“Where’s the nickel?”
“He didn’t give me a nickel,” said Almanzo, and Frank yelled:
“Yah, yah! I told you he wouldn’t. I told you so!”
“He gave me half a dollar,” said Almanzo.
The boys wouldn’t believe it till he showed them. Then they crowded around, waiting for him to spend it. He showed it to them all, and put it back in his pocket.
“I’m going to look around,” he said, “and buy me a good little sucking pig.”
The band came marching down the street, and they all ran along beside it. The flag was gloriously waving in front, then came the buglers blowing and the fifers tootling and the drummer rattling the drumsticks on the drum. Up the street and down the street went the band, with all the boys following it, and then it stopped in the Square by the brass cannons.
Hundreds of people were there, crowding to watch.
The cannons sat on their haunches, pointing their long barrels upward. The band kept on playing. Two men kept shouting, “Stand back! Stand back!” and other men were pouring black powder into the cannons’ muzzles and pushing it down with wads of cloth on long rods.
The iron rods had two handles, and two men pushed and pulled on them, driving the black powder down the brass barrels. Then all the boys ran to pull grass and weeds along the railroad tracks. They carried them by armfuls to the cannons, and the men crowded the weeds into the cannons’ muzzles and drove them down with the long rods.
A bonfire was burning by the railroad tracks, and long iron rods were heating in it.
When all the weeds and grass had been packed tight against the powder in the cannons, a man took a little more powder in his hand and carefully filled the two little touchholes in the barrels. Now everybody was shouting: “Stand back! Stand back!”
Mother took hold of Almanzo’s arm and made him come away with her. He told her:
“Aw, Mother, they’re only loaded with powder and weeds. I won’t get hurt, Mother. I’ll be careful, honest.” But she made him come away from the cannons.
Two men took the long iron rods from the fire. Everybody was still, watching. Standing as far behind the cannons as they could, the two men stretched out the rods and touched their red-hot tips to the touchholes. A little flame like a candle-flame flickered up from the powder. The little flames stood there burning; nobody breathed. Then—BOOM!
The cannons leaped backward, the air was full of flying grass and weeds. Almanzo ran with all the other boys to feel the warm muzzles of the cannons. Everybody was exclaiming about what a loud noise they had made.
“That’s the noise that made the Redcoats run!” Mr. Paddock said to Father.
“Maybe,” Father said, tugging his beard. “But it was muskets that won the Revolution. And don’t forget it was axes and plows that made this country.”
“That’s so, come to think of it,” Mr. Paddock said.
Independence Day was over. The cannons had been fired, and there was nothing more to do but hitch up the horses and drive home to do the chores.
That night when they were going to the house with milk, Almanzo asked Father:
“Father, how was it axes and plows that made this country? Didn’t we fight England for it?”
“We fought for Independence, son,” Father said. “But all the land our forefathers had was a little strip of country, here between the mountains and the ocean. All the way from here west was Indian country, and Spanish and French and English country. It was farmers that took all that country and made it America.”
“How?” Almanzo asked.
“Well, son, the Spaniards were soldiers, and high-and-mighty gentlemen that only wanted gold. And the French were fur-traders, wanting to make quick money. And England was busy fighting wars. But we were farmers, son; we wanted the land. It was farmers that went over the mountains, and cleared the land, and settled it, and farmed it, and hung on to their farms.
“This country goes three thousand miles west, now. It goes way out beyond Kansas, and beyond the Great American Desert, over mountains bigger than these mountains, and down to the Pacific Ocean. It’s the biggest country in the world, and it was farmers who took all that country and made it America, son. Don’t you ever forget that.”
Chapter 17
Summer-Time
The sunshine was hotter now, and all the green things grew quickly. The corn thrust its rustling, narrow leaves waist-high; Father plowed it again, and Royal and Almanzo hoed it again. Then the corn was laid by. It had gained so much advantage against the weeds that it could hold the field with no more help.
The bushy rows of potatoes almost touched, and their white blossoms were like foam on the field. The oats rippled gray-green, and the wheat’s thin heads were rough with young husks where the kernels would grow. The meadows were rosy-purple with the blossoms that the bees loved best.