CHAPTER XV

I SWEAR, I’d enjoy firing his barn!” Dick fumed, as the two friends walked on through the beating sun. “I don’t think I can stand much more of it, Fred. I’m all gone inside. The lining of my stomach has folded over.” They were passing the corner of a field where, in the distance, they could see two men at work digging ditches to drain the boggy land, and they paused again to rest under the shade of a tree.

“I guess they will stop soon and go home to a square meal,” Dick said, bitterly; and then his roving glance fixed itself on a spot in the corner of the snake-fence near by.

“By George!” he exclaimed, exultantly, “we are in luck! Gee, what a pick-up!”

“What is it, now?” Walton asked. But the boy was bounding away toward the fence. “You wait and see—gee, what luck!”

Walton stood and watched him as he climbed over the fence, dived into the thick underbrush, and reappeared with a covered tin pail in his hands. As he came back he unfastened the lid and laughed loud and long. “Full to the brim!” he chuckled. “Meat, bread, pie, and a bottle of fresh milk. We can leg it along the road a piece and sit down to it, or stow it away as we walk. My dinner-bell’s rung, old man.”

“Put it back, Dick! Go put it back!” Fred said, firmly, his eyes averted.

The boy stared, a blended expression of surprise and keen disappointment capturing his features.

“Do you really mean it, Fred?” he asked, his lip falling, the pail hanging motionless at his side.

“Yes, it is not ours,” the other said. “Put it back before they see you, and then I’ll—I’ll try to explain what I mean.”

The boy swore under his breath, and for a moment he stood gloweringly sullen, but at the third command of his companion he retreated to the fence and dropped the pail into its place. Then he came back, his head hanging, his face still dark with disappointment.

“Huh!” he grunted, and started on without waiting to see if Fred was ready to go. Walton followed, and presently caught up with him.

“I’m not a preacher, Dick,” he began, with a forced laugh, which was intended as an opening wedge to the boy’s displeasure, “I’m not one bit better than you are. I’ve stolen a farmer’s watermelons by the light of the moon, and climbed his June apple-trees, and filled my pocket with his prize fruit, and heartily enjoyed it; but somehow I feel differently now. Dick. I’m older than you are, and reckless living has got me down and stamped all hope out of me. I’m fighting for my life. I’m swimming in a strange, swift stream, and my strength is almost gone, but I have grasped at a straw; it may hold me up, it may not; but I hope it will. That straw is the determination to live right—absolutely right—from now on, no matter what it costs. I’ve done great wrong, and I’m sick with the very thought of it. I want to try to do what is right, and if I could influence you to feel as I feel about these things, I’d like it mightily; it would strengthen me in my course. Two can succeed better, even at a thing like that, than one.”

“But I’m starving!” the boy whimpered. “The world wasn’t made for anybody to starve in. The birds up there in the trees don’t starve, and God gave them as good right to live as you or me. Huh! when that beefy chump back there sows his wheat they watch him with their keen eyes from their nests in the trees, and when his hulking back is turned they chirp with glee and pounce down on his seed and take it and flutter away with it in the sunshine.”

“Dick, you are a bloody anarchist!” Walton laughed gently as he placed his hand affectionately on the boy’s shoulder.

“I don’t know whether I am or not,” Warren retorted, still ruffled. “But the blamed bucket of grub may stay where it is. I wanted it for your sake as much as mine, but I sha’n’t ask you to sit down to other men’s dinner if you are going to ask the blessing over it. But you are too dang particular. At least, I’ve got as much right to the stuff as they have, for they can go home and get more, and I can’t.”

“That is one way to look at it,” Walton said, quietly, “and I thought as you do once, but I don’t now.” After this they trudged along for several minutes in silence. The boy did not raise his eyes from the dusty ground, but he put his hand on Walton’s arm, and there was a catch in his young throat as he said:

“Fred, somehow you make me think of my mother, When she was alive she was always wanting me to be good. She used to talk to me when I was a little tiny fellow. It was always that one thing over and over: ‘My little boy is not going to be a bad man when he grows up, is he?’ That’s what she said time after time, and in a thousand ways she tried to impress it on me. She worried a lot about me just before she died. You see, my father—well, he didn’t care what became of me, or her, either. He drank like a fish, and went with idle men about the loafing-places—in fact, he was shot and killed in a bar-room. I’ve tried pretty hard to have faith in what my mother used to say about God’s mercy and all that stuff, but, Fred, God never answered her prayers to look after me. If I haven’t had to go it blind, I don’t want a cent. Selling papers on the street at night till nearly morning, sometimes sleeping in a stairway, outhouse, or stable. Then I was a messenger boy, for a little better wages, in a dead boy’s uniform, and finally became a tramp telegraph operator. But, Fred, you are true blue. I don’t want a better pal. The way you yanked out that watch and offered it to keep me out of jail when it was the last thing you had in your pocket—well, you can count on me, that’s all. I won’t try to stuff another man’s grub down your throat, either.”

A man was coming toward them on horseback, and as he drew near he reined in and leaned forward on the neck of his horse. “Gentleman,” he began, as he pulled at his scraggy beard and kicked his feet more firmly into his wooden stirrups, “I don’t know whether you fellows are interested in the like or not, but I’m riding round here and yon trying to drum up hands to gather and crate and ship my crop of early peaches. There is such a demand for labor of that sort all through the peach section that we are powerful short on help.”

The two pedestrians exchanged eager glances.

“Where is your place?” Fred asked.

“Why, it’s a few miles to the right, over them hills,” the rider said. “It’s the Womack farm. That’s my name. I’ve got a hundred acres of dandy Elbertas, and they are ripening as fast as chickens in a hatching-machine. They are a thing that has to be picked an’ got off in cold-storage cars at exactly the right minute or they ain’t worth the nails in the crates when they get to market. They say if all us early fellows can manage to hit New York just right this year, we’ll get three dollars a crate, an’ that will pay big, as times are now.”

“How far is it to your place?” Walton asked.

“Why, it’s a little better than seven mile—on a beeline; but I reckon by the nighest road it’s a matter of ten or thereabouts. You fellers look a little mite tired, but by stiff walking you could get there by sundown. You can make good wages in a pinch like this if you will buck down to it—I calculate three plunks a day for each of you.”

“And how long would the work last?” inquired Fred, as he and Warren looked at each other, their pulses quickening, their eyes beginning to glow.

“Well, I could hold you down for two weeks at least, for mine don’t all ripen at once; but after you was through on my land you could go farther north and get more to do.”

“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.”

Crawling through the bars, they went to the house. There was no light in the front part, but a yellow glow shone from a window against the dark foliage of the trees in the rear, and thither the wanderers directed their lagging steps. Looking in at the open door of the kitchen, they saw the portly form of the farmer’s wife at a table washing dishes in the light of a smoking brass lamp which had no chimney.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, as her kindly eyes fell on them. “Not more pickers, surely?”

“That’s what we are, and as good as you ever laid eyes on,” Dick told her. “Mr. Womack said you’d give us something to eat. We haven’t had a bite since yesterday.”

“Well!” The woman drew her hands from the big dish-pan and dried them on her apron as she looked them over doubtfully. “Pete Womack goes crazy every year at picking-time. He’s filled the house, barn, and yard with hooting and singing gals and boys, and furnished nobody to wait on ‘em but me. The gals all say they are too fagged out at night to lay their hands to cooking or dish-washing, and yet, if you’ll just listen and watch, you’ll see that they are all able to gallivant with the men about the yard. Six couples met here for the first time last summer and got married. They say there’s some progress being made right now between three or four, an’ picking’s just set in. I tell Pete he ought to start a marrying-agency and take out a license to preach, so he can tie ‘em on the spot and collect two fees. Some of ‘em are respectable and mean all right, but Pete is so anxious to get his crop off on time that he’s got women in that bunch that—to look at ‘em—Well, it ain’t any of my business! I ain’t set up as a judge, and as the saying is, I won’t throw no stones. But you say you are hungry, and I don’t see how I could give you a thing hot at this time of night. My fires are out, and—”

“Hot!” Dick shouted. “Why, I’ve got such a big storage capacity that I’d be afraid to take it hot. It might generate steam and explode.”

The woman laughed. “Well, you must be hungry,” she said. “Come on in the dining-room and I’ll lay it out in a minute. There is plenty of cold stuff. I cook a lot ahead. You have to feed pickers like kings or they won’t stay. It won’t take long to heat the coffee. But I reckon you want to wash and wipe. You’ll find pans and water on the shelf in the entry, and a clean towel on the roller. I’ll be ready when you are.”

“I’ll see about that, old lady,” Dick challenged her, as he made a dash for the near-by water-shelf.

Two minutes later the two wanderers sat down at a long, improvised table, made of unplaned planks, in the dining-room. In the light of a guttering home-made tallow dip the farmer’s wife spread before them the best meal that famished men ever feasted on. They saw roast chicken with dressing, fried chicken with cream gravy, country-smoked ham in a great platter of eggs; butter, hard and cold, from the spring-house; great, snow-capped pound-cakes, biscuits, apple-sauce, jellies, jams, cold buttermilk, and hot coffee.

“I don’t know where I’m going to bunk you boys,” Mrs. Womack said, in a motherly tone, as she stood behind their chairs, and, with unsuppressed delight, watched them eat. “The women and gals have got every bed in the house; and every spot on the floor, even to the kitchen, has been staked off by the men.”

“What’s the matter with the barn?” Dick mumbled, with his mouth full. “I wouldn’t want a better place this time of year than a sweet-smelling bed of fresh hay or fodder.”

“There’s plenty of room in the loft down there,” the woman replied; “but somehow I hate to see nice-looking young men like you put in a place like that.”

“It will do very well,” Fred assured her. “In fact, we would rather like it.”

“Well, a little later, if you decide to stay, I may fix you a place in the house,” the woman said; “but you got in too late to-night.”

“I’m dead tired and sleepy, Fred,” Dick said, when they had left the table. “Let’s turn in.”

Directed by Mrs. Womack, they went down to the barn, and from the big cattle-room on the ground they climbed a ladder to the loft above. A startled hen flew from her nest with a loud cackling as they crawled through the hay and husks and leaves of corn to a square, shutterless door, through which the hay was loaded to wagons below. They threw off their coats and vests, and made pillows of them; then took off their shoes, and lay down and stretched out their tired limbs.

Through the doorway they saw the fathomless sky filled with mysterious stars. The chirping of some chickens, as they jostled one another on the roost below, came up to them; the champing of the teeth of a horse, as he gnawed his wooden trough; the snarling of a tree-frog; the far-off and dismal howling of a dog, and—they were asleep.