Little Lady of the Big House | Page 6

to a team abreast, what he knew were
his Shire mares, drawing the plows back and forth across,
contour-plowing, turning the green sod of the hillsides to the rich dark
brown of humus-filled earth so organic and friable that it would almost
melt by gravity into fine-particled seed-bed. That was for the corn--and
sorghum-planting for his silos. Other hill-slopes, in the due course of
his rotation, were knee-high in barley; and still other slopes were
showing the good green of burr clover and Canada pea.
Everywhere about him, large fields and small were arranged in a
system of accessibility and workability that would have warmed the
heart of the most meticulous efficiency-expert. Every fence was
hog-tight and bull-proof, and no weeds grew in the shelters of the
fences. Many of the level fields were in alfalfa. Others, following the
rotations, bore crops planted the previous fall, or were in preparation
for the spring-planting. Still others, close to the brood barns and pens,
were being grazed by rotund Shropshire and French-Merino ewes, or

were being hogged off by white Gargantuan brood-sows that brought a
flash of pleasure in his eyes as he rode past and gazed.
He rode through what was almost a village, save that there were neither
shops nor hotels. The houses were bungalows, substantial, pleasing to
the eye, each set in the midst of gardens where stouter blooms,
including roses, were out and smiling at the threat of late frost.
Children were already astir, laughing and playing among the flowers or
being called in to breakfast by their mothers.
Beyond, beginning at a half-mile distant to circle the Big House, he
passed a row of shops. He paused at the first and glanced in. One smith
was working at a forge. A second smith, a shoe fresh-nailed on the
fore-foot of an elderly Shire mare that would disturb the scales at
eighteen hundred weight, was rasping down the outer wall of the hoof
to smooth with the toe of the shoe. Forrest saw, saluted, rode on, and, a
hundred feet away, paused and scribbled a memorandum in the
notebook he drew from his hip-pocket.
He passed other shops--a paint-shop, a wagon-shop, a plumbing shop, a
carpenter-shop. While he glanced at the last, a hybrid machine, half-
auto, half-truck, passed him at speed and took the main road for the
railroad station eight miles away. He knew it for the morning butter-
truck freighting from the separator house the daily output of the dairy.
The Big House was the hub of the ranch organization. Half a mile from
it, it was encircled by the various ranch centers. Dick Forrest, saluting
continually his people, passed at a gallop the dairy center, which was
almost a sea of buildings with batteries of silos and with litter carriers
emerging on overhead tracks and automatically dumping into waiting
manure-spreaders. Several times, business-looking men,
college-marked, astride horses or driving carts, stopped him and
conferred with him. They were foremen, heads of departments, and
they were as brief and to the point as was he. The last of them, astride a
Palomina three-year-old that was as graceful and wild as a half-broken
Arab, was for riding by with a bare salute, but was stopped by his
employer.

"Good morning, Mr. Hennessy, and how soon will she be ready for Mrs.
Forrest?" Dick Forrest asked.
"I'd like another week," was Hennessy's answer. "She's well broke now,
just the way Mrs. Forrest wanted, but she's over-strung and sensitive
and I'd like the week more to set her in her ways."
Forrest nodded concurrence, and Hennessy, who was the veterinary,
went on:
"There are two drivers in the alfalfa gang I'd like to send down the hill."
"What's the matter with them?"
"One, a new man, Hopkins, is an ex-soldier. He may know government
mules, but he doesn't know Shires."
Forrest nodded.
"The other has worked for us two years, but he's drinking now, and he
takes his hang-overs out on his horses--"
"That's Smith, old-type American, smooth-shaven, with a cast in his
left eye?" Forrest interrupted.
The veterinary nodded.
"I've been watching him," Forrest concluded. "He was a good man at
first, but he's slipped a cog recently. Sure, send him down the hill. And
send that other fellow--Hopkins, you said?--along with him. By the
way, Mr. Hennessy." As he spoke, Forrest drew forth his pad book, tore
off the last note scribbled, and crumpled it in his hand. "You've a new
horse-shoer in the shop. How does he strike you?"
"He's too new to make up my mind yet."
"Well, send him down the hill along with the other two. He can't take
your orders. I observed him just now fitting a shoe to old Alden Bessie
by rasping off half an inch of the toe of her