CHAPTER IX
ORRIN POST
This was the fifth day since Hiram had started his test boxes, and he was so much interested in this matter on his arrival at Sunnyside that he did not think again of Mr. Battick's first "bluebird," or harbinger of spring. In fact, he had not seen the fellow along the road and presumed the tramp had crept into a thicket somewhere to sleep off his intoxication.
He bedded down Jerry, the horse, and fed him, for it was early twilight. He locked the barn and went up to the incubator shed where he lodged. He always kept a fire here, and the temperature of the seed boxes had never fallen below 65°, and he usually managed to keep the heat at about 70°. He knew that a drop below 55° would seriously affect the germination of the corn, and at night Hiram wrapped bags about the boxes and covered them well.
The conditions under which he had made his tests of Mr. Brown's corn had been ideal. When he uncovered the boxes he saw at once that all the ears he had selected kernels from were not strong and vigorous. Any kernel of corn that does not send out vigorous sprouts of both root and stem within four or five days is too weak to germinate properly under ordinary field conditions.
Hiram discarded promptly all of twenty ears in this lot—feeding some of the discarded ones to Jerry the next morning for his breakfast.
"They look all right," Hiram observed to himself. "But looks are sometimes deceiving. I have an idea that Mr. Brown plants a whole lot of seed that either does not come up at all, or does not improve his general crop. I wonder if I am going to beat him at his own game and with his own corn."
He immediately selected more of the Brown corn for testing and filled the squares of the seed boxes again. Later he proposed to test some of the seed corn he had bought from other farmers.
Some of the seed boxes were in far from a good condition, and the young farmer spent the best part of half an hour in fixing them. A smile of satisfaction crossed his features as he surveyed his work.
"They can't say that I haven't tried to do this right," he thought to himself. Then he gave a long stretch. "My! but there's a lot to this farm work," he murmured.
By the time the work on the boxes had been completed Hiram felt hungry. It was growing dark, and he concluded that he had better get something to eat before doing anything else.
There was a dishful of cold potatoes on the shelf, and these he sliced for frying. Then he brought out what was left of some cold meat; he next prepared to make himself something hot to drink.
The young farmer was working around the stove when he heard an unusual noise outside. He listened for a few seconds, and then went to the door and threw it open.
"Not a soul in sight," he murmured to himself. "That's queer. I thought I heard somebody coming. I wonder if it can be some stray animal?"
He walked outside and gave another look around. Neither man nor beast was in sight, and, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, he returned to the shed.
Hiram cooked his supper and then lit a lantern to make his usual turn about the premises before going to bed. The barn doors were padlocked, but there were small sheds into which wayfarers might crawl and, as Yancey Battick had suggested, the tramp who smokes is the farmer's deadly enemy.
It was a dark night and a chill wind was whining through the burned pines across the road. Hiram's custom was to go around the barn, try all the doors, and flash his lantern into the calf-pens and the old wagon shed. It was when he got down the slant beside the barn to the door which he had recently locked in putting Jerry in his stall, that he got a whiff of tobacco smoke.
"That bluebird!" muttered Hiram. "Where is the scamp?"
It was but a faint odor Hiram smelled—the sickish-sweet odor of a dead pipe; it led to the nearest calf-shelter.
He had been getting the pens ready for the young stock Mr. Bronson would send up to Sunnyside in a day or two. He had torn one of the fodder stacks to pieces, and scattered the broken and half-rotted bundles of fodder over the floor of the shed and pen to dry out and to be picked over and trampled by the cattle.
There had been nobody on the place this day to his knowledge—certainly not before he had driven to Pringleton. And what would bring any proper visitor down here to the sheds? But the tobacco smell was stronger as he approached the arched opening. A whiff of it was blown directly into his nostrils.
He reached up to the beam inside the opening and ran his hand along it—the very place an habitual smoker would be likely to place his pipe on entering the shed, sober or otherwise. Habit is strong.
There it was. Although it was cold, Hiram was sure it had not long been so. He held up his lantern the better to see it. There was a "heel" of half-burned tobacco in the pipe. That was what he had smelled.
The wabbly ray of the lantern flashed across the shed. Hiram, suddenly startled, saw a huddled form lying on the fodder-strewn floor.
The young farmer did not fancy handling any individual who was half intoxicated, as this person probably was. He was no friend to the drunkard in any case.
But the fellow might have matches in his pocket. In his drunken state he might do some damage with them. Besides, it was blowing up cold, and Hiram felt that he could not sleep warm himself if he knew this fellow-creature lay here with so little shelter.
He crossed the shed and stooped over the stranger. He placed a tentative hand on the shoulder nearest him. The touch elicited nothing but a groan.
"Pretty far gone," muttered Hiram. "Well, nothing to do but to roll him over more comfortably and bring one of Jerry's blankets—"
Fitting the deed to the words, he moved the man slightly. There was an impatient exclamation from the stranger; then, for an instant, his face came into the radiance of the lantern as he arose upon his elbow.
It was a wild looking and much flushed face. The eyes, seemingly half-filmed with sleep, rolled about but fastened their gaze neither on Hiram nor on anything else. It was a delirious look.
"Hey! Wake up!" urged the young farmer. "What are you doing here? Who are you?"
"Orrin Post—that's me! Orrin Post," said the stranger, loudly and promptly. Then he sank back upon the fodder again, and his mind seemed to sink, too. He only muttered impatiently when Hiram touched him again.
"Here's a pretty kettle of fish!" gasped Hiram. "What shall I do with Orrin Post? That is what I should like to be told."
He had suddenly made another discovery. There was no smell of liquor about the fellow. His breath was feverish, but not alcoholic. The man most certainly was not drunk.
This was no case of leaving the man covered up in the calf shed to "sleep it off." Whatever was the matter, Hiram was quite sure the stranger needed more attention than that. If this was the fellow Yancey Battick had pointed out to him staggering along the road to Sunnyside Farm, he should have had help right then and there—a doctor, perhaps.
First of all, Hiram decided, the sick man must be removed to the nearest comfortable place; and that place was the incubator house where he had made himself so much at home. He rolled the stranger over again and stretched out his limbs. He was quite as tall as Hiram, if not taller; but there was little flesh on his frame, and the young farmer was positive the man weighed considerably less than he did.
Hiram knelt down and lifted the sick man across his shoulder, holding both wrists as he again staggered to his feet. He picked up the lantern and started up the path beside the barn. The stranger seemed sunk in complete unconsciousness, only muttering a word now and then.
In a few minutes the young farmer had brought his burden to the shack which he had made his home since coming to Sunnyside. He laid Orrin Post—if that was his name—in the bunk and began removing his shoes and outer clothing. His garments were shabby, but of fair quality, and his underclothes were clean. He was evidently a fellow who respected himself. Perhaps he was not a tramp at all.
However, it was not so much who he was as what he was. Hiram, stripping off the man's clothing, made a discovery that startled him—then actually frightened him.
The fellow's body was burning up with fever—face, hands, chest. What was this? His hand, lightly touching the chest of the victim, revealed an eruption under the skin. It felt almost like small shot—the beginnings of deep-seated postules, perhaps.
Hiram Strong was staggered by the discovery. For a moment he fell back from the bunk. He even turned his gaze on the door, and it is true that he thought of escape.
The highly inflammatory fever; the eruption on the chest. That it was a malignant disease of some kind he knew, and he believed he recognized the symptoms as those of the most deadly of all diseases that ever becomes epidemic in a temperate climate.
"Smallpox!" the young farmer muttered. "This fellow's got it sure enough, and I have exposed myself to it."