The pony mare and one of the Percherons dropped foals within the next two weeks, and fawn-eyed Jersey calves arrived almost daily. At the Oleson farm another little Swede entered the world. Sarah and Temperance Crandall were on hand to help the midwife, but Early Ann was strictly forbidden to go near the place until the baby was born, washed, and placed in his hand-carved cradle. The arrival of three small billy goats, and twelve litters of Poland China pigs increased the blessed events on the west shore of Lake Koshkonong to a staggering figure.
Stud Brailsford, deep in the spring plowing, had no time to think of any woman. He bought a brooder and an incubator for Sarah, and evenings he went into the cellar to tinker with the new contraptions. In due time flotillas of fluffy ducklings, eight hundred scrambling, peeping chicks, and a dozen long-necked, awkward, yellow-green goslings were in evidence on every hand.
One night the orchard was taken in a single onslaught by the rush of spring. The fragrant white billow swept over apple, cherry, plum, and Sarah's flowering crab. Underneath the laden trees the dandelions bloomed, and the bees came to plunder.
Once again spring was upon the land.
2
It might have occurred to Stanley—but never did—that throughout the spring the boy had seemed curiously devoted to the farm, unwilling to miss a single week-end in the country. It should have seemed strange to Brailsford that when the "Trailer" went bankrupt in May, Peter took the loss of his job so philosophically. But all that Stud thought, when he thought about the matter at all, was now his boy was back at last, that he had sown his wild oats and was ready to settle down, and that during the coming season he would make him thrashing boss again.
3
On the morning of June 28, 1914—the day that Gavro Princip shot the Archduke Ferdinand at Serajevo—Stud Brailsford awoke just before dawn. Ducks were quacking, geese hissing in the barnyard. Roosters were heralding the dawn, answered across the lake by other roosters. A cow bawled at her calf, the wind rustled in the corn. Ten miles away a train whistled, and rumbled across the river bridge. To Stud's simple mind the world had never seemed more peaceful. The smell of coffee, toast and sausage drifted up from the kitchen. The first streaks of color were showing in the east, reflected on the surface of the lake.
Stud did not know that Europe was an armed camp, that civilization was about to be blown to bits, that Wisconsin farm boys, whistling as they went to the barns that morning, would soon be lying in the mud of Flanders. Stud had never heard of the Archduke Ferdinand nor of Serajevo. You could not have convinced him that a shot fired by a Serb in remote Bosnia could affect his prosperous dairy farm on Crabapple Point in the Fertile Rock River valley of Southern Wisconsin.
It was Sunday. Peter and Gus were already up and doing the chores. Stud could lie abed for another half hour if he wished. He could go swimming in the lake, or merely lie in the hammock under the trees, listening to the birds and taking life easy. Such indolence was all but unbelievable to the big farmer who for the past three and one-half months had been working sixteen hours a day, laboring evenings and holidays, even breaking God's commandment by plowing on Sunday. But at last the crops were planted; the corn was knee-high, and the twenty acres of tobacco were a rich, healthy green.