about the same distance, repeating this hard work over and over again
until he managed to get one of the gophers on to the top of a log
fence. How much he ate of his hard-won prey, or what he did with the
others, I can't tell, for by this time the sun was down and I had to
hurry home to my chores.

VI

THE PLOUGHBOY

The Crops--Doing Chores--The Sights and Sounds of
Winter--Road-making--The Spirit-rapping Craze--Tuberculosis
among the Settlers--A Cruel Brother--The Rights of the
Indians--Put to the Plough at the Age of Twelve--In the
Harvest-Field--Over-Industry among the Settlers--Running the
Breaking-Plough--Digging a Well--Choke-Damp--Lining Bees.

At first, wheat, corn, and potatoes were the principal crops we
raised; wheat especially. But in four or five years the soil was so
exhausted that only five or six bushels an acre, even in the better
fields, was obtained, although when first ploughed twenty and
twenty-five bushels was about the ordinary yield. More attention was
then paid to corn, but without fertilizers the corn-crop also became
very meagre. At last it was discovered that English clover would grow
on even the exhausted fields, and that when ploughed under and planted
with corn, or even wheat, wonderful crops were raised. This caused a
complete change in farming methods; the farmers raised fertilizing
clover, planted corn, and fed the crop to cattle and hogs.

But no crop raised in our wilderness was so surprisingly rich and
sweet and purely generous to us boys and, indeed, to everybody as the
watermelons and muskmelons. We planted a large patch on a sunny
hill-slope the very first spring, and it seemed miraculous that a few
handfuls of little flat seeds should in a few months send up a hundred
wagon-loads of crisp, sumptuous, red-hearted and yellow-hearted fruits
covering all the hill. We soon learned to know when they were in their
prime, and when over-ripe and mealy. Also that if a second crop was
taken from the same ground without fertilizing it, the melons would be
small and what we called soapy; that is, soft and smooth, utterly
uncrisp, and without a trace of the lively freshness and sweetness of
those raised on virgin soil. Coming in from the farm work at noon, the
half-dozen or so of melons we had placed in our cold spring were a
glorious luxury that only weary barefooted farm boys can ever know.

Spring was not very trying as to temperature, and refreshing r