This back end of the farm—quite forty acres, or half of the whole tract—had been entirely1 neglected by the last owner of the property for a great many years. It was some distance from the house, for the farm was a long and narrow strip of land from the highway to the river, and Uncle Jeptha had had quite all he could do to till the uplands and the fields adjacent to his home.
They came upon these open fields—many of them filthy2 with dead weeds and littered with sprouting3 bushes—from the rear. Hiram saw that the fences were in bad repair and that the back of the premises4 gave every indication of neglect and shiftlessness.
Perhaps not exactly the latter; Uncle Jeptha had been an old man and unable to do much active work for some years. But he had cropped certain of his fields “on shares” with the usual results—impoverished soil, illy-tilled crops, and the land left in a slovenly5 condition which several years of careful tillage would hardly overcome.
Now, although Hiram's father had been of the tenant6 class, he had farmed other men's land as he would his own. Owners of outlying farms had been glad to get Mr. Strong to till their fields.
He had known how to work, he knew the reasons for every bit of labor7 he performed, and he had not kept his son in ignorance of them. As they worked together the father had explained to the son what he did, and why he did it, The results of their work spoke8 for themselves, and Hiram had a retentive9 memory.
Mr. Strong, too, had been a great, reader—especially in the winter when the farmer naturally has more time in-doors.
Yet he was a “twelve months farmer”; he knew that the winter, despite the broken nature of the work, was quite as valuable to the successful farmer as the other seasons of the year.
The elder Strong knew that men with more money, and more time for experimenting than he had, were writing and publishing all the time helps for the wise farmer. He subscribed10 for several papers, and read and digested them carefully.
Hiram, even during his two years in the city, had continued his subscription12 (although it was hard to find the money sometimes) to two or three of those publications that his father had most approved. And the boy had read them faithfully.
He was as up-to-date in farming lore13 now, if not in actual practise, as he had been when he left the country to try his fortune in Crawberry.
Beyond the place where the branch turned back upon itself and hid its source in the thicker timber, Hiram saw that the fields were open on both sides of this westerly line of the farm.
“Who's our neighbor over yonder, Henry?” he asked.
“Dickerson—Sam Dickerson,” said Henry. “And he's got a boy, Pete, no older than us. Say, Hiram, you'll have trouble with Pete Dickerson.”
“Oh, I guess not,” returned the young farmer, laughing. “Trouble is something that I don't go about hunting for.”
“You don't have to hunt it when Pete is round,” said Henry with a wry14 grin. “But mebbe he won't bother you, for he's workin' near town—for that new man that's moved into the old Fleigler place. Bronson's his name. But if Pete don't bother you, Sam may.”
“Sam's the father?”
“Yep. And one poor farmer and mean man, if ever there was one! Oh, Pete comes by his orneriness honestly enough.”
“Oh, I hope I'll have no trouble with any neighbor,” said Hiram, hopefully.
They came briskly to the outbuildings belonging to Mrs. Atterson's newly acquired legacy15. Hiram glanced into the hog16 lot. She looked like a good sow, and the six-weeks-old shoats were in good condition. In a couple of weeks they would be big enough to sell if Mrs. Atterson did not care to raise them.
The shoats were worth six dollars a pair, too; he had inquired the day before about them. There was practically eighteen dollars squealing17 in that pen—and eighteen dollars would go a long way toward feeding the horse and cow until there was good pasturage for them.
These animals named were in the small fenced barnyard. In the fall and winter the old man had fed a good deal of fodder18 and other roughage, and during the winter the horse and cow had tramped this coarse material, and the stable scrapings, into a mat of fairly good manure19.
He looked the horse and cow over with more care. It was a fact that the horse looked pretty shaggy; but he had been used little during the winter, and had been seldom curried20. A ragged21 coat upon a horse sometimes covers quite as many good points as the same quality of garment does upon a man.
When Hiram spoke to the beast it came to the fence with a friendly forward thrust of its ears, and the confidence of a horse that has been kindly22 treated and looks upon even a strange human as a friend.
It was a strong and well-shaped animal, more than twelve years old, as Hiram discovered when he opened the creature's mouth, but seemingly sound in limb. Nor was he too large for work on the cultivator, while sturdy enough to carry a single plow23.
Hiram passed him over with a satisfactory pat on the nose and turned to look at the white-faced cow that had so terrified Mrs. Atterson. She wasn't a bad looking beast, either, and would freshen shortly. Her calf24 would be worth from twelve to fifteen dollars if Mrs. Atterson did not wish to raise it. Another future asset to mention to the old lady when he returned.
The youth turned his attention to the buildings themselves—the barn, the cart shed, the henhouse, and the smaller buildings. That famous old decorating firm of Wind & Weather had contracted for all painting done around the Atterson place for the many years; but the buildings were not otherwise in a bad state of repair.
A few shingles25 had been blown off the roofs; here and there a board was loose. With a hammer and a few nails, and in a few hours, many of these small repairs could be accomplished
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