When Marc arrived, Azel Stebbins was walking towards his barn with a bit and bridle in one hand. When he saw the ensign ride up and dismount, he stopped, took him in with a searching stare, then grinned and shot his hand out to the visitor.
“Hello, there,” he boomed from a barrel chest. “I’m Azel Stebbins.”
“Good day to you, sir. I am-”
“Ensign Marc Edwards, come to have a gander at the tons of wheat I got lyin’ surplus all over the farm.” His laugh invited Marc to join in on the joke.
As Marc smiled, he did a quick appraisal of the man he expected to be his prime suspect. Stebbins looked like a quintessential Yankee: tall and ruggedly handsome with blue eyes and hair the colour of bleached hay, big-boned and muscular (features even his coat and leggings couldn’t hide), and sporting a hair-trigger grin offset by a calculating tilt of brow and chin, from which drooped a blondish goatee.
“The quartermaster at York has been authorized to purchase extra supplies in the coming months, grains and pork in particular,” Marc said, glancing towards the barn and the coop, smokehouse, and corncrib behind it.
“A mite worried about the ruckus in Quebec, I’m told,” Stebbins said as he took the horse’s reins.
“That was a factor, I believe.”
“And you’re the drummer?” Stebbins said.
“Advance agent.”
“Seen plenty of drummers where I come from, though not always glad to.”
The quick grin telegraphed the joke, and Marc dredged up a weak smile.
“Anyway, I’d like to see whatever you might have to offer. The price will be good, and paid in pound notes.”
“Well, I’m relieved to hear that, I reckon-though my Yankee blood hankers after currency you can sink your teeth into.”
“Are you new to the province, then?”
Stebbins halted near the big double door to the barn. No grin mitigated his next comment. “I figure you know to the day and the hour precisely when I first set foot on His Majesty’s soil, and a good deal of what I’ve been doin’ and sayin’ since. You and me’ll get along just fine so long as there’s no malarkey between us. You look like a sensible young fella to me.”
“Erastus Hatch has given me a few details of your stay in the district, but for my part I assure you I am here to reconnoitre grain and pork. There’s no politics to a soldier’s hunger.”
“When you’ve been here a while you’ll learn that everything’s politics in this country. As it is in the United States. The difference is, back home everybody’s given a chance to join in the game-and win.”
The obvious rejoinder-“Then why didn’t you stay there?”-was on the tip of Marc’s tongue before he reined it in, took a deep breath, and said, “Be that as it may, Mr. Stebbins, I have a simple duty to perform-”
“Now, now, don’t get yer garters in a snarl,” Stebbins said, hitching Marc’s horse to a post, dropping his gear, and starting to haul the doors apart with both hands. “And for Chrissake, quit hailin’ me as mister. The name’s Azel, though I been called worse from time to time.”
“Then you’ve something to show me?”
“You think we’re headin’ inta my barn to take a leak?”
The interior of the barn was spacious, well laid out, and scrupulously maintained. Two rows of stalls housed Ayreshire milk cows, a team of Clydes, a roan mare, and a huge bull manacled to a concrete stanchion by a ring in its nose. Fresh straw was evident everywhere. The energy Stebbins was putting into his political activities and unexplained “hunting” forays evidently had not affected his proficiency as a farmer.
“We had a drought last July that hit the wheat hard,” Stebbins said, “but I put in a fair amount of Indian corn for pig feed, and it’s paid off. The hogs are in the back. Hold yer nose!”
When they’d finished admiring the hogs-robust Yorkies waxing nicely towards slaughtering time-and tallying a potential purchase by the quartermaster’s self-appointed legate, Marc said casually, “You’ve done exceedingly well here in a short time.”
“I have done, haven’t I? And I’ve managed a wife and two babes inta the bargain.”
“I heard about the fuss over alien rights when I arrived last spring,” Marc said in his most empathetic tone. When Stebbins ignored the bait, Marc added, “You must have been concerned you might lose all this.”
“You’re damn right I was! I built everythin’ you see here, and the house, too, with the aid of my neighbours and other Christians who cared not a fig about my place of origin or the way I voted. I put in my own crops with only my woman and a lad or two from the township. Our harvestin’ is done together, farm by farm. We got no landlords or fancy squires in this part of God’s world.”
“And Mr. Dutton was your man for the Assembly?”
“I reckon he didn’t need much help takin’ this seat.”
“Hatch was telling me a neighbour of his suffered terribly from the drought.”
Stebbins paused at the bull’s stall, seemed to make some sort of decision, and said, “Smallman. Aye, sufferin’s an inadequate word to cover what happened to that poor bastard.”
“Jesse was a friend?”
Again a brief hesitation, then, “Not really. More like a comrade-in-arms, but when you’ve fought alongside somebody for the same cause you can make friends pretty fast. Jesse thought we couldn’t get a fair shake for our grievances under the present set-up in Toronto, but he couldn’t bring himself to cross the line.”
“Whereas others did?”
Stebbins grinned cryptically. “Now them are matters I wouldn’t know nothin’ about, would I?”
“I wasn’t implying you did,” Marc said lamely. “But we heard rumours of seditious talk down this way and meetings of some secret society.”
“The only so-called secret society infestin’ this county is the Loyal Orange Lodge, led by that lunatic Gowan.”
“At any rate, the alien question’s been resolved, hasn’t it? Your land is safe and you can hold any office you can get yourself elected or appointed to.”
Stebbins said, “You’ll also be happy to know I’ve just applied for my naturalization papers. I been here longer than the seven years they’re requirin’ for citizenship.”
Marc was glad they had turned to leave the barn because it gave him a moment to recover from the shock of hearing this news and the deliberate manner in which it was revealed.
“Yessirree, in a month or so, Azel Stebbins, his wife, and his bairns are gonna be bona fidee subjects of King Willy the Fourth.”
Marc was not ready to give up, however, and when Stebbins insisted they seal their verbal contract with a drink, Marc was quick to accept.
“I never trust a man who turns down a free drink,” Stebbins said, and winked. He led Marc past the horse stall to a manger below the hayloft, reached down, and drew a clay jug into the weak light of the waning day. He tipped it up, took a self-congratulatory swig, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and passed the jug to Marc. “That’ll tan yer insides.”
Marc made a valiant show of duplicating his host’s gestures, appending only an explosive wheeze to the set. Stebbins’s grin wobbled through Marc’s tears. “My God, that’s raw stuff,” he managed to say.