3stalwarts

by Unknown

It was midafternoon. Small cold showers coming with the wind at intervals of an hour all day had washed the air clear under the tumbling grey sky. Once in a while a spot of sunshine running across the valley would cover the boats for an instant with a bright warmth; but the cloud-shadow swooping down after it immediately brought back the darkening chill.

  “It feels quite a lot like snow,” said Dan, who was steering.

  “It does, at that,” said Fortune Friendly. The old man was stamping up and down the deck beside the cabin windows, smoking at an alder pipe he had cut and baked himself. The wind had whipped a bright red into his cheeks and nose, and his sharp eyes glistened.

  “This is the good part of boating,” he said. “The walking ain’t so bad now my boots are broke in,”— he glanced down at them,— “but I like riding the river this way, when all I’ve got to do is take a turn at steering.”

  They were almost opposite Lowville, now, on their way back from Carthage. To the west, the great hogback of Tug Hill began climbing over the bankside trees. As they went on, the edges of the nearer hills crept up against it, until they were winding through a flat deep valley.

  The hardwood was turning to sombre browns and yellows; even the maples were rusty; there was no brightness in the leaves. The poplars on the hilltops shook and leaped in the pitch of the wind; but the great pines on the valley floor stood straight, only their tops stirring with a slow lifting of arms. The entire land brooded before the solemn approach of winter; it appeared to be breathing the clear bite of the air; and on it, with the rolling sky above their heads, men and animals moved with circumspect minuteness. A woman stood in a yard, pumping glittering water; two dogs stalked a woodchuck taking his final meal of the year; two men spread manure, tossing forkfuls first on one side, then on the other. Back and forth across a slope a farmer moved behind a dappled team, uncovering dark threads with his plough.

  “It’s a fine land for farming,” Dan said.

  The old man knocked out his pipe and sat down on the cabin roof, clasping his knees with his smooth hands.

  “I was born in this section,” he said.

  “Yeanh?” said Dan. “Was it good for dairying?”

  “Sure, as good as any land. My folk were related to folks at Lyons Falls. We had a good farm. And then Pa come into money from some city kin, and Mother said I’d ought to be a minister. So I went to college.”

  “Yeanh,” said Dan.

  “I learned a lot it wasn’t good for me to learn,” said the old man. “But my pa had money, so it didn’t do no real harm. But when I come back I didn’t go to preaching, as I might have if I’d growed up here. I’d learned a lot to make a man afraid of preaching.”

  “Yeanh.”

  “I come back and said I’d settle down. I married and I lived on a farm my wife’s kin owned by Lyons Falls. I built barns and I planted an orchard, and I dammed a brook and made a fishpond. I had three men working for me, and there was a maid in the house. And when my pa died and the money come to me I got a good dairy started and my wife was happy.”

  “Gol!” said Dan.

  “But it was the same thing every year. First the winter, and then the summer; calves dropped, and growed and milked, and the crops sowed and harvested. And the field ploughed in the fall, when the ducks went south. I finicked with my orchard, and I raised some good horses. I was a regular farmer. And the second year Hester had a child. And she did the third year. It became a habit with her.”

  “Yeanh.”

  “Then one day, when the canal had been put through, I saw a girl on a boat. She had hair as black as a crow’s, and she had an orange-colored dress on, and she waved her hand when she went by. And I went home that evening. It was in August, near the end, and the men were drawing oats. I saw nothing in it, just the bundles staggering up on the forks. So I said to my wife, ‘Let’s quit this country. There’s no profit in just farming. We’ll go to the city; I’ve got money enough. We’ll live in New York.’ And she said, ‘Fortune, I wouldn’t want to move the children.’ “

  “Yeanh.”

  “It don’t count, farming, or anything else a man does. Where does he get to? He works his fields and gets crops and raises cattle and builds a house, and he says it’s his. It’s the same way in everything. There’s nothing we’ve got under the sun. We haven’t even got a hold on our selves. We’re just a passing of time. So next morning I got up early and took a hundred dollars and cleared out, and that was twenty years ago. I’ve been on the canals, I’ve been out West, I’ve been on the sea and sailed in ships. And it’s just the same as if men were asleep, making a dream with their business. And it don’t get them anywhere, does it?”

  “It’s how you look at it, I guess,” said Dan.

  “They learn new names to call things,” said the old man. “But they always call the new names by the same old one. They say progress is what they’re making. But progress is like time. It’s just the same from beginning to end, because it can’t move. ‘As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, Amen.’ And that’s true, Dan, no matter what you say it about. All we’ve got is the working of our own minds.”

  He refilled his pipe.

  “I went down the canal, Dan, and when I was hungry I played at cards. A man I lived with at college had taught me the tricks of that. And once in a while when I needed money real bad I’d preach, which is another kind of game, only the preacher holds the trumps and the temptations are very strong. I saw people fold their hands round a prayer on Sundays, Dan, as if they were doing business; but there’s a peculiar comfort in it for some people. And I’ve preached funeral sermons for people I never saw the face of, for a meal and five dollars. I did it once for an Oneida half-breed for a glass of liquor and a venison steak, and the men’s kin were real pleased with what I told them. Only his wife went off in the woods when I was done and mourned. There ain’t anything new under the sun, Dan.”

  Molly, who had been listening at the cabin door, came up on deck, and the wind caught hold of her dress and hair.

  “Did you ever see the gal again with the black hair, Fortune?”

  The old man looked at her, sombrely.

  “No,” he said. “I was telling Dan that.”

  He went down to smoke his pipe in the quiet of the cabin.

  Molly sat down in his place, drawing the collar of Dan’s shirt up about her ears.

  “I was talking with a woman on one of the boats.” She nodded ahead at the string. “We’d ought to get into Lyons Falls this evening.”

  The queue of boats followed the tug round a wide bend to the right. The brown-and-gold tints of the sunset merged into a pale green twilight, with copper edges to the lower clouds. The beat of the paddles slackened and the roar of falling water increased in volume. Still, through heavy mut-ter, Dan’s ears caught the clear ring of cowbells, and looking away to the left he saw a great farm opening out through the pines, a long herd of cows tailing through a pasture, the pale light washing the white on their bodies to silver, and, against the faint glow of the eastern slope, the white skeleton of a rising barn.

  “Look at them cows, Molly.”

  “They’re pretty, Dan.”

  “That barn they’re building there’s the biggest barn I ever see.”

  “Why should anyone want so big a barn?”

  He did not answer her.

  Little figures of men in blue overalls were coming slowly down the ladders, backward, their faces turned on the work they had done.

  “It’s as big as a church,” Molly said.

  “It’s bigger,” said Dan.

  Then the river straightened ahead of them, and the tug swung in by the side of the lock that let the canal into the river. A string of boats was forming to go downriver. Another tug, beside the pier, was spouting up columns of oily smoke, a white hiss now and then escaping the valve. Men were loading five-foot logs aboard for the fires.

  Visitors

  Down below, Molly got supper. When they came
into Port Leyden in the darkness, Dan called to Friendly to tie up behind a squat white boat.

  Just as they were finishing their meal, they heard footsteps on deck and a rapping on the cabin roof.

  “Come in,” Molly called.

  Before Dan could go to the door, footsteps clattered on the stairs, and a hearty voice called, “My, my! Where’s Dan Harrow?”

  There was a familiar ring in the voice. The door was flung open and a little man wearing a cap, with the ear mufflers up, peered in.

  “Dan Harrow aboard?”

  “He ought to be if he ain’t,” said the hearty voice from behind. “It’s the Sarsey Sal, ain’t it?”

  “Hullo,” said Dan. “Hullo, Mr. Tinkle.”

  The little man beamed and stretched out his hand. Then he put his head back through the door and shouted, “Come on, Lucy!”

  They heard her purling down the stairs.

  “She’s getting awful fleshy,” the little man confided. “Don’t know but what she’s getting wheezy.”

  “I ain’t neither. Sol, that’s a lie. I don’t tell tales on to your rheumatiz, do I?”

  The fat woman came breezing in, her hat a little on one side from bumping on the stairs.

  “My stars, Dan, ain’t this grand?”

  She swept over to him and enveloped him in her arms.

  “To think of you owning a boat, being a regular boater! I always let on to Sol you would be, but he’d shake his head, when the rheumatiz wasn’t bothering him too much, and he’d say he guessed not. Mr. Butterfield told us about you. We’re hauling for him now.”

  She stepped back and cast her bold eyes round the room.

  “It’s real comfortable and homey, ain’t it? These old boats are nicer, I think. They’ve got a better feel into them. You don’t feel so old in them. And it’s clean, too. And curtains on the window. My! Ain’t it a nice boat, Sol?”

  The little man was holding his cap in both hands, the lamp shining on his bald head, a grin of pleasure puckering his face.

  “Listen to him!” exclaimed Mrs. Gurget. “Just standing there and looking round as if he’d never been out of Stittville all his life. You’d hardly think but what he was a deef-and-dummer. Can’t you talk, Sol?”

  “Once in a while I edge in a word, Lucy.”

  “Fresh,” said the fat woman, tossing her head. “Well, how be you, Dan? You look thriving. Don’t he, folks? Introduce me, Dan. I always feel itchety till I know who folks are. Gives a person a handle for conversation.”

  She drew herself up with a smile.

  “Now’s your chance, Dan,” said Solomon.

  Mrs. Gurget tossed him a frown.

  “This here’s Fortune Friendly— he’s driving for us. And this is Molly Larkins. Mrs. Gurget and Mr. Solomon Tinkle,” said Dan, the blood bright in his cheeks.

  Mrs. Gurget gave the old man a smile and beamed at Molly.

  “I’d knowed there was a woman on board as soon as I laid eyes on them curtains, fresh ironed. A man alone might as well hang up a dishrag.”

  “Won’t you set down?” said Molly, pushing forward the rocking-chair. Dan watched her with open admiration. She was very cool about it.

  Mrs. Gurget sank down and threw back her red shawl to show the locket on her bosom.

  “Well, it feels good to set down. I’ve been steering all day. We unloaded in Lyons Falls this afternoon and Sol said we’d ought to start right back. Mr. Butterfield asked us if we knowed you, Dan, and then he told us you’d got a boat. It gave us a start. I thought Sol’d spit right there in the office. So when we see your boat coming in a while ago Sol wanted to go right on board, but I told him to mind his manners and give you folks time to eat. That’s the way men are,” she said to Molly, patting her hand; “so long as they see smoke in a stovepipe, they think there ought to be food set right out to feed a circus. How do you like cooking for this man, dearie?”

  Molly smiled.

  “He’s a real nice man to work for.”

  Mrs. Gurget gave her another pat.

  “I think so myself. Dan’s all right— yes, sir. Oh, me,” she sighed, with a smile at Solomon, “we’re all young once. Don’t you find it so, Mr. Friendly?”

  The ex-preacher leaned back on his stool, his hands clasped over one knee. He had been smiling ever since Mrs. Gurget entered the cabin.

  “Well, some of us never lose it, Mrs. Gurget.”

  The fat woman laughed delightedly.

  For a minute or two the conversation hinged on minor gossip, on the triplets borne by Mrs. Scroggins on the Pretty Fashion while the boat was going through Lockport,— a child for every other lock, as Solomon said, —and a new cure for consumption, and the “Rheumatic Amputator” Solomon had bought at a horse fair out of Syracuse from a traveling surgeon. He pulled up a trouser leg to show it to them, a thin lead band that fitted just above the calf of his leg. “Careful,” Mrs. Gurget admonished. “We’re in company.” “It burns the rheumatiz right out,” Sol explained. “See them little teeth on the inside? Well, you soak them in sour cider and that generates the beneficent electrical that balances the blood by getting it to proper temperature. It helps a lot. Why after I’ve wore it an hour I can feel the heat a-swarming in to beat the cars. Yes, sir.”

  “It only cost seventy-five cents,” Mrs. Gurget said. “Ain’t it wonderful the progress that science can make for the money?”

  Fortune Friendly nodded gravely.

  “It’s as good as God.”

  “It’s better for the rheumatiz,” said Solomon.

  “Hush, you,” said Mrs. Gurget.

  Molly smiled.

  “You’d ought to get out that rum you got in Carthage, Dan. Unless you prefer cider, mam.”

  “No— no, thanks.” The fat woman laughed. “Rum noggin’s a healthy habit with me.”

  Molly got the glasses and Dan brought a small keg out of the sleeping cuddy.

  “Here, Sol, get up and help Dan. He’s a great hand at driving a bung, Dan. Sol’s the handiest man at it I ever see. Let him do some work. Dearie, can’t I help you with them glasses? Mr. Friendly, it’s nice for old folks to be waited on, ain’t it? I don’t count Sol as only a child. There’s times, seeing him with a bottle, I think he still ought to be sucking.”

  The kettle was purring full on the stove, and the sharp odor of lemon that Molly was cutting mingled with the smell of rum. Mrs. Gurget spread her nostrils over her glass.

  “It’s a regular party. Well, here we be. You’re a lucky man, Dan, though I don’t know if you know it.”

  She drank it down to “Dan and Molly and getting together.”

  “Now Lucy’s got her belly warmed, she may soother down,” said the little man. “Butterfield says he wants for you and me to get potatoes in Den-ley,— there’s a load there,— and to Boonville, Dan; but while we’re waiting here along you come; so here’s how.”

  He drank, and broke into conversation with Fortune Friendly. Mrs. Gur-get was occupied with Molly. The cabin looked very homey all at once to Dan; and Molly, with a bright look on her face, bending toward the fat woman, was prettier than he had seen her. He felt a little nervous, but very happy, and Molly’s collectedness gave him a sense of comfort. Now and then the two women glanced his way, as if they were talking about him, a sort of smile in their eyes. The kettle steaming, the warm light of the lamp, the scent of rum coming after the day in the cold air, brought an air of establishment to the Sarsey Sal. His guests, his boat… .

  Solomon turned back, laying his hand on Dan’s knee.

  “I’ve been talking to Mr. Friendly, Dan,” with a pert nod in the ex-preacher’s direction, “and I’ve got an idea. All at once, like, there’s been a lot of talk coming up about this feller Calash. I’ve kept my eyes looking out and my ears listening, Dan, and I reckon he’s up here, especially after what Mr. Friendly’s been saying about Henderson in Rome. I think he’s up here.”

  “I guess that’s right,” said Dan.

  With elaborate nicety, the li
ttle man tapped Dan’s knee with the end of his forefinger.

  “How would two thousand dollars, split three ways, go between us, Dan?”

  Dan was uneasy.

  “Why, I don’t know.”

  “Two thousand dollars!” exclaimed the fat woman, glancing up. “Where’s two thousand dollars?”

  Solomon pointedly ignored her.

  “This feller Henderson’s up here, but he won’t ever get him. He don’t know where he is. But I’ll bet I do. Why don’t me and you and Mr. Friendly round him up, then?”

  “Why, I don’t know,” repeated Dan. He felt suddenly uncomfortable and worried. It would mean seven hundred dollars to him, a lot of money. But he had a liking for the man, somehow; he did not know why. He had seen him once in Boonville when he came on the canal, and once on the haul to Rome, and twice in Rome; and the man had put him aboard his boat in Utica; and he had petted his horse, and the horse had liked him. It was a lot of money. He did not know why he liked him. There seemed to be a lot of things tied up in the man… .

  “He’s a criminal,” said the little man. “He’s wanted dead or alive. He ought to be caught afore he breaks loose here.”

  “My land!” exclaimed the fat woman, settling her hat straight. “He ought! It ain’t safe with him roaming around like a bug on a hot night; there’s no telling where he’ll bump into. I get a start every time I hear a team on the towpath!”

  Solomon Tinkle nodded approvingly.

  “That’s it; there’s no telling what he’ll do. We’d ought to go after him. It’s a duty.”

  “That’s right,” said Mrs. Gurget. “It’s a duty.”

  The ex-preacher nodded gravely.

  Molly was regarding Dan with a queer questioning light in her eyes.

  “I don’t know,” he said uneasily. “How’d you go about it, Sol?”

  “I’ve figured out just about where he’s liable to be. You know, down by Denley, where the road crosses to the river. There’s an old brown house down there.”

  “Yeanh, it’s the Riddle house,” said the fat woman. “I know it. It’s eight-sided.”

  “Yeanh,” said Solomon, leaning forward, his glass clasped in both hands. “It’s got eight sides. Old Riddle built it when he got off the canal. He was born in these parts, so he come back to build. Wanted to get away from folks, so he built him a house down in that Godsake hole. He was born deef , and they say from living alone that way he lost the power of speaking. Used to bring his order into the Denley store on Saturdays, wrote out on a paper. It’s the dangdest house I ever see. He lived by himself, and two winters ago he died into it.”