3stalwarts

by Unknown

  “Down in the valley, The valley so low, Hang your head over, Hear the wind blow.”

  Dan swallowed hard, as if he would have liked to cry, and sat up suddenly. Molly came to the curtain and put her head through. Her hair hung forward on her shoulder in a big loose braid, making her look ridiculously young. She was wearing a thin green print that brought out the bright flush in her cheeks; and her blue eyes, seeing his tousled hair and the patient, bewildered pleasure in his face, grew dark with tenderness. “Get up, lazy Dan. Come and get your breakfast.” She tossed his trousers onto the bed and went back to her work.

  “Hear the wind blow, dear, Hear the wind blow, Hang your head over And hear the wind blow.”

  He pulled on his trousers and laced his boots; his fingers were clumsy. Then he went on deck and drew himself a bucket of water, washed, and went to the stable. The horses were up and eager for their feed. He got them a bucket of water from the butt and stood by their heads watching them drink. The orlhorse lifted its head when it had drunk and brushed the back of his neck with its cool damp muzzle. Dan swore and thumped it with his fist, and the horse laid back its ears and pretended to nip him. Dan laughed at it and slapped its neck; and the horse pricked its ears suddenly and stamped. The other, impatient of the byplay, whickered into the belly of the manger for oats.

  Dan brushed them down and grained them. They were a fairly good team, a little lighter than he liked a horse; but they were fattening from their week of rest. He put on their collars and adjusted the hames and went back to the cabin.

  Molly had let down the table from the wall, and now she sat at one end, the coffeepot before her. The sunlight coming through the window caught in the edges of her hair.

  “Good morning,” she said, her eyes on the high color the cold water had whipped up in his cheeks.

  “Morning,” said Dan. He went over to the sink, felt for the comb behind the mirror, and ran it through his hair.

  Molly laughed.

  “It don’t do a bit of good to do that.”

  “No,” he said. “I guess it don’t.”

  “Come and set down, then. Here’s your coffee,” she said, pouring him a cup. “Whatever woman was on to this boat before you men tried to run things certainly knowed coffee. She stocked up good. There’s enough of everything to last us till we get ready to leave Rome, except for eggs and butter and milk.”

  “Yeanh,” said Dan, starting in on his bacon and potatoes with relish.

  She eyed him dubiously.

  “I haven’t had time to make a pie,” she said. “But I’ll whip up something tonight.”

  “This is good enough for me,” Dan said, looking her over with a broad grin.

  Her eyes smiled to watch him eating.

  “It’s an old boat,” she said. “But it’s real nice. It’s fixed out about the most comfortable of any boat I’ve lived on to. The china’s pretty, too, white and red like this. Just my color. But I’d like to clean it out good.”

  “We can when we quit Rome.”

  “It ain’t that it’s so awful dirty,” she went on. “But I don’t like to live in it with the old man dead the way he is, and not clean up all round.”

  She wrinkled her nose.

  “He was all right,” Dan said. “Samson Weaver was a good man.”

  “I don’t doubt he was all right. It’s just a feeling.”

  “Mrs. Cashdollar said you was notional.”

  “What did she say?” Molly asked quickly.

  Dan grinned.

  “Please tell me.”

  “No, I guess I’d better not.”

  “It must’ve been bad.”

  “No, I wouldn’t say it was bad. She seemed to like you all right.”

  “She’s been nice to me,” Molly said. “She’s a pretty nice old woman.”

  “I like her a lot.”

  “She is nice. It’s too bad she’s getting so fat. She has to wear a wig, too.”

  “I didn’t guess it.”

  “It is. It’s a pity, too. She looks awful with it off her.”

  “Well, it looks all right on.”

  “Men don’t notice. I’d rather lose my teeth than my hair.”

  “You’ve got enough to last a while, if it’s real.”

  “You’d ought to know it was real. I had to pull it out from under you a dozen times.”

  “It’s pretty, such a lot of it,” he said, his eyes shining. The dimple stole into her cheek.

  “I wish it was yellow.”

  “I like it just how it is,” said Dan, seriously.

  She smiled to herself.

  “When do you want to start?”

  “Just so soon as you’re ready.”

  “I want to hang the blankets outside anyway to-day.”

  “All right. I’ll rig a line while you’re washing dishes.”

  He felt as if he could sit there for hours just watching her, as she bent forward, her elbows on the table, her chin cupped in her hands. There was no denying she was pretty, when you looked at her fresh coloring and the feathery curl of her light brown hair. The sunlight dusted her skin with a luminous bloom and picked out a shadow between her shoulders.

  “Dan,” she said suddenly.

  “Yeanh.”

  “Could I get a bigger mirror? I can’t hardly see to do my hair in this one.”

  “Why, yes, I guess I could, after Butterfield pays me off.”

  She sighed, as if relieved.

  He pushed back his chair.

  “I reckon we’d ought to get ready. I’ll hang out them blankets.”

  “There’s some pins in that bag hanging on the door. I found them this morning.”

  Dan stretched a line between the cabin roof and that of the stable. There were two notched uprights already cleated in place within easy reach of the left runway, as though Annie had superintended the operation. The iron-tipped boat pole, one end against the bottom of the pit, could be used as a brace.

  It was a bright windy morning, with white clouds tumbling high up. The blankets wipped and shivered. When he had hung them, Dan raised the half hatch of the stable and laid the gangway for the horses.

  In the cabin Molly was drying the dishes, her hands and wrists red from the water. Dan took the dishpan out to empty it.

  “It’s kind of cold,” he said, when he came in again. “You’d better dress up warm.”

  She nodded, her mouth full of pins as she began twisting the braid round and round her head. It made a heavy coil. When she had finished, she gave her head a little tentative shake.

  “Have you got something warm I could use, Dan?”

  “Yeanh. There’s a blue shirt in my bag.”

  “I’ll get it,” she said. “You’d better get the horses out.”

  The team came down the gang eagerly, but rather stiff from their long ride in the stable. He rubbed down their legs with his hands, while they drew trembling long breaths and bent their knees as he finished.

  Molly came on deck. The tails of his blue shirt flapped loosely over her hips.

  “All right,” she said, swinging the rudder out.

  He let down the stable hatch, drew in the gang, tossed off the tie-ropes, and spoke to the team. They settled down willingly under their collars. Dan saw that he would not need to use the reins or Samson’s heavy whip.

  They were a good pair, active walkers, but too light and quick to do much hauling without another pair to relieve them. Dan decided that he would want another team, and, if he got another team, that he would buy a good one.

  The Sarsey Sal swung out from the wharf into the basin. They cleared it quickly and came into the open canal. A cold wind snapped across the water when they passed the last street; looking over his shoulder, Dan saw it drawing Molly’s skirt snug about her legs, fluttering it behind her. She stood with her weight on the hip nearest the rudder, both hands on the sweep, her face turned sidewise to meet the wind. A strand of hair whipped her lips, and she caught it suddenly with her white teeth
and grinned ahead at Dan while she held it.

  He warmed to see her there, on his boat, wearing his own shirt, a heavy woolen one with the collar standing up against the back of her hair. The awkwardness of its fit made it curiously becoming to her. His boat— the water cuddling the clumsy old bows; his cook; his heart rose in him and he turned his head into the wind to feel it beating on his skin, and he smiled to himself.

  There were not many boats heading west that morning. The press of the emigrant season was over. Most of the west-bound boats were freighters like the Sarsey Sal, heavy-laden. But there was the autumn push of crops coming east. Grain from the lakes, boat after boat; and potatoes coming down to the cities all along the line; and apples, with their sharp sweet smell. Every few minutes a boat passed him.

  At noon he put the horses on board for an hour to feed and rest. Molly got a quick lunch of potatoes and eggs and tea; and she begged some apples from a boater as he passed. He tossed them onto the Sarsey Sal and took off his hat to Molly; and, standing beside her, Dan flushed with pride. His boat, his cook; forward in the stable his team munching their oats; he belonged to the canal.

  “Maybe we’ll go down to New York next spring,” he said to her in the cabin.

  She caught her breath.

  “I’d like to.”

  “Ever been down?”

  “No. But I’d like to see it. It’s a great city, and the streets full all the while. And theatres and museums.”

  All at once Dan felt a little afraid of it, so many people. He had not liked Albany, and Albany was a small place alongside of New York, by all accounts.

  “You can see boats from four canals, there, all to once,” Molly said.

  He watched her biting out of her apple.

  “Seen anything of Klore?” he asked after a while.

  She took another bite without looking at him.

  “Yeanh,” she said, with the apple against her mouth. “He’s out hauling to Buffalo.”

  “Yeanh.”

  “He come around to Mrs. Cashdollar a dozen times looking for me,” she said.

  “Yeanh.”

  “I wouldn’t have nothing to do with him. Not any more.”

  “I’m glad he’s away.”

  “He’s looking out for you, Mrs. Cashdollar said. He’s mad about you and me.”

  “I don’t want to fight him.”

  “You’ll have to sometime.”

  “I probably will,” Dan said seriously.

  “You ain’t scared of him?” she asked with a quick sidelong look.

  “I don’t want to fight him.”

  “You’ll have to lick him if I stay with you. It’s got to come,” she said, with a definite cold prescience in her tone. “I can see it.”

  “Yeanh,” he said, moodily.

  She gave him a long frank look.

  “Any kind of a man can get a-hold of something, Dan; but it’s keeping it that counts.”

  They went on after the meal. For an hour Molly walked with the horses and Dan steered.

  “Keep ‘em slowed down!” he shouted to her.

  She nodded her head. She had a free, swinging stride which he liked to watch. He could see that the horses liked her; and that was a good thing, he said to himself; you could trust a horse or cow’s opinion better than a man’s or a dog’s.

  She came nimbly up the boat ladder when he swung it in to the towpath, and he caught her when she came over the side and held her in his arm. She was flushed from her exercise, and he could feel her drawing herself in hard against him.

  “Get ashore, lazy Dan,” she said, kissing him.

  He gave her a squeeze.

  “Dan!” she gasped. “Lord! You can lick Klore any time, if you have a mind to!”

  For a while he felt as though he could.

  “What a thing it’ll be to watch!” she said to herself, looking ahead at him where he walked beside the horses, his heavy shoulders bent. “He needs to be stiffened, but it’s got to come.”

  They hauled into Rome at four o’clock, and tied up at the Butterfield dock.

  Samson’s End

  Mr. Butterfield rose from behind the cherrywood desk that faced the door.

  “Good afternoon. What can I—” His grey eyes brightened.

  “Why, it’s young Harrow, isn’t it? I’m glad to see you. Come in and sit down.”

  He stepped forward, smiling, and shook hands.

  Dan put his hat on the desk and looked down at his fists. It was cool in the room. The chairs were black-leather-seated, and a dark green rug lay on the floor. Two small windows high up on the left wall let in the afternoon sun to fall in two squares on the varnished sealing of the opposite wall. Facing Dan, Mr. Butterfield sat erect in his well-fitting black coat, the tips of his fingers touching across his lap, a kindly look in his grey eyes.

  “I come to ask you something,” Dan said somewhat diffidently.

  “I’ll give you the best advice I can, Harrow.”

  Dan swallowed. Even in the office there were traces of the dust of the new grain, with its sweet, musty smell.

  “Where have you been since I saw you?” Mr. Butterfield asked.

  “Utica and Albany and back to Utica,” said Dan.

  “Who did you come in with?”

  “I come in on the Sarsey Sal.”

  “Why, that’s Weaver’s boat. Did you bring up my machinery?”

  “Yeanh.”

  “I’m glad it’s here. I expected it yesterday. Did Weaver come into the office with you?”

  “No, that’s why I come to see you, Mr. Butterfield. Samson’s dead.”

  “Good Lord! What happened to him?”

  “I reckon he was scared of the cholera.”

  “Yes, I heard there was a case. Strange at this time of year, but we’d had a good deal of hot foggy weather. Tell me how he died.”

  Dan told him how he had signed on in Albany, how they had passed the cholera boat burning, how Samson had been worrying, how Henderson came aboard.

  “It must have been his heart,” said Mr. Butterfield. “It was a hard trip for you, Harrow. I think you did well to come through so quickly. What did you do with the poor fellow?”

  “That’s partly what I come to see you about.” And Dan told him in detail of his deal with the undertaker.

  “I didn’t know rightly what I ought to do,” he said apologetically. “I hadn’t had no experience. When Pa died Mr. Breezy done the job.”

  “Well, Samson Weaver was a good man. I wouldn’t want him to go that way.”

  “It didn’t seem right,” said Dan. “But I had to have some money. And I didn’t know nobody in Utica to borrow from.”

  “You ought to have written up to me.”

  “Weaver said you wanted the machinery right away.”

  “That’s true enough. Still, I don’t want to leave him as he is.”

  “It don’t seem right,” Dan agreed, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

  “I guess I know the doctor the undertaker was taking him to. He’s a first-rate surgeon, and I suppose he has to have a study once in a while. I won’t mention his name. There’s a good deal of prejudice against the practice, though I don’t see anything wrong in it. But we ought to consider Samson. I don’t think he would have liked it, Harrow.”

  “I guess that’s right, Mr. Butterfield. He had a kind of horror.”

  “Well, then, suppose I look up this surgeon; I’ve got to go to Utica tomorrow anyway; and I’ll have the body buried decently and have a stone put up. Don’t you think yourself that would be best?”

  “Yeanh,” said Dan, “it didn’t seem right letting him go to the doctor that way— seeing as how I wasn’t in Samson’s family.”

  Mr. Butterfield looked grave.

  “Yes. I agree with you, Harrow. Seeing he hasn’t any family, it’s a sort of double obligation to us to see he’s treated decently. He was a very decent man.”

  “Yeanh.”

  “I’ll
be glad to pay for the headstone, but maybe you’d like to con-tribute something, Harrow.”

  “Yeanh. That’s what I come to see you about, Mr. Butterfield.”

  “How about ten dollars?”

  Dan drew a breath of relief.

  “That’s just what I’d ought to give, I think.”

  He took the ten dollars Cushman had given him from his pocket and pushed them across the desk. Mr. Butterfield put them in his wallet, took a cigar out of a drawer, lit it, and leaned back.

  “What are your plans now, Harrow?”

  “That’s what I come to see you about, Mr. Butterfield. I wanted to see you about the Sarsey Sal. Samson said he didn’t have any folks. I was wondering if you’d know if anybody else had an interest in the boat.”

  “I happen to know that nobody has.”

  “I was wondering who’d own the boat then, Mr. Butterfield.”

  Mr. Butterfield examined the end of his cigar.

  “I should think you had as good a claim as anybody, Harrow. You took good care of Weaver on the haul up.”

  “I didn’t have much time to take care of him. I didn’t feel right about letting the doctor have him.”

  “We’ve straightened that out. I shouldn’t worry about it. I don’t see why you shouldn’t go on with the boat, Harrow, just where Samson Weaver left off. He was very fond of that old boat. He said to me once, Til bet she’ll keep on moving as long as there’s water to rub her belly on.’ I think he’d like to think of the Sal still going along. I had his boat and him working for me regularly. Would you like to sign up with me?”

  “Yeanh.”

  “I want to send a load of corn and oats up to Ney’s in Carthage tomorrow. Will that suit you?”

  “Yeanh.”

  “How are you fixed for horses?”

  “There’s a pair on the boat, bays— six and eight, I’d judge. They’re good walkers, but kind of light to suit me. I don’t think they’re a lot over twenty-three hundred.”