\merican Agriculturist, December 6, 1924 
TTll6 Trouble ]V[clk.er— By E. R- Eastman 
699 
CHAPTER X 
HPURNING his bruised body over and 
* over on his bed that night after his 
accident, in an effort to get a little relief, 
Jim Taylor had plenty of time to think, 
plenty of time to realize that pleasant 
memories of past happiness may some¬ 
times turn to gall and wormwood, and 
become accursed. Gifted with an active 
imagination, he pictured that ride home 
from the fair with his friend Bradley mak¬ 
ing love to Dorothy. His mind swung 
from mad revolt to sick despair, and back 
again, as he saw behind his closed lids 
that face once softened in tenderness to 
him looking with love at another man. 
One by one came back to him all the 
little ventures of a boy and girl friend¬ 
ship. 
There was that time, when Dorothy 
was about sixteen, when Kortwright’s 
bull drove her up a chestnut tree in the 
middle of the pasture and kept her there 
for hours. Jim smiled a little as he 
remembered how, while returning from a 
trip for blackberries, he had come upon 
her perched precariously on a high limb, 
and had chased off the bull. 
Nice to remember, too, how Dorothy, 
usually so strong and self-contained, had 
climbed and slid down that tree, and with 
loosened hair and clothes awry, had 
thrown her arms impulsively around his 
neck and clung to him while she had 
sobbed but her nervousness and fright. 
Never had he forgotten either how her 
slim and boyish taut young body-had felt 
against his. Was it then, or years 
before, that his feeling of tenderness 
toward the little girl had been born? It 
must have been before, for never could he 
remember when he had not loved her. 
Happy years went by, happy in spite 
of the poverty and hard work, years 
filled with the sweetness of companion¬ 
ship with Dorothy. There were the long 
rides on a Sunday afternoon to look for¬ 
ward to during the week; there were the 
times when they had gone berrying and 
fishing together, for Dorothy was an all- 
around girl. There was that time when 
a bee had stung her and she had been 
grateful to Jim for trying to draw the 
poison out of her arm with his mouth. 
T HEN came that Sunday evening in 
late August, when Dorothy was 
going away to school—she was to leave 
the next day—when he had taken her 
for a long good-bye ride. 
How every detail of that evening stood 
out! How it hurt now to think of it— 
yet he could not help but think. What 
had they talked about that night? Noth¬ 
ing much. They understood each other 
anyway. 
“Going to be pretty lonesome. Dot, 
when I can’t see you.” 
“Will be for me, too, Jim. But we can 
write.” 
“Most likely you’ll forget all about me. 
There’ll be lots doing at your school, and 
you’ll mefit a lot of boys.” 
“Why, I hope so. I want to see some 
of the world outside of Speedtown and 
some of its folks, but I could never forget 
you, Jim.” 
It was then, he remembered, that he 
had shifted his lines and covered with his 
the warm little hand in Dorothy’s lap. 
It was not hard to recall how he had 
thrilled when she sat motionless for a 
moment before she shyly had withdrawn 
her hand . 
A little more talk—then silence. He 
had recaptured her hand again, and the 
wonder of it was that this time she had 
given his great paw a little squeeze in 
return. 
More silence, while they had ridden 
along the friendly country road in the 
dusk of a summer evening. He had not 
been conscious of them at the time, but 
now all of the country sounds stood out 
in his memory as the background of that 
evening of happiness. Away off on the 
hill some neighbor’s dog had barked, and 
the crickets and tree-toads—what a 
chorus they had made in the harvest 
meadows. 
Never again would he get that fra¬ 
grance of a ripening cornfield without feel¬ 
ing a stab of pain, for never could he 
forget how he had stopped the horse that 
night where the road was bordered on 
both sides by corn higher than a man’s 
head, where the summer stars looked 
down and saw him take little Dorothy 
into his arms and kiss her laughing mouth. 
She had kissed him, too, sobered momen¬ 
tarily. 
T)UT tonight the memory of it was 
only pain to him. The next day 
Dorothy had gone away to school to learn 
the ways of the world and to find perhaps 
that the ways of Speedtown and its-folks 
were slow and uncouth, for when she had 
come back, things had been somehow 
different. Yet to be fair, thought the 
boy, had it been she who had changed, or 
was it himself? Had more years brought 
a better perspective to teach him, as it 
was teaching others of his generation, 
that marriage was a luxury, and that he 
who must toil to the end of his days in 
poverty had no right to saddle that 
poverty upon another life, and perhaps 
other lives? Maybe in his sensitiveness 
on this point he had seemed cool and 
indifferent to Dorothy. Certainly on 
that day back in June she had seemed to 
care for him still. 
But of course she had been joking then, 
he thought. She always was a great hand 
at trying to kid him. Anyway, all of 
that was behind him now for sure, for 
this summer had come their differences 
over the milk quarrel and she had taken 
sides with her father against him. 
r PHEN Bradley had come. With 
* searing vividness, Jim saw in imagi¬ 
nation Dorothy and Bradley as they 
returned from the jair. He could see 
them as they left the fair frounds after 
nearly' everyone else had gone. He 
could see Bradley driving slowly to pro¬ 
long the ride home. Then later he saw 
them taking the untraveled crossroad 
through the cornfield . . . 
Let her go! He couldn’t help it . . . 
If that was where her happiness lay, why 
he ought to be glad . . . Might as 
well go to sleep and forget it . . . 
But he never could forget . . . And 
he could not sleep . . . 
Then back again his mind came to the 
same old subject. Opposite the deserted 
Johnson farmhouse Bradley would be 
stopping now. Then the talk would 
grow more intimate, with long silences. 
Jim well remembered that Dorothy knew 
how to make silences say more than words. 
But he knew too that Bradley could not 
keep silent. He was always talking over 
his plans, ambitions and what he was 
going to do in the world. And this 
would interest Dorothy, and win her 
sympathy—that sympathy which was 
akin to love. 
Perhaps Bradley would put his arm 
around her, as he himself had done on 
that summer night long ago. Then he 
imagined a look of soft tenderness coming 
into her eyes for his friend, her arms 
around his neck, and her face lifted for 
his kiss. 
With a groan, the tortured boy buried 
his head in his pillow 
He thought he could not bear it, but 
he knew he must. There was this milk 
fight coming ... He could throw 
himself into that . . . If he could 
forget, maybe dull the pain a little . . . 
So, slowly out of his bitterness, a kind 
of calm came to Jim, a calm based upon 
resignation to the belief that Dorothy 
had forever passed out of his life, and on a 
grim determination to devote himself to a 
fight for better things for the dairy farmer. 
At last came sleep. 
CHAPTER XI 
TT was a cold, almost frosty morning in 
^ September, a week after the Speed- 
town fair. Jim Taylor, none the worse 
for his accident, except for a slight limp, 
was on his way with team and wagon to 
change works with a neighbor to fill silo. 
Although he could not see them for the 
dense fog, he could hear the rattle of the 
other neighbors’ wagons similarly bound 
on the country roads. In a few moments 
six or eight teams with fifteen or more 
men arrived at the Kortwright farm where 
the blower was already erected. After 
a moment spent in visiting, Jim drove his 
team on down the road a little way and 
turned through the gate into the big corn¬ 
field. 
Ten minutes after his wagon with its 
big flat rigging had reached the field, the 
men had it loaded and on its way back to 
the roaring monster which chewed the 
heavy armfuls of cornstalks into inch 
pieces and blew them into the huge silo. 
Before the first wagon was unloaded, 
another waited in line, and others would 
constantly follow all day long, before 
the maw of the big “can” would be 
satisfied. 
In the field, the men had pinned heavy 
feed sacks around them in an attempt to 
protect themselves from the dew-soaked 
corn; but after less than ten minutes of 
lifting the heavy bundles, they were all 
wet through. There was not much time 
to grumble, or even to think about sore 
wrists, poisoned with corn, or backs lame 
from many days of heavy lifting, for un¬ 
less this silo and all the others in the 
neighborhood, and of the whole farm 
country, were filled, the cattle could not 
eat—and the cattle must eat to give milk. 
A MONG the teamsters whose turn for 
loading came just before Jim’s, was 
a pompous, dignified little farmer, whom 
the boys called “Shorty.” Shorty made 
up in braggadocio the very considerable 
which he lacked in brains. When he was 
not boasting, he was wont to improve 
spare moments by lecturing the men 
upon their evil habits. 
“Look at me now,” he would say in all 
seriousness. “Once I was as unregener¬ 
ate as you, but now-” and then he 
would trail off in as long a sermon as the 
patience of his audience would stand for. 
In the middle of the forenoon, after the 
teams had made several trips back and 
forth from the field to the blower, Jim 
and Shorty drove into the field together. 
The machine had shut down a few 
moments for some minor adjustment, so 
the men had a welcome rest. Immedi¬ 
ately Shorty began to complain about the 
light loads the field men were giving him. 
“What say, Shorty? What say?” 
Bill Mead asked. “Load too light, is it? 
Well, we’re sort of sorry for your horses, 
but if you feel that way about it, we’ll 
try and give you a real load.” 
“Now, Shorty,” said Jim, in a low 
voice, “why don’t you keep your mouth 
shut? You’ll just get yourself into 
trouble.” 
But Shorty knew not the fine art of 
silence. He could not keep stil 1. 
“Yes,” he answered. “I want you 
men to understand that my horses can 
pull twice as much, and it isn’t efficient 
for me to be traveling back and forth 
with such light loads. I’ll bet any man 
here five dollars that you fellers can’t load 
enough corn on this wagon to stick these 
horses.” 
With a wink at the other men. Bill 
picked up a big bundle of corn and 
slammed it on Shorty’s wagon. No 
sooner was he out of the way than five 
or six others stood with their arms full of 
corn, holding it up for him to take. 
Ordinarily, he and Jim and the other team¬ 
sters stood on the edge of the wagon and 
took the corn from each man in turn, 
and so placed it on the load that it could 
be picked up and unloaded easily at the 
blower. But now the corn came so fast 
that before Shorty could get rid of one 
armful, two more men were clamoring for 
him to take theirs. 
IN ALLY, he became so excited and 
A nervous that he slowed up and did 
little more than dance helplessly up and 
down while the men threw corn on the 
wagon without waiting for him to take it. 
Some of it went on head first, some butt 
first, and some of it stood upright, mak¬ 
ing it almost impossible for it to be torn 
loose and rapidly unloaded. 
Higher and higher it piled up, until i 
almost before Shorty realized it, he had a ' 
load three times the ordinary size. At 
last, in despair, he rushed up to the end 
of the wagon and shouted to his horses. 
They strained forward for a moment in 
perfect cooperation, and the large load 
finally moved forward slowly but surely 
out of the lot. The men followed to the 
end of the field, still throwing on the corn. 
As it went from the lot into the road, 
Shorty was more intent in shaking his 
fist at his tormentors than he was in his 
driving, with the result that a corner of 
the rigging ripped out one of the posts and 
destroyed a section of the fence. The 
last the men saw of Shorty on that 
particular trip, while they were drifting 
back to load the next wagon, he was 
yanking his horses into the road, nnd 
there floated up to them some decidedly 
unchurchlike language about the “gosh- 
danged devils hadn’t stuck and couldn’t 
stick his blankety-blank horses.” 
“Pretty good language for a feller that’s 
always preachin’,” said Bill. 
“Well, he got away with it,” said 
another one of the men. 
“Never mind,” said Bill, “we’ll get him ^ 
next time!” 
r PHE teams came and went in turn 
A until Shorty and Jim again drove into 
the field. Poor Shorty was a little the 
worse for wear. His shirt was wet 
through with sweat and was ripped 
clear across the baclc where it had / 
plastered to his skin. Streaks of white / 
through the black corn smut showed/ 
where the sweat had rolled down his face 
in his terrific labor of unloading the 
tangled corn at the blower. 
Most of the men were a little sorry for 
him, and he might have escaped further 
trouble, but no sooner was he within 
ear-shot than he began to twit and jeer 
them, and boast about their failure to 
stick his horses. 
“You fellers weren’t so smart as you 
thought you were, were you?” he shouted. % 
“Wait till old man Kortwright finds 
out how you smashed his fence gettin’ 
0 Continued on page l^Oli) 
Read This First, Then Start the Story 
r T , HE county fair proved an exciting day for Jim Taylor. It started 
* badly, because Harry Bradley, the popular young county agent, took 
Dorothy Ball while Jim roamed about the grounds alone. Then Bradley 
proved the star of a baseball game, while Dorothy cheered him, although 
for her old friend Jim, now her father’s opponent in a local feud over the 
threatened milk strike, she had only a cold glance. Finally, after an excit¬ 
ing horse race, one of the racers ran amuck and Jim risked his own life 
and was knocked unconscious stopping the frantic animal. 
He comes to, weak and dizzy, and is sent home the hero of the fair, but 
he does not know that sweet Dorothy Ball seeks out the village doctor and 
tremulously inquires about his injuries. 
