3stalwarts (112 page)

The old man took snuff again. He looked over the lake as if he saw the cabin, and not the schooner, now so near they could make out the people on deck.

“Next morning,” John Durble went on, “I told the man— his name was Cutler, James Cutler— that I was aiming to settle down here. I asked him if there was land. He didn’t say anything. He just waved his hand right round. Then he said would I want to buy improved land. Pretty soon I figured out he wanted to sell his farm. I could see it was good soil, and I liked it being close to the Creek. Running water’s a great help— just to see it and hear it. We made a deal. Then we went in to the women. My wife didn’t say anything— but I think she was pleased to be living where there’d been other people living, as long as there weren’t going to be any neighbors. But the woman’s eyes sort of glassed— as if there was something curling shut inside of her. She looked older than her husband.

“He took me outside and we spent the morning walking the place— a hundred acres, and I could have more after I’d been settled there for a year or so; but now I had enough cleared meadow and all. I paid the man dollar-down for the land, for six hogs, two cows, and three sheep. There was a couple of chickens, too, but he throwed them in on the deal. We took two days off riding down to Black Rock and making the papers over, and then me and Ellen, my wife, settled in for the winter. There was wheat and oats to be got in, and still the firewood to cut for winter. I was busy. Ellen worked into the house and tended a bit of a garden the other woman had kept there. Just when she left, the other woman had dug up some daffodil bulbs; but she left us one to grow. That was all she done— she didn’t speak about leaving. But my wife said she’d been on six different places since she had married. Her husband did that, cleared and sold improved land. He couldn’t abide.”

Nobody looking at Dan and John Durble would have guessed that the old man was talking, he spoke so quietly. Or, if they had known that, they would not have thought that Dan listened. Both men sat in the same position, backs to the wall, hands on knees, both looking out over the lake. The schooner had come in now, and the wharf hands began to unload her. She carried fur from the winter’s trapping—

“The nearest person to us was eighteen miles down the creek toward Black Rock. In and about the creek was heavy timber. We didn’t get the full smash of winds off the lakes. But I think it commenced to wear on Ellen, just the shadow of them and the wind-shriek in the branches. Our boy was born that summer. We were lucky. A man wagoning west had his wagon-reach break half a mile from the house, so him and his wife came in and I mended his wagon and the wife minded Ellen.

“But I’d become a farmer. I’d done well with crops and my sheep had lambed and I had three litters of pigs. We weren’t troubled during the summer. But late in the fall the bears come after them.

“It’s the second winter comes hardest; but Ellen had the boy to fuss with, and so did I. I’d built onto the barn that fall and put a storeroom on the cabin; but now I got to planning that when I’d got settled well, maybe in two years, I’d set right out to build a big house— that is, if there was a way I could get lumber. There wasn’t no mill yet on the Creek. I’d even gone and spotted the place I’d build at. On a rise down the Creek, where a kind of flat land came in from the north. You could see quite a ways from there— pretty near to the lake. But it snowed heavier and heavier that winter— the worst I’ve seen. And I took sick, and my wife had to do the whole job. Lucky I’d got my wood in.

“But I’d generally had to go down about the January light-snow time to Black Rock for stores. This year I couldn’t. Our tea give out. Worms got into the flour. I was getting bad, and I couldn’t only lie on the bed bunk. My wife kept up pretty good. She always had a smile. And she still looked pretty in her eyes and hair; but the worry was making her thin. We knew we was in for a bad time.

“Then one day, when it was all-harry cold and the wind cracking the trees like rifles, somebody knocked on the door. My wife opened it and in come an old feller, brown as an Injun, with white hair. He had a long-eared hound dog with him. He set down on a bench and kind of looked us over, and my wife said ‘Hello’ to him and talked about the winter, watching his face close. He set there looking at us; he had a hooked nose and his eyes was so light they looked white alongside of his skin. After a while he grinned at my wife and he said, ‘Don’t you worry.’ And right away she smiled at him. Then he come over to me. I hadn’t been able to speak none at all. He sat down and took a-hold of my hand. I’d been figuring and figuring how to get to town, but I couldn’t get no sleep for worrying. And right off, when he took hold of my hand, I went to sleep. When I come to, it was sun shining through the winder right across the blankets, and I thought I could feel the sun through them. My wife was cooking tea. I asked her where the old man was. She said he’d gone to town. I asked her where she got the tea, and she said he’d taught her to make it out of white-pine bark. It was good. I had a cup. Then I went to sleep. It had frozen solid, so he’d gone with the two horses down the Creek. Someway I knew he’d come back right enough.

“He did. After that he come round regular till I’d got well. Seems like he’d had a cabin back in the woods about four mile. He’d knowed all along we was there, but hadn’t come till one day he’d been by and seen my wife going out to mind the barn. After that he come round again to make sure. Then he’d come in with some rabbits and a bird, and then gone off to get our flour. He was a trapper. All his life he’d been in the woods. He’d seen three wars come and go through these woods, but he hadn’t mixed. He kept by himself off in the woods. There wasn’t much trapping through these parts, but he done well enough for him. He couldn’t read nor write, but he knew a lot of great men by the way of his talk. His name was Parchal Smith.

“But he never stayed long. Till I got well, he brought in game twice a week and stayed for a meal. After that he only came round once in a while. The winter dragged through. We’d see him once in a while in sum-mer. He’d bring fish. He’d took a fancy to Ellen, I guess. But if there was anybody with us he’d leave the fish by the door, and we never knowed he was there till we went out and found him gone.

“That summer word come through that they was planning to start the canal. People talked about that like it was Judgment Day getting close. They’d commenced to dig in Rome. People said it would be fifty years by the time it got to Black Rock, and others said it would be three. We’d hear from time to time how it was getting along. The first year they did fifteen miles. The next year there was three thousand men working on the line, by all accounts. In ‘19 they turned the Mohawk water in at Rome and ran a boat to Utica. That was late in the fall. We heard about it a month later where we were.

“There had been two farmers moved in within walking distance of my place. I helped them build. My wife went over to help in their houses. She’d got a loom now and was handy at making cloth. In ‘19 a mill was built up above us on the Creek. The man that built it was looking forward to the canal. I did the work and hired a man to mind the farm. I made money, but I worked on half pay, meaning to take the rest out in lumber. I’d got it fixed I’d build a real house and barn. And after planting, next spring, I commenced the work. The rest come round and said I was building too big, but me and my wife knew now that we had to settle there for good or give up the country. It was a notion I had that that would be the last carpenter work I’d do. I wanted to build my own house. Ellen and me’d dreamed about that house, just how we wanted it— two stories with a peaked roof and dormers.

“It took me a year to build. It was right on the rise I told about, and I’d put a long stoop round the side facing out. There was more people going through. By this time the canal had opened beyond Syracuse, so there was less space for them to haul across in wagons. I made money selling them food and grain. My wife was handy making cheese. That sold well. Only now and then she’d go give a cheese away. Just when she saw a young wife that couldn’t buy it. Them would look at the house I was building like it was the last they’d ever expect to see.

“Old Parchal Smith come round less. Three other families had moved in,-but none more,-but that was too much for him. He only come in the middle of winter or late at night in summer. He was getting restless. He’d leave his hound outside, and as soon as he’d hear the dog growl he’d go out. He didn’t like the talk of the canal.

“It was easier for Ellen now, with three other women round. They’d hold parties ‘mongst each other, and make us get dressed up to go. They’d send round letters by one of the children, when they could have walked as well themselves. They figured out a lot of manners that way. And they was particular about them.

“We’d talked about the canal. It didn’t seem like it would ever get to us. They’d surveyed in ‘19, and the route would come close to my place. We knew it would be good for trade, and Winster, who had the mill, figured he would sell planks for boats.

“It was different with the women. They watched the news; they got it out of everybody that come along. They wanted the talk about it, I guess.

“I’d moved into my big house, though I hadn’t enough to furnish it decent, and the neighbors had said I was foolish to build so big. But me and Ellen didn’t care. We guessed they’d wished they’d builded that way to begin with. It was the finest house west of Rochester.

“Then, first thing we knowed, in ‘23, men commenced working on the route between Black Rock and Lockport. Black Rock figured they would be the port, and Buffalo figured they would. Once a month one of them would hold a celebration, according to the news. We’d hear the guns and fireworks clear to Tonawanda Creek. The men that worked was Irishers mostly, though we hired out teams.

“I remember, two springs after that, how me and Ellen sat on the big stoop in June. A warm afternoon. The word come the water would come in from Erie. And after a while we seen it come. Brown and muddy, very slow; so’s not to rip the banks. It went by us in a little creek. We watched it rise all day. At night it was still getting up. Brown and muddy. Me and my wife just set there holding hands, and we dassn’t try to speak. It seemed like the garden would have more flowers that year— there’d be people to look up and see them on the rise. Then she put the children to bed, and come out again. We didn’t have no supper. We didn’t want it. We’d listen to the water eddy down below all night. In the morning it had come off blue in the sun— pretty near that color.”

The old man pointed.

“We hadn’t realized the water would come so close— but now it was there we liked it. People said there would be noise, but we liked it. They finished Lockport that fall. Tolls was taken on the first of October. It had been a fine farming summer. I’d had more money in than I’d expected for a single year. Then on the twenty-sixth the opening come.”

He stopped again, his eyes far off, as if he listened.

“It was a masterful event. The leaves had turned late that year, and there was still color to the woods. Wednesday night, me and my wife was waked up by a knock, and, going down, there was Parchal. He’d heard. He’d been down to the water of the canal. He had a pack on his back and his long rifle in his hand. The dog looked gay. He knew he was going on a hunt.

“They had put cannon— you know how— all along the canal and down the Hudson. There was an old ten-pounder mounted on my rise of ground, its snout pointing west, and there was one of McDonough’s sailors— an old horny man snoring upstairs in the best room— there to touch it off. The neighbors came next morning early. Ellen and the women had gotten up a big feast, and a lot of the Irishers had come in from Lockport, remembering us, to get the food. Old Parchal that night took us out and showed us a doe deer, fat and prime, he’d brought for us. ‘I had my eye on her all summer,’ he said. But his eyes was cold and kind of still.

“That next morning we got up and the women went to work. The men sat on the porch, looking down the canal to the lake. I had some Jamaica and Golden Medford for them— it was a brisk morning. Cool from frost at night, but no wind at all. The smoke from our pipes hung under the roof. The children played round— noisy. The cook smells came out to us. The sailor, Benjy Wright, sat on the cannon’s butt, patting her once in a while, and telling us how he used to shoot her. Parchal stood off by himself on the grass, leaning on his rifle, the hound dog sitting right in front of him. Both their heads was still, but they both looked westward. And the hound was working his nose. Some of the men laughed at the lean old feller and his big dog, but when I told ‘em how he’d fed me and my wife one winter, they stopped.

“About nine o’clock Benjy cut him a hard plug with his sailor knife. He had a tail of hair on his neck, and he’d oiled it that night, staining the piller till my wife could have cried. He wore a red-and-white striped shirt and had pressed his pants himself. They was wide pants. Now he petted the butt of the old cannon and he says, ‘Lilah, when it comes your turn to talk, you talk out loud.’ He lighted his match and we stood waiting. Then a cannon sounded down by Buffalo. And Benjy touched the match to the fuse and in a minute the old gun bucked and roared, and a glass broke in the window of the parlor. The Irishers jumped up cheering, and the little girls commenced to cry. And the women come out. They wasn’t crying, but they had wet eyes. Then we sat down and watched Benjy load up the cannon. And an hour and forty minutes later there was a cannon faint to eastward of us. And our gun bucked and shot again and we heard a gun boom in Buffalo. But with that sound from the eastward of us we knowed that New York knowed. The sound of it told us that.

“All to once we knowed there was other people back east who knowed about us. We were in a country as big as half the world, but with that shot it all come closer together. We weren’t alone.

“My wife,” said John Durble, “come and sat in my lap and cried.”

“Yeanh,” said Dan.

For a while there was silence.

“Clinton’s boat come along a while later when we were eating dinner. The food got burnt somehow. But we cheered him by and his four grey matched horses, and he waved to us. And we cheered the other boats. We finished eating. But it was only when my wife and I put the children to bed that night we noticed Parchal Smith was gone. When the shot sounded eastward he must have gone. Him and the hound both. I never heard of them again. But nights now me and my wife hear the boats once in a while— a horn, maybe— or, when it’s still, the clink of a trace chain. Or we see the night lanterns. The railroads come in time. But here it didn’t make so much difference. They come too easy and quick.