by Unknown
His strength had returned with the miles of tramping, but his mind felt dead. At nights he was given to dreaming. He dreamed of himself as hunting sometimes in the woods, sometimes in cities; and the birds took up a noise of mourning; and somewhere a dark shape flitted, laughing with Norah’s voice. He had the dream again and again.
Now he was lost, and he decided to sit down where he was to wait for the stars to come. When he saw the dipper he’d head north. Heading north, he was bound to strike the canal.
He waited for the night to darken under the trees, and he looked for the stars. Before the dipper came, he saw a light shining far off among the oaks.
The light turned out to be a fire burning between two trees. A young man, with round, smooth, red cheeks, was stretched on his stomach on the ground. He had a piece of clay in his hand on which he was marking signs with a stick.
“Evening.”
The young man started. He turned his face. His eyes regarded Jerry with a stupid sort of cunning.
“Hello.”
“Can you tell me which way Palmyra lies? Or Victor? Or Manchester, for that matter? I’ve got lost.”
“There’s Palmyra, two miles off. The others are there and there, but a longer ways. What was you after to get lost?”
“I’m hunting a man with a white-blind horse, a white horse.”
The man sat up. His shifty eyes sparkled.
“Kind of like the Apocalypse horse, to hear you.”
Jerry stared. Under his eyes the man turned surly.
“Well, I ain’t seen them nohow.”
“I hardly expected it,” Jerry said hopelessly. “Mind if I sit down a while?”
“No, I don’t. Set over there.”
“What are you making?”
“I’m writing what I thought of this afternoon. Did you ever read the Bible, mister?”
“Not much.”
“But did you ever stop to think of the easy money in the Bible?”
“No.”
“Nobody has but me, I guess. Back home they want me to hoe potatoes or corn, or reap, or milk. Why should I? I’ve got a better idea to make money without working.”
“How?”
“That’s my idea.” He turned his eyes slyly.
“Are you writing on that clay?”
“I don’t write. But that don’t matter. This is practise. I’ve got to figger something nobody but me can read. Then I’ll have something on people. Something they’ve got to come to me to get.” He grinned. “Did you ever think of all the things you’d like to have, mister?”
“Not all at once.”
“But that’s what I’m a-doing now. Everything. Money, land, servants, girls.” He licked his red lips. “Every last little thing.”
“Can you tell me how to find Palmyra?”
“Go down that slope to the crick. There’s a path. If you meet a girl a-coming, just tell her Joe Smith’s up on the rise a ways.”
He grinned.
“Just tell her Joe’s got the Holy Ghost right handy if she gets here quick enough.”
Jerry left quickly, for the man made him queasy. He found the creek, but he did not meet the girl.
As the inn in Palmyra was closed, he slept in the barn, and next morning went his round of questions. But the trail was too cold, now. Nobody remembered the white-blind horse.
It made no sense: their starting west, then doubling back towards the east. She wanted to lose him, or Falk did, and they had vanished. He tried to think where they had gone. One chance occurred to him. He would go to Utica, trying at Melvilles on the way.
Hammil
Caleb Hammil regarded him with genuine regret.
“I’m sorry you won’t stay with me, Jerry. There’s my partnership ready for you.”
“I’m promised to Hunter.”
The fat man nodded.
“Work’s what you need. Work ahead, Jerry. Do everything you planned to do if she was there that’s what I’d do myself. You’ve had hard luck. But if you keep going, it’s my idea something will turn up.”
“I will.”
“I wish, though, you could have seen the bank I laid along the Mohawk down by Herkimer. We’ve got the canal running half on the hill and half where the water was. It’s a sight to look at. More especially when a boat runs by. Lord, how those packets travel!”
“I’m going straight out to Rochester.”
“Some day I’ll come out to see you, when I’ve time.”
“I wish you would.”
“How are you fixed for money?”
“Good enough. But, Mr. Hammil, I’d like to sell that lot of mine.”
“Charlie Green’s old lot?” The fat man rubbed his chin. “Colonel Tyler was speaking to me about it two days ago. Wanted to know if I could tell where you was. He said he’d offer to pay a hundred dollars for that lot.”
“A hundred!” Jerry looked blank.
Hammil chuckled.
“What was it you paid for it?”
“Three dollars.”
“Well,” said the fat man with a shrewd look, “why don’t you sell it if you’re willing and use the money to buy you a plot in Rochester and build a house?”
“I was thinking that.”
“A good frame house, two stories and a full attic, costs less than fifteen hundred dollars. You could build, yourself, when you had the time. The lumber wouldn’t come to nothing, then.”
Jerry said nothing. But he thought, “I’ll do it. I’ll save this money towards my land, and I’ll build a house.”
Hammil was rubbing his hands together.
“Now Colonel Tyler’s offered to pay a hundred. I should guess you could get two hundred out of him. Say, why don’t you let me handle it? We can trot down to the bank and you can make out an agreement for me to be your agent in the business. Tyler’s told me all his troubles. It’s the only decent canal-side plot for a packet landing left. He’s got to have it for his Erie Navigation line of packets. I’ll guarantee two hundred dollars.”
He caught up his hat.
“You’ll have time enough. The packets are stopping under the bridge now, and the Montezuma don’t haul out till ten.”
As they walked along Jerry asked about his friends. Hammil had all the news. Lester Charley had run off nobody knew where; but Mrs. Charley was taking hold of the store. “She don’t know nothing about books, but she’s making the store pay. She handles books like shoes, or dresses it’s the best way. Decorates her shop and has a lot of picters. Want to stop in?”
“No, thanks.” He’d rather not see the place now, having to answer questions. Hammil nodded. His eyes were bright with understanding.
“Self Rogers,” he changed the flow of Jerry’s thoughts, “come back from the west considerably ganted. He marched in and swore he’d never build another shanty for me. That was all. The last I see of him that day he was in the pothecary’s. Watson told me afterwards that the old fellow’d got himself gone over thoroughly. He had an ether paint for toothache, a dose of calomel, snake oil on his legs for rheumatism, and Pholadelphis for the gout. Then he went down to Bellinger’s and got insensible on whiskey and when he woke up he come right back to me and asked for a new job. We signed papers and I sent him down beyond Little Falls-on a shanty contract.”
He chattered on. Bourbon was out at pasture; he needed a week’s rest from the summer traveling. Jerry was sorry not to see the horse. Except for the north-country hauling, one didn’t see the same number of freight wagons any more. The town was changing. Growing fast. The boats surprised one with their numerousness. Already they were hauling east of Little Falls. Little Falls to Montezuma quite a stretch.
At the bank they made out papers for the sale of the lot. Jerry found that his balance had grown with interest. There was two years’ work with Hammil.
“You’re pretty well off for a young man,” Hammil said. “You’ve got enough to make a handsome start. Fifteen hundred dollars would be a handy sum for any man.”<
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They were walking up Genesee Street now. Under the bridge, the Navigation Company had a booth for the passenger agent. Jerry paid four dollars for passage money. It entitled him to the use of a berth and his meals on the forty-eight-hour trip.
The fat man stood uneasily on the dock while Jerry’s bag was put aboard.
“I ain’t been onto one myself.” He laughed nervously. “Truth is,” he added “two phrenologists has told me that I’ll get my death of water. So I just don’t chance it.”
He put his hands in his pockets and leaned against a bridge timber. His face saddened.
“Jerry, I hate to see you going. I’m glad we don’t feel hard against each other. I did a while when you got through and went west on me. But I’m over it. I’m real glad to see you again.”
“Something was into me, I guess,” said Jerry.
They both stared at the packet in their embarrassment. The other passengers were all aboard. The captain stood beside the steersman with his watch out, and looked up the canal towards Liberty Street, where the company stable was. Then they saw the driver boy coming down with his team. They were hitched tandem and the boy rode the rear horse. The captain tooted his bugle a warning blast.
Hammil shook Jerry’s hand.
“Good-bye, Jerry.” The small mouth was serious in the fat face. “Seems I’ll always remember you outside of Bellinger’s hearing that hen announce her egg. I took a fancy to you then. Good luck.”
He wrenched his hand away and turned. He stumbled on the steps to the street level. Jerry stared after him. He himself was heading west to Rochester now; he was well off to make his start; but the world seemed lifeless. The agent touched his elbow.
“Best get on.”
Jerry climbed the gang to the deck. The steersman heaved it in and leaned it in its clamps against the cabin wall. The horses were hitched to the towrope; the captain blew an ornate call upon the bugle. The team took up the rope and a couple of loafers on the dock helped shove the boat out. They did it carelessly, as if they did it every day.
The Packet Boat
The Montezuma, like her sister boat, the Chief Engineer, was seventy feet by thirteen. Loaded, she drafted thirteen inches.
As Jerry stood beside the steersman he was surprised at the ease with which the tow horses slid her through the water, as they walked her out through the basin.
“We’ll get to going pretty quick,” said the steersman.
The town had changed. From the bridge westward, the canal ran through a line of brand-new docks and warehouses. But already the scent of traffic lay about them. In the still September heat, Jerry smelled meal and grain, potatoes, pork and pickled salmon, iron smells from new ploughs greased for shipment, and stoves, green lumber, gypsum, hay in bales. The docks were crowded with men handling barrels, scooping grain. Most of the newest warehouses had their second stories jutting over the plankway, and let down tackles through trapdoors to swing up crates and slings of kegs. Men shouted back and forth, gave orders, checked on tallies. The horses dozed with slung hips, letting the clamor pass their drooping ears. Pigeons and sparrows cluttered the road and found bonanzas in the dust, and small boys scampered on and off the waiting boats.
He eyed them like a carpenter, judging the curve of the bows, the height of siding, the space between the ribs, the construction of the stable, and the way the cabin stairs let down from the deck. They were of all colors, mostly built by men along the canal, some obvious experiments. No two were alike and all seemed very short for their beam. Soon he would build his own; but not one under sixty feet or to carry less than thirty tons.
“When the ditch is opened up both ends,” the steersman said, “I reckon there’ll be a danged sight more of them. They’re a terrible nuisance to us already. By law they’ve got to give us way. But now and then you strike a Yankee and he’s cussed as all git.”
Jerry nodded.
“There’ll be ten to twenty most any time to see here. Utica’s well disposed for traffic. Every month it seems to me I see a new boat. That John Van Ness Yates is a Little Falls boat, came on last month. She’s hauling water lime for the lower aqueducts. And the Western Trader’s also new. She’s one of the first built, but a farmer made her out of green pine timbers and he didn’t get a hundred yards before she sank. They couldn’t keep her caulked. So they took her out and let her weather and she’s just lately back. I class her new for that.”
Jerry nodded.
“I guess I’ll go inside.”
“I hope you like us,” said the steersman, affably.
The men’s cabin extended two thirds of the boat’s length. The walls were painted yellow; and there were two long tables side by side. Along the walls the berths were folded up. They consisted of iron frames on hinges with a yard of canvas stretched across them. Jerry identified his berth by his bag.
He sat down opposite it and stared round. There were some fourteen men and three women. The women were sitting in a little library under the steersman’s deck. The rest of the travelers were already splitting into little groups. Some elected cards. A couple of farmers talked of crops. Three merchants bewailed Albany prices. Their voices blended into a drone, like the drone of flies against the windows, hushed but ceaseless. It was so quiet in the cabin that if Jerry had not looked through the windows he would never have known that they were moving. And he marveled at the casualness of the passengers, who seemed to take it all for granted.
A talkative man in a grey hat, whom everybody else edged off from, caught sight of him. Jerry rose hastily. He didn’t want to talk, or listen to talk. He went on deck again.
There it was peaceful and still. The sun fell straight down, putting light on the blue line of the canal. The steersman nodded.
“It’s nice up here. Why don’t you go to the front deck? Most likely you won’t be bothered there.”
Jerry went forward, past the kitchen window, which exuded a scent of carrots and fall cabbage and beef, and the windows of the ladies’ cabin. The deck offered a ten-foot space. And till dinner time he was alone watching the play of the towrope against its cleat, eyeing the new banks, already healed with grass, and hearing the ripple of water washing past the bow.
They passed through Whitesboro at a trot, changed horses short of Rome, drew into Rome at two. He could see the Arsenal’s straight cream walls, and the town beyond it on his right. A passenger got on at the dock; and two others disembarked a man and his wife, evidently, for there was a carriage waiting for them.
And just beyond the dock Jerry thought he could identify the place where Governor Clinton had pricked the sod at dawn of July fourth. It seemed a long time ago. Time enough for all this ditch to be dug, to fill with water, and for grass to seed itself and grow. Time enough for him to build seven locks, to lay a culvert bottom. Time enough to have a baby, to be a fool, to lose his wife. He tried not to think of Mary; but even here, in placid travel, while two strong horses pulled him in a tandem hitch, he seemed to see her driving on some road, with his daughter on her lap, behind a white-blind horse. “Not mad nor nothing.”
The dinner bugle tootled and he went below.
The Talkative Man
But in the afternoon the talkative man found Jerry out. He was a little man, with grey hair nearly white, a sharp face, and rather close-set, patriotic eyes.
“Hello there, my boy,” he said. “I wondered what had become of you all day. Mind if I sit down?”
Moving over, Jerry made room for him, in the spot of shade. The gentleman sat down, easing his fashionably tight trousers, and parting the skirts of his coat. He pulled a cigar from a morocco case, and said, “My name’s Vanderbilt Blue.” He put his hand out and eyed Jerry knowingly. “People call me a naturalist, or an explorer, or even a savant titles I don’t deserve. Citizen of Utica is more my style. Where do you come from, my boy?”
“Nowhere in particular,” said Jerry.
“Come, come,” Mr. Blue essayed a smile, “you must have been born, you kn
ow.”
“I’ve heard so.”
“Well, your name, then?”
“Fowler. I was born in Uniontown,” Jerry relented; then saw too late his error. A gleam rose up in Mr. Blue’s eyes.
“I’ve been through there a pretty village. …” But he managed to imply that Utica was something more than that. “A very pretty little village. Is this your first voyage on our Grand Canal?”
“Yes,” said Jerry.
Mr. Blue put his cigar between his lips and rubbed his hands. He had the kind of thin mouth that shapes itself all over a cigar.
“Doesn’t it give you a thrill, my boy? Not very? Well, it ought to. If you were as curious as me, you’d get more interest out of life. I’m always asking questions. I want to know. I look for data. I was, to take an instance, along with Alexander Wilson when he routed the theory that the swallow dives under the river in the fall and winters in the mud. We turned a creek aside and shoveled up the muck together. There wasn’t a sign of a swallow. Yes, I waded in like any Johnny. I tell you that,” he gestured modestly, “just to show the way my mind goes after things. But next to learning,” and his eyes swung round, “I like to impart knowledge. I regard it as a duty. Now, as long as we’re on this canal, and it’s your first trip, maybe I’d best begin on that.”
He spat overside, folded hands on his knees, and looked ahead. His chest swelled. He spoke.
“Now, riding along in all the comfort of an elegant hotel, with all the peacefulness of a well-ordered home, you’d never guess the trouble that went into the creation of this for you for me for all the world. I suppose you know it’s going to be the longest canal in all the world?”
“I’ve heard it mentioned,” Jerry said.
“It’s an interesting fact that most of the men concerned with this great work have come from Utica. Or environs. Isaac Briggs, for instance. Canvass White, who went to England and discovered in New Hartford waterproof lime. It isn’t so much to say that without lime this work would be impossible. I can claim Geddes as a sort of neighbor. Wright. My boy, it makes me proud. Caleb Hammil set up all the locks. And these men do you realize it? had nothing but their wits to work with. No books, no experience. By gad, it’s wonderful.”