Hiram the Young Farmer

by Burbank L. Todd

He followed the wheel marks of the wagon to the road. He saw the track where it turned into the field, and where it turned out again. And it showed plainly that the thief came from town, and returned in that direction.

Of course, in the roadway it was impossible to trace the particular tracks made by the thief's horse and wagon. Too many other vehicles had been over the road within the past hour.

The thief must have driven into the field just after night-fall, plucked the ten young turkeys, one by one, out of the coop, tying their feet and flinging them into the bottom of his wagon. Covered with a bag, the frightened turkeys would never utter a peep while it remained dark.

“I hate to tell Sister—I can't tell her,” Hiram said, as he went slowly back to the house. For Sister had been “counting chickens” again, and she had figured that, at eighteen cents per pound, live weight, the ten turkeys would pay for all the clothes she would need that winter, and give her “Christmas money”, too.

The young farmer shrank from meeting the girl again that night, and he delayed going into the house as long as possible. Then he found they had all retired, leaving him a cold supper at the end of the kitchen table.

The disappearance of the turkeys kept Hiram tossing, wakeful, upon his bed for some hours. He could not fail to connect this robbery with the other things that had been done, during the past weeks, to injure those living at the Atterson farm.

Was the secret enemy really Peter Dickerson? And had Pete committed this crime now?

Yet the horse and wagon had come from the direction opposite the Dickerson farm, and had returned as it came.

“I don't know whether I am accusing that fellow wrongfully, or not,” muttered Hiram, at last. “But I am going to find out. Sister isn't going to lose her turkeys without my doing everything in my power to get them back and punish the thief.”

He usually arose in the morning before anybody else was astir, so it was easy for Hiram to slip out of the house and down to the field to the empty turkey coop.