the looks of ye,” said Pete, “you’re a strong enough lad.”
“I can lift a spoon as far as my mouth,” admitted Teller with a grin.
“Be ye willing to work?” said Pete.
“What kind?” asked Teller.
“Nothing hefty,” said Pete. “Just take the milk away from eighteen head, cool it, feed and set the barn to rights. Come after school and leave afore supper.”
“How much?” asked Teller.
Pete’s eyes contracted to their gimlet aspect. “Fifty cents a day,” he said, “cash in hand.”
The grin vanished from Teller’s face; his upper lip curled in a sneer and his eyes turned red. “You ton o’ beef,” he muttered angrily, “who do you think I am? Kiss you and your fifty cents!” He started out, shouting over his shoulder, “Who’s going to pay me my due of five bucks for walking five miles home? Me that wouldn’t travel half around your belly for fifty cents!”
In an instant, rage transformed Pete’s grotesque bulk into the threat of a toppling rock. His cheeks took on the dreaded purple tinge, but his eyes, instead of flattening into fish scales, seemed to spurt venom.
“Stop him!” he wheezed raucously. “Bring his greasy neck where I can squeeze it with only one hand! Stop him!”
Lottie let fly with a wire pan brush that almost tore off Teller’s ear as he kicked open the door and left. Outside, he snatched up a quarter-brick and hurled it at Rumble. It caught the dog full in the chest, and though it bounced off harmlessly, it came near to killing him anyway from choking to death with fury.
“Pete,” murmured Ellen, “how fast did you say your brain can walk?”
Close to Pete’s chair stood the sturdy three-legged stool which he carried with him whenever he went out. He gave it a petulant side kick, knocking it over. His chin dropped, causing his beard to spread like a baby’s bib. A moment ago he had seemed a concentration of power, and even now he didn’t look ridiculous, only sad. Meg felt sorry for him.
“Don’t worry, Pete,” she said softly. “Your brain was right, all right. Leave it to me and I’ll prove it.”
II
THAT NIGHT Meg lay awake, remembering Teller. He was mean and as tough as they come, but even so, it would have been a break to have him around, crashing like a bull into the hidden struggle at Yocum Farm and giving her something different to worry about. Then she thought of Johannath Storm, and when she woke she could hardly wait to get to school. Nath was barely seventeen and shorter than Teller’s six feet, but stockier. The way a lot of the girls acted, especially Tibby Rinton, you’d think he must be good-looking, yet he wasn’t—not really. He had freckles and rough hair, muskrat-brown, and when he smiled, his blue eyes would crinkle almost shut to the shape of a fingernail moon. Meg had never really talked to him the way Tibby Rinton did every chance she got, but she had smiled at him more than once and he had smiled back. She caught him alone in the hall and walked close behind him.
“Nath,” she whispered, “I’m in a terrible fix. Pete Yocum made me promise to bring you out to the farm this afternoon, and I just don’t know what to say.”
He slanted laughing eyes down at her. “You’ve said it all before you begin,” he told her. “How long would it take?”
“Not so awful long,” she said eagerly. “If you went out on the bus with me, afterwards you could cut across Oxhead Woods and get home right quick.”
“Sure,” said Nath. “I hadn’t thought of that. I guess I can make it.”
In the bus they sat side by side, and as they went up the lane together, she couldn’t keep from thinking how different it was from walking with Teller. She spied Pete sitting on his stool in the open wagon shed, overseeing Lot grind feed.
“Here’s another boy, Pete,” she said, “a nicer one. His name’s Johannath Storm, but everybody calls him Nath.”
“Howdy,” said Pete. “You ain’t son to the widow that has the bitty crossroads store over to the Friesburg Pike, is you?”
“That’s right,” said Nath.
“I need a body to help me out with the evening chores,” said Pete humbly. “You know what they be, good as me, and all I can pay is fifty cents a day.”
Nath hesitated and might have refused if he hadn’t chanced to glance at Meg. Her lips were half parted and the hope in her eyes changed her face so completely that it was like looking at somebody he didn’t know.
“All right, Mr. Pete,” he said. “I guess I’ll take the job, for a while anyways.”
Pete didn’t attempt to hide his pleasure. “Well, now; that’s right good news,” he said softly. “Could you start today?”
“Sure,” said Nath. “Just show me the lay of the place.”
With an alacrity that made Nath gasp, Pete got off the stool, hung it on one arm like a bangle and headed for the barn. Meg went to the house to freshen up, and though Nath didn’t need a lot of showing, Pete wouldn’t leave him. He didn’t say much, he just watched, and the longer he watched the deeper seemed his absorption with some fascinating project that made him think hard enough to raise a sweat. He had his cane gripped between his knees and was toying with a horseshoe, a big one. Nath wished he would go away. How could he work when his brain was teetering between thinking Pete was funny, yet perhaps he wasn’t? Then Pete seized the horseshoe by the tips, straightened the cold iron into a rod, tossed it aside and spat at it languidly.
Nath felt his face turn white; now he knew whether Pete was funny or not. He didn’t look at him any more; he worked hard, and presently he could murmur, “I guess that’s all of it.”
“Yes, sir,” said Pete, “and you done right good.” His hand started for his hip pocket, but stopped halfway. “You earned a bite of supper to boot. Come along in the house and set.”
Because Yocum Farm had the allure of a walled castle that everybody knew about but few had entered, Nath was tempted. Besides, he wanted to have another look at Meg. It was queer how you could see a kid around at school for a couple of years and then discover she was somebody you didn’t know at all. “I’d like to,” he said, “but I can’t. I guess my mother’s wondering already where I’m at.”
“That needn’t worry ye,” said Pete, leading the way toward the house. “I’ll phone Mis’ Storm soon as I git inside.” He stopped at a pump at the end of an arbor that fused into the broad eaves of a lean-to whose roof swept upward to meet the clapboarded siding of the house. “Have yourself a wash; here’s soap and I’ll send out a towel.”
Nath laid his jacket aside, stripped to the waist and stood laughing at Rumble, who was living up to his name; crouched on his belly, he looked and sounded like a maneless, grumbling lion. A broad grass-grown driveway broke sharply on the left into a steep-curving ramp, and at its foot, so unexpectedly close that it gave Nath a start, glistened the waters of the Yocum Farm tarn. Meg came running out with a towel.
“Better come over to meet Rumble before you wash,” she said. Rumble hurled himself to the
