Chapter 11

"You agree to pay them for their labor in sand and gravel, and once you get them using concrete, they'll come back for more. Since you were in to see me last, I've been thinking the matter over and I believe you can manage it so you can get what help you need in this way, except, perhaps, one or two carpenters when you come to the heavy work of the cow barn. It will be to their advantage to learn how to do the work. I was talking to the two boys we brought out with us to-day to see if I couldn't get them to help you, but they said they didn't want to be mussing around with farm work. I told Edward, my nephew, that he didn't understand enough about farms to know what was good for him, or he'd be glad to help you. Well, I must go and see your Uncle Joe. Think over what I've been telling you about having the farmers' boys help you and I'll think it over too and see how it can be managed. Of course, you wouldn't want them all here at one time. I think if they came two or three at a time, it would be better. We could work out a schedule of dates, and know when each boy would come so there would be no break in the working force. You'd better see if you'll have tools and forms enough to keep them all working, Bob, and if you don't, your Uncle Joe ought to get you a few more."

Left to himself, Bob began to turn over in his mind the possibilities and advantages of having more assistance, and getting the cow barn started earlier than he had anticipated. Now that it would only require a little more than another week to complete the hen house, he decided that with double the number of forms they were now using, and keeping Duncan Wallace casting sections, instead of fence posts, as they had originally planned, they could probably get enough made for a good start on the cow barn by the time the excavations and footings were in place.

At four-thirty Bob quit work as usual and went to the house and cleaned up to do his milking. Just as he was finishing his last cow, his Aunt Bettie and the girls, accompanied by their visitors, came into the yard to see him milk. Bob explained that as soon as the new cow barn was finished, the milking would no longer be done in the barnyard, but in the barn, and instead of milking by hand, they would install automatic milking machines. He could then take care of twenty cows easier than he could now take care of ten milked by hand.

"How do you like the new Holsteins?" asked the banker, as he watched Bob finish off the last cow.

"They're fine, Mr. White. This one's name is Spot. She's my favorite; she's a three-year-old and gives twenty quarts of milk each day. That's better than any of the others, although two of them come pretty close to her. When we get the new barn and can, regulate their feeding, they'll all do much better."

"Why, do you know how much milk each cow gives?" inquired Mrs. White, surprised.

"Certainly," said Bob, "we not only know, but we set down every day how much we get, so we can keep a record. If you'll come down to the dairy house, I'll show you how it's done. Of course, we don't measure each cow's milk separately every day, or weigh their cream every day, but every time I milk, I keep the milk of one cow in a separate pail, so it may be weighed. For instance, I'm taking note of Spot's yield to-day."

"This is very interesting, Bob," said Mrs. White. "I didn't think you went into farming so scientifically."

"They don't on some farms," replied Bob, "but Aunt Bettie and I keep books here on Brookside Farm. We want to find out what pays the best."

"That's right," said the banker, "working and figuring go hand in hand, and if you keep that up Brookside Farm will soon be paying a good profit."

"Will you let me see your books after supper, Bob?" he asked. "Your Aunt Bettie has invited us all to stay and have supper with you."

"Yes," said Bob. "I'll be glad to."

"Did that one cow give that much milk?" asked the banker's wife in astonishment, as she saw the huge pail Bob had gotten from Spot.

"Yes," said Bob proudly.

"Why, I had no idea one cow could give so much milk," she replied.

"That's why," said Bob, "it doesn't pay to keep common cows. They eat as much as a purebred and don't give nearly as much milk. Besides, their milk isn't as rich as Holsteins. If you come along to the dairy house, I'll show you how we separate the milk and get the cream."

"May I carry one of the pails, Bob?" asked Ruth.

"You'll have to be careful, Ruth, if you carry it," admonished her aunt. "If you and Edith don't go racing, you may carry it between you," she continued, as the two girls picked up one of the largest pails and started off for the dairy house.

When they arrived, Bob weighed the milk given by Spot and made a note of it in his record book, setting down the date and name of the cow; then he weighed the balance of the milk, and under the heading of "Herd of Ten Cows," he set down the total amount given by all. "You see," said Bob, "in this way we have an individual record of milk taken every ten days from each cow, and a daily record of the ten taken together. It doesn't make so much bookkeeping and is close enough for all practical purposes. When we get our electric lights in, Mrs. White," he continued, as he started the separator, "we're going to put an electric motor on the separator. Then I can be doing something else while the milk's going through."

"Listen to that, Ida," said the banker, addressing his wife. "Everything on Brookside is going to be run by power and every person on the farm will be multiplied by two or five before Bob and his Aunt Bettie get through, and besides it won't be such hard work."

"No," laughed Bob, "when the power does the work, you don't notice it so much."

"That's so," said the banker's wife; "you must be tired, Bob, at the end of a day, with all the activities you have around here."

"Oh, one gets used to it, Mrs. White. I've gained ten pounds since I came here."

He put the cream he had gotten in a cream can and placed it in the trough. He opened the icehouse door and put some more ice around the cans.

"How'd you happen to get the old ice in the new dairy, Bob?" asked the banker.

"Well, we figured if we left it in the old icehouse, over half of it would melt during the summer and we wouldn't lose anything like that much by transferring it, so we put it on the wagon and hauled it over. Of course, when this ice was cut, the cakes were made all kinds of sizes, which gave us some trouble in piling it up. Next year we're going to cut the ice in twenty-two by twenty-two-inch sizes. I don't know whether I told you or not, Mr. White, but the floor of the icehouse slopes toward the center, so each cake helps to support the other as we take them out."

"Just listen to that, Ida. See how Bob has figured out all these things. Who would have thought of that?"

"I didn't," confessed Bob. "That was in one of the farm bulletins on icehouse construction."

"Somebody else worked it out, but you used the idea," said the banker. "Often a man who can utilize another's idea can develop it to greater profit than the one who first created it. It's my opinion, Bob, that it's the little things in life that are carefully managed that make a success of the big things."

"What do you do with your skim milk, Bob?" asked Mrs. White. "We feed that to the calves, and what's left over to the pigs, and some of it occasionally to the chickens."

"Do you make butter, Bob?" asked Mr. White.

"We used to," said Bob, "but now we sell all our cream to the creamery and buy our butter." "What, buy your own butter?"

"Yes, Aunt Bettie says it pays better to buy butter from those who make it in a big way than try to make it ourselves. We get the butter when we deliver the cream and in that way we don't have the extra work to do. Of course, we could make our own butter, and would do so if there was no creamery, but the money that goes for a pound of butter is less than we get for a pound of butter fat, and we save the time Aunt Betty would have to devote to it."

Bob now opened the refrigerator and showed them how they kept their eggs, butter and fresh meat.

"My, what a nice-looking lot of things to eat," said Mrs. White admiringly, as she looked into the white-enameled refrigerator. "See the crates of nice white eggs and freshly-killed poultry."

"Of course, we aren't killing much poultry now," said Bob. "We won't get started on that until the hen house is finished, but we're killing off a lot of the common chickens to get rid of them. They're bringing thirty cents per pound now."

"We'll wait supper till you get your shower and change your clothes, Bob," whispered his aunt, as the party came to the house and Bob disappeared. The favorable comments made by the banker and his wife on his work raised his thoughts above the level of mere clothes. He cared not that his ready-made suit compared rather poorly with the tailor- made clothes of their boy visitors. He decided that as he was going to be a farmer, he would wear the kind of clothes that belonged to farmers, and wouldn't try to ape others in the matter of dress.

After supper was over, Bob and his uncle, with the banker, adjourned to the sitting room, where they spent a half hour in going over their system of cost-keeping.

"This is a fine system, Joe," said the banker. "I'm glad to know you're taking such an intelligent interest in your farm."

"Well, it was pretty hard, John, for me at first to understand keeping accounts and all that, but Bettie and Bob were so insistent that I finally made up my mind that I was going to learn what it was all about. I think now I've a pretty fair idea how to tell whether a thing's paying or not; besides, since we got it started it don't take over five minutes a day. Before the summer is over, we'll have our work pretty well systematized. I'm beginning already to find out that a lot of things we've been doing on this farm all our lives have been unprofitable and also that many things we've neglected entirely can be made to pay a good profit."

"Nothing like figures, Joe, to tell you where you're at," laughed the banker. "Next thing for us to do, Joe, is to see that we get our farmers all awake and in line for a new concrete road to town. We must build that road this summer. I want you to be able to haul your produce easily."

When Bob returned to the porch, he found that the boys and girls had gone for a walk, from which they did not return until the banker and his wife were ready to leave. It did not add to his pleasure to see the easy manner in which they walked along, arm in arm, on their return to the house, or the rather overlong hand-shaking when they finally parted. He decided he didn't like those boys--especially "Eddie" Brown.

XVI

RUTH AND JERRY

"I'm goin' to start planting the corn this morning, Bob," said his uncle at breakfast on Monday morning. "I ought to get the ten-acre field finished by Wednesday evening. As soon as that is planted, I guess I had better take the tractor and haul out some more cement. John White and I made arrangements on Saturday, when he was here, to go ahead with the rest of the buildings. There'll be a considerable amount of cement required for these, and I don't want to stop planting corn to bring it out, and after that you know we'll be pretty busy. I wish you would figure up how many barrels of cement it will take approximately for each of the buildings, Bob; also the rolls of galvanized wire and steel bars for reinforcing so that I can get these ordered at the same time. You'll want some window frames and ventilators, gratings and other things for the cow barn, too. I think you'd better make some sketches and a list of just what you want. Then we can get bids, and see where we can buy the cheapest. You'd better get some catalogs, too, Bob, on cow stable fittings, such as stanchions, sanitary water bowls and manure carriers. Of course, we'll want to build the silo, too, at the same time, and you better make a list of the materials required for that. You and your Aunt Bettie can talk over the details and arrange the matter between you."

"All right, Uncle Joe; we'll take care of it," said Bob, "and have the list ready for you in a few days. Of course, we don't want to knock off during working hours to make up this list, unless we have to, but when it comes to putting on the roof of the hen house, Tony can carry on the work by himself, if necessary, while I complete the drawings of the cow barn and silo and figure out the quantities."

"Don't forget that I'm here," said Ruth, "and I'm going to help build the rest of the buildings, even though I did hurt my thumb the first time I tried. I've been practicing out in the woodshed and I can hit a nail on the head nearly every time now."

At the mention of her nail-driving ability, Bob could not refrain from smiling.

It was probably nine-thirty that morning when Bob, busy at work on the hen house, looked up and saw Ruth dressed in her farmerette clothes, talking with their uncle at the far side of the field where he was planting oats. It was fully an hour later when he looked up again and saw Edith standing near him. At first glance she seemed abashed, but he noticed that the corners of her mouth were tucked up in a roguish laugh.

"Anything happened, Edith?" he asked.

"Not yet, Bob, but," she replied laughing, "there'll be something happen to Ruth in a few minutes, if you don't come and rescue her."

"Why, where is she?"

"Come, and I'll show you," said Edith, and Bob turned the concrete mixer over to Tony and they went over to the old orchard, back of the smokehouse.

In almost the exact center of this three-acre plot, a tree had decayed and fallen several years before, and a young apple tree had been planted to take its place. This tree was now about five inches in diameter, and forked about five to six feet from the ground. In the crotch of this small tree, a foot dangling on either side, sat Ruth, balancing herself as best she could while Jerry, the new Southdown buck, was prancing back and forth, jumping alternately at one foot, then at the other, as she let them hang down within his reach.

"How did she get up there?" asked Bob, as he took in the situation.

"I don't know," said Edith, "but she must have been up there a long time, because I've been hearing her shouting for at least a half hour, but I thought she was with you and Tony working on the hen house."

"Oh, Bob, come over here and drive Jerry away," cried Ruth, hearing them. "I've been sitting in this apple tree holding up my feet until they're ready to drop off."

"How did you happen to get up there, Ruth?" called Edith laughing, while she and Bob stood outside the fence enjoying the situation and watching Jerry jump time and again for a dangling foot.

"I went up to see Uncle Joe--say, aren't you going to help me, Bob?-- and was taking a short cut through the orchard and forgot all about Jerry--confound that sheep," drawing a foot up just in time--"when I saw him I started to run, and he ran after me. This was the only tree small enough for me to climb, so I got up here and Jerry has been keeping guard ever since. Whenever I let a foot dangle down he strikes at it. Come on, and drive him away, Bob. I'm so tired I can scarcely keep from falling."

"All right," laughed Bob, "I'll get him away," and vaulting the fence he ran over to where Jerry was standing, took him by the wool on the back of his neck and held him with one hand.

"Now, slide down, Ruth--he won't hurt you. All he wanted was someone to pet him."

"I tell you he's cross, Bob. He would have butted me if I hadn't got up into the tree."

"He was only trying to play with you, Ruth. Now, come down and I'll prove you're wrong."

But no sooner had Ruth placed her cramped feet on the ground than Jerry broke loose, and with head down, went charging after her, as, letting out a scream, she dashed for the house as fast; as she could go. The gate, opening into the yard by the smokehouse, was too far away, so she changed her course and headed for the fence between the orchard and hen house, near the spot where Edith was standing. She had placed her right foot on the second board of the fence just ready to jump, when Jerry arrived just in time to take advantage of the opportunity presented. With one strong butt he hoisted her clear of the fence, landing her on all fours on the soft, plowed ground on the other side. She jumped up quickly, spitting out a mouthful of the soft earth she had scooped up. Bob and Edith were doubled up with laughter.

"Oh, you two probably think it's very funny," snapped Ruth, "sitting up in an apple tree for a half hour, with Jerry trying to knock your feet off every time you let them hang down, to say nothing of his butting me over the fence. Well, laugh if you want to, but it's not so funny if you're IT."

"Perhaps you'd better come into the house, Ruth, and get rested," suggested Edith, "or maybe you'd like to help Aunt Bettie plant the garden."

"You help her yourself, if you want to; I'm going to help Bob and Tony build the hen house," she declared suddenly. "I was coming over to help you, Bob, when Jerry treed me in the orchard, and if it hadn't been for him, I would have been there an hour ago."

"All right," laughed Bob; "I'll be glad to have you help me now, Ruth," and he helped brush the dirt from her clothes. Edith caught a merry twinkle in his eye, as they left her to go back to the concrete mixer.

"What can I do to help, Bob?" asked Ruth, when they arrived at the work.

"I think I'll let you be the engineer, Ruth, and run the mixer. That's an important job," he added, winking at Tony. He instructed her how to start and stop the engine, and which levers to use in filling and emptying the drum. She was still busy with the mixer when the dinner bell rang.

"I'd like to get a turtle, Uncle Joe," said Ruth at dinner. "How can I catch one?"

"Get Bob to shoot a ground squirrel for you and bait a couple of hooks; then set some lines in the new pond. Perhaps you can catch one that way."

"Is that what you bait turtle hooks with?" asked Ruth.

"Ground squirrels make the best kind of bait," said her uncle. "If there are turtles in the pond, you'll get one of them with that."

"Let me shoot the squirrel myself, Uncle Joe," said Ruth.

"I won't have time to go hunting squirrels this afternoon, but perhaps you and Bob might be able to find one on the fence down back of the barn. You can take my shotgun, Ruth, but be careful that you don't shoot yourself instead of the squirrel."

"Oh, I know how to shoot, Uncle Joe; don't worry," she declared.

"Let's go as soon as we get our dinner, Bob," she said enthusiastically.

When they had finished, Bob got two turtle lines and hooks from the woodshed and the double-barrel gun and four shells. They went down along the fence back of the barn toward the pond. When they were almost at the foot of the hill, near a chestnut tree, they saw a ground squirrel sitting on the top of a fence post.

Bob handed the gun to Ruth and explained to her how to operate it, and much to his surprise and admiration, she quickly raised the gun to her shoulder and fired-the squirrel tumbling off the fence.

"How did you happen to do that?" he asked, lost in admiration, for it was a neat shot.

"Throw your hat up in the air and I'll show you," she said.

As he hesitated, she asked.

"You're not afraid I'll hit it, are you, Bob?"

"No, I'm not," said Bob, and with that he threw his straw hat high into the air and it came down with a nick in the brim and two holes in the crown.

"Where did you learn to shoot, Ruth?" he demanded, looking at his damaged hat.

"Oh, I learned that long ago," she replied, pleased that at last she had won his genuine admiration. "I've two medals for shooting. My brothers are both crack shots and they taught me. I usually shoot with a rifle, however."

"That's fine shooting," said Bob. "I couldn't do nearly as well as that myself," he admitted grudgingly.

"Now, show me how to bait the hook," she said, picking up the squirrel. Bob took it and showed her how to prepare and put it on the hook.

They then went along the pond until they came to some small thorn bushes that grew on the bank. Bob showed her how to cast the bait by whirling it round and round and then let it fly out into the water. She tried several times until she got the knack of doing it, then threw in both lines and tied them fast to the thorn bushes.

"How long'll I have to wait before I catch a turtle, Bob?" she asked, as they started for the house.

"Maybe an hour and maybe not till to-morrow morning, and maybe as long as a day or two--it just depends," he replied.

About three o'clock in the afternoon, he noticed that Ruth, who had gotten tired running the mixer, had gone to the house. A little later he saw her with Edith passing through the barnyard in the direction of the pond.

It was perhaps a half hour later when he heard shouts in the direction of the pond and someone calling his name. He dropped his tools and rushed across the plowed field, when he saw Edith hurrying toward him as fast as she could walk over the newly-plowed ground. She was waving her hand to him, motioning him to hurry.

"What's happened to Ruth now?" he asked breathlessly, catching up to her.

"It isn't Ruth this time," she replied. "It's Duncan Wallace."

"Why, what's the matter with him?" he asked eagerly, surprised that the staid old Scotchman should have gotten into trouble.

"Well, it was this way," said Edith, between breaths, as they started in the direction of the sand pit, "when Ruth and I went down to the pond the first line we pulled out had a turtle on it, and while I held it by the tail, Ruth took a forked stick and pried the hook out of its mouth; then she thought it'd be good sport to take it down and show it to Duncan Wallace, and when she got near she held it up by the tail and showed it to him.

"'What's that you have there Mister--Miss--?'

"'A turtle, Mr. Wallace,' said Ruth, laughing over the fact that he did not know whether she was a boy or a girl.

"'Oh, a turtle, is it? Well, let me see it.' Then he took the turtle from her, Bob, and laid it on the shovel he was using to screen sand. He held the shovel so that the turtle's head was not very far from and on a level with his face. Then, much to my disgust, he began spitting tobacco juice in the turtle's eyes, forcing it to draw its head into the shell. It didn't seem to like it very much, for all of a sudden it reached out its head and grabbed Duncan Wallace by the nose, and, oh, Bob, you should have seen him dance and heard him swear; he swore something terrible," she said laughing heartily. "It was the funniest thing, Bob, I ever saw in my life--neither Ruth's ride on the cow the other day nor her experience with Jerry this morning could compare with the way that old Scotchman hopped around, waving his shovel in one hand, the turtle dangling from his nose, and swearing like a pirate."

"Well, how did you get the turtle off?" asked Bob, laughing in spite of his fears for the Scotchman's safety.

"We didn't get it off," said Edith; "that's why we got you here. Ruth tried to shake it off, but his nose bled terribly. He was sitting on a pile of sand holding on to the turtle when I left," she replied.