3stalwarts (84 page)

Julius W. Wilson walked with a long stride.

“You’re lucky to get a job with me here,” he remarked to Dan. “Line boats generally go straight through, and the Michigan Six Day don’t hire a captain that’s late. But this trip Wendell, on the western end, shoved a short-haul job on to me, to Rome, so I had to stop over.”

He nodded to a boater— and then, with a fine gesture, swept off his wide felt hat to a sharp-faced woman with an outthrust jaw who came striding along the street toward them.

“How d’ye do, Mrs. Quackenbush,” he said politely. “How are you this handsome day?”

She swung round at him, and as her skirt lifted a trifle from the swirl Dan noticed that she wore a man’s cowhide boots.

“Hullo, Julius, how be you?”

“You’re looking good,” observed Mr. Wilson.

“Good yourself! Don’t try none of your dandiness on me!”

“Here’s a young man come down from Boonville with your sister, Nell Berry,” said Mr. Wilson, indicating Dan with a wave of his hand.

“Pleased to meet you. My name’s Quackenbush.”

She grasped Dan’s hand, and her palm felt calloused against his.

“Dan Harrow,” he said.

“How is the old hen?” she asked good-humoredly.

“Good.”

“She always is. The first time she’s sick she’ll be underground. Well, I’ve got to get going. Please to’ve seen you boys.”

“There’s a character,” observed Mr. Wilson, when she was out of hearing. “You don’t know it, Harrow, but you’ve shook hands with the woman that’s pumped the canal dry three times.”

Dan stared.

“Oh, I ain’t guffing you none. You can ask any boater. She married old Idwall Quackenbush two days afore he died. I reckon she shocked the lights clean out of him. And when she’d seen him buried she took up his boat and she’s run it ever since. The danged crate leaks so she’s got to keep pumping it; you’re apt to see it tied up anywhere with the water tossing out in squirts. Ben Rae, he’s my steersman, he figgered one night she’d pumped enough water to fill the Erie three times over.”

He laughed.

“It don’t faze her. And she makes money. She’s raising quite a family, too. Got three boys.”

They came down to the docks and walked west along them until they came to a lumber yard.

“There’s the old Xerxes,” said Mr. Wilson. He pointed out a yellow boat, trimmed green, tied up a little way ahead. “We’re waiting here for some matched boarding to take down to the Oriskany Mills. Then we pick up a load in Utica from the Ashery for Little Falls— a shipment for Westfeldt’s soap. It’s dirty to handle, but we’ll have to clean on the way down to Albany. I’m running down empty from Little Falls.”

Just as they came abreast of the boat, an immense old Jew thrust his head from the cabin door, came up the steps, and stood beside the rudder sweep, where he stretched his arms over his head and yawned.

“Hello, Ben,” said Mr. Wilson. “Got that boarding on yet?”

The Jew turned toward them slowly. He had a great white beard, like the beard of Moses, and when he spoke the end of it jumped away from him in little jerks.

“No,” he said. “There was a big line waiting at the yard. We’re just due now; we’ll get loaded by noon.”

Wilson grunted.

“Time enough, I guess. We can get in to Utica by tomorrow evening.”

“Sure, that’s right. Whyn’t you go see the missis and meet up with us at ‘Riskany? It won’t cost you more’n a dollar.”

“I might, at that. Say, Ben, here’s a lad I took on as driver as far as Albany. Name’s Dan’l Harrow. Ben Rae.”

The Jew wrinkled his long nose and grinned.

“It’s a pleasure. Come aboard.”

“Ben’s in charge,” Wilson said. “Well, I guess I’ll shove along. It ain’t often I get a chance to see Aurelia for a night during summer. She won’t travel the canal,” he explained to Dan, “and she’s quite right. It’s degrading for a delicate woman. She used to be the loveliest singer on the New York stage. An artist of the first water. Lovely still, but melancholy.”

“No blame to her,” said Rae, “living by herself so much.”

Mr. Wilson waved an arm and walked rapidly away down the dock.

“Come on down,” the Jew said to Dan. “William’s cooking dinner.”

He led the way into the cabin.

The Xerxes had been built to carry twenty passengers as well as the crew. The cabin took up most of the stern half of the’ boat; freight space lay forward. There was no stable for the horses, as the line companies had their own service stables the whole length of the canal. They handled only the rush freight, and, in spite of the growing power of the railroads, they did big business in carrying emigrants westward.

Under the windows a row of iron-frame bunks, on which canvas was stretched, were hinged against the walls. To the right of the steps a curtain marked the entrance to the crew’s bunks, which were built into a cuddy, five feet high, directly under the steersman’s deck. In the corner to the left of the steps stood a good-sized stove, at which crew and passengers could take turns.

When Dan and Benjamin Rae entered, a man was peering into the oven.

“Here’s a lad Julius W. got for driver as far as Albany,” said Rae.

The man turned a pair of mild brown eyes toward them and pushed his hand rapidly the wrong way through his hair.

“Hullo,” he said.

He was middle-aged and had a lean, thoughtful face.

“Biscuits coming good?” asked Rae.

“Fair,” said the man.

“This lad’s Dan Harrow,” said the Jew. “Meet William Wampy.”

“Hullo,” said Wampy again.

He turned back to the stove. A coffeepot spouted fragrant steam, and potatoes and bacon, frying together, sizzled when he turned them with a broad knife.

“Put your bag back there,” said the Jew, pointing to the sleeping cuddy. “I’ll set out the dishes.”

They ate leisurely, and the food was good.

“William’s studying to be a cook,” Rae said to Dan, as he poured syrup over his biscuits. “He’s a pretty slick hand, I’d say.”

Wampy flushed with pleasure.

“He’s a great hand for a fiddle,” said Rae. “He sleeps hearty. And he can work when we make him. But mostly he cooks and eats what he cooks.”

Wampy raised his dark eyes to Dan’s.

“Eating’s fun,” he said.

Men stamped on deck. Presently they heard them loading the boarding into the pit forward. Rae shoved back his chair and sighed.

“Reckon I’d better go and get a team.”

He went out.

Dan started to follow him.

“No need of you going out,” said William Wampy. “We’re paid to run this boat, not to fill it full of lumber.”

He helped himself to more biscuits.

“It ain’t a bad job, if you use your privileges,” he observed.

Dan sat down again and watched him eat. He ate long and silently. Once in a while he smacked his lips.

“I married once,” said Wampy. “For four years I didn’t have no good food.

“Well,” he added, after a while, “Benjy’ll be coming back pretty quick. We’ll have to clear up. Will you wipe or will you wash?”

“I don’t care,” said Dan.

“I’ll dry then. We’ll let the cups dreen.”

When they had finished, Dan went on deck. The last boards were being handed up on to the boat. The Jew was coming along the dock behind a pair of mules. A man, who had been overseeing the lading, went up to him.

“Fifteen thousand,” he said. “You’ll sign for Wilson.”

“Surely,” said the Jew.

He signed the bill, and the men who had been loading got off the boat.

“You drive,” he called to Dan.

Dan hooked the evener to the towline and threw the tie-ropes on deck. The mules took up the slack and heaved; the Xerxes groaned against the dock, inched slowly out, and they started down the Erie. As they passed other boats tied up, a man on deck would catch the towrope and pass it across the boat. In fifteen minutes they had cleared the basin, and the mules came out upon the towpath. A hundred yards ahead three other boats crept in the same direction.

“No point hurrying,” said the Jew; so Dan allowed the mules to take their own pace, until a little after four o’clock they entered the village of Oriskany and tied up beside the woolen mills.

In the gathering dusk of the cabin William Wampy was fondling notes from his fiddle, making a melody from “The Wind that Shakes the Barley.”

“He’s got kind of a pretty softness on the strings,” said the Jew.

Dan rested his forehead on his arms and closed his eyes. The whirr of the mill machinery and the clack of the looms dimmed as the notes of the fiddle felt their way toward a tune. Boats that passed seemed a long way off. Dan repeated Molly Larkins’s name to himself and all at once saw her again, sitting beside him in her red dress in the darkness in Hennessy’s Saloon, while the light from the knothole picked out bits of color here and there. Only now they left the saloon together and went down to the docks… .

The Jew glanced down at him and smiled in his white beard. “Tired,” he said to himself. He pulled a pipe out of his pocket and filled it and put it in his mouth and leaned back against the cabin. But he forgot to light it. And after a while his head bent forward toward his up-drawn knees.

A Sermon by Request

Sunday-morning breakfast they ate at a comfortable late hour. A little after ten o’clock, Julius Wilson appeared beside the boat. He had been given a lift by Mr. Butterfield, who was driving down to Utica.

“Dandiest pair of trotters I’ve ever sat back of,” he said.

He came aboard briskly.

“We’d better start off now; you get the mules out, Dan, but William’ll do the first stretch of driving.”

Traffic was lighter than it had been on the preceding day. Almost all the boats they met were company boats.

They drifted along placidly, the mules and William Wampy taking a leisurely pace on the towpath. Dan drowsed on the cabin roof and Mr. Wil-son steered. The Jew was busy with his Sunday washing. He had a tub just forward of the cabin, over which he bent, dousing his underwear. His long white beard was tied up in a towel to keep it dry.

After they had traveled for a little over an hour, Dan suddenly became aware of a faint sound of people shouting. Far ahead on the right shore stood a small group of houses; nearer at hand a small barn, by itself, with George Henry, Feed Stores, Utica painted in white letters on the end.

Mr. Wilson and the Jew had also heard the noise, for they were looking ahead with their hands over their eyes. William Wampy trudged on behind the mules, and paid no attention.

“He can sleep walking,” said the Jew. “He does it so he won’t get tired.”

The clamor increased rapidly. A bunch of perhaps twenty people were running along the towpath toward them— one man well ahead, then more men, some women and children.

“Wonder what’s up?” said Mr. Wilson.

“Some kind of ruckus.”

“Wonder what they’re a-chasing him for?”

It was obviously a chase. As it neared them they made out the pursued man clearly. He was running in great strides, his long spindly legs stretching out well ahead of him. In one hand he carried a small satchel, in the other a floppy grey felt hat.

“Knee action a mite too high for speed,” observed Mr. Wilson, “but he sure is working for it.”

They could see the man’s face, as red as his scarlet waistcoat. His head was thrown back; his mouth was open; and his long thin moustaches whipped back against his cheeks at every bound. He was holding his own, but no more.

It could be seen now, also, that the pursuers were got up in their Sunday best. Now and then, when he spied a stone in his path, a man would pick it up and hurl it after the fleeing man. Most shots went wide, but occasionally one found its mark, and the skinny man would spring into the air and gain a foot when he came down.

He and the Xerxes reached the barn at almost the same moment, but he paid no heed to the boat. The doors were open, and with a new burst of speed he rushed through them. In a few seconds all of the yelling pursuers had swept in after him, except a small boy who approached at a much slower pace and carried carefully a basket of eggs in his right hand. He had an intelligent face.

Mr. Wilson bawled to William Wampy to stop the mules.

“We might as well tie up and see what’s going on.”

The barn was well filled with hay, the air drowsy with motes. A small window to the east let in a shaft of sunlight on the head of a ladder leaning against the mow and glittered on the tines of a pitchfork. The boy who had carried the basket was tossing eggs high up over the edge of hay. One popped flatly, and the man in the mow swore in a strangling voice. The congregation at the foot of the ladder gathered the hubbub of their voices into a deep bellow of delight.

Mr, Wilson took a man by the elbow.

“Excuse me breaking in, but what’s going on?”

“Why,” replied the man, “there ain’t enough of us round Maynar’s Corners to have a regular church, there being only Hoofman’s store and six farms round; but when this feathered snake come in, saying we’d ought to hire a preacher and that he was a good one, we hired him for six sermons at four dollars per and give him free board. We paid him last night, he having give five of them, but whiles he was waiting for service this morning one of the boys seen him sneaking out the back door with his bag in his hand— ready to cut and run, by Jeepers Cripus!”

He was still red-faced from his running, and he breathed loudly through his nose. A little woman in a stiff black dress, black knitted wristers, and upright small bonnet ran over to him.

“Ain’t any of you men going to climb that ladder, Nat Wattles?”

“I don’t want to run my stummick on a pitchfork, Annie; not me nor any other man.”

“Well, by holy, if you men is all scared, the womenfolk will climb that ladder. I’d just like to set my hands on that sermonizing Judas man!”

She started elbowing the men aside.

“Come on, girls!”

There was savagery in her shrill cry and the echoing shout of the women crowding behind her. The man Wattles shifted his feet.

“He’s to blame for it,” he said nervously.

But the man on the mow, who had been lying so coolly behind his pitchfork, heard the cry and got to his feet. He raised his hand into the bar of sunlight, commanding attention. Suddenly, out of nowhere, an egg broke against his palm, and a quiver shot through him while the brown yolk wriggled slowly to his wrist. But he held his posture.