Beat upon by the fierce heat and the hard, white light, the face of the country took on every day more of the appearance of drought. Each day vegetation shrank and the exposed surface of bare, caked earth increased. Corn dwindled and yellowed and bluegrass turned dry and brown. The alfalfa stretched its deep roots far down into the soil and managed to keep its rich dark green color, but grew never an inch. The roads lay under a thick coating of this fine powdery dust, soft as velvet to bare feet. When a wagon or buggy passed along it traveled hidden from sight by its own dust and left a diminishing trail behind like a comet. Hens held their wings out from their bodies and panted in the deepest shade of the barnyard. In the pastures cattle and sheep stood all day under trees; and even horses rarely ventured forth into the full glare of the sun. In the evening when the sun slanted low and a grateful coolness stole across the fields, all these creatures, like their human brothers, shook off the torpor of the heat and began to feel more like themselves. The hens scratched for a living among the chaff and dung. The sheep and cattle, banded together after their kind and with their heads all turned in one direction, cropped the scant bluegrass. The horses, aristocrats of the pasture, went apart by themselves, scorning the company of these humbler creatures.
The tobacco plants, owing to their sturdy weed nature, lived through the heat and drought; but they might as well have died, for their leaves were as thin as paper. By the middle of August the tobacco growers, including even Jerry, had given up all hope of getting a crop that year.
With the failure of their crops, every day became Sunday for the men; and they began to visit in each other's barnyards. Different degrees of success, with the inevitable accompaniment of work, self-seeking, greed, jealousy, and disappointment, would have divided them. But the universal bad luck brought them into community of spirit and ushered in an era of neighborliness and good feeling. Lounging on the shady side of each other's barns, whittling aimlessly at bits of stick, chewing straws and tobacco, the men talked about the springs that had gone dry and those that were going dry, inquired about the state of each other's wells and cisterns, and complained about how far they had to drive their cattle to water. They compared notes on the subject of prickly heat and other skin rashes, and talked of the hotness of beds at night. Uncle Jabez Moorhouse quoted copiously from his one book on the subject of drought, a favorite topic with the prophets, and all the old men called to mind former dry years, citing chapter and verse as to the exact date of the arid year, the time the drought began and the number of weeks it had lasted. The calendar for the past fifty years was thoroughly gone over from this point of view and each dry year carefully compared in all respects with the current one. There was matter here for much discussion and argument among the older men, their memories often telling stories that were widely at variance with each other.
The first days of August brought news that sent a buzz of excitement through the groups of barnyard loungers. Although there was no newspaper to carry it, this news flashed rapidly into even the innermost recesses of Scott County. The most unschooled tobacco grower living in the loneliest hollow did not have to wait long for its arrival. The more advanced and intellectual, who subscribed to a religious or agricultural monthly, got the tidings long before the next issue of their magazine was dropped in the rural mail box. The magic word war is powerfully and swiftly winged and scorns modern methods of broadcasting. Standing about the coldly monumental August stove, the loiterers in Peter Akers' store spat into last winter's sawdust and talked over the news that the Cincinnati-Lexington train had brought. Driving homeward in their several directions, they pulled up alongside of every passing wagon.
"Hey, d'yuh know there's a big war on?"
At home they told their wives, their neighbors, everybody who passed by the house.
Having done this, they had, however, told all they knew. The words Germans, French, Russians, floated about in the air, but to most of the tobacco growers meant nothing whatever except that the war was a long way off. There was, however, a general realization that it was a big one, that somewhere far away the world was in great turmoil and excitement. The outermost ripples of this excitement shivered through Scott County.
The women inquired anxiously as to the likelihood of their sons and husbands having to go to war. Their fears relieved on this vital point, they poohhooed the whole matter and went on about their housework, instantly transferring their attention to matters of real importance, such as the rendering out of hog fat and the patching of overalls.
"It's ridiclus," said Aunt Abigail, on one of her visits to Judith, "the idee o' them folks a-goin' to fightin' each other. It's a shame an' a disgrace an' it'd otta be put a stop to. Even if they air on'y ignernt furrin folks, they'd otta know better."
To the men it was meat and drink. When they gathered in each other's barnyards, the talk was all of war. To sit in the peaceful warmth of a summer afternoon, placidly chewing the mild Burley of their own fields and express their views about the fighting of the foreigners was a rare treat, combining luxuriously the thrills and excitements of war with the comfort and security of peace. They had virtually no basis upon which to form opinions; but opinions they had, none the less. They were as excitable, argumentative, and dogmatic as any group of men in any other walk of life. Each man held his own convictions in as high esteem and those of his neighbor in as thorough despisal as if he were a successful manufacturer of toothpaste or a United States senator. The discussions on the war were as animated, as heated, as intelligent, and as generally representative of the different types of male humanity as if they had occurred in a metropolitan club. The fact that on the shady side of Jerry Blackford's cowshed the basis of fact was somewhat more vague and flimsy than that in a Union League clubroom made no essential difference. Each man aired his own ideas as loudly and impressively as he could, and paid no attention whatever to those of any of the others; and there was much honest joy and satisfaction.