3stalwarts (80 page)

Solomon Tinkle squatted down beside his mules, and Dan drew in his breath and waited.

Between the drivers and beyond them they could see old Ben leaning on his staff with the sun shining over his shoulder. Below the locks the roar of the Kill falls came upon their ears and filled their heads and took their hearing from them, so that they saw Jason lower his head and rush upon the tall man and take two hard right smashes on his face and turn with his mouth wide open; and there was no sound at all. But they could see his cry.

“All he has to do,” explained his steersman, “is to hit him once; then he’ll mow him down and set him up in shocks.”

“I guess that’s right,” the other agreed affably. “George isn’t no hand for punishment.”

They spat together.

Up above them Jason rushed again and again on his deceptively clumsy legs, but each time the other’s longer reach helped him to dodge and get in a blow. At first he smiled confidently; but after a time his wind shortened and his hands grew sore, and the other’s rushes missed him more narrowly.

Dan had never watched a prolonged fight between two men. He stepped over to Solomon Tinkle and sat down beside him. The sun caught the face of the man Jason as he rushed, and the cheeks showed red and puffed like overripe tomatoes, ready to burst at the pat of a small stick. The two piglike eyes gleamed from the close lids in a controlled frenzy. Then the head sank again and the man bored in.

The sudden glimpse of color flopped something inside of Dan, and he swallowed convulsively.

The tall man landed again, left and right, and the blood came out upon his hands and touched the cuffs of his shirt.

Dan cried aloud. And the tall man grinned.

“Now look!” cried Solomon, hunching forward.

For the grin on the tall man had suddenly become frozen, and it hardened and set and became a leer, and all at once his mouth sprang open; but they heard no scream.

“No doubt it was low,” said Solomon. “We might as well pull out.”

He spoke to his mules and they took up the slack in the rope. Dan kept on staring.

The bearlike Jason was standing close in on the tall man, his legs spraddly and his back arched, and his hands drove straight in from the waist. The tall man looked over his head, and it seemed to Dan that he was looking straight at him. His fist jumped out at the other’s face, but fell aside, as though there were weights hung from his elbows. He gave no sign of mov-ing any more; but he grinned.

“Come on, Dan,” cried Hector. “We’ve got to get along.”

Dan started the team, and as they went round the bend he looked back once more. The bearlike man stood in the same position, but old Ben’s arms were stretched above his head and he stared at the tall man on the ground at his feet.

Mrs. Gurget glanced at Dan and saw that he was still a bit queasy from the fight. “Pore old man,” she said, as the trees shut off their view of the lock-tender. “I reckon he’s got religion bad.”

“Yeanh?”

“Yes, I guess he has. He used to take tolls at the weighlock to Utica; but one day he bumped his head and went twirly.”

“All lock-tenders is twirly,” Hector said sententiously from the rear. “I reckon that’s why they’re lock-tenders.”

A few hundred yards farther on, they came upon another lock, with a tender’s house standing close beside it, and again Mrs. Gurget woke the echoes with her horn. A small black-haired man with a twisted shoulder stepped out of the door.

“That’s Ethan Allen McCarthy,” Mrs. Gurget said to Dan. “He’s got ideas against God, and him and Ben don’t speak any more.”

“Hullo, Ethan,” she called. “How be you?”

“Morning, morning,” he said.

And then, as he walked over to the gate beams, “George Marble just went through with Jason Brown pushing him close.”

“They just had it out at the Five Combines. George got a beating.”

“Glad to hear it. I’ll bet old Ben took a frenzy watching them.”

“No, nothing to notice.”

“He will, he will. He’ll have to think out the sin of it first. He don’t mean harm, but he’s crazy as a hot bitch with his religion.”

He locked them through.

“Do you believe in God?” he asked Dan.

“Well, I ain’t thought.”

“Don’t, young man. Don’t do it. You can’t get anywhere doing it. Eat your vittles and thank God you ain’t got religion to raise a gas on a good meal.”

A wind had begun to pick its way down the pass; by eleven o’clock it was blowing strong from the northwest, and tumbled cold grey clouds showed over the northern hills.

Still they wound on with the tops of the trees close to their feet; and again and again they sank between the limestone walls. The canal had come to life; behind them now they heard, in eddies of the wind, the horns of other boats, long-drawn and broken by echoes. And they met boats coming up, hauled by sweating teams, the drivers cracking their bull whips as they walked with long slow strides, and the steersmen stiff beside their rudders at the stern. When they passed, Dan learned to trip his rope by holding back the horses while Hector steered the boat to the far side of the canal, so that the slack of the towline sank into the water as the boat came abreast, and the upstream craft, horse and boat, passed over it.

They locked through number thirty-nine and hauled out onto a stretch a mile and a half long, and for a way the hills were high above them and the roar of the Lansing Kill close at hand. The road stayed up on the hillsides, appearing here and there between the trees.

In a cove where the canal set back, they saw a shanty boat, a hovel on a platform with a porch facing the stern. Tethered by the towpath, an old mule cropped up grass with short, tobacco-brown teeth. He did not look up at them, but one long white ear followed the sound of their passing. On the porch of the boat, a man with a white beard sat smoking a corncob pipe. Dan could see the smoke pop from his lips and hover under the roof before the wind snatched it away. A line between two posts on the roof held a snapping string of clean clothes to the wind. Inside, a woman was singing softly.

“Queer place for a shanty boater,” said Mrs. Gurget.

“They come and go,” said Hector Berry.

The singing ceased, and the woman came out to stand beside the old man and watch the boats passing. She looked very young and slender and dark. Mrs. Gurget waved to her, but her eyes followed Dan and she did not reply. The old man turned his head to speak to her, and she went in.

“Queer folk,” Mrs. Gurget said to herself.

The old man took another puff on his pipe, and the wind carried the smoke away; and a moment after, the boats turned a bend.

Mrs. Gurget’s glance fell upon Dan. She did not wonder the girl had looked at him. There was a light in his eyes as he walked. He kept his gaze far ahead to the outlet of the gorge. He was handsome, she decided. He had good features, and the wind had brought a color into his lean high cheeks.

“Seeing things,” said Mrs. Gurget. “Young.”

She heaved a sigh and caught the tiller in against her side with her right elbow that she might pat smooth her hair and settle her bonnet.

She smiled at him.

“Dan!” she called softly. He did not hear her.

She sighed again, and put her hand to her heart. Presently she felt for the bottle under her chair.

Dan had seen the young woman on the shanty boat. Over the water she had seemed very pretty. He had flushed… .

“It must be lonesome living on a shanty boat,” he said to Mrs. Gurget.

The fat woman smacked her lips against the rim of her tumbler.

“I guess so— but they’re queer folk.”

“It must be hard on a girl.”

“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Gurget, “perhaps it is.”

“It must get lonesome for her, alone with her father.”

“Good land!” exclaimed the fat woman. “I guess it would be lonesome.”

“Jeepers!” said Dan. “He’s too old for her to marry.” He looked at her accusingly; but Mrs. Gurget, with considerable delicacy, was taking another drink.

At noon they tied up to the bank. After they had grained the teams, Hector and Solomon and Dan sat on the deck of the Nancy, while Mrs. Gurget cooked dinner. They leaned their backs against the low wall of the cabin to be out of the wind, and the iron ventilators, just over their heads, exhaled the smell of coffee and of frying chops. The clouds had swept full across the sky, and there was a keenness in the wind suggesting snow. Far up the valley a small shower was crossing the hills. A hawk circled dizzily back and forth, his wings on an almost vertical plane when he crossed the force of the wind. Now and then his piercing whistle reached their ears.

All at once Solomon tilted his head.

“What’s that?”

They turned their faces to the wind. The road ran along the hillside on their left, and through an opening in the trees almost opposite the Nancy a section of it which had been freshly planked shone white.

In a gust of the wind, from up the valley, they heard clearly a thunder on the wood, and all at once, in the opening, they had a clear view of a tall man riding a grey horse hard.

A spatter of rain struck their faces.

“Jeepers, he was traveling,” said Solomon.

Dan had recognized the horse. There was no doubt in his mind that he had seen Calash for the second time.

“Dinner’s ready,” called Mrs. Gurget as they went into the cabin. “What’s the matter with you?”

Solomon told her about the horse they had just seen.

She served them with a platter of pork chops and a round pan of fried potatoes. The smell of her coffee was forewarning of heaven.

“Them chops,” she remarked, “is A-l. I guarantee ‘em. They raise first-rate hogs to Boonville. Now set down and eat.”

She gave them a good example.

“I wonder what that man’s hurry was?” said Hector, swishing his coffee round and round in his cup.

“Grey horse?” asked Mrs. Gurget.

“Yeanh.”

“Tall man riding him?”

“Pretty tall.”

“Well, my gracious! Didn’t you read a poster this morning, Sol?”

“By grab! I’ll bet it is!”

“What?” asked Hector.

“Gentleman Joe.”

“Gol,” said Hector.

Hector’s Sad Case

There was a pause while Mrs. Gurget brought on an apple pie.

“We ought to pick up Nell by four o’clock,” said Solomon.

“Yeanh,” said Hector. He turned to Dan. “That’s Penelope Berry, my wife.”

“We ought to get going pretty quick,” said Mrs. Gurget. “She don’t like to be kept waiting.”

“That’s true,” said Hector. “She’s a remarkable woman, Dan. You’ll be pleased to know her. But if you ever get married, make sure she’s got no moral sense— either way.”

They pulled out shortly afterwards. The wind had died down, but the clouds still hung in the sky.

The locks they came to were spaced farther apart, and at last they reached the lowest three combines, from the top of which they looked down on the village of Northwestern. Before them the hills sloped away and the canal ran again through level farming country.

Three boats were tied up to the Northwestern dock in front of Han Yerry’s Saloon, and laughing voices reached out to them from the windows under the long porch. An old man sat with his back against a cleat and fished for sunfish and bass.

“Pushing on?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. We aim to reach Delta tonight.”

“That ain’t far.”

He pulled a paper bag from his pocket, licked his forefinger, thrust it in, and rubbed the snuff that stuck to it back and forth along his gums.

The two teams plodded ahead steadily. The sun came out from under the clouds to the west and shone upon the meadows with brown and yellow tints.

“We ought to pick up Nell Berry pretty soon now. She’s staying at a farm behind those trees over there. Some of her kin.”

The fat woman pointed out a grove of trees to Dan.

“Poor Hector,” she sighed. “If he’d up and lace her once or twice, he’d work some of the cat poison out of her liver. She’s a good enough body, too, but he’s let her boss him until she’s got unhealthy notions.

“Now you wouldn’t think it,” she went on, smiling, “but Sol, he won’t take any nonsense. No, sir. But Hector, he was like one of them Bible men and courted her five years before she said she’d take him. And then on the day of the wedding, when the minister came early, she said there’d be no marrying, but he might as well stay to the wedding dinner that had been cooked anyhow. She told Hector the same thing— he’d ought to’ve dragged and kicked her to the marrying state, but she was like an old mare that hadn’t been harness-broke, and she balked. He asked when; and she made it one year. They ate the dinner and married the next year without it, her pa saying that a woman hadn’t ought to have more than one dinner to a wedding. And on the night of the wedding she told him she’d be damned if she’d sleep with him— and I guess she hasn’t yet. But that ain’t so bad-it wouldn’t be no privilege.”

The fat woman tossed her head.

“Hector! Hector!”

The cry was shrilly imperative. A little woman with a grizzled knot of hair pushing her straw-colored bonnet over her eyes, and a big carpetbag in her left hand, ran down to the towpath.

“That you, Nell?” said Hector mildly.

“That me? I should guess it was, waiting here for you with this bag in my hand for all of half an hour. What made you so late?”

“I had ‘em all into the Nancy for dinner,” explained Mrs. Gurget. “I made ‘em come, and we killed a little time.”

“Who gave you leave to boss my husband?” shrilled the little woman. “If Hector wasn’t so mild-mannered, people wouldn’t impose on him and keep me waiting like this. Now put that boat against the bank, Hector. Think I’m going to jump eight foot of water?”

Hector swung the Ella in obediently and put out a plank to the towpath. The little woman started up, then stopped and backed off, raising her wizened face to glare at Dan.

“Who’s that man, Hector? I never seen him. I won’t sleep on board that boat if that strange man is going to be on it.”

“Well, this is just Dan Harrow who’s driving to Rome for me. That’s all.”

“I don’t care who he is. A good woman can’t afford to take risks. Either that strange young man will stay ashore, Hector, or I will. Do you hear?”