"Neighbors ought to be neighborly; and it won't do either of us anygood to hug to ourselves any injury which we fancy the other has done. We'll be friends if you say so, Peter--though I tell you right now that if you turn another mean trick against me, I'll take the law into my own hands and give you worse than you've got already."Pete looked sheepish enough, and shook hands. He knew very well that Hiram could do as he promised.
But from that time on the young farmer had no further trouble with him.
Meanwhile Hiram's crops on the Atterson Eighty grew almost as well this second season as they had the first. There was a bad drouth this year, and the upland corn did not do so well; yet the young farmer's corn crop compared well with the crops in the neighborhood.
He had put in but eight acres of corn this year; but they had plenty of old corn in the crib when it came time to take down this second season's crop.
It was upon the celery that Hiram bent all his energies. He had to pay out considerable for help, but that was no more than he expected. Celery takes a deal of handling.
When the long, hot, dry days came, when the uplands parched and the earth fairly seemed to radiate the heat, the acres of tender plants which Hiram and his helpers had just set out in the trenches began to wilt most discouragingly.
Henry Pollock, who did all he could to aid Hiram on the crop, shook his head in despair.
"It's a-layin' down on you, Hiram--it's a-layin' down on you. Another day like this and your celery crop will be pretty small pertaters!""And that would be a transformation worthy of the attention of all the agricultural schools, Henry," returned the young farmer, grimly laughing.
"You got a heart--to laugh at your own loss," said Henry. "There isn't any loss--yet," declared Hiram.
"But there's bound to be," said his friend, a regular "Job's comforter" for the nonce.
" Look here, Henry; you'd have me give up too easy. 'Never say die!' That's the farmer's motto.""Jinks!" exclaimed young Pollock, "they're dying all around us just the same--and their crops, too. We ain't going to have half a corn crop if this spell of dry weather keeps on. And the papers don't give us a sign of hope.""When there doesn't seem to be a sign of hope is when the really up- to-date farmer begins to actually work," chuckled Hiram.
"And just tell me what you're going to do for this field of wilted celery?" demanded Henry.
"Come on up to the house and I'll get Mother Atterson to give us an early supper," quoth Hiram. "I'm going to town and I invite you to go with me."Henry had got used by this time to Hiram's little mysteries. But this seemed to him a case where man had done all that could be done for the crop, and without Providential interposition, "the whole field would have to go to pot", as he expressed it.
And in his heart the young farmer knew that the outlook for a paying crop of celery right then was very small indeed. He had done his best in preparing the soil, in enriching it, in raising the sets and transplanting them--up to this point he had brought his big commercial crop, at considerable expense. If the drouth really "got" it, he would have, at the most, but a poor and stunted crop to ship in the Fall.
But Hiram Strong was not the fellow to throw up his hands and own himself beaten at such a time as this. Here was an obstacle that must be overcome. The harder the problem looked the more determined he was to solve it.
The two boys drove to town that evening and Hiram sought out a man who contracted to move houses, clean cisterns and wells, and various work of that kind. He knew this man had just the thing he needed, and after a conference with him, Hiram loaded some bulky paraphernalia into the light wagon--it was so dark Henry could not see what it was--and they drove home again.
