3stalwarts (98 page)

Visitors

Down below, Molly got supper. When they came into Port Leyden in the darkness, Dan called to Friendly to tie up behind a squat white boat.

Just as they were finishing their meal, they heard footsteps on deck and a rapping on the cabin roof.

“Come in,” Molly called.

Before Dan could go to the door, footsteps clattered on the stairs, and a hearty voice called, “My, my! Where’s Dan Harrow?”

There was a familiar ring in the voice. The door was flung open and a little man wearing a cap, with the ear mufflers up, peered in.

“Dan Harrow aboard?”

“He ought to be if he ain’t,” said the hearty voice from behind. “It’s the Sarsey Sal, ain’t it?”

“Hullo,” said Dan. “Hullo, Mr. Tinkle.”

The little man beamed and stretched out his hand. Then he put his head back through the door and shouted, “Come on, Lucy!”

They heard her purling down the stairs.

“She’s getting awful fleshy,” the little man confided. “Don’t know but what she’s getting wheezy.”

“I ain’t neither. Sol, that’s a lie. I don’t tell tales on to your rheumatiz, do I?”

The fat woman came breezing in, her hat a little on one side from bumping on the stairs.

“My stars, Dan, ain’t this grand?”

She swept over to him and enveloped him in her arms.

“To think of you owning a boat, being a regular boater! I always let on to Sol you would be, but he’d shake his head, when the rheumatiz wasn’t bothering him too much, and he’d say he guessed not. Mr. Butterfield told us about you. We’re hauling for him now.”

She stepped back and cast her bold eyes round the room.

“It’s real comfortable and homey, ain’t it? These old boats are nicer, I think. They’ve got a better feel into them. You don’t feel so old in them. And it’s clean, too. And curtains on the window. My! Ain’t it a nice boat, Sol?”

The little man was holding his cap in both hands, the lamp shining on his bald head, a grin of pleasure puckering his face.

“Listen to him!” exclaimed Mrs. Gurget. “Just standing there and looking round as if he’d never been out of Stittville all his life. You’d hardly think but what he was a deef-and-dummer. Can’t you talk, Sol?”

“Once in a while I edge in a word, Lucy.”

“Fresh,” said the fat woman, tossing her head. “Well, how be you, Dan? You look thriving. Don’t he, folks? Introduce me, Dan. I always feel itchety till I know who folks are. Gives a person a handle for conversation.”

She drew herself up with a smile.

“Now’s your chance, Dan,” said Solomon.

Mrs. Gurget tossed him a frown.

“This here’s Fortune Friendly— he’s driving for us. And this is Molly Larkins. Mrs. Gurget and Mr. Solomon Tinkle,” said Dan, the blood bright in his cheeks.

Mrs. Gurget gave the old man a smile and beamed at Molly.

“I’d knowed there was a woman on board as soon as I laid eyes on them curtains, fresh ironed. A man alone might as well hang up a dishrag.”

“Won’t you set down?” said Molly, pushing forward the rocking-chair. Dan watched her with open admiration. She was very cool about it.

Mrs. Gurget sank down and threw back her red shawl to show the locket on her bosom.

“Well, it feels good to set down. I’ve been steering all day. We unloaded in Lyons Falls this afternoon and Sol said we’d ought to start right back. Mr. Butterfield asked us if we knowed you, Dan, and then he told us you’d got a boat. It gave us a start. I thought Sol’d spit right there in the office. So when we see your boat coming in a while ago Sol wanted to go right on board, but I told him to mind his manners and give you folks time to eat. That’s the way men are,” she said to Molly, patting her hand; “so long as they see smoke in a stovepipe, they think there ought to be food set right out to feed a circus. How do you like cooking for this man, dearie?”

Molly smiled.

“He’s a real nice man to work for.”

Mrs. Gurget gave her another pat.

“I think so myself. Dan’s all right— yes, sir. Oh, me,” she sighed, with a smile at Solomon, “we’re all young once. Don’t you find it so, Mr. Friendly?”

The ex-preacher leaned back on his stool, his hands clasped over one knee. He had been smiling ever since Mrs. Gurget entered the cabin.

“Well, some of us never lose it, Mrs. Gurget.”

The fat woman laughed delightedly.

For a minute or two the conversation hinged on minor gossip, on the triplets borne by Mrs. Scroggins on the Pretty Fashion while the boat was going through Lockport,— a child for every other lock, as Solomon said, —and a new cure for consumption, and the “Rheumatic Amputator” Solomon had bought at a horse fair out of Syracuse from a traveling surgeon. He pulled up a trouser leg to show it to them, a thin lead band that fitted just above the calf of his leg. “Careful,” Mrs. Gurget admonished. “We’re in company.” “It burns the rheumatiz right out,” Sol explained. “See them little teeth on the inside? Well, you soak them in sour cider and that generates the beneficent electrical that balances the blood by getting it to proper temperature. It helps a lot. Why after I’ve wore it an hour I can feel the heat a-swarming in to beat the cars. Yes, sir.”

“It only cost seventy-five cents,” Mrs. Gurget said. “Ain’t it wonderful the progress that science can make for the money?”

Fortune Friendly nodded gravely.

“It’s as good as God.”

“It’s better for the rheumatiz,” said Solomon.

“Hush, you,” said Mrs. Gurget.

Molly smiled.

“You’d ought to get out that rum you got in Carthage, Dan. Unless you prefer cider, mam.”

“No— no, thanks.” The fat woman laughed. “Rum noggin’s a healthy habit with me.”

Molly got the glasses and Dan brought a small keg out of the sleeping cuddy.

“Here, Sol, get up and help Dan. He’s a great hand at driving a bung, Dan. Sol’s the handiest man at it I ever see. Let him do some work. Dearie, can’t I help you with them glasses? Mr. Friendly, it’s nice for old folks to be waited on, ain’t it? I don’t count Sol as only a child. There’s times, seeing him with a bottle, I think he still ought to be sucking.”

The kettle was purring full on the stove, and the sharp odor of lemon that Molly was cutting mingled with the smell of rum. Mrs. Gurget spread her nostrils over her glass.

“It’s a regular party. Well, here we be. You’re a lucky man, Dan, though I don’t know if you know it.”

She drank it down to “Dan and Molly and getting together.”

“Now Lucy’s got her belly warmed, she may soother down,” said the little man. “Butterfield says he wants for you and me to get potatoes in Den-ley,— there’s a load there,— and to Boonville, Dan; but while we’re waiting here along you come; so here’s how.”

He drank, and broke into conversation with Fortune Friendly. Mrs. Gur-get was occupied with Molly. The cabin looked very homey all at once to Dan; and Molly, with a bright look on her face, bending toward the fat woman, was prettier than he had seen her. He felt a little nervous, but very happy, and Molly’s collectedness gave him a sense of comfort. Now and then the two women glanced his way, as if they were talking about him, a sort of smile in their eyes. The kettle steaming, the warm light of the lamp, the scent of rum coming after the day in the cold air, brought an air of establishment to the Sarsey Sal. His guests, his boat… .

Solomon turned back, laying his hand on Dan’s knee.

“I’ve been talking to Mr. Friendly, Dan,” with a pert nod in the ex-preacher’s direction, “and I’ve got an idea. All at once, like, there’s been a lot of talk coming up about this feller Calash. I’ve kept my eyes looking out and my ears listening, Dan, and I reckon he’s up here, especially after what Mr. Friendly’s been saying about Henderson in Rome. I think he’s up here.”

“I guess that’s right,” said Dan.

With elaborate nicety, the little man tapped Dan’s knee with the end of his forefinger.

“How would two thousand dollars, split three ways, go between us, Dan?”

Dan was uneasy.

“Why, I don’t know.”

“Two thousand dollars!” exclaimed the fat woman, glancing up. “Where’s two thousand dollars?”

Solomon pointedly ignored her.

“This feller Henderson’s up here, but he won’t ever get him. He don’t know where he is. But I’ll bet I do. Why don’t me and you and Mr. Friendly round him up, then?”

“Why, I don’t know,” repeated Dan. He felt suddenly uncomfortable and worried. It would mean seven hundred dollars to him, a lot of money. But he had a liking for the man, somehow; he did not know why. He had seen him once in Boonville when he came on the canal, and once on the haul to Rome, and twice in Rome; and the man had put him aboard his boat in Utica; and he had petted his horse, and the horse had liked him. It was a lot of money. He did not know why he liked him. There seemed to be a lot of things tied up in the man… .

“He’s a criminal,” said the little man. “He’s wanted dead or alive. He ought to be caught afore he breaks loose here.”

“My land!” exclaimed the fat woman, settling her hat straight. “He ought! It ain’t safe with him roaming around like a bug on a hot night; there’s no telling where he’ll bump into. I get a start every time I hear a team on the towpath!”

Solomon Tinkle nodded approvingly.

“That’s it; there’s no telling what he’ll do. We’d ought to go after him. It’s a duty.”

“That’s right,” said Mrs. Gurget. “It’s a duty.”

The ex-preacher nodded gravely.

Molly was regarding Dan with a queer questioning light in her eyes.

“I don’t know,” he said uneasily. “How’d you go about it, Sol?”

“I’ve figured out just about where he’s liable to be. You know, down by Denley, where the road crosses to the river. There’s an old brown house down there.”

“Yeanh, it’s the Riddle house,” said the fat woman. “I know it. It’s eight-sided.”

“Yeanh,” said Solomon, leaning forward, his glass clasped in both hands. “It’s got eight sides. Old Riddle built it when he got off the canal. He was born in these parts, so he come back to build. Wanted to get away from folks, so he built him a house down in that Godsake hole. He was born deef , and they say from living alone that way he lost the power of speaking. Used to bring his order into the Denley store on Saturdays, wrote out on a paper. It’s the dangdest house I ever see. He lived by himself, and two winters ago he died into it.”

“He always liked chocolate cake,” said Mrs. Gurget.

“I heard tell of it,” said Molly. “They found him after a heavy blizzard. He was sitting dead in a chair.”

“He was a funny old bezabor,” Solomon continued. “Well I mind him on his boat in them canvas pants he used to wear, snarling his horn in his chin whiskers and blowing like they’d reelected Jackson. They say he used to blow it some down to his house. Once in a while Murphy tells me they still hear it blow.”

“I heard about him,” said Fortune Friendly. “He had the horn in his hand when they found him.”

“I’ve always wondered if the rooms was shaped like pieces of pie,” said Mrs. Gurget. “Having eight sides to a house would make a person think so.”

“I don’t know,” said Solomon. “I ain’t never been inside. But I’ll bet who is inside right now. It’s a comfortable house and a good place for him to stay while he’s up here. I reckon we three might edge in there tomorrow night and see.”

“I don’t see how we could handle him,” Dan said.

“I’ll take my revolver,” said Solomon. “I’ll hold that on him till you get your arms round him, Dan. Then we oughtn’t to have no trouble. When you hold him, I’ll knock him on the head.”

“He’s a menace,” said Fortune. “If we can get him, it’s our right duty to get him; and we’d ought to be able to collect the reward.”

“Well—” Dan began; but they were all looking at him, Molly still with that queer worried expression. Maybe they thought he was scared.

“All right,” he said.

He did not wish to go; but at the same time he felt an irresistible desire to see the man’s face… .

Riddle’s House

They hauled into Denley in the afternoon— a bit of a village with the store and post office in one building, and two houses, and a small cheese factory, all in a row facing the river valley. Lumber wagons loaded with potatoes from neighboring farms were waiting on the towpath. The boats tied up, and Solomon and Dan took their teams aboard for the night. By five o’clock the boats were loaded; by six they were all eating in the cabin of the Nancy. Mrs. Gurget had insisted on that, so that Molly could keep her company while the men were away. Solomon put his revolver in the pocket of his coat, where it made a heavy bulge, and he and Dan and Fortune went on shore. The little man was white with suppressed excitement.

It was quite dark, and a rain was falling. There was no wind. Solomon carried a lighted lantern in his hand.

“We might as well stop in at Murphy’s and have a sniff first,” he said.

“Suits me,” said Fortune.

They tramped down the towpath toward the square of light cast by the store window. Against it they could see the rain falling in grey streaks, and drops twisting down the glass. Inside, Murphy, the storekeeper and post-master, sat on a stool before the round-bellied stove and smoked his pipe at a saturnine man, with black hair, a thin face, and bat ears.

“Hullo,” he said, when the three entered.

“Evening,” said Sol. “We just come down to get a glass of strap and see how you were making out.”

“Pretty good,” said Murphy. “I seen you loading your boats.”

“Yeanh. We loaded ‘em.”

Fortune nodded to the bat-eared man.

“Evening,” he said.

“Let me make you acquainted, gents. That’s Reuben Doyle, gents. He drops in in an evening to make me some conversation.”

Doyle returned his nose to his glass and grunted.

Murphy drew them glasses of strap and then leaned against the counter to make some exchanges on the weather. Fortune sat down on a wooden box and Dan lingered by the door, shaking the rain from his hat.

“I hear old Riddle’s dead,” Solomon remarked after a while.

Murphy started, his thin mouth opening with surprise.

“Why, yes, he’s been dead two years, Solomon. I thought you knowed about it.”