It was mid-afternoon when Joe finished his mowing and stood casting his eyes up to the sky for signs of rain. There being none, he concluded that it would be safe to allow yesterday’s cutting to lie another night in the field while he put in the remainder of the day with his scythe in the lower orchard plot, where the clover grew rank among the trees. 91
Satisfied that he had made a showing thus far with which Isom could find no fault, Joe tucked the snath of his scythe under his arm and set out for that part of the orchard which lay beyond the hill, out of sight of the barn and house, and from that reason called the “lower orchard” by Isom, who had planted it with his own hand more than thirty years ago.
There noble wine-sap stretched out mighty arms to fondle willow-twig across the shady aisles, and maidenblush rubbed cheeks with Spitzenberg, all reddening in the sun. Under many of the trees the ground was as bare as if fire had devastated it, for the sun never fell through those close-woven branches from May to October, and there no clover grew. But in the open spaces between the rows it sprang rank and tall, troublesome to cut with a mower because of the low-swinging, fruit-weighted limbs.
Joe waded into this paradise of fruit and clover bloom, dark leaf and straining bough, stooping now and then to pick up a fallen apple and try its mellowness with his thumb. They were all hard, and fit only for cider yet, but their rich colors beguiled the eye into betrayal of the palate. Joe fixed his choice upon a golden willow-twig. As he stood rubbing the apple on his sleeve, his eye running over the task ahead of him in a rough estimate of the time it would require to clean up the clover, he started at sight of a white object dangling from a bough a few rods ahead of him. His attention curiously held, he went forward to investigate, when a little start of wind swung the object out from the limb and he saw that it was a woman’s sun-bonnet, hanging basket-wise by its broad strings. There was no question whose it was; he had seen the same bonnet hanging in the kitchen not three hours before, fresh from the ironing board.
Joe dropped his apple unbitten, and strode forward, puzzled a bit over the circumstance. He wondered what 92 had brought Ollie down there, and where she was then. She never came to that part of the orchard to gather wind-falls for the pigs–she was not gathering them at all during Isom’s absence, he had relieved her of that–and there was nothing else to call her away from the house at that time of the day.
The lush clover struck him mid-thigh, progress through it was difficult. Joe lifted his feet like an Indian, toes turned in a bit, and this method of walking made it appear as if he stalked something, for he moved without noise.
He had dropped his scythe with the apple, his eyes held Ollie’s swinging bonnet as he approached it as if it were some rare bird which he hoped to steal upon and take. Thus coming on, with high-lifted feet, his breath short from excitement, Joe was within ten yards of the bonnet when a voice sounded behind the intervening screen of clover and boughs.
Joe dropped in his tracks, as if ham-strung, crouched in the clover, pressed his hands to his mouth to stifle the groan that rose to his lips. It was Morgan’s voice. He had come sneaking back while the watch-dog was off guard, secure in the belief that he had gone away. As Joe crouched there hidden in the clover, trembling and cold with anger, Morgan’s voice rose in a laugh.
“Well, I wouldn’t have given him credit for that much sense if I hadn’t seen him with my own eyes,” said he.
“He’s smarter than he looks,” said Ollie, their voices distinct in Joe’s shamed ears, for it was as quiet in the orchard as on the first day.