“Ye ain’t tired o’ life so soon, be yer?”
“No,” said I, “but I’m going to show you rubes how to treat an orchard.”
Bert went off laughing, and presently I saw him driving toward town with his heavy wagon. I walked up to the plateau field to greet Mike. As I crested the ridge the field lay before me, the great, lone pine standing sentinel at the farther side; and half of it was frail, young green, and half rich, shining brown.
“She ploughs tough, sor,” said Mike, as the panting horses paused for breath, “but she’ll harrer down good. Be the seed pertaters come yit?”
“Bert has gone for them,” said I. “Let me hold the plough once.”
Mike, I fancied, winked at his son Joe, who was a strong lad of twenty, with an amiable Irish grin. So everybody was regarding me as a joke! Well, I was, even then, as strong as Mike, and I’d held a sweep, if not a plough! I picked up the handles and lifted the plough around, setting the point to the new furrow. Joe started the horses. The blade wabbled, took a mad skid for the surface, and the handles hit me a blow in the ribs which knocked my breath out. Mike grinned. I set my teeth and the ploughshare, and again Joe started the horses. Putting forth all my strength I held the plough under the sod this time, but the furrow I ploughed started merrily away from the straight line, in spite of all my efforts, and began to run out into the unbroken ground to the left. I pulled the plough back again to the starting-point, and tried once more. This trip, when I reached the point where my first furrow had departed from the straight and narrow way, the cross strip of sod came over the point like a comber over a boat’s bow, and the horses stopped with a jerk, while the point went down and again the handles smote me in the ribs.
“It ain’t so azy as it looks,” said Mike.
“I’ll do it if I haven’t a rib left,” said I grimly.
And I did it. My first full furrow looked like the track of a snake under the influence of liquor, but I reversed the plough and came back fairly straight. I was beginning to get the hang of it. My next furrow was respectable, but not deep. But on the second return trip I ploughed her straight, and I ploughed her deep, and that without exerting nearly so much beef as on the first try. Most things are easy when you once know how.
On this return trip the sweat was starting from my forehead, and the smell of the horses and of the warm, fresh-turned earth was strong in my nostrils. I didn’t look at my pine, nor think of book plates. I was proud at what I had done, and my muscles gloried in the toil. Again I swung the plough around, and drove it across the field, feeling the reluctant grass roots fighting every muscle of my arms.