The Argosy/Volume 58/Issue 4/The Hawkins Harvester

by Edgar Franklin Stearns

 

THE HAWKINS HARVESTER

By EDGAR FRANKLIN

A diabolical invention of the conscienceless millionaire with

an insensate desire to make things easy for his fellow-men.

THERE was a long, sweet stretch of peaceful months, during which I nurtured the fond and foolish belief that Hawkins had at last been forced from his role of chief hoodoo to my own existence.

Wealthy man, genially inventive constructor of malevolent mechanical madnesses though he be, Hawkins and I met as strangers.

We still lived on the same block in New York. We still trod the same pavements. We still frequently rode downtown on business mornings on the same "L" train. But we never spoke as we passed by.

We never exchanged the smallest, iciest of nods—albeit more than once I caught a wistful eye directed at me over the top of the inventor's morning paper.

At those moments, I presume, a well-grounded wonder was perambulating Hawkins's brain it is not every one who can pass through the series of demonstrations to which he treated me during our past acquaintance—and then pull out alive.

Hawkins, then, seemed to realize that there had arisen between us a barrier impassable and impregnable as a square mile of twelve-inch armor plate; and the bruises and abrasions on my person healed up at last, and life began to take on much the same cheery aspect it had worn before I encountered Hawkins and his damnable inventions.

And then summer arrived.

Hawkins, you know, has his country home next to mine, far up in the heart of the Massachusetts Berkshires; and when you are at odds with your neighbor in such a locality—and more particularly when your wife is a friend of the enemy's wife—something very like uncomfortable constraint is likely to arise.

By reason of which constraint, perhaps—the summer situation having been endured for a matter of two or three weeks—a wild spasm of Christian forgiveness suddenly gripped my heart on that fateful, brilliant afternoon.

Forgiveness, at least, seems the prettiest name for it. It may have been plain hysteria or a touch of the sun or the first signs of senile decay. Whatever it was, it came abruptly and with marked force, and took the shape of a fixed decision to forgive Hawkins.

I would go to him and forgive him, coldly and formally. If he expressed deep contrition, I would add a few kind words and leave; and after that the greater distance that remained between us for the rest of time, the better. The annoying constraint would at least be removed.

By some accident on the hired man's part, the tanks of my touring-car had been filled that morning. I cranked the motor, and, climbing in, headed for Hawkins's.

It is a very small run; in a matter of five minutes I was rolling up Hawkins's drive, and, with something of an internal chill, was tooting the horn in the old familiar way.

A startled maid appeared. She looked at me. She rubbed her eyes, and said:

"The—ladies have gone driving, Mr. Griggs. They won't be—back until evening."

I announced that I was after Mr. Hawkins himself. The young woman permitted herself a gulp, and—

"Mr. Hawkins—Mr. Hawkins has gone over to the Hayes farm, sir. If—you want to see him, you'd better hurry."

"Eh?"

"Yes, sir. He's been gone some time now, and—and he may not be there long, and—"

Her voice seemed to fade. The girl herself backed into the doorway. I gave a final stare at her. She disappeared, and perhaps with something of a grunt I sent the car down the other drive and along the road again.

What on earth was Hawkins doing at Hayes's place—the biggest farm in the county? Had he picked Hayes as a new victim, or— I dropped speculation in an absent-minded study of the scenery.

It would be just as easy to forgive Hawkins on somebody else's property as on his own, little as that might be saying.

Ten minutes more of easy going, and I came up the long approach to Hayes's solid old farmhouse.

The wide old vine-clad veranda was there. I would line up beside it and make inquiry for Hawkins; I would deliver the oration that was already beginning to stick in my throat, and— From behind the vines rushed a too, too familiar figure.

It was Hawkins—Hawkins coming down the three steps with brilliant smile and outstretched hand, straight for my machine; and from his lips came:

"Griggs!"

I straightened up and stepped out. I squared my chest and took a long breath as I began impressively:

"Hawkins! I—"

"Griggs! Not another word!" cried the inventor joyously. "Not one single word! I forgive you, absolutely and completely! No!"

My lips had opened again.

"It's all right, old man! I won't hear an apology or the hint of an apology, Griggs! You've acted like a chump, and you know it now—and we'll let bygones be bygones, and consider the whole thing dead, buried, and forgotten. Now, come up here and have a glass of Hayes's cider!"

He wrung my hand again and waited breathlessly. For my part, I leaned against the car and tried to get a limp lower jaw back into place. So I was forgiven! I—

"And you've arrived exactly at the psychological moment!" Hawkins babbled on happily. "You've come when—"

Hawkins stopped short. For a second or two he listened intently; then, with a startled little cry, he dodged for the sheltered recesses of the porch—and I followed with a single leap.

And from somewhere to the rear of the house had come a sudden wild neighing—a galloping, and then a thundering of hoofs—and down past the house raced Hayes's big mare, traveling at perhaps a fraction of a second less than a mile a minute!

She was taking no account of possible obstacles. Her whole mind and energy seemed bent on tearing the top layer from the drive in her course to the public highway.

At her heels came a colt, shrieking rather than neighing like a normal horse, and pounding great clods into the air behind him!

And then they were gone—gone down the highway in an impenetrable cloud of white dust; and as Hayes himself appeared and raced wildly after them, Hayes's hired man suddenly shot into view. He whizzed dazedly around the corner of the house; he tripped; he fell; he slid to a wild, kicking standstill at the foot of the steps.

Like a rubber ball, he bounced to his feet again. He staggered wildly about for an instant; then he confronted Hawkins, and mouthed, as he dug at the gravel in his eyes:

"You—you—better come up quick, mister! She's steamin' t' beat the band, an' the critters is nigh crazy skeered! That there mare—"

Hawkins stiffened for an instant, then relaxed with a roar.

"Didn't I tell you to call me as soon as the gage went to six pounds, you confounded—" He broke off and leaped into my machine. "Get us up to the barn, Griggs! Quick!"

I suppose it was the fatal instinct returning to me. I obeyed swiftly; and perhaps thirty seconds later shut down the power suddenly before the stable.

Hawkins was gone almost before we stopped—gone into the barn at a gallop. And that usually placid structure was surely worth observation.

From the cracks in the sides, from the cracks in the roof, from the open door and windows, came cloud upon cloud of steam. From the door, also, came a tremendous hissing. And from the depths of the place, as the hissing stopped abruptly, came:

"Got hold of those horses, Henry? All right. Sure of it? Griggs!"

"Yes," I answered faintly.

"Back your car away about a hundred feet and then get out and come here!"

Again I obeyed—and again instinct aided me a little; I ran the motor behind the stone wall of the adjoining field. After which I approached the barn slowly—and came to a dead standstill.

For there was a strange chug-chug within the structure now. The doors swung open. And through them came what seemed to be the cream of all Hawkins's inventive nightmares.

Fully nine feet in height, the unholy contrivance seemed to combine the external details of a traction-engine, a steam-roller without the rollers, a flying-machine with skeleton wings, a collapsible hay-rake—and there was a strong hint of the ordinary auto-truck in the big red body at the rear.

In the middle seemed to be the boiler; beside it a saddle and possibly sixty-five or seventy levers and valve-handles and gages; and in the saddle sat Hawkins, keen-eyed and smiling tensely.

"Out of the way a little, Griggs!" he called. "She may slide a bit—"

The warning was not exactly necessary. A fragment or two of wits had returned, and I was standing on the wall by the car even before his words ceased and the dear, familiar smile of supercilious contempt came to his lips.

He pulled another one or two of his levers. The contrivance came down the little incline with a rush and a bounce. Hawkins pulled again, and the thing stopped beside me with a jerk that sent its engineer's arm around the smoke-stack and brought a grunt from his th

He straightened up again on the instant, however, and eyed me with a smile as he announced:

"Griggs! The Hawkins Harvester!"

"Hawkins—"

"The salvation of the general farmer—the eliminator of farm labor—the blessed simplifying element of future agriculture. Look! You catch the general idea of the thing at first glance, of course?"

He waited for no denial.

"Primarily, she drives herself—the farm-horse wiped out of existence! Next, every operation takes place from the saddle here; the farmer himself runs it alone—and the farmhand is wiped out, too.

"And last, but best, the machine will plow, harrow, plant, mow, rake, reap, and bind every product of the field, and finally either pack it in the barn for winter or cart it automatically to the nearest market, whether it be two or two hundred miles distant from the harvest field!"

"Hawkins—" I began again.

The inventor's back was turned to me; his voice rang out cheerily:

"Now, I'll throw all the details out into view, as they would be in action. Watch."

I watched. I was rather too thunderstruck to do anything but watch. And as I watched it seemed that I dreamed of a farm-supply catalogue, or that I had been dropped into a wholesale farm-supply salesroom recently jarred by an earthquake.

A clank, and what was unquestionably a tremendous mowing-machine apparatus, shot out on the side nearest me. Another clank, and a correspondingly huge hay-rake hung over it. A third, accompanied this time by an uncanny rattling of chains, and a vast net-work of heavy iron came into view, and Hawkins called proudly:

"That's the complete reaping and binding apparatus over there, Griggs. Picks up and bundles everything in sight, without jarring a single wheat-berry out of its pod. Now we'll see the triple-bladed plow and the harrow and—"

"Hey! Mr. Hawkins!"

I turned with the inventor. Between us stood Hayes himself. His face was smeared with perspiration and dust; his person seemed to have accumulated much of the highway, and his breath was nearly gone; but through all the grime shone the might of a righteous man's anger.

"Mr. Hawkins," he roared, "you ain't going t' try that there thing here to-day er any other day! I got all I want of it! Now that derned mare o' mine's gone—and she'll break her neck before she ever gits back, not t' mention killin' the colt!"

"Why, Hayes—" gasped Hawkins.

"That's all right! I know ye've paid me good money t' let yer build the blasted thing in my barn over winter, and t' keep it secret—an' I've let yer dratted mechanics eat me outer house an' home fer five dollars a week, an' I've had the barn all messed up with tools an' grease, an' set on fire twice with yer forge, but—"

Interesting details seemed to be coming. The Hawkins Harvester had a past. I listened intently.

"But this is too derned much!" Hayes was continuing. "You git the crazy engine offen this place, an' if I ever see it back here—"

Hawkins, as it were, was standing in his saddle.

"Hayes," he declaimed coldly, "I have paid you at your own figure for everything I have received. A verbal contract is perfectly legal, whether you know it or not, and our agreement was that I was to make a trial trip over that ten-acre hay-field to-day, cut and rake the entire field, and bind a certain small portion of it into bundles, by way of experiment."

"Then you can consider her canceled, Mr. Hawkins. I ain't going—"

"On the contrary," came in ice-drops from Hawkins, "the demonstration is going to continue! Out of the way, please."

"Look here, you!" shrieked Mr. Hayes.

The harvester gave a roar of steam that sent both of us several feet farther from its interesting mechanism. One tremendous clatter of iron and steel, extending over thirty seconds, and mower and rake and binder had folded up placidly, and the wheels of the machine itself were moving.

"Hawkins, if you dare—" The farmer's voice was drowned in steam.

"Hawkins!" I pleaded loudly.

The harvester merely swung around, and with a good deal more grace than one could have expected. It was bound for that big hay-field on the other side of the barn; and Heaven have mercy on the man who sought to delay it!

It swung quickly through the gateway and into the mass of waving hay, as Hawkins called out to me:

"Griggs! Note every detail of the working!"

For the moment I was ignoring the harvester. Hayes himself appealed to me as vastly more interesting.

As concerns outward and visible manifestations of white-hot rage, I have never seen anything to, equal Mr. Hayes at that moment. His complexion, even through the dirt, was that of arctic snow; his eyes glittered like sparks from an electric welder; his breath came in spasmodic gasps, and his hands opened and closed with a queer series of snaps as the harvester swept into the big field and lowered its mowing-machine.

"An' arter all I've stood, the derned fool's goin' t' ruin that hull field an' the Lord knows how much more, an'—"

Hawkins was working close to the wall; incidentally, his knives were blithely clipping off dozens of wild raspberry bushes and hurling them into the next pasture. Hayes's breath came in a last, long whistle:

"And he ais't goin' t' do no more, by heck!" he roared.

Hayes started for the barn. I started for Hawkins. It's a horrible, hideous thing to see a man killed in cold blood; and if ever a mortal looked bent on murder, it was Hayes.

Therefore, I made after Hawkins at top speed. He was at the other end of the hay-field now. He had very literally cut a swath, and one some fifteen feet wide.

At the moment he was engaged in turning his strange engine; and before I came up with him the harvester was rushing down upon me and tossing hay to the four winds.

Hawkins removed his hat with a polite, triumphant bow.

"Anything on earth to beat it?" he queried in a bellow.

"Hawkins!" I screamed. "Get out of here—get your machine out of here! That man is after you! He'll be here in a second, and the Lord knows what he'll do! Get away before—"

The harvester paused momentarily. Hawkins's sardonic grin faced me around the corner of the smoke-stack.

"My dear Griggs," he said serenely, "I am perfectly aware of my exact rights, in this as in every other case. There are many things that I shall explain later: but here and now let me assure you that I know what I am doing. And if Hayes elects to get just a little bit gayer, he'll pay me cold cash for having this field mowed automatically and raked over, or— Holy Moses, Griggs!"

I stared at him. Hawkins was standing in his saddle once more and glaring, wide-eyed, toward the barn.

"Say!" he gasped. "That—that fool's gone mad in good earnest! He—"

I turned swiftly. And I made tracks for another portion of the field; for Hayes was approaching with a gleaming pitchfork of size that exceeded the normal almost as completely as did the harvester itself. His eye was even wilder than before; his fingers were clenched lovingly around the handle; and as he raced up he thundered:

"Now you'll get out!"

"Hayes! I warn you—" Hawkins screamed.

And the scream rose suddenly to a shriek of agony, for the big tines seemed to have found some part of his anatomy; and the sinister voice added:

"You get that thing out of here alive, er I'll do it after you're dead!"

I was going to cover my eyes. I could not. Too many things were happening at once. For a start, there was a wild hiss of steam from the harvester, and a clanking—and Hayes went down with a crash.

He was up in an instant, gripping his pitchfork anew; and as he did so the harvester started with a jerk and a roar.

Hayes went after it. Hawkins looked back. The harvester quickened its pace, and Hayes quickened his: and the odds were rather more than even money on Hayes and the pitchfork.

Hawkins seemed to realize it. His arms swung in wild panic for a second or two; then his hands began to tug at levers, in a wild effort to escape.

There seemed to be something of the desired result. The harvester shot ahead at very creditable speed. It was a good, conscientious harvester, too, and it did more.

With a deafening crash, it let down its huge hay-rake; and Hawkins looked back in frenzied amazement, and dragged at more of his mechanism.

The harvester responded obligingly by unlimbering its huge binder; and wheels and bands and racks began to clatter and spin frantically.

In the saddle, apparently, there was another struggle. The sole result was that three tremendous plow-blades appeared suddenly before the machine, dug themselves into the ground, and took to tearing up cart-loads of loose dirt and hay.

And then the harrow—ah, the harrow! That decided to appear almost instantly. In a matter of seconds it was engaged in gathering hay and earth clods and hurling them about in a happy, indiscriminate, care-free way.

Hayes staggered backward. Perhaps he realized that the Hawkins Harvester had become unmanageable; perhaps he did not. At all events, he merely stared and mouthed for the moment.

A man with a battery of Gatling guns might have attacked the harvester safely from a distance. Hayes possessed only a puerile pitchfork. With the Hawkins Harvester plunging wildly toward the bars of the young fruit orchard, Hayes made a wide détour for the barn—and for another short space I forgot him.

For that harvester was enough to absorb the attention of a dozen men. It seemed entirely happy now, although the gifted inventor had been again reduced to clutching the hot, belching smoke-stack as he directed his great eyes at me.

"Griggs!" he shrieked, above the din. "The—thing's gone—wrong! You get in front and jump up here, on this bar, and—"

His breath left him in a single violent puff.

The harvester had tried to eschew bars and leap the barbed-wire fence to the orchard. As a consequence—perhaps merely as a tiny joke—it removed some dozen feet of fence, hurled it into the binder, converted it into a compact little bundle, and threw it straight at me.

I dodged rapidly. The harvester careered ingenuously onward—and Hawkins seemed to lose interest in me as he tugged and twirled at the steering-wheel.

And he did accomplish something. Before his course altered, the mower had removed just seven of Hayes's choicest young plum-trees and filliped them toward the binder. The binder responded almost in blasé fashion, by bundling them without an effort and kicking them into the air.

A roar of despair escaped Hawkins. He stared back; he stared forward; and I held my breath.

Now it was coming. He was going to miss the bars that led out of the orchard and toward the house. He was going to strike that stone wall and go to eternal smash!

He struck it. And there was no smash, for the harvester merely plowed that cemented stone wall out of its path, and pitched angrily at the hedge beside the path.

It was a good, strong hedge, but it went like the proverbial chaff. Twenty seconds, and Hayes's ten years' growth was cut and bundled neatly and thrown by the roadside. And the harrow reached back and gave it a violent kick, by way of good measure.

Somehow, as I tagged behind at dangerously close range, a daze came over me. In a matter of five or six minutes—counting out the mare and her colt—that harvester must have done at least two or three hundred dollars' worth of actual damage, and it was still going.

Nay, it was moving at rapidly increasing speed. And even more, it was headed straight for the Hayes homestead.

Suppose it should hit the house amidships? There was no reason to assume that it wouldn't remove the aged foundations and tear down the walls, and then— But its course had changed suddenly.

With a mad chorus of panting snorts, the harvester veered a trifle and made for that beautiful side porch, with all its vines and its lattice-work and its slender columns.

And then—it seemed to be over in a second, almost!

The plow-blades removed the underpinning neatly. The columns and the flooring came down with a roar that suggested the San Francisco earthquake. Hayes appeared suddenly around the corner of the house as the harvester made a futile lunge at the outdoor kitchen and decided to steer for the smoke-house.

He was carrying something in his hand, and I had not superintended the blasting on my own property to mistake the something.

It was dynamite, in sticks, and one of them was raised over his head!

And, somehow, forgetting home and family and all, I rushed madly at the harvester and bellowed:

"Jump, Hawkins! Jump! He's going to blow you up! Jump, for Heaven's sake! Jump clear, and—"

Hawkins arose and gave one wild look backward. His teeth shut. He stood fairly upon the saddle for an instant—then he flew through the air and cleared the entire mechanism, to roll helplessly at my feet.

I had no attention to give him. The harvester was roaring onward, a dozen yards distant, with Hayes trotting determinedly after it, the big stick still upraised.

Then he paused suddenly. He watched the affair skim by his smoke-house, and his arm went up higher, and the stick flew up through the air—and the earth seemed to open suddenly and throw forth plows and harrows and mowing-machines in a single burst of flame, and—

 

I think that quite a space must have elapsed, because both Dr. Brotherton and the constable must have come all the way from the county town.

Brotherton was just removing a hot bandage from my forehead as I opened my eyes and sat up. He surveyed me with a grin, and:

"Well, you're not dead, Griggs, anyway; but I'd steer clear of having my head collide with a two-hundred-pound plow-blade hereafter."

"Am I—hurt?"

"Not so's you'd notice it," responded the doctor. "There are no bones broken—I don't know why. Able to drive your car home?"

Several blinks at the sunshine, and I announced the probability of such a proceeding. Then I began to look at Hawkins, sitting on the porch-steps with a bandage or two in evidence, and with the constable on one side and Hayes on the other.

"Hawkins is settling up—in fact, I believe he has settled up, to the tune of several hundred cold plunks," murmured Brotherton dryly. "He decided to avoid arrest, and—"

Hawkins had risen and was coming toward us uncertainly. His face was while and pained, but distinctly ugly.

"I'll get your car, Griggs," Brotherton suggested, as he strolled up the lane toward the barn.

"Well, they've mulcted me," Hawkins observed fiercely. "They've trimmed me for just seven hundred dollars, on a blackmailing threat of arrest, Griggs. They've insisted on my—"

The car was bowling gently toward us.

"Hawkins," I said, "be thankful that they didn't stick you with a knife, or that Hayes didn't hurl another dynamite stick at you, or—"

"Ah! That's where I've got him!" said the inventor hoarsely. "That's the count that'll take him through every court in this State. Five thousand dollars, all told, I spent on that machine, and he dared—"

Gently but firmly I placed Hawkins in the motor. He seemed to rebound. He stood erect, and roared toward Hayes:

"To-morrow morning—"

Then he sat down suddenly.

A carriage was coming up behind us. A lady was in the carriage, and the widening whites of her eyes were visible as she stared at Hayes's home.

Really, there was much to see. There was the place where the porch had been; there was a deep hole in the ground, and the few standing bits of the smoke-house; there were pieces of iron and steel, fragments of belts and cog-wheels and levers and chains and great chunks of boiler-plate and big driving-wheels—the whole with a frieze of valve handles and smaller steel rods.

The lady continued to stare, and slowly her gaze wandered to my machine as I murmured:

"Your wife, Hawkins!"

Without a sound, Hawkins slid to the floor of the automobile. From the depths behind me came a faint, wailing noise:

"Home, Griggs! For the Lord's sake, home! Your home!"