Cordelia Underwood, or the Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League

by Van Reid

  The huge fellow, a good head taller than Sundry, paused at the crest of the rise, possibly to take his bearings, but more likely for the purposes of gaining his breath. He sounded like some large animal now, chuffing with his exertions.

  Sundry had no plan. He was in fact propelled by several factors—youth, courage, a sense of duty, the excitement of the moment—none of which encompassed a single practical notion of how to subdue such an opponent. The Bull swung about just as Sundry leveled a flying tackle at his quarry’s waist.

  The thought occurred to Sundry, as he collided with the Bull, that he would have had similar luck attempting to pull down a large oak. A grunt exploded from the giant—not from the force of the attack, but from mere surprise. Sundry on the other hand let out a long sough, sure that he had done damage to every bone and joint in his body.

  They remained there for a moment—the Bull unmoving as a cliff, Sundry grappling at the man to regain his knees. Then the giant took a step down the opposite side of the knoll, dragging Sundry with him, and slipped on the rain-slick grass. Halfway down the slope Sundry let go of the man, whose descent resembled that of a large boulder. Sundry finished the bottom of the hill on his stomach and found himself up to his elbows in a small stream.

  With a startled gasp he sat up in time to see the Bull towering above him. The great chest expanded with a deep breath, the powerful arms rose, and the ham-sized hands brandished a rock the size of Sundry’s head, which was the very object for which it was intended.

  Sundry froze in horror. Then the Bull froze in horror. A sound reached them, rising and falling and wailing—a cross between the call of a loon and the hoot of an owl. An eerie figure plunged down the slope—arms waving, rags whipping in the wind of its movement.

  “Owooo-uhhhhowwww-uhhhhowwww!”

  The Bull let out a second grunt and ran, barely thinking to drop the rock halfway up the next ridge.

  Sundry was on his feet and shaking his rattled brain when Ducky Planke hooted and looned past him and up the opposite slope, veering in a separate direction from the Bull.

  “Sundry!” came a voice from the top of the ridge behind the young man. The outline of Sheriff Piper and the shine of a rifle barrel appeared there. Mister Walton, puffing and blowing, appeared next.

  “I’m down here!” called Sundry. “Stay there, I’ll come back up.”

  “Good heavens, son!” declared Mister Walton when the young man reached the top of the hill again. They were shadows to each other, there in the dark, the rain cold on their ears. “Are you all right?”

  “Now, what did you think you were going to do, once you caught that fellow?” wondered the sheriff.

  “I did catch him, actually.”

  “The one that got away,” said Piper wryly.

  “Mr. Moss,” said Colonel Taverner, who was calmly bringing up the rear with Seth. “I am not accustomed to having my orders obeyed with such speed and enthusiasm. Perhaps you’d like to work for the Customs Service.”

  “I have employment, thank you.”

  “Yes, well, it’s probably safer for you. I didn’t mean for you to take on the entire smuggling population of the state by yourself, you understand.”

  “You say that you caught him?” said Mister Walton.

  “Sort of the way Napoleon caught Wellington. We went rolling down this hill, and I was still waking up from the fall when he offered to knock my head in with a rock. About then Ducky Planke came by and frightened him off.”

  “That’s who the quacker was!” exclaimed Seth.

  “Frightened him off?” said a bemused sheriff. “Ducky frightened that moose off?”

  “He was sort of ghostly, hooting and wailing. He saved my life, I swear it!” Sundry raised his hand as if he were in the witness box.

  “Ducky Planke?” asked Taverner.

  “It takes a little explaining,” said the sheriff. “But Ducky is what you might term a character, who lives on the island.”

  “And he was the one who warned them of us?”

  “No, no,” said Seth. “Ducky just quacks now and again.”

  “He’s quite good at hooting and loon calls,” added Sundry.

  They were walking back toward the fort now, their pant legs soaked and their hats drooping in the cold drizzle. Two or three houses in the vicinity showed lights, lit by those wakened when Taverner fired his gun.

  “That’s the last we’ll see of them,” ventured Seth.

  “Don’t be so sure,” said Taverner. “There wasn’t anything in that dory, that I could see, so they must have been picking something up. I’ll call in some of the agents at Bath to help me search the shoreline tomorrow.”

  “I’m rather worried about that poor little boy who was with them,” said Mister Walton.

  “Just another dirty ragamuffin, Mister Walton,” said Colonel Taverner. “Willing to help break the law and pick your pocket. He’ll be dead or in jail before his time, but he’s a bad one from the company he keeps.”

  “There are no bad children, Colonel,” averred Mister Walton. “Only bad influences.”

  But the colonel had gone on to other things. It was his plan to keep watch in the fort the rest of the night, in case the man in the boat should return. Seth offered to stay with him, but to complete the illusion that their post was deserted, Sheriff Piper took Mister Walton and Sundry back to Wiscasset in the carriage. When they reached the rig, an owl-like hoot rose from somewhere below them.

  The three of them paused and looked down toward the water.

  “That was real, I think,” said Sundry.

  Mister Walton hunched his shoulders and found no comfort in his wet collar. He waited willingly, however, staring into the rainy night. Soon they were rewarded.

  “Quack, quack! Quack, quack!”

  BOOK SIXJULY 8, 1896

  34 Boothbay Harbor

  NORTH EAST TELEGRAPH COMPANY

  OFFICE-WISCASSET, MAINE

  JULY 8 PM 11:00

  PORTLAND MAINE

  MR & MRS C BAFFIN

  12C ADAMS ST

  LEAVING FOR BOOTHBAY. WEYMOUTH HOUSE TONIGHT. REGARDS.

  TOBY

  THE WET WEATHER MADE SECTIONS OF THE ROAD TO BOOTHBAY GREASY, and the horse that Mister Walton had hired (along with a small trap) had a cautious air about her, so Sundry let her have her pace, which was moderate. The trap’s fringed canopy kept a good deal of the intermittent rain from their heads, but their faces were damp with the shrouds of mist that blew across the fields and straggled against the treeless hills.

  It was a pleasant journey despite the rain. The day was not particularly cold, and they were well dressed. Mister Walton nearly lost his hat in a sudden gust when they crossed the Sheepscott River from Wiscasset, after which he pulled it over his head so that the tips of his ears pointed at perpendicular angles.

  Turning onto the Eddy Road, they met Colonel Taverner and Seth Patterson returning in their own rig from a night of watching and a morning of combing the shore for contraband. Seth was snoring in his seat, but the colonel looked as sharp as if he were fresh from a good night’s sleep. Asked for the sequel to the previous night’s excitement, the colonel regretted that he had nothing to report.

  “They were fair frightened off,” he said. “I expected better of them.”

  “They were the strangest smugglers I have ever heard of,” said Mister Walton.

  “I’ve been pursuing night runners for nearly twenty years,” said Taverner, “and I wonder at nothing.”

  Mister Walton nodded, but the truth was that his own potential for wonder remained unhindered despite a life of travel and discovery. Perhaps Colonel Taverner had some innate inability to be surprised, and if so, Mister Walton thought it too bad. He liked the colonel, but would not care to be on his wrong side. He and Sundry wished the two civil servants good day (Seth was still asleep) and proceeded along the Eddy.

  As with most of Mister Walton’s movements during the past week, traveling to Boothbay was the resu
lt of a suggestible whim—this particular suggestion having been forwarded by Sundry. Boothbay seemed a fair goal to Mister Walton, since he had never been there.

  Sundry proved an amusing guide; he drove well and he was filled with anecdote and legend, all of which he gladly shared as they passed particular homes or landmarks.

  Climbing a steep hill through a small settlement of white houses, they passed Captain Clough’s fabled home—a two-story Colonial structure some distance from the road that spoke no word to the unknowing traveler of its singular confluence with history. “It’s difficult to comprehend that a queen nearly lived there,” said Sundry.

  “Not unlike people,” said Mister Walton. “Some of the most remarkable I have known were the least remarkable to look at.”

  “Yes, and some are remarkable only to look at.”

  Mister Walton chuckled.

  Once on the road to Boothbay the river valley disappeared and they were trotting slowly between stony fields and rolling knolls. Only an occasional house claimed the land. The wind which had been at their back drove light sprinkles of rain upon them. Mister Walton termed the weather “resolute in its dampness.” It did not darken the general outlook for their day, however; for Mister Walton, the prospect of new sights and new acquaintances were enough to frustrate the purpose of any cloud.

  Sundry, for his part, was born with philosophy.

  They had not gone very far on this route when they came up behind a man wending his way shanks’ mare. The rain had picked up a bit and Sundry did not have to be told to offer the fellow a ride. He was a broad, hefty sort of person, topped by a wide-brimmed hat that drooped over his ears with the rain, and somewhere between Sundry and Mister Walton in age. When he raised his head they could see an expanse of large unshaven features; when he smiled, several teeth were conspicuous by their absence. “Oh, I couldn’t climb up there!” he said. “I’m soaked to the bone!”

  “Nonsense,” said Mister Walton. “All the more reason to get where you’re going.

  “Heading for Back River to see my uncle,” said the man, and he clambered up into the trap, which sagged slightly as he settled himself. “I am very much obliged to you, sirs. Thaddeus Orne,” and he offered his hand.

  Introductions and handshakes were exchanged, and they sat back beneath the canopy as Sundry negotiated the trap around a boggy piece of road.

  “I was just saying,” said Mister Walton, “that the weather is very determined.”

  “It has a constant way about it,” agreed Thaddeus. “My father says it will clear tomorrow.”

  “Does your father predict the weather, then?”

  “No, he reads the paper.”

  The older man mouthed a silent O as Thaddeus nodded in a matter-of-fact way; but having been caught out, Mister Walton proved good for it, saying: “I do like the old way of doing things.”

  There was respect all around in the trap from that point onward, and Thaddeus didn’t even blink when Mister Walton suggested that a person could “sing the clouds away.”

  “Do you think so?” asked Thaddeus.

  “I am very sure of it. When I was a child, my mother and I would sing up the sun whenever the rain grew tiresome.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t know about it sooner,” said Thaddeus, tapping at the brim of his sopping hat. “What did you sing?”

  “Anything! Anything at all!”

  Thaddeus put his head back, then, and a wonderful tenor voice soared out of him.

  When he was finished, Thaddeus peered around the edge of the canopy at the sky. “That was marvelous,” said Mister Walton.

  Thaddeus pulled his head back in. “Nothing definite yet.”

  “Maybe it needs to be louder,” suggested Sundry.

  “Well, join me this time.”

  “My goodness!” said Mister Walton. “I’d much rather listen to you. Please, give us another.”

  “Not at all. Do you know ‘Jenny Jenkins’?”

  “I’ve heard two or three renditions,” admitted Mister Walton cautiously.

  “We’ll sing one as won’t embarrass us if we meet a lady,” assured Thaddeus, and so they sang:

  The distance to Boothbay Center, once known as North Boothbay, seemed too short, and Mister Walton was sorry that Thaddeus couldn’t sing with them all the way to the harbor; but here he parted with them.

  “I do believe your method works, Mister Walton,” said Thaddeus, though the rain hadn’t even considered letting up.

  “Thank you,” said the portly fellow. “My mother knew what she was doing, I think.”

  “I bet she had a lovely voice.”

  “Indeed she did.” They waved, and Mister Walton thought he could hear Thaddeus humming to himself as they drove off.

  Boothbay was one of the more populated towns along the coast, and this was indeed its center, with a church and school and town house, a smithy and several stores. Traffic increased as they neared the common, as did the presence of the harbor, nestled beyond the next hill. The air had changed as they neared the end of the peninsula—not gradually, but in noticeable stages: the warmth of the day falling just a bit, the dampness of the rain giving way to the dampness of the ocean air, and the tang of salt reaching the nose like a tonic as they rounded a bend in the road or crested a knoll.

  “I can feel the ocean!” declared Mister Walton, and he filled his lungs with a great invigorating draft.

  Sundry slowed the trap to a halt so that a woman, umbrella held high, could carefully pick her way past the puddles as she crossed the road before them. A man standing in the doorway of a store—a butcher’s apron about his middle—answered Mister Walton’s cheerful greeting with a wave. A two-horse coach, coming from the harbor, passed them with a flurry of clopping hooves and splashing wheels, and Sundry tipped his hat at a pretty face that looked out at them as the coach trundled by. Then he shook the reins and they made the fairly marked descent toward the harbor.

  At the top of the next slope the harbor became apparent in glimpses between buildings, then in longer views as they neared the wharves. Though as bound to the sea as Wiscasset, Boothbay was another sort of place altogether. Wiscasset was a town of merchant commerce, and great ships paid tribute to her navigable shore, snug within the body of the mainland. The railroad came there, and where the Sheepscott River and Wiscasset Station met, the cargo of the world passed, a prosperous transaction that was revealed in the town’s handsome custom house and in the grand outlook of her wealthier homes.

  Boothbay, in contrast, was of a dualistic nature. The first facet of her personality was immediately clear to Mister Walton as Sundry drove them past the closely huddled homes: here was a fishing village, classic in its tiers of buildings that faced like an amphitheater onto the constant drama of the harbor water. Gulls navigated the currents of air above the fishing vessels, the seine nets strung up to dry on sunnier days, and barrels of bait in the aft of lobster boats.

  The major highway to Boothbay Harbor was traveled by steamships, and a degree of cargo did arrive in this fashion—generally to supply the many stores in the area. But no train came to Boothbay; she stood upon an outer reach of land, and the maritime traffic made her sister to the islands and other ports of call along the coast. Some of her people might feel closer to Boston than they did to the town of Edgecomb next door.

  And there lay the second side of her nature, for the picturesque village, the rocky shores, and pine-clad slopes had long since welcomed the summer rusticators. Resort hotels and seasonal businesses thrived as Boothbay grew famous amongst those who sought a summer retreat. Fleeing the press of the cities and the heat of more southern climes, happy crowds arrived with the onset of the warm months, populating the verandas of her hotels, and charging the atmosphere of the otherwise quiet village with the excitement of new faces and amusing accents.

  Mister Walton wondered aloud if Thaddeus Orne was still singing on his way to Back River, for when they reached the carriage drive of the Weymouth House the sun had fo
und a break in the clouds and peered, as through a keyhole, upon the view it had been recently denied.

  The manager of the Weymouth House was efficient in handling their bags and in stabling the rented horse and trap, so that it was not yet noon and they had the rest of the day to deal with at their leisure. A small restaurant closely overlooked the busy wharves, and here they had lunch.

  The sun continued to assert itself, and soon it held a substantial portion of the sky. The effect was dazzling, with the rain-dampened wharves and boats shining with the obliging light. If cheerful in the rain, Mister Walton was positively jolly as the day brightened, and it was not long before he was happily conversing with those at neighboring tables. The talk centered mostly on a giant sea creature that had been seen off Monhegan recently, and some good-natured banter was had concerning the nature of the beast and the odds of it being seen again.

  As a rule, Sundry would have enjoyed listening to this conversation, and perhaps joined in himself, but he felt a great need to stretch his legs after the morning’s drive. A robust gentleman with a booming laugh was just suggesting that the sea creature’s chances of being sighted again were in direct proportion to the amount of hard drink available, when Sundry excused himself from Mister Walton’s side for the purposes of taking a walk.

  Gravity and the fascination that water holds over mankind as a race drew the young man to the wharves, and he found a lonely post against which to recline his lanky frame. The breeze was in his face, the sun at his back, and the sound of the current rippling against the pilings below had a musical tone that soothed the ear. A steamboat, the Nahanada, pulled away from a nearby dock and swung its bow about for the trip through Townsend Gut and up the Sasanoa to the Kennebec and Bath.