Dry Divide

by Ralph Moody

  My little leaders seemed to have a deep-seated distrust of urban environment, and were violent in their protests against my efforts to force them into it. Several times, in trying to turn back, they doubled around so far I could look them in the faces. Only their fear of the blacksnake kept them straightened around where they belonged, and I often had to pop the cracker within an inch or two of their heads. It must have taken me a full fifteen minutes to run that one-block gauntlet, and the tracks of my wagon wheels looked as if they’d been left by squirming angleworms. To help things along, Bones came out of the bank when I was in the thickest of the battle, and shouted, “How you getting along, Son?” I couldn’t trust myself to answer him.

  I had a little more trouble in convincing my snap team that the driveway through the elevator wasn’t the road to perdition, but once they’d passed over it they seemed to accept their fate.

  Though they kept turning their heads from side to side, looking for something to spook at, they trotted right along as I drove them back through town. We’d just passed the church and started up the steep climb from the valley when we met Paco coming down. Gus was hitching on his second tote team, three and a half miles from town, when I passed him, and when I came to the sharp rise just before reaching the Hudson place, Jaikus was unhitching the old mares after giving Lars a pull out of the field. At each passing, we shouted that we were going to knock the heligo out of Heligoland, but I didn’t stop. There was no room in our schedule for visiting.

  It was eleven-thirty when I pulled up at the thrashing rig. With my next load not due out until five o’clock, I unharnessed my horses, fed them, and had the engineer give three toots on his whistle—the call for Judy to come with the Maxwell. She must have driven me at least a hundred miles between then and five o’clock—carrying dinner buckets, checking loads on the road, and going to Oberlin for six two-dollar watches.

  Gus and Lars had gold watches, so I didn’t buy any for them. Of course, Jaikus didn’t need one, but I didn’t want him to feel left out, and the rest of us just about had to have them. My schedule was so tight that the thrashers would have had to stop their machines if we’d fallen as much as fifteen minutes behind time, but that wasn’t the main reason for my buying the watches. It was just the opposite. Everyone was so overanxious that he was hurrying his horses too much, and not giving them enough time to rest after hard pulls. That kind of driving will break horses down much quicker than overloading or excessive mileage, and I had to guard against it. To spare our horses as much as possible, each run had to be so accurately timed that a round trip wouldn’t vary by more than five minutes. If a man lost time on the way to town, or if he had to wait at the elevator, he could make up for it on his way back with empty wagons. But there was no sense in wearing the teams down by getting back fifteen or twenty minutes too early, and the men needed watches for timing themselves. Judy needed one as badly as the rest of us, for part of her job was to keep a check on all hands, and to bring me word of any trouble or falling behind schedule.

  It is seldom that a new and closely scheduled job runs smoothly on its first day, and it is almost never that two such jobs can be dovetailed together and still run smoothly, but ours did. Neither thrashing rig had a minute’s breakdown all day, both turned out their full capacity of grain, and there was never a time when we didn’t have wagons waiting to catch it. My greatest trouble was to keep the crew from rushing too much, or from failing to give their horses long enough rests after hard pulls.

  At five minutes after five I pulled away from the rig on the Hudson place with the last load to be hauled for the day. Though there would be another one thrashed, it would sit in the field until I hauled it away at seven o’clock the next morning. With mine being the last load, there was no need for me to hurry. I ran the gulches fast, but gave my horses long rests on the far side, and others after pulling each of the long upgrades.

  It was quarter of seven before I reached Cedar Bluffs, the stores were all closed, there was no one on the street, and my little leaders went down it without the slightest bobble. After my loads had been dumped and my empty wagons weighed out, I waited for Doc to bring in the last load from the De May place. He came in right at seven o’clock, and was weighed out by seven-ten, but the scaleman was a little annoyed. Seven was closing time for the elevator, and he was a bit grumpy about being kept overtime. All it took to keep him happy was to tell him we’d let the last load from the De May place sit in the field over night, and Doc would bring it at seven in the morning instead of seven at night. It really made an easier day for Doc. On the new schedule, he’d pull his first load out at six in the morning, and be all finished for the day by half-past-three.

  Although the tally registers on the thrashing machines were fairly accurate, they measured by volume, and were only a guide to go by in loading. At the elevator the measure was entirely by weight, and I would be paid in accordance with the elevator tally. Before the wheat was dumped into the pit, an exactly measured sample was taken from each wagon, weighed in a tester, and examined for grade. If the kernels were small and shriveled, the tester might show that it ran no more than fifty-four or -five pounds to the volume bushel, while exceptionally good grain might run as high as sixty-four or -five, and regardless of bulk, sixty pounds was counted as a bushel.

  After Doc’s wagons had been weighed out, the scaleman gave me our tally for the day, and it totaled 2,305 bushels—1,270 from the Hudson place, and 1,010 from Grampa George’s rig. On the way back, Doc led the first tote team on to the De May place for the night, and I led the second one on to the Hudson place. I barely had the horses unharnessed, tied to the wagon wheels, and fed, before Judy stopped to pick me up on her way home with Doc.

  Though the thrashing crew had long since eaten supper and gone home, my whole crew had waited so we could eat together. It was one of the best evenings we’d ever had, more like a celebration than supper, and when we sang, “We’re on our way to Heligoland,” we could have been heard from a mile away.

  16

  Home on the Dry Divide

  AFTER our first big day of hauling, Judy and I sat up late, figuring out the exact schedules, writing a copy for each driver, and making entries of the day’s business in our books. With our hauls being eight miles from the Hudson place, and five from De May’s, our day’s hauling figured out—at one and a half cents a bushel per mile—to $228.15. That seemed a lot of money to earn in a single day, but we couldn’t be sure there was any profit in it. My cost for wages for my own crew that day had been $70, there had been another $43 for hired drivers and teams, and the grub and horse feed would amount to another $25, leaving a balance of only $90.15. Then too, I was already in debt $2,606 for horses, harness, wagons, repair materials, supplies, and groceries, as well as $840 that had piled up for wages since the last day of harvest. It didn’t take much figuring to show that we’d have to get in a bit over thirty-eight days of hauling at that rate for me to get myself out of debt.

  I could see only two bright spots—and one that wasn’t so bright. The bright ones were that there was still one load in the field that would have been hauled on any but our first day, and that we’d had no use for one of the rigs I’d hired. The rig and driver had cost me $11, with another $1.50 for grub and horse feed, and the load in the field would bring $14.40 for hauling. The dark spot was that I lost money on hired rigs. With big, slow horses, the best a driver could do was to haul two fifty-bushel loads eight miles in a day. The hauling brought in $12, and my cost was $12.50.

  Our second day went fully as well as our first one. I was away with my first load by quarter of seven, took my second from Grampa George’s rig at 9:20, and was back at the Hudson place by eleven o’clock. Somewhere along the way I had passed every one of my drivers, and each one was exactly on schedule. With things going that smoothly, there was no need for running the wheels off the old Maxwell, and with me free for six hours in the middle of the day, there was no need of keeping Judy on the run. Except for taking
us to the rigs in the morning, and bringing us in at night, it was better for her to stay at the house and help her sister, particularly with a thrashing crew to feed as well as the rest of us. When we’d first come to the place, Doc had thought there would be another Hudson before harvest was over, but Judy had told me the baby wasn’t due for another month at the earliest. Still, Mrs. Hudson was in no condition to be doing the cooking for sixteen men, while trying to take care of five small children.

  Until it was time to harness for my five-o’clock trip, I carried out the dinner buckets, visited a few minutes with each driver as he ate, drove to The Bluffs for a little visit with Bones—and to be sure all the wagons were rolling on schedule—then got better acquainted with Ted Harmon and Grampa George. The old man still couldn’t figure how we were getting 120-bushel loads through the gulches with our little mustangs, but I didn’t tell him. If I had, he’d have been positive that I’d lost my senses. On my trip to town I’d stopped at each gulch to watch one of my drivers go through, and each one had done the trick as handily as if he’d done it all his life.

  My own horses pricked up their ears as we approached the brink of each gulch, then laid them back flat to their necks, and raced through as though they found as much thrill in it as I did.

  That second evening I never had to lay a hand on the blacksnake. By that time my leaders were cornering nearly as well as any of the others, and neither shied nor danced when going through the town and into the elevator. It was just after 6:30 when I weighed my empty wagon out, and when the scaleman gave me my tally for the day, it totaled 2417 bushels. I picked up both tote teams on my way home, leaving one at the De May place, and taking the other on to the wagon circle on the Hudson place. When Judy picked me up, I took the blacksnake along, and hung it back in the barn.

  That evening when Judy and I figured up and entered the books things looked a little better. We’d hauled 1425 bushels from the Hudson place, and 992 for Dr. De May, for a total earning of $245.40, so we had nearly $120 to help pay off the debts.

  By the third day our hauling had settled so well into a pattern that there was no longer any need for my running back and forth to see that we kept on schedule. Each man knew the exact minute he was due to pull away from a thrashing rig, when he should reach the elevator, and when he should be back. Of course, the machines didn’t turn out exactly the same number of bushels every hour, so some of our loads were a few bushels short, and others a few over. About all there was for me to do, beside delivering my three loads a day, was to lug out dinner buckets, and bawl, “We’re on our way to Heligoland,” when I passed one of my rigs on the road.

  By our fourth day I felt sure enough that the business was going to be successful that I dared go still further in debt, and Bones agreed with me enough to lend me another thousand dollars. That time I didn’t have to tell him what kind of a note to make out, and he didn’t object to making it for sixty days—so long as the interest was 8%.

  Maybe it’s the Scotch blood in me, or maybe it’s because I was born in New England, but it always hurts my feelings to see profits getting away. And profits were getting away in my hired teams. Besides, I knew from my first buying trips right where I could get more mustangs just about as good as the ones I already had. I didn’t need anything very good for tote horses, since we didn’t require a lot of extra pulling power for getting up the long grades, so fairly cheap horses would do as well as any others, just so they were willing pullers. At Oberlin I could find almost any kind and condition of wagons and harnesses I wanted. By the end of the week I’d invested the whole thousand: $400 for four good mustangs, $200 for four good-enough tote horses, $200 more for four wagons that didn’t need any rebuilding, $20 for coupler steel, and $180 for four sets of stout harness.

  A boy who had been driving one of the hired rigs was real handy with a four-horse hitch, and had nerve enough for running the gulches. I didn’t think he should have as much as the men who had stuck by me all through harvest, who had never drawn but a few dollars of their pay, and who had offered to let me use the rest of it. But when I told the boy I’d pay him $6 a day, right through to the end of the hauling season, and whether or not we worked every day, he was glad to take the job. With forty-three or -four more days of hauling contracted ahead, I could save enough in team hire to pay for the new horses and wagons. And if I could keep the rig busy every day, hauling 120-bushel loads, it would make me nearly $600 in cash profits besides.

  Each noon when I took a driver his dinner bucket, I looked over his horses from hoofs to muzzles, watching for any sign of breaking down—any swelling of a leg that might indicate a strained tendon, any lump on a hock that might develop into a spavin or thoroughpin, or any excessive loss of weight. During harvest we’d worked the Hudson horses into the lean, hard, toughness of well-trained racing Thoroughbreds, and the week at pasture had put them into prime condition. But some of the new mustangs had been carrying a few pounds of soft flesh when I’d bought them, and with forty-two fast miles on the road every day, half of it under heavy load, they were losing weight faster than I liked.

  I couldn’t be positive that part of the loss wasn’t due to my feeding them the weedy wheat hay we’d cut from the borders of the fields, and I couldn’t risk taking any unnecessary chances. Unless those horses were kept in tiptop condition, I’d be broke and out of business. Wheat, together with straw that has some sap left in it, isn’t bad feed for horses doing ordinary work. But when they are being overworked they should have feed strong enough to fully balance the energy they’re spending—and in that country nothing better than oats and third-cutting alfalfa hay could be found. At the beginning of my second week I bought fifty bushels of oats, and had a farmer from the valley bring us two loads of freshly cut alfalfa hay. From then on, each horse was fed ten quarts of oats a day, together with as much hay as he would clean up, and was watered at least three times.

  Although we had lots of days when we ran full tilt, we had others when we were a few loads short; because a thrashing rig broke down for an hour or two, had to move from one field to another, or when we were finishing with one of the smaller jobs and starting another. Then we lost a couple of days because of rain, but most of the time we had all the business we could handle. Within a week after we’d started hauling, our rigs—and our battle hymn—were known throughout the whole surrounding country, and a day seldom passed without some farmer stopping me on the road, or coming to see me, about hauling for him when he started his thrashing. Of course, I couldn’t take any more big jobs, but I picked up enough fill-in hauling to give my horses all the work I dared put them to. Originally I’d thought that forty to forty-two miles a day would be as much as they could stand, but as they toughened and hardened I raised the limit to forty-five, and they throve on it. Sometimes our jobs overlapped a bit, so I had to hire a few extra teams and drivers, but there was no profit in it, so I kept it down as much as I could.

  There is little doubt that the last week in August was the happiest Mrs. Hudson had ever had. By that time we knew that her wheat was going to yield a good full twenty-two bushels to the acre, and the rain we’d had at the first of the month would assure her a corn crop. After we’d had a talk with Bones, and I’d shown him the tally slips, she bought a nice little house in town and a new Maxwell. Then she left the children with her folks, and spent the whole week shopping for furniture and all the things she’d need for her new home, but she wouldn’t leave the ranch until the thrashing had been finished.

  The day we’d talked with Bones, the landlord had called on Mrs. Hudson in the evening, and offered to lease me the whole place for the next year. I didn’t want the wheat land, but made a deal with him to lease the pasture and buildings. Then I made a deal with Mrs. Hudson to harvest her corn crop in exchange for her cows and the old Maxwell.

  Mrs. Hudson wasn’t going to move any of the junk furniture from the house, and I didn’t want it either. But with fall coming on, I did want to move my crew inside, so the ne
xt morning I gave Judy a check for $200, and told her, “I can’t afford to spend a lot of money for furniture, but I’d like to fix the house up enough that we can be comfortable in it till the hauling season is over. Suppose you take a ride over to Oberlin and see what this will buy us in surplus Army cots, and a little decent secondhand furniture: chairs, a table, and a couple of dressers with drawers enough to hold our clothes.”

  “Well,” she said, “this will be enough to get the stuff we’ll need, but I don’t know if I can find it all in one day.”

  “That’s all right,” I told her. “Take as many days as you want. You won’t have much time anyway, not with your sis away most of the time and thrashers to cook for.”

  Judy took me at my word. As soon as she’d taken us to work each morning, she’d drive away, come back at noon to feed the thrashers and bring us our dinner buckets, then drive away for a couple of more hours. In the middle of the week I asked her how she was getting along, but she didn’t seem to want to talk about it, and just said she hadn’t had time to find the best bargains yet.

  There had been several times when I’d needed the old Maxwell, so I told her, “Don’t worry too much about getting the best bargains. I have an idea you can buy everything we need at the Army and Navy Surplus store. They have folding chairs, and tables, and cots. Foot lockers would do as well as dressers, just so each one of us has some place to keep his clothes. You pick out the stuff, and I’ll send a wagon over to haul it for you.”

  “Hmmmf!” she sniffed. “They’re robbers over to the Army-Navy store. Two hundred dollars wouldn’t go no place there. And besides, there’s no sense getting the stuff out here till sis moves into her new house. When do you reckon the thrashing will be finished?”