Hill Man by Janice Holt Giles

Author:Janice Holt Giles
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2011-02-16T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

When you look back on the way things happen to a man, and the way his life goes, it sometimes seems as if he’d set himself a kind of goal and had headed for it all his life, everything happening with that goal in mind, and all his purposes and aims fixed by it. Like he never lost sight of it for a minute. Like he never thought on any other thing. Like he was besieged and obsessed by it. And with Rady Cromwell it seems more that way than with most.

But when you take it all to pieces and look at it, you can see how he moved little by little, studying only one thing at a time, never fixing even to himself any particular goal in view, but watching sharp and making the most of every chance that come his way. If he was driven by one thing, and one thing only, he never knew it himself. He was just following his own instincts, looking out for himself, and with some pride in his way of knowing what would better him. You might say that always stood out plain in front of him. Bettering himself. Making more for himself. But that seems to be a common enough ambition in most men and nothing peculiar to Rady. On the ridge it meant working more land and working it better. Seeing every way to get the most out of every acre, and turning your hand to get more acres.

Like he told Miz Rowe, Rady never had no intentions of cheating Mister Rowe, and as far as I know he never did. Of course he took an advantage when he made the deal with old man Pringle, unbeknownst to Mister Rowe, to work his own land, but it was not an advantage that would work against him. It was the kind of deal that had to be worked the way Rady worked it. On the quiet. But he knew he could give the Pringles a third of his half share, and still make money for himself. He knew what he could do, and he knew precious few men on the ridge could come close to it. He could get more work out of the Pringles than Mister Rowe ever could, and he could work harder and longer than most, himself. But he didn’t want his chances of proving it ruined before he got started. So he slid into it easy and cautious. The time had come, now, when he wanted to move the Pringles to the ridge. It was warming up considerable and corn needed to be in the ground. Pastures needed to be cut soon, and there was a mort of work on both Mister Rowe’s place and Rady’s needing done all at once.

So Rady took a quart bottle out to his barn and filled it from the jug and slid it into his hip pocket, and then he set out like he’d been doing for a week or more to plow on Mister Rowe’s place.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.