CHAPTER XXVII
DAY DREAMS
There was an uncertainty in the atmosphere of Sunnyside Farm and an expectancy of trouble in all their minds. What would happen next? Would the enemy strike again, having been thwarted in one attempt to destroy the new wheat?
The fact that the soil had been well enriched and that the forcing effect of nitrate made the crop grow so fast was really the salvation of Yancey Battick's new grain. The pest could not work fast enough to overcome the rapidity of the wheat's growth.
Hiram had a multitude of things just now to take up his time; yet he made a pilgrimage to each farm in the vicinity to discover which wheat fields, if any besides that on Sunnyside, were affected by the new pest. The English grain louse had not been seen in this part of the country he was sure, previous to a few months before.
"It bred on Banks's land," Mr. Turner told Hiram Strong. "When I first saw the critter during the winter—Banks called me over to show it to me—I told him I'd plow up that wheat as soon as I could, if I was him, and plant something else—spring wheat, or oats, or something. It was a puling kind of crop anyway. And it's a sight now!"
"I presume his land is poor?"
"You presume just right. And he's shiftless. Don't raise more than half a crop of anything. Don't keep cattle—they are too much trouble, he says—and his farm is getting poorer and poorer."
"I've seen his kind of farmer before."
"You bet you have! I've often thought, Mr. Strong, that a shiftless neighbor is worse than a dishonest one. You are on the watch for a thief; but a shiftless or lazy man will make more trouble than forty thieves, I do believe."
Hiram considered that Mr. Turner was about right. He went far enough with the old man to look at the Banks' wheat. It was completely blighted by the pest and to Hiram's mind would scarcely be worth thrashing. Besides, when the binder went through the field he knew very well that the pest would lodge on the weeds and grass that bordered the grain, and would thus exist—a serious menace—until the new wheat appeared in the fall.
"Do you know what I would do if I had money, Mr. Turner, and owned a farm next to this one?" the young farmer said.
"What would you do?" asked the old man suspiciously.
"I'd offer Banks a price for his standing grain and then burn it."
"Hey! You surely would have money to burn," grumbled Turner.
"Get the other neighbors to go into the deal with you. It will save your crops in the end. First you know, you'll have to give up raising grain to starve out the pest. And maybe that won't do it."
"'A fool and his money are soon parted,'" said Turner.
"Maybe," Hiram rejoined slyly. "But how about a fool and his wheat?"
"Huh!" was Turner's only comment.
Meanwhile, Hiram learned that Adam Banks had been at home over Sunday and on that occasion could easily have brought the specimens of the grain pest to the fields on Sunnyside. He would never have a chance to repeat the trick, however—if he was guilty—for there was a guard at the wheat field every night, and by day some of the workmen were always in sight of the piece of seed-wheat.
Hiram Strong enjoyed Sister's visit immensely. The girl seemed just like a bit of home—the only real home Hiram had known since he was a child. Had she been really his sister he could have thought no more of her.
And she was still a healthy, wholesome girl. She was not growing up too fast, as he sometimes thought Lettie Bronson was.
Sister, in a gingham frock and one of Miss Pringle's sunbonnets, was out with Hiram all over the big farm. She knew enough about agricultural pursuits now, and loved nature enough, to enjoy thoroughly Sunnyside and all it meant to Hiram. The latter, too, found in Sister a confidante such as he had never had before.
She could help, too. The clover crop ripened suddenly because of a dry spell. The brilliant crimson blossoms which gave to the fields a blush such as no other flower gives, began to turn brown at their base petals. The mower had to be brought into use at once—in fact, two of them.
Sister rode the tedder and managed to stir the clover well behind both mowing machines. In spite of the dry spell it was a heavy crop of clover hay, and the odor of it ascended in the noonday heat as the incense must have ascended from the altars to the Sun God in ancient times.
The two teams of Percherons were at work six days a week. As soon as the clover was made and drawn to the mows, the big plows were put in to turn over the clover sod. This was raked lightly, rolled, and then the corn was drilled. The early corn was already up and under the second or third cultivation. Everything at Sunnyside was on the rush.
The cattle were on regular pasture. Twelve of the sleekest and oldest were held in the pens for fattening. They would be the first "commercial crop" since Hiram had come to Sunnyside sold off the farm, save a part of the previous year's wheat.
Following the plowing of the clover sod, the areas where oats had been and the cowpeas put in for a soilage crop were turned under, and corn was planted on that land. Hiram was planning for a real corn crop this year, and for the most part he used the seed corn he had raised from that of Daniel Brown. Another corn crib was built at this time to be ready for the expected harvest.
As soon as the corn was planted where the peas were turned under for manure, the regular haying came on. Such hay as there was on Sunnyside had to be harvested in a hurry. It was a thin crop, for it had been seeded to timothy and red top several years before. Hiram decided to plow most of this meadow land for wheat in the fall and seed some of the present wheat- and corn-land for meadow. He turned the cattle into the mowing fields, therefore, as soon as the hay was out of the way.
No further menace had attacked the wheat. The fields of grain on Sunnyside were a beautiful sight—now turning a golden yellow and with the heavy heads nodding to the harvest. Battick's new variety was at least a foot taller than that in any other field on the farm.
The man had watched the special wheat as a mother cares for her new-born babe. Night and day he hung about the edges of the field. He even crept over the patch that had been burned seeking for any of the insects that might not have been destroyed by the fire.
"I think that man must be more than half crazy, as Jim says he is," Sister said to Hiram in commenting upon Battick.
"Why does Jim—and you—think Battick is insane?" Hiram asked her, smiling.
"Why, he makes such a fuss over that new wheat."
"His whole heart is set upon developing this Staff of Life Wheat," the young farm manager said thoughtfully. "And so is mine, Sister."
"What do you mean, Hi?"
"I guess I am crazy, too," the young fellow said. "I believe my fortune, as well as Battick's, is wrapped up in that wheat. Somehow, from the very first time I saw the seed in his house, the night I arrived in this neighborhood, I have felt that the new wheat meant much to me."
Sister looked at him, puzzled.
"I really wish you would say right out what you mean, Hi Strong!" she exclaimed.
"I am day dreaming, I suppose," he told her. "But when I look over this billowing field I can see thousands of acres of the same grain, all in one mowing, and a crop that will fill vast granaries with wheat. There would be a fortune in a single crop of such size."
"Oh, Hiram, you are thinking of the wheat fields of the great Northwest," Sister said in a low tone. "Are you dreaming of going so far away from us all?"
"Sister," said the young farmer seriously, "I set out to farm Mrs. Atterson's Eighty with the idea of making that a stepping-stone for something bigger. I have got the bigger thing; but it is not big enough. I am still working for another man. I want to work for myself."
"But—but it takes so much capital to run one of those great wheat ranches."
"I know. I couldn't expect to begin at the top. If I begin for myself it must be at the bottom. But I have more than a thousand dollars saved, and I have a quarter interest in Battick's new wheat. Before this time next year, Sister, I ought to have at least five thousand in cash!
"When I have that much money I am going to strike out for myself—on my own hook. Whether it will be in the Northwest or not I don't know. But Hiram Strong, Sister, is going to be his own man before he gets through, not another fellow's hired hand!"