3stalwarts (165 page)

“You are the most bedeviling bitch I ever ditched with, Besy. I won’t go on no more.”

“All right, then. Then I’m done with you, Rafe.”

“I wasn’t going to turn you off. There’s a cabin used to stand here— a trapper’s cabin. I’ll turn up to it.”

“Has it a roof left?”

“How do I know? It used to have.”

The pots clashed together as the wagon tilted over the ditch. The pony’s hoofs, pastern deep in loam, struck into a steep grade. Bushes scraped under the box.

“An old man named Lager. I mended him a fry-pan once. He aimed to start out west. He headed out to Mackinaw, he said, endeavoring to join the Pacific Company.”

“It’s a dismal-looking place, Rafe.”

“Feared of ghosts again? For a lusty bitch you have got strange fearings.”

“Who said I was feared?”

Rafe pulled the pony up beside the door.

“Who in hell is here?”

“What are you seeing, Rafe?”

“There’s a horse behind the cabin. Hear him?”

“There is, Rafe.”

“Hey, there!”

“Rafe, there’s another wagon coming up from the road.”

“Hell’s perdition! You’ve got me into this …”

“Put up your sticker, Rafe. These ain’t no sheriffs.”

“Hey, mister?” The tinker’s voice was surlily polite. “We’ve picked a young lad up, bad hurted, and brought him here as nearest shelter.”

“What’s happened to him?”

Rafe shrugged and spread his hands.

Somebody lifted Jerry. He could not open his eyes, but he heard them talking.

“Easy, you tinker. Don’t knock in his head against that door. There’s an old bed in the corner. Lay him there.”

He smelled dusty needles, felt them sticking against his wet clothes. A fire was roaring near by. The woman was stripping him. He opened his eyes.

The man said, “Here’s somebody else. Who’re you, mister?”

A dark-clad figure loomed over Jerry. A hatchet face looked down.

“Jerry! I’ve been looking for you all night and day.”

His eyes swam.

The gypsy woman looked up.

“He’s fainted. He’s got the fever. Who’s Mary?”

“Mary’s his wife,” Bennet said.

“Do you know him?” asked the tinker.

“Yes.”

“Come along, Besy. There’s no call for you now.”

“All he needs is tending, mister. He’s healthy. Read your hand, mister? Read the born hand for a fip; the both, for past and future, for a shilling?”

“No, thanks. Here’s a shilling for tending the boy. You’re a kind-hearted woman.”

“Get moving, Besy. We’ll be late for meeting.”

6

“So long as her eyes light on you’

August was nearly spent when Anna came home from the camp-meeting. She waited on her husband with a blank but attentive eye. To Jerry she was peculiarly kind, in her stolid fashion; two or three times a day she might have been seen going into the woods to seek him herbs. She brought them in in a little basket, jealously covered with fern leaves to keep them fresh, and she brewed them in a stone pot— a crudely shaped thing that she told Jerry had come down through her family. She used it exclusively for medicines.

The fever had left him thin and taken the color from under his burn. But six days after she told him that his blood was sweet again, Bennet had announced that he was heading eastward.

“I’m taking the Victor road to join the pike at Waterloo. If you want to get back to Montezuma, you could ride along with me to the east end of the Cayuga Bridge.”

Jerry accepted gratefully. He was not yet fit for all-day walking, but he wanted to get home.

Anna came stolidly to the door and handed them up a luncheon.

” ‘Bye.”

They stopped at the mill to shake hands with Corbal. He hardly noticed them. Daker had sowed some Russian wheat and he was absorbed in the flour.

“I think it ought to have a finer grind than my stones can give.”

He took a pinch.

“Look here.”

He put some in their hands.

“What’s that?” He cupped a hand behind one ear. “Oh, you’re going? Come again sometime. Now this here wheat …”

Before they had got out again to Daisy, Corbal had kicked in the trundle and the mill was roaring. As they drove through the woods their ears still sang from the stones. Bennet laughed.

“He leads a good life for a man, I think. His deafness shuts him in and he doesn’t give an earthly dang for anything in the world but wheat. You ought to see him grinding buckwheat. Dumps it in and drags it out. Coarse or fine, whichever way the stones are set. But wheat’s a misery on his soul. He’s always figuring about wheat.”

He eyed Jerry aslant and chattered on.

“All foreign seed comes bad here in three years. The German’s been no good at all. I was talking to Mr. Clinton about it, and he’s interested. North of Rome two years ago it seems he’s discovered some native growing. Whether from foreign seed originally or a native article he didn’t know. But he took seed and he’s trying it. Tall straw he says, and a crisp beard, and short kernels. If it’s a blight-free wheat it will be the greatest thing that ever happened to our farmers.”

Jerry, he saw, was not listening. It didn’t matter to Issachar. He talked that Jerry could think out his thoughts in peace. Himself, he didn’t care a hang for wheat. His long face was kindly. He clucked at Daisy.

Daisy stepped high. She was frisky with the valley grass; and to-day was cool for an August afternoon. A brisk northerly wind was shivering the poplars, and drawing chords from the oaks and balsams. The road was hard from the dry weather; the clear sun patterned it with leaves; and as she trotted, light and shade passed over her sleek back, making her seem to trot the faster.

From Victor the land opened up in farms, and men were cradling grain while their women and the children followed them to bind the sheaves and shock them. The wind bowed the grain before their scythes, and cloud shadows swept on them endlessly.

As they came into Manchester, Bennet said, “It’s high time I was getting back to Lebanon. They’ll be wondering what’s become of me and the letters I’m to bring them. I guess between here and Albany I’ll have to invent me an excuse.” He expelled a humorous sigh. “But traveling with a story on your mind makes a long trip. I’ll just forget about it till I reach Schenectady. That’s a town the sight of which always brings me back to sober fact.”

He glanced again at Jerry.

Jerry was slouched upon the seat. He was still pale. His eyes looked unseeingly at Daisy’s ears.

Bennet touched his knee.

“What’s bothering you, boy? You haven’t said three words since we left Corbal’s.”

Jerry looked miserably round at him.

“I’m thinking what a blasted fool I’ve been.”

“Is that all?” asked the preacher.

“Isn’t it enough? I’m wondering how I’m going to go back to Mary.”

“Devil it, boy! Walk in on her. She ought to be so glad to see you she won’t think of one thing else. Once she’s shown how glad she is a man can always ride out a woman after.”

“I can’t just walk in on her.”

“Why not?”

“You don’t know how she is. She’s unspoken for a girl. She’s quiet. But she looks at me sometimes. Seems as if I could see her looking at me now, this minute.”

Issachar rubbed his nose.

“Well, I’m blessed if I can see what else there is for you to do. It seems kind of late to take yourself with qualms.”

Jerry did not answer.

“If you can’t just walk in, then tell her the whole business and ask her to forgive you. It’s awful hard for a good woman to hold out against forgiving someone she is fond of.”

“But how am I going to tell her? It doesn’t seem to make no sense when I look back at it. All the time now, it seems I was just wanting to get back to her. This last time before I came out here she’d kept herself so secret from me. …”

“Don’t say nothing about that,” said Bennet sharply. “Don’t do that, boy.”

His eyebrows drew together in perplexity.

“I think,” he said slowly,— “and you’ll recollect I only seen her once, Jerry,— but I think the way she was looking at you that one time, she wouldn’t say no to you, no matter what you did, so long as her eyes lit on you.”

“Do you think so?”

Some of the haggardness seemed drawn from Jerry’s eyes.

“I do for a fact,” said Bennet, solemnly.

It seemed that the thud of Daisy’s hoofs grew dimmer for a while; and the mile markers on the roadside fences came back to Jerry with insufferable slowness.

He said aloud, for Bennet to hear in witness:—

“I’ll move her out to Rochester this fall, and I’ll build her the kind of house she’s wanted so bad, for her own, not too close to town. I’ve got the money now to do it. And enough left over to take in business with me joining Roger Hunter. I will do it.”

Issachar solemnly nodded his head.

“A good thing to do, Jerry. It seems to me you might owe her that much.”

They drove along in comfort for a little way. But as the afternoon drew on and they passed Manchester and the Geneva crossroad, Jerry felt his head growing lighter. He was still weak from the long bout with fever.

Yet the Shaker’s kind voice had planted a little seed of gladness in his brain. “So long as her eyes lit on you.” That was what he had to do— get back to her, to see her, and to hear her speak. The time he had been away became one long silence she had imposed against him. He thought, “I’ll quit the canal for good. I’ll live along with her from now on.” He remembered things between them— things that made him blush to think of. Once he had promised to buy her a spinning wheel. Now he would make that right. As soon as they got to Rochester, he would take her to a store and let her pick the one she fancied— never mind the cost.

The sun went down at their backs before they reached Waterloo; but Bennet pressed the mare forward through the village. It was supper time along the street. People were inside eating, or if they had finished they were out on the stoops to watch the road in their comfort. Daisy’s hoofs tossed beats against the walls and brought back echoes. The rattle of the wheels was duplicated by the high brick courthouse with its new, white, staring windows.

“What do you say, Jerry? Shall we night it here or get along a ways?”

“You’re driving.”

“You look tired. But four miles on, there’s the White Bear-kept by Rube Sammons. It’s a good enough place. What do you say?”

Jerry’s whole soul responded.

“Let’s get along.”

“There’s light enough for a ways.”

Bennet smiled towards the dusk.

The pike stretched straight away, and Jerry saw the night rising up like a steel sheath. The sky was domed. Faint stars hung here and there.

The mare trotted gamely. As she snuffed the coolness her nostrils bloomed and she shook her head.

“She’s a good little beast,” Bennet said affectionately. “Willing for all there is.”

Jerry was thinking that if they had Hammil’s horse, the cob, Bourbon, in the thills, they could go on all night. But the mare was an honest lady who deserved her rest.

Once the steel had reached the zenith, the night made swiftly. The stars gained brilliance as the wind died. A little beyond the northern ditch Jerry saw the fire of some movers. Their wagons were circled round it and he saw the flames and the seated figures through the wheels. The sight brought back their wedding. Now he remembered how he had been ashamed of the ring he had fashioned for Mary out of a horseshoe nail; and he told himself that it was an uneven work, half done, but that if she would still wear it he would never again suggest a gold one.

The rising notes of a teamster’s bells swam over them. He had not noticed their approach. He would not have heard them or seen the high front of the wagon had the teamster not cracked his whip.

“Good girl, Daisy. Half a mile.”

It seemed a long time before they spun into the tavern yard and Issachar sprang out. Jerry’s knees wobbled under him, and though he was ashamed to take the preacher’s hand, he knew that he could not have clambered down himself.

The light from the open door blurred before his eyes as Bennet helped him through. He heard him whisper to the keeper, “Just got over fever.”

“A little beer?”

But the keeper’s wife came bustling up.

“Would you murder the lad, Rube? Beer! Some buttermilk is the proper fancy. Come, lad, sit over here not too close the stove. A glass of buttermilk fresh from the spring-floor.”

A couple of farmers were talking to a peddler in the tap. Their voices surged and swam. Local court was over and there were things to tell.

The tavern keeper leaned over their chairs.

“How’s business been, Rube?”

“I can’t complain. Tonight’s a good night, filling beds with singles— you and the cobbler and this boy.”

Jerry was able to walk up to his room alone. He threw his shoes off and flung himself on his bed. Bennet, looking in later, covered him. He scarcely slept at all before Bennet was back waking him. While they ate their breakfast in the sun-filled tap, Mrs. Sammons sowed the floor with gleaming new sand. She was a talkative woman.

Jerry did not listen. He was fretful to get started. The flies in the windows droned. The clattering of the ducks across the yard was deafening. It seemed an hour before Bennet was ready to leave the table.

But at last the hostler brought out Daisy.

“A dainty mare you’ve got, mister. It’s pleasing to me to tend her— what with that blind white brute in the stable that would as soon step on a baby’s foot as eat an oat.”

Bennet grinned with pleasure. He stood off to admire Daisy with the hostler. Jerry could hold himself no longer.

“Let’s get going,” he cried.

Issachar Bennet carried a bulbous silver watch. He said that he could always tell when he was beginning to get fleshy by the difficulty he had getting it out of his pocket. He checked the pointing of its plump hands with the slant of the sun.

“Ten o’clock, Jerry. We’ll be sighting Bridgeport pretty fast.”

He stuck the watch away and shook the reins. Daisy picked up pace and the tires hummed on the crushed stone. They came out on the edge of a grade with the pike sloping down easily between two rows of maples. At the far end a glint of blue shone beside the track; and over the heads of the trees they saw the lake stretching out to southward. The little mare snorted with joy and went kiting down the grade full tilt. The wheels began to sing in their boxes; and the end of the wagon whipsawed dizzily.