As we went south, one of those warm sudden rains sprang up, or came down—one of those quick, heavy rains which I recognized as characteristic of the region of my infancy. We saw it coming in the distance, a thickening of smoke clouds over some groves in the west. Then a green fog seemed to settle between us and the trees, and I knew it was raining.
“Here it comes,” I called. “Had we better get the top up?”
Bert, who was now the master of motion and a radically different temperament to Speed, paid no heed. He was very taciturn or meditative at times, but equally gay at others, and much more self sufficient and reliant, if anything. I had been most interested by the quiet, controlling way in which he had gone about getting himself housed and fed at night and at other times. Porters and garage managers gave no least care to Bert. He managed them and suggested ways and means to us occasionally. Whenever anything happened to the car he leisurely extracted himself with the aid of his crutches and set about adjusting it as though there were not the least thing defective about him. It was interesting, almost amusing.
But now, as I say, he paid no heed and soon a few heavy drops fell, great, splattering globules that left inch size wet spots on our clothing, and then we were in the storm. It gushed.
“Now, will you listen?” I observed as we jumped down. Franklin and I bustled about the task of getting the hood up. Before we could do it, though—almost before we could get our raincoats on—it was pouring—a torrent. It seemed to come down in bucketfuls. Then, once we had the hood up and the seats dried and our raincoats on and were suffocating of heat, the storm was gone. The sun came out, the road looked golden, the grass was heavenly. In the distance one could see it raining elsewhere, far across the fields.
“Yes,” I observed feelingly and tenderly, “‘this is me own, me native land;’ only I wish it wouldn’t make its remembered characteristics quite so obvious. I can be shown that it is just as it used to be, without being killed.”
The land smiled. I’m sure it did. Aren’t there such things as smiling lands?
And a little farther on, without any suggestion from me, for I am well satisfied that he would never be so influenced, Franklin was commenting on the luxurious character of the region. The houses were all small and simple, very tasteless little cottages, but very good and new and seemingly comfortable, sheltering no doubt the sons and daughters of people who had been here when I was. Excellent automobiles were speeding along the roads, handsome western makes of cars—not so many Fords. The cattle in the fields looked healthy, fat. Timothy and corn were standing waist high. It was hot, as it should be in a fat riverland like this. We had not gone far before we had to get out to examine a hay baling machine—the first hay baler (for the use of individual farmers) I had ever seen. There had been a haypress at Sullivan, a most wonderful thing to me to contemplate in my day—a horse going round in a ring and so lifting and dropping a great weight which compressed the hay in a box; but this was different. It was standing out in an open field near three haystacks and was driven by a gasoline motor, a force which made short work of the vast quantities of hay piled on the feeder. Three men operated it. The horses that drew it stood idle to one side.
“How much hay can you bale in a day?” I asked of one of the farmers.
“Depends on the number working,” he replied. “We three men can do up a couple of stacks like that.” He was referring to two goodly mounds of sweet brown hay that stood to the left.