a new automobile was ordered without a
question, but it was considered extravagant to go to a hotel for dinner. If his
father or Bayliss heard that he had been there-and Bayliss heard everything they
would say he was putting on airs, and would get back at him. He tried to excuse
his cowardice to himself by saying that he was dirty and smelled of the hides;
but in his heart he knew that he did not ask Ernest to go to the hotel with him
because he had been so brought up that it would be difficult for him to do this
simple thing. He made some purchases at the fruit stand and the cigar counter,
and then hurried out along the dusty road toward the pumping station. Ernest's
wagon was standing under the shade of some willow trees, on a little sandy
bottom half enclosed by a loop of the creek which curved like a horseshoe.
Claude threw himself on the sand beside the stream and wiped the dust from his
hot face. He felt he had now closed the door on his disagreeable morning.
Ernest produced his lunch basket.
"I got a couple bottles of beer cooling in the creek," he said. "I knew you
wouldn't want to go in a saloon."
"Oh, forget it!" Claude muttered, ripping the cover off a jar of pickles. He
was nineteen years old, and he was afraid to go into a saloon, and his friend
knew he was afraid.
After lunch, Claude tools out a handful of good cigars he had bought at the
drugstore. Ernest, who couldn't afford cigars, was pleased. He lit one, and as
he smoked he kept looking at it with an air of pride and turning it around
between his fingers.
The horses stood with their heads over the wagon-box, munching their oats.
The stream trickled by under the willow roots with a cool, persuasive sound.
Claude and Ernest lay in the shade, their coats under their heads, talking very
little. Occasionally a motor dashed along the road toward town, and a cloud of
dust and a smell of gasoline blew in over the creek bottom; but for the most
part the silence of the warm, lazy summer noon was undisturbed. Claude could
usually forget his own vexations and chagrins when he was with Ernest. The
Bohemian boy was never uncertain, was not pulled in two or three ways at once.
He was simple and direct. He had a number of impersonal preoccupations; was
interested in politics and history and in new inventions. Claude felt that his
friend lived in an atmosphere of mental liberty to which he himself could never
hope to attain. After he had talked with Ernest for awhile, the things that did
not go right on the farm seemed less important. Claude's mother was almost as
fond of Ernest as he was himself. When the two boys were going to high school,
Ernest often came over in the evening to study with Claude, and while they
worked at the long kitchen table Mrs. Wheeler brought her darning and sat near
them, helping them with their Latin and algebra. Even old Mahailey was
enlightened by their words of wisdom.
Mrs. Wheeler said she would never forget the night Ernest arrived from the
Old Country. His brother, Joe Havel, had gone to Frankfort to meet him, and was
to stop on the way home and leave some groceries for the Wheelers. The train
from the east was late; it was ten o'clock that night when Mrs. Wheeler, waiting
in the kitchen, heard Havel's wagon rumble across the little bridge over Lovely
Creek. She opened the outside door, and presently Joe came in with a bucket of
salt fish in one hand and a sack of flour on his shoulder. While he took the
fish down to the cellar for her, another figure appeared in the doorway; a young
boy, short, stooped, with a flat cap on his head and a great oilcloth valise,
such as pedlars carry, strapped to his back. He had fallen asleep in the wagon,
and on waking and finding his brother gone, he had supposed they were at home
and scrambled for his pack. He stood in the doorway, blinking his eyes at the
light, looking astonished but eager to do whatever was required of him. What if
one of her own boys, Mrs. Wheeler thought . . . . She went up to him and put her
arm around him, laughing a little and saying in her quiet voice, just as if he
could understand her, "Why, you're only a little boy after all, aren't you?"
Ernest said afterwards that it was his first welcome to this country, though
he had travelled so far, and had been pushed and hauled and shouted at for so
many days, he had lost count of them. That night he and Claude only shook hands
and looked at each other suspiciously, but ever since they had been good
friends.
After their picnic the two boys went to the circus in a happy frame of mind.
In the animal tent they met big Leonard Dawson, the oldest son of one of the
Wheelers' near neighbours, and the three sat together for the performance.
Leonard said he had come to town alone in his car; wouldn't Claude ride out with
him? Claude was glad enough to turn the mules over to Ralph, who didn't mind the
hired men as much as he did.
Leonard was a strapping brown fellow of twenty-five, with big hands and big
feet, white teeth, and flashing eyes full of energy. He and his father and two
brothers not only worked their own big farm, but rented a quarter section from
Nat Wheeler. They were master farmers. If there was a dry summer and a failure,
Leonard only laughed and stretched his long arms, and put in a bigger crop next
year. Claude was always a little reserved with Leonard; he felt that the young
man was rather contemptuous of the hap-hazard way in which things were done on
the Wheeler place, and thought his going to college a waste of money. Leonard
had not even gone through the Frankfort High School, and he was already a more
successful man than Claude was ever likely to be. Leonard did think these
things, but he was fond of Claude, all the same.
At sunset the car was speeding over a fine stretch of smooth road across the
level country that lay between Frankfort and the rougher land along Lovely
Creek. Leonard's attention was largely given up to admiring the faultless
behaviour of his engine. Presently he chuckled to himself and turned to Claude.
"I wonder if you'd take it all right if I told you a joke on Bayliss?"
"I expect I would." Claude's tone was not at all eager.
"You saw Bayliss today? Notice anything queer about him, one eye a little off
colour? Did he tell you how he got it?"
"No. I didn't ask him."
"Just as well. A lot of people did ask him, though, and he said he was
hunting around his place for something in the dark and ran into a reaper. Well,
I'm the reaper!"
Claude looked interested. "You mean to say Bayliss was in a fight?"
Leonard laughed. "Lord, no! Don't you know Bayliss? I went in there to pay a
bill yesterday, and Susie Gray and another girl came in to sell tickets for the
firemen's dinner. An advance man for this circus was hanging around, and he
began talking a little smart,- nothing rough, but the way such fellows will. The
girls handed it back to him, and sold him three tickets and shut him up. I
couldn't see how Susie thought so quick what to say. The minute the girls went
out Bayliss started knocking them; said all the country girls were getting too
fresh and knew more than they ought to about managing sporty men and right there
I reached out and handed him one. I hit harder than I meant to. I meant to slap
him, not to give him a black eye. But you can't always regulate things, and I
was hot all over. I waited for him to come back at me. I'm bigger than he is,
and I wanted to give him satisfaction. Well, sir, he never moved a muscle! He
stood there getting redder and redder, and his eyes watered. I don't say he
cried, but his eyes watered. 'All right, Bayliss,' said I. 'Slow with your
fists, if that's your principle; but slow with your tongue, too,—especially
when the parties mentioned aren't present.' "
"Bayliss will never get over that," was Claude's only comment.
"He don't have to!" Leonard threw up his head. "I'm a good customer; he can
like it or lump it, till the price of binding twine goes down!"
For the next few minutes the driver was occupied with trying to get up a
long, rough hill on high gear. Sometimes he could make that hill, and sometimes
he couldn't, and he was not able to account for the difference. After he pulled
the second lever with some disgust and let the car amble on as she would, he
noticed that his companion was disconcerted.
"I'll tell you what, Leonard," Claude spoke in a strained voice, "I think the
fair thing for you to do is to get out here by the road and give me a chance."
Leonard swung his steering wheel savagely to pass a wagon on the down side of
the hill. "What the devil are you talking about, boy?"
"You think you've got our measure all right, but you ought to give me a
chance first."
Leonard looked down in amazement at his own big brown hands, lying on the
wheel. "You mortal fool kid, what would I be telling you all this for, if I
didn't know you were another breed of cats? I never thought you got on too well
with Bayliss yourself."
"I don't, but I won't have you thinking you can slap the men in my family
whenever you feel like it." Claude knew that his explanation sounded foolish,
and his voice, in spite of all he could do, was weak and angry.
Young Leonard Dawson saw he had hurt the boy's feelings. "Lord, Claude, I
know you're a fighter. Bayliss never was. I went to school with him."
The ride ended amicably, but Claude wouldn't let Leonard take him home. He
jumped out of the car with a curt goodnight, and ran across the dusky fields
toward the light that shore from the house on the hill. At the little bridge
over the creek, he stopped to get his breath and to be sure that he was
outwardly composed before he went in to see his mother.
"Ran against a reaper in the dark!" he muttered aloud, clenching his fist.
Listening to the deep singing of the frogs, and to the distant barking of the
dogs up at the house, he grew calmer. Nevertheless, he wondered why it was that
one had sometimes to feel responsible for the behaviour of people whose natures
were wholly antipathetic to one's own.