Dry Divide (5 page)

I really did the horses more harm than if I'd kept my head and held my tongue. For three or four minutes Hudson took his anger at me out on them, lashing them, driving them ahead a few feet, then yanking them to a stop. Shouting, swearing, whipping, and yanking the jerk lines, he put the horses through a drill until they could make a square turn without moving the machine either forward or back. When, at last, he was satisfied with the turns, he threw the machine out of gear, drove toward the roadway, and motioned for Judy to follow with the front barge in the waiting line. She didn't turn her head toward me as she passed, but she did turn her eyes, and her voice was barely loud enough for me to hear when she said, “You watch out for him, Bud. He hates you enough a'ready.”

“I'll watch him,” I told her just as quietly, then hopped onto Old Bill's barge as it passed. His team was rearing and dancing, but he seemed to pay no attention to their plunging. The first thing I noticed was his hands. He held the reins just firmly enough to keep a steady, restraining pressure on the bit, but not enough to anger or annoy the broncs. I needed no one to tell me that he was an expert horseman, one who had been handling high-strung horses for more years than I'd lived, so I asked, “Where did you develop those rein hands, Bill?”

“Exercisin' trotters,” he told me. “Spent all my life around the race tracks and stables, but work's been slack since the war. An old rooster like me has to take any job he can get.”

Old Bill's handling of his horses not only quieted them, but quieted the anger that was still boiling inside me. I paid no more attention to Hudson until I heard him yell, “Keep your head about you and watch what you're doin'! Back that team up and pull in where you belong!”

Hudson had turned the header so that it faced the edge of the wheat field, and Judy had turned her barge to bring it under the conveyor elevator. I looked up just in time to see Gus and Lars start across the floor of the barge toward Hudson, pitchforks in hand. Neither of them made a sound, but there was something in the way they moved that made me catch my breath. I think it made Hudson catch his, too. His whip lashed out across his horses' backs, and they leaped into their collars, sending the header ripping into the wheat field with a rush.

Hudson grabbed frantically for the boom, the gear lever, and the pulley ropes. But the horses had started with such a rush that the header was dragged more than a hundred feet, ripping the dead-ripe grain to the ground, before he could set the machinery in motion and lower the elevator enough that the conveyor belt could carry the cut grain up into the barge. Long before it got there Judy had the barge in position to catch it, but the only way she could keep it there was by beating the slow old mares with the rein ends, forcing them into a lumbering trot.

Old Bill turned in behind the header, and I became convinced that Hudson was actually insane or on the verge of insanity. With a worn-out old header, a girl driving the barge, and six frightened mustangs to handle, he kept his whip flailing and his horses at as near a trot as they could pull the heavy machine. The swath he cut through that field was far from straight, but only a man with tremendous strength could have held any line at all. Wheat poured off the end of the conveyor belt like water rushing through a floodgate, and to keep the barge under the weaving stream, Judy had to drive with her head turned back, flogging the old mares and pulling them from side to side. By the time Hudson had cut a swath a quarter-mile into the field the barge was heaped to overflowing. He pulled his horses to a stop, made a right angle turn, and shouted, “Next barge! Stackyard here!”

I jumped off Bill's barge, and he brought it squarely under the elevator just as Hudson finished his turn. His coming in so smoothly seemed to anger Hudson. He lashed his horses and sent the header into the new swath like a wriggling snake, crashing the elevator against the side of the barge, then veering it out far enough to throw the cut grain onto the ground. And with each erratic veer he bawled at Bill to watch what he was doing and keep the barge under the elevator.

I never saw any man take the play away from another so quickly and completely. Old Bill never once looked back at the crazily lurching elevator, or paid the slightest attention to Hudson, but set a course as straight as a taut string, forcing Hudson to fight the rudder and quit flogging his horses in order to keep the stream of wheat flowing into the barge. He cut three short swaths down the field and back to make room for the stackyard, then yelled for Doc's barge—and my troubles began.

With Doc's barge under the elevator, Hudson kept straight on toward the far end of the field, a quarter-mile away, and again whipped his horses nearly to a trot. Gus and Lars were evidently afraid Judy would have trouble in catching up to take her turn, and they nearly buried me. Plunging their forks nearly to the floor boards, they heaved, and rolled about half the load off over the low side of the barge. Before I could more than get my fork into it, they'd sent the other half of the load tumbling down, burying me to the waist. They didn't bother to clean out the barge, but scooped off the bulk of what was left with a few swipes of their forks, and before I could paw my way out of the mess Judy had larruped the old mares into a trot and was halfway out of the stackyard.

Fortunately, Jaikus and Paco weren't as strong as Gus and Lars, but they scooped wheat out of there fast enough that I couldn't do much beside dodge the forkfuls. Then Old Bill drove away at a trot, and across the quarter-mile-square field I could see Judy pulling her barge in beside the header while Doc turned back with a heaping load.

It was then I discovered that I didn't know any more about stacking wheat than a goose knows about knitting mittens. It didn't handle like hay, wouldn't bind together in good forkfuls, and was as slippery as wet spaghetti. I had to get the heap spread out into some semblance of a stack before any more was piled onto it, and the only way I could think of doing it was by getting on top and scooping as fast and far as I could in both directions. I was so winded I couldn't speak when Doc pulled his load alongside, and my stack looked like something that had been left over from a hurricane. There were only two things that saved me: Doc and the greenness of Edgar and Everett.

The boys held their pitchforks as if they were long-handled soup spoons, and with each dab they made at the load they pushed off about as much wheat as a fellow could stuff in his hat. I didn't stop to look up at them, but kept flailing away with my own fork until Doc caught my eye and motioned me to him. “You're going at it all wrong, Bud,” he told me quietly. “I'd trade jobs with you only I got my belly full of wheat stacking when I was a kid, and promised myself I'd never do another day's work that would put callouses on my hands. Don't try to pitch it like hay. Turn your fork over and use it like you were sweeping deep sand with a broom. Then push it to the outside, but don't try to tread too close to the edge; it would slip out like hot mush. I'll let you know how your sides are building; don't worry too much about 'em. Make your stack about thirty feet long and fifteen wide, and let it round up a little in the middle. Now take it easy; there's no sense in killing yourself off for this wild man. That's what he's trying to do to the whole bunch of us, horses and all. He's taking twice as much straw as there's any need for, just to pour the work onto us.”

I ripped into the heap and dragged wheat, as Doc told me where to push it and how to handle it. By the time Judy turned into the yard with her load I had the heap squared out enough that it looked like the beginning of a stack, but the boys weren't half finished with their unloading. As Judy pulled in behind Doc's barge, I heard Hudson yell, “Get that barge unloaded and back here! Driver, give them kids a hand!”

I'd been too busy to pay any attention to Hudson, but had an idea he was still at the far end of the field, and was surprised to hear his voice so plainly. When I looked up I found that he had nearly circled the field. The header was standing no more than a couple of hundred yards away, and Old Bill was pulling away from it with his barge loaded high. I'd barely glanced up when Doc shouted back, “No business! I hired out as a driver!”

Doc had no sooner refused than Hudson shouted, “One of you Swedes trade places with one of them kids! I don't aim to pay for no time when this header ain't rollin'!”

For maybe ten seconds Gus and Lars mumbled to each other, then started to climb down from the barge, and Lars told Judy, “Ve kvit.”

She caught her breath sharply as he said it, and when I looked up two big tears were brimming in her eyes. I knew well enough why they were there, and I'd promised her I'd do everything I could to keep the crew on the job, so I asked Gus and Lars to wait a minute, then went to the barge. I told them in the simplest words I could find that they could have my day's pay if they'd stay and each work with one of the boys. They mumbled a few more words in Swedish, then Lars nodded and went to climb on Doc's barge.

The rest of the forenoon was a series of mad rushes and stops. Hudson drove at the job as if he were trying to harvest the whole two sections in a single day, but the conveyor belts on the header, probably eight or ten years old, couldn't stand the strain. With the crop having sprung from volunteer seeding, it wasn't evenly spread over the land. In some places it was thin, but in others thick and rank. Any reasonable man would have kept his horses at a slow walk, and would have raised or lowered his cutter bar so as to take only the heads and three or four inches of straw, but Hudson set his cutter low enough to catch the shortest heads and left it there, putting a terrific strain on the horses and the worn-out old header. Half a dozen times the conveyor belt broke from being overloaded, and each time it took Hudson nearly half an hour to repair it.

The breakdowns were lifesavers for the horses and me, for they gave me time to square my stack into shape, but they were rough on Edgar and Everett. They were the only ones Hudson dared vent his anger on, and from clear across the field I could hear him yelling and swearing at them. I have an idea they had promised each other to finish out the day in spite of anything, but if so Everett broke his promise. At about eleven o'clock, he blew sky high, jumped off the barge with his pitchfork held in both hands, and for a second or two I thought he was going to rush Hudson with it, but he stopped just beyond reach of the whip, shouting that they'd quit and demanded their wages right then. Hudson roared back that they hadn't earned the grub they'd eaten, then whipped up his horses and drove on.

The boys followed the header for a few yards, shouting that they'd have their attorney take care of Hudson, then they gave up and limped toward the house. Just before we knocked off for noon I saw them hobbling toward the main road, carrying their suitcases and looking as dejected as any pair of boys I'd ever seen. Their leaving was more or less a relief to the rest of us. As far as Gus and Lars were concerned, they'd only been in the way, and as soon as they were gone Hudson cooled down a little, probably convinced that Gus and Lars would go right on doing double work, and that he'd saved himself fourteen dollars a day. Then too, as the horses began to tire he couldn't keep them at so fast a pace, so the header gave less trouble.

By noon the temperature was above 110°, I was sweating so much that the wheat beards stuck to my back and belly like a swarm of stinging mosquitoes, and the blisters on both hands had broken. Each time Doc came in with a load he scolded at me for going at my job too hard, and told me the easier ways to do it, but I couldn't pick up the knack well enough to find a minute's rest without letting my stack get out of shape. Then too, I'd run out of breakfast long before Hudson shouted, “Grub!” from the far end of the field.

I rode in from the stack with Judy and Gus, and when we reached the corral Hudson was nowhere in sight. He'd left the header in the middle of the yard, and Paco was unhooking the trace chains. Doc and Bill were unhitching their own teams, and Jaikus was pitching a little dab of wheat into the corral from one of the barges. Judy would have gone right to work at unhitching her team, but I told her to run along, and Gus did the unhitching while I helped Paco with the header teams. All the horses were dripping with sweat, so we didn't dare let them have much water, but gave each one a dozen swallows or so before putting them into the corral to make out a meal on that dry, bearded wheat straw. When we stripped off their bridles no one would have guessed they were the same broncos we'd harnessed that morning. They were so worked-down and starved that all the fight had gone out of them.

The children were playing near the windmill when we left the corral to wash up for dinner. They stood watching us until we were halfway to them—half curious, half frightened, like four little antelopes—then ran away behind the house. We'd washed and were just starting for the kitchen when Hudson came out. He avoided looking our way, and hurried off toward the header.

Dinner was on the table when we went in—exactly the same things we'd had for supper and breakfast—and Judy was clearing away Hudson's dirty dishes. She looked up and smiled, started to say something, then stopped with her lips pinched tightly together as if she were having to hold it back. After she'd put on a clean plate and cup she sat down and helped herself to a potato, a biscuit, and some gravy, but she just shook her head when I passed her the platter of boar pork. The other fellows ate it for the same reason I did, but there was hardly a word said during the meal.

We stuffed in as much of the nauseating grub as we could stomach, left the table, and went out to sit in the narrow strip of shade on the north side of the house, glad of the half hour's rest before it would be time to go back to the field. Hudson was at the header, hammering rivets into the spliced old conveyor belt, and barely let us sit down before he yelled, “Get them horses hitched up! What you loafin' there fore? I've lost time enough a'ready!”