3stalwarts (151 page)

Under her she felt a rolling from the wheels. The seat jutted far forward beyond the front axle, even over the wheelers’ rumps, so that when the wheels went into a sink hole she herself seemed already to have passed it, and she felt only a sudden swooping forward and a slow rise afterwards, without a jar. It seemed to her as if she rode in the bows of a boat, and the marshland were water, and now and then she lifted to a long low roller.

There was no sound of wagon-moving. The wheels turned silently in their greased boxes, the balance of the great body prevented squeaks and rattles; only occasionally the drill top shuddered slightly with a noise like shaking sails.

The top was carried upon six birch hoops. Inside, when she looked back, the wagon was like a dusky cave with a small hole of light at the far end. It was piled with boxes and gave forth smells of loading, whether of this load or of earlier ones she could not say.

The movement lulled her, and the baby slept as peacefully as if she were snugged in her cradle. The bells, so near, seemed to ring no louder than the bells of wagons she had heard in passage during night.

The wagon moved through mist. Mary could look down upon a floating whiteness level with her feet, in which the horses and the teamster moved like half-dreamed animals beneath the sea. Even the marsh grass was hid-den. Now and then she made out groves of trees, lifting a darker grey in cut-out patterns. She saw them as floating shapes that drifted backward. There seemed to be two layers of the mist— the one upon the ground to hide the horses, and another, higher, resting on the tops of trees; and she and the grey drill wagon-hood moved on a sacred level above the one and under the other.

Plover were flying south. Their voices, slung back and forth high up, were filtered slowly down to mingle with the bells. She heard a flock of ducks break from a marsh pool, their nasal uproar shattering the mist and starting eddies, their shapes like bullets fired at the sun.

The horses raised their heads and pricked small ears. Hunter looked up. “Mallards,” he said. His brown face was like an Indian’s.

Mary rode as a person on the verge of waking— that still moment when the senses are alive but the mind is lulled and only half perceives. And Hunter, glancing up at her from time to time, read her still face, and let her be… .

The horses strode at three miles to the hour. A steady pace, at first glance it seemed slow; but they were bred to hold it, fourteen hours to the day, days on end.

When the sun had cleared the mist, and the marshes lay open to view, the wagon had got past the Onondaga crossing and headed westward on the Geddes road. Cossett’s tavern lay behind them, a brown square shape, like a marsh growth in the grass. A barrack lifted its grey bark back a little way beyond it; and Mary saw the men coming forth from the door, hiking their trousers after breakfast, and straggling down in twos and threes for the raw black furrow through the grass. Two teams with scoops were drawing up the bank, stamping their feet to hold in mud while the handle-man bore down to lift the edge and then, on top of the embankment, heaved; and the scoop turned over, leaving its dump, an oozing mound. She could see the furrow winding off northwesterly, deep in the still brown grass, and she smelled the stagnant water that crept out of the banks to puddle in it.

But the road to Geddes went straight away west; and in a little while the canal had disappeared and they were rolling up on higher ground and farm lands began to show their fences here and there, houses and log barns, like the Melvilles’, cattle coming forth from milking, a boy slapping cow hocks with a strap, a barking dog, stilling suddenly to lift his leg against the gatepost, and a woman, who might have been herself, carrying two loaded buckets back across the yard.

The sun shone warmly. The wet road showed its ruts in narrow, gleaming lakes; but the earth smelled wholesome again. With the warmth, the color began to rise in Mary’s cheeks. She raised her head and saw white clouds in a blue sky. The bells under her feet picked up a clearer tune and the horses shook their withers. Hunter caught up a pace on them so that he walked where he could look at her over his shoulder. He heard the baby snuffle and gasp.

He laughed.

“Comfortable?”

“Yes, thanks.”

She opened the flap over the baby’s face and shifted the round head to lie under her breast. She smiled at Hunter.

“It’s more comfortable than any riding I have had.”

He laughed again.

“I seldom ever ride. It makes a man too tired, all day long.”

He looked as if he could go on walking until his horses put their forefeet in the sea.

“But it’s an easy-riding wagon.”

He seemed never to glance at his horses. Even when they met an ox-cart with two children popping round eyes at them over the box edge and had to take the off edge of the road, he merely said, “Gee, Edward,” quietly and watched the off front wheel. When it had touched the shoulder, “Up!” he said, and the three teams straightened one by one. The oxcart had to look out for itself. A Pennsylvania team had right of way. It gave what it could, and if that was not enough the other vehicle must get into the ditch.

There were no stages on this road. It was back-country— a few farms here and there just taking on establishment. Geddes, when they reached it, was no more than a hamlet, round a tiny store that bore a sign, Post Office… .

By noon they had passed Camillus, a larger village with a small frame church and schoolhouse. Mary saw the children coming forth to eat their lunch, and the teacher, an oldish man in sober black, eating his bread and cheese upon the doorstep. Half a mile beyond the village the tolling of the bell for afternoon caught up with them. A brassy noise, unmusical, yet it rang as if the master unloosed his pride in it.

For their own lunch they stopped beside a moss-bedded brook as cold as ice. The horses came down in pairs to drink from it, careful with their forehoofs not to muddy it, dipping their muzzles to the eyes. Mary watched the gulps traveling up the arching throats. The horses lingered for an instant to let the water dribble from their nostrils, then turned back to the wagon, where Hunter had fastened their feed box to the rigid pole. They took their orderly stations before their own compartments. He stayed until all were eating. “That grey’s kind of a thief,” he explained. “He don’t go actually for to steal, but to play a joke; but when a horse is hauling, a joke like that comes heavy on him.”

He made a small fire and sank in crotched sticks on either side of the flames, put another over them, and hung an iron kettle floating tea leaves. Then he brought out collops of lean pork.

“You’ll have one, Mrs. Fowler?”

“If you’ll share my pie and cheese.”

“That’s fine.”

While he cooked the sizzling meat on pointed sticks, Mary undid her dress. She had already changed the baby’s cloths, rinsed the used in the spring, and spread them on a bush. But now a fly had waked the baby to a sense of famishment. It batted its hands against the breast and laid hold eagerly. And again, as she had felt in the beginning days, the wonder of her strength was waked in Mary and she bent far over the child. To-day it looked to her like Jerry. Its eyes, she thought, would not be grey like hers, but dark as his. A darkeyed girl, she thought, with yellow hair.

As the milk flowed, she straightened her back. Across the fire she met the teamster’s frank eyes. He was smiling at her.

“I’ve never seen her, Mrs. Fowler. Can I now?”

Mary nodded. He came forward to bend down by the suckling baby. He touched its cheek with a tar-stained thumb.

“Pretty,” he said softly. His thumb, in drawing off, just brushed the breast. But Mary was untouched by it; her being was absorbed as it had always been, and Hunter’s brown face smiled as he returned to his fire.

The baby fell asleep when it had finished, and they ate together side by side upon a log. They did not talk, but when they were done Hunter lighted a cigar and puffed awhile, and then rose up and hitched his team.

He helped Mary to her seat and handed up the baby. He took a last look at the spring.

“If some teamsters had seen me there with linens all spread out they would have laughed.”

But Mary did not hear. Her eyes were for the road beyond the leaders’ ears.

“Will we meet Jerry on the road?”

“I don’t know. I’m hauling in to Montezuma. If he’s working still at Jordan, likely not. We go on to Brutus before we turn north.”

She scarcely was aware of the start, the wagon rolled so smoothly. They passed through miles of woodland, sweet with balsam, where she saw rabbits under ferns. Hunter pointed out a partridge eating berries, but before she saw it the bird had thundered off into the trees.

Elbridge, a little village, met them in the woods, and then at a little after three they came to Brutus. Here the westward road ended in a tavern against which a horseshed leaned, and they turned north away from the Auburn road. They now traveled in the thickest woods that Mary had ever seen. The branches bent down to scrape the wagon-hood, and the box swayed and pitched over corduroy. The bells were a muffled, close sound which she could almost touch.

Without warning they rolled out in a clearing. The road ran on to dry ground at a corners where a cabin stood. Burnt land showed stumps and the charred bodies of trees. A man and woman were working, between them dragging a hand brush-harrow over lumpy ground. And inexplicably the raw ditch of the half-dug canal stretched out of the trees from the right and went away to west beside a raw new road.

Hunter stopped the team and walked across to the young couple.

“Hello,” he said.

The man took in the whip and the great wagon and the panting team. His eyes hardened; and the woman drew close to his side.

“Hello,” he said.

Hunter smiled friendlily, but the man’s eyes were unchanged.

“You ain’t seen a man named Fowler round about here?”

“Fowler?” asked the man, stiffly. He turned to the woman. Labor had hollowed her oval face. She spoke in an edged voice.

“He’s the one that left the letter?”

“Maybe him. I disremember names. These diggers are all alike. They answer only to a gun.”

He looked at Hunter, then slowly to the wagon. Both he and his woman then saw Mary.

“Is it her expects a letter?”

“It might be her or me.”

“He left a letter for his wife.”

“Suppose you let us see it.”

“How’ll we know? A letter ain’t a thing for everybody,” said the man. The woman added, “I have got it hid. You can’t have it.”

It might have been their meagre stock of coins they talked about.

Hunter said, “You could let me read it. If it’s not for us we’ll hand it back.”

The two looked at each other.

“Maybe that’s so,” said the man. “Fetch it, Anna.”

The woman tiredly entered the house. The man followed her. He came forth with a rifle in his hand. Then the woman brought a folded square of paper. It was not sealed. Hunter looked at the address.

“It’s for you, Mrs. Fowler.”

He made to hand it up to Mary.

“I won’t let you hand it up,” the man said suddenly.

Mary’s heart had fallen.

“Read it there. I don’t want to get down, disturbing the baby.”

“You’ve a baby?” demanded the woman.

“Yes.”

“He said the woman had a baby— was his wife. George, you recollect.”

The man nodded.

“Could I see the baby?”

Dully, Mary opened the blanket flap. The sight of the small red face comforted her. But the woman had sprung up on the eveners and was peering in with avid eyes.

Suddenly the eyes filled, and she whispered up to Mary proudly, “I’m expecting my own self. In February.”

Mary looked round the small clearing. She thought of the woods road and snow.

“I’m glad,” she said, and the woman smiled and nodded.

“I guess it’s all right, George,” she said over her shoulder.

Hunter was reading the letter. He said, “Jerry’s sorry he can’t come to meet you. He’s hired you a little house in Montezuma, belonging to a Mrs. Peck. It’s ready for you. There’s firewood and she has got in edibles. He’s coming down next week.”

The woman smiled at Mary.

“A hired house,” she said; but Mary thought, “He wouldn’t come to meet us. Yes. A hired house.”

Port Byron stood in fields. And from Port Byron the broad wheels rolled on a better road. The horses tossed their bits as if their collars had been cured of pain. At sunset they saw a town below them. Beyond, a river gleamed in a meandering channel, making islands. A great marsh was spread out, as far as the eye could see. The grass was bending in a wind like waves of dim grey water. Mary had never seen such grass; it rose, out of water, ten feet high.

The village street followed the higher bank of the river. There were buildings on each side. A tannery ran a long shed beside the road and gave out green hide smells. A church had a small square tower. There was a tavern with a yard, and a man brushing down a sweated horse.

Across the river, two long barracks stood on little hillocks, and in the sunset sheen men were digging to their waists in muck. A boat coming across the river carried three men wrapped in blankets. As Hunter’s wagon passed the landing, one of the two rowers jumped out and made fast to the planks. He looked at Hunter, spat into the water, said, “Just three more fevers.”

“Much of it?” Hunter asked.

“Not much now. They had three hundred sick last August.”

The wagon rolled down the street.

Hunter asked a man, “Where’s Mrs. Peck live?”

The man pointed a thumb.

“That frame house at the end of the street. A widow-woman. Her husband owned the tannery; she’s rich. That house— with the first cabin back of it.”

Mary followed the thumb’s pointing. The man was staring up at her. But she did not look at him. She saw the cabin. It was lifeless.

Hunter wheeled the team round the frame house. A weedy garden patch was back of it. He helped Mary down at the cabin door, and carried in her bundles for her. He said, “I’ll light you a fire before I go on.”