The Lost Constitution

by William Martin

  Daniel made a gesture, as if to quiet his son.

  “George must know.” Then Charles turned to George. “Bartlett dabbles. The company has paid off more than one girl to keep down the scandal.”

  George had always suspected. “Some men are weak. But—”

  Daniel said, “If you’re fond of him, or value your family’s control of the mill, you might bring us to his side with a simple stroke of the pen.”

  “In the mountains of New Hampshire or the river valleys of Massachusetts,” said George, “we should not let sentiment interfere with business.”

  He did not tell them that the more he thought about their philosophy of selective logging, the better he liked it. A good philosophy for life in New England: Don’t use all your resources at once. Husband them. Preserve them. Respect them. Because you never knew what lay ahead, only that another winter was a certainty.

  However, a man so suddenly in love might be fooled into thinking that summer would last forever.

  A THUNDERSTORM BLEW through that evening. It signaled the arrival of cool air from Canada, a crisp northwesterly breeze, a blue-skied clarity that made every tree stand out in sharp relief on the mountainside across from the hotel.

  So George decided that he and Cordelia should ride the cog railway.

  When a New Hampshirite named Sylvester Marsh had proposed a train to the top of Mount Washington, people called him Crazy Marsh and said he might as well try to build a railroad to the moon.

  But he designed an open-cab engine, called “Old Peppersass” because it resembled a bottle of pepper sauce. It was set on a wheelbed canted to match the slope of the track so that the boiler would remain upright. It pushed cars up the mountain, but not with rail-on-rail traction. A revolving cog beneath the engine engaged the greased cog teeth in the middle of the track. And the whole contraption rose toward the clouds.

  And why would Crazy Marsh want to climb a mountain with a train? Not simply because it was there, though it most certainly was, but to take people to the top and make money doing it. There was no better motivation for an inventive New Englander.

  The train had become one of the most famous attractions in America, the first cog railway in the world, one of the wonders of the age. And Marsh made enough money from it to invest in the Fabyan House, so that all the tourists who came to ride it would have a place to stay, so that his money made money from his money, like the cycle of evaporation to condensation to rain that made New England so green.

  George and Cordelia paid their money and rode at the very front of the front car.

  It was a dizzying ascent, up from the hardwood forest, up through pine and spruce, past the treeline, across chasms on the teetering trestle known as Jacob’s Ladder, then over fields of lichen-covered rock to the bare summit, where a ramshackle meteorological station was literally chained to the rocks so it would not blow away, and a small hotel called the Tip-Top House was built into them for the same reason.

  Here, summer was forgotten. The August breeze became a hard-blowing wind. But it scrubbed the air clear for a hundred miles in every direction.

  Most of the passengers made for the Tip-Top, to enjoy the view from behind glass. But George and Cordelia braved the wind, going arm in arm across the top to a cairn, a six-foot pile of stones built by visitors on a calmer day. It offered a bit of protection from the ceaseless wind, a good place for them to enjoy the view.

  In the far distance, above the mountains, below the light blue of the sky, they could see the dark blue of the Atlantic.

  “What a beautiful world,” said Cordelia.

  “More beautiful than it’s looked in many years,” George said.

  As if she understood where he was headed, and feared the direction, she changed the subject. “Do the Indians have a name for this mountain?”

  “Agiocochook, home of the great storm spirit. White men call it the big rockpile.”

  The wind gusted. Instinctively, she leaned into him for protection.

  And he told her he loved her. “I always have. Even when you didn’t love me.”

  “I always loved you, George.”

  “So … the gray has only just begun to fill my beard. It won’t stop.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That you should consider marrying me.”

  She slipped her hand into his.

  The train whistle blew. The stay on top of the mountain was a short one.

  “I can’t leave my father,” she said.

  “I once asked you to defy him. I won’t ask you again.”

  “I did what a daughter must do, what we all must do for our parents. And I cared for my husband past all hope of recovery, because the vow was for better or worse.”

  And in the clarity of that thin air, George saw his own life with a clarity he had never known before: Even when he did not realize it, he had been waiting for her, and he would wait longer, if need be, because she was a woman with character.

  BY AFTERNOON, THEY were back in the warmth of the valley.

  Cordelia went to check on her father. George took a seat on the veranda, with a glass of lemonade and the newspaper and a sense that now, when Frenchy asked him what he was building for, he would have an answer.

  Puffy clouds jumped from peak to peak, painting a tableau of shadow and light on the landscape. A group of ladies and gentlemen were playing croquet on the green in front of the hotel. The stagecoach was clattering to a stop in the roundabout.

  The driver pulled on the reins, “Welcome to the Fabyan House, folks.”

  The hotel staff came hurrying. A bundle of newspapers dropped from the driver’s seat, followed by a bag of mail. The doors flew open, and the first people off were two chubby little boys.

  George watched them for a moment; then he heard their father’s voice. And his blood congealed in his throat.

  “Now boys, stay still and don’t go runnin’ off until we find Uncle George.”

  Uncle George? Was that what they called him?

  A heavyset woman emerged, fanning herself with one hand and dabbing perspiration from her forehead with the other: Mary Watson Pike.

  Then a broad ass appeared in the doorway of the coach, beneath gray swallow tails and green plaid—yes, plaid—trousers. Its owner, dressed in what he took to be the colors of recreation, was so large that he had to back out.

  The springs groaned, the coach listed, so that the rest of the impatient passengers could not even pile out on the other side.

  Then Bartlett Pike turned, his thumbs hooked into the pockets of a vest that was as yellow as his pants were plaid. He surveyed the hotel and said, in the voice of a man who liked to attract attention, “More beautiful than I’d heard.” Then he called to one of the hotel boys, flipped him a coin, told him to see to the family luggage. “Every bag is marked with the name Pike.”

  Mary Watson Pike herded the boys up the stairs. “Come along. We’ll see our accommodations before you go running off.”

  Running off was exactly what George wanted to do.

  But Bartlett’s eyes had already found him. “Why, George! As I live and breathe.” With the thickthighed waddle of a man twice his age, Bartlett mounted the steps.

  “As you live and breathe?” said George. “Or as you live and wheeze?”

  Bartlett dropped into a rocker next to George. “It’s good to see you.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “Your letter. The North Conway postmark. I telegraphed your man Turlock and asked if you were here. He reckoned we were in contact.”

  George looked out at Mount Washington. “I should fire Turlock.”

  Bartlett leaned closer, lowered his voice. “I’m here to fight for my life, George. Don’t make me grovel.”

  “Business is business. You taught me that. I’ve made my way in business ever since I was thrown out of the mill.”

  Bartlett began to rock. “It’s a long time ago.”

  “You spoiled my reputation,” said George. “No
w you’re spoiling my holiday.”

  Just then, Cordelia emerged from the hotel.

  George stood. “Are you ready?”

  “Who’s this?” Bartlett pushed himself up from the rocking chair.

  George wanted to rush her right past him, but Bartlett was too big to ignore, and Cordelia was too polite to ignore him, so George surrendered to an introduction.

  Bartlett took her hand in both of his. “I belong to two wild Indians who are probably terrorizing the upstairs hallways at this very moment.”

  “Indians?” said Cordelia.

  “My boys. Nine and eight.” Then Bartlett looked into her face and said, “She’s beautiful, Georgie. Plain to see that she’s no halfwit.”

  “Halfwit?” Cordelia’s cordial expression faded. “What do you mean, halfwit?”

  Bartlett tipped his hat. “Perhaps my cousin will explain.”

  AND HE DID.

  As they rode along the Amonoosuc, George told her the story of St. Albans—the halfwit girl, the strange evening with Dawson Caldwell, pistol-whipping, masquerade as a rebel, his theft of the lost Constitution.

  “I did it to help the country, but—”

  “You stole it?” She sounded shocked at first, then she was silent as the horses clopped along, then she laughed. “I suppose you couldn’t have just asked for it.”

  “Now my cousin would blackmail me because of it.”

  “What does he want?”

  “He wants my help, so that the family can keep control of the mill.”

  “Is that so bad? To help your family?”

  “No, but—” He decided not to tell her about his own expulsion from the mill. Some secrets were better left unshared. “He’s done a better job than they credit him for.”

  “Then perhaps you should help him.”

  “But—”

  She pulled hard on her horse’s reins. “A man who won’t help his cousin might not be trusted to help any who are his flesh and blood. Perhaps you should help him.”

  PERHAPS. BUT PERHAPS not.

  Perhaps he might shoot the fat bastard. That was what he was thinking at dawn the next day when he went to the stable and found Bartlett, dressed in a buckskin jacket, neckerchief, riding boots, and broad-brimmed hat.

  George looked him over. “You’ve been reading dime novels, I see.”

  “Can I ride with you?”

  George went over to the mount already saddled for him. “You’ll need a horse.”

  “I reserved one last night,” said Bartlett. “I thought we might talk. Man to man.”

  The stable boy came out with a butterscotch mare. “This should do for you, sir.”

  Bartlett flipped him a coin.

  George swung a leg and mounted. Then he looked down at his cousin. “Well, come on, if you’re comin’.”

  Bartlett lifted himself with surprising grace into the saddle. “Where are we going?”

  “Timber cruising.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We go to a promontory, look over a tract, estimate the stumpage—”

  “Stumps?”

  “Stumpage. Standing timber. We look at survey lines, find corner trees, estimate how much spruce, pine, and birch, which tells us how many board feet we can take, which tells us how much money we can make, which tells us how much we should offer for the land.”

  “Sounds complicated.”

  “I’ve been in these woods ten years, thanks to you. I’ve learned plenty,” said George. “But first, there’s a man I have to see.”

  He led his cousin across the road to a clump of stores in the village called Fabyan’s. Above one of them was the sign, J. E. HENRY, DRYGOODS, NOTIONS.

  The sun’s disc was just appearing from behind Mount Washington. Somewhere a rooster crowed. Somewhere a coffeepot burbled its aroma into the air.

  “Why are we stopping here?” asked Bartlett.

  “Just wait.” George dismounted and followed the coffee smell inside. As he hoped, J. E. Henry was at the counter, looking over the books while a nervous shopkeep swept the immaculate floor.

  “Good morning.” George approached the counter.

  Henry raised his head. The wide face and lidded eyes offered not a glimmer of recognition.

  “They said you were an early riser,” offered George.

  “Early to bed, early to rise,” said Henry without inflection.

  George joked, “Early bird catches the worm, too.”

  “If I’m the bird, what might you be?”

  George let his smile drop. No sense grinning like a fool when someone was insulting you. “I’m another timber man.”

  “Competition?”

  “Or a potential partner.”

  “I have partners. You’ve heard of Henry, Baldwin, and Joy?”

  “I have. And you’ve heard of the Saunders family? I have land in the middle of their grant, but I might be convinced to join forces with—”

  “If I log here, I’ll work my way down the valley. They’re working their way up. It’s a long valley. With luck, we’ll never meet.”

  “Colonel White says you’re buyin’ into his hotel,” George went on. “And you’ve opened this fine store. Looks to me like you’re plannin’ to stay.”

  Henry looked over George’s shoulder. “There’s a fat man in buckskins sittin’ out there on skinny mare. If she don’t move soon, she may go swaybacked all in a mornin’.”

  George got the message: Henry wasn’t interested. But George had taken the measure of J. E. Henry and concluded that Turlock’s advice was accurate. You couldn’t do business with a man who lived by the maxim, “Do unto others as they would do unto you, only do it first.” While Saunders was a hard bargainer but fair, Henry seemed like the sort who wouldn’t so much negotiate as try to swallow you whole.

  George, of course, had no real desire to negotiate. He was simply trying to use Henry’s ambitions to gain an advantage. So he stopped in the doorway. “I’m cruisin’ today, up the Zealand River.”

  Henry said, “Cruise away,” as if it were a threat.

  WORKING FROM A map and ignoring most of his cousin’s efforts at conversation, George headed up the road to the confluence of the Zealand River and the Amonoosuc.

  He followed the riverbank for a time, then turned onto a trail no wider than a deer path. He kept the map pinned to the pommel of his saddle and his compass on a lanyard around his neck. From time to time he stopped, wrote notes, checked the map, looked for surveyor’s marks on corner trees, checked the compass.

  “Do we know where we’re going?” asked Bartlett after a while.

  “I know,” grunted George. “When do we stop?”

  “We won’t, unless you stop complainin’.”

  “I’ve been looking at your horse’s ass for an hour.”

  “Has he shit any?”

  “No,” answered Bartlett, “but you might, once you hear what I have to say.”

  George pulled up on the reins and cast a long look over his shoulder.

  Bartlett smiled now, as if he had just taken the upper hand. “Keep riding.”

  Maybe that’s what George would do. Keep riding, draw Bartlett on, draw him deep into the wilderness, draw him on and leave him. Then the problem would be solved.

  Instead, he urged his horse up Middle Sugarloaf until they came to a spot where the trail grew so steep that horses could not negotiate the switchbacks. They were still deep in the foliage, but up above the morning sun was warming the granite ledges.

  George dismounted and tethered his horse. “We go the rest of the way on foot. Stay on the trail and stay close.” Then he started to climb, moving quickly over the rocky, uneven surface, forcing fat Bartlett to keep up or get lost.

  In the next fifteen minutes, Bartlett made every sound of exasperation, exhaustion, and desperation in his repertoire, along with a few that sounded like asphyxiation.

  Let him grunt. Let him groan. Let him fall and fracture his skull. George just kept climbing, until he
came to a kind of staircase of rocks and boulders, a trail scoured out by rainfall that had eroded the surrounding soil. It led him to the top and a stupendous view northeast to Mount Washington, southeast toward an isolated pass called Zealand Notch.

  When Bartlett finally came crashing into the sunlight, the sweat had darkened his hatband and his face had turned the color of raw beefsteak. He stopped, leaned against a rock, gasped a few more times, then stumbled over to where George was sitting on his haunches, studying the valley through binoculars.

  With another groan, Bartlett lowered his bulk onto the rock. “It’s beautiful.”

  George kept his eyes to the glasses. “Lookin’ down on the world together, like we used to do when we climbed the cupola.”

  “Every mornin’,” said Bartlett. “Good talk. Man to man.”

  “You lied to me then. What lies do you have for me now?”

  “No lies, George. I’m beggin’ you. Work with Saunders. Bring him to my side.”

  “I can’t even bring him to my side.” George got up and walked to the edge of the rocks. It was not a sheer drop, but a forty-five-degree slope smoothed by thousands of years of rain, snow, and wind, curling twenty-five feet down to the next ledge.

  Bartlett said, “It’s what Grandpa Will would have wanted.”

  “Did he tell you that before he died?”

  “No, but Daniel Saunders told me that if you sign over your Sawyer River land—”

  George whipped around. “You talked to them?”

  “Last night. I dined with them at the White Mountain House.”

  George strode back and stood over Bartlett, felt the weight of the binoculars in his hand, and fought the impulse to beat Bartlett’s skull in with them.

  Bartlett pushed himself back to his feet and said, “I told you you’d shit.”

  “Shit? I ought to kill you.”

  Bartlett put up his hands in a gesture of conciliation. “George, this can benefit all of us.”

  “All? Or just you?”

  Bartlett walked to the edge. “A long way down.”

  George said, “It could be a long way down for you, too.”

  Bartlett raised a hand to his ear. “What’s that? I don’t hear so well, not since someone strapped me in the cupola while the work bell clanged. You might not remember that. But maybe you remember this.” Bartlett reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope, which he held out.