“Yaas, suh,” said the porter, “dis here Emma engine done jump de track mo’n ten er six times sence I wuz acquainted wif de engine driver. But she don’t never harm nobody. When she fall down she jess natchally lay dere an’ fizzle ca’m as a cowcumber.”
“Do you suppose the Emma is going to do anything of that sort to-day?” asked the young man, apprehensively.
“Can’t say, suh; ef her wheels gits to runnin’ round too fas’ to suit her, dishere Emma engine is boun’ to do some buckin’.”
The engineer, a fat, placid man, gazed calmly down upon them from the window of his cab as they passed along the rotting platform.
“Is them bird-dawgs?” he asked, catching the eye of their owner.
“Yes, setters,” said the young man, whose name was Dean.
“Smell-dawgs?”
“I believe,” said Dean, gravely, “that they may be so designated.”
“Slick lookers,” remarked the engineer, doing something to the apparatus in his cab which suddenly enveloped the Emma in a volume of steam. Clarence instantly attempted to flee toward the horizon; Mike barked violently, the recoil resembling back-jumps of a rapid-fire gun. For a few moments master and dogs performed one of those newspaper supplement designs, popularly supposed to represent bodies in rapid revolution — motion being symbolized by a series of circles.
But young Dean finally obtained control and hustled the dogs aboard the combination baggage and passenger car, which with the Emma and her tender made up the train-de-luxe. Soothing and chaining the dogs, he left them after a few minutes, went forward into the body of the car and seated himself in the rear of it.
Presently he became aware of weird noises ahead, emitted by the locomotive; the bell rang mournfully; a cloud of steam blotted out the immediate landscape; the Emma was in process of mobilization.
The landscape, temporarily blotted out, had been remarkable for its sameness. It consisted entirely of woods.
Half an hour later a spectacled conductor came leisurely through the aisle relieving the dozen or more passengers of their tickets. They all appeared to be personal friends of his, for he paused to exchange amenities and intimate gossip with everyone.
When at length he reached Dean he took the ticket, and, examining it with serious attention, whistled reflectively through his walrus mustache which obligato produced an æolian harp effect suggesting a room full of stridulating insects.
“Goin’ to Anne’s Bridge?” he demanded, gazing at Dean over his spectacles.
“If you don’t object,” said Dean, with easy humor.
There was no jocularity about the conductor: “I’ll let you know when to git off,” he said, gloomily, “but don’t blame me!”
“Doesn’t this train run to Anne’s Bridge?” asked Dean.
“It don’t exactly run nowhere. It jest goes. But it don’t go to Anne’s Bridge.”
“What?”
The conductor surveyed him pityingly: “No, sir.”
And as he started on he added half to himself: “And nothing else don’t go to Anne’s Bridge if they can help theirselfs.”
Dean wondered why, but before he could make further inquiries the conductor disappeared into the section of the car devoted to express and freight.
The train lurched along leisurely, slowing every now and then to a humpy crawl. Occasionally its progress produced a squirming motion like a crippled caterpillar.
Dean continued to gaze from the dirty window; there were woods everywhere, more or less maltreated as is customary in America. Now and then the train passed through dreary burned areas where from acres of ashes blackened tree trunks rose, grotesquely charred and twisted as though giants had suffered there at the stake.
Wet looking clouds hung low over the woods, giving to the region a melancholy aspect. The car was hot and ill-smelling; a child cried continually. Now and then the train stopped; Dean could not make out why: there were no sidings; no other train passed. He finally concluded that the locomotive merely ran down now and then and had to be wound up again.
After one of these almost interminable delays the conductor who had been sitting on the rear seat across the aisle, playing solitaire, finally laid aside his cards and went forward apparently to see what was the matter.
He returned in the course of a quarter of an hour, reseated himself, rewetted his thumbs, and resumed his cards.
Dean leaned forward across the aisle:
“What’s the trouble?” he asked. “No trouble,” replied the preoccupied conductor.
“Why has the train stopped?”
“It’s the engineer. He’s fishin’.”
“What!” exclaimed Dean.
“He’s fishin’,” repeated the conductor. “Last trip east he seen a big trout lyin’ in under the bridge, and he said he meant to git him some day.”
“Are you telling me that the engineer has stopped this train to catch a trout?”
“Waal, he’s got the right to fish a spell if he’s a min’ to, h’ain’t he?”
“But I want to go to Anne’s Bridge—”
“You’ll git there, son,” said the conductor, tranquilly wetting his thumb again and shuffling up the cards. Absorbed in his new lay-out he replied only vaguely to Dean’s protests.
“Gosh-a-mighty,” he commented, “folks must be in a dinged hurry where you come from.”
None of the other passengers appeared to be impatient; nobody seemed to resent the piscatorial enterprise of the engineer.
After a while Dean rose, exasperated, went to the platform, and descended.
Just ahead was an iron bridge under which a stream flowed. Leaning against a girder stood a fat man in blue overalls, fishing. Dean walked forward; the engineer looked around at him placidly as he came up:
“The son-uva-gun won’t bite,” he remarked, intent on his line. “Worms is no good in August.”
He yawned, spat into the water reflectively, then began to reel in: “No, sir, worms won’t do. I’ll try him next trip with a grasshopper,” he added. “An’ if he won’t take that, b’gosh, I’ll try a minnie-fish. Say, son, I’ll git that trout if I hev to set here all day next trip!”
They turned and walked toward the train together.
“You was the young man with the smell-dawgs, wasn’t you?” inquired the engineer, affably.
Dean nodded.
“Where was you a-cal’latin’ Fr to hunt ‘em?”
“I’m going to Anne’s Bridge. I understand there are plenty of woodcock and partridge there.”
“Anne’s Bridge!” repeated the engineer, halting beside the Emma where his fireman lay asleep on top of the heap of coal in the tender.
“Yes. How far is it to Anne’s Bridge?”
“‘Tain’t a great ways.”
“The conductor tells me there is no station at Anne’s Bridge.”
“Station! No sir.”
“Then how do you go there?”
“Me? I don’t go there.”
Dean smiled: “How do I go there?” he asked, patiently.
“Waal, if you’re fixed onto goin’ to Anne’s Bridge I’ll stop the train som’ers along — along the track som’ers—” he waved his fat hand, vaguely including all the horizons.
“But I am to be met by somebody from Anne’s Bridge.”
“Waal, if I see anybody on the track I’ll stop. Will that fix you up, son?”
“I hope so,” said Dean.
The Emma presently wreathed herself in steam, scuffled her driving-wheels, coughed like Camille in the last act, and shuffled forward protesting with every melancholy bell-note.
Sonic twenty minutes later the train stopped as though it had been maimed for life; the conductor looked out of the window, laid aside his cards and got up with a terrific yawn.
“I guess you git off here,” he said to Dean who had already risen. “I’ll jest set your valise alongside the rails; you’d better git your dawgs out yourse’f.”
When Dean emerged, rather
badly mixed with his scrambling dogs, he saw the engineer, the fireman, the conductor, and the passengers all intently watching a young woman in a sun-bonnet and a pink print dress.
On an old logging road beside the track stood a horse and wagon.
The occupants of the train were apparently much interested in the proceedings; even the Emma, somehow, appeared to be lingering there out of sheer feminine curiosity.
Dean grasped both leashes in one hand and took off his hat with the other.
“I am James Dean,” he said. “Is that Mr. Allende’s wagon?”
She replied in a self-possessed voice that the wagon was for him and his luggage.
Dean had about all he could do with the struggling dogs, but he picked up the heaviest luggage and the young woman took the rods and gun-cases.
When the wagon had been loaded and the dogs unleashed, and when the young woman in the sun-bonnet and pink print dress had taken the reins; and Dean had climbed into the seat beside her, the Emma emitted a remark which was more like a gigantic feminine sniff than a whistle. And the train slowly and reluctantly moved on, engineer, fireman, conductor, and passengers all looking back until the trees finally blanketed their view.
The old logging road was moist and springy but very uneven; the horse walked, now and then tearing a mouthful of leaves from neighboring branches, snatching at blackberry vines, munching and switching at flies as he proceeded on his easy way.
The dogs had already performed hundreds of marathons around the moving wagon, galloping in sheer ecstacy of freedom after the long day’s hot confinement.
“Do you usually meet Mr. Allende’s boarders?” asked the young man, pleasantly, after the first and natural interval of silence.
As the girl turned to reply her sun-bonnet fell back on her shoulders. She was a superbly healthy young thing.
“There is no Mr. Allende,” she explained, briefly. “I answered your letter.”
“Oh. You are Mrs. Allende?”
“Miss Allende,” she replied.
“The letter I had in answer to mine was signed ‘A. Allende.’ I didn’t understand.”
She said nothing.
“Have you many boarders?” he asked, pleasantly.
“No.”
“I suppose the cool summer has made it a bad season. People remain in town.”
“I don’t know.”
“Perhaps you have not been accustomed to boarding people from the city.”
“No.”
“Is this your first venture?”
“Yes.”
Her quiet monosyllables rather amused than disconcerted him. There seemed to be nothing sullen in her reticence. So he ventured to make conversation as it suited him.
“In the advertisement inserted in Rod-and-Reel you say that the trout fishing is good and that there are woodcock and partridge in season.”
“Yes,” she said.
“I suppose what boarders you have are sportsmen,” he went on.
She bit her lip, lightly, looking straight ahead between her horse’s ears.
“Nobody has answered my advertisement excepting you,” she admitted.
Not displeased that he was to have the streams and coverts to himself, yet sorry for her, he remained silent. She sat silent, too, and very straight, her folded hands resting on the reins in her lap — a gracefully motionless charioteer — a tinted rural statue in pink print.
“Is Anne’s Bridge pretty?” he asked, “Not very.... No.”
“It’s a pretty name, anyway. Who was Anne?”
“Somebody who lived there, I believe — years ago.”
“Isn’t there any tradition concerning the name?”
“I don’t know,” she said, indifferently.
The horse walked forward switching his tail; the dogs, wagon broken, were now trotting behind, tongues lolling.
Presently the woods opened; a rolling country covered with second growth spread away before them and the road became sandy.
The girl spoke to her horse who broke into a bored sort of trot.
Root fences, silvered by age, lined the road. Beyond, on either side, lay fields.
They passed a cemetery, the head stones showing intensely white amid thin wild grasses and spindling maples. Beyond stood a deserted house, the roof fallen in; beyond that were a few other houses in various conditions of decay, some still inhabited judging by the shy, wild looking children who clustered to gaze at them as they drove past.
“We are in Anne’s Bridge,” said the girl.
After a moment she turned and looked at him.
“It isn’t pretty, you see,” she added, with a composure which he thought a trifle forced.
He glanced ahead and saw half a dozen unpainted and scattered houses partly buried in woodbine and clematis. Groups of great trees shaded the remains of the village, elms, oaks, and maples. And just ahead was a stone bridge arching a clear, tumbling stream; and, under a dozen huge trees, an old yellow house fronted the water beside the bridge.
Phlox, tiger lilies, marigolds, and petunias made a tangle of color in the front yard: behind the house were sandy fields, a barn, and a belt of woods into which the stream flowed.
“Why did you say that Anne’s Bridge is not pretty?” he said. “Is this your house?”
“Yes.”
“It’s exceedingly picturesque. So is that brook. I shall be more than contented here, Miss Allende.”
The girl threw the reins over the horse’s back but remained seated for a moment looking down at the dogs. They were drinking at the brook; Clarence drank like a gentleman; Mike slobbered and lay down in the water, gulping.
Dean descended and offered to aid the girl but she rose and sprang to the grass on the other side.
“I haven’t any servants,” she remarked; “I’ll take your baggage.”
But he smilingly intervened and lifted his traps from the wagon.
“Please — if you will follow me—” And she walked into the open door way and unlatched a door on the left.
It was a bed-room; she left him there surrounded by his luggage.
Although all the windows were open there was in the room the odor of long disuse.
In the late gray afternoon light he looked around at the bare ugliness of it all — the iron bed, the cheap water basin and pitcher, the square of coarse new carpet on the floor, the single highly varnished chair.
But there was fresh water in the pitcher, and presently he was busy with his toilet.
Clarence came to his door, politely scratching; Mike bounded in, wagging and snooping about the room; and their master continued his dressing until a gray flannel shirt and knickerbockers replaced his civilized attire.
Perfumes from the kitchen became agreeably apparent by the time he was ready to emerge from his room.
The girl, carrying a lighted candle, met him as he appeared. Her sleeves were rolled up and the heat of the range had tinted her cheeks and left a faint dew on her white forehead.
“Your supper is ready,” she said. And he followed her to the rear where an alcove from the kitchen formed the dining-room.
On the table was a thin worn cloth, very clean; a plate of stoneware, a new knife and fork with wooden handles, and two candles burning in tin candle sticks.
From the kitchen around the corner the girl brought a plate of crisp trout, fried potatoes, hot biscuits, a dish of blue-berries, and a jug of milk.
“Where did these come from?” he asked, smilingly, helping himself to the trout.
“From the brook in front of the house.”
“That’s encouraging,” he remarked, cheerfully.
She made no comment.
Whether it was merely appetite or whether the food was particularly well cooked he did not stop to think, but he ate everything he saw.
From moment to moment the girl came in from the kitchen in silent inquiry concerning his needs. When she returned again the young man rose:
“In your advertisement,” he said, ple
asantly, “you say that a guide can be furnished. I shall need him to-morrow. So if you will kindly notify him—”
She stared a moment as though in hesitation, then:
“I meant that I could show anybody where to fish or shoot. There’s nobody else to do it.”
Dean looked up surprised and dubious.
“I understand fishing and shooting. I often go by myself,” she said in a low voice.
“I see. Well, in that case you ought to be as good a guide as anybody,” he returned gaily.
“Did you wish to start early?” she asked, lifting her dark eyes.
He hesitated: “I suppose you have housework to do.”
“Yes. But I can be ready whenever you wish.”
“What have you to do first?” he inquired.
She looked at him in slight surprise, then a faint smile curved her lips — the first deviation from emotionless composure that he had yet noticed.
She said: “If you care to know, I have a cow to milk, a horse to feed, eggs to gather, a fire to light, breakfast to prepare, beds to air, floors to sweep, dishes to wash, a little work in the garden, in the kitchen—”
“Good heavens!” he exclaimed, so genuinely astonished that the latent smile on her lips flashed out.
“These things take a little time,” she admitted, “but I shall rise earlier than usual and I do not think I shall keep you waiting, Mr. Dean.”
“I don’t want to inconvenience you —— —”
“You don’t inconvenience me. I expected to guide anybody who came here to fish. I am very glad to do it.” He remained silent and unconvinced, looking uncertainly at her where she stood in the candle light.
“I don’t want to make a nuisance of myself—” he began.
“I am very thankful to have anybody to board,” she said, simply.
So he walked away and seated himself on the flat, water-worn rock which served as a doorstep.
His dogs came up to greet him, wagging apology, then returned to the platter of bones by the doorstep. Dean, from the pockets of his shooting coat, added a few dog biscuits to their repast, then lighted his pipe, clasped his knees between his hands, and gazed out into the darkness.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 739