Except for profiteers, reaction had set in. War profligacy, asinine finance, crushing taxes already were doing their work.
Rather than pay for feed, farmers sold their stock. The demand for pork started everybody hog-raising. Prices fell; loss followed. Then stagnation. It was the bitter aftermath of war—the deluge. Dead water.
Only one star of hope glimmered over the waste,—the New Administration.
Spring was a month early that year. Odell, at sixty, unimpaired by pie and the great American frying pan, his gaitered legs planted sturdily in the new grass, looked out over his domain and chewed a clover stem.
“I ain’t afraid,” he said to Lister. “I’m going the hull hog. Every acre.”
“Where’s your help?” remonstrated Lister.
“I got ’em.”
“Some on ’em is quitters. They’ll lay down on yeh, Elmer.”
Odell spat out the clover stem: “Every acre, Ed!” he repeated. “And six cows on test.”