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Milt made tea, ignoring them, while Bill entertained the Gilsons and Saxtons with Rabelaisian stories of threshing-time when shirts prickly with chaff and gritty with dust stuck to sweat-dripping backs; of the "funny thing" of Milt and Bill being hired to move a garbage-pile and "swiping" their employer's "mushmelons"; of knotting shirts at the swimming-hole so that the bawling youngsters had to "chaw beef"; of drinking beer in the livery-stable at Melrose; of dropping the water-pitcher from a St.
Sunday was the hard day of the week with them, just as Saturday was the busy day with the merchants on Main Street. Revivals were seasons of extra work and pressure, just as threshing-time was on the farms. Visiting elders had to be lodged and cooked for, the folding-bed in the parlor was let down, and Mrs. Kronborg had to work in the kitchen all day long and attend the night meetings.
Where were they from? From Jimtown, where they had showed the night before. And where bound? To the Hanley Ranch, a big wheat ranch, about twenty miles east. It was threshing-time there, and there would be plenty of men to make an audience. Mr. Mildini meant plenty from his point of view. A settlement of five houses looked good to him. Oh, yes, Whitey knew the Hanley Ranch.
In those days in the West threshing-time was an era of prosperity, and twenty-five or thirty men would band together and buy a threshing-machine. They owned plenty of horses, and they would go from ranch to ranch with this machine, and thresh the grain. Now, this threshing-time being of short duration, it drew into it men whose occupations were entirely different at other times of the year.
He acted not only as manager, but as foreman of the ranch, which included two sections, twelve hundred and eighty acres. And he had many enemies. Perhaps you have wondered at that queer audience in the barn, and why threshing-time should bring it together.
Don't you know me?" Mrs. Ericson put down the lamp. "You must be Nils. You don't look very different, anyway." "Nor you, Mother. You hold your own. Don't you wear glasses yet?" "Only to read by. Where's your trunk, Nils?" "Oh, I left that in town. I thought it might not be convenient for you to have company so near threshing-time." "Don't be foolish, Nils." Mrs. Ericson turned back to the stove.
And this matter of her not having anything to mother was responsible for many things, as you shall learn. Threshing-time was rush time with her. She had few chances to think of anything except food, but this night she happened to have a little leisure, and had devoted it to consideration of Whitey. "That poor boy out in that tent with all those rough men. Why didn't I think of him before?"
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