Farmer Boy (18 page)

“You'll spoil the boy, James,” Mother said, but Father answered:

“He's big enough now to wear boots.”

Almanzo could hardly wait for the cobbler to begin.

First the cobbler looked at all the wood in the woodshed. He wanted a piece of maple, perfectly seasoned, and with a straight, fine grain.

When he found it, he took his small saw, and he sawed off two thin slabs. One was exactly an inch thick; the other was a half inch thick. He measured, and sawed their corners square.

He took the slabs to his cobbler's bench, and sat down, and opened his box of tools. It was divided into little compartments, and every kind of cobbler's tool was neatly laid in them.

The cobbler laid the thicker slab of maplewood on the bench before him. He took a long, sharp knife and cut the whole top of the slab into tiny ridges. Then he turned it around and cut ridges the other way, making tiny, pointed peaks.

He laid the edge of a thin, straight knife in the groove between two ridges, and gently tapped it with a hammer. A thin strip of wood split off, notched all along one side. He moved the knife, and tapped it, till all the wood was in strips. Then holding a strip by one end, he struck his knife in the notches, and every time he struck, a shoe-peg split off. Every peg was an inch long, an eighth of an inch square, and pointed at the end.

The thinner piece of maple he made into pegs, too, and those pegs were half an inch long.

Now the cobbler was ready to measure Almanzo for his boots.

Almanzo took off his moccasins and his socks, and stood on a piece of paper while the cobbler carefully drew around his feet with his big pencil.

Then the cobbler measured his feet in every direction, and wrote down the figures.

He did not need Almanzo any more now, so Almanzo helped Father husk corn. He had a little husking-peg, like Father's big one. He buckled the strap around his right mitten, and the wooden peg stood up like a second thumb, between his thumb and fingers.

He and Father sat on milking-stools in the cold barnyard by the corn-shocks. They pulled ears of corn from the stalks; they took the tips of the dry husks between thumb and husking pegs, and stripped the husks off the ear of corn. They tossed the bare ears into bushel baskets.

The stalks and rustling long dry leaves they laid in piles. The young stock would eat the leaves.

When they had husked all the corn they could reach, they hitched their stools forward, and slowly worked their way deeper into the tasseled shocks of corn. Husks and stalks piled up behind them. Father emptied the full baskets into the corn-bins, and the bins were filling up.

It was not very cold in the barnyard. The big barns broke the cold winds, and the dry snow shook off the cornstalks. Almanzo's feet were aching, but he thought of his new boots. He could hardly wait till supper-time to see what the cobbler had done.

That day the cobbler had whittled out two wooden lasts, just the shape of Almanzo's feet.

They fitted upside-down over a tall peg on his bench, and they would come apart in halves.

Next morning the cobbler cut soles from the thick middle of the cowhide, and inner soles from the thinner leather near the edge. He cut uppers from the softest leather. Then he waxed his thread.

With his right hand he pulled a length of linen thread across the wad of black cobbler's wax in his left palm, and he rolled the thread under his right palm, down the front of his leather apron. Then he pulled it and rolled it again. The wax made a crackling sound, and the cobbler's arms went out and in, out and in, till the thread was shiny-black and stiff with wax.

Then he laid a stiff hog-bristle against each end of it, and he waxed and rolled, waxed and rolled, till the bristles were waxed fast to the thread.

At last he was ready to sew. He laid the upper pieces of one boot together, and clamped them in a vise. The edges stuck up, even and firm. With his awl the cobbler punched a hole through them.

He ran the two bristles through the hole, one from each side, and with his strong arms he pulled the thread tight. He bored another hole, ran the two bristles through it, and pulled till the waxed thread sank into the leather. That was one stitch.

“Now that's a seam!” he said. “Your feet won't get damp in my boots, even if you go wading in them. I never sewed a seam yet that wouldn't hold water.”

Stitch by stitch he sewed the uppers. When they were done, he laid the soles to soak in water overnight.

Next morning he set one of the lasts on his peg, the sole up. He laid the leather inner-sole on it.

He drew the upper part of a boot down over it, folding the edges over the inner sole. Then he laid the heavy sole on top, and there was the boot, upside-down on the last.

The cobbler bored holes with his awl, all around the edge of the sole. Into each hole he drove one of the short maple pegs. He made a heel of thick leather, and pegged it in place with the long maple pegs. The boot was done.

The damp soles had to dry overnight. In the morning the cobbler took out the lasts, and with a rasp he rubbed off the inside ends of the pegs.

Almanzo put on his boots. They fitted perfectly, and the heels thumped grandly on the kitchen floor.

Saturday morning Father drove to Malone to bring home Alice and Royal and Eliza Jane, to be measured for their new shoes. Mother was cooking a big dinner for them, and Almanzo hung around the gate, waiting to see Alice again.

She wasn't a bit changed. Even before she jumped out of the buggy she cried:

“Oh, Almanzo, you've got new boots!” She was studying to be a fine lady; she told Almanzo all about her lessons in music and deportment, but she was glad to be at home again.

Eliza Jane was more bossy than ever. She said Almanzo's boots made too much noise. She even told Mother that she was mortified because Father drank tea from his saucer.

“My land! how else would he cool it?” Mother asked.

“It isn't the style to drink out of saucers any more,” Eliza Jane said. “Nice people drink out of the cup.”

“Eliza Jane!” Alice cried. “Be ashamed! I guess Father's as nice as anybody!”

Mother actually stopped working. She took her hands out of the dishpan and turned round to face Eliza Jane.

“Young lady,” she said, “if you have to show off your fine education, you tell me where saucers come from.”

Eliza Jane opened her mouth, and shut it, and looked foolish.

“They come from China,” Mother said.

"Dutch sailors brought them from China, two hundred years ago, the first time sailors ever sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and found China. Up to that time, people drank out of cups; they didn't have saucers. Ever since they've had saucers, they've drunk out of them. I guess a thing that folks have done for two hundred years we can keep on doing. We're not likely to change, for a new-fangled notion that you've got in Malone Academy."

That shut up Eliza Jane.

Royal did not say much. He put on old clothes and did his share of the chores, but he did not seem interested. And that night in bed he told Almanzo he was going to be a storekeeper.

“You're a bigger fool than I be, if you drudge all your days on a farm,” he said.

“I like horses,” said Almanzo.

“Huh! Storekeepers have horses,” Royal answered. 'They dress up every day, and keep clean, and they ride around with a carriage and pair. There's men in the cities have coachmen to drive them."

Almanzo did not say anything, but he did not want a coachman. He wanted to break colts, and he wanted to drive his own horses, himself.

Next morning they all went to church together.

They left Royal and Eliza Jane and Alice at the Academy; only the cobbler came back to the farm.

Every day he whistled and worked at his bench in the dining-room, till all the boots and shoes were done. He was there two weeks, and when he loaded his bench and tools in his buggy and drove away to his next customer, the house seemed empty and still again.

That evening Father said to Almanzo:

“Well, son, corn-husking's done. What say we make a bobsled for Star and Bright, tomorrow?”

“Oh, Father!” Almanzo said. “Can I—will you let me haul wood from the timber this winter?”

Father's eyes twinkled. “What else would you need a bobsled for?” he asked.

Snow was falling next morning when Almanzo rode with Father to the timber lot.

Large feathery flakes made a veil over everything, and if you were alone and held your breath and listened, you could hear the soft, tiny sound of their falling.

Father and Almanzo tramped through the falling snow in the woods, looking for straight, small oaks. When they found one, Father chopped it down. He chopped off all the limbs, and Almanzo piled them up neatly. Then they loaded the small logs on the bobsled.

After that they looked for two small crooked trees to make curved runners. They must be five inches through, and six feet tall before they began to curve. It was hard to find them. In the whole timber lot there were no two trees alike.

“You wouldn't find two alike in the whole world, son,” Father said. “Not even two blades of grass are the same. Everything is different from everything else, if you look at it.”

They had to take two trees that were a little alike. Father chopped them down and Almanzo helped load them on the bobsled. Then they drove home, in time for dinner.

That afternoon Father and Almanzo made a little bobsled, on the Big-Barn Floor.

First Father hewed the bottoms of the runners flat and smooth, clear around the crook of their turned-up front ends. Just behind the crook he hewed a flat place on top, and he hewed another flat place near the rear ends. Then he hewed two beams for cross-pieces.

He hewed them ten inches wide and three inches high, and sawed them four feet long. They were to stand on edge. He hewed out their corners, to fit over the flat places on top of the runners. Then he hewed out a curve in their underneath edges, to let them slip over the high snow in the middle of the road.

He laid the runners side by side, three and a half feet apart, and he fitted the cross-beams on them. But he did not fasten them together yet.

He hewed out two slabs, six feet long and flat on both sides. He laid them on the cross-beams, over the runners.

Then with an auger he bored a hole through a slab, down past the cross-beam, into the runner.

He bored close to the beam, and the auger made half an auger-hole down the side of the beam. On the other side of the beam he bored another hole like the first.

Into the holes he drove stout wooden pegs. The pegs went down through the slab and into the runner, and they fitted tightly into the half-holes on both sides of the beam. Two pegs held the slab and the beam and the runner firmly together, at one corner of the sled.

In the other three corners he bored the holes, and Almanzo hammered in the pegs. That finished the body of the little bobsled.

Now Father bored a hole cross-wise in each runner, close to the front cross-beam. He hewed the bark from a slender pole, and sharpened its ends so that they would go into the holes.

Almanzo and Father pulled the curved ends of the runners as far apart as they could, and Father slipped the ends of the pole into the holes. When Almanzo and Father let go, the runners held the pole firmly between them.

Then Father bored two holes in the pole, close to the runners. They were to hold the sled's tongue. For the tongue he used an elm sapling, because elm is tougher and more pliable than oak.

The sapling was ten feet long from butt to tip.

Father slipped an iron ring over the tip and hammered it down till it fitted tightly, two feet and a half from the butt. He split the butt in two, up to the iron ring, which kept it from splitting any farther.

He sharpened the split ends and spread them apart, and drove them into the holes in the crosswise pole. Then he bored holes down through the pole into the two ends of the tongue, and drove pegs into the holes.

Near the tip of the tongue he drove an iron spike down through it. The spike stuck out below the tongue. The tip of the tongue would go into the iron ring in the bottom of the calves' yoke, and when they backed, the ring would push against the spike, and the stiff tongue would push the sled backward.

Now the bobsled was done. It was almost chore-time, but Almanzo did not; want to leave his little bobsled until it had a wood-rack. So Father quickly bored holes down through the ends of the slabs into the cross-beams, and into each hole Almanzo drove a stake four feet long. The tall stakes stood up at the corners of the sled. They would hold the logs when he hauled wood from the timber.

T h e storm was rising. T h e falling snow whirled and the wind was crying with a lonely sound when Almanzo and Father carried the full milk-pails to the house that night.

Almanzo wanted deep snow, so that he could begin hauling wood with the new sled. But Father listened to the storm, and said that they could not work outdoors next day. They would have to stay under shelter, so they might as well begin threshing wheat.

The wind howled and the snow whirled and a mournful sound came from the cedars. The skeleton apple trees rattled their branches together like bones. All outdoors was dark and wild and noisy.

But the solid, strong barns were quiet. The howling storm beat upon them, but the barns stood undisturbed. They kept their own warmth inside themselves.

When Almanzo latched the door behind him, the noise of the storm was not so loud as the warm stillness of the barns. The air was quiet.

The horses turned in their box-stalls and whinnied softly; the colts tossed their heads and pawed. The cows stood in a row, placidly swinging their tasseled tails; you could hear them chewing their cuds.

Almanzo stroked the soft noses of the horses and looked longingly at the bright-eyed colts.

Then he went to the toolshed where Father was mending a flail.

The flail had come off its handle and Father had put them together again. T h e flail was an ironwood stick, three feet long and as big around as a broom-handle. It had a hole through one end.