3stalwarts (114 page)

“If he crosses the canal beyond the Wide Water,” she said, “he can lose his trail in the woods by Cobb’s Hill.”

Slowly they went back to the Sarsey Sal. In the cabin, with the lamps lighted, Dan sat down and opened his hand. Gentleman Joe had put a small pin into it, shaped like a running horse.

“I wonder if they’re diamonds,” he said.

Molly turned from brushing out her hair.

“It’s pretty,” she said. Then, “Dan, don’t help him again. Keep clear of him.”

“Why?”

“Did you ever see him?”

“Why, sure,” he said. “I’ve seen him a lot of times.”

“His face, I mean?”

“No,” he said, “I never seen it. I’d like to.”

It surprised him to have to say it. He knew perfectly well that he had never seen Gentleman Joe’s face, but his impressions of the man were woven in so closely with his life on the canal, that to hear his admission in plain words was startling.

“I saw it against a window light,” Molly said.

He did not hear her; he was looking at the horse again, shining on the callus on his palm; he was happy.

To Boonville

Henderson and his deputies had missed Calash in Rochester. After Dan’s brief glimpse of them there, the chase vanished again, as completely as if they fled behind the moon.

The Sarsey Sal took up her appointed journeyings; back and forth between ports, from Albany to Buffalo. Life in the cabin ran smoothly. But once more Dan detected a cool aloofness stealing into Molly’s kindness. His mind returned to Klore. They had heard of him. He was doing job hauls on the Boonville Canal. Sooner or later Butterfield would have to send the Sarsey Sal up the feeder, where she could not be missed.

Dan had grown heavier during the summer. His skin had taken on the warm brown shade the sun and wind give to light-haired people. He walked now, or stood beside the rudder, with a new erectness. He seldom had men dispute his place at a lock. Once in the night at Number 54, another boat had tried to overtake them and hold them from going through the lock.

Dan called to Molly to pole the boat in; the horses knew enough to wait at the upper end; and at the lower, in the light of the lock-tender’s lantern, Dan and Fortune settled the other crew. Fortune returned breathing war and nursing a black eye with the palm of his hand, but Dan went merely to the team, hitched the towline on the evener while the big black looked over his shoulder, and took up the trail again.

Back and forth, back and forth, in hauls of varying length, the life which the boaters loved for its variety, the different places to tie up, the waterfronts of different ports, Dan began to find monotonous. After the first sight, the rush and hurry at the locks, the gush of waters, the lifted voices in the long basins, the line boats passing with their noisy immigrants, the crack of whips, were all the same to him. Yet he still held to the canal. For one thing, he liked to watch his big team overhaul another with their long stride. For another, he had Molly. For a third, the wail of the horns at night.

Then, one morning in August he hauled into Rome and went to the warehouse office for shipping orders. Mr. Butterfield was reading a letter at his desk. He merely nodded to Dan, pointing out a chair. Dan sat down, put his hat on the floor, and glanced round the cool room, then at Butterfield’s handsome white head.

Mr. Butterfield had been kind to him. They liked each other.

After a minute the older man folded the letter with his clean fingers and rapped it gently on his desk.

“Harrow,” he asked, “do you intend to keep to canawling right along?”

Dan glanced at him curiously.

“I ain’t sure, Mr. Butterfield. I hadn’t really thought.”

The cool grey eyes looked across at him thoughtfully.

“Some like it,” he said.

“Yeanh.”

“I should think a man like you would get tired of it. Just hauling another man’s goods back and forth between cities.”

“Well, I do sometimes, Mr. Butterfield.”

Mr. Butterfield continued gently tapping the letter on the desk.

“This letter’s from a friend of mine,” he said. “He wants to know if I know of a good man to take charge of his dairy. That is, really, he wants a superintendent for his place. Would a job like that interest you?”

“Where is it?”

“Lyons Falls. He has the finest farm in Lewis County. Maybe you saw the barn he was building last fall.”

Dan remembered the ribs of the great structure rising on the meadows, as lovely to him as a cathedral.

“Yeanh.”

“He has a fine herd,” Mr. Butterfield continued.

“I saw it,” Dan said.

“Have you had any experience?”

“Not with fine cattle,” Dan said. “But I’m pretty good with cows. I ad-mire good cows.”

“He says he doesn’t care for too experienced a man. He wants a young fellow willing to learn.”

Dan remembered the wide meadows on the river bottom and the long herd winding in. Above all, he remembered the great barn rising. “You’ll get three hundred a year to begin with, and keep. And if you work out right, the salary will go up.”

“It sounds like a good proposition,” Dan said, slowly, looking down at his hands.

“He wants a man in the fall, in time for fall ploughing.”

It seemed to Dan that he could feel the plough helves on the heels of his palms.

“And he wants a single man,” said Mr. Butterfield. “So right away I thought of you.”

Dan looked up.

“That might sort of stop me taking it, Mr. Butterfield.”

“Why?”

Dan was embarrassed.

“I’m sort of bound up here. I couldn’t take it single.”

“Do you think she’d go with you? She’s nice for a canal cook, I know that; generally they won’t leave. They’ve got a taste for travel in them.”

“I’d like to talk it over with her,” Dan said.

“All right. There’s no particular hurry. I’ll write Mr. Wilder and see what he says. I think it would be a good place for you, Harrow. And I think Mr. Wilder would find you a good man for him.”

They turned to business abruptly. Dan was to take a load of corn to Boonville… .

That evening Dan told Molly and Fortune that they would be heading for Boonville in the morning. Her face paled slightly.

“Klore’s up there,” she said.

“Yeanh,” said Dan.

“Well, it’s got to come to a wrastle one way or another,” Fortune said.

They started out of Rome in the grey before dawn, when the mist lay on the water and the air was still. Dan was steering. It was on such a morning that he had entered Rome the year before. Under his feet his own boat moved; his team went along the towpath; and his own cook worked in the cabin. He had all these. They would be worth fighting for. He knew that Klore stood between him and all his life on the canal.

Molly had said little during breakfast. She was having one of her moody days. Later she came on deck and stood beside him in the stillness, her eyes on the towline stretching into the mist; ahead the clink of the traces, and occasionally, as the mist swirled, a sight of the rumps of the team and Fortune’s thin shanks walking. Drops formed on her hair and crept slowly over her cheeks.

Just as they cleared the basin they met a boat coming in. The other team stopped and the Sarsey Sal went over the tripped rope. As the rudders passed, a harsh voice hailed them.

“What boat’s that?”

“The Sarsey Sal,” Dan said.

The heavy voice swore a hard oath; and, as if the mist cleared before it, they had a glimpse of Jotham Klore, blackbearded, looking after them. He did not try to get ashore; he said nothing further; he just looked after them. He would be on the up trip before they could come down.

Then the mist closed in between him and Dan, and when Dan turned to Molly she had gone below.

When the mist burned off, they saw men reaping oats in the fields, men in a line, swinging the cradle scythes in beautiful rhythm, while women and boys walked after them tying bundles.

Molly came out again into the warmth of the sun and sat opposite Dan with her basket of sewing, mending the collar of one of his shirts.

For a while Dan said nothing, but he let his eyes roam over the meadows where the wind made waves in the grain and the corn lifted its leaves and whispered. Finally they came to rest on her, on the light hair at the nape of her neck, and the print dress tight over her bowed shoulders.

“Mr. Butterfield says there’s a job for me up at Lyons Falls— superintendent of that big farm where we saw them building the barn.”

She kept her head bent.

“It’s three hundred a year, to start with, and keep.”

“Yeanh?”

Her voice was toneless.

“Yeanh,” he said. “It’s a fine dairy.”

A note of enthusiasm crept into the words.

“It’s a fine job to start with.”

“What did you say, Dan?”

He grew moody.

“They want a single man.”

She looked up at him quickly.

“What did you say, Dan?” she asked again.

“I said I couldn’t take it single.”

“Yeanh.”

“Mr. Butterfield said he’d write and see. I couldn’t take it single. I couldn’t leave you, Molly.”

Her eyes were wet.

“Molly, will you come with me if they’ll take us double?”

Her face bent toward her work again.

“Dan, why don’t you want to stay on the canal?”

“What’s the use? Just going back and forth— all places the same. There ain’t any interest into it.”

She drew a long breath.

“Will you come, Molly, if I get the job?”

She didn’t answer.

He looked at her a long time.

“Will you marry me if I stay on the canal, Molly?”

She kept her eyes on her hands, but there was a slight heave in her shoulders, and when she finally looked up he saw that she was crying. Eventually she went below without having given him an answer.

He brooded as they went along, steering by instinct. He knew that even if Mr. Wilder offered the job to him, as a married man, he would have to say no. His eyes followed the reapers and rested on a wagon being loaded with bundles, jumping up on the underhand swing of the forks. He turned his head to get a last glimpse of them, as if he were saying good-bye. His emotion ran so deep that he could scarcely feel it. After all, he would have the boat and his two teams and Molly.

The hills closed in. They entered the Lansing Kill, and began the long slow climb through seventy locks… .

In Boonville they met the Nancy. The fat woman was in high good humor. She had learned a new recipe for cheese pie.

“It’s good,” Solomon said. “I don’t deny it’s good, but when you get it seven days in the week the boat smells so even the rats get out.”

“Go along,” said Mrs. Gurget.

“It troubles the digestion,” Solomon said.

“Sol!” cried the fat woman.

“It’s true,” he said grimly. “It segashuates right—”

“You shut up!” she said. “Where’s your manners?”

Fortune broke in tactfully.

“I wonder if we mightn’t get a game of cards?”

Mrs. Gurget snatched her breath.

“My stars! Cards! Pinochle! I ain’t played in a week.”

She hitched her chair forward to the table.

“Show me a pack.”

Dan looked questioningly at Molly.

“I’ve got a pack,” said Fortune, “only they’re kind of dirty.”

“That’s all right,” said Mrs. Gurget in her hearty voice. “Sol ain’t washed his hands. He says it spoils his luck, but he’s a dirt-easy proposition anyways. How’ll we play?”

“I’m no good at it,” said Molly.

“Me neither,” said Dan.

“It ain’t right. One of you ought to play. Still,” the fat woman comforted her conscience, “three-handed pinochle is a lot better game than four-handed. Ain’t it, Mr. Friendly?”

“Yes, there’s a kitty three-handed.”

Molly cleared off the supper things, and the game started and went on while Dan helped her wash the dishes.

The fat woman played with gusto; one end of her shawl, trailing over the back of the chair, twitched like a third monstrous arm as she put her card on a trick. She would hesitate an instant, then put forth the card, snapping a corner down sharply, and whenever she took the trick she would break into her hearty laugh. As the playing progressed, her laughter became more frequent and good-humored. The melds she declared were extraordinary; four times she held a hundred aces, with an extra ace or two at that, and she seemed to be able to fill one hundred and fifty of trumps whenever she liked. Even double pinochle came to her hand; and the kitty always favored her.

“Some day she’ll get a thousand aces,” grunted Solomon; “and that will serve her right, too. There’s three people I’ve heard tell about getting a thousand aces, and they all had their hearts stop.”

“Mine wouldn’t,” chortled the fat woman. “I’d be too anxious to see it again to die.”

Fortune Friendly said nothing. But he watched the fat woman’s playing and followed her luck with eyes as rapt as Jacob’s must have been in his dream. When he shuffled with his quick fingers, he got himself good hands, but all the other good cards went to the fat woman; and when she or Solomon dealt, her luck was monolithic.

Solomon was like the fly between the two irresistible forces.

Molly and Dan sat down on the far side of the cabin, listening to the click of the cards and the remarks of the players, and Solomon’s intermittent groaning. Whenever the fat woman leaned back in laughing, the lamplight glittered on her locket and fell full on her broad red face. And Dan thought of the face in the locket, and looked at Solomon sitting across the table from her, his thin nose beaded with sweat as he concentrated on his cards. But then the fat woman would straighten up and settle her hat with both hands and go about the business of dealing.

Dan leaned back and drowsed with the sound of the playing in his ears. Content in each other’s presence, he and Molly did not talk; but now and then she glanced up at him with a smile at one of Solomon’s groans or Mrs. Gurget’s delighted shrieks. They were all his friends, Dan thought, and it was pleasant to have them there together; and he forgot Jotham Klore coming up from Rome.

The fat woman’s voice broke in upon him, as she made conversation in dealing.