3stalwarts (168 page)

The old fellow nodded.

“It’s a nice place for a man to set,” said Jerry. “Do you generally set here?”

“Mostly.”

“Were you here yesterday?”

“Was.”

“Round noon?”

“About.”

Jerry asked his question: “Did a cobbler go by?”

The old man took a suck.

“A cobbler? A cold-faced son of a stamp? (Herrrr-rop.) There’s plenty such. They go through all the time. Passing me out westward. Driving a white horse? White horses (herrrr-rop) ain’t uncommon. A light wagon? A young woman with him? Well, couples are most frequent, mister. A man sees plenty setting here. The horse is blind, white-blind, you say. (Herrrr-rop.) Now we’re getting somewheres.”

He stabbed the licorice into his mouth.

“Herrr-rop” he gasped. “I’ll tell you how it is. Each one of all them things don’t mean a two-foot spit on a dusty road. But when you pile them up, then by— herrr-rop— you make out an idee.”

“Which way did they go? Pike or road?”

“Now, now,” he said. “I ain’t said I seed them mister, did I? I reckon I was asleep.”

Palmyra Woods

Jerry was following a tote road made by a farmer to get out some scantling timbers from his pine lot. The track he had followed made no sense. For a month he had wandered. He had followed the pike from Waterloo to Geneva, but no one he asked had any word to tell him of the cobbler and his white-blind horse.

Then he had returned to Waterloo to find the old man sleeping by the trough. This time the old man told him he wasn’t sure, but he thought he must have been asleep.

“Why do you think so?” Jerry asked.

“Because when I woke up there was two shillin’ in my fist.”

For two shillings more, he averred that he had had a dream of a white-blind horse that took the road to Manchester. By then the track was stale, but Jerry doggedly followed it. He asked every man and woman, every child along the road. Before he came to Manchester word had gone out ahead of him. Sometimes a wag invented a monstrous tale, but more often information was at hand. At Manchester, he learned that they had continued on towards Victor. But Victor offered a dead end. They hadn’t passed, to anybody’s knowledge. Jerry back-tracked. The south side of the road was the better-farmed. But on the north side a road ran into the woods, a corduroy, narrow and twisting. He tried it because there was nothing else to try. It led him farther and farther, without visible reason, towards the northeast. It was too dry for tracks; but in a swamp the corduroy had broken recently. There were signs of a man’s feet in the stiff muck.

Then the road dwindled out in oak woods and Jerry struck out blindly. It was his second day in the woods and he had discovered nothing. He had not had food for twenty-four hours; he was lost; and his heart sickened in him.

His strength had returned with the miles of tramping, but his mind felt dead. At nights he was given to dreaming. He dreamed of himself as hunting sometimes in the woods, sometimes in cities; and the birds took up a noise of mourning; and somewhere a dark shape flitted, laughing with Norah’s voice. He had the dream again and again.

Now he was lost, and he decided to sit down where he was to wait for the stars to come. When he saw the dipper he’d head north. Heading north, he was bound to strike the canal.

He waited for the night to darken under the trees, and he looked for the stars. Before the dipper came, he saw a light shining far off among the oaks.

The light turned out to be a fire burning between two trees. A young man, with round, smooth, red cheeks, was stretched on his stomach on the ground. He had a piece of clay in his hand on which he was marking signs with a stick.

“Evening.”

The young man started. He turned his face. His eyes regarded Jerry with a stupid sort of cunning.

“Hello.”

“Can you tell me which way Palmyra lies? Or Victor? Or Manchester, for that matter? I’ve got lost.”

“There’s Palmyra, two miles off. The others are there and there, but a longer ways. What was you after to get lost?”

“I’m hunting a man with a white-blind horse, a white horse.”

The man sat up. His shifty eyes sparkled.

“Kind of like the Apocalypse horse, to hear you.”

Jerry stared. Under his eyes the man turned surly.

“Well, I ain’t seen them nohow.”

“I hardly expected it,” Jerry said hopelessly. “Mind if I sit down a while?”

“No, I don’t. Set over there.”

“What are you making?”

“I’m writing what I thought of this afternoon. Did you ever read the Bible, mister?”

“Not much.”

“But did you ever stop to think of the easy money in the Bible?”

“No.”

“Nobody has but me, I guess. Back home they want me to hoe potatoes or corn, or reap, or milk. Why should I? I’ve got a better idea to make money— without working.”

“How?”

“That’s my idea.” He turned his eyes slyly.

“Are you writing on that clay?”

“I don’t write. But that don’t matter. This is practise. I’ve got to figger something nobody but me can read. Then I’ll have something on people. Something they’ve got to come to me to get.” He grinned. “Did you ever think of all the things you’d like to have, mister?”

“Not all at once.”

“But that’s what I’m a-doing now. Everything. Money, land, servants, girls.” He licked his red lips. “Every last little thing.”

“Can you tell me how to find Palmyra?”

“Go down that slope to the crick. There’s a path. If you meet a girl a-coming, just tell her Joe Smith’s up on the rise a ways.”

He grinned.

“Just tell her Joe’s got the Holy Ghost right handy if she gets here quick enough.”

Jerry left quickly, for the man made him queasy. He found the creek, but he did not meet the girl.

As the inn in Palmyra was closed, he slept in the barn, and next morning went his round of questions. But the trail was too cold, now. Nobody remembered the white-blind horse.

It made no sense: their starting west, then doubling back towards the east. She wanted to lose him, or Falk did, and they had vanished. He tried to think where they had gone. One chance occurred to him. He would go to Utica, trying at Melvilles on the way.

Hammil

Caleb Hammil regarded him with genuine regret.

“I’m sorry you won’t stay with me, Jerry. There’s my partnership ready for you.”

“I’m promised to Hunter.”

The fat man nodded.

“Work’s what you need. Work ahead, Jerry. Do everything you planned to do if she was there— that’s what I’d do myself. You’ve had hard luck. But if you keep going, it’s my idea something will turn up.”

“I will.”

“I wish, though, you could have seen the bank I laid along the Mohawk down by Herkimer. We’ve got the canal running half on the hill and half where the water was. It’s a sight to look at. More especially when a boat runs by. Lord, how those packets travel!”

“I’m going straight out to Rochester.”

“Some day I’ll come out to see you, when I’ve time.”

“I wish you would.”

“How are you fixed for money?”

“Good enough. But, Mr. Hammil, I’d like to sell that lot of mine.”

“Charlie Green’s old lot?” The fat man rubbed his chin. “Colonel Tyler was speaking to me about it two days ago. Wanted to know if I could tell where you was. He said he’d offer to pay a hundred dollars for that lot.”

“A hundred!” Jerry looked blank.

Hammil chuckled.

“What was it you paid for it?”

“Three dollars.”

“Well,” said the fat man with a shrewd look, “why don’t you sell it —if you’re willing— and use the money to buy you a plot in Rochester and build a house?”

“I was thinking that.”

“A good frame house, two stories and a full attic, costs less than fifteen hundred dollars. You could build, yourself, when you had the time. The lumber wouldn’t come to nothing, then.”

Jerry said nothing. But he thought, “I’ll do it. I’ll save this money towards my land, and I’ll build a house.”

Hammil was rubbing his hands together.

“Now Colonel Tyler’s offered to pay a hundred. I should guess you could get two hundred out of him. Say, why don’t you let me handle it? We can trot down to the bank and you can make out an agreement for me to be your agent in the business. Tyler’s told me all his troubles. It’s the only decent canal-side plot for a packet landing left. He’s got to have it for his Erie Navigation line of packets. I’ll guarantee two hundred dollars.”

He caught up his hat.

“You’ll have time enough. The packets are stopping under the bridge now, and the Montezuma don’t haul out till ten.”

As they walked along Jerry asked about his friends. Hammil had all the news. Lester Charley had run off— nobody knew where; but Mrs. Charley was taking hold of the store. “She don’t know nothing about books, but she’s making the store pay. She handles books like shoes, or dresses— it’s the best way. Decorates her shop and has a lot of picters. Want to stop in?”

“No, thanks.” He’d rather not see the place now, having to answer questions. Hammil nodded. His eyes were bright with understanding.

“Self Rogers,” he changed the flow of Jerry’s thoughts, “come back from the west considerably ganted. He marched in and swore he’d never build another shanty for me. That was all. The last I see of him that day he was in the pothecary’s. Watson told me afterwards that the old fellow’d got himself gone over thoroughly. He had an ether paint for toothache, a dose of calomel, snake oil on his legs for rheumatism, and Pholadelphis for the gout. Then he went down to Bellinger’s and got insensible on whiskey and when he woke up he come right back to me and asked for a new job. We signed papers and I sent him down beyond Little Falls-on a shanty contract.”

He chattered on. Bourbon was out at pasture; he needed a week’s rest from the summer traveling. Jerry was sorry not to see the horse. Except for the north-country hauling, one didn’t see the same number of freight wagons any more. The town was changing. Growing fast. The boats surprised one with their numerousness. Already they were hauling east of Little Falls. Little Falls to Montezuma— quite a stretch.

At the bank they made out papers for the sale of the lot. Jerry found that his balance had grown with interest. There was two years’ work with Hammil.

“You’re pretty well off for a young man,” Hammil said. “You’ve got enough to make a handsome start. Fifteen hundred dollars would be a handy sum for any man.”

They were walking up Genesee Street now. Under the bridge, the Navigation Company had a booth for the passenger agent. Jerry paid four dollars for passage money. It entitled him to the use of a berth and his meals on the forty-eight-hour trip.

The fat man stood uneasily on the dock while Jerry’s bag was put aboard.

“I ain’t been onto one myself.” He laughed nervously. “Truth is,” he added “two phrenologists has told me that I’ll get my death of water. So I just don’t chance it.”

He put his hands in his pockets and leaned against a bridge timber. His face saddened.

“Jerry, I hate to see you going. I’m glad we don’t feel hard against each other. I did a while when you got through and went west on me. But I’m over it. I’m real glad to see you again.”

“Something was into me, I guess,” said Jerry.

They both stared at the packet in their embarrassment. The other passengers were all aboard. The captain stood beside the steersman with his watch out, and looked up the canal towards Liberty Street, where the company stable was. Then they saw the driver boy coming down with his team. They were hitched tandem and the boy rode the rear horse. The captain tooted his bugle a warning blast.

Hammil shook Jerry’s hand.

“Good-bye, Jerry.” The small mouth was serious in the fat face. “Seems I’ll always remember you outside of Bellinger’s hearing that hen announce her egg. I took a fancy to you then. Good luck.”

He wrenched his hand away and turned. He stumbled on the steps to the street level. Jerry stared after him. He himself was heading west to Rochester now; he was well off to make his start; but the world seemed lifeless. The agent touched his elbow.

“Best get on.”

Jerry climbed the gang to the deck. The steersman heaved it in and leaned it in its clamps against the cabin wall. The horses were hitched to the towrope; the captain blew an ornate call upon the bugle. The team took up the rope and a couple of loafers on the dock helped shove the boat out. They did it carelessly, as if they did it every day.

The Packet Boat

The Montezuma, like her sister boat, the Chief Engineer, was seventy feet by thirteen. Loaded, she drafted thirteen inches.

As Jerry stood beside the steersman he was surprised at the ease with which the tow horses slid her through the water, as they walked her out through the basin.

“We’ll get to going pretty quick,” said the steersman.

The town had changed. From the bridge westward, the canal ran through a line of brand-new docks and warehouses. But already the scent of traffic lay about them. In the still September heat, Jerry smelled meal and grain, potatoes, pork and pickled salmon, iron smells from new ploughs greased for shipment, and stoves, green lumber, gypsum, hay in bales. The docks were crowded with men handling barrels, scooping grain. Most of the newest warehouses had their second stories jutting over the plankway, and let down tackles through trapdoors to swing up crates and slings of kegs. Men shouted back and forth, gave orders, checked on tallies. The horses dozed with slung hips, letting the clamor pass their drooping ears. Pigeons and sparrows cluttered the road and found bonanzas in the dust, and small boys scampered on and off the waiting boats.

He eyed them like a carpenter, judging the curve of the bows, the height of siding, the space between the ribs, the construction of the stable, and the way the cabin stairs let down from the deck. They were of all colors, mostly built by men along the canal, some obvious experiments. No two were alike and all seemed very short for their beam. Soon he would build his own; but not one under sixty feet or to carry less than thirty tons.

“When the ditch is opened up both ends,” the steersman said, “I reckon there’ll be a danged sight more of them. They’re a terrible nuisance to us already. By law they’ve got to give us way. But now and then you strike a Yankee and he’s cussed as all git.”