“No, for I made up my mind that if I could not persuade them at that end I could show them at this. I staked out a claim for a farm of my own, and I mean to live here until it is mine and those people in Rudolm see that it can be done and that Jake’s threats must come to nothing in the end. It takes fourteen months to prove up on a claim, but my time is almost done.”
“And you have lived in this lonely place so long as that,” Hugh exclaimed. “How did you ever hold to that one idea for all this time?”
“I did not,” admitted Oscar, “for I went off on a wild goose chase, but I came back again. When I went down to Rudolm last April and knew that war was declared, there was nothing I thought of but that I must be a soldier or a sailor as quickly as chance would let me. I rushed down to Duluth to enlist; my scheme for helping Rudolm was forgotten as though it had never been.”
Oscar’s tale stopped suddenly short. Hugh, looking down, saw his big hand clench suddenly upon his knee until the knuckles were white and the cords stood out along his wrist. For a moment the boy did not dare to speak.
“Wouldn’t they take you, Oscar?” he said gently at last.
“They wouldn’t take me,” was the heavy answer, as though even now the disappointment was too keen to dwell upon. “It was on account of what that fight with the pirates had done to my arm, the bone had been injured so that the elbow will only move halfway. I never believed it amounted to anything, but every man at the recruiting station thought otherwise.”
“What did you say to them?”
“Say—I have no notion what I said. I shouted and cursed at them, for such anger possessed me as I had never known before. Finally I flung out of the building and down the street, not knowing or caring where I went. I wandered all night, I think, for when at last I came out on the docks where the Great Lakes’ freighters were loading, it was beginning to be morning. I saw iron and steel and flour and wheat all being dropped into those great holds, to be carried overseas, so some one told me, to help toward the winning of the war. I sat there long in a sort of daze, and watched the steamers loading, but at last, through my anger, through the sight that was before my eyes I began to see this valley again and to dream of what might come out of it to help us win the war.”
“Iron—mines?” ventured Hugh inquiringly after Oscar had sat quiet a minute, seeing his vision again, perhaps.
“No, there is iron in plenty near Rudolm and in the ranges to the eastward, enough for all the munition factories we have. No, no, what are mines alongside of a great valley lying fallow, ready to help feed a starving world? Can’t you see those wild grass meadows cut up into great square fields of green, can’t you see those slopes all yellow with grain and rippling like water under the autumn winds? It’s not iron—it’s not gold—it’s wheat, man, wheat!”