Read Online Dry Divide by Ralph Moody - Free Book Online Page B

toward Hudson, pitchforks in hand. Neither of them made a sound, but there was something in the way they moved that made me catch my breath. I think it made Hudson catch his, too. His whip lashed out across his horses’ backs, and they leaped into their collars, sending the header ripping into the wheat field with a rush.
    Hudson grabbed frantically for the boom, the gear lever, and the pulley ropes. But the horses had started with such a rush that the header was dragged more than a hundred feet, ripping the dead-ripe grain to the ground, before he could set the machinery in motion and lower the elevator enough that the conveyor belt could carry the cut grain up into the barge. Long before it got there Judy had the barge in position to catch it, but the only way she could keep it there was by beating the slow old mares with the rein ends, forcing them into a lumbering trot.
    Old Bill turned in behind the header, and I became convinced that Hudson was actually insane or on the verge of insanity. With a worn-out old header, a girl driving the barge, and six frightened mustangs to handle, he kept his whip flailing and his horses at as near a trot as they could pull the heavy machine. The swath he cut through that field was far from straight, but only a man with tremendous strength could have held any line at all. Wheat poured off the end of the conveyor belt like water rushing through a floodgate, and to keep the barge under the weaving stream, Judy had to drive with her head turned back, flogging the old mares and pulling them from side to side. By the time Hudson had cut a swath a quarter-mile into the field the barge was heaped to overflowing. He pulled his horses to a stop, made a right angle turn, and shouted, “Next barge! Stackyard here!”
    I jumped off Bill’s barge, and he brought it squarely under the elevator just as Hudson finished his turn. His coming in so smoothly seemed to anger Hudson. He lashed his horses and sent the header into the new swath like a wriggling snake, crashing the elevator against the side of the barge, then veering it out far enough to throw the cut grain onto the ground. And with each erratic veer he bawled at Bill to watch what he was doing and keep the barge under the elevator.
    I never saw any man take the play away from another so quickly and completely. Old Bill never once looked back at the crazily lurching elevator, or paid the slightest attention to Hudson, but set a course as straight as a taut string, forcing Hudson to fight the rudder and quit flogging his horses in order to keep the stream of wheat flowing into the barge. He cut three short swaths down the field and back to make room for the stackyard, then yelled for Doc’s barge—and my troubles began.
    With Doc’s barge under the elevator, Hudson kept straight on toward the far end of the field, a quarter-mile away, and again whipped his horses nearly to a trot. Gus and Lars were evidently afraid Judy would have trouble in catching up to take her turn, and they nearly buried me. Plunging their forks nearly to the floor boards, they heaved, and rolled about half the load off over the low side of the barge. Before I could more than get my fork into it, they’d sent the other half of the load tumbling down, burying me to the waist. They didn’t bother to clean out the barge, but scooped off the bulk of what was left with a few swipes of their forks, and before I could paw my way out of the mess Judy had larruped the old mares into a trot and was halfway out of the stackyard.
    Fortunately, Jaikus and Paco weren’t as strong as Gus and Lars, but they scooped wheat out of there fast enough that I couldn’t do much beside dodge the forkfuls. Then Old Bill drove away at a trot, and across the quarter-mile-square field I could see Judy pulling her barge in beside the header while Doc turned back with a heaping load.
    It was then I discovered that I didn’t know any more about stacking wheat