The Deacon stowed himself in the wagons with the rest the next morning, and rode out with them through the bright sunshine, that gave promise of the soon oncoming of Spring. For miles they jolted over the execrable roads and through the shiftless, run-down country before they found anything worth while putting in the wagons.
"Great country, Pap," said Si suggestively.
"Yes; it'd be a great country," said his father disdainfully, "if you could put a wagonload o' manure on every foot and import some Injianny men to take care of it. The water and the sunshine down here seem all right, but the land and the people and the pigs and stock seem to be cullin's throwed out when they made Injianny."
At length the train halted by a double log house of much more pretentious character than any they had so far seen. There were a couple of well-filled corn-cribs, a large stack of fodder, and other evidences of plenty. The Deacon's practiced eye noticed that there was no stock in the fields, but Si explained this by saying that everything on hoofs had been driven off to supply the rebel army. "They're now trying to git a corn-crib and a fodder-stack with four legs, but hain't succeeded so far."
The Captain ordered the fence thrown down and the wagons driven in to be filled. The surrounding horizon was scanned for signs of rebels, but none appeared anywhere. The landscape was as tranquil, as peace-breathing as a Spring morning on the Wabash, and the Deacon's mind reverted to the condition of things on his farm. It was too wet to plow, but he would like to take a walk over the fields and see how his wheat had come out, and look over the peach-buds and ascertain how they had stood the Winter. He noticed how some service-trees had already unfolded their white petals, like flags of truce breaking the long array of green cedars and rusty-brown oaks.
The company stacked arms in the road, the Captain went to direct the filling of the wagons, and Si and Shorty started on a private reconnoissance for something for their larder.
The Deacon strolled around the yard for awhile inspecting the buildings and farm implements with an eye of professional curiosity, and arrived at very unfavorable opinions. He then walked up on the porch of the house, where a woman of about his own age sat in a split-bottom rocking-chair knitting and viewing the proceedings with frowning eyes.
"Good day, ma'am," said he. "Warm day, ma'am."
"'Tain't as warm as it orter to be for sich fellers as yo'uns," she snapped. "You'd better be in the brimstone pit if you had your just deserts."
The Deacon always tried to be good-humored with an angry woman, and he thought he would try the effect of a little pleasantry. "I'm a Baptist, ma'am, and they say us Baptists are tryin' to put out that fire with cold water."