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_ Claude was to continue farming with his father, and after he
returned from his wedding journey, he fell at once to work. The
harvest was almost as abundant as that of the summer before, and
he was busy in the fields six days a week.
One afternoon in August he came home with his team, watered and
fed the horses in a leisurely way, and then entered his house by
the back door. Enid, he knew, would not be there. She had gone to
Frankfort to a meeting of the AntiSaloon League. The Prohibition
party was bestirring itself in Nebraska that summer, confident of
voting the State dry the following year, which purpose it
triumphantly accomplished.
Enid's kitchen, full of the afternoon sun, glittered with new
paint, spotless linoleum, and blue-and-white cooking vessels. In
the dining-room the cloth was laid, and the table was neatly set
for one. Claude opened the icebox, where his supper was arranged
for him; a dish of canned salmon with a white sauce; hardboiled
eggs, peeled and lying in a nest of lettuce leaves; a bowl of
ripe tomatoes, a bit of cold rice pudding; cream and butter. He
placed these things on the table, cut some bread, and after
carelessly washing his face and hands, sat down to eat in his
working shirt. He propped the newspaper against a red glass water
pitcher and read the war news while he had his supper. He was
annoyed when he heard heavy footsteps coming around the house.
Leonard Dawson stuck his head in at the kitchen door, and Claude
rose quickly and reached for his hat; but Leonard came in,
uninvited, and sat down. His brown shirt was wet where his
suspenders gripped his shoulders, and his face, under a wide
straw hat which he did not remove, was unshaven and streaked with
dust.
"Go ahead and finish your supper," he cried. "Having a wife with
a car of her own is next thing to having no wife at all. How they
do like to roll around! I've been mighty blamed careful to see
that Susie never learned to drive a car. See here, Claude, how
soon do you figure you'll be able to let me have the thrasher? My
wheat will begin to sprout in the shock pretty soon. Do you
reckon your father would be willing to work on Sunday, if I
helped you, to let the machine off a day earlier?"
"I'm afraid not. Mother wouldn't like it. We never have done
that, even when we were crowded."
"Well, I think I'll go over and have a talk with your mother. If
she could look inside my wheat shocks, maybe I could convince her
it's pretty near a case of your neighbour's ox falling into a pit
on the Sabbath day."
"That's a good idea. She's always reasonable."
Leonard rose. "What's the news?"
"The Germans have torpedoed an English passenger ship, the Arabic;
coming this way, too."
"That's all right," Leonard declared. "Maybe Americans will stay
at home now, and mind their own business. I don't care how they
chew each other up over there, not a bit! I'd as soon one got
wiped off the map as another."
"Your grandparents were English people, weren't they?"
"That's a long while ago. Yes, my grandmother wore a cap and
little white curls, and I tell Susie I wouldn't mind if the baby
turned out to have my grandmother's skin. She had the finest
complexion I ever saw."
As they stepped out of the back door, a troop of white chickens
with red combs ran squawking toward them. It was the hour at
which the poultry was usually fed. Leonard stopped to admire
them. "You've got a fine lot of hens. I always did like white
leghorns. Where are all your roosters?"
"We've only got one. He's shut up in the coop. The brood hens are
setting. Enid is going to try raising winter frys."
"Only one rooster? And may I ask what these hens do?"
Claude laughed. "They lay eggs, just the same,--better. it's the
fertile eggs that spoil in warm weather."
This information seemed to make Leonard angry. "I never heard of
such damned nonsense," he blustered. "I raise chickens on a
natural basis, or I don't raise 'em at all." He jumped into his
car for fear he would say more.
When he got home his wife was lifting supper, and the baby sat
near her in its buggy, playing with a rattle. Dirty and sweaty as
he was, Leonard picked up the clean baby and began to kiss it and
smell it, rubbing his stubbly chin in the soft creases of its
neck. The little girl was beside herself with delight.
"Go and wash up for supper, Len," Susie called from the stove. He
put down the baby and began splashing in the tin basin, talking
with his eyes shut.
"Susie, I'm in an awful temper. I can't stand that damned wife of
Claude's !"
She was spearing roasting ears out of a big iron pot and looked
up through the steam. "Why, have you seen her? I was listening on
the telephone this morning and heard her tell Bayliss she would
be in town until late." "Oh, yes! She went to town all right, and
he's over there eating a cold supper by himself. That woman's a
fanatic. She ain't content with practising prohibition on
humankind; she's begun now on the hens." While he placed the
chairs and wheeled the baby up to the table, he explained Enid's
method of raising poultry to his wife. She said she really didn't
see any harm in it.
"Now be honest, Susie; did you ever know hens would keep on
laying without a rooster?"
"No, I didn't, but I was brought up the old-fashioned way. Enid
has poultry books and garden books, and all such things. I don't
doubt she gets good ideas from them. But anyhow, you be careful.
She's our nearest neighbour, and I don't want to have trouble
with her."
"I'll have to keep out of her way, then. If she tries to do any
missionary work among my chickens, I'll tell her a few home
truths her husband's too bashful to tell her. It's my opinion
she's got that boy cowed already."
"Now, Len, you know she won't bother your chickens. You keep
quiet. But Claude does seem to sort of avoid people," Susie
admitted, filling her husband's plate again. "Mrs. Joe Havel says
Ernest don't go to Claude's any more. It seems Enid went over
there and wanted Ernest to paste some Prohibition posters about
fifteen million drunkards on their barn, for an example to the
Bohemians. Ernest wouldn't do it, and told her he was going to
vote for saloons, and Enid was quite spiteful, Mrs. Havel said.
It's too bad, when those boys were such chums. I used to like to
see them together." Susie spoke so kindly that her husband shot
her a quick glance of shy affection.
"Do you suppose Claude relished having that preacher visiting
them, when they hadn't been married two months? Sitting on the
front porch in a white necktie every day, while Claude was out
cutting wheat?"
"Well, anyhow, I guess Claude had more to eat when Brother Weldon
was staying there. Preachers won't be fed on calories, or
whatever it is Enid calls 'em," said Susie, who was given to
looking on the bright side of things. "Claude's wife keeps a
wonderful kitchen; but so could I, if I never cooked any more
than she does."
Leonard gave her a meaning look. "I don't believe you would live
with the sort of man you could feed out of a tin can."
"No, I don't believe I would." She pushed the buggy toward him.
"Take her up, Daddy. She wants to play with you."
Leonard set the baby on his shoulder and carried her off to show
her the pigs. Susie kept laughing to herself as she cleared the
table and washed the dishes; she was much amused by what her
husband had told her.
Late that evening, when Leonard was starting for the barn to see
that all was well before he went to bed, he observed a discreet
black object rolling along the highroad in the moonlight, a red
spark winking in the rear. He called Susie to the door.
"See, there she goes; going home to report the success of the
meeting to Claude. Wouldn't that be a nice way to have your wife
coming in?"
"Now, Leonard, if Claude likes it--"
"Likes it?" Big Leonard drew himself up. "What can he do, poor
kid? He's stung!" _
Read next: Book Three: Sunrise on the Prairie: Chapter 2
Read previous: Book Two: Enid: Chapter 12
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