3stalwarts (82 page)

His hand went to his face and lingered there. A missionary, who had been observing him for several moments, came up behind him and laid a kindly hand upon his shoulder. “What is it, my boy?” he asked, perceiving an opportunity to assist in the regeneration of a soul. “It’s a hard life you’ve had to live, but there’s help for every man here.” He opened a small bag he carried in his left hand and selected a tract, which he held out to Dan. It was titled, Esau; or the Ruinous Bargain.

Dan stared at him vacantly, and the missioner smiled reassuringly.

“Come with me,” he said. “Perhaps I can help you.”

He was dressed in black clothes, and wore a rather soiled white tie.

“Thanks,” Dan mumbled.

The missioner’s long face brightened.

“You see the way ahead of you,” he said encouragingly. “You’re puzzled now; but I’ll help you find it if you’ll come with me.”

Dan’s face cleared, as if he understood.

“Yeanh,” he said. “That’s right. I was wondering where there was a barber.”

Perhaps it had been a bad morning for the missioner, or perhaps the work was new to him, for he sighed and told Dan he didn’t know and went on down the dock.

Dan picked up his bag and faced the row of warehouses. A couple of teams pulling heavy lumber wagons thumped past him.

“Looking for something?”

A middle-aged man, well dressed in a black coat and black satin waistcoat, grey trousers, and a pipe hat, regarded Dan out of cool grey eyes. He had lean, fine features, a thin mouth sufficiently curving not to be cruel, and his head was set handsomely on his neck. He was of a type new to Dan’s experience; there was the clever fit of his clothes, for one thing.

“Yeanh,” said Dan. “I was looking for a barber.”

“Well, you go up that right-hand street, two blocks, and turn left down the second street, about five houses down. What’s your name, if I may ask?”

“Dan’l Harrow.”

“Was your father Henry Harrow? He was? I thought I recognized something in your face. I knew him well. Where’s he been all these years?”

“Tug Hill way. He’s dead.”

“I’m sorry. I knew him well. So did all the Erie folks. His name and his boat stood out in the great days of packet traveling. What are you doing in Rome?”

“I aim to get a job,” said Dan.

“Located yet?”

“No. I aim to look around some.”

“It’s a good idea to find out what you want. If you’d like to, I can offer you a job. Come round next week. Butterfield’s warehouse. My name’s John Butterfield. I’d like to help you any way I can. Your father was a fine man.”

He shook hands cordially and went on his way, walking sturdily erect.

M. Pantoulenzo, Barber

Following Mr. Butterfield’s directions, after three minutes’ walking Dan found himself in a street of wooden houses, some with fancy work on the porches, but for the most part severely plain and painted in quiet colors. Over a second-story window of one of these his wandering eye fell upon a sign bearing the name M. Pantoulenzo, ornately scrolled, with the explanatory legend underneath:—

HAIR TRIMMED. EASY SHAVE. BLOOD LET.

Teeth drawn at Regular Prices.

A door opening on a pitch-dark flight of stairs advertised M. Pantoulenzo again with a card and the words, “One flight up.” Dan entered and, after a moment’s groping, found himself on a small landing with a door on the left-hand side. A small pane of glass was let into one of the panels, affording a view of the shop.

Directly before the window stood a barber chair, gorgeous in crimson plush, and at the moment harboring a tall, very thin man with an abstracted expression on his face. He was sitting up straight, with his hands on his knees, his head bent painfully to one side in the manner of the conscientious and anxiously obliging customer. The towel in which he was enveloped had evidently been manufactured by the barber himself, for it reached just below the tall man’s waistcoat and formed a chute down which the shorn hair slid to his trousers. Of the barber himself Dan could see no more than the half of a red face, a glancing black eye, and a pair of thin hands stretching spasmodically for the hair above them.

The attitudes of both men suggested so forcibly a precarious equilibrium of mind and body that Dan fingered the latch and opened the door as quietly as he could.

“Goo’ morning,” said the barber. “Set down, mister. I’m through in half a mo’.”

The tall man did not look up.

The little barber was parting his customer’s hair. Then he whipped away the towel, scattering the loose hair broadcast. The tall man leisurely climbed out of the chair and pulled out a billfold.

“Here you be, Francey.”

The barber nodded his head and put the bill in his pocket. The tall man picked a broad-brimmed hat from a peg and said, “Morning,” and went out of the room with an easy swagger of his shoulders.

“Next!” cried the barber.

Dan looked round.

“You, mister; you’re next, I reckon.”

Dan took his seat in the chair, and the barber deftly slipped the towel over him and pinned it round his neck.

” What’ll you have?”

“Shave.”

The sunlight shining through the windows and lighting on his neck made him drowsy, his eyes lazily surveying the varnished board walls, a colored lithograph of the battle of Oriskany their only decoration, the white shelf with its rows of lotions, its two razors and their strops, the worn old mug with a cap of lather gradually settling back into its rimy interior, the kettle of hot water purring on the little corner stove, and all about his feet the shorn hair of former customers lying in heaps like little cords of wood.

The barber set about whipping up a lather. He was a small man, but in spite of his outlandish name there was nothing particularly foreign-look- ing about him. His pointed face held an expression of keenness, and there was a precocious cock to his head. As he worked, he kept popping questions at Dan.

“Getting warmer?”

“Yeanh.”

“I thought maybe it would. We don’t get much real cold here till November.”

He applied a great deal of lather and then began to strop his razor. He did it with a flourish.

“Stranger?” asked the barber.

“Yeanh.”

The barber worked for an instant in silence.

“Well,” he said, “you’ve come to a good place to find work. Rome, New York, is due to become one of the great metropolises.” He turned up the left side of Dan’s face. “And look where it stands. On the confluence of two canals. Oneida County has just commenced to grow. Look at the timber. Finest white pine in the state. Cribs of timber coming down every spring faster than the locks’U take them. It’s right on the trade route to the West. The highroad, the railroad, and the canal right among the streets. You looking for a job on the canal?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I wished I’d knowed that. The feller that was in here was looking for a driver. Operates a line boat on the Troy to Michigan Six Day Line.”

Dan took an interest. “What’s his name?”

“Julius W. Wilson. A celebrated character, now a Roman. Used to be-long to Flame and Furnas, the famous knife-throwing team of the American Museum in New York City. Corner of Ann Street and Broadway. If you ever go there, don’t miss it. It’s one of the wonders of this continent, and if there are any others most likely they’re all in it. Every afternoon from four to four-thirty Flame and Furnas did their show. (Flame was Wilson’s bill name.) Furnas held the knives and did the talking and Wilson done the throwing. It was a great sight— a cold chill for a thousand people every ten seconds. They had a nine-year-old boy for a target.”

“You know a lot about him.”

“Why wouldn’t I? I’m his regular barber. Most any day he’ll tell me all about it; tell me just how close he’d come. Ankle, knee, hip, waist, shoulder (armhole by particular request), neck. Couldn’t beat him. It ain’t strange, it’s the artist temperament.”

Dan grunted.

“True as preaching. I’ve shaved a whole minstrel show; they’re all the same.

“Yes, sir,” the barber went on, “if you want a job, you go round to Hennessy’s Saloon— just round the corner— when you’re shaved and ask for Wilson. Probably he’ll take you on. He’s hauling to Albany.”

“I guess I will.”

M. Pantoulenzo flourished his razor under Dan’s nose and shaved the lip.

“M. Pantoulenzo— quite a name, eh?”

“Yeanh,” said Dan.

“A good trade name’s a great thing in business. Now, looking at that name, you’d never guess I was born in London, would you?”

“No.”

“That’s why I picked on it. Real name is Smiggs. That might go in England. Smiggs, barber. But it wouldn’t go an inch in this land. Americans are that way. They’ve got extravagant notions of business and work which makes ‘em serious in their notions of pleasure or getting their hair cut, or going to the dentist. My Crikey, ‘ow these people do shine to a dentist! If I wasn’t a barber, I’d go in for teeth altogether. You can tear out a whole jawful of teeth with them and set up false ones and they’ll call it progress.”

He reached for a damp towel with which to remove the edges of lather left from the shave, and then, grunting, swung the chair into an upright position.

Dan paid him and made his way slowly down the stairs.

In Hennessy’s Saloon

The sun had come out warm, and the air was so sparkling and clear that he stepped out sturdily. Women were going by on their way to market, their baskets on their arms. A carriage crossed the end of the street, and a fast trotter in front of a varnished surrey caught Dan’s eye.

Overhead in the cloudless sky he could see a great flock of crows flapping over the town, so high above him that their cawing sounded thin.

There could be no mistaking Hennessy’s Saloon; it was so obviously one. Its flashy green doors hooked open, it stood well out toward the roadway; and its two broad glass windows gave it an appearance of extreme open-handedness and sincerity.

Inside the bar, the keep was reading that week’s copy of the Roman Citizen. There was no one else in the room. He looked up at Dan’s entrance, cocking one eye over the edge of the paper.

“What’s yours?”

“Is Mr. Wilson here?”

“Come in five minutes ago. He’s out back talking to Hennessy. You can see him when he comes out. What’s yours?”

“I don’t know,” said Dan. “I hadn’t thought.”

“You’ll want a bit of a swallow,” said the keep. “Julius W. and old Hennessy talk quite a while once they get going. Have a black strap?”

“Surely.”

The keep mixed a glassful, drawing first the molasses and then the rum directly from the kegs. There was a great row of them behind the bar, which ran the whole length of the room, and over them, on shelves, rows of bottles obliquely picked out the sunny doorway. The keep covered the glass with another and shook the mixture. His hands worked with great rapidity, and when he set the glass before Dan there was a thin cap of brown foam upon it.

“Four cents.”

Dan slapped down the pennies and started to sip the heavy sweet drink. It was cool in the barroom, and the shadow was grateful to his eyes after the sunlight in the street. Gradually he became drowsy; the two preceding days had been hard ones. The keep grinned to see him nod and almost lose his hold on the glass.

“Kind of sleepy, eh? Well, Wilson won’t be out for an hour, most likely, and if you want to lie down in the back room I’ll call you when he comes out.”

He pointed his thumb to a door at the back of the bar. Dan thanked him and picked up his bag.

After he had closed the door behind him, it took Dan a minute to accustom his eyes to the darkness. The one window in the room was boarded over, but enough light crept through the cracks to show him four stout posts, two feet or more in diameter, rising from floor to ceiling. About each post a circular platform had been constructed with a mattress to fit, so that as many as twelve men could sleep about a single upright, their feet to the post and their bodies radiating outward like the spokes of an immense wheel.

Dan stretched himself out with his hands folded behind his head. He must have dozed for a minute, for he suddenly became conscious of three voices speaking beyond the door to the bar; and that strange sense which bridges the gap between sleeping and waking informed him that they had been speaking for some time. In an instant he had recognized the bartender’s voice; and it occurred to him that he had heard both of the other voices. And then he caught the names, and placed them— Spinning, the sheriff of Rome, and Mr. Henderson, who called himself a horse dealer. Spinning was talking in his loud voice.

“… danged near cornered him up by Potato Hill. He’d got himself put up at the Morris place. Old man Morris didn’t have no idea about who he was. But he described the horse to me. He can’t see very well, and the feller wore his hat in the house, a wide-brimmed one, so it was hard to see his face. Calash had only stayed there overnight. But the horse sounds like the one you lost. Yes, sir, I’ve no doubt it’s the same. Give us a little more time, Mr. Henderson, and we’ll have him back for you.”

“I don’t doubt it.” Henderson’s voice was harder to follow. “When did he come down this way?”

“That afternoon. We’re not such fools. We had a couple of people on the lookout. And I know reliable he’s headed for Syracuse. Nothing more I can do for the moment. I’m going to have some rest. We’ll get him, though, won’t we, Luke? You know me.”

“Sure,” said the bartender. “Question of time. You’ll have him, though.”

“They’re sending a Department of Justice man up here,” the sheriff growled. “But do you think they’d tell me his name? No, they won’t. I’m to keep on on my own line and help him if he comes to me. Like as not when we’ve got Calash he’ll join in on the reward.”

“It’s hard,” said Mr. Henderson.

“Sure,” said the bartender sympathetically.

The voices of the sheriff and Henderson dimmed, as if they had moved to another part of the room. Then Dan heard a new voice, a woman’s this time, asking for Mr. Klore.

“Said he’d be back in half an hour,” replied the barkeep.

The young woman’s voice replied that she would wait. Quick, light steps came through the half door in the bar to the door of the circular-bed chamber. Dan heard a whisper and the bartender’s voice huskily replying, “Just a young lad.”