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| THERE were three in the meadow by the brook, | |
| Gathering up windrows, piling haycocks up, | |
| With an eye always lifted toward the west, | |
| Where an irregular, sun-bordered cloud | |
| Darkly advanced with a perpetual dagger | 5 |
| Flickering across its bosom. Suddenly | |
| One helper, thrusting pitchfork in the ground, | |
| Marched himself off the field and home. One stayed. | |
| The town-bred farmer failed to understand. | |
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| What was there wrong? | 10 |
| Something you mid just now. | |
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| What did I say? | |
| About our taking pains. | |
| To cock the hay?—because it’s going to shower? | |
| I said that nearly half an hour ago. | 15 |
| I said it to myself as much as you. | |
| |
| You didn’t know. But James is one big fool. | |
| He thought you meant to find fault with his work. | |
| That’s what the average farmer would have meant. | |
| James had to take his time to chew it over | 20 |
| Before he acted; he’s just got round to act. | |
| |
| He is a fool if that’s the way he takes me. | |
| Don’t let it bother you. You’ve found out something. | |
| The hand that knows his business won’t be told | |
| To do work faster or better—those two things. | 25 |
| I’m as particular as anyone: | |
| Most likely I’d have served you just the same: | |
| But I know you don’t understand our ways. | |
| You were just talking what was in your mind, | |
| What was in all our minds, and you weren’t hinting. | 30 |
| Tell you a story of what happened once. | |
| I was up here in Salem, at a man’s | |
| Named Sanders, with a gang of four or five, | |
| Doing the haying. No one liked the boss. | |
| He was one of the kind sports call a spider, | 35 |
| All wiry arms and legs that spread out wavy | |
| From a humped body nigh as big as a biscuit. | |
| But work!—that man could work, especially | |
| If by so doing he could get more work | |
| Out of his hired help. I’m not denying | 40 |
| He was hard on himself: I couldn’t find | |
| That he kept any hours—not for himself. | |
| Day-light and lantern-light were one to him: | |
| I’ve heard him pounding in the barn all night. | |
| But what he liked was someone to encourage. | 45 |
| Them that he couldn’t lead he’d get behind | |
| And drive, the way you can, you know, in mowing— | |
| Keep at their heels and threaten to mow their legs off. | |
| I’d seen about enough of his bulling tricks— | |
| We call that bulling. I’d been watching him. | 50 |
| So when he paired off with me in the hayfield | |
| To load the load, thinks I, look out for trouble! | |
| I built the load and topped it off; old Sanders | |
| Combed it down with the rake and said, “O. K.” | |
| Everything went right till we reached the barn | 55 |
| With a big take to empty in a bay. | |
| You understand that meant the easy job | |
| For the man up on top of throwing down | |
| The hay and rolling it off wholesale, | |
| Where, on a mow, it would have been slow lifting. | 60 |
| You wouldn’t think a fellow’d need much urging | |
| Under those circumstances, would you now? | |
| But the old fool seizes his fork in both hands, | |
| And looking up bewhiskered out of the pit, | |
| Shouts like an army captain, “Let her come!” | 65 |
| Thinks I, d’ye mean it? “What was that you said?” | |
| I asked out loud so’s there’d be no mistake. | |
| “Did you say, let her come?” “Yes, let her come.” | |
| He said it over, but he said it softer. | |
| Never you say a thing like that to a man, | 70 |
| Not if he values what he is. God, I’d as soon | |
| Murdered him as left out his middle name. | |
| I’d built the load and knew just where to find it. | |
| Two or three forkfuls I picked lightly round for | |
| Like meditating, and then I just dug in | 75 |
| And dumped the rackful on him in ten lots. | |
| I looked over the side once in the dust | |
| And caught sight of him treading-water-like, | |
| Keeping his head above. “Damn ye,” I says, | |
| “That gets ye!” He squeaked like a squeezed rat. | 80 |
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| That was the last I saw or heard of him. | |
| I cleaned the rack and drove out to cool off. | |
| As I sat mopping the hayseed from my neck, | |
| And sort of waiting to be asked about it, | |
| One of the boys sings out, “Where’s the old man?” | 85 |
| “I left him in the barn, under the hay. | |
| If you want him you can go and dig him out.” | |
| They realized from the way I swobbed my neck | |
| More than was needed, something must be up. | |
| They headed for the barn—I stayed where I was. | 90 |
| They told me afterward: First they forked hay, | |
| A lot of it, out into the barn floor. | |
| Nothing! They listened for him. Not a rustle! | |
| I guess they thought I’d spiked him in the temple | |
| Before I buried him, else I couldn’t have managed. | 95 |
| They excavated more. “Go keep his wife | |
| Out of the barn.” | |
| Some one looked in a window; | |
| And curse me, if he wasn’t in the kitchen, | |
| Slumped way down in a chair, with both his feet | 100 |
| Stuck in the oven, the hottest day that summer. | |
| He looked so mad in back, and so disgusted | |
| There was no one that dared to stir him up | |
| Or let him know that he was being looked at. | |
| Apparently I hadn’t buried him | 105 |
| (I may have knocked him down), but just my trying | |
| To bury him had hurt his dignity. | |
| He had gone to the house so’s not to face me. | |
| He kept away from us all afternoon. | |
| We tended to his hay. We saw him out | 110 |
| After a while picking peas in the garden: | |
| He couldn’t keep away from doing something. | |
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| Weren’t you relieved to find he wasn’t dead? | |
| |
| No!—and yet I can’t say: it’s hard to tell. | |
| I went about to kill him fair enough. | 115 |
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| You took an awkward way. Did he discharge you? | |
| |
| Discharge me? No! He knew I did just right. | |
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