him a couple of eggs mornings after this,” said he, “they’ve fell off to next to nothing in price, anyhow. And eat one yourself once in a while, Ollie. I ain’t one of these men that believe a woman don’t need the same fare as a man, once on a while, anyhow.”
His generous outburst did not appear to move his wife’s gratitude. She did not thank him by word or sign. Isom drank another glass of water, rubbed his mustache and beard back from his lips in quick, grinding twists of his doubled hand.
“The pie-plant’s comin’ out fast,” said he, “and I suppose we might as well eat it–nothing else but humans will eat it–for there’s no sale for it over in town. Seems like everybody’s got a patch of it nowadays.
“Well, it’s fillin’, as the old woman said when she swallowed her thimble, and that boy Joe he’s going to be a drain on me to feed, I can see that now. I’ll have to fill him up on something or other, and I guess pie-plant’s about as good as anything. It’s cheap.” 46
“Yes, but it takes sugar,” ventured Ollie, rolling some crumbs between her fingers.
“You can use them molasses in the blue barrel,” instructed Isom.
“It’s about gone,” said she.
“Well, put some water in the barrel and slosh it around–it’ll come out sweet enough for a mess or two.”
Isom got up from the table as he gave these economic directions, and stood a moment looking down at his wife.
“Don’t you worry over feedin’ that feller, Ollie,” he advised. “I’ll manage that. I aim to keep him stout–I never saw a stouter feller for his age than Joe–for I’m goin’ to git a pile of work out of him the next two years. I saw you lookin’ him over this morning,” said he, approvingly, as he might have sanctioned her criticism of a new horse, “and I could see you was lightin’ on his points. Don’t you think he’s all I said he was?”
“Yes,” she answered, a look of abstraction in her eyes, her fingers busy with the crumbs on the cloth, “all you said of him–and more!”
47
CHAPTER III
THE SPARK IN THE CLOD
It did not cost Isom so many pangs to minister to the gross appetite of his bound boy as the spring weeks marched into summer, for gooseberries followed rhubarb, then came green peas and potatoes from the garden that Ollie had planted and tilled under her husband’s orders.
Along in early summer the wormy codlings which fell from the apple-trees had to be gathered up and fed to the hogs by Ollie, and it was such a season of blighted fruit that the beasts could not eat them all. So there was apple sauce, sweetened with molasses from the new barrel that Isom broached.
If it had not been so niggardly unnecessary, the faculty that Isom had for turning the waste ends of the farm into profit would have been admirable. But the suffering attendant upon this economy fell only upon the human creatures around him. Isom’s beasts wallowed in plenty and grew fat in the liberality of his hand. For himself, it looked as if he had the ability to extract his living from the bare surface of a rock.
All of this green truck was filling, as Isom had said, but far from satisfying to a lad in the process of building on such generous plans as Joe. Isom knew that too much skim-milk would make a pot-bellied calf, but he was too stubborn in his rule of life to admit the cause when he saw that Joe began to lag at his work, and grow surly and sour.
Isom came in for quick and startling enlightenment in the middle of a lurid July morning, while he and Joe were at work with one-horse cultivators, “laying by” the corn. 48 Joe threw his plow down in the furrow, cast the lines from his shoulders, and declared that he was starving. He vowed that he would not cultivate another row unless assured, then and there, that Isom would make an immediate enlargement in the bill-of-fare.
Isom stood beside the handles of his own cultivator, there being the space of ten rows between him and Joe, and took the lines from around his shoulders, with the deliberate, stern movement of a man who is preparing for a fight.
“What do you mean by this kind of capers?” he demanded.
“I mean that you can’t go on starving me like you’ve been doing, and that’s all there is to it!” said Joe. “The law don’t give you the right to do that.”
“Law! Well, I’ll law you,” said Isom, coming forward, his hard body crouched a little, his lean and guttered neck stretched as if he gathered himself for a run and jump at the fence. “I’ll feed you what comes to my hand to feed you, you onery whelp! You’re workin’ for me, you belong to me!”
“I’m working for mother–I told you that before,” said Joe. “I don’t owe you anything, Isom, and you’ve got to feed me better, or I’ll walk away and leave you, that’s what I’ll do!”
“Yes, I see you walkin’ away!” said Isom, plucking at his already turned-up sleeve. “I’m goin’ to give you a tannin’ right now, and one you’ll not forget to your dyin’ day!”
At that moment Isom doubtless intended to carry out his threat. Here was a piece of his own property, as much his property as his own wedded wife, defying him, facing him with extravagant demands, threatening to stop work unless more bountifully fed! Truly, it was a state of insurrection such as no upright citizen like Isom Chase could 49 allow to go by unreproved and unquieted by castigation of his hand.
“You’d better stop where you are,” advised Joe.
He reached down and righted his plow. Isom could see the straining of the leaders in his lean wrist as he stood gripping the handle, and the thought passed through him that Joe intended to wrench it off and use it as a weapon against him.
Isom had come but a few steps from his plow. He stopped, looking down at the furrow as if struggling to hold himself within bounds. Still looking at the earth, he went back to his implement.
“I’ll put you where the dogs won’t bite you if you ever threaten my life ag’in!” said he.
“I didn’t threaten your life, Isom, I didn’t say a word,” said Joe.
“A motion’s a threat,” said Isom.
“But I’ll tell you now,” said Joe, quietly, lowering his voice and leaning forward a little, “you’d better think a long time before you ever start to lay hands on me again, Isom. This is twice. The next time––”
Joe set his plow in the furrow with a push that sent the swingle-tree knocking against the horse’s heels. The animal started out of the doze into which it had fallen while the quarrel went on. Joe grinned, thinking how even Isom’s dumb creatures took every advantage of him that opportunity offered. But he left his warning unfinished as for words.
There was no need to say more, for Isom was cowed. He was quaking down to the tap-root of his salt-hardened soul, but he tried to put a different face on it as he took up his plow.
“I don’t want to cripple you, and lay you up,” he said. “If I was to begin on you once I don’t know where I’d leave 50 off. Git back to your work, and don’t give me any more of your sass!”
“I’ll go back to work when you give me your word that I’m to have meat and eggs, butter and milk, and plenty of it,” said Joe.
“I orto tie you up to a tree and lash you!” said Isom, jerking angrily at his horse. “I don’t know what ever made me pity your mother and keep her out of the poorhouse by takin’ in a loafer like you!”
“Well, if you’re sick of the bargain go and tell mother. Maybe she is, too,” Joe suggested.
“No,