CHAPTER XXVIII
CORN AND COMPARISONS
Hiram and Sister (who had as yet not discovered her first name) often discussed her personal mystery. The lawyer who had finally searched her out at the Atterson farm, having traced her through the records of the orphanage in which she had spent so many unhappy years, had neglected to tell her the name with which she had been christened.
"Nor do I know my little brother's name. Poor boy! To think of his having been sent to a reform school! I often cry about him, Hiram. How awful it is for him to be wandering about the world, maybe ill-used, beaten, hungry—perhaps growing up wicked! He perhaps will not find anybody like Mother Atterson—or you—or Mr. Lem Camp."
"I don't know that you had much to congratulate yourself about until we all left Crawberry and got out on Mother Atterson's farm," said Hiram.
"Well, it seems to me now that I was pretty lucky," the girl said soberly. "But poor little Claude couldn't possibly have found such good friends."
"'Claude'!" repeated Hiram in surprise. "How do you know his name is Claude?"
"I don't—really. Sometimes I call him 'Marvin.' I like both names," replied Sister. "It doesn't really matter what I call him till I know what his really, truly name is, does it?"
"Well, for goodness' sake! don't call him 'Claude.' If he is a real boy, that will make him sick! And how do you know he is so much younger than you?"
"Why—"
"Did the lawyer say so?"
"No, he didn't. He didn't say how old—er—Marvin was. But, of course, he must be only a little boy to run away and get lost."
"Pshaw! He may be older than you are."
"Why, how you talk! Of course he isn't, Hi Strong. How could my little brother be older than I am? Why, that is ridiculous!"
"You have a mighty hazy idea of your brother, I do believe," Hiram chuckled. "If he was arrested and sent to the reform school—"
"Hiram! How can you? My brother arrested?"
"How do you suppose he got into the reform school?" demanded her friend.
"Oh! Do they have to be bad to get to reform schools?"
"He'd have to be sent by the Court to such an institution. He must have been old enough to be arrested for doing something, Sister. It needn't have been anything very bad—swiping apples, or throwing stones, or something like that."
"But, Hiram!" murmured Sister, almost in tears.
"I know it sounds hard. Sometimes a committing magistrate is pretty harsh. They don't have Children's Courts everywhere. And sometimes there isn't any other place to send kids but to the reform school."
"Oh, my dear, you make my heart ache," declared Sister, sighing.
"Well, he was some size to have been sent to such an institution instead of to an orphanage, as you were."
"I—I suppose so."
"How long was he in the reform school before he broke out?" Hiram asked.
"That lawyer did not tell us."
"Then, when did he run away?"
"I guess it was some time ago, come to think of it," the girl admitted.
"Seems to me you and Mother Atterson didn't ask many questions of that man," said Hiram.
"We were so stirred up!" cried Sister. "And he was only at the house a few minutes. He told me to be sure and let him know if I went anywhere else. I wrote to him when I was coming out here. But he never replied."
"I'd like to ask him a few things," muttered Hiram thoughtfully. Then: "So you have no idea when your brother ran away?"
"It must have been some time before the lawyer found me last year. He said he had been hunting for both of us, and he wanted to make sure of me, so that I would not run away and make trouble. For the property my Grandmother Cheltenham left us cannot be divided till both heirs are found. That is just the way he put it."
"Humph! A nice way to fix it, I must say. Your grandmother must have been a pretty cranky old tea-party."
"I don't know, Hiram. Maybe she did what she thought was best. But I do hope that I take after my mother's side of the family."
"Which can't be any worse than the Cheltenhams in any case, eh?" chuckled Hiram. "Nice name—'Cheltenham.' Sounds as though you ought to be related to the King of England, or some of the nobility."
"Now, you're laughing at me, Hiram! I'd just as lief my name was something short and nice sounding—like 'Strong,' or 'Post,' or—"
"Maybe Orrin's name isn't so short and sweet." Hiram said suddenly. "You know, as I wrote you, there is a mystery as to what Orrin's name really is."
"Yes, I know," said Sister thoughtfully. "And Orrin is such a nice young man. I asked him the other day, Hi, what he supposed might have become of my little brother after he ran away from the reform school."
"What did he say?"
"Why, he seemed real interested. He said maybe Claude—I mean, Marvin—was wise to run away. Orrin said sometimes they hire boys out from those schools to farmers who make them work like slaves. He seemed to know all about such things."
"He did?"
"I believe Orrin must have been in one of those schools himself when he was a boy."
"Lucky if he wasn't in a worse place," thought Hiram.
But he did not go any deeper into a discussion of Orrin's affairs at this time. The mystery of who and what Orrin Post really was seemed quite as far from being solved as the whereabouts of Sister's brother.
The wheat was now nodding heavy heads for the harvest. The binders and extra harvest hands came to Sunnyside Farm after reaping Mr. Bronson's other wheat fields. Everybody about the place—even Sister—worked in the wheat fields, standing up the golden shocks, from early morning until nightfall.
Everybody about the place—even Sister—worked in the wheat fields.
Close on the heels of the harvesting the great tractor drawing the threshing machine rumbled up to Sunnyside. The regular threshing crew came with it so that the work at Sunnyside went much more rapidly this time than it had the year before, although the yield of grain was far greater.
But how everyone did toil at it! Threshing under the very best conditions is the hardest farm work there is. It is not such tedious work as the making of the crop—the plowing and raking, rolling and seeding, and the cultivation of it, or of the mowing and binding; but for out and out bone-breaking labor, and in the hottest part of the year, threshing takes the palm. It must be hurried, too, for there is always another grain ranch to go to. And the season, too, is that when other work on the farm is urgent.
Mr. Bronson came himself to Sunnyside to watch Hiram's wheat and oats threshed. Besides, he was particularly interested in the yield of Battick's new wheat.
Lettie came up with him from Plympton and remained over night at Miss Pringle's, with Sister. She seemed unfeignedly glad to see Sister again, and the two girls raced about together all day, watching the toiling threshing crew, and riding the empty wagons back to the field.
"One seemed," Orrin said to Hiram Strong, "as big a kid as the other."
In the evening, however, after the boys had eaten supper and washed at the bunkhouse, they strolled over to Miss Pringle's, and the girls met them with their most grown-up manner. Indeed, Lettie flirted with Orrin in a way that actually amazed Hiram. He was glad that Sister was not addicted to such manners. And yet, of course, Lettie meant no harm and Orrin Post seemed to understand. Hiram wondered if he had been used to the kind of society in which Lettie had learned to behave in this way.
Of course, Orrin was quite "grown-up." Lettie looked upon him as fair game, without doubt. She would not have considered for a moment treating Hiram in this way.
Sister did not attempt to copy the more sophisticated Lettie. Yet she seemed to approve fully of the daughter of the owner of Sunnyside Farm.
"Lettie is so much nicer than I used to think her," Sister said gently to Hiram. "She is so kind."
"Yes?"
"She wants me to go back to Plympton with her and stay a while before I go home."
"Yes?" questioned Hiram again.
"Would you?"
"I—don't—know," said Hiram slowly.
He remembered the sort of young people he had met at the Bronson house the night of the party. He had never been able to make up his mind whether he had been invited on that occasion out of sheer kindness, or not. Hiram's perceptions were keen. Would Sister be comfortable in their society? Would they, young and gay and careless and more or less intimate friends from childhood, make her feel a little as though she were outside of all their fun and friendships? Sister was sweet and lively, true and likable, but could she, after all, adjust herself to surroundings which were very different from those she had been accustomed to?
"I'd like you to advise me, Hiram," said Sister softly.
"What does Delia say?" exclaimed Hiram suddenly.
"She says go if I want to, and if I don't like it to come back here any time. She says I can hire a flivver there to bring me back for a couple of dollars—if I am in a hurry."
"There!" exclaimed Hiram with relief. "I always did think Delia Pringle was a mighty sensible person. I agree with her, Sister."
"After all," thought Hiram, "Sister is likable and attractive, and, moreover, pretty well able to look out for herself. And then, Lettie is kind and sweet-natured and thoughtful, and why should I take it for granted that her friends are not the same sort?"
Orrin only laughed about Lettie when the boys went back to Sunnyside at ten o'clock.
"You needn't be jealous, Strong," he said. "She is only practising on me. She thinks you are not ripe for such nonsense yet."
"Humph!" thought Hiram. "Do I appear to be such an awful kid?"
Comparisons are odious, however. Hiram did not propose to judge Lettie by the same standard by which he judged Sister. They were two very different girls.
The work of threshing went on apace. Hiram had arranged his wagons as he had the year before in harvesting the ensilage for the silo—putting the small wheels in the rear and the big wheels in front. They thus brought enormous loads of the golden sheaves on the racks to the threshing machine, merely dumping the load. Men stood on both sides of the heap and forked the sheaves into the chute. This was a modern threshing machine which automatically cut the bands as the sheaves were fed into the maw of the roaring monster.
The straw was blown into a huge pile at one side of the barn, later to be baled; for good wheat straw is valuable. The straw from the oats Hiram used for bedding.
Mr. Bronson or Hiram stood by the men bagging the grain, keeping tally. The ordinary wheat averaged thirty-two and a half bushels to the acre—almost twice the average of the year before, and better by several bushels than the average on the neighboring farms. Still, this was no great yield.
The threshing machine was then run in between the oat stacks and the bundles of oats were pitched by crews of four men into the chute. The oats yielded a fair average—nothing great. But, then, they had been raised more as a preparatory crop than anything else. All the oat land had grown a heavy crop of cowpeas for soiling, and now the corn stood rank, black, and knee high upon all those oat fields.
The oats were run through the threshing machine before the new wheat was brought up from the lower end of the twenty-acre piece which lay along the road. The oats had swept every kernel of the ordinary wheat out of the machine. The Staff of Life Wheat, as Hiram had dubbed it, was the handsomest grain anybody working on the threshing crew had ever seen.
And how it did yield! It was a marvel considering how thinly the seed had been sowed. Still, Battick was not satisfied, and almost wept whenever he thought of the quarter acre that had been burned. From the remaining three-and-three-quarters acres was threshed a hundred and sixty-eight bushels and a peck of grain—the biggest yield that had ever been known in the neighborhood of Sunnyside within the memory of the oldest living farmers.
Hiram, flushed and excited, felt like shouting in his happiness, self-contained though he usually was.
"Even when this land was all virgin prairie, I do not believe they got greater yields of wheat," Mr. Bronson declared.
"And yet," Hiram said thoughtfully, "a forty-five bushel average is an ordinary harvest in Kansas and Nebraska. And further north the yield is even greater. This, Mr. Bronson, is not wheat land."
"Well, it is good enough for me," declared his employer, warmly. "Those fellows out there in the Northwest are under greater expense than I am for tractors, machinery, and wages. I am pretty well satisfied. If you do as well for me with the corn—"
"Oh, when it comes to corn, this is just the land for it!" cried Hiram.
"And with tractors instead of horses—"
Hiram shook his head.
"I've been figuring that out, Mr. Bronson," the young farmer said. "Nothing less than three hundred acres of corn—and as much of it in one piece as possible—would pay under tractor cultivation. Sunnyside could never be a tractor farm. The fields are too much cut up."