1
For days now the main topic of conversation on the Brailsford farm had been the merits of the various makes of cars (a much more intriguing subject than the tramp who had been discovered half dead near Bad Pete's blind pig in Brailsford Junction). They talked Imperials, Elcars, Cuttings, Speedwells, Marions, and the swank new Garfords with the single headlight. They discussed pro and con the new-fangled gas and electric self-crankers. Some members of the family wanted Prest-O-Lites while others were eloquent for electric. Each had his own ideas concerning which of the marvelous creations had the most stylish lines.
Stud himself liked the notion of a big powerful White Steamer. He said with the price of gasoline going up every month a White would soon be a real economy. Besides you could go sixty miles an hour in a steamer.
"Sixty miles an hour!" cried Sarah, throwing up her hands in dismay.
"Shucks, that's nothing, Ma," Peter said. "I can go sixty on my motorcycle."
"Yes, and you'll break your fool neck some day," said Early Ann. "He pretty near went off the Busseyville bridge with me on behind last night."
"Peter, you must be careful," his mother said.
"Tattle-tale," said Peter. He kicked Early Ann's shins under the table, and she kicked back.
"Me for an Imperial," said Gus. "They're twenty years ahead of their time and the classiest looking buggies you ever hope to see."
But in the end, of course, they bought a Ford, and a second hand one at that, with brass braces in front and a figure that only an owner could love. It stood up in the air like a lumber wagon, and you could hear it coming for a mile. It boiled over at eighteen miles an hour, but that was all right because the worse they boiled the better they went. Stud shined the brass radiator until it glittered like the gilded roof of Solomon's Temple. Sunday was spent in tinkering with the magneto, the lighting system, and the carburettor—that was what finally wrecked the Sabbath day. You had to hold your thumb just right in cranking the thing to avoid a broken arm, and when the engine finally decided to perambulate the whole body shook like a dish of crab-apple jelly.
Stud had the appearance of a circus giant cramped over the steering wheel. He had difficulty in manipulating the trio of pedals with his large feet, and the idiosyncrasies of the spark and gas kept him guessing, but he whooped it up and down the road like a youngster with his first bicycle, and Sarah held on beside him, game as a Red Cross nurse in the face of inevitable death. Sarah purchased a linen duster and motoring veil. Stud bought himself a pair of motor-goggles and a linen cap which he wore like Barney Oldfield with the visor in back. The entire family grew suddenly sensitive to Ford jokes.
Unfortunately, farming, even in those halcyon days, was not all driving the Ford; and so despite races between Peter and Stud,—the motorcycle versus the tin lizzy,—platonic midnight excursions by Gus in the borrowed motorcar, and thrilling family forays about the countryside, work went on as usual about the farm.
Crops were better than could have been expected. Some parts of the great Middle West suffered floods in the spring of that year and drought in the late summer, but on the Brailsford farm rains and sunny weather were neatly interspersed. The pumpkin vines opened their yellow flowers in corn which was waist-high by the fourth of July. The moisture kept the tobacco from spindling up too soon; it spread wide leaves of velvet green in rows which went as straight as arrows across the fertile north twenty.
Stud's Jersey heifers, sleek Poland China shoats, and Shropshire lambs looked like blue ribbon material down to the last little orphan. A lively pair of twin kids had the family captivated with their antics. At the age of six weeks this pair of baby billy goats were leaping about the shed roofs like veritable young chamois. Sarah discovered four beautiful new hybrids among her gladioli; and her chickens—Plymouth Rocks and Leghorns—might have stepped right out of the pages of the "Country Gentleman."
It was true that Sarah felt tired these days, and that Ulysses S. Grant, the great Poland China boar, was acting particularly vicious, but on the whole the farm was running like clock work.
Almost before the Brailsfords realized it the grain had all been cut, and the thrashing crew had descended in a hungry horde upon the farm. Some of the oats went sixty bushels to the acre, the wheat nearly forty.
What a time they had with the thrashers! The womenfolks from all over the country came to help with the baking and cooking. Country kids for miles around rode Admiral Dewey and his patient wife, took turns in carrying water to the men, slid down the hay rope, begged for cookies, played pomp-pomp-pullaway and run-sheep-run.
The teen-aged boys, after work in the fields, wrestled and boxed, not always in fun. The teen-aged girls, who helped their mothers as little as possible, watched the boys and giggled.
Out in the fields and at the thrashing machine the men labored in the hot, sticky atmosphere with barley beards in their shirts and sweat in their burning eyes. They pitched bundles of grain onto the wagons, pitched them off into the thrashing machine; they drew water for the steam engine and shoveled coal in under the boiler; they carried the great sacks of grain—which poured from the shoot, winnowed, clean, and plump,—and dumped them into the big bins in the granary.
They marveled at Stud's fine new red and silver thrashing machine with its blower which could send the golden straw into a pile at any point he wished. They looked forward to following this beautiful machine up and down the valley.
In Sarah's kitchen the hot and perspiring women fairly tumbled over one another in their efforts to prepare for the hungry men. They stewed chickens by the dozen, fried thick slices of ham, made brown ham gravy, boiled pecks of new potatoes, baked pies and cakes and opened cans of pickles. There was nothing fancy about the fare they served, but it was ample.
They were jovial, catty, good-natured, cross, polite, or rude as the spirit moved them. They dropped the "sistering" and "Missusing" of the church suppers and called each other plain Mary, Meg, Bert, and Cissy. They had a perfectly grand time for all their complaining.
And when the dirty men burst into the kitchen, joshing and pushing one another over chairs, pouring well water down one another's neck, splashing and crowding at the sink, and asking the women why they couldn't rustle together a little food for the real workers, the women thought of nothing but feeding and humoring the pack. If a man proved too obstreperous, however, these Amazons were thoroughly capable of forcing him to eat the extra food for which he was shouting, until at last he had to cry "enough," grinning sheepishly at his defeat, while his fellows jeered and taunted.
Against their better judgment, and in thorough contradiction to their pre-conceived distrust of Early Ann, these women were forced to admit some merit in the Sherman girl. They noticed how hard she worked in Sarah Brailsford's kitchen, how, although she kidded with their men-folks, she showed practically no inclination to lure them into the haymow, and how, above all, she was a friendly girl and not at all stuck up about her good looks.
Good looks she undoubtedly had, the men admitted as they lay about the lawn during the hour of rest after their big dinner. They complimented Stud upon his taste in hired girls, and suggested that it was no wonder Peter took her for rides on his motorcycle.
"She'll be riding a motorcycle herself one of these days," Peter said. "She's tomboy enough. I'll bet she could lick most of you guys in a wrastle."
"Been wrastling her much, kid?" the men wanted to know. "She looks like good wrastling."
Peter flushed. He had never thought of Early Ann as a sweetheart. He had been thinking all morning about Maxine Larabee, and how he hoped she would drive in at one of the farms where he was in charge of the big thrashing outfit. Stud had told Peter he could be thrashing boss that year and take the fine new machine all over the countryside. It would be wonderful to have Maxine hear him giving orders and directing all the men.
Maybe Bud Spillman would come up with a sneer on his face right while Maxine was there, and Peter would knock his block off. Nothing could be sweeter.
"I'd like to wrastle that girl," one of the men was saying. "I'll bet she'd make good wrastling."
During the past few weeks Sarah had tried to be particularly kind to Early Ann. She had noticed how the girl had listened to her manner of speech and tried to imitate it, how she had dropped many of her "ain'ts" and "them theres," and was taking pains to set the table nicely. One day Sarah had shown her some of her battered text books left over from distant academy days. Early Ann had taken them to her room and had painfully waded through several of them during the long summer evenings. She had even asked Sarah to show her the notes on the organ and had practiced faithfully at her scales.
In matters of personal appearance, however, Early Ann had a flair which the older woman lacked. She had a way of doing her hair, of wearing a flower or a ribbon which made her beautiful even in an apron. But in matters of tidiness and cleanliness she learned much from Sarah. She brushed her teeth more often now, and every evening, to the tantalization of the hired man, bathed in the back pantry before she went to bed.
She actually worshiped Mrs. Brailsford.
"You're ... you're wonderful, Mrs. Brailsford," the girl had told her one afternoon when they were alone in the kitchen fixing supper. "It just seems like you're the kindest thing in God's world. I wish I could be your daughter like you said."