CHAPTER XVII
WHEAT HARVEST
There had been two powerful lamps lifted from automobiles and placed so that they would light the veranda. Therefore the front of the partially built house and the yard were well illuminated.
As the bull charged through the gap in the fence his coming cleared the yard in a hurry. The only person who stood his ground was Hiram, and he did not do so from any choice of his own.
It seemed that the mad bull was aiming directly for the steps to the veranda, and the young farm manager stood directly in his path. The youth was not fear-paralyzed, but his mind was quite as empty of ideas at the moment as the others who had run in all directions. His single thought was:
"If I only had a club!"
Hiram Strong had not overpowering fear of this, or any other, bull. He quite realized the danger threatening whoever stood in the way of the beast. But he had dodged more than one animal of the kind, and with a hardwood stick in his hand he would not have been panic-stricken at this meeting. The nose of a bull is a very tender spot.
"Oh, if I only had a club," the young farmer repeated to himself.
But Hiram had no club, and he saw no other weapon within his reach. As Turner's bull charged across the yard directly at him, Hiram skipped backward until he reached the steps, and up those he stumbled.
The figure of the young fellow—the only living thing in his path—evidently held the bull's attention. He came on after Hiram, uttering another bellow.
Within those few seconds the excitement outside the new house was communicated to those inside. The music stopped suddenly; the girls began to scream. And when the boys at the bay windows began to shout that Turner's bull was loose a good many of the dancers and spectators acted as though the beast was already upon the dancing floor.
And it actually did seem as though the animal had that very intention of entering the partly finished house. Hiram had no more than leaped up the steps than the bull plunged clatteringly after him.
Had there been a bit of plank or a piece of scantling lying about, the young fellow might have beaten the bull back. But the girls that afternoon had cleaned up the rubbish all too thoroughly.
Hiram flashed a single glance behind him. Within the wide opening left for the front door he caught a glimpse of the startled faces of both Lettie Bronson and Miss Pringle. They were both screaming some advice to him; but what it was they said Hiram did not know. The general hullabaloo drowning their cries. The excitement was growing.
But here, through a gap in the front wall, darted another person. It was Orrin Post bringing with him a cape belonging to one of the dancers that he had caught up and which floated behind him like the cape of a matador.
The flying garment doubtless caught the eye of the enraged bull. He bellowed again and again and stopped to paw the boards of the veranda floor.
His hesitation was his undoing. Orrin rushed right in between Hiram and the bull and flung the cape over the bull's head. Quickly Hiram leaped forward to help, and between them he and Orrin wound the cape about the animal's head so that it could not shake off the all-smothering folds.
Orrin ... flung the cape over the bull's head.
"We got him!" shouted Orrin, in high delight. "All right, Strong?"
"Yes," replied Hiram. "Grab that rope. Here's one on this side. They are hitched to his horns. Whoever those fellows were, they had no need to let the beast go."
"It was Banks and his friends. They did it purposely, you can just bet."
"No doubt of that."
All the ferocity of the bull seemed to have evaporated. They backed him off the veranda while the girls and boys returned with much excitement and noise. The bull, half smothered in the folds of the cape, uttered a rather plaintive "moo!"
"Hear that creature, will you?" cried Miss Pringle's strident voice. Then, with increased excitement: "What have you got his head wrapped in, I want to know? For the land's sake if it isn't my best broadcloth cape! Now what do you folks know about that!"
The laugh that rose after this excited statement by the spinster relieved the situation to some degree. But it did not pacify Hiram Strong's anger.
"I wish with all my heart I had trounced that Banks fellow this afternoon when I had the chance," he declared to Orrin.
"I agree with you. Nothing but a blamed good licking will ever do a fellow like him any good."
"I don't want to do him good," grumbled Hiram. "I just want to pound him and make him suffer."
But they were not likely to see Adam Banks again just then, or have a chance to beat him properly. Having encouraged younger boys to help lead Turner's bull from the pasture to Sunnyside and turn him loose, Banks had taken his own hasty departure.
Then, evidently awakening to the enormity of his offence after he reached home, he packed a bag and departed from his father's house before daybreak and was not seen in the neighborhood again for some time.
The excitement did not serve to spoil the house-raising dance, however, for when the bull was led away the crowd returned to the dance floor, and the gaiety continued until long after midnight.
Hiram met most of the people worth knowing for a wide district surrounding Sunnyside Farm, and he was glad to make their acquaintance in this friendly way. Most of all, however, did he enjoy the dance because of the presence of Lettie Bronson. She gave him several dances, and when he finally put her into the car beside her father Hiram secretly felt that this evening was marked with a very agreeable milestone in his career.
They next day opened a season of work even more strenuous than that which had gone before. The cultivating of the corn crop had to be carried on every day now unless it rained. Mr. Bronson had furnished Hiram a second small horse, and that, with Jerry, kept the cultivators and rake busy. The Percherons were too big and clumsy to use in the cornfield after the planting, and there was, too, plenty of other work for them to do.
Such hay as there was on Sunnyside had to be harvested, and then came wheat harvest. Most of this crop—especially that on the twenty acre piece which had been underdrained—was rather thin. Sunnyside had not grown heavy crops for years—if it ever had—and Hiram felt somewhat doubtful about the final outcome of this attempt to make the old farm productive when he saw how slim the wheat crop was.
They cut and stacked it, however, trusting that it would pay for thrashing later. Hiram went to the expense of removing the sheaves from the field entirely and building the stacks on a lot near the barns. Immediately he put the Percherons to work plowing the twenty acres along the county road.
He had no stable manure to broadcast here; yet he desired to help fill his silo from this very piece of ground as well as to put the soil in better condition for winter wheat.
The Percherons certainly earned their keep that week. It was dry, with the ground getting harder and more baked every day. Yet Hiram ploughed the piece deep and raked it well before setting out to broadcast a good dressing of bone meal.
Turner came along and stopped to watch Hiram, who was himself riding the harrow which, in this case, pulverized the soil better than the disc machine.
"I don't know why it is," the aged farmer said, as Hiram stopped near the road fence in a cloud of dust, "but this soil fines up, seems to me, after such late plowing, better than I ever remember its doing before. Why do you suppose that is, Mr. Strong?"
Hiram smiled across the fence at him: "I never saw the piece plowed before, you know, Mr. Turner. I don't think much of it even now. But if there has been any change in the condition of the soil I am inclined to lay it to that foolish job of underdraining I did."
"Pshaw! Nonsense! Couldn't be that!" exclaimed the old fellow, driving on. "We ain't had no rain to amount to anything yet. When I see the water pouring out o' those log drains of yours into the county ditch I'll take back all that I said about that foolishness."
"Mighty hard work to convince some people they are wrong," chuckled Hiram to himself, as he started the Percherons again. "But it looks as if we would get enough rain pretty soon to prove one of us—either Mr. Turner or me—in the wrong."