Canal Town

by Samuel Hopkins Adams

  Horace stepped high as he walked back to his office. The dull room looked brighter, more homelike to him. It took him a moment to see why. Dinty’s sampler hung on the wall, giving the whole place a touch of life and color that was like the reflection of her young vitality and mirth. That the purple-pink-green scheme was pretty garish he had to admit to himself, but the wording had dignity and was calculated to inspire his patients with a fitting sense of confidence and respect.

  Where were the patients?

  At the end of his first month’s practice, Dr. Amlie entered in his day-book a disheartening computation. His total takings figured out to eighteen dollars and forty-eight cents.

  That shrewd man of affairs, Decker Jessup, dropping in of an evening, supplied one reason for the scanty returns.

  “It’s your charges for treatment.”

  “Surely I am moderate,” protested Horace. “Would you have me dispense my medicines at a loss?”

  “You ask cash. Specie is scarce as hen’s teeth in this region.”

  “I ask cash and get excuses,” answered the young man sadly.

  “Take what you can get,” counseled the cobbler. “In winter the easiest-moved barter is gunpowder, prime pelts, cordwood up to what you need, and goosedown, but be sure it’s goose. For this season, flaxseed, wheat, oats, or rye, and cheese. Don’t take butter or vegetables, if you can help it. Whisky, rum, or brandy you can move any time. How much cash have you taken in this week?”

  Horace reddened uncomfortably. “Less than five dollars.”

  “So! And part of that on the Bank of Whistleforit, I’ll warrant you. Where’s the profit in that?”

  Reluctantly Horace crossed out the footline on his fee-list, substituting:

  Barter Accepted at Current Rates.

  Two patients had been steady in their attendance, both in the non-profit category. Dinty and Wealthia brought in their arms for inspection. Dinty’s was healing nicely, but her friend, less docile to orders, had kept picking at the scab, and the area around it was still fevered after two weeks. Thus it happened that, overtaking his daughter in the garden as he came home to his noonday dinner, Genter Latham was surprised to have her wince away from his affectionate grasp on her arm.

  “Hello! What’s this?” he demanded.

  “Nothing,” she lied glibly. “A yellowjacket stung me.”

  “Let’s see.” Ignoring her objections, he examined the angry area with concern. “We’d better have Murchison take a look.”

  “Couldn’t I have Dr. Amlie?” begged Wealthia. “Dr. Murchison is so snuffy and stuffy.”

  “That young man has yet to prove himself,” returned her father with the good humor upon which she could always depend but never presume, since it did not interfere with his having his own way. “I’ll send for Murchison.”

  The bearded practitioner responded with alacrity to the summons of his most important patient. He inspected the arm with narrowing eyes.

  “Kine-pox poisoning,” he pronounced. “Who performed the vaccination?”

  “Vaccination?” roared Genter Latham. “What’s this, Wealthy?”

  “Please, Pa, dear, don’t be mad with me. I couldn’t help it.” She recounted the episode, naturally casting the responsibility upon Dr. Amlie.

  The father turned slowly from red to purple. Struggling for self-control, he asked the old physician, “Is there any warranty for the fellow’s procedure without consulting me?”

  “None at all, Mr. Latham,” lied the physician. “Not the slightest. Most unseemly, sir. Medically most improper.” He knew better, but here was his opportunity to discredit the young upstart.

  “Can you do anything to relieve the arm?”

  “We can bleed. The poisonous matter must be eliminated from the system. How long that will take depends on the amount of the rotted matter introduced into the veins,” answered Murchison with malignant satisfaction.

  “Don’t let him do it, Pa. Please!” begged the girl. “It’s getting better. Truly it is.”

  But it was not getting better. Poor Wealthia was soundly bled, purged, and puked, night and morning. Her father sent for Ephraim Upcraft, the self-stated Honest Lawyer. As was his custom in dealing with this autocratic client, Upcraft sounded him and then told him exactly what he wished to be told. They went to court together.

  Timothy Mynderse, the constable, pinned on his badge, took his staff from the corner, and served the warrant of arrest upon Horace Amlie, M.D.

  “What for?” demanded the astonished young man.

  “It’s all in the warrant. Atrocious assault on a minor child. Ten years in Auburn, I wouldn’t wonder. Got any bail?” (Timothy hoped that the answer would be affirmative, as the jail was a casual affair, requiring constant official supervision to keep any prisoner so minded from kicking down the door and going about his business.)

  “No. What bail? Where could I get bail?” asked Horace wildly.

  “Ain’t you got any friends?”

  Horace thought of Squire Jerrold, but abandoned the idea. How could he know that there would not be a second charge on behalf of Dinty? There was Decker Jessup. The cobbler might be willing to help. He went to see him, accompanied by the official.

  “Easy,” said the cobbler. He put up a fifty-dollar bond with the magistrate. “Demand a jury trial,” he advised. “The circuit won’t be around for a month. That’ll give us time. We’ll diddle old Latham yet.”

  The arrest of the new doctor on the procurement of Genter Latham was the main topic of conversation at the smithy assemblage next day. Opinion was practically unanimous that the young sprig was done for. Best thing for him to do would be to skip his bail, saddle his nag, and dust off the highway. Only Silas Bewar, the blacksmith, took exception.

  “Don’t thee be too sure,” said he. “That young man has a clear eye and a good conscience, or I miss my guess. He’ll not be easy to drive.”

  Horace’s situation was parlous. There was no other lawyer than Upcraft nearer than Canandaigua. Legal fees for his defense would run to twenty-five dollars and expenses. How could he afford so great a sum? Particularly as his remunerative employment at the canal camp was now irremediably lost.

  One bit of evidence in his favor was that Dinty’s arm was completely healed. Now, if Happalonia Vallance would only be so obliging as to come down with the smallpox, thus proving the effects of the exposure, his case would be sound. Though a humane and conscientious young gentleman who wished harm to none of God’s creatures, Horace could not encounter Happalonia on the street without an irrepressibly avid scrutiny of her complexion. It remained dishearteningly pink, white and unblemished.

  Poor Wealthia was having a bad time under the ministrations of Dr. Murchison. Her system, weakened by his potent measures, did not permit the arm to heal well. Moreover, the old fox was pursuing a strategic method of his own. Wealthia’s legs broke out into an angry rash from the knee down, and the doctor, with a long face, told Mr. Latham, “I greatly fear that the disease, itself, has taken new hold.”

  “Will she die?” asked the distracted father.

  “I will save her,” promised Murchison. He had the best of reasons for confidence that she would not die. “I will save her,” he repeated, “if she can be saved by the best resources of Science.”

  Gossip of the smithy passed a new tidbit from mouth to ear: Genter Latham had oiled up his pistol and sworn that he would kill young Amlie if little Wealthia died or if the poxes went to her face.

  The source of this, it appeared, was Aunt Minnie Duryea, Wealthia’s babyhood nurse, who had been called in. So Decker Jessup, alarmed, reported to Horace.

  “Could you arrange for me to see Mrs. Duryea?” asked Horace.

  “Surely. She’s a cousin of mine. She don’t like old Murch any too well.”

  They met secretly at the cobbler’s shop. The old lady was vehement and voluble. Dr. Murchison wasn’t doing the child any good with his drenches and squills, and now it was leeches on her poor, little le
gs to take down the swelling.

  “Great, big, ugly, yellow blotches,” she said.

  Horace pricked up his ears. “What’s that? Blotches?”

  “Kind of muddy yellow. Filled with water, like. The leeches won’t touch ’em.”

  “That isn’t smallpox,” said Horace positively, “nor pox poisoning.”

  “Don’t look like it to me,” agreed Aunt Minnie. “Looks like some kinda skulduggery to me.”

  Horace recalled the case of a Paris Hill boy who, having been exposed to smallpox, fooled the medical faculty for a time by breaking out into great, itchy weals, quite unlike the typical pustules of the disease. The experts believed that they had found a new manifestation, until the true nature of the ailment was discovered. This sounded suspiciously like the same thing.

  “There’s no rash on her face, neck or arms?” he asked.

  “No. Only the vaccination spot. I noticed the Doctor rubbing her legs one day before they broke out.”

  “Before?” said Horace quickly. “You’re sure it was before?”

  “I’m pretty sure there wasn’t anything there.”

  “Did he wear gloves when he rubbed her?”

  “Yes, he did, now that you speak of it. I thought he was afraid of catching the smallpox.”

  “Will you do something for me, Aunt Minnie? I want you to prick two or three of the blisters and bring the liquid to me. You’d better wash your hands well after doing it.”

  She was back in a few minutes with some of the exudation in a small vial, reporting that the patient’s arm seemed easier, but her legs itched her cruel.

  Right here Horace badly needed a medical witness. The nearest approach to it in the village was the dubious personage who presided at the Sign of the Streaked Pole, and called himself L. Brooks, M.D. Of his professional title and knowledge, Horace was extremely skeptical. However, in as simple a matter as the present purpose, he might do.

  Carefully anointing the inner side of his forearm with the serum taken from Wealthia’s blisters, Horace waited. Soon the flesh began to redden. Presently it itched angrily. Blisters formed and slowly filled. At the end of three hours the arm presented a fine, typical appearance. Its owner took it to the Sign of the Streaked Pole.

  “I have a rash,” said he, rolling up his sleeve. “I should like your opinion upon it.”

  The barber looked and grinned. “That ain’t no rash,” he pronounced. “You been handlin’ pizen oak. Soak it in sugar of lead and don’t scratch to spread it.”

  “You’re a better doctor than some in this village,” said Horace grimly. “I’ll have a shave.”

  But when Horace broached the subject of his coming trial and asked L. Brooks to testify as an expert witness, the barber turned pale.

  “Put myself forward against Genter Latham? You must think I’m a booby. Why, he’d ruin my trade as soon as spit. He’d fetch another hairdresser to town, and where’d I be? Not me! I got a family to support.”

  “They’re a spineless lot in this town,” Horace subsequently complained to Decker Jessup.

  “Well, I dunno, I dunno,” demurred the cobbler. “Genter’s a hard man to brook. Many a stout fella he’s run out of Palmyra. They deserved it, I guess, by and large, but that wouldn’t make any odds to him. Cross his path and his purpose, and he won’t endure to breathe the same air with you. There’s only one man’s stood up to him, far’s I know.”

  “I’d like to meet him and shake his hand.”

  “You met him. Silverhorn Ramsey.”

  “That young scalawag!” Horace smiled. “What was wrong between Latham and him?”

  The cobbler lowered his voice. “Sarah Dorch.”

  “The young woman who had smallpox?”

  “She didn’t always have smallpox. You ought to have seen her before.” He smacked appreciative lips. “Um—ah-h-h-h!”

  “What’s the connection?” asked Horace.

  “We—ell, Genter Latham’s a lusty widower and Sarah Dorch is—was—a mighty sightly gal who liked gewgaws and pretty duds. I reckon that side door of the Latham house got its hinges oiled pretty often so’s they wouldn’t creak at night. Then, one evening, Latham walks into the Eagle parlor like he owned the place, and there sits Sarah and Silverhorn smiling across two glasses of flip. Latham stood there staring, till the gal saw him and gave a cackle and scuttled home like a scared pullet.

  “Next morning our young buck was swaggering down Main Street, dandling his bugle-horn, when Latham took him by a shoulder and shoved him into the ell of the building. You can bet, nobody came near to eavesdrop. What was said exactly we’ll never know. But Latham was black as thunder’s self when the young fellow slipped around him with a laugh. Silverhorn lifted his trumpet and blew his ta-ra-ra-ra. The folks came, a-running.

  “ ‘Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!’ says he like the court crier. ‘I’ve a public word to say. Mr. Genter Latham prefers my room to my company. He’ll have me clapt into quod as a ne’erdoweel and a vagabond if I show my cabeza again in town. So says he. But hark ye, friends. And hark ye, Mr. Genter Latham. Lay me by the heels and you’d best keep that little wren of a daughter in a locked cage, for, so help me Almighty God and the American flag! the next band of tenkers to wagon it this way will take her where you won’t see her again. Or, if not the next, some other company. So sandpaper your nose with that!’

  “There was a kind of sickish silence. Everybody knows that Silverhorn, for all that he’s an educated scholar, has truck with tenkers and gyppos and horse-copers and the like. Mr. Latham’s face was like death and murder. But he only gave a kind of croak in his throat and went away, walking blind and brushing folks aside like so many straws.”

  “What happened to the girl?”

  “Sarah? Oh, she kept on with Latham. All this was a year ago. Then she caught smallpox, and he hasn’t laid eye or hand on her since. They say he’s afraid to.”

  Horace shook his head. “There would be no danger of contagion now.”

  “It isn’t that. He’s afraid of what he might see. Right, too.” The cobbler shuddered sympathetically. “She’s an awful sight, poor lass, let alone what pain she suffers.”

  “Suffers?” said Horace. “Physically, do you mean? That shouldn’t be.”

  “Her face never healed since.”

  “Who is treating her?”

  “Murchison was till her money gave out.”

  “Send her to me,” said Horace.

  “You’re a kind young fellow,” said the cobbler. He sighed. “I used to be kinda piney on Sarah, myself.”

  Casting about him for any possible help, Horace wrote to his old preceptor, Dr. Vought, now in Rochesterville, stating his predicament. Reply was received by the next coach from the fiery old gentleman.

  Stick to your post, my boy. I’ll come up and help you at the trial. I know your precious lot. Genter Latham is a bully. Gail Murchison is the bastard offspring of a skunk mated with a rattlesnake. Upcraft is so crooked that if you threw him into Ganargwa Creek he would float upstream. All Palmyra is a hotbed of smug Federalism and aristocracy. Let them catch their small or any other pox and die and rot of it for all of me. But you are too good a lad to be beaten by them. Count on me. Draw on me, too, up to a hundred if you need the ready. I was young once, myself, and still have a fight left in me.

  Sarah Dorch, veiled and timorous, added to his list of free patients. The cobbler’s statement of her condition was not exaggerated. But what most shocked Horace in her appearance was that there was no occasion for it. An eczema which followed the pitting had been grossly aggravated by Murchison’s inept or careless treatment. Horace compounded a bland ointment of beeswax, honey and boric acid for the open sores and arranged for the patient to pay him daily visits. She was wretched but grateful.

  After mulling over the case of Wealthia Latham, Horace committed an inexcusable breach of ethics by visiting surreptitiously another physician’s case, having persuaded Aunt Minnie Duryea to smuggle him into the Latham home while it
s master was absent. Under strict injunctions of secrecy, he examined Wealthia and treated her poisoned legs. In two days she was up and about.

  There was now but a week to go before court convened. Lawyer Upcraft stopped Horace in the street.

  “I have a message from Mr. Latham.”

  “What is it?”

  “He stands ready to withdraw his criminal charge.”

  Horace’s heart bounded. The hardshell magnate had relented now that his daughter was well. His hopes were promptly dashed by the lawyer’s next words.

  “On condition that you close your office and quit town within a week.”

  Horace’s face grew white, then red. In reverse order these colors mean surrender, in this order, fight.

  “Your answer,” pressed Upcraft.

  “What would you think it would be?” said Horace grimly.

  “I warn you, young man. It’s that or jail.”

  Horace turned and left him.

  That night Horace lay awake long considering his plight. An expedient suggested itself. It was theatrical, sensational, perhaps cheap; but for that very reason it might be successful. Genter Latham’s vulnerable point was his love for Wealthia and his pride in her budding beauty. From this angle Horace plotted his attack.

  Pocketing his pride, he went to the Latham place. The mogul was sitting on his veranda, enjoying an after-dinner segar.

  “Mr. Latham.”

  The formidable brows drew down. “Well, sir?”

  “I have heard it said that you are a fair man.”

  This was a judicious mixture of speculation and flattery. Being anything but fair in his dealings with his fellows, the town great man would probably pride himself upon the very quality which he most signally lacked.

  “I am a just man,” said Genter Latham coldly.

  “Mr. Upcraft delivered your message.”

  “You have six days left.”

  “Will you come to my office at four o’clock this afternoon?”

  “Why should I?”

  “It concerns your daughter.”