3stalwarts (76 page)

“Gil, do you remember that John Wolff? He got arrested on that muster day?”

“John Wolff, by God. The man that kept the store. I testified against him.”

“He was here before you came back. They’d driven him out of German Flats and he came up here to see you.”

“What did he want?” Gil’s face hardened. “If he wants to come back to settle, he better not try.”

“Oh no, he was looking for some news of his wife. She never turned up in Canada.”

“I remember. After they took him to Albany she went back to the store. But she’d gone from there when the militia went up— you remember, after we went to Little Stone Arabia Stockade.”

It seemed they couldn’t get away from it. Again and again, day after day, the years came back to them. Lana wasn’t thinking of the Wolff woman then— she was thinking of the winter night in the Schuyler hut when Gil brought home the half of a thin doe. All at once she realized that it wasn’t herself who had been responsible for that long dread between them, nor Gil. She wasn’t like that. She wished he had kissed her when he came in. She lifted her face and looked at him. He wasn’t looking at her.

Lana’s eyes filled suddenly with tears. Those years, they had entered not only herself, and Gil, and through them the children, they had become part of the land, even on this place, remote as it had been throughout the war— the birds of the air, she thought, the beasts of the field. “Man’s days are as grass.” Herself, Gil.

“Is Dad come back, Ma?”

Gilly’s narrow dark little face peering through the trap from the loft… . Joey still snoring on like a half-stifled little hedgepig.

“Yes, son. It’s Dad. Get back to bed. Me and your Ma are going now.”

He laid his arm round Lana in the dark, leading her to the room they slept in. The baby was snuffling her breath in and out. As Lana started to unlace her short gown, she discovered the peacock’s feather still in her hand. She fumbled for the shelf beside the window and laid the feather on it.

She heard Gil getting down on the bed; the rustle of straw beneath the blankets. Beyond the window the faintly clinking cowbells moved along the brook.

“We’ve got this place,” she thought. “We’ve got the children. We’ve got each other. Nobody can take those things away. Not any more.”

ROME HAUL

To CHARLES TOWNSEND COPELAND

with

the writer’s

admiration, affection, and gratitude

The author has made use of two songs taken from The American Songbag: “The E-ri-e” (page 429) and “The Erie Canal” (page 430). For permission to reproduce this material he wishes to thank Mr. Carl Sandburg and Harcourt, Brace and Company.

1

THE PEDDLER

In 1850, the road to Boonville wound out of the Tug Hill country through long stretches of soft wood. On the steady downward slopes it curved back and forth through the balsams and scrubby pine; only on the occasional small ascents it ran straight; so that whoever traveled the road saw fellow travelers at a distance below him, or not at all— until he came upon them in the shadow of a bend.

Along the road a young man was walking. He strode easily, his feet meeting the ground as if they were used to earth. He was tall in spite of the stoop that took inches from his stature. His shoulders were broad and sloped. There was a cleanliness about his face and straight short hair suggesting inexperience of men.

The road, in his hours of walking, had laid a film of grey dust on his cowhide boots and had coated his trousers halfway to his knees. He wore a battered faded green hat with a narrow brim, a blue shirt open at the neck, and a brown homespun coat which puckered under his arms. In his right hand he carried a small carpetbag, ornamented on one side with a design of flowers, which he held turned inward against his leg.

The road brought him to the top of a long easy hill, and as he walked over the lip he heard the creak of a wagon round a bend ahead of him.

It was an odd-looking turnout. Both horse and wagon were of grey antiquity and capable only of slow and cautious movement. The horse leaned gingerly upon his breeching. It was not in him to hurry up hill or down. He footed the road slowly with a shambling sensitiveness and wove from side to side to lighten the effect of the grade. With the lines hanging loose on the dashboard, his head had free play so that he was able to combine his scientific descent of the hill with the demands of his appetite.

On the box, a man was reading a book. His eyes ran from side to side of the page as though he was hurrying to finish a chapter. After a moment he marked his place with a piece of string and closed the book smartly.

“Whoa!” he shouted, catching up the reins and throwing his weight backward.

The horse pricked his ears at a tuft of grass and made for it.

“Dammit!” exclaimed the man. “Have a lift?”

He did not appear to notice that the walker moved with twice the speed of his horse.

“Where’re you goin’?”

“Boonville is my destination,” replied the driver, dropping the reins. “Will you climb on?”

“Thanks.”

The walker jumped over the nigh front wheel and took his seat.

“My name’s Jacob Turnesa,” said the driver. “Peddler, I am. Peddles clothes and dress goods and jewelry. It’s a good business. What’s yours?”

“Ain’t got any now.”

“Name.”

“Dan’l Harrow.”

“Pleased to know you. Shake hands.”

He grasped Harrow’s hand with long thin fingers. His eyes over his hooked nose had drooping underlids which showed startlingly red in the pallor of his face. They surveyed Harrow appraisingly before he shifted them to his horse.

He pulled a clay pipe from his pocket and pointed it.

“There’s a horse,” he said.

“Yeanh.”

“There’s a horse,” he repeated.

“I seen him.”

“Ahhh! He’s a great one to go, he is.”

Harrow nodded.

“He is at that, though. After you get him started where there’s grass along the road, there ain’t no stopping him.”

He nodded, ruminatively spat, and began filling his pipe from a pouch of grey buckskin.

“Look at him now,” the peddler continued. The old horse had reached the bottom of the slope, where a small brook stole under the bridge and balsams made the air sweet; and he quickened his pace on the upward grade. “Funny horse. Has notions in his head like a human. Goes slow downhill ‘cause he hates to think of the updrag beyont. And when he hits the updrag he perks up his ears, thinking of the downhill he’s going to find on the other side. If he was a man, you’d call him a philosopher.”

“I wouldn’t,” said Harrow, dubiously looking at his fists.

“No,” agreed the peddler, his thin mouth grinning behind his whiskers, “you’d call him a damn fool.”

He struck a match on the iron brace of the dashboard and put it to the bowl of his pipe. A puff of rank sweet smoke popped out of the charred bowl like a recoil and swept into Dan’s face.

“Where you come from?” Turnesa asked, flipping the dead match at the rump of the horse, who switched his grizzled tail with irritation.

“Tug Hill way.”

“That’s lonely country. Leave yer family?”

“They’re dead.”

“Ahhh.”

“Pa, he died. The man that bought the place didn’t want no help. I was plannin’ to go anyhow. There ain’t nothing to that land.”

“Like horses?”

“Horses and hogs pretty good. Mostly I admire cows.”

They came out on a level piece of road where the trees opened on either side into meadow and pasture, with here and there a house.

“It ain’t very far to Boonville, now,” remarked the peddler. “That’s a nice town.”

Men were working in the fields, mowing oats. As the wagon passed a yellow house under big elms, a woman came out of the door. She wore a pink sunbonnet and carried a bucket in her hand. The squeak of the wheels attracted her attention and she looked up and recognized the peddler.

“Hullo, Mr. Turnesa,” she called. “Have some root beer?”

“Afternoon, Mrs. Sullivan. Thanks.”

He picked up the reins and yanked them. The woman pressed close to the off front wheel and lifted her bucket, in which a dipper lay, mysterious in the brown drink. Turnesa held down his beard with his left hand and brought the dipper, brimming, sidewise to his lips. He drank noisily.

“Won’t your friend?” suggested the woman, nodding out from under her bonnet. She had a plump, red, pleasant face, blue eyes, and a mouth suggesting capability. Harrow thanked her and drank eagerly. The beer was cool and very good.

“Done any peddling down the canal?” she asked.

“Only down the feeder. I don’t go below Rome any more. That railroad spreads my line of goods too quick through the main line.”

“Awful things, them railroads. Some say it’ll kill the boating in time.”

“Maybe,” said the peddler. “But I don’t think it will. It ain’t got the traction. Mules have, and the railroads can’t use mules. I say let the railroads take all the people that’s fools enough to risk ‘em. Packet boats was a nuisance anyhow.”

“That’s right,” said Mrs. Sullivan. “Lord help me, though, I wouldn’t ride in one of them trains. They go too fast.”

“Yeanh.”

“Any news Rome way?”

“They say Mary Runkle’s trial’ll come up next month.”

“Who’s she? Oh, I remember! It was she choked her husband to death while they was in bed together. It don’t seem true.”

“You can’t tell,” said Turnesa thoughtfully. “She had the strength.”

“Say,” exclaimed Mrs. Sullivan, “Drake Gallup was up from Boonville last night. He says all the folks down there is turble brustled up about there being a criminal loose on the canal.”

“I wonder who it is?”

“Don’t know for sure, but they think he’s the man’s been pulling these holdups on the canal. Stopped Drake.”

“Did Drake get a look at him?”

“No. The man wore a handkerchief over his face. He rode a big grey horse and was dressed like a spark, pipe hat and all. They call him Gentleman Joe Calash. He don’t seem to hang in one place any length of time.”

“He will one day.”

Mrs. Sullivan laughed.

Young Harrow had been listening attentively with a gleam coming into his eyes.

“Excuse me, mam. What do they want him for?”

Mrs. Sullivan smiled at him.

“Plenty. The posters is made out, ‘Dead or alive.’ “

“Yeanh,” said the peddler. “I guess he’s a bad one, all right. Say, I’ll have to get on. Thanks for the drink. Geddup!”

He struck the horse with the ends of the reins and leaned back on the seat. Mrs. Sullivan nodded to Harrow.

“Good-bye. Young man going to Boonville?”

“Yeanh,” said Harrow, diffidently. “Aim to get work there on the canal. Thanks.”

The horse walked.

“So you’re going on the canal?” said the peddler.

“Yeanh.”

“Who with, if I might ask?”

“Pa said once that Hector Berry might give me a job.”

“That’s right, he needs a driver. He’s here now— Boonville, I mean. He’s boating one of Uberfrau’s fleet. Guess he’ll take you on.”

He puffed his pipe in tune to the click and creak of the wagon.

“It’ll be a new start for you.”

He glanced at his companion. Harrow sat leaning forward on the seat, elbows on knees, staring at his large-jointed hands, a kind of hesitation in his blue-green eyes. He did not look stupid. He had been hatched by soli-tude, which nourishes men on musing, not on thought. But as he glanced up in answer to a question the peddler saw a native shrewdness lurking in the corners of his eyes.

“Well, I hope you’ll like it. The Erie is a swarming hive. Boats coming and going, passing you all the while. You can hear their horns blowing all day long. As like as not there’s a fight at every lock. There’s all kinds of people there, and they’re all going all the while. It ain’t got the finish and style as when the packet boats was running, but you’ll find fancy folk in the big ports. It’s better without the packet boats; let the railroads take the passengers. It leaves the pace steady for growing. There’s freight going west and raw food east, all on the canal; there’s people going west, New Englanders, Germans, and all them furrin folk, and there’s people com-ing east that’ve quit. But the canawlers keep a-moving.”

The peddler folded his hands over his knee.

“Water-level trade route, they call it, and it is. By grab, it’s the bowels of the nation! It’s the whole shebang of life.”

He glanced at his companion. Harrow was staring over the old horse’s ears. The cool of evening was born in the air, and shadows began to take a longer shape. Behind them Tug Hill and the sun were sinking together.

“A man can’t tell what’s coming to him,” said the peddler after a while. “The Constitution of these here States says we’re all born alike, and I guess maybe that’s right. But something takes hold of us different after that. Some people goes after money, and some after women, and some just drinks. I don’t know but what they’re right; but me, I’ve set on a wagon all my life, so I don’t rightly know. You’re a-going out after something.”

“I’m wondering where the road will fetch me out,” he added after a moment.

“Yeanh.”

“Geddup,” the peddler said to the horse, but the old beast switched his grizzled tail and snatched at a morsel.

The peddler glanced at Harrow from under his tufted brows.

“What’U you do if you don’t like the canal?”

“I ain’t thought.”

“Thought only how he’d like it,” the peddler said to himself.

“Well,” he said aloud, “you’re to rub around with a queer lot. If I was you I’d stick to Berry. He’s all right, I guess. I hope you’ll like it down there.”

“Reckon I will.”

“Ever do any reading?” the peddler asked, after a pause.

“Some. Pa learnt me. I went to school by Turin for a spell.”

“Well, then, here’s something to take with you.”

The peddler felt about under his hams and presently produced the vol-ume he had been thumbing when he greeted Harrow.

“It’s a good thing to have a book if you’re tied by alone for the night.”

Harrow took the book hesitatingly and weighed it in his hand. Then he looked at the title.