“I think we'd better take you up,” Warren said. “I'd like that sort of work.” He winked at his friend and rubbed his stomach. “I see myself packing good, ripe, juicy peaches right now, but not in crates. The truth is, farmer, we are mighty hungry, and that is a long walk. Now, if you had fifty cents about you that you'd be willing to let go in an advance, why we'll buy a snack at some farm-house, and go right on to you.”
The horseman's shrewd face fell. He leaned forward and ran his gnarled fingers through the mane of his horse, and avoided the pair of anxious eyes fixed on his. “I don't want to be blunt and hurt your feelings, fellers,” he said. “But we never come together before—we are plumb strangers, I might say; and, well, to tell the truth, last year I started out on this same business, and to my certain knowledge not a man, woman, gal, boy, nor baby that I advanced money to ever got to my place, while all the others who wasn't paid was there bright and early.”
“But we are hungry and weak!” Dick Warren protested.
“Well, some o' them that I failed to get told the selfsame tale. One said if I'd pay off the mortgage on his land, he'd bring his entire family; but that wasn't business, and I refused. I'm making you fellows a fair open-and-shut proposition. You hit my place before dark to-night and tell my wife to give you a square meal—tell her I've hired you to pick and pack, and that I said to stow you away somewhere for the night. She will make room for you. Now, I hope I'll see you there. That's as good as I can offer, as I look at it.”
“All right, we'll be there,” Walton promised. “And we will do the best we can for your interests.”
“Very well, gentlemen, I'll expect to see you there when I get back. So long.” And with his legs jogging the flanks of his mount, the farmer rode away.
“We can make it, Dick,” Walton said, encouragingly. “Let's bend down to it.”
“The thought of that meal is enough to keep me going,” the boy replied. “What do you reckon she will give us? But stop! My mouth is watering at such a rate that I believe I'll try not to think of it.”
It was long after sundown when the wayfarers reached the farm in question. The house was a rambling, one-story, frame structure which originally had been painted, afterward whitewashed, and rain and storm beaten till not a trace of any sort of coating remained on the bare, fuzzy, gray boards. At the gate, or bars, of the snake-fence, in front, they paused, faint and exhausted, wondering if they would be bitten by watch-dogs if they entered unannounced. On the grass under the trees in the front yard a group of twenty or more young women and young men were singing plantation melodies, and here and there couples were sitting alone or strolling about, their heads close together.
“They are peach-gatherers,” Walton surmised. “Come on; there are no dogs that I can see.”