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Updated: May 10, 2025
He could not shake off the feeling that the enemy in the dark was at work again. January passed, and the fatal day the tenth of February drew nearer and nearer. If Pepper proposed to exercise his option he must do it on or before that date. Neither Hiram nor Mrs. Atterson had seen the real estate man of late; but they had seen Mr.
He seldom spoke never unless he was spoken to; and he lay up under the roof of the furniture wagon, whether asleep, or no, Mrs. Atterson could not tell. "He's as odd as Dick's hat-band," the ex-boarding house mistress confided to the driver. "But, bless you! the easiest critter to get along with you never saw his beat.
There was no raid made upon her turkey coops this year, however. Pete Dickerson was not much in evidence during the spring and early summer. Mrs. Atterson went back and forth to the neighbors; but although whenever Hiram saw the farmer the latter put forth an effort to be pleasant to him, the two households did not well "mix".
He would have preferred cedars, of course; but those trees were scarce on the Atterson tract and they might be needed for some more important job later on. When he came up to the house at noon to feed the stock and make his own frugal meal in the farm house kitchen, the posts were cut.
The young farmer was of two minds whether he should see Caleb Schell, or not. But when he got back to the house for supper, and saw the doleful faces of the three waiting there, he couldn't stand inaction. "If you don't mind, I want to go to town tonight, Mrs. Atterson," he told the old lady. "All right, Hiram. I expect you've got to look out for yourself, boy.
"But three or four of the dratted things want to stay on the nest all the time," complained the old lady. "If I was you, Mrs. Atterson," Hiram said, soberly, "I'd spend five dollars for a hundred eggs of well-bred stock. "I'd set these hens as fast as they get broody, and raise a decent flock of biddies for next year. Scrub hens are just as bad as scrub cows.
So if you'll agree to always call me `Hiram' I'll always call you `Henry." "It's a go!" returned the other, shaking hands again. "You going to live around here? Or are you jest visiting?" "I don't know yet," confessed Hiram, sitting down beside the boy. "You see, I've come out to look at the Atterson place." "That's right over yonder. You can see the roof if you stand up," said Henry, quickly.
Hiram brought in a few bunches for their dinner on Saturday the first fruits of the garden. "Now, I dunno why it is," said Mrs. Atterson, complacently, after setting her teeth in the first radish and relishing its crispness, "but this seems a whole lot better than the radishes we used to buy in Crawberry.
Then he found they had all retired, leaving him a cold supper at the end of the kitchen table. The disappearance of the turkeys kept Hiram tossing, wakeful, upon his bed for some hours. He could not fail to connect this robbery with the other things that had been done, during the past weeks, to injure those living at the Atterson farm. Was the secret enemy really Peter Dickerson?
The gentleman looked at him curiously. "You certainly are an able-minded youngster, Hiram," he observed. "I s'pose if you do so well here next year as you expect, a charge of dynamite wouldn't blast you away from the Atterson farm?" "Why, Mr. Bronson," responded the young farmer, "I don't want to run a one-horse farm all my life. And this never can be much more.
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