like this?” protested Newton, who was developing an unwonted perspiration. “None of the others are heatin’ themselves up.”
“Don’t you get any fun out of doing a good day’s work?” asked Jim.
“Fun!” exclaimed Newton. “You’re crazy!”
A slide of earth from the top of the pit threatened to bury Newton in gravel, sand and good top soil. A sweet-clover plant growing rankly beside the pit, and thinking itself perfectly safe, came down with it, its dark green foliage anchored by the long roots which penetrated to a depth below the gravel pit’s bottom. Jim Irwin pulled it loose from its anchorage, and after looking attentively at the roots, laid the whole plant on the bank for safety.
“What do you want of that weed?” asked Newton.
Jim picked it up and showed him the nodules on its roots—little white knobs, smaller than pinheads.
“Know what they are, Newt?”
“Just white specks on the roots,” replied Newton.
“The most wonderful specks in the world,” said Jim. “Ever hear of the use of nitrates to enrich the soil?”
“Ain’t that the stuff the old man used on the lawn last spring?”
“Yes,” said Jim, “your father used some on his lawn. We don’t put it on our fields in Iowa—not yet; but if it weren’t for those white specks on the clover-roots, we should be obliged to do so—as they do back east.”
“How do them white specks keep us from needin’ nitrates?”
“It’s a long story,” said Jim. “You see, before there were any plants big enough to be visible—if there had been any one to see them—the world was full of little plants so small that there may be billions of them in one of these little white specks. They knew how to take the nitrates from the air——”
“Air!” ejaculated Newton. “Nitrates in the air! You’re crazy!”
“No,” said Jim. “There are tons of nitrogen in the air that press down on your head—but the big plants can’t get it through their leaves, or their roots. They never had to learn, because when the little plants—bacteria—found that the big plants had roots with sap in them, they located on those roots and tapped them for the sap they needed. They began to get their board and lodgings off the big plants. And in payment for their hotel bills, the little plants took nitrogen out of the air for both themselves and their hosts.”
“What d’ye mean by ‘hosts’?”
“Their hotel-keepers—the big plants. And now the plants that have the hotel roots for the bacteria furnish nitrogen not only for themselves but for the crops that follow. Corn can’t get nitrogen out of the air; but clover can—and that’s why we ought to plow down clover before a crop of corn.”
“Gee!” said Newt. “If you could get to teach our school, I’d go again.”
“It would interfere with your pool playing.”
“What business is that o’ yours?” interrogated Newt defiantly.
“Well, get busy with that shovel,” suggested Jim, who had been working steadily, driving out upon the fill occasionally to unload. On his return from dumping the next load, Newton seemed, in a superior way, quite amiably disposed toward his workfellow—rather the habitual thing in the neighborhood.
“I’ll work my old man to vote for you for the job,” said he.
“What job?” asked Jim.
“Teacher for our school,” answered Newt.
“Those school directors,” replied Jim, “have become so bullheaded that they’ll never vote for any one except the applicants they’ve been voting for.”
“The old man says he will have Prue Foster again, or he’ll give the school a darned long vacation, unless Peterson and Bonner join on some one else. That would beat Prue, of course.”
“And Con Bonner won’t vote for any one but Maggie Gilmartin,” added Jim.
“And,” supplied Newton, “Haakon Peterson says he’ll stick to Herman Paulson until the Hot Springs freeze over.”
“And there you are,” said Jim. “You tell your father for me that I think he’s a mere mule—and that the whole district thinks the same.”
“All right,” said Newt. “I’ll tell him that while I’m working him to vote for you.”
Jim smiled grimly. Such a position might have been his years ago, if he could have left his mother or earned enough in it to keep both alive. He had remained a peasant because the American rural teacher is placed economically lower than the peasant. He gave Newton’s chatter no consideration. But when, in the afternoon, he hitched his team with others to the big road grader, and the gang became concentrated within talking distance, he found that the project of heckling and chaffing him about his eminent fitness for a scholastic position was to be the real entertainment of the occasion.
“Jim’s the candidate to bust the deadlock,” said Columbus Brown, with a wink. “Just like Garfield in that Republican convention he was nominated in—eh, Con?”
“Con” was Cornelius Bonner, an Irishman, one of the deadlocked school board, and the captain of the road grader. He winked back at the pathmaster.
“Jim’s the gray-eyed man o’ destiny,” he replied, “if he can get two votes in that board.”
“You’d vote for me, wouldn’t you, Con?” asked Jim.
“I’ll try annything wance,” replied Bonner.
“Try voting with Ezra Bronson once, for Prue Foster,” suggested Jim. “She’s done good work here.”
“Opinions differ,” said Bonner, “an’ when you try annything just for wance, it shouldn’t be an irrevocable shtip, me bye.”
“You’re a reasonable board of public servants,” said Jim ironically. “I’d like to tell the whole board what I think of them.”
“Come down to-night,” said Bonner jeeringly. “We’re going to have a board meeting at the schoolhouse and ballot a few more times. Come down, and be the Garfield of the convintion. We’ve lacked brains on the board, that’s clear. They ain’t a man on the board that iver studied algebra, ’r that knows more about farmin’ than their impl’yers. Come down to the schoolhouse, and we’ll have a field-hand addriss the school board—and begosh, I’ll move yer illiction mesilf! Come, now, Jimmy, me bye, be game. It’ll vary the program, anny-how.”
The entire gang grinned. Jim flushed, and then reconquered his calmness of spirit.
“All right, Con,” said he. “I’ll come and tell you a few things—and you can do as you like about making the motion.”
CHAPTER II
