3stalwarts (131 page)

“I declare if little Alice ain’t helpless as Lester,” she said. Her narrow shoulders sagged. “I might know the only girl I had would look like him, but I didn’t expect she’d act like him at five months.”

“She’s a nice-looking baby,” Jerry said, averting his eyes. The baby had stored up enough water in her mouth to make a handsome splutter.

“Did you make agreement on the room, Mr. Fowler?”

“Yes, we decided to take it a week anyway. Shall I pay Mr. Charley?”

“No! You pay me— if you’re minded to pay in advance. He talks about business in his store, but I never see no signs of it. You pay me. Thank you. That’s real nice of you. I hope you’ll like it.”

She pinned the bill into her dress and carried the silver to a cupboard. She took out a jar, and dropped the change into a dark liquid.

“Vinegar,” she explained. “It’s the only place them young thieves wouldn’t look for it— or Lester neither.”

In a moment she was back at the pan, fishing out a towel from a mess of other things on her way. As he went through the door, Jerry heard her talking sharply to the baby.

Lingering for a moment in front of the house, Jerry looked up and down the street. On his right he heard the whine of a small metal saw, then the tapping of a light hammer. Through the window he saw a gunsmith working at his bench.

He didn’t know where to turn. Back in Uniontown, where one knew everybody, getting work was a different proposition; but here a man didn’t feel just like stopping anybody on the street, like a beggar, to ask him for work. Jerry had eighteen dollars in his pocket; and if they stayed at Charley’s that would keep them nine more weeks— barring sickness or accident. He shuffled his feet in the white dust and looked through the windows of Mr. Todd’s cigar store. Behind him on the street a gentleman rode by on a big spanking bay while a hound dog followed, threading the trees along the sidewalk.

Attracted by the sight of a good horse, Jerry walked slowly down Genesee Street. The wind was dying and the heat of the sun was gaining strength. Women returning from market, laden with baskets, or carrying a bucket of well water, stopped in the narrow strips of shade for brief gossips.

Jerry only half caught their discreet voices; but as he went on, wondering what to do, he began to feel more at home. For all its size, Utica was a country village: these people were country people, like the people back in Uniontown. It occurred to him that a good place for him to go would be the blacksmith’s. In Uniontown that was the gathering place for men towards noon.

He halted a Quaker couple coming towards him in their drab clothes. The man lifted his sloping high hat.

“Thee wants a blacksmith, young man?”

“Yes.”

“Thee is a stranger here in Utica?”

“I got in this morning.”

“Then thee might try John Jones’s beyond Bellinger’s. It’s opposite the harness maker’s, Mr. Dana’s, on Whitesboro Street.”

“Thanks, I know that street.”

The man touched his hat again, and the woman soothed the head of a white duck that protruded from her basket.

Jerry continued his way to the square at which the Hallecks had dropped them. All along the sidewalk, tied to hitching posts, drowsed horses. A pair of bullocks hauled a load of limestone on their creaking cart. Com-ing up from the stage house, Jerry encountered the largest Pennsylvania wagon he had ever seen. Nine horses were harnessed in the team, and the driver carried an eighteen-foot whip, such as only a heavy-muscled man could handle. A second man sat on the seat with a shotgun across his knees; and as the great wheels rumbled round the turn for Genesee Street, Jerry saw a third holding a rifle between the rear flaps.

Other pedestrians stopped beside Jerry to watch the wagon take its slow way out of the town.

“They’re a tough-bitted looking pair of guards,” said a voice.

“They have to be, I guess. Sleeping out with that wagon in these western counties.”

“Last time they come east they raised a rumpus down in Bellinger’s. Weren’t nobody could handle them to throw them out.”

“Well, they’re sober enough heading west.”

“Where are they hauling now?”

“Erie Bank in Pennsylvany. Carrying specie.”

“I wouldn’t want to tie up with them. Hank’s a noted gouger in the western counties.”

“Nobody to bother them, I guess. Time’s gone since the Doanes and Tomblesons was at it.”

The bells made small notes in the sun. The wagon top drew a circular spot of shadow in behind it. Down Main Street Jerry saw a hostler bringing out the four-horse team for the north-country stage. The driver was leaning against the nigh front wheel chewing tobacco with a lank jaw. He spat a fly from the tire and brandished his whip at a hired girl in one of the hotel windows. She giggled, cried out, “Go on!” and slammed the sash down.

Whitesboro Street was cooler. The stores were not as pretentiously fronted. The houses were smaller. A little ahead, Jerry saw a signboard hanging over the walk, and Bellinger’s Tavern painted on it. Behind the tavern a low, log-walled barn made one side of a yard. It looked like a farm that had been captured and fenced in with houses. Somewhere in the loft an excitable hen was announcing the arrival of an egg.

“It does beat all,” said a man in the street, “how -surprised a hen can be.” Jerry grinned and looked over at a red, sweating face under a broad grey hat.

“That’s right,” he said. “It seems like even an egg could tickle a hen.” The man lifted his face and guffawed. He was wearing a prodigiously fuzzy brown homespun coat and black pants stuffed into cowhide boots, and his shirt was a bright green flannel. The horse he was leading by a halter rope caught Jerry’s eye. It was a brown horse, black-pointed, with good legs, a small head. Jerry took one look at the crest and front and moved round behind.

“Like him?” asked the fat man.

“I’d have bet he was a stallion,” Jerry said. “But he ain’t.” The man stepped round with Jerry, his paunch jerking tubbily to his short steps. He bent over at the end of the rope and breathed loudly. “The man I bought him off in Cooperstown had come up from south. He said he was gelded to his knowledge two years back. Claimed he was three years old. I bought him last week— but all I’ve been able to figure out about the brute is that he ain’t a mare, anyway.”

Jerry grinned.

“Maybe he’s a ridgeling. No gelding ever growed a neck like that.”

The fat man looked doubtful as he straightened up. He tilted his hat forward over his round nose to scratch the back of his head.

“I ain’t much of a man with horses. But I got him pretty cheap and I’ve been looking out for a horse could drag me around a lot these coming years and not get tired. It takes a good piece of flesh to drag me, mister.”

Jerry eyed the horse.

“He ought to do that.”

The horse stood still in the street, disdainfully moving his ears above their heads. He was deep-barreled. The ribs were set high and deep-sprung. His short legs were clean, with small, neat, round hoofs.

“I’m going to get him shod,” said the owner.

Jerry said, “He don’t look to me as if he ever wore iron. He’s a strange-looking animal, but I notion his looks.”

“I calculated he might be Morgan,” said the fat man.

Jerry shook his head.

“He ain’t Morgan. He’s too big, too square across the quarters. I’d like to take a look at his mouth.”

“Go ahead. I ain’t got up the nerve myself, and if I did I wouldn’t know nothing.”

Jerry took the lead rope and laid his right hand under the horse’s jaw. He pinched easily and caught the lip.

“You wasn’t cheated on age,” he said. “The rings are sharp. Here, you!” as the horse jerked back. The fat man snatched the rope, and planted his feet.

“By God, I couldn’t stand that brute’s running away on me again. Not up Genesee Street.”

The horse recognized an unbudgeable weight on the end of the lead rope and haughtily resigned himself.

“I’ll just take him into Jones’s. Then it’s up to him.”

“I was just going there,” said Jerry. “I’d like to see him shoe that horse.”

“You a stranger?” asked the fat man, as they proceeded.

“Yes,” said Jerry.

“I thought you looked new to Utica. My name’s Caleb Hammil.”

Jerry introduced himself, and the fat man extended a monstrous paw. Behind them the hen tripped through the barn doors and viewed the world. She was still cackling; but suddenly she squalled. They wheeled to see her feathers ruffling as she turned tail and scudded round the corner. A moment later a rooster went by leveled out from bill to tail. His pale yellow, spurred legs glistened through the puffs of dust, and he had a purposeful eye.

“That looks like one of the old Bellinger cocks,” said Hammil. “You like cockfighting?”

“Never seen a good one.”

“It’s pretty good sport,” said Hammil. “I used to go in for it, but every cock I ever owned seemed to put on flesh too quick to make more of than meat.” He scratched his head. “It’s a funny thing. I never could figure it out.”

Beyond the tavern hitch-rail, the footpath was crossed by a horse walk, leading up a slight incline to the smithy. Old catkins from the two maples flanking the doorway still furred the planking. From inside came the whirring of the forge fan and the clang of a hammer against iron and the mutter of desultory voices. A dog gave a sharp bark as the horse’s hoofs struck on the plank, and the hammer clanked and was still.

“It’s Hammil with his new horse.”

“Hello, Caleb. When did you get back?”

“Yesterday, John. Morning, Francis. Morning, Ed.”

“Morning,” they said, as the two men entered. The horse stopped still in the door. His ears were pricked and his nostrils suddenly blossomed at the fire.

The smith, a short blackbearded man with long arms thickly haired, cropped a chunk of soft coal on the fire and came forward out of the shadow. A small smooth-coated black dog sprang down from somewhere and trotted up beside him. They took a stand in front of the horse.

“Here he is,” said Hammil, handing over the halter rope.

The smith took it and continued his examination of the horse. He did not move a hair. The two loafers, who had been sitting with their backs against the iron-bench, scented an unusual thing and got up creakily. They were a senile pair— one with staring lazy eyes half blank, half sharp; the other a thin unwhiskered old man in leggings, who had a wheeze in his speech. They lined up beside Jones.

“Where’d you get him?” asked the smith.

Hammil repeated his tale of the southern man. “This young chap, Jerry Fowler, said he looked like a stallion. Myself, I don’t know.”

The smith continued his scrutiny in silence. But Francis let out a wheeze, and said, “He ‘pears uncommon to me.”

He bent down and took hold of his moustaches with both hands.

“Reckon I can tell a stallion when I look,” he said, with an air of maintaining it against the world. “That ain’t no stallion.”

“Might be a ridgeling,” Hammil said. “That’s Fowler’s idea.”

The two men gowked at Jerry. Then as one man they turned back to the horse. They shook their heads. Francis whistled between his teeth.

Hammil was leaning his back against the wall with all the defensive indifference of the man who has brought back a new horse. Jerry felt a mo-ment’s sympathy, but his attention was on the smith.

John Jones casually put the halter rope under his arm and fished under the tail of his apron. He brought out a rope of twist and poked it into his beard and gnawed off a chew. The muscles in his temples went in and out to the clamp of his jaws. His forge-red face and his blue eyes were calm.

“It’s twenty years since I come across the water,” he said at last. “I’ve never seen the like of this animal since then. He don’t exactly resemble a cob, Hammil, but he’s pretty like it. If he’s got the blood of it in him, you’ve made a buy.”

Suddenly his hands shook under his apron and his eyes blazed. He looked the horse straight in the eye, and said an outlandish word. The horse looked back steadily, his feet neatly braced, his pointed small ears unmoving. The smith swore under his breath. “If he was brought over he’d remember Gaelic.” He jerked the lead rope.

The horse hesitated.

“Come up!” Jones said harshly.

The horse entered, nostrils a-flutter at the smell of fire and old hoof. The two loafers returned to their boxes against the iron-bench and Hammil joined them. Jerry remained in the doorway. Jones hitched the animal to a ring in one of the upright cedar trunks that braced the loft, and said, “I doubt if he’s been shod. I want room.”

Hammil grinned.

“That’s what Fowler said. I wish you luck, John.”

The smith looked over at Jerry.

“What do you know about horses?”

Jerry’s cheeks flushed.

“Just a little.”

“Well, I calculate you’re right. And I believe he’s a ridgeling myself. It was a dirty trick to spoil a horse as good as that, but I guess it was the Irish blood in him held up on the bloody devil that done it.”

He went about among his tools and then proceeded to the iron-bench. He turned there to speculate on the hoofs once more.

“Want plates, Caleb? Or a bar shoe? Or light caulks?”

“Whatever you say, John.”

“Road work?”

“Yes.”

“If it wasn’t for their macadaming so much lately I’d say leave him as he is. Those hoofs ain’t going lame in dirt, not with hocks as dainty as his.”

“I’d consider him too let down,” said Francis, round a wheeze.

“That’s because you never knowed anything about a horse,” said the smith gruffly, picking up bars. “Blow— Rip!”

The little dog cocked an ear and sprang onto a small treadmill set up to the left of the forge. His tan feet began to fly. His stump of a tail jerked and bobbed. In a moment his tongue slipped out of his mouth and little bobs of froth flecked his cheeks. Inside the forge sounded the whirr of the fan. Jones stepped over and raked together the coal the blast had opened up, and a minute later the fire bloomed red.

Over by the bench in the sunny window, Hammil and the two old men began to talk. But the smith paid them no heed.

“We’ll have to gentle the brute,” he said to Jerry, as to a man who could understand; and Jerry watched admiringly as his big hands stroked the nervous muscles and firmly handled the front hoofs. While the iron heated, the smith walked round and round the horse, putting his shoulder against its belly, lifting its hoofs, sniffing them, letting them go, and watching their set upon the floor. The horse was distinctly on guard, but the sure strong hands quelled with their knowledge any disposition to violence be-fore the horse himself had felt it. It was an artist at work that Jerry watched, cutting out the hoofs and framing them. The rasp cut level without fraying.