I could hear the roosters in the barnyard,the turkey gobbler,and the old ganders screamed once in a while,and sometimes a bird sang a skimpy little fall song;nothing like spring,except the killdeers and larks;they were always good to hear--and then the dinner bell rang.I wished I had been where I couldn't have heard that,because I didn't intend going home until I had a fish that would do for mother if I stayed until night.If the best one in the family had to starve,we might as well all go together;but I wouldn't have known how hungry I was,if the bell hadn't rung and told me the others were eating.So I bent another pin and tried again.I lost the next worm without knowing how,and then I turned baby and cried right out loud.I was so thirsty,the salty tears running down my cheeks tasted good,and doing something besides fishing sort of rested me;so I looked around and up at the sky,wiped my face on the skirt of my sunbonnet,and put on another worm.I had only one more left,and I began to wonder if I could wade in and catch a fish by hand;I did teeny ones sometimes,but I knew the water there was far above my head,for I had measured it often with the pole;it wouldn't do to try that;instead of helping mother any,a funeral would kill her,too,so I fell back on the Crusaders,and tried again.
Strange how thinking about them helped.I pretended I was fighting my way to the Holy City,and this was the Jordan just where it met the sea,and I had to catch enough fish to last me during the pilgrimage west or I'd never reach Jerusalem to bring home a shell for the Stanton crest.I pretended so hard,that I got braver and stronger,and asked the Lord more like there was some chance of being heard.All at once there was a jerk that almost pulled me in,so I jerked too,and a big fish flew over my head and hit the bank behind me with a thump.Of course by a big fish I don't mean a red horse so long as my arm,like the boys bring from the river;I mean the biggest fish I ever caught with a pin in our creek.It looked like the whale that swallowed Jonah,as it went over my head.I laid the pole across the roots,jumped up and turned,and I had to grab the stump to keep from falling in the water and dying.There lay the fish,the biggest one I ever had seen,but it was flopping wildly,and it wasn't a foot from a hole in the grass where a muskrat had burrowed through.If it gave one flop that way,it would slide down the hole straight back into the water;and between me and the fish stood our cross old Shropshire ram.I always looked to see if the sheep were in the meadow before I went to the creek,but that morning I had been so crazy to get something for mother to eat,I never once thought of them--and there it stood!
That ram hadn't been cross at first,and father said it never would be if treated right,and not teased,and if it were,there would be trouble for all of us.I was having more than my share that minute,and it bothered me a lot almost every day.I never dared enter a field any more if it were there,and now it was stamping up and down the bank,shaking its head,and trying to get me;with one flop the fish went ALMOST in the hole,and the next a little away from it.Everything put together,I thought Icouldn't stand it.I never wanted anything as I wanted that fish,and I never hated anything as I hated that sheep.It wasn't the sheep's fault either;Leon teased it on purpose,just to see it chase Polly Martin;but that was more her doings than his.
She was a widow and she crossed our front meadow going to her sister's.She had two boys big as Laddie,and three girls,and father said they lived like "the lilies of the field;they toiled not,neither did they spin."They never looked really hungry or freezing,but they never plowed,or planted,they had no cattle or pigs or chickens,only a little corn for meal,and some cabbage,and wild things they shot for meat,and coons to trade the skins for more powder and lead--bet they ate the coons--never any new clothes,never clean,they or their house.Once when father and mother were driving past,they saw Polly at the well and they stopped for politeness sake to ask how she was,like they always did with every one.Polly had a tin cup of water and was sopping at her neck with a carpet rag,and when mother asked,"How are you,Mrs.Martin?"she answered:"Oh I ain't very well this spring;I gest I got the go-backs!"Mother said Polly looked as if she'd been born with the "go-backs,"and had given them to all her children,her home,garden,fields,and even the FENCES.We hadn't a particle of patience with such people.When you are lazy like that it is very probable that you'll live to see the day when your children will peep through the fence cracks and cry for bread.I have seen those Martin children come mighty near doing it when the rest of us opened our dinner baskets at school;and if mother hadn't always put in enough so that we could divide,I bet they would.
If Polly Martin had walked up as if she were alive,and had been washed and neat,and going somewhere to do some one good,Leon never would have dreamed of such a thing as training the Shropshire to bunt her.She was so long and skinny,always wore a ragged shawl over her head,a floppy old dress that the wind whipped out behind,and when she came to the creek,she sat astride the foot log,and hunched along with her hands;that tickled the boys so,Leon began teasing the sheep on purpose to make it get her.But inasmuch as she saw fit to go abroad looking so funny,that any one could see she'd be a perfect circus if she were chased,I didn't feel that it was Leon's fault.If,like the little busy bee,she had "improved each shining hour,"he never would have done it.Seems to me,she brought the trouble on her own head.
