A Day with a Tramp, and Other Days

by Walter A. Wyckoff

A heave of the great plain raised me presently to a height, from which, far over the roll of the intervening fields, with the warm sunlight on their varying growths, I could see the church spires in the town surrounded almost by wooded hills, with the Des Moines River flowing among them. The air was full of the distant clatter of mowing machines, which carries with it the association of stinging heat and the patient hum of bees and the fragrance of new hay.

As I descended into the next hollow there came driving toward me a young farmer. He was seated on a mower, his eyes fixed on the wide swath cut by the machine in its course just within a zigzag rail fence that flanked the road. The green timothy fell before the blade in thick, soft, dewy widths that carpeted the meadow. A chance glance into the road discovered me, and he brought the horses to a stand. As he pushed back his hat from his streaming forehead, I could see that he was young, but much worn with care and overwork.

“Will you take a job with me?” he asked, and the wonder of it was the greater, since that whole region has through it a strong Yankee strain, and men of such stock are sore pressed when they come to the point without preliminaries.

Again I had to resort to a feeble excuse of necessity to go farther; but, curious as to the response, I ventured an inquiry about the local demand for men.

“Oh, everyone needs men,” the farmer rejoined impatiently, as, tightening the reins and adjusting his hat, he started the horses, anxious, evidently, to drown further idle talk in the sharp noise of the swift-mowing knives.

In the river valley I was not long in finding a lane which disappeared among a scattered growth of stunted trees in the direction of a rocky bluff that marked the bed of the stream. Every day’s march brought some chance of a bath, and, at times, I was fortunate enough to fall in with two or three in thirty miles, and nothing could be more restful or refreshing in a long walk, or a better preventive against the stiffness that is apt to accompany it. Here I could both bathe and swim about, and when I regained the highway, it was almost with the feeling of vigor of the early morning.

The main-travelled road did not lead me, as I expected, into Fort Dodge, but to an intersection of two roads, a little west of the town. Instead of going eastward into the city, I turned to the west, in the direction of Tara, a small village on a branch of the Rock Island Railway. The setting sun was shining full in my face, but no longer with much effect of heat. As I hurried on in the fast cooling air, the way led by an abrupt descent into a ravine, where flowed a small tributary of the Des Moines among rocks and sheer banks, forming a striking contrast with the rolling prairie. It was but a break in the plain. From the top of the opposite bank, the land stretched away again in undulating surface, with much evidence of richness of soil and the wealth of the farmers.

Not without exception, however; for, at nightfall, I was nearing a small house, through whose coating of white paint the blackened weather-boards appeared with an effect of much dilapidation. When I entered the garden, passing under low shade-trees, I met a sturdy Irishman, bare-headed, and in his shirtsleeves, whose thin white hair and beard alone suggested advancing years.

There was no difficulty in dealing with him. He was not in need of a hired man, but was perfectly willing that I should have supper and breakfast at his home and a bed in the barn on the terms of a morning stint. Accordingly, I followed light-heartedly into the kitchen, where, in the dim light, I saw his wife and a married daughter, with her son, a lad of six or eight.

Supper was ready; with every mark of kindly hospitality, the farmer’s wife, a motherly body with an ill-defined waist, made ready for me at the table, moving lightly about, in spite of age and bulk, in bare feet, that appeared from under the skirt of a dark print dress with an apron covering its ample front. A lamp was lighted, and from the vague walls there looked down upon us the faces of saints in bright-colored prints. A kitchen clock ticked on the mantel-shelf, and a kettle was singing on an iron stove that projected half way into the room. We supped on tea and bread and hard biscuits, while the farmer questioned me about the crops along the day’s route, and his wife heaved deep sighs and broke into a muttered “The Lord bless us!” when I owned to having walked some thirty-five miles since morning.