HIRAM IN THE MIDDLE WEST

OR

A YOUNG FARMER'S UPWARD STRUGGLE

BY BURBANK L. TODD

AUTHOR OF "HIRAM THE YOUNG FARMER."

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK
GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY

Copyright, 1920, By
GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

BACK TO THE SOIL SERIES

By BURBANK L. TODD

12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.

HIRAM THE YOUNG FARMER
Or, Making the Soil Pay

HIRAM IN THE MIDDLE WEST
Or, A Young Fanner's Upward Struggle

(Other Volumes in Preparation)

George Sully & Company, New York

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

HIRAM IN THE MIDDLE WEST

CHAPTER I

THE MAN WHO WAS AFRAID OF RATS

For an hour before the accommodation train stopped at Pringleton the rain had etched zigzag lines upon the windowpane beside Hiram Strong's seat; so to find the platform aglitter with puddles in the dull lamp light and the water dripping drearily from the station eaves did not surprise him. What was rather astonishing was to find Pringleton such a very lonely place.

As far as he could see, when he had walked around the bungalow-built station the light in the stationmaster's ticket office was the only light visible save the switch-targets and the disappearing green lamps on the end of the train. Hiram, with his heavy bag, was the only passenger who had got off the evening train.

When he came around to the front of the station again he saw the stationmaster humped over his desk in the bay window, with a pen stuck over his ear, looking for all the world like a secretary bird. He peered out of the window at Hiram curiously, and finally pushed up the sash.

"I don't know whether you know it or not, young fellow," the stationmaster said, "but the company charges mileage if you use this platform for a walking track. And you'll make trouble for me if you keep going around, for I never have found out how many laps make a mile, and I sha'n't know what to charge you."

Hiram Strong smiled his approval of this brand of humor, yet his question put in reply was quite serious:

"Have you seen anybody around here, sir, from a place called Sunnyside Farm?"

"There isn't anybody at Sunnyside Farm, as far as I know," said the stationmaster; "and there hasn't been since the house burned down last year."

"Yes, I know," Hiram said quickly. "But I rather expected Mr. Bronson would have somebody over here to meet me."

"Mr. Stephen Bronson?" asked the man. "Him that's just bought the Sunnyside place?"

"Yes. It's quite a walk to the farm, isn't it?"

"It is the longest two miles you ever walked, son," declared the stationmaster. "Were you thinking to walk it to-night?"

"As there is nobody here to meet me, I guess I'll have to," replied the youth cheerfully. "Which way do I head? You'll have to start me right, or else I may wear out your platform walking around and around on it all night."

The stationmaster chuckled. "Well, young fellow," he observed, "it is evidently to my advantage to put you on your way. Turn around, pick up your bag, go right down those steps to the road and walk straight ahead. You are now facing west. When you get into the road you will find it not so dark as it seems."

"Dark enough, I guess," muttered Hiram.

"You can't miss the road even on a dark night, for there is no fork in it till after you pass Sunnyside."

"But," asked the youth, "is there anybody up that way who will lodge me for the night, as the Sunnyside house is burned?"

"You may get taken in at Miss Delia Pringle's, just beyond Sunnyside—first house after you pass the ruins of the burned farmhouse. This station is named after her folks. Don't make the mistake of going to the first house this side of Sunnyside."

He said this last so curiously that Hiram asked him: "Why not?"

"Because that is Yancey Battick's place. He'll likely blow a charge of rock salt into you from his shotgun and then ask what you want afterward."

"Why, what's his idea?" asked Hiram much amazed.

"Says he's afraid of rats—that's all," declared the stationmaster, and immediately slammed down the window to shut out the searching February wind.

The youth hesitated for only a moment longer. He rather thought the stationmaster of Pringleton was quite as odd as the man he called Yancey Battick, who met all visitors with a salt-loaded shotgun and was afraid of rats.

"And this isn't really a night fit for a rat to be out," Hiram muttered, after he had walked for some time along the muddy road leading west from the station.

Occasionally while he was still near the railroad he passed a dwelling; but it was just about supper time, and nearly all the lights were at the backs of the houses. Hardly a ray of cheerful lamp light reached the road.

The houses were situated farther apart as he continued his march. The fine rain was penetrating in the extreme. Hiram desired shelter more than he ever had before, it seemed to him.

And just when it appeared as though nothing about his situation could be worse, the heavens opened. It had been doing this, off and on, all day. But this water fall seemed heavier than any of those that had preceded it.

Hiram Strong saw a light ahead and a little to one side of the road. It was not a very bright light (perhaps it was drowned by the curtain of falling rain) but it must be in a house, he thought. At a time like this, it was any port in a storm.

He set out at a heavy run toward the light. He found a sagging gate in a decrepit fence. Plunging up a muddy path, he reached a tiny porch which might have offered some shelter had not the roof leaked like a sieve.

"Hard luck!" muttered the youth. "If they won't let me in—"

His feet pounding on the rickety steps and the thump of his heavy bag on the porch aroused somebody within. Hiram heard a firm step at the other side of the door.

Suddenly the door opened with an abruptness which was startling. The door opened on a chain, and through the aperture of about eight inches was thrust the brown muzzle of a double-barreled shotgun that, at the moment, looked as big as a cannon to the youth. He stepped back promptly, and a cascade off the roof of the porch went down the back of his neck.

"What are you after?" demanded a harsh voice.

Above the slanted gun-barrel appeared a ferocious black moustache which completely hid the wearer's mouth, a beak-like nose, and a pair of blue eyes that glittered half wildly. Altogether the householder was of most forbidding aspect, and the youth at once identified him as Yancey Battick. He had evidently stopped at the wrong house after all!

"I want nothing, Mr. Battick, but shelter till the rain holds up," Hiram answered.

"Who told you my name?" demanded the man. "I never saw you before, young fellow."

"I guessed it," Hiram replied. "I'm a pretty good Yankee at guessing."

"And you are a Yankee, I imagine," the man said. "You're from the East, aren't you?"

"Yes, sir," replied Hiram, and mentioned the locality from which he had just come in answer to Mr. Stephen Bronson's summons.

The man still presented the gun, and although Hiram had stepped from under the cascade pouring down from the roof, he was anything but comfortable out there on the porch.

"Where are you going?" asked Battick, scowling still.

"To Sunnyside Farm."

"Why, there's nobody there! The house is burned down."

"I expect to work that place this year for Mr. Stephen Bronson. I want to find a place to lodge near the farm, and I was told to apply to—Miss Pringle, I believe the name is."

"What!" gasped the man. "A young fellow like you? Who sent you unwarned into the clutches of that old maid?"

"Why—is she so bad?" Hiram asked.

"There isn't any male too young nor yet too old to be out of danger of that old maid. Come on in," added Mr. Battick, unchaining the door. "I wouldn't let any male creature get into that woman's clutches."

Hiram stepped rather doubtfully into the house. Mr. Yancey Battick certainly was a very odd person. He had been warned that the man with the welcoming shotgun was afraid of rats; it appeared that he was likewise much afraid of spinsters.

CHAPTER II

A KERNEL OF WHEAT

"Hold on!" said Yancey Battick, halting Hiram just after he was inside the house and the door was closed. "Who sent you here?"

He seemed a very suspicious man. His blue eyes searched the open countenance of the boy from the East, and his expression, with bristling moustache and all, was fierce indeed.

"I tell you I was not sent here at all," Hiram explained rather wearily. "In fact, I was advised strongly against knocking at your door."

"Who advised you?" demanded Battick quickly.

"The stationmaster."

"That old thimblerigger, Jason Oakley? Huh! Are you a friend of his?"

It was evident that Mr. Battick was not on friendly terms with many of his neighbors. Hiram Strong did not lack common sense. He proposed to say nothing to cause the householder to turn him out into the downpour, which was now very severe.

"I am just as much a friend of his, Mr. Battick, as I am of yours," the youth said.

"Humph! Well! And I suppose Jason told you to try at Delia Pringle's?"

"He did."

"Humph!" Battick said again, and finally set the gun in a rack near the chimney corner.

At last Hiram Strong felt as though he could look about the room. Heretofore his attention had been given to that gun. The door by which he had entered opened directly from the porch; there was no entry-way. The room seemed to be the entire width of the cottage with a wide fireplace facing the door, and evidently there was another room behind the chimney—perhaps two.

This living room was sufficiently interesting—not to say surprising—to the visitor to hold his full attention for the time being. The two ends of the room, at the right and left of the doorway, first gained Hiram Strong's interest. At the right the wall was completely masked from floor to ceiling by bookshelves, and those shelves were filled with books, the nature of which he could not so easily learn, for the hanging lamp did not thoroughly illuminate the apartment.

At the other end was a bench upon which were retorts, a mortar-and-pestle, an alcohol forge, and other implements and instruments which suggested chemical—and other—experiments. There were, too, racks of seed-boxes for testing. Hiram was thoroughly familiar with these shallow trays.

But in the middle of the room was the object that most excited Hiram's interest. This was a high table—or so it seemed—its shape something like that of a coffin. At least, it was as long as a full length casket, about as wide, and was side-boarded like no table Hiram had ever seen before. But there was a tarpaulin spread over it. The four legs were of round, barked, straight logs four inches in diameter.

After setting the gun in the rack Battick turned toward his visitor and, though not very graciously, invited him to be seated, pointing to a rustic armchair at the side of the hearth farthest from the gun-rack.

"And take off your coat, stranger. What did you say your name was?"

"It is Hiram Strong."

"What did you say about working Sunnyside for Mr. Bronson?" continued the host. "I guess you mean you're going to chore around for him?"

"I hope to run the farm for Mr. Bronson."

"A boy like you?"

"I'll never be any younger," Hiram laughed, for he was rather used to having people cast reflections upon his age. He had had, however, much greater experience in practical farming than many men on farms who were twice his age.

"What do you know about farming?" asked Battick abruptly. "What experience have you had, Mr. Strong?"

Hiram smiled slowly. He was by no means a handsome boy, but he was wholesome looking and his smile was disarming. Even the scowling visage of Yancey Battick began to smooth out as he watched his visitor. But it was plain to be seen that the man was a misanthrope.

"You see," Hiram began, "my father was a very good farmer indeed, although he farmed for other men all his life. He read a great deal and studied farming methods, and I worked right along with him until I was fourteen. What he learned—at least, a good deal of it—I learned, too."

"Humph!" sniffed Battick, "a boy of that immature age?"

"Father made a friend of me. We were like brothers—chums," Hiram Strong continued. "Somehow, he was an easy man to learn from—he was patient."

"I see," muttered Battick. "Well, I take it your father died?"

"Yes, sir. I had got it into my head that I did not want to be a tenant farmer, as he was all his life, and there was no money left. So I went to town thinking there would be more and better chances for a boy."

"Humph! You were starting out young."

"I didn't have any folks," explained Hiram. "I got a job that barely paid my board and lodging. And I soon got sick of it."

"Of the job or the city?" asked Battick, the ghost of a smile passing over his face as he listened to his involuntary guest and stared into the leaping flames on the hearth.

"Of both," replied Hiram promptly. "The city is no place for a fellow who loves the country as I found I did. Mother Atterson, with whom I boarded, had eighty acres left her near the town of Scoville, and she and I made a dicker. I farmed it for her for two years, and when our contract ended at Christmas last, I had fixed things so that she could run it on a paying basis with the help of a friend of mine, Henry Pollock, and by the aid of Sister, whom Mother Atterson has adopted, and Lem Camp, who lives with them.

"Mr. Stephen Bronson bought a place near Scoville—"

"He's always buying farms," grumbled Battick. "Got more money than brains."

"I wouldn't say that," Hiram emphasized in disagreement. "I do not believe that Mr. Bronson ever invests in a farm without getting a good return for his outlay. He did on the old Fleigler place there in Scoville. And he only bought that place to live there for a part of each year while his daughter, Lettie, is going to school at St. Beris."

"Yes. I've heard he has a daughter that just about leads him around by the nose," sniffed Battick.

Hiram Strong laughed.

"She's a girl that most any man would be willing to be led around by, by the nose or otherwise," he said. "Lettie Bronson is a mighty pretty girl. Anyhow, her father liked my work on the Atterson Eighty; so he has made me this offer to come out here to the Middle West and farm Sunnyside for a couple of years."

In this brief way Hiram Strong had related the more important occurrences narrated in the first volume of this series, entitled "Hiram the Young Farmer; Or, Making the Soil Pay." His modest statement that "Mr. Bronson had liked my work on the Atterson Eighty" scarcely described the farm owner's enthusiasm, however, or explained why Mr. Bronson had sent for so young a fellow to run his new purchase here at Pringleton near the Ohio River.

The rain continued to slap against the old clapboards of the house and the limbs of the huge buttonwood tree Hiram had seen in the front yard creaked loudly. A long and hard storm threatened, and the outlook for pushing on to Miss Pringle's was not a happy one. The woman would be in bed before Hiram reached her place.

As Mr. Battick seemed to have fallen into a brown study and asked no further questions, Hiram felt free to examine the furniture of the living room again. The table—if it was a table—was an odd thing. The young man did not know what to make of it.

The piece of tarpaulin that covered it was sunk in along the top, and he came to the conclusion that there was no real top to the table. Then, in leaning back in his low chair near the fire, he saw that the long frame was bottomed with heavy planks. It was a box on four legs rather than a table.

Mr. Battick spoke again, in his usual abrupt fashion:

"Have you had your supper yet, young fellow?"

The tone could not be called cordial.

"I had something to eat on the train," replied Hiram indifferently.

"On that old accommodation?" sniffed Battick. "Case-hardened sandwiches, I bet."

Hiram laughed, but admitted the fact.

"I know what it is to ride on that train," the man said. "In spite of what Jase Oakley told you about me, I wouldn't see a man starve—not right here in my own house," added this queer individual, though still gruffly.

"Oh, the stationmaster did not say anything about you except that you were afraid of rats," Hiram rejoined, watching Battick slyly, for he was very curious about the man.

"That's what that old thimblerigger said about me, eh?" growled Battick. "Lucky he don't often come up this way. It might happen that I should take him for a rat."

He said it so savagely that Hiram considered it best to say nothing more to excite his strange host. Battick brought eggs and bacon and half of a corn pone from a cupboard, preparing the meal deftly at the open fire.

Suddenly Hiram's attention was caught by something on the floor just under the nearest corner of the odd table, or box, in the middle of the room. It was a tiny, cone-shaped heap of grain—wheat, he thought. It had dribbled through the bottom of that box by some tiny hole, it was plain, and had fallen unnoticed to the floor.

There was something odd about this grain—something that immediately attracted Hiram's particular interest. When Battick's back was turned he stooped sideways from his chair and secured one of the kernels of wheat between his thumb and finger. He placed it in his palm and studied it minutely.

The kernel of wheat was different from any grain he had ever seen. First of all, it was a very large, plump grain, perfectly formed, and upon one side was a tiny yet distinct red stripe.

Suddenly Hiram looked up from the grain in his hand. Battick had made a strange move. He had set the skillet down on the hearth and was reaching for the shotgun. His eyes seemed to glow and a deep flush was diffused over the man's forbidding looking countenance.

Hiram Strong was amazed and startled at his host's appearance.

"What is the matter, Mr. Battick?" cried the visitor. "What are you doing with that gun?" for the man had seized it now.

"Hush!" hissed Yancey Battick. "I think I see a rat!"

CHAPTER III

INVENTOR'S LUCK

The thought had been impressed upon Hiram Strong's mind from the very first that there was something altogether wrong with Yancey Battick. His wild eyes and excited manner now convinced the visitor that this suspicion was correct. Battick was not altogether sane. And when he reached for that rock-salt loaded shotgun the visitor prepared to defend himself.

The muzzle of the gun swung toward Hiram. The latter slid out of his chair and darted sideways just as Battick rose up with the butt of the gun at his shoulder. The muzzle seemed closely following Hiram's movements.

Then the man's finger pressed the trigger and the gun roared. It seemed that the wind of the charge passed over Hiram's head.

"What under the sun are you doing?" demanded the youth, leaping up and facing the householder.

"What did you move for?" retorted Battick. "I might have got you instead of the rat."

"The rat?" repeated Hiram in some doubt.

Battick returned the smoking shotgun to its rack and crossed the room to the workbench. Under it, deep in the shadow of the corner, he found his game—a fat, gray rat, still kicking.

"Great Scott!" murmured the boy from the East, "it really was a rat."

"What did you think I would be shooting in this old house?" growled Battick. "It's rat-ridden. They give me no peace. They have cost me more—well, no use going into that," said the man, and so concluded.

But Hiram Strong was now immensely interested in this strange individual. His fright because of Mr. Battick's reckless use of his shotgun was soon over. The rats about this ancient cottage certainly were very bold. But there must be—there was—a particular reason why the man was afraid of the rats. This fear of which Hiram had first heard from Jason Oakley, the stationmaster, was not merely some idiosyncrasy of Battick's.

"Have you tried poison for the vermin?" Hiram demanded.

"I've tried everything," replied the man gruffly.

"What makes them so bold?"

"The place was overrun with them when I came on it four years ago. I can't keep anything in the barn. Why, they have eaten a good buggy harness on me! I have to keep my harnesses in my bedroom. I've got an alarm clock in there and it ticks so loud that it scares them off, I guess. And, then, I snore. That must keep the creatures on the move."

Hiram did not know whether the man was all together in earnest, or not; but he had to laugh at this last statement.

"It ain't no laughing matter," Yancey Battick said, wagging his head. "My old horse got a nail in his hoof and I greased it well. Hanged if the rascals didn't near eat him up in one night. If he hadn't kicked and snorted so and woke me up, I guess they would have had the most of him eaten before morning."

"But what brings them into the house—and so bold? You must be on the watch for them continually."

"I am. Jase Oakley is right. I am afraid of the things. I scarcely dare leave the house because of them—"

He halted. Hiram knew instinctively that the man thought he had said too much. He had verged on some secret, the mystery of which the youth had felt to be in the very air of the house since he had entered it. He saw that Battick was eyeing him again in his suspicious, if not ugly, way, so he hastily asked:

"Did you learn to shoot on the fly like that by shooting rats?"

"Oh, I knew how to use a gun before I came to Pringleton."

"You've got good eyesight. I did not see that rat at all."

"I saw the glint of his eyes under the bench." Battick was again giving his attention to the preparations for supper. "I've got so I am continually on the watch for the rascals."

And he did not dare leave the house because of them! Then, decided Hiram Strong, there was something in the house that he feared the rats would destroy.

Hiram looked under the odd box in the middle of the room at the little heap of grain that lay there. Wheat! A special kind of wheat! The seed-boxes on the bench told something. Hiram could guess more. But he said nothing at the moment. In fact Yancey Battick was scarcely a man to whom one would address a personal remark or ask a direct question about himself or his affairs.

Yancey Battick brought a small stand from one corner of the room and set it before the fire. He spread a clean, if coarse, cloth upon it, and then the tableware, such as a camper would use. The smoking food, together with a pot of coffee, came on the table, and Battick beckoned Hiram to draw up his chair.

"This is mighty good of you, Mr. Battick," the visitor said, "especially when I know you do not make a practice of harboring wayfarers."

"I hope I shall not be sorry for having befriended you," the man said gloomily.

"I assure you—"

"You couldn't assure me of anything," interrupted Battick. "I have had sufficient experience to make me a thorough pessimist. You look like a nice young fellow; but I shall not be surprised if I am, in the end, very sorry that I took you in."

"Even to save me from the clutches of Miss Delia Pringle?" the visitor suggested slyly.

There came a sudden twinkle into Yancey Battick's eye. Whether or not he was a monomaniac on some subject (and Hiram Strong was tempted to believe he was) it was evident that the man appreciated a joke. He nodded his appreciation of Hiram's words.

"That woman is a pest!" Battick said with vigor. "But I guess she is honest—wouldn't steal anything but an unsophisticated and helpless man-critter, I mean."

So it was stealing that he was afraid of! Rats are great thieves. Hiram guessed again—and believed he had hit the fundamental trouble with his odd host. Battick had originated, or developed, a new seed-wheat. He feared somebody would steal it from him, and the rats were doing so.

The rats were so troublesome that he had to keep the wheat in his living room. This table-looking thing was a box full of wheat. And because the rats were so bold he dared not leave the house. Even with all these precautions the thieving creatures were getting some of the wheat, as note that little pile of grain under the box on the floor.

The young fellow from Scoville was interested in more than one way. First of all, Battick himself aroused his curiosity. But that single kernel of wheat he had picked up interested Hiram Strong much more.

He had examined many samples of seed-wheat, but nothing that had ever looked like this large, plump grain with the tiny crimson stripe upon it This was indeed a distinct variety, and if its culture was possible on all wheat lands, and it milled all right, Hiram knew the strange man had the basis of a fortune—if he could put it over.

This section around Pringleton, as Hiram had learned from Mr. Bronson, was not particularly a wheat-growing country. And yet every farmer of any importance grew some wheat. If this box was full of grain the man had about eight bushels, if Hiram was any judge of bulk and measure. Sown carefully, this would be enough for five or six acres. Five or six acres of wheat is a very small wheat crop, but an excellent seed crop.

If Battick really had a new and good wheat, the crop from this amount of seed would pay him a good penny, if he could sell it to an honest seedsman. There was thus reason why he should be so afraid of thieves—and especially of the rats.

Under fortunate conditions, the increase of these few bushels of wheat would yield Battick a small fortune. Perhaps the man was by no means as crazy as he at first appeared. And it might be that he knew his neighbors, and had reason to suspect them of desiring to rob him of the fruits of his discovery.

The two finished supper and pushed back from the table. There was a sink in one corner of the room, and at this Battick quickly washed the cooking utensils and tableware, while Hiram dried them. They spoke of inconsequential things while they did this work Then Battick said:

"I wouldn't have the heart to turn you out on a night like this, even if it cleared off—which it isn't likely to do. I'll let you sleep in my bed and I'll bunk down here before the fire."

"Oh, no, Mr. Battick! I could not think of taking your bed," Hiram urged, but with a smile. "You have proved to me that you are a much better neighbor than you were quoted at; but there is no use in carrying the demonstration too far. I will sleep here before the fire and be very glad of the chance."

Yancey Battick flashed him another of those hard, suspicious glances. It was not difficult to read the man's mind now that Hiram had discovered, as he thought, the key to the mystery. Battick was suspicious of him yet. He said gruffly:

"If you remain here to-night, young man, you will sleep in my bed. And see that you do sleep, too, for although I snore, I'm easily roused, and I keep that gun right beside me."

Hiram could not help being somewhat exasperated by all this suspicion. He was glad enough of the shelter; but he did not think he looked so dishonest that his host had to guard himself with a shotgun.

"Look here, Mr. Battick," he said, rather tartly. "You're one of those cows that give a good pail of milk and then step in it. You give me supper and a bed, but distrust me. How do you know but you are entertaining an angel unawares?" and he ended by laughing a little to cover his vexation.

"That's all right, too," Battick replied. "I know all about those 'angels unaware.' I've had my experience with them, and I've had to run 'em off the place with my shotgun. Besides, I don't see any wings sprouting on you, Mr. Strong. I'll treat you just as good as you treat me. But as I tell 'em all, when you come to my front gate, call out; and if I don't answer, keep off."

"If you are a pessimist, Mr. Battick," Hiram said shortly, "I hope I'll never get to be one."

Suddenly the man flashed him a more earnest glance than before. His countenance became suffused with red.

"I hope you never will, young man," Battick said. "And never be an inventor. Immediately a man starts out to help his fellows, everybody's hand is turned against him. He is pariah—and likewise the prey of all those with thieving instincts. Consider Goodyear, what he suffered; and Elias Howe, and a horde of others.

"I came to Pringleton to escape people who wanted to rob me. Some of them had. But it seems people are the same in all localities. I have to watch, and threaten, and live like an outlaw to keep what is my own, Mr. Strong. You are young and have faith. Keep that faith in people if you can. But never be an inventor; for that is a crime that should be punished by being boiled in oil, or sawn asunder, or drawn and quartered, or some other middle-age device for making capital criminals suffer."

"That is dreadful!" exclaimed Hiram.

"Sounds pretty rough, I admit," Battick said, in his usual tone. "But believe me, I know whereof I speak. Now, come this way, Mr. Strong. I think you will be comfortable."

He lit a candle at the blaze on the hearth and led the way into his bedroom. It was a comfortable room, and Battick insisted upon putting clean sheets on the bed, which he aired before the fire, and left his guest finally with the word:

"Don't be frightened if you hear the gun in the night, Strong. I shall probably be only shooting at a rat."

Hiram had never been entertained in just this way before. He peered through the crack of the door and saw Yancey Battick loading the barrel of the shotgun that had previously been emptied. The young fellow went to bed finally feeling that he was in the midst of alarms.

CHAPTER IV

SUNNYSIDE

As so often happens after a hard storm, the weather cleared at daybreak and a patch of cold blue wintry sky met Hiram Strong's inquisitive gaze through the window as he rolled over in Yancey Battick's comfortable bed to look out.

He judged immediately that it would be a race between Boreas and Jack Frost as to which would gain the most advantage by the stopping of the rain. The sturdy wind would try to dry up the saturated earth before Jack Frost could get his fetters on the puddles and plowed ground.

From what he had read of conditions here about Pringleton, the winter had already been severe enough for all farming purposes. The grain was in good shape, the plowed ground had already been well frozen to the detriment of the bugs and worms, and the fruit trees were showing no signs of early sap-rising.

Another month of cold weather, some snow for a wheat-cover, and some strong March winds, would put the land in ideal shape for corn.

And Hiram Strong had been brought here to the Corn Belt of the Middle West for the express purpose of raising corn.

He was enthusiastic over the prospect. He had worked hard and intelligently on the little Eastern farm, and now had come his chance, not only to work out his present theories on a larger scale, but to experiment further and with greater facilities for carrying his plans through to successful completion. Yes, it was with eager anticipation and high hopes that he looked forward to the advancing spring.

Mr. Stephen Bronson had been growing bumper crops on all his farms through the Middle West, and especially those in the vicinity of Pringleton. Without doubt the big farm owner, having seen what Hiram Strong had accomplished on the Atterson Eighty, determined to learn if such methods of cultivation would pay on a larger acreage and under somewhat different conditions of climate and with different tools.

The young fellow quite realized that he was on trial only. He must make good within two years or he would be a failure in the eyes of such a sharp business man as Stephen Bronson.

Hiram, however, had no intention of being a failure; he had come here to Pringleton to win, just as he had gone upon the old Jeptha Atterson farm to win.

Hiram remained in bed on this morning until he heard a stir in the living room and the sizzling of bacon in the skillet. He had not been disturbed by Mr. Battick shooting at rats in the night (for which he was grateful), but he had not dared to venture into the outer room until he was sure his host was moving about.

Hiram brought his bag out of the bedroom already packed. Battick only grunted a "good morning," and was evidently in no more cheerful mood than on the evening before. Had he been invited to do so, the youth from the East would not have wished to prolong his stay with the man.

Battick, however, seemed still opposed to Hiram's getting into the clutches of Miss Delia Pringle. At breakfast he said:

"If you can stand to 'bach it,' as I do, Mr. Strong, you can make yourself comfortable up there at Sunnyside, and no thanks to anybody."

"But you say the house is burned down!"

"That's right. The last fellow who was on the farm, however, went in strong for poultry. Believed in fowls—it was a religion with him. And I take it a man has got to make 'em his religion really to get anything out of them. I never had the patience myself."

"I believe eighty per cent. of those who try hens for profit, fail; but the successful ones can easily enough point out the reasons for those failures," said Hiram.

"Well, maybe. However, that Brandenburg who lived at Sunnyside last fixed up a pretty good hen plant. After the fire he went in a hurry. Feared he would be blamed, perhaps. And I guess that Pringle woman would have done something to him if she could have got the law on him."

"Miss Delia Pringle?" Hiram asked, with some curiosity.

"Yes. Her folks owned pretty near all the land around here two or three generations ago. That's why it is called Pringleton. Sounds like a nursery rhyme. She sold Sunnyside to Stephen Bronson, same as she sold me this place."

"Indeed?"

"This was the old Pringle homestead. Built before the Flood, or thereabout," said Battick. "That is why it is rat-ridden. The rodents had it to themselves for years, while the farm lay idle. It had not been cropped to death by tenants; that is why I bought it. You will find part of Sunnyside in worse shape than this old place was. Miss Pringle had one tenant after another on the big farm, each one worse than the previous incumbent. I hope Stephen Bronson got it cheap enough."

"You intimated I might find some means of housekeeping up there, after all," said Hiram. "What did you mean?"

"That Brandenburg left his chicken plant just as it was. The end shed is tight and has a good stove in it and a bunk. He watched his incubators there. You get some bedclothes and some cooking utensils and you'll be fixed right," said Battick.

"Anything rather than give me up to the teeth and claws of Miss Pringle, is it?" asked Hiram, with a quiet chuckle.

"No laughing matter, young fellow," advised Battick, as the visitor prepared to depart. "I'll bet you she'll be over to see you before you are at Sunnyside twenty-four hours—unless she has a broken leg. Oh, I know her, Mr. Strong. I pretty near had to run her off this place with my gun."

"I hope not, Mr. Battick."

"Fact," said the man in a perfectly serious way. "As I tell you, this was the old Pringle place. She claimed she liked to come down here for old time's sake and sit under that buttonwood tree out there. She'd bring her sewing and stay all the afternoon and I had to dress up and make believe I was going to town to get rid of her."

"That was a good deal of a time-consumer," interrupted Hiram, his eyes dancing with his inward mirth.

"Then," pursued the harassed man, "folks riding by began to ask me if we were going to be married soon and whether I'd continue to live down here or go up to Miss Pringle's new house to live with her. It got right embarrassing for a modest man, for a fact!

"Besides," added Battick, "I didn't know but she was aiming to get me into court for breach of promise. Circumstantial evidence has hung many a man."

"I hope I shall have no similar trouble," Hiram replied, vastly amused.

He believed Battick, in spite of all his moodiness, and his fear of rats—and dislike for visitors—was a wit and worth cultivating. At least, he determined to learn more about that new wheat that the man was guarding so religiously.

In fact, Hiram had found a chance to pick up a pinch of the wheat corns from under the trough, and had the grain safely twisted up in a bit of paper in his pocket.

He knew better than to offer Mr. Battick anything like money in return for the queer hospitality the misanthrope had shown him. Hiram did, however, make one attempt to return something for the kindness.

"I see you have seed wheat in this box, Mr. Battick," he said. "If you wish to keep the rats out of it, I believe I can show you a wrinkle."

"You can?" rejoined Battick, watching him with keen suspicion again.

"You have a couple of old milk pans there and two wash basins. Invert a basin or a pan over each leg of that box and no rat can run up the leg and over the side of the box, or gnaw into it."

"I get you!" ejaculated Battick, seeing the point at once. "I believe that's a good idea, young fellow."

"I know it is," rejoined Hiram with confidence. "I built me a corncrib that way only last year. It surely gives Mr. Rat something new to think about."

He picked up his bag, shook hands with his odd host, and went out. It was a keen wind he faced as he started up the hill to Sunnyside Farm.

A jay winging its way from one wood to another, stopped upon a dead limb to stare curiously at the wayfarer. Then, with raucous cry, it disappeared in a piece of woodland that evidently belonged to the old farm that Yancey Battick had purchased from the terrible Miss Pringle. This windbreak divided the Battick place from Sunnyside.

While he was yet at some distance Hiram saw the burned ruins of the farmhouse on the hill and the barns and other outbuildings. All the arable land of Sunnyside seemed to lie on the south side of the road; and the slope of the fields was toward that same point of the compass.

The higher land on his right was heavily timbered clear to the summit of the hill. As he mounted the incline he obtained a pretty clear idea of what the acres he expected to farm looked like.

Hiram Strong was deeply interested in his calling. Every young fellow must, if he would get on in the world and really amount to anything. As he had told Yancey Battick the evening before, Hiram's father had been a good farmer, and he had not only given his son knowledge, but had instilled into his mind the principle of thoroughness, as well.

As Hiram looked, searching the fields to the far-distant line of the forest-bounded farm, he wondered what would be his fortune here. Would he be able to show a profit for Mr. Bronson on the ledger, as he had for Mother Atterson? As to his own contract, Hiram was on a straight salary, and whether he made little or much for his employer his own income would not be affected.

But money was not the only thing that Hiram Strong saw in the bargain. He was after a reputation. Moreover, he desired to learn something from his experience—whatever it might be—here at Sunnyside.

He reached the plain at the top of the rise at last. The outlook all about was promising, save in one direction where there was a piece of burned timber. The nearest house was a white painted cottage with green blinds on the other side of the road and a few rods beyond the burned timber lot.

"That must be Miss Pringle's," Hiram thought, and on the heels of this mental decision he beheld to his surprise a woman with a shawl thrown hastily over her head running out of this small dwelling and out of the yard, approaching the main gate of the Sunnyside place, evidently in a state of exaggerated excitement.

"Say, young man!" she shouted while still some distance away, "I want to know why you've kept this whole neighborhood in a stir-up all this blessed night? Where have you been? And you as dry as a bone right now!"

CHAPTER V

THE TERRIBLE MISS PRINGLE

The woman so excitedly approaching Sunnyside was a buxom person with every sign of an assertive and determined character. This first speech addressed to Hiram made him feel that he must somehow be in the wrong—that he had done something to shock Miss Pringle and the neighborhood in general.

Hiram took off his hat as Miss Pringle came near. But he did not offer his hand, for he was not at all sure that her greeting was intended to be a friendly one.

"I suppose you are Mr. Strong?" the woman gasped, rather out of breath when she arrived.

"Yes, ma'am," replied Hiram.

"Well, for the land's sake, where have you been?"

"I guess I don't understand you," he said. "Are you Miss Pringle?"

"That's who I am," she declared with emphasis. "And I heard all about you from Mr. Bronson. You were comin' to stay at my house last night and you didn't come. Were you told to come to me?"

"Not exactly. I was advised to try at your house for lodging—"

"Who by?" she flashed at him.

"By the stationmaster."

"That dumbhead! I might have known Jase Oakley would ball it all up. When Mr. Bronson 'phoned to me that he could not get over in the storm to meet you at the depot, I turned right around and 'phoned Jason to tell you that I would be on the lookout for you. Didn't he tell you that, Mr. Strong?"

"Not in just that way," replied Hiram.

"Well, for the land's sake, where did you stop? When you didn't come along at the proper time after the train got in last evening I began calling folks on the line. I called everybody that had a 'phone, and none of 'em had seen you. It was so rough a night—"

Hiram saw at once that the terrible Miss Pringle was, after all, a kindly soul. It could not be for the mere possession of a "male creature," sight unseen, that she had taken all this trouble to locate him, a stranger in Pringleton.

"You were most kind, Miss Pringle," he said quickly. "I am sorry to have caused you any disturbance of mind."

"But where did you stay?" insisted the woman, eyeing Hiram with two very sharp brown eyes.

It was evident that very little of importance went on in Miss Delia Pringle's neighborhood that she did not see. She was kindly of disposition as well as shrewd, Mr. Yancey Battick's opinion to the contrary notwithstanding. Hiram was not at all afraid of her when he looked into her plump and rosy face.

"I tell you," he said, smiling covertly, for he suspected from what the stationmaster had said how the majority of the neighbors looked upon Yancey Battick, "a heavy shower caught me and I made for the nearest house."

"And whose was that, for the land's sake?" was the instant demand.

"Mr. Battick's," Hiram said demurely.

"Yancey Battick?" almost shrieked Miss Pringle. "Why, he's crazy!"

"I shouldn't wonder if he is a little," admitted Hiram. "But I am sure he is harmless."

"I don't know about that," she demurred. "He's altogether too quick to use a gun. A poor tramp came past here last summer—he never would have stopped, I guess, only he was out of breath completely—and Battick had blown his coat-tails off with a charge of rock-salt just because the hobo had gone into the yard of the old house and around to the well. That's the coldest water anywhere in Pringleton; but nobody ever gets a drink of it but Yancey Battick now."

"I suppose he's paid for it, Miss Pringle?" said Hiram quietly.

"I don't know that he has," was her quick reply. "At least, the neighbors blame me for selling the old place to such a man. They know I didn't need the money. And Yancey Battick certainly ain't what you can call with truth a good neighbor. We count on getting good neighbors into the Pringleton district if we can. That is why I was so glad to sell Sunnyside to Mr. Bronson.

"And do you really mean to tell me that you spent the night with Mr. Battick?" she added.

"And he did not eat me up," laughed Hiram.

"Well! All I've got to say, young man, is that you're a regular Daniel. You'd find it cozy and comfortable, I guess, in a lion's den. Never heard of anybody's even getting inside of the old house before since Battick got into it. He did let you inside, didn't he?"

"I don't look as though I had stayed out on that leaky old porch of his, do I?" asked Hiram, still much amused.

"You're as dry as a bone, as I said before."

"Not only did he entertain me for supper and breakfast, but he gave me his own bed in which to sleep."

"For the land's sake!" Miss Pringle shook her head in wonder. Then her brown eyes suddenly snapped. All the inquisitiveness in the woman's nature came to the surface; perhaps it was her single sin. "What's he got in that house he's so afraid the neighbors might see, Mr. Strong?"

"I did not see anything particularly mysterious—nothing at all," Hiram assured her.

"Not a thing? Wasn't he trying to hide anything from you? Didn't he seem afraid of anything?"

"He certainly has a great fear of rats," Hiram admitted, answering her second query but avoiding the first. "And he has good reason to. He shot a big fellow right there in the house while we sat before the fire."

"You don't say!"

"If it was me I'd get me a weasel and turn him loose in the house and then pour cement and broken glass in the rat holes."

"He knew the rats were there when he bought the old homestead," declared Miss Pringle defensively.

"And I guess he has a right to shoot them if he wishes to," laughed Hiram.

"But he is too promiscuous with his shotgun," declared the woman, shaking her head. "Well, now, Mr. Strong, I'm sorry you did not reach my house. I—and Abigail Wentworth who lives with me—would have been glad to put you up. But I am glad you made out as well as you did at Mr. Battick's. I'm glad to know he's not so bad as we all thought him."

"Perhaps the neighbors haven't approached him just right," Hiram suggested. "He wishes to be let alone."

"Then there is something wrong with him," Miss Pringle declared. "Something that he's ashamed of."

"You are jumping at a conclusion there, that may not be correct," Hiram said. "At any rate I saw nothing really wrong with Mr. Battick. And I feel grateful for his hospitality."

"Well, now, Mr. Strong," the woman said quickly, "you bring your bag right over to the house and stop with me till Mr. Bronson can make other arrangements for you."

"You are more than kind," Hiram told her. "But I understand that I may be able to go to housekeeping on my own account in one of the sheds—where the former tenant of the farm ran his incubators and brooders."

"That Jim Brandenburg! He made me a lot of trouble. But he did have ideas about hens. I suppose that shed could be made comfortable for you if Mr. Bronson wants you right on the place."

"I will try 'baching it,' Miss Pringle," Hiram said with firmness.

"Well, just as you say. But I want you to come over to-day to dinner. You ain't prepared to go right to housekeeping, I'm sure."

"Thank you; I will certainly come," Hiram assured her.

"Do so," Miss Pringle said warmly, as she turned away. "Abigail will blow the horn when it's ready."

He thanked her again. The terrible Miss Pringle did not prove to be so very formidable after all. It was evident that Battick had gained just as wrong an idea about his neighbors as the neighbors had about him.