With an oath Riles jumped from his buckboard and struck a savage blow at the frank labourer, but years of hardship in the fields had taken greater toll than he guessed. The fist he aimed at the face of his critic cut a circle in thin air as a sledge-hammer blow caught Riles under the jaw and he fell with tremendous force against a hub of the buckboard. When he staggered to his feet the flesh of his forehead was cut in two and the eyes lobed forward as though they would fall out.
Riles had the wound dressed by a doctor and met the evening train, where he engaged a harvester just out from Ontario. They drove home through the darkness, the hired man so tired with three days and nights of bumping in a slat-seated colonist car that he would have fallen out of the buckboard had Riles not held him in. When the horses were stabled the new comer was shown to his bedroom, which was reached by climbing up steps nailed to the studs of the shanty where Riles and his wife lived. In the loft was a little window looking out of a gable, a straw mattress covered with two discarded horse-blankets lay in a corner, and a kitchen chair, from which the back had been broken, completed the furniture of the little room. It was, however, also used as a store-house for old clothes and for drying vegetables, and the mice scampered in great excitement at the approach of the lantern.
Long before daylight Riles wakened the hired man by thumping the wall with a stick of firewood. “Come, yuh barnyard savage,” he said, in his playful humour, “roll out. Do yuh think I’m goin’ to pay yuh twenty dollars a month to sleep? Get down here an’ get at those oats, an’ be quick about it, or I’ll fire yuh before noon.”
The sleepy harvester crawled out of the musty blankets, drew on his clothes, and opened his suit-case. From a jumble of socks and underwear he drew a revolver and a murderous-looking knife. Slinging the suit-case by a strap over his shoulder, with the knife between his teeth, the revolver in one hand and the lantern in the other, he made the precipitous descent into the kitchen.
“What in thunder does this mean?” demanded the astonished Riles, as he caught sight of the animated arsenal.
“I’m going after those oats,” the man replied, in a hoarse whisper. “They’re wild oats, ain’t they?”
“No, they’re not wild oats, my smart young fellow. They’re tame oats, if yuh know the difference.”
“Then if they’re tame oats,” said the other, in a wheedling tone, “if they’re tame oats, don’t you think, Mr. Riles, if we were careful, we might manage to sneak up on them in daylight?” And before the astonished Riles could find an answer the hired man continued, “Ta, ta, Mr. Riles. Much obliged for the night’s lodging. Hope you catch the oats,” and had swung out into the darkness to find his way back to town.
His first experience with hired men was rather disconcerting, but out of it dawned an important light. The illumination came upon Riles as he stooked the oats himself that forenoon. After dinner he drove back to town and called casually upon Bill Perkins, the lawyer. It was no part of Riles’ policy to encourage any such useless class as lawyers or doctors by paying a fee, but he usually succeeded in getting the desired information in process of conversation, and without appearing to have sought it. He had already benefited several times by advice given by Perkins in this way, and the lawyer had determined to be even with him.
Perkins was busy with a transfer of land when Riles dropped in, and for a few minutes the conversation was of crops and harvest and the weather. Skilfully enough the farmer introduced the subject of hired help, lamenting how difficult it was to get good men and how the hired men now-a-days took all the profit from the farm and left the owner with the expense, in all of which Perkins concurred. As he was about to leave the office Riles remarked—