The Unplowed Sky Page 14

  “Oh, it’s a good enough way of getting the belt off the flywheel and it’s kind of fun—for them as thinks it is. There! Belt dropped on his head. Generally does.”

  Hallie watched with misgiving as two men carried the belt to the belt reel in front of the separator. Surely Rory wouldn’t expect her to fit that long, heavy weight of leather on the big flywheel! But somehow, whatever was expected, she would have to do it. To show Garth.

  And Meg as well. Hallie was convinced that wooing Meg would earn only contempt. If she could win the girl’s respect, liking might follow. Even if it didn’t, there had to be respect. Since Meg took Jackie swimming, she had become his “hero,” special because she was nearer to his age than the grown-ups and yet did a grown-up job. After all, he didn’t know Hallie very well, and she was too busy to spend any real time with him except on Sundays. If he spent most of that day with Meg—

  A twisting pang tightened Hallie’s insides. It would only be natural if Jackie came to worship Meg, who could be both playmate and protector. Without trying, just by her attitude, Meg could influence Jackie against his sister.

  It’s not fair, Hallie thought again. Raford and probably Garth and who knows who else think Jackie’s mine. It’s not his fault. Not his fault I have to make us a living and can’t pay lots of attention to him. But it hurts for him to think Meg’s wonderful when she’s such a nasty little beast to me.

  So drive the engine. Make him think you’re wonderful, too.

  As soon as lunch was over, Rory opened the dampers and shoveled in an even layer of coal. The steam was quickly up to operating pressure. “It’s all yours!” Rory shouted. “Steer over in front of the separator, and then haul it between the next stacks.”

  “There isn’t room!” The giant stacks loomed sixteen feet high, fifty feet long, and twenty feet wide. The passage between these straw mountains was no more than eight feet, and the engine measured nine and a half feet from one huge front wheel to the other.

  “Just keep to the middle. Of course you’ll close the ash pan dampers while steering through the stacks. Don’t want any sparks landing in the wheat.”

  “Oh, heavens, no!” Hallie spoke through her teeth. “Let’s not do anything dangerous—just bring a white-hot fire through two straw stacks!”

  “I’ve seen some fires, but none that started that way,” Rory allowed cheerfully. “Hey, that’s great! You’re right in line with the separator.”

  Garth and Baldy swiftly hooked the separator to the engine. All the crew was watching, but Garth’s and Meg’s intent faces blurred the others. “Check that water glass,” cautioned Rory.

  Hallie did and saw the level showed that the water was only an inch above the crown sheet. Calling on her memory, she opened the steam valve on the injector and throttled so that water wouldn’t go out the overflow. When the water glass showed almost half full, she shut off the injector.

  As the engine crept toward the stacks, sweat dripped from her eyebrows and beaded on her chin. Under the slat bonnet, her hair felt plastered to her scalp. Her gloved hands fumbled as she closed the ash-pan dampers on the firebox. She gritted her teeth, fought the urge to duck and close her eyes, and sent the huge lugged wheels ramming between the stacks.

  The wheels knocked loose masses of straw. Some fell to the ground, but other clumps came within inches of the firebox. It seemed an eternity before the feeder was even with the end of the stacks and Garth signaled for her to stop.

  “Wasn’t that fun?” Rory yelled.

  Hallie couldn’t answer. She hadn’t knocked down the stacks or started a blaze, but only half the job of making a set was done. Steering away from the unhitched separator, she circled back to face it, swung too wide, and had to reverse and cut in sharper.

  On the second try, she lined the engine up with the already leveled separator. Jim spread a tarp under the cylinder to catch and save the shattered grain. Henry and Rich pulled the extension feeder into place and got it ready. Rusty and Luke stretched the belt from the drive pulley of the separator, and Garth smeared it with his own belt dressing; pine tar mixed with linseed oil.

  “Let’s belt up,” Rory called.

  Hallie sent the engine crawling toward the belt as Rusty and Luke came forward. Rory tossed down the chocking block and Baldy wedged it in front of the drive wheel to keep the engine from moving forward.

  “Get out there on the drive wheel,” Rory directed. “Take hold of the outside of the belt with your right hand. Hang onto the brace support of the cab with your left hand and put the belt in place on the flywheel. Good! Now reverse real slow and easy so the belt will wrap itself around the wheel.”

  Hallie obeyed. Would the belt slip? Would it break? To her boundless relief, the canvas belt, guided by Luke and Rusty, tightened.

  “Perfect! Stop!” Rory knew how nervous she had been. His eyes were admiring. “You lined the flywheel straight as could be with the separator pulley. Not only are you the prettiest engineer from Canada to Texas, you can be a darned good one!”

  He gave her a hand down as Baldy blocked an engine wheel. The crew cheered lustily. Except for Garth and Meg. Garth raised the blower tube and quickly turned two crank wheels to swing it to the rear of the engine. The pitchers selected their pitchforks—each had a favorite to use through the season—and made running jumps at the stacks, using pitchforks to work their way up. Luke bounded up and stretched down his pitchfork handle to Rusty. The heaviest, oldest man on the crew, Rusty was a powerhouse on top of the stack, but it wasn’t easy for him to get there.

  Rory gave two long toots and pulled back on the throttle. The first grain spikes landed on the feeder. Chaff flew from the cylinder. Straw belched from the blower to begin a new mountain. Grain poured into the wagon Mike Donnelly would drive to his granary. Hallie walked to the shack, stripping off her gloves.

  She had done it! Hauled the separator between the stacks, lined the engine up with the separator, and actually helped belt up! Of course she didn’t know how to fire the engine or clean the flues or keep the steam at the right pressure. There was much she didn’t know and would probably never learn.

  But she could drive the engine; she could make a set. She was surprised at herself, and proud, no matter what Garth thought. Bridget and Kathleen, equipped with apples and oatmeal cookies, had already come to play with Jackie.

  Blue eyes admiring, Kathleen said, “Mama drives the grain wagon. But she can’t drive a steam engine. I don’t even think my daddy can.”

  “They could if they needed to,” Hallie said, but her heart swelled at the wondering pride in Jackie’s face.

  “You helped put on that big old long belt, Hallie! You drove the engine! Shaft says the engine man is the boss of the outfit!”

  She gave him a hug. “I’m not the engineer, honey. And I’m sure not the boss!”

  “Can I drive the engine when I get big?”

  “I don’t know about this engine but if you want to be an engineer, there’s nothing to stop you.”

  “I’m going to have my own engine. And a separator! And Shaft will cook for us! He said he would.”

  “Well, then, all you have to do is grow up.” Hallie took off her overalls and started cleaning husks and silk off the corn Mike Donnelly had dropped off that morning.

  “Hallie, you done real good,” Shaft said, putting six loaves of bread in the oven.

  “Garth thinks it’s all foolishness.”

  “Then he’s a fool! When you stop to think about it, outside of driving the water or coal wagons, running the engine is the one threshing job a boy or woman can do. It takes a lot of strength to pitch spikes or bundles. I won’t say a woman couldn’t learn how to run the separator, but it’s a job for an expert. Get someone on the separator who doesn’t know what they’re doing, and you wind up with grain in the straw stack. If Rory got hurt or sick, it could come in real handy for you to drive and help make a set.” Shaft grinned at her. “So you just keep practicin’. One of these days old Garth may bl
ess his stars you did.”

  “I hope so,” Hallie said. “I don’t want Rory to get sick, but I certainly hope his brother has to eat a good big wedge of humble pie.”

  “I guarantee he will. Later or sooner. Say, Hallie, do you know how to make corn fritters? They’d sure taste good with ham.”

  IX

  Jackie patted his tire swing goodbye and let Shaft boost him up on the tank wagon. Rusty had yielded his place in Jim’s flivver to Hallie, so he climbed onto the separator with Garth. Rory gave the two short and two long whistles that signaled they were moving on.

  The Donnellys waved farewell. “See you next year!” Mike called. Bridget and Kathleen echoed, “Next year! Next year, Jackie!”

  “Next year!” he shouted back.

  The procession rumbled away. The Model Ts took the lead. The threshing had finished before dinner, and it was now early afternoon. “It’ll take the outfit a couple of hours to get to Crutchfield’s,” Jim said. “But we should thresh a set before supper.” He grinned at Hallie, and she hoped any woman he might care for would look at his warm hazel eyes and not care about the stiff white scars. “Did I see Miz Donnelly give you some roasting ears?”

  “And green beans, radishes, and green onions,” Hallie said. “She was afraid watermelons would jar to pieces but she packed half a dozen cantaloupes in wadded-up newspapers.”

  “They are very kind people,” Henry said.

  Jim nodded. “I sure hope they never need a loan from the Hollister bank.”

  “Or any bank,” said Hallie. She and Mary had both been too busy to visit but she had liked Mary immensely and enjoyed the little girls. Jackie would miss them, but already he was counting on seeing them next year.

  Would he? Would Garth manage to survive Raford’s underhanded attack? And if he did, would he hire Hallie again? For that matter, what was she going to do that winter? She cringed inwardly at the thought of how her small brother would miss Shaft and Smoky and Laird and the crew. And so would she.

  Fresh vegetables, milk, and eggs were not to be had at the Crutchfields. Mrs. Crutchfield was an invalid, and the young woman who took care of her and the housework had no time for gardens, chickens, and cows. Harry Crutchfield, a gaunt, graying man with a surprisingly warm smile, drove one grain wagon, his hired man the other.

  “Must be hard for Mr. Crutchfield to keep going,” Shaft mused one morning as he and Hallie prepared dinner. “Only child they have is a daughter who married and moved to Oregon. There’s no one to take over the farm and care about it the way he has. But I reckon he keeps planting and hoping and harvesting ’cause that’s what he’s always done.”

  When Sunday came at the Crutchfields, the threshers got their steam bath as the boiler drained. They had to do their own laundry here, so there was much shaving of bars of Ivory and plunging up and down of the stompers till the fence was spread with overalls, khakis, socks, bandannas, and BVDs covered modestly by shirts.

  While they waited their turn at tub and stomper, the men shaved or patronized Shaft, who snipped and clipped his best for the men who either weren’t going to town or were saving their money, like Rusty and Henry. After Jackie, wide-eyed, had watched all the men shave, Meg took him and Laird to splash in the creek that curved around the field. As water monkey, it was part of her job to know where the cleanest water was. If there was a swimming hole, she found it, too.

  They were now closer to Blackwater than Hollister, so that was the day’s destination for most of the crew. Luke gazed wistfully as the men scrambled into the Model Ts but shook his head when invited by both Buford and Jim.

  “Rusty is writing to my sister, and I had better do that, too, so she can read it to our mother.”

  The older, heavier man rested a hand on his slim young brother-in-law’s shoulder. “Luke’s never been away from home before. His mama wouldn’t turn him loose till he promised to write every week. And, as far as I’m concerned, the best way to keep my money saved for that team of good mules I need is not to go to town.”

  “‘When I was single, my pockets did jingle …,’” Rory caroled.

  “They don’t jingle long,” Rusty retorted. “If you bachelor boys can’t get rid of your money in town, you lose it shootin’ craps or playin’ cards.”

  “To each his own,” said Baldy, piling in Buford’s backseat. The towngoers departed, and quiet reigned except for the distant whining creak of the windmill. Henry, Luke, and Rusty spread out at the table to wrestle with their letters.

  Always and inevitably, Garth prowled around the separator with tools and oilcan. It didn’t seem to Hallie that she would ever get to know him better on Sunday. Or anytime. She pounded her clothes and Jackie’s with the stomper, wrung them, rinsed them, wrung them again, and hung them on the fence. Garth certainly didn’t want to know her any better than he had to.

  This bitter reflection couldn’t spoil the pleasure of shampooing dust, sweat, and chaff out of her hair and bathing in sun-warmed water. Shaft’s music, dreamy and spirited by turns, floated out of the shack. Hallie swayed to it as she toweled her hair. She dressed in clean clothes, brushed out her hair, and let it hang loose to dry.

  The steps were partly shaded by a cottonwood. She settled there with her mending. Jackie had knocked the knees out of his overalls and lost buttons off his shirts. She had rips in two aprons and a dress and a small tear in her nightgown.

  Behind her, the porch creaked. Luke’s green eyes had a soft glow. His skin was really no darker than that of the sunburned men but his was smooth and even, with no blotches and peeling or that several inches of white forehead concealed by a hat.

  “Your hair shines like a blackbird’s wing, Miss Hallie.”

  “Why, thank you, Luke. That sounds like poetry.” He truly was a beautiful boy. It pleased Hallie’s eyes to look at him. Boy? He must be at least her age or older. But somehow, disagreeable as he could be, Garth had become her measure of a man. “Have you finished your letter already?”

  His teeth flashed as he nodded toward the men hunched over the table, making much harder work of their pencils than ever they did of pitchforks. “I only needed to tell Mother I’m well and like the crew. Rusty has to tell my sister about his whole week and how much he misses her and the kids. And I never wrote to a sweetheart like Henry does, but that must take a lot of pretty words.”

  Hallie laughed. “You must be right. Henry spends hours on letters to his Anna, but it only takes him a few minutes to scratch a postcard to his parents.”

  The young man hesitated a moment. “Meg asked me to come swimming when my letter was done. Do you think I’m too old to swim with the kids?”

  “Of course not. What’s age got to do with cooling off on a hot day?”

  He nudged his toe against the bottom of the porch railing. With a gulp of breath, he blurted, “Would Mr. MacLeod mind?”

  “Garth? Why should he?”

  Luke’s face reddened. “I’m Cherokee. With some Scotch.”

  Hallie blushed, too, that anyone as graceful, hardworking, and courteous as Luke should have to ask such a question. “I know Garth won’t allow any Ku Klux Klan sort of talk. The only man who seemed to have those kind of ideas got himself fired the day you hired on.” Hallie looked up into the dark-lashed wide green eyes. “Garth brings his daughter threshing so he must think it’s all right for her to be around the men he hires.”

  “But—swimming? Just me and the kids?”

  “It’s not far from the shack. I can hear them laughing. But some fathers wouldn’t want any young man splashing around in the creek with a twelve-year-old daughter.”

  Luke’s eyes went wider. “Oh, I wouldn’t—She’s just a kid!”

  “Don’t tell her so,” Hallie advised. “Just to feel sure about it, why don’t you ask Garth?”

  Luke gasped. “I—I’m scared to!”

  “Mmm.” Hallie thought a moment. “Go tell him the cook—you don’t have to say which one—wants to know if he’d rather have raspberry
buckle or rice pudding for dessert tonight.”

  “But Sunday is your day off.”

  “Shaft and I are here.” Hallie shrugged. “We don’t mind setting out cold food and leftovers for supper or making an easy dessert. So find out what His Lordship favors. Then just say Meg asked you to swim, and you’d like to if it’s all right with him.”

  Luke considered. “That’s good. I can ask without making a big thing of it.” He watched Hallie for a moment. “I—I wish you could swim, too.”

  You’re just a kid. That thought was exactly what he had said about Meg. Could Garth possibly be thinking that she—Hallie—was too young for him? She doubted that had much to do with his coldness. She was female, therefore not to be trusted—even if she spent part of her free day making his choice of rice pudding or raspberry buckle.

  Smiling up at Luke, she said, “There’d be so many of us no one could swim. Go along and enjoy yourself.”

  “If Mr. MacLeod says yes.” Luke was still apprehensive.

  “If he says no, it won’t be because you’re Cherokee,” Hallie said briskly. “I’m sure it’s easier preached than practiced, Luke, but I hope you’ll try not to think that every turndown you get is because you’re Indian.”

  “Lots of them are.”

  “Probably, and that’s not right. But isn’t your shirttail cousin, Will, the best-known, best-liked man in the whole country?”

  “Sure. All the same, Miss Hallie, did you know it was only this June that all American Indians were granted full citizenship?”

  “What?”

  “Some tribes had held citizenship a long time, like the Wyandots and Kickapoos. The Indians in Indian Territory became citizens in 1901. But, till just a little over a month ago, all the others weren’t.”

  Hallie tried to banter. “Well, Luke, women couldn’t vote and therefore weren’t full citizens till the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920—and even then, the women who’d worked so hard for the vote weren’t allowed to witness the signing.” Mrs. MacReynolds had been so indignant about the slight that poor Mr. MacReynolds had apologized for all mankind.