Canal Town

by Samuel Hopkins Adams

  “Well, young man,” said Genter Latham’s heavy voice, “bigger targets, these, than bottles. Eh?”

  “Are the others coming?” panted Horace.

  “Look up the hill.”

  The slope was dancing with lanterns.

  “We’d better run for it,” said Horace.

  Too many of the canallers were already pushing toward them. Now the towpath was dotted with hastening figures, summoned by the rallying cry of “Lo-o-o-o-ow bridge!” joined to the urgent peals of Silverhorn’s bugle. In response to the summons, coffee-house, ginnery and brothel had spewed forth reinforcements. The two doughty stone-throwers withdrew under cover of their own fire, plunged through the canal, and met the advancing townfolk on the far bank.

  “The witch-boy told me,” Genter Latham imparted to his companion. He was in jovial humor. “Haven’t had a fight for years,” he chuckled.

  “You’ll have one now,” prophesied Horace. “The captains are out for blood.”

  Tip Crego, it appeared, had gone on after encountering the magnate, to spread the alarum, and the result of his effort was seen in relays of hurrying villagers, half-clad or less, among whom Horace made out O. Daggett, Carlisle Sneed, T. Lay, Decker Jessup, Billy Dorch, Jed Parris, and, for good measure, Bezabeel Fornum with a hammer, L. Brooks, M.D., with a hop-pole, L. St. John with his stout bat, and the alcoholic Simmons appropriately brandishing an earthen gallon measure. It was a doughty enough band, full of fight, adequate perhaps to hold off the superior forces of the Erie men with the barrier of the canal to help, but insufficient for the business in hand which was the rescue of Quaila Crego.

  Always for offense, the boatees now reconnoitered the stretch of canal water. Fresh accessions were arriving every minute, as Horace noted with dismay. Silverhorn, jaunty on his gangplank, seemed to be directing the strategy. A well-directed cobble to the ribs, from the hand of Genter Latham, brought him down, and he rose, raging, from the shallows to head a charge. The town group was forced backward. It looked as if they might be surrounded, captured and be subjected to the rite of “Erie baptism” as enthusiastic voices suggested. Horace, fighting at one edge of the group, was downed and found himself being dragged toward the brink when a calm and familiar voice, hazily heard, said,

  “Stopper thy nose, Friend Amlie.”

  Then a prolonged “Squissh—ssh—ssh—sssshhhhh!”

  Strangled yelps and moans from the four men who had him down followed. He was, himself, half-choked in stifling fumes when the powerful Quaker heaved him to his feet. Through tear-dimmed eyes he saw Silas Bewar brandishing an ungainly implement over the groveling forms of several human beetles who were aimlessly crawling about.

  “Does thee wish any more?” inquired the peaceable voice.

  Apparently no more was needed. Silas lowered the nozzle of the long squirtgun which he employed in his veterinary practice.

  “I made free of thy firkin of hartshorn,” he explained to the rescued man.

  As the potent fumes of the ammonia dissipated, Horace perceived that the battle had entered a new phase. The mariners now were being pushed back under pressure of a compact force of new arrivals from the village. To the dim eyes of the observer it seemed that a familiar figure had taken charge of operations, but he could hardly believe his ears when Silas told him that the authoritative commander was the Rev. Theron Strang. Horace had not known it, but the lanky Doctor of Divinity was not only a mighty man of his hands, but had served as one of Andy Jackson’s captains at New Orleans. Fighting was no novelty to him. Standing to his orders were Tom Daw, Cassius Moore, a dozen tannery lads, puffy, stocky old Simon Vandowzer, a likely group from the mintery, and a general representation of stable, store and warehouse. Though less mature and weighty, man for man, than the enemy, they were ready and willing.

  Dominie Strang came to Horace and asked if he was able to go on. Receiving an affirmative, he set an apprentice lad to gathering rocks, and stationed the marksman at one corner of the attacking corps. On the other wing, Genter Latham was similarly supplied with an ammunition helper. The clergyman seemed to know instinctively just what each man was best fitted for. The sharpshooters were to harass the foe until the final charge came, and then join it.

  As Horace took his assigned position, a form almost as impalpable as the night mist flitted past him. It was Tip Crego. The boy held what seemed to be a slender rod in his hand. Horace recognized the blowgun and thought it poorly selected for the tough encounter in prospect.

  Silverhorn’s bugle was sounding again, with a note of urgency. Cambling, Job Gadley and a couple of other captains were exhorting their followers with the foulest of objurgations and threats against the Palmyrans. The canallers about-faced and formed up between canal and creek, with their captive at their protected rear. As Dominie Strang made his swift dispositions, it was apparent that the juncture of battle would be in the canal bed itself, and Lord help the man that went down.

  Of that melee Horace remembered little afterward and that little dimly. Early in the clash somebody hit him a handsome clip back of the ear causing a mental confusion through which, however, he could recall with satisfaction chin-butting an ambitious opponent who was trying to thumb out his eye after the approved Kentucky fashion. Horace disposed of him with a kick not countenanced by even the most liberal rule of the ring—this was no time for formalities—and waded to shore to retrieve his breath. Weaving on the bank and staunching his gory nose, he found time to admire the man of God as he smote the hosts of Midian hip and thigh in the forefront of that confused war. Genter Latham was doing valiantly, backed by Carlisle Sneed, Bill Simmons and a dozen mintery men in a rush which carried them to the side of the pole-bound Mistress Crego who had swooned again, this time in the stout arms of Silas Bewar.

  A savage charge of the Erie men bore back Quaker, drunkard and magnate, and Horace was fain to rejoin the rescue squad. The brush fire had died down. Men fought, hand to hand, in the darkness of the rising mists, scarcely able to distinguish friend from foe. Horace’s head was still ringing merrily, but he was valuable in the close work, being something of a wrestler. He presently found himself battling on one side of the reverend commander-in-chief, while Jed Parris, spouting his best line of profanity, upheld the other. A piercing call arose, downstream from them.

  “Hey, Doc! Dr. Amlie! Where’s Doc Amlie?”

  Some overtone of terror in the cry gave pause to the struggle. Horace elbowed himself free from the ursine embrace of a large and drunken helmsman and splattered his way to where a little group Was dragging a burden to the towpath. He bent over an inert form.

  “Fetch a light,” he ordered.

  All the lanterns had been doused in the fighting. Not a man had a dry flintbox. While volunteers ran to the Pinch for torches, Horace dropped to his knees and loosened the fallen warrior’s collar. His hand touched something small and hairy, projecting from the throat. His heart checked. Without sight, he knew it for one of Tip Crego’s darts. He plucked out the lethal point and concealed it. So small and light a thing to have taken a strong man’s life. There was no blood, hardly a mark. To all appearances the man had been drowned.

  Lights arrived. In the glow the mean features of Captain Gambling were revealed.

  “He’s dead,” said Horace.

  “My God!” shivered a voice from the shadow.

  “Let us pray,” said the Rev. Theron Strang.

  For an instant Horace glimpsed Tip’s terrified visage in the circle above him. It vanished.

  “Fire! Fire!”

  The shout came from the Pinch. A torch had been dropped, or perhaps some vengeful canaller had started the flames. A rising wind whipped them to fury. Townsmen and canal folk, forgetting their feud in the shock of a fatality, combined to fight the holocaust. It was a hopeless attempt. In an hour there was only scattered ash where Poverty’s Pinch had sprawled.

  Just as well for Palmyra, the respectable said. Just as well, too, that Witch Crego and her bastard had relie
ved decent folk of their contamination by vanishing from the scene. It was easy for the humble and obscure to disappear, leaving no trace and little inquiry. Nobody cared except Horace Amlie, who had a warm affection for Tip, and the frail ones of the Settlement who, lacking Mistress Crego, now had none to turn to in trouble.

  Not before dawn did quiet rest upon the battle scene. High o’er the field a lonely cadence grieved, as Carlisle Sneed mourned an eye, gouged out by a person or persons unknown in the heat of conflict. Happily it was his glass eye. But he could not be dissuaded from the search until Horace had promised him a new and better one.

  For the young physician there was no sleep. The wounds of his own faction he patched up on the ground. Having thus fulfilled his immediate obligations, he boldly boarded the canal boats, offering repairs. The boatees welcomed him. They respected a lusty fighter, and readily displayed their own damages, courteously inquiring after his, and paying on the nail.

  “That was a poxy fine turn-up,” they said. “Too bad about Cap Cambling. But he was a pizen skunk, anyway.”

  Not only was no rancor cherished, except by that surly soretail, Captain Job Gadley, but Horace found himself endued with a new popularity. Specially admired was his dexterity with a rock, attested by an impressive list of stomach bruises, rib and arm contusions, and one minor concussion of the brain, all of which he treated. As an aftermath of his spreading repute, he was officially invited to become an honorary member of the Rochester Baseball Club which, fifty strong, met of weekday afternoons in Mumford’s Pasture.*

  After Sunday service Squire Jerrold accosted Horace while his wife passed on, nose in air.

  “I hear you wrought mightily last night,” said he with a twinkle.

  “It was an active fight,” answered Horace. “You should have seen our man of peace, Elder Strang.”

  “Dinty left good-bye for you.”

  Horace looked blank. “She’s gone? Already?” He would never have believed that she would leave town without bidding him farewell.

  “Unexpectedly. Colonel and Mrs. Hopkins were called to New York and stopped to take her for a visit to the Moses Rogers mansion on the Battery. She will see New York society at its finest and most fashionable,” said the father with satisfaction.

  It was on Horace’s lips to protest that she was too young for such heady dissipations. Some instinct checked him. He was unreasonably depressed.

  Her letter came by the first post. It began “Dear Dr. Amlie” and expressed polite regrets that there had been no opportunity for her to pay her respects before departure, and she was his Obedient Servant and Well-wisher, Araminta Jerrold.

  The P.S. was more Dintyish. “I cried.”

  * Nearly a generation before General Abner Doubleday “invented” baseball at Cooperstown.

  – 23 –

  You Never can Tell till you Try.

  (AN APOTHEGM FREQUENTLY REPEATED IN DINTY’S DIARY)

  That minor Neptune who holds sway over artificial waterways withdrew the light of his countenance from the Ganargwa Valley. In spite of favorable rains, the canal level in that stretch of navigation slowly diminished to a scant two feet. Optimistic Palmyra shut its eyes to the threat. Then came disaster.

  The blow fell in the night, as July merged into August. The village, waking, looked out upon a vista of sodden mud patches between dreary pools, where clear water should have rippled. A few boats canted at unsightly angles while their captains raged upon the decks. Opposite the scaler’s office a four-ply raft carpeted the canal floor.

  There had been a breach in the berm toward East Palmyra, but this, in itself, could not account for the suddenness of the decrease. Others there must be to have caused so catastrophic a leakage. Urgent appeals were sent to the Canal Board for engineers. Contractors were dispatched to round up labor gangs. Plans were advanced for further tapping of the Genesee River. Prayers for rain were offered in all the churches. Palmyra, repentant of the pride and arrogance which had led it vaingloriously to exalt itself above less fortunate communities, abased itself in sackcloth and ashes.

  Rumors and reasons for the misfortune were freighted about. One had it that Exhorter Sickel, notoriously a foe to the Erie, had prayed the water away. Another opinion held that an outraged Heaven had wrought the calamity in reprisal upon the political cabal which was scheming to oust Governor Clinton from the Commission, a plot which subsequently succeeded. The canallers ascribed it to the vengefulness of the Powers of Darkness.

  Drunken Bill Simmons was their chief witness. Having unobtrusively borrowed a batteau on the creek to sleep off a spree, he had cast off and waked to find himself far downstream, staring up into a livid sky wherein bat-winged apparitions performed a hideous saraband. One figure which bore a striking likeness to the corporeal form of Witch Crego, had plunged like Lucifer down upon the very spot where the berm had given way.

  The brotherhood of the towpath was for hunting down Mistress Crego. But even the most militant lost countenance when it became known that Elder Strang and Dr. Amlie had rescued her from a cave, helpless from shock and exposure, and had taken her to the Strang home, where the parson defied all the hosts of evil to touch her. The hosts of evil had no stomach for the job; one experience at the hands of the formidable man of God had sufficed them. Counsels of peace prevailed; let the hex be!

  Tip Crego was nowhere to be found. Nor would his “aunt” be prevailed upon to give any information. She was fearful of everybody now, including Dr. Amlie. As soon as the Pinch rose from its ashes, which it quickly did in character hardly less noisome than before, she went back there to live. She commanded the respect of fear.

  Public responsibilities pressed upon Horace. Thus far the season had been unusually healthy. Now, with the pools festering in the heat, anything might be expected. As the physician frankly admitted to Genter Latham, he was not yet satisfied as to whether the flies or the mosquitoes were the chief agents of disease. Other forms of insect life might be guilty, also; stink-bugs, snake doctors, hellbenders, even the innocent-appearing butterflies and moths, all were under suspicion.

  “Go after ’em, my boy,” said the great man good-humoredly. It was no skin off the end of his nose, whatever the fanatic might do to the premises of his neighbors. “Clean ’em all up.”

  “Yours, too?”

  “So long as the town pays,” grinned his sponsor.

  By virtue of his constabulary authority, Horace organized inspection squads. His cronies of the smithy rallied to him, not that they harbored any passion for cleanliness, but for the sport of it. It developed into a sort of game; who could find the most and worst smells on his neighbor’s premises; and though some ancient feuds engendered new heat, surprisingly little rancor attached to the instigator of the campaign. With practically no opposition he invaded privies, abolished garbage heaps, limed casual waste-water, and soaked up the foul mire of the canal bottom with acidulous refuse collected from the asheries. When, after three weeks of this, he appeared at town meeting to report both ague and intestinal affections below normal, he was cheered. The spirit of the place was chastened.

  To the mind of the inhabitants this matter of health was secondary to the all-important question: when would the water come back? Lower and lower drooped the communal optimism, as week succeeded week and no keel moved between Clyde and Rochester. Even the sturdy Wayne County Herald, which was the old Canal Advocate renamed, drooped in print. Unless the leaks were located and staunched, would all the projected increase in supply suffice to restore navigation before the season closed? Ye Scribe darkly doubted it. In that case, what would befall the town? It would stagnate like the scum of its canal-bed.

  Relieved of his specific preoccupations, Horace remembered that he had never answered Dinty’s letter of farewell. He sharpened two quills, mixed himself a fresh well of ink by his best formula—no soot-and-water for his personal correspondence—sat in to his desk at nine of the evening and at ten had completed a labored composition which suited him so ill tha
t he crumpled it and threw it into the fireplace. His second attempt was different. Rut when he came to read it over, his face turned a surprised and uncomfortable red. What kind of missive was this for a man of his age to be sending to an unfledged schoolgirl? Suppose someone else read it, the school authorities, for instance; they might almost mistake it for a love-letter, so warmly was it couched. Most assuredly, that was not what it was meant to be. He tore it into strips and went to bed in very ill-humor with himself.

  Dinty was now back at school, having gone there direct from her New York visit, and writing her parents weekly that she had had enough of it. Wealthia was coming home at the end of the term; why could not she come, too? She implied that she knew practically everything that was to be learned from book or blackboard, an assumption which brought an indulgent smile to the mouth of her father and a thinning of her mother’s lips.

  “I daresay she knows too much about some things that are no part of a young girl’s education,” said Mrs. Jerrold.

  “Nonsense!” said her husband. “What’s on your mind now?”

  “I hear things from Albany. There is too much license in that school. Half the young gentlemen in Albany follow Wealthia Latham and our daughter when they appear on the street.”

  “No wonder!” remarked Squire Jerrold, which as a contribution to family amity was far from successful.

  “You’re too weak with her, Mr. Jerrold. She can twist you around her finger. You don’t understand her.”

  Mr. Jerrold might have retorted that Mrs. Jerrold not only failed to understand Dinty, but had never made any attempt to. To her narrowed-in mind, Dinty was an incomprehensible and unmerited affliction, a contumacious and high-minded little upstart who needed taking down. If parents could not do it, a husband might. So much she said to the Squire. It startled him.