3stalwarts (113 page)

“The canal brought us money, and built great cities along the line— it’s building this one. But it brought something better to me and my wife. I couldn’t tell you, son. We hear the horns.”

After a while he said, “I got to get home.”

And he went away.

But that evening, as the Sarsey Sal moved eastward by the intake gates of Tonawanda Creek, Dan looked up and saw a house on the gentle rise of ground. A white house, peaceful, comfortable, two stories, with dormer windows on the peaked roof. He blew his horn, softly. It sounded gentle on the air. Molly, who was standing close beside him, asked, “Why did you blow it, Dan?”

Dan pointed to a lighted window. The shadows of two figures appeared standing together. Then one opened the window and leaned out, to follow with his eyes the light of the night lantern along the velvet water. The light caught a red glow in Dan’s high cheeks and traced golden threads in Molly’s hair as she combed it out and braided it there on the deck.

It was very still; it was spring. Tree toads lifted clear treble voices against the black sky; and the chirrup of tiny frogs along the canal went with the Sarsey Sal in a rising throaty song.

In Erlo’s Boarding House

The horses had the rhythm of the long hauls. They went with a plodding stride, and Fortune went slowly behind them, head down and hands in his pockets.

It was a warm April morning, and the sun had just cleared the light mists from the meadows. Tendrils of it still lingered where the balsams shaded the canal. A flock of ducks scrambled out of a setback, leaving a white trail of foam over the water, and started out again on their northward journey. A little later Dan heard a distant murmur, a cry taken up by twenty voices, and thrown back and forth between them, singly and in a swelling chorus. Fortune, too, heard the honking and kept his eyes on the sky. Dan called Molly on deck. Soon they saw them in the liquid, early morning sky, high up, a line of geese rippling northward.

At Lockport they caught up to a long line of boats going down. Far below, the canal shot straight away, out under the high bridge. On their left the water thundered over falls. Boats, like tiny chips pulled by ants on a cobweb thread, moved out at measured intervals from the downward flight. All along the locks tenders worked quickly at the levers, their shirts soaked with sweat. Regularly, life-sized boats issued from the top lock of the upward flight and hauled past the waiting queue. Dan sat on deck by the rudder and watched them pass. The immigrant season had started. A line boat came by, bright yellow, one of the Michigan Six Day, with an old German smoking a porcelain pipe, his stocking feet straight out on the cabin roof in front of him, the soles turned to the sun. Women’s voices rose from the cabin, and the sound of a fiddle wheedling at a tune. Steering was a tall upright old man with a long white beard.

“Ben!” Dan cried. “Ben Rae!”

The Jew turned his fine face toward the Sarsey Sal, a puzzled light in his eyes. Then he recognized Dan and waved his arm.

“Hullo, Dan. How be you?” He turned to the cabin door, his deep voice booming, “Hey, Julius! Julius! Here’s Dan Harrow.”

The lanky black-haired Wilson sprang out on deck.

“Hello, Dan. Glad to see you. Who’re you boating for?”

“My boat,” Dan said proudly.

“Say,” said Wilson, “I met Berry back in Rochester. He said to tell you Jotham Klore was hauling east, working on the Boonville feeder. He said you’d want to know.”

Fortune had turned to see who was talking. He recognized the Jew.

“Hey, there, how’s pinochle?” he shouted.

“How’s preaching?” cried the Jew.

Wilson laughed, shook his fist, and Fortune chuckled. The boat drew away. Line boats worked on schedule. Their crews could not stop to talk. Dan felt sad.

The Sarsey Sal sank down between the stone walls, and down again when the gates closed, until it came out once more on the smooth flow. The big team waited for it, with their heads turned round, and stepped out on the towpath of their own accord as Dan tossed the towrope to Fortune. They heaved and went on.

They kept the teams at a good pace that day, and late on the afternoon of the next they saw the roofs of the city ahead of them in the southeast. The windows were afire with the sunset, and, as the boat pulled forward, the red light moved from pane to pane along the entire city front. There was a slight haze of flour dust over the roofs of the mills. On their left the thunder of the swollen falls beat heavily.

There was an empty berth for the Sarsey Sal just under the Main Street Bridge. They ate in the cabin with the shadows stealing over the canal. Boats passed in each direction. But the shouts along the dock, where men had been loading, grew fainter, thinned out. The boats passing now were bound straight through.

After supper, in the cool of the evening, Dan sat awhile on deck, smoking his pipe, while Molly cleaned the dishes. It was a peaceful scene he looked out upon from under the rafters of the bridge. The boats lay still all along the banks in a double row; smoke and the smell of cooking rose from their cabins. A horse stamped in his stall, and sighed over his oats. Along the wharf a few men moved leisurely; and a couple loitered on the bridge over his head, their voices falling toward his hands in a soft murmur.

Fortune had gone off on his eternal pilgrimage to cards.

Molly came up after a while in her street dress with its tight-waisted jacket and flaunting hem. At the news of Klore’s being on the Boonville canal, a worried expression had left her eyes. She had been quietly happy that day. Now she was smiling when she took Dan’s arm.

“Let’s walk around a little, Dan, if you ain’t too tuckered.”

They stepped to the towpath and made their way up to the bridge by a little flight of stairs set in against the wall. For a while they strolled up Plym-outh Avenue and through the streets of the third ward, past the fine houses with their lawns under towering elms. There was a misty vagueness in the line of the trees against the twilight, and the dusk about their roots was deep.

They made their way down again toward the canal along Exchange Street, getting glimpses of the dark water of the river between the mills. The night had closed in. Lights came in windows on their left; roof lines were lost against the sky until the stars came out, when, gradually, they were born again.

They went down to the canal and walked out along the towpath on the aqueduct. They leaned on the parapet, looking downstream. Here and there were lights in the dives on Water Street, and the reflections of them seemed to be running on the river. The thunder of the falls below came to their ears in a steady muttering and made speech an intimate thing.

“I wonder where Gentleman Joe is,” Dan said after a while.

Molly was standing close to him, her hand still in the bend of his arm. Now he felt her turn.

“If he was here, he’d be in one of them houses, I guess.”

She pointed to the row of houses on their right, rising three stories high, their foundations licked by the river. Their clapboarded sides, even in that dim light, had a neglected look, and their odd, old-shingled roofs made an unkempt line against the stars. The nearest of the row, not twenty feet from where they stood, showed no lights; but a wisp of smoke floated upward from its chimney. The windows of its second story, close to the aqueduct, were not more than three feet above the parapet.

Dan and Molly, taking up their stroll again, moved under it. As they passed, they heard a guarded voice call to them.

“Say!”

They both looked up. There was no one visible in the window, and the voice seemed to come from above it.

“There’s a dormer set back on the roof,” Molly said suddenly. “I remember noticing it before.”

Dan stepped back until he could see the dormer. He could barely make out a man’s figure leaning out of it.

“Hello,” he said quietly.

He caught a movement of the man’s head.

“It’s all right,” he said. He had guessed who the man was. “It’s me— Dan Harrow. There ain’t anybody around.”

He thought he caught a sound of sharply indrawn breath.

“Say,” said the man, again.

“Yeanh?”

“Henderson’s watching all along the street. The only way I can get out’s by this window. Can you bring me up a line? They won’t be keeping people out of the houses. It’s people coming out they’re watching for.”

“All right,” Dan said.

“Listen. Do you know where Jannard’s stable is?”

Dan felt Molly at his side.

“I do,” she whispered.

“Yeanh,” he said.

“Then go there. I’ll make it worth while for you. The horse’s in the back box stall, saddle by the door. There’s a line hanging from the hook next to it. I seen it yesterday. Bring the horse here and come into the house. The horse’U stand. It’s straight up at the top— three flights.”

“All right.”

The man drew back. Dan turned to Molly. She was looking at him steadily. Then, as if she knew what she had read in his face, she took his arm. A block back across the river, down on Front Street, they found a small stable. A lantern burned dimly in the harness room. Dan took it. In a moment he had found the big grey, the saddle, and the coil of rope.

The grey snorted at the strange hand, but gave himself readily to the girth. Running his hands down the clean forelegs, Dan could feel the trembling of the horse.

“He knows what’s up,” he said softly.

He ought to by this time,” Molly said.

The horse walked gently behind them. At the door Molly stopped.

“Wrap that line round under your coat,” she said. Dan gazed at her a moment with admiration.

“Hurry up, Dan,” she said. Now that she had made up her mind to help him, she thought clearly. He hadn’t asked her to help him, she was doing it because she wanted to.

On the towpath again, she stopped.

“I’ll stay here with the horse. You go down over the aqueduct. It’s Erlo’s boarding house. The door’s on Water Street.”

Dan went ahead alone. There were no lights in the dingy street, but he kept close to the walls. He thought he saw a movement three houses ahead of him, and he paused. But there was no further indication of a watcher. Relieved, he turned into the doorway by his left hand. It was pitch-dark in the narrow hall. In a room over his head he heard a man snoring. Then the creak of a bed. There was a sour smell of old carpet. In the back, a whisper of the river running by. He felt his way cautiously up the stairs.

On the landing he paused. He had heard no sound, but a cool breath of air told him that the street door had opened. He tried to reassure himself by thinking that he had failed to latch the door after him in his care to be silent. But he was sure he had latched it.

There was no sound, no creak of boards. He held his breath. But he heard nothing but the trip of his heart. Still he stood quiet. After a few moments he began to think that no one had come in. He was just putting out his foot for a step along the hall, when something made him stop. It was nothing he heard, nothing he could see. But up the stairs was stealing an odd perfume, a faint smell of violets.

At first he thought a woman had come in. Then before his mind’s eye was flashed a picture of a man with a bullet scar on his temple and slicked black hair. The hair had smelled of violets.

Both men waited— an interminable time. The rush of the river was in the ears of both. The ticking of a clock back in the kitchen crept into the silence. The man in the bedroom snored on.

After a time, Dan heard a creak below him. Then again the breath of cool air came up to him. Again it was shut off. The man had left.

All over him Dan felt the sweat breaking out. But he went on now more confidently. In a moment he came to the door of the attic room and rapped gently. It swung open. All he could see was the pallid patch of the window. Something was poked into his back.

“It’s me,” he said quietly.

The pistol was taken away.

“Got the rope?” Calash asked.

Dan unwound it. They tied it to the knob of the door.

“Where’s the horse?”

“My cook’s got him at the other side,” Dan said. “I didn’t want to leave him alone.”

“All right. You’d better come down after me. They’ll stop you if you go out how you came in.”

He put one leg over the sill and began to lower himself. Dan saw his tall thin silhouette sliding down. Then he stopped, his face against the shingles, lying breathlessly still. Round the bend in the towpath came the jingle of trace chains. They heard the breathing of mules harsh above the mutter of the distant falls, The boat went by with a ripple along its sides casting a bright patch on the water.

“Evening,” they heard the driver say. Dan knew he must have seen Molly with the horse.

“You’d better hurry,” he said.

The man slid down, his face turned away from the light. The rope tightened on the shingles and moved half an inch from one side to the other, with tiny squeaks. Then it jerked, and Dan went down slowly.

When he reached the towpath, he found Calash mounted. Molly was standing by the horse’s head.

“It’s lucky the driver didn’t see that rope,” Calash said.

He bowed over the horse’s withers to Molly.

“It was mighty fine of you to bring the horse,” he said to her.

She did not reply.

He leaned down to shake hands with Dan.

“I owe you a lot.”

He put his hand in his pocket.

“No,” said Molly suddenly, in a firm low voice.

“I wasn’t going to,” Dan said.

“Not money,” Calash said. He put something in Dan’s hands. “You can have this to remember by.”

“Thanks,” he said again, his voice odd, harsh.

Then the grey horse leaped forward.

Molly caught Dan’s arm.

“They’ll hear him,” she said. “Come quick, Dan.”

She hurried back across the aqueduct. Before Dan could move, two men came out of Front Street. They were mounted.

“Did you see a horse?” they shouted.

Dan waved his hand eastward.

“He turned off,” he cried.

They dashed into the darkness.

Molly met him on the far side.