3stalwarts (107 page)

“Yeanh,” he said.

“Then don’t you worry, Dan. I’ll bet when you get back to the Sarsey Sal you’ll find Molly’s all chippered up.”

The fat woman drew in her breath. Her deep bosom arched, and a little locket hanging there caught the light.

“I used to be young and pretty like her, and have notions,” she said. Her fat fingers opened the locket and she turned it to the light.

Dan glanced at a crude pencil drawing that looked as if it had been taken from a lithograph. It was the head of a very pretty girl on a slim neck, with a gay upward curve to the chin. The fat woman chuckled somewhere deep down in herself.

“Ever see the face afore?”

“No,” he said.

“Well,” said Mrs. Gurget, “that’s me. I was a notional gal and I turned down Sol, who wanted to marry me— such a wizzen of a man, I thought. I went West with another. But when I came back on the canal, looking like this, he was looking for a cook, and I took the job. Sometimes he asks what’s in the locket and then I put him off and say he’d better not know, and he pesters, and I laugh. And nighttimes he talks about Nancy when he’s sleeping. It knocked him bad to lose her.”

Suddenly she laughed, and her voice rang true.

“It’s funny my telling you, Dan,” she said. “I never told anybody else but you, but you won’t tell anybody. Sol’s asked me to marry him; but I said no. It wouldn’t be fair to him now; and there ain’t any sense. We both have a good time, living along.”

She laughed again, leaned over, and kissed him.

“Run on back, Dan. You’ll find Molly’s chippered up expecting you.”

The light still burned in the cabin of the Sarsey Sal. Molly was not there, but when he opened the door she came out of the cuddy in her night clothes. He looked at her covertly; her face was fresh and clear again, and she smiled, and her eyes were tender as he had seen them when she first came aboard his boat. By secret consent, neither said a word, but when Dan sat down Molly sat on his lap, her feet curled up on his knees. He took them in his hand to keep them warm.

It was dead still, a quiet night. They kept silent with the march of the clock in their ears, the breathing of the kettle. Her hair, braided for bed, hung over her shoulder and swung back and forth against his waistcoat as she breathed; and he felt each touch against his heart.

Monday Sol and Dan pulled out from the city under a leaden sky. The low-hanging city smoke behind them looked white. Now and then the horses snorted and shivered their withers as they walked. The air was breathless, and Dan felt the skin on his neck tingling.

“It smells like a blizzard coming,” Solomon said. And Dan agreed.

Before they reached the woods, snow began to’ fall; here and there a flake, drifting straight down. When one lit on his cheek, though the day was not cold, a chill touched him.

Behind them the great Mohawk valley dipped, then mounted to the som-bre arch of the sky. There were no clouds, but an even darkening, out of which the flakes stole downward. The snow on the ground shone with a miasmic pallor. The runners of the bobs scraped on the snow with a hollow sound, and the clink of the trace chains was small, dull, and struck the air a close note that died instantly. There was no echo.

After his one remark, Solomon hunched down inside his coat and said nothing. For all the stillness, it required effort to speak; the air was heavy in the lungs, and words clung to the teeth. To try to make the voice carry, a man had to shout his words, as though he were battering a wall with them. His only refuge was inside himself.

A week had gone by for Dan since his talk with the fat woman, and the quiet night with Molly. The happy life had come back to them. But now, with the darkness closing in, he remembered Mrs. Gurget’s words— a light man and a dark man. Untrue nonsense. But the words revolved in his mind, and he saw himself and Jotham Klore. Even at the beginning he had seen Jotham Klore; even the old peddler who had brought him down to the canal had warned him against the man. A big bully, in his last fight he had licked the Buffalo man, they had heard; he was cock on the canal. … A light man and a dark, and Molly in between… .

When the wind came, it came stealthily. A cold breath from the north, unnoticeable except for the drift of the snowflakes. Now and then they lifted just before they came to earth, and drifted southward a few feet before settling down.

So slowly did the wind take hold that before it found its strength the sleighs had entered the woods, tiny figures in the stillness, crawling along the winding track, with the snow feeling its way through the branches to light upon them. Gradually the loads whitened with a thin powder. The big flakes were thinning out.

With the new snow, the gleam went out of the ground; a dullness enveloped the world. Space closed in, distance became an illusion. Time was measured by the steady stride of the horses, the faint sound of trace chains clinking. Light spread through the flakes and thinned and died. Dan traced patterns in the falling snow. The cold crept closer.

As the wind grew, there came a sigh out of the trees. When they passed spruce clumps, Dan saw the upper branches lifting and falling in a monotonous ritualistic rhythm. Down on the road they could not feel it. They would hardly have known it was storming, had it not been for the mounting snow in the tracks. It lay soft and thick and powdery.

An hour passed. Then, with no warning, the sound of their passage was snuffed out. A great hand rocked the trees; the snow smothered the sound of the runners; the mounting roar of the wind, so gradual, had taken possession.

When they came into the first long clearing, the drive of the gale struck them. The tails of the horses before Dan whipped back straight at him like flung spears; it seemed that he could see the skin on their quarters pulled tight; their heads dropped as if they had been malleted. For a second they stopped, then lunged on the collars and fought ahead. The snow drove on them so fast that Dan could not say how it blew, up or down; there was a thick mist between him and the trees; and he felt the cold cutting past his coat into his stomach.

He had a glimpse of a group of ancient pines on the hill on his left. Their old stalwart trunks were bending; their great branches stretched southward, as if they had turned their backs to the wind.

Then once more the forest, and the roar of wind in the trees, and a lightening of the pressure on his breath. The teams picked up pace and forged ahead, eager for the camp. The snow deepened. The horses had to lift their feet.

Hour by hour, with no knowledge of the time. It was early afternoon when they entered the camp and saw dim lights behind the snow. Both teams were white with frost and snow; the sleighs were coated. Dan was so stiff he could hardly fight to his feet; he felt as if he must break to do it. Gradually he thawed in the kitchen; then went out again to rub his team down. Solomon sat by the fire, stretching out his hands as if he begged a precious thing, and the cook clogged back and forth with his wooden foot, making great kettles of coffee, for the men would be coming in early.

“This ain’t going to stop,” he said. “It’s got a tail hold on all the winds in time, and it’s out to travel somewhere.”

Wind gripped the roof of the cookhouse and shook it. It found the doors and beat upon them till they groaned like living things. When a man lifted the latch to open them, they were snatched from his hand and cracked against the wall so that a murmur broke out on the shelves of kettles. The man came in hunched over and fought the door to shut it. He was white over, though his red face sweated.

“Palery’s hurt,” he shouted to them, and he shook his fists, as if he thought they were not listening to him. “Him and Franks was cutting a four-foot spruce,” he cried, “when the wind took hold afore they was more than half through. It buck-jumped right across his legs, right here.” He smashed his fists across the front of his thighs. “He’s a mess!” he shouted. “Can’t you hear me? He’s just a mess. They’re fetching him in.”

Six men broke through the door, carrying a man on a stretcher of poles and coats and put him on the table and looked at him and drank coffee. He was unconscious, his face a dead white like rotten snow. The manager came in ahead of more men. He looked him over.

“Don’t take his pants off,” cried a man shrilly. “Don’t take ‘em off, for God’s sake.”

The manager felt of the man’s legs. “No use,” he said. “He ain’t bleeding, but we can’t do anything. He’ll have to see a doctor.”

“You couldn’t get him down through this,” the cook said, passing out sugar.

“We’ve got no team knows the road enough,” the manager said. “A man couldn’t see.”

He forced whiskey into the man’s mouth. After a while they brought him to, and he screamed at them.

The manager turned to Dan. “Could your team make it?” he asked. “They know the way.”

“They’ve had a hard haul,” Dan said.

“They’ll be going light.”

“He’d freeze,” said a man.

“We can rig him a tent back of some boards and put lanterns under the blankets.”

Dan hesitated. His team was tired. The track was sheltered in the woods. If the snow was not drifted too high in the clearings, they might make it. He nodded. The black would smell out the track.

“One other man, to help in a drift,” he said.

“I’ll go,” said Franks. “I was with him— I’ll go.”

He was a huge fellow, smooth-shaven, with a low forehead and dark sunken eyes that gleamed.

“All right,” said Dan.

The hurt man heard them, for he began to curse them and beg them to let him stay.

In the barn, Dan harnessed his horses, talking to them in a low voice. The black nuzzled him inquiringly, but the big brown merely stared at the wall and shook the harness down comfortably. They had put on flesh since Dan had bought them.

“They’re fine horses,” said the manager. “I’d like them here.”

At the entrance to the stable the black snorted, but the brown pushed out uncompromisingly, walking to the sleigh.

“Second link!” Dan shouted to the men who hitched them.

Palery had been loaded aboard under blankets. The lanterns under them were bringing out the smell of horses. Dan squatted down in the lea with the big man Franks at his side. “Ged-dup!” he shouted.

The team looked round, then lunged into the darkness, walking slow. At the edge of the woods they reared slightly to break the drift. Behind, the camp was swallowed from sight. Then they entered the woods and the wind passed over their heads, shaking the trees on either side, where branches shrieked as they fought against each other. There was a wild tumult in the storm, now, a hideous uplifting of voices as it beat the woods, and the old great pines groaned in the darkness. Only the road had comparative quiet, running under the uproar, like a tunnel of silence.

Once inside, the team broke into a trot before Dan’s urging. He had never trotted them before, but he knew they must make their best speed to get into the city before the deepening snow stopped them altogether. Once stopped, there was no exit. The road would be a coffin and the wailing trees the mourners.

Once in a while, during the first hour, when the wind died down to let them listen, they could hear the hurt man jabber and shout. At first Dan feared he might throw the blankets off; but when he touched the blankets to see how the man was, Franks caught his arm in a great hand and shouted close to his ear.

“Leave him be! He’s tied.”

There was a gleam in the big man’s eyes, a green glow in the dark, like an animal’s, as he crouched beside Dan. Now and again he would lift his face at the wind and shake his fist. But the cold, striking his throat, would make him duck down again.

The rumps of the horses were snow-white. The deepening snow had slowed them to a walk, but they made good time. The cold came under the howl of the wind to freeze the sweat as it formed.

At the first clearing they stopped. Then they went ahead slowly. The snow was over their bellies and they gathered their hind legs up under them until their haunches sat on the snow, and then jumped like rabbits. Between each thrust, they stopped again, panting in racking gasps, and lowered their noses, as if they smelled for the track. Then they jumped again. Once in a while they seemed to dispute a turn and stood with their heads close together. When they moved next, they would lean against the snow at their chests and push their feet forward to select the track.

It took them fifteen minutes to buck the clearing of a hundred yards. In the shelter of the woods Dan stopped them and let them breathe a minute before he walked them ahead.

The feeling of night came over them with added cold, but no darkening beyond the snow. The power of sight had been taken from them; Dan and Franks glued their eyes to the rumps of the horses and trusted to them. The lines were frozen in Dan’s mitten; the lids of his eyes had stiffened. He had to rub them to keep them open. But his companion sat glaring ahead from his sunken eyes, and now and then he appeared to laugh at the howling wind and the wild thrash of the trees.

The third clearing they were barely able to win through, and the horses shook and staggered as they burst into the shelter of the woods. From here each step was a task. Gouts of snow were snapped from the branches, building the road up in lumps, and the sleigh bucked over them in jerks and shunted from side to side.

They came to the edge of a ravine, and Dan shouted suddenly, “There’s a bridge!”

But the fury of the storm was in the horses. They did not stop. The sleigh lurched drunkenly into the open, slipped sideways. Franks leaped to the far side and caught the tail end in his hands and drew on it with a gigantic heave; and then the team found the corduroy under their shoes and stamped as they crossed it. Franks leaped on again, his eyes gleaming, laughing and throwing his arms at the storm. He reached under the blankets and felt beside the hurt man and drew out a huge dinner bell which he swung back and forth over his head. The wind took the sound as it was born, but they could think of it rushing miles away across the valley. The team heard it, and pricked their ears.

“Three miles!” shouted Dan.