"Rivalries arose in my neighborhood, of course. But I thought they were friendly rivalries. We even talked over our discoveries at the Grange meetings. I had made a study of plant life, and I gave little lectures—the more fool me!—to the boys and girls who were interested enough to come together at the schoolhouse to listen. I had no idea my neighbors would steal."
"You don't mean to say they did?"
"Exactly. And some of the very boys I had tried to interest and help were the ones who broke down my fence and turned the cattle into my young oats. That was so I should be unable to raise a crop of the new oats that year and so fail to take advantage of the Mortgage Lifter being advertised by the seedsmen. You understand that all big money is made on new seeds in the first and second seasons, don't you?"
"I know that, Mr. Battick," Hiram agreed. "After that everybody has the new strain. It must be a quick clean-up in the seed business."
"That's it. I don't really know to this day just who it was profited by my loss. In the main, I mean. Almost everybody around my place had some of the seed. That held the gang together and made it impossible for me to get any evidence against the real transgressors. You see, the other neighbors were bribed.
"However, my crops had been destroyed, the seed-oats taken out of my granary in the night when I was ill. It was a dirty plot! Bonsall and Burgess were not to be blamed. Nor could they tell me anything. They were bound to secrecy in their contract."
"And could you get no satisfaction?" asked Hiram, in sympathy.
"I could prove nothing. You cannot patent, or copyright, a seed! Those fellows merely beat me to it."
"It was a shame!"
Battick laughed bitterly. "They certainly did me dirt," he said. "I sold out and came here. I may be wrong in telling you this. Nobody else knows what I came here for and why I bought the old Pringle place."