Hiram in the Middle West

by Burbank L. Todd

CHAPTER XXXI

WHO IS THEODORE CHESTER?

By this time the great corn crop was in the cribs and Sunnyside Farm was down to a winter basis. The crop had averaged sixty-five bushels of shelled corn to the acre, and only one other farm belonging to Mr. Bronson—and that a very well tilled one indeed—had done better, or as well.

Hiram's success with corn (which was, indeed, the principal reason for his having been put in charge of the farm by Mr. Bronson) was all the more to be commended because of the conditions under which the young fellow had undertaken this present contract. Hiram had been obliged to change radically the methods of corn growing he had followed in the East.

Just as the old-time farmer who hand-hoed his cornfield learned to throw away the hoe and use the cultivator, horse-hoe, and fluke-harrow, so these big corn growers had developed a method of cultivation quite at variance with that of the small farmer cultivating but a few acres.

Hiram had discovered that by rotation of crops which kept down the weeds corn could be cultivated with a riding harrow drawn by two or three Percherons that could do twice the work in a day of three ordinary horses worked to single cultivators, and with the saving of two men's time.

In addition to learning and following these new methods and in some cases improving on them, Hiram had kept more than a rough farm account. He knew his overhead charges against each crop. It cost him more per acre, for instance, to prepare his field for the seed corn he had shown Daniel Brown; but that particular field paid him in increased yield. It ran ten bushels per acre over the remainder of the farm.

The cribs were bursting with corn. Mr. Bronson had long since got over his first objection to the red ear and the occasional mottled one. This corn would ship to any distance after it was well dried and lose practically no weight in the journey.

He proposed to hold Hiram's crop this year until mid-winter, or later, when the price would certainly advance.

"I am satisfied that your methods have made me money, Hiram," said his employer, on one occasion. "You don't know everything. Nobody does. But there is one very good thing about you. You are not too old to learn!" and Mr. Bronson laughed.

However, all this occurred before that letter came from Sister which so excited Hiram's curiosity. That the same Cincinnati lawyer should have to do with the search for the lost Cheltenham boy and for the mysterious Theodore Chester, was a coincidence that, Hiram decided, must needs be looked into.

"Strayed boys are not so common as all that," he thought.

He sat down and wrote to Mr. Eben Craddock at the address the lawyer had given him, asking if he had found Theodore Chester, just who that mysterious individual was, and if the lost Cheltenham boy—first name unknown—had any connection with Mr. Craddock's former inquiry at Sunnyside Farm.

As it chanced, another matter came up before Hiram received any reply from Craddock, which proved to be a very surprising incident and one that for the time being quite drove thought of his letter to Craddock out of Hiram's mind.

Mr. Bronson was buying young stock—calves and yearlings—all the time to swell the number of the herd Hiram was feeding, and with which he was so successfully enriching Sunnyside. Sometimes the farm's owner, or one of his men, brought the new live stock to Hiram. At other times the former owners of the calves delivered them.

It was on a day early in December that a big farm wagon with a cattle-rack in it was driven into the yard. The boys were living again in the house, and had the furnace fire going, for Mr. Bronson had just had the house decorated and wished it to be kept well heated. Hiram left his comfortable seat before the dining room register, and went out to meet the wagon. Orrin and Jim were both down at the cattle sheds.

The moment Hiram drew near the wagon in which the calves bawled he recognized the driver and the latter knew him.

"Well, well!" exclaimed the bewhiskered man whom Hiram believed to have been the employer of his assistant whom he knew as "Orrin Post." "Are you still here?"

"I am on the job still," answered Hiram smiling.

"I was told to ask for Mr. Strong."

"That is my name."

"Then you do run this here Sunnyside Farm?"

"You are correctly informed, sir."

"And they tell me you've grown the biggest crop of corn and the heaviest wheat ever seen on this land," said the bearded man from beyond Pringleton.

"We've done right well here this year."

"Well, well! Well, I've got six calves here, Mr. Stephen Bronson bought and told me to deliver to you."

"All right. Drive down that road beside the barn, if you will. We will unload them at the calf pens."

He jumped upon the wagon at the rear to look at the calves and ride down to the place indicated. All the time he was wondering what would happen if the bewhiskered man should spy Orrin—if the real Orrin Post should confront the young man who claimed that name.

Ought he to have prepared his friend for this meeting? Should he inquire of the farmer what the mystery was all about, anyway?

Hiram remembered how Orrin had slipped out of the house and kept away when this farmer and the lawyer had appeared at Sunnyside the previous winter. What would he do now?

And just then the teamster turned the trotting horses into the paddock and brought them to a standstill with a flourish.

"Whoa, there!" he shouted. "Where do you want these calves put, Mr. Strong? Here, you—By crippity! how the deuce did you come here, Ted Chester?"

Hiram jumped off the rear of the wagon and ran around. Leaning on a fork the young man he knew as Orrin Post confronted the farmer.

"So it is you, is it, Mr. Post?" the younger man said.

"You mean to say you've been here all this time? And that lawyer and me have been right here and asked—"

Suddenly he swung to look at Hiram. He shook a finger at him.

"What did you mean by telling me and that lawyer you didn't know this fellow?"

"I did not. You did not make me understand that this was the man you were looking for," declared Hiram without looking at his friend.

"You were holding out on us," said the farmer. "You made me lose a fifty-dollar note."

"How is that?"

"That lawyer promised it to me if we found Ted, here. And now I don't suppose he'll give a cent."

"Anybody would be mighty foolish to give fifty dollars for me," broke in the man who appeared to be the missing Theodore Chester.

"What do they want you for, anyway?" Hiram demanded.

"I don't know."

"Do you know?" Hiram asked the original Orrin Post.

"That lawyer did not tell me. But if this fellow, Ted Chester, hadn't left me flat—"

"If you hadn't put me out when I was taken sick, I suppose you would have got the reward," said the accused.

"But why should anybody offer a reward for you?" Hiram asked him again.

"Because they want me, I suppose."

"What do they want you for? And who wants you?"

"Humph! I'm not going to tell everybody that," said the other, with a side glance at the bearded man, indicating that Post was the person he did not care to confide in.

"Well, is your name Theodore Chester?" Hiram asked in some desperation.

"I suppose it is. At least, that is what I have always called myself."

"Now you know, Ted, I always treated you right," began the bearded man.

But Hiram stopped him. He waved a commanding hand.

"Get those calves into that pen. If Ted wants to talk to you, he can do so afterward. But it doesn't seem to me as though it was any of our business whether he is Ted Chester or somebody else."

"Well, I tell you right now," growled the farmer. "I ain't going to lose that fifty if I can help it."

When the calves were unloaded and the real Orrin Post had driven away grumbling, Ted Chester—if that was his name—turned to look at Hiram in rather a sheepish fashion.

"I suppose you think it's up to me to explain, Strong?" he asked.

"Well, I am curious," admitted Hiram.

"Of course, you, thinking my name was Orrin Post until now—"

"No. I might as well tell you that I suspected you had been known as Ted Chester about a year ago," interrupted Hiram, and he told him how he had come to that belief.

"Well, it is a fact. That was Orrin Post. I worked for him. He is the man who chased me when I was sick. I don't know how I came to give you his name, unless it was because he was on my mind. And in my opinion—then, at least—one name was as good as another."

"Was there any reason why you were afraid to use this one of Chester?"

"Only that I did not want to be traced."

"By whom?"

"By anybody."

"Then you knew," said Hiram thoughtfully, "that somebody was after you?"

"I was told so."

"Who does that lawyer represent?"

"Hang it all, Hiram!" exclaimed the other, "I have been in a reform school. Back East. I ran away. I never had any bringing up—much. Only for a couple of years I lived with nice people. Then I got into trouble and was arrested. I stayed in the reform school some time."

"This must have happened a good while ago," guessed Hiram shrewdly.

"I was only nineteen when I ran away from the institution."

"The authorities cannot be searching for you through that lawyer," declared Hiram. "It must be for something else you are wanted."

"I—I never thought of that," murmured his friend.

"Who were your people?"

"I don't know. First I remember I was in an orphanage."

"Just like Sister."

"I suppose so," said the other.

"How do you know 'Theodore Chester' is your name?" demanded Hiram.

"Why, that is what they called me. No! Not altogether," he added. "I saw the books once and I know they had me down as 'Ted C.' They always called me Ted. I named myself Chester."

"Just as Sister names her brother—and herself for that matter," muttered Hiram. "Say, Orrin—I mean, Ted! Suppose your name should be the same as Sister's?"

"What do you mean, Strong?" cried the other.

"Suppose your real name is 'Cheltenham,' too?" propounded Hiram Strong shrewdly. "Stranger things have happened, don't you think?"

"Me? You mean that I may be Sister's brother?" demanded Ted. "What nonsense! Why, she told me her brother was a little boy—younger than she is."

"Lots she knows about it!" rejoined Hiram excitedly. "She doesn't know anything more about her brother than you know about yourself. Orrin—Ted—whatever your name is. This matter has got to be looked into! Right away, too!"