It had been two weeks since the girls had arrived at the farm. To the outside observer life seemed to be pleasant. There had been no arrests, no outrageous fights on the main street of Brookings, there had been no new plots of turned land. It seemed as if the girls had settled into life well. But that tranquility was a myth.
In reality there was a massive battle of wills going on. The only neutral ground was the outhouse and town. Any other area was fair game. The small tricks had evolved into carefully thought out plans of attacks. Of course there were still tricks that were just too perfect to pass up. One example of this was when the boys, who obvious didn't realize how deep this rift ran, left their laundry on the porch for Pip and Calyx to do as they had the preceding weeks. Well they had done their laundry, with an extra surprise for the boys. They had not only shrunk the boys clothing by two sizes, but they had dyed all of the clothing blue. It hadn't been apparent at first, since the blue jeans were placed on top. But it became apparent when the boys ended up with blue skin, from an overzealous use of the blue dye.
The boys had retaliated by leaving the pig slop bucket on the porch. They did this right before an unexpectedly hard rain. The sudden very heavy down pour had caused the bucket to overfill and spill the contents over the entire porch. The soggy mess had taken the girls two hours to clean up, not accounting for the fact that both Trish and Anne had queasy stomachs.
The boys felt bad about making Trish and Anne sick, they had only planned on making them work hard. So they had gathered together all of the kindling and cow chips the girls would need for a week and placed them at the side of the house as a peace offering. While the girls were pleased with that they still couldn't let the guys think they had won them over so they had drenched the guys with dirty dishwater when ever they came near the house.
The little fights went on for over two weeks until the guys were sick and tired of it. They were in the barn on night after a very quiet dinner of tough salt pork and cold baked beans. The girls had ignored them, and had talked amongst themselves. Their conversation though was hard to listen to as they spoke of the wonderful cake Hazel had made that afternoon with chocolate frosting and the pot roast they were going to have for lunch the next day. A meal the boys knew they would never have.
As the boys sat in the barn nursing some bottles of beer that Jack had obtained the last trip to town their frustrations came out. "I hate them." Race said vehemently.
"They can take their stupid cake and pot roast and go back to New York." Spot's tone was morse.
"I think we should just leave them. See how great they are after being on their own for a couple of weeks." Skittery suggested.
"Not on your life, it was your brilliant idea that brought them out here. Listening to you could end up with us in prison for life." Bumlets objected loudly.
"I just said we needed one girl, I didn't mean we needed to bring out all of them. That was Jack's great idea." Skittery shot back.
"You suggested it in the first place. They're here now so we can't get rid of them even if we wanted to." Bumlets said glumly.
"What do you mean we can't get rid of them? I bet if we offered them train fare home they would take it." Mush offered.
"No way, we barely have enough money to get our supplies on credit. We buy train tickets for all those girls and we won't make it through the winter." Race said knowingly.
"Fine so we can't get rid of them, we can't leave. What should we do?" Skittery asked.
"Ignore them." Spot said simply.
"Ignore them?" Mush looked surprised.
"Yeah, we just ignore them. We buy our own supplies and do our own laundry, cook our own food. We do everything in our power to ignore them. We've apologized enough. We can't soak 'em like I'd like to so we just ignore them." Spot explained.
The boys were silent as they all evaluated Spot's plan. It could work. They didn't have to go to the house to make a meal. Meat could be cooked over an open fire just as well as a stove. The only time their clothing really needed to be washed was when it was stiff enough to stand upright.
"Okay we ignore them then what?"
"When they act right, stop pranking us then we'll try this courting thing again. They're here now. We just as well marry them." Spot said with a shrug. The guys seemed to agree to this and so began the biggest silent treatment one has ever seen.
Who knew how long it was going to last. If the boys had any say though, it would last until the girls had seen the light and apologized for their own behavior.
