setting up a shell-game. To avoid his father, Claude turned and
went in to his brother’s store. The two big show windows were
full of country children, their mothers standing behind them to
watch the parade. Bayliss was seated in the little glass cage
where he did his writing and bookkeeping. He nodded at Claude
from his desk.
“Hello,” said Claude, bustling in as if he were in a great hurry.
“Have you seen Ernest Havel? I thought I might find him in here.”
Bayliss swung round in his swivel chair to return a plough
catalogue to the shelf. “What would he be in here for? Better
look for him in the saloon.” Nobody could put meaner insinuations
into a slow, dry remark than Bayliss.
Claude’s cheeks flamed with anger. As he turned away, he noticed
something unusual about his brother’s face, but he wasn’t going
to give him the satisfaction of asking him how he had got a black
eye. Ernest Havel was a Bohemian, and he usually drank a glass of
beer when he came to town; but he was sober and thoughtful beyond
the wont of young men. From Bayliss’ drawl one might have
supposed that the boy was a drunken loafer.
At that very moment Claude saw his friend on the other side of
the street, following the wagon of trained dogs that brought up
the rear of the procession. He ran across, through a crowd of
shouting youngsters, and caught Ernest by the arm.
“Hello, where are you off to?”
“I’m going to eat my lunch before show-time. I left my wagon out
by the pumping station, on the creek. What about you?”
“I’ve got no program. Can I go along?”
Ernest smiled. “I expect. I’ve got enough lunch for two.”
“Yes, I know. You always have. I’ll join you later.”
Claude would have liked to take Ernest to the hotel for dinner.
He had more than enough money in his pockets; and his father was
a rich farmer. In the Wheeler family a new thrasher or a new
automobile was ordered without a question, but it was considered
extravagant to go to a hotel for dinner. If his father or Bayliss
heard that he had been there-and Bayliss heard everything they
would say he was putting on airs, and would get back at him. He
tried to excuse his cowardice to himself by saying that he was
dirty and smelled of the hides; but in his heart he knew that he
did not ask Ernest to go to the hotel with him because he had
been so brought up that it would be difficult for him to do this
simple thing. He made some purchases at the fruit stand and the
cigar counter, and then hurried out along the dusty road toward
the pumping station. Ernest’s wagon was standing under the shade
of some willow trees, on a little sandy bottom half enclosed by a
loop of the creek which curved like a horseshoe. Claude threw
himself on the sand beside the stream and wiped the dust from his
hot face. He felt he had now closed the door on his disagreeable
morning.
Ernest produced his lunch basket.
“I got a couple bottles of beer cooling in the creek,” he said.
“I knew you wouldn’t want to go in a saloon.”
“Oh, forget it!” Claude muttered, ripping the cover off a jar of
pickles. He was nineteen years old, and he was afraid to go into
a saloon, and his friend knew he was afraid.
After lunch, Claude took out a handful of good cigars he had
bought at the drugstore. Ernest, who couldn’t afford cigars, was
pleased. He lit one, and as he smoked he kept looking at it with
an air of pride and turning it around between his fingers.
The horses stood with their heads over the wagon-box, munching
their oats. The stream trickled by under the willow roots with a
cool, persuasive sound. Claude and Ernest lay in the shade, their
coats under their heads, talking very little. Occasionally a
motor dashed along the road toward town, and a cloud of dust and
a smell of gasoline blew in over the creek bottom; but for the
most part the silence of the warm, lazy summer noon was
undisturbed. Claude could usually forget his own vexations and
chagrins when he was with Ernest. The Bohemian boy was never
uncertain, was not pulled in two or three ways at once. He was
simple and direct. He had a number of impersonal preoccupations;
was interested in politics and history and in new inventions.
Claude felt that his friend lived in an atmosphere of mental
liberty to which he himself could never hope to attain. After he
had talked with Ernest for awhile, the things that did not go
right on the farm seemed less important. Claude’s mother was
almost as fond of Ernest as he was himself. When the two boys
were going to high school, Ernest often came over in the evening
to study with Claude, and while they worked at the long kitchen
table Mrs. Wheeler brought her darning and sat near them, helping
them with their Latin and algebra. Even old Mahailey was
enlightened by their words of wisdom.
Mrs. Wheeler said she would never forget the night Ernest arrived
from the Old Country. His brother, Joe Havel, had gone to
Frankfort to meet him, and was to stop on the way home and leave
some groceries for the Wheelers. The train from the east was
late; it was ten o’clock that night when Mrs. Wheeler, waiting in
the kitchen, heard Havel’s wagon rumble across the little bridge
over Lovely Creek. She opened the outside door, and presently Joe
came in with a bucket of salt fish in one hand and a sack of
flour on his shoulder. While he took the fish down to the cellar
for her, another figure appeared in the doorway; a young boy,
short, stooped, with a flat cap on his head and a great oilcloth
valise, such as pedlars carry, strapped to his back. He had
fallen asleep in the wagon, and on waking and finding his brother
gone, he had supposed they were at home and scrambled for his
pack. He stood in the doorway, blinking his eyes at the light,
looking astonished but eager to do whatever was required of him.
What if one of her own boys, Mrs. Wheeler thought…. She
went up to him and put her arm around him, laughing a little and
saying in her quiet voice, just as if he could understand her,
“Why, you’re only a little boy after all, aren’t you?”
Ernest said afterwards that it was his first welcome to this
country, though he had travelled so far, and had been pushed and
hauled and shouted at for so many days, he had lost count of
them. That night he and Claude only shook hands and looked at
each other suspiciously, but ever since they had been good
friends.
After their picnic the two boys went to the circus in a happy
frame of mind. In the animal tent they met big Leonard Dawson,
the oldest son of one of the Wheelers’ near neighbours, and the
three sat together for the performance. Leonard said he had come
to town alone in his car; wouldn’t Claude ride out with him?
Claude was glad enough to turn the mules over to Ralph, who
didn’t mind the hired men as much as he did.
Leonard was a strapping brown fellow of twenty-five, with big
hands and big feet, white teeth, and flashing eyes full of
energy. He and his father and two brothers not only worked their
own big farm, but rented a quarter section from Nat Wheeler. They
were master farmers. If there was a dry summer and a failure,
Leonard only laughed and stretched his long arms, and put in a
bigger crop next year. Claude was always a little reserved with
Leonard; he felt that the young man was rather contemptuous of
the hap-hazard way in which things were done on the Wheeler
place, and thought his going to college a waste of money. Leonard