The Unplowed Sky (10 page)

“But Shaft, I'm scared of the way the steam hisses, the fire burning right there—the dreadful things that can happen!”

“That's good.” Shaft's tone held no sympathy. “Means you'll be careful. Hey, there's the breakfast whistle! Jack's really letting it tootle. If he don't turn out to be a boss thresherman, I'll miss my guess.”

Hallie's eyes brimmed. “We're so lucky you talked Garth into hiring me.”

“No, I'm lucky.” Shaft himself blinked fiercely. “First time in my life I ever kind of felt like I had a family.”

“Shaft! Really?”

He nodded, tied-back beard bobbing its limit. “Don't take it wrong, but it's just like the good Lord took pity on a run-down old bootlegger and sent me a sweet, smart, pretty daughter and hundred-proof son.”

The men were pouring into the shack but Hallie gave Shaft's arm a squeeze. “There's no One I'd rather have for a kind of father,” she whispered, and then passed golden biscuits and platters of steaming food.

Did you hear me blow the whistle?” Jackie kept asking each time he came in from playing with Laird and Smoky, who was still kitten enough to frisk and chase bits of string. “Didn't I toot real good?”

“Sure did, son,” Shaft told him each time, never impatient.

“Rory says I can do it
every
morning!” Jackie would say next in an awed tone. Then he went out, imitating the whistle. “Whoo-eeee! Whoooo-eeee!”

It was wonderful to have him so contented instead of clinging fearfully to her skirt the way he had after his mother left him at the MacReynoldses. Shaft's words about family had stirred something buried so deep and long in Hallie that she seldom allowed herself to feel it. Did all grown-ups have that little ache of homesickness? Probably not, if they had grown up and left home in the ordinary way. But Hallie had lost her mother long ago, then her home and her father in any way that mattered, though he hadn't really died till that winter. She hadn't spent a full day with the crew, but already she felt more sense of home, of belonging, than she had in all her years at the MacReynoldses, kind as they had been. Wonderingly, she realized that some of that was because she had Jackie to care for, but a lot of it was due to Shaft.

“Let's see now,” Shaft mused, slicing the last ham off the bone which he dropped into the simmering beans. “Bread's in the oven. So's a twelve-pound roast. That's a purty leaf pattern you made on them cherry and apple pies. They go in the oven soon's the bread comes out. You'll have them taters peeled by time to take out morning lunch. We'll give the boys ham sandwiches this morning, beef this afternoon, and I'll make hash tonight with whatever's left of the roast and taters. Stew a gallon of tomatoes with bread, heat up a gallon of green beans with bacon, make some rice pudding with plenty of raisins and cinnamon, and that's supper.”

“Don't you ever wonder what to fix?” Hallie marveled.

“Not for long. Don't have a lot of choice. Taters every meal, fried, smashed, or boiled. Plenty of meat and bread. Beans cooked till they're juicy but still firm. Gravy that don't have lumps. A pick of canned tomatoes, corn, peas, green beans, and fruit. Slaw, if I can get ahold of fresh cabbage, stewed dried apples or peaches or prunes. The boys ain't fussy long as it tastes good, there's plenty of it, and they get their pie or cake.”

Hallie had been peeling potatoes so long that her fingers cramped. She wiggled them, wondered how many tons of potatoes she would peel that summer, and picked up the knife again.

Rory didn't give Hallie much chance to get cold feet. He disappeared after supper and returned as she was attacking the pots and pans. “Here you are.” He dropped faded overalls and a shirt on the bench and took the dish towel away from Shaft. The instant the cook untied his beard and sat down, Smoky draped herself beneath his beard, spanning shoulder to shoulder, and Jackie scrambled up to nestle where he could stroke the kitten.

Just to see that was worth all the work Hallie had done that day, even if she hadn't been paid in money. Watching her brother in tender delight, she became aware that Rory was gazing at her. Something had changed in his eyes, in his manner which usually radiated young, almost arrogant masculinity.

“Looks like they're in pig heaven, the three of them,” he said. “Hey, Shaft, I hope that beard of yours don't give fleas to the cat.”

“I'll give 'em to you, young sprout, when I'm in a givin' mood,” Shaft retorted, but he didn't even open his eyes.

“Now, Hallie,” said Rory, “the best way to start you on the engine is when we make a new set. So you watch when it's time to bring morning and afternoon lunch. If the stacks are just about finished, put on your overalls, and I'll show you how to haul the separator to the next set and back the engine to where we can belt up.”

Hallie cringed. She'd had time to regret that, caught between the brothers, she had let herself be pressured into attempting to control that monster of steel and steam. “Rory—” she began faintly. “I—I don't think—”

“Well, look who's got attached to the other end of a dish towel.” Garth filled the door. Even by lamplight, Hallie could see the sardonic curve of his mouth. “Before you start helping out with cookshack chores though, laddie, it would be a fine notion to give your engine a going-over.”

Rory flushed to the roots of his curly, sweat-damp golden hair. “Baldy takes care of the flues and firebox.”

“You're still in charge.”

“Doesn't seem much like it with you nosing around!”

“I'm the one paying the mortgage!”

The brothers' eyes clashed. Rory glanced away first. “I was going to check everything over good in the morning.”

“What if something took a long time to fix and made us late starting?”

Rory swung around to confront Garth. “When it does—
if
it does—you can dock my share for what you're out of pocket.”

Garth's tone grew more conciliatory. “No use having it happen in the first place, laddie. If—”

“Laddie! When are you going to quit treating me like a kid?”

“When you stop acting like one.” Garth held out a mineral-crusted rubber ring. “You must have noticed this hand-hole gasket was leaking.”

“Sure, but the boiler had to cool off. I was going to drain it in the morning.”

“You'd have to be up long before Baldy to drain the boiler, take out the hand-hole plugs, and clean the holes and plate, oil the bolt, cut a new gasket to fit just right, and fill the boiler again before time to start the fire.”

“I'd of done it!”

“You'll just have to pardon me all to blazes, but sleepy-headed as you are of a morning, I reckoned we'd better get it done tonight.” Garth turned on his heel. “Boiler should be drained out by now. I've got a lantern rigged.”

“Oh, for the love of mud!” Rory slung the towel at its hook. Halfway to the door, he paused, turned, shrugged, and laughed. “One of these days! But my brother's right, drat his hide! Sorry I can't finish wiping for you, Hallie. Be sure and remember to watch those stacks tomorrow!”

His whistling floated back, a bit too nonchalant, perhaps. Shaft removed Smoky carefully from beneath his beard and put her in Jackie's lap, depositing them both on the bench. He washed his hands outside and returned to take over the drying.

“Rory had that comin', but I sure thought he was going to punch Garth in the nose. Trouble is, Garth can't quit peerin' over Rory's shoulder, so Rory kind of expects him to do it, even if makes him madder'n a wet hen.”

“It was mean of Garth to call Rory down in front of us.”

“Job had to be done, and I reckon Garth wants to get to bed.” Shaft slanted her a quizzical look. “Still, if you ask me, the boss is plumb, pure-dee jealous.”

Hallie's cheeks warmed but she scoffed. “Jealous? Jealous of what?”

“I saw the way he watched you when we took out lunch and you wore that purty blue sunbonnet.”

“Anytime
I
looked his direction, he was staring at the separator as if he couldn't wait to get back to it!”

“Sure. But his eyes were glued to you till you started to turn your head. 'Course you have that effect on most of the boys.”

“It's just their food they're interested in,” Hallie demurred, though she knew better. All the crew flirted a little, each in his own style, except for married Rusty Wells, and painfully shy Mennonite-reared Henry Lowen. “Mightn't it be better if Rory got a job with another thresherman?”

“I get the drift that their mother didn't want Rory to come to America, too. Garth talked her into it, pointin' out all the better chances the boy would have. So I guess he feels bound to keep an eye on him, especially now both their parents are gone. Usually the lads get along, but this is the first time they both took a shine to the same young lady.”

“If Garth's taken a shine to me, he's got a funny way of showing it.” Hallie sniffed.

“He's out of practice, and he's fightin' it,” said Shaft, setting the last kettle to be filled with picked-over beans that would soak all night. “All the same, I've been with Garth nigh onto five years. Seen quite a few women buzzin' around, but he's always dodged them like they were mosquitoes.”

“He won't have to dodge me,” Hallie vowed. “Not that I wouldn't like to sting him out of his notions about women!”

“You'll sting him pretty deep when you learn to run the engine.”

Hallie shuddered. “How did I ever get stuck with that?”

“Just lucky,” Shaft chuckled. “Say, we better get Jack to bed before he falls off that bench.”

We
. How good it was to feel she had help with the child, others who cared. As she washed Jackie's sleepy face and got him into his night shirt, she knew she
was
lucky, in spite of Garth's hostility. Even if the Rafords had been nice, Jackie was much happier with the threshers—and so was she though tomorrow she'd have to get up on the platform of that smoke-belching terror or be disgraced.

There was no way she would yield Garth that triumph. She would learn to run that beast. And she just hoped that someday that mulish, bullheaded
man
would have to be grateful that she could.

V

To Hallie's relief, morning lunch found the crew halfway through some stacks. But as afternoon lunch approached, the stacks diminished so swiftly that she set her jaw and went behind the cookshack to change into Ernie Brockett's shirt and overalls. She'd never had on trousers before. These were shapeless, and she had to roll up the bottoms.

“You look funny in those overalls, Hallie!” Jackie laughed as he trotted along with a pan of cookies. “Will the men think you're a boy?”

She grinned back at him. “Wouldn't it be fun if they did?” By the time they reached the set she was appreciating the fact that the wind couldn't whip her skirt around. Still, she was ill at ease in the strange garments and kept her gaze on the sandwiches as she passed them around.

Meg frowned at her and turned to Garth. “What's she rigged up like that for?”

“Ask your uncle.” Garth shrugged.

“You may ask me.” Hallie looked the girl in the eye and spoke in a firm, pleasant tone.

Meg's smooth, creamy brown skin went pink. When neither father nor uncle came to her rescue, she gave a toss of her head that made her brown curls jounce. “All right,” she said with a dangerous sparkle in her gray eyes. “What are you doing in those clothes?”

“Rory's going to teach me how to run the engine.”

Meg's mouth opened as if she'd been hit in the chest. She squeezed her sandwich till the bread crumbled and bits fell to the ground. She whirled to her uncle. “You wouldn't teach me! You said a girl's got no business on an engine!”

Rory squirmed. “Now, Meggie, lass—”

“You—you even said it was time Dad found someplace to leave me during threshing season—that I was getting too old to be a water monkey!”

“Well, you are! What kind of woman are you going to be if you never learn how to act like one?”

Meg's voice quivered with outrage as she jerked her chin toward Hallie. “I guess you think I ought to act like
her
?”

“Wouldn't be a bad place to start.”

Meg gulped. For an awful moment, Hallie thought she was going to cry, but the girl sucked in a long breath before she spoke in a controlled but withering tone. “You won't teach me because you think I should start behaving like a woman—but because Hallie is one, you'll show her how to do a man's job. Sounds just brilliant, Uncle Rory.”

“You've got your job, girl, and it keeps you busy. Reason I'm teaching Hallie is so she can take my place if we ever get in a fix where she needs to.”

“The reason,” Meg jeered, “is because you want to show off and have a chance to put your hand over hers while you teach her how to use the throttle!”

The men all laughed. Rory's sunburned face turned even redder. “Why, you little dickens!” He turned to his brother. “You going to let her wise off like that?”

“Sounds like the truth to me,” Garth said with just the suspicion of a grin before he bent a stern gaze on his daughter. “There's no call to be rude and huffy to Miss Meredith even if you are upset with your uncle, Meg. Don't you think you ought to say you're sorry?”

Then the tears did brim over. Scrubbing them away furiously, Meg jumped to her feet. “I'm
not
sorry! I wish she wasn't here! And—and I'd rather die than act like her!”

“Meg!” Garth roared.

She pelted away, climbed up on the tank wagon, and called to the horses. She had been spiteful, but Hallie regretted Meg's humiliation in front of the men, all the more because it ruined any slim chance that in time the girl would accept her.