board that had been carried by a freshet from the
water and laid it across them, and decided that would have to serve
until they could do better.

Then they sat astride the board, Dannie drew out a coin, and they
tossed it to see which was heads and tails. Dannie won heads. Then they
tossed to see which bank was heads or tails, and the right, which was
on Rainbow side, came heads. So Jimmy was to use the bridge. Then they
went home, and began the night work. The first thing Jimmy espied was
the barrel containing the milk pail. He fished out the pail, and while
Dannie fed the stock, shoveled manure, and milked, Jimmy pounded out
the dents, closed the bullet holes, emptied the bait into it, half
filled it with mellow earth, and went to Mary for some corn meal to
sprinkle on the top to feed the worms.

At four o'clock the next morning, Dannie was up feeding, milking,
scraping plows, and setting bolts. After breakfast they piled their
implements on a mudboat, which Dannie drove, while Jimmy rode one of
his team, and led the other, and opened the gates. They began on
Dannie's field, because it was closest, and for the next two weeks,
unless it were too rainy to work, they plowed, harrowed, lined off, and
planted the seed.

The blackbirds followed along the furrows picking up grubs, the crows
cawed from high tree tops, the bluebirds twittered about hollow stumps
and fence rails, the wood thrushes sang out their souls in the thickets
across the river, and the King Cardinal of Rainbow Bottom whistled to
split his throat from the giant sycamore. Tender greens were showing
along the river and in the fields, and the purple of red-bud mingled
with the white of wild plum all along the Wabash.

The sunny side of the hill that sloped down to Rainbow Bottom was a
mass of spring beauties, anemones, and violets; thread-like ramps rose
rank to the scent among them, and round ginger leaves were thrusting
their folded heads through the mold. The Kingfisher was cleaning his
house and fishing from his favorite stump in the river, while near him,
at the fall of every luckless worm that missed its hold on a
blossom-whitened thorn tree, came the splash of the great Black Bass.
Every morning the Bass took a trip around Horseshoe Bend food hunting,
and the small fry raced for life before his big, shear-like jaws.
During the heat of noon he lay in the deep pool below the stump, and
rested; but when evening came he set out in search of supper, a