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piles of old magazines. Ralph facetiously called the attic "Mahailey's library."
One day, while things were being packed for the western ranch, Mrs. Wheeler, going to the foot of the ladder
to call Mahailey, narrowly escaped being knocked down by a large feather bed which came plumping through
the trap door. A moment later Mahailey herself descended backwards, holding to the rungs with one hand, and
in the other arm carrying her quilts.
"Why, Mahailey," gasped Mrs. Wheeler. "It's not winter yet; whatever are you getting your bed for?"
"I'm just a-goin' to lay on my fedder bed," she broke out, "or direc'ly I won't have none. I ain't a-goin' to have
Mr. Ralph carryin' off my quilts my mudder pieced fur me."
Mrs. Wheeler tried to reason with her, but the old woman took up her bed in her arms and staggered down the
hall with it, muttering and tossing her head like a horse in fly-time.
That afternoon Ralph brought a barrel and a bundle of straw into the kitchen and told Mahailey to carry up
preserves and canned fruit, and he would pack them. She went obediently to the cellar, and Ralph took off his
coat and began to line the barrel with straw. He was some time in doing this, but still Mahailey had not
returned. He went to the head of the stairs and whistled.
"I'm a-comin', Mr. Ralph, I'm a-comin'! Don't hurry me, I don't want to break nothin'."
Ralph waited a few minutes. "What are you doing down there, Mahailey?" he fumed. "I could have emptied
the whole cellar by this time. I suppose I'll have to do it myself."
One of Ours 32
"I'm a-comin'. You'd git yourself all dusty down here." She came breathlessly up the stairs, carrying a hamper
basket full of jars, her hands and face streaked with black.
"Well, I should say it is dusty!" Ralph snorted. "You might clean your fruit closet once in awhile, you know,
Mahailey. You ought to see how Mrs. Dawson keeps hers. Now, let's see." He sorted the jars on the table.
"Take back the grape jelly. If there's anything I hate, it's grape jelly. I know you have lots of it, but you can't
work it off on me. And when you come up, don't forget the pickled peaches. I told you particularly, the
pickled peaches!"
"We ain't got no pickled peaches." Mahailey stood by the cellar door, holding a corner of her apron up to her
chin, with a queer, animal look of stubbornness in her face.
"No pickled peaches? What nonsense, Mahailey! I saw you making them here, only a few weeks ago."
"I know you did, Mr. Ralph, but they ain't none now. I didn't have no luck with my peaches this year. I must
'a' let the air git at 'em. They all worked on me, an' I had to throw 'em out."
Ralph was thoroughly annoyed. "I never heard of such a thing, Mahailey! You get more careless every year.
Think of wasting all that fruit and sugar! Does mother know?"
Mahailey's low brow clouded. "I reckon she does. I don't wase your mudder's sugar. I never did wase nothin',"
she muttered. Her speech became queerer than ever when she was angry.
Ralph dashed down the cellar stairs, lit a lantern, and searched the fruit closet. Sure enough, there were no
pickled peaches. When he came back and began packing his fruit, Mahailey stood watching him with a furtive
expression, very much like the look that is in a chained coyote's eyes when a boy is showing him off to
visitors and saying he wouldn't run away if he could.
"Go on with your work," Ralph snapped. "Don't stand there watching me!"
That evening Claude was sitting on the windmill platform, down by the barn, after a hard day's work
ploughing for winter wheat. He was solacing himself with his pipe. No matter how much she loved him, or
how sorry she felt for him, his mother could never bring herself to tell him he might smoke in the house.
Lights were shining from the upstairs rooms on the hill, and through the open windows sounded the singing
snarl of a phonograph. A figure came stealing down the path. He knew by her low, padding step that it was
Mahailey, with her apron thrown over her head. She came up to him and touched him on the shoulder in a
way which meant that what she had to say was confidential.
"Mr. Claude, Mr. Ralph's done packed up a barr'l of your mudder's jelly an' pickles to take out there."
"That's all right, Mahailey. Mr. Wested was a widower, and I guess there wasn't anything of that sort put up at
his place."
She hesitated and bent lower. "He asked me fur them pickled peaches I made fur you, but I didn't give him
none. I hid 'em all in my old cook-stove we done put down cellar when Mr. Ralph bought the new one. I didn't
give him your mudder's new preserves, nudder. I give him the old last year's stuff we had left over, and now
you an' your mudder'll have plenty." Claude laughed. "Oh, I don't care if Ralph takes all the fruit on the place,
Mahailey!"
She shrank back a little, saying confusedly, "No, I know you don't, Mr. Claude. I know you don't."
"I surely ought not to take it out on her," Claude thought, when he saw her disappointment. He rose and patted
One of Ours 33
her on the back. "That's all right, Mahailey. Thank you for saving the peaches, anyhow."
She shook her finger at him. "Don't you let on!"
He promised, and watched her slipping back over the zigzag path up the hill.
XIV
Ralph and his father moved to the new ranch the last of August, and Mr. Wheeler wrote back that late in the
fall he meant to ship a carload of grass steers to the home farm to be fattened during the winter. This, Claude
saw, would mean a need for fodder. There was a fifty-acre corn field west of the creek,--just on the sky-line
when one looked out from the west windows of the house. Claude decided to put this field into winter wheat,
and early in September he began to cut and bind the corn that stood upon it for fodder. As soon as the corn
was gathered, he would plough up the ground, and drill in the wheat when he planted the other wheat fields.
This was Claude's first innovation, and it did not meet with approval. When Bayliss came out to spend Sunday
with his mother, he asked her what Claude thought he was doing, anyhow. If he wanted to change the crop on
that field, why didn't he plant oats in the spring, and then get into wheat next fall? Cutting fodder and
preparing the ground now, would only hold him back in his work. When Mr. Wheeler came home for a short
visit, he jocosely referred to that quarter as "Claude's wheat field."
Claude went ahead with what he had undertaken to do, but all through September he was nervous and
apprehensive about the weather. Heavy rains, if they came, would make him late with his wheat-planting, and
then there would certainly be criticism. In reality, nobody cared much whether the planting was late or not,
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