Her cheek brushed his, a flower touch for lightness and fragrance. The supple young body pressed to him. The rhythm of the music took and swayed them. Everything around him seemed to be slipping away. She leaned back from him, her lips upturned.
“It’s funny,” she murmured.
“What’s funny?”
“You. Me. Us.”
“I don’t see anything funny about it.” (Funny! A feeble characterization, indeed!)
“Even your voice is funny.”
“Dinty! Dinty!”—from without.
“That’s Mark, searching for me.”
“Mark be damned!”
She drew back, one slender hand trailing to his wrist and lingering there. “Why do you want Mark to be damned, Uncle Horace?” she whispered.
“Do you have to keep calling me that fool name?”
“It doesn’t seem to fit any more, does it?” she mused.
Standing a little away now, as Marcus Dillard appeared at the entrance, she smiled upward. As he pondered upon it afterward—and he gave it an amount of consideration quite disproportionate to its ephemeral existence—it seemed to him a strange smile, difficult of interpretation; a smile alien to the Dinty of their former relationship; an over-sagacious smile; an absurdly adult smile; a smile of guile with an obnoxious suggestion of condescension, as if she were enjoying some recondite knowledge occluded from his duller, male comprehension. No, damn it! Not condescension. That would be too much.
There was another quality inherent in it, too. It came to him with a shock. It was—yes, by God! there was no other word for it—it was unscrupulous.
– 22 –
It was a Gallant Combat. Wo is me that I should not have been Present at the Stricken Field.
(THE WAVERLEY INFLUENCE UPON DINTY’S DIARY)
Portents of trouble were abroad on the ill-fated night of the ball. Four canal boats, frugally avoiding basin charges, had moored to the berm in the widened area below Poverty’s Pinch. The crews had gone to town, leaving one man in charge of each craft. The Anna Maria, salt-laden from Salinas, was guarded by her captain, Job Gadley, who, incapacitated by a humor beneath his knee, sat on his afterdeck, somberly chewing his plug. At his most amiable, Captain Gadley was no pattern of sweetness and light. His affliction enhanced in him a temperamental acerbity unworthy of his scriptural name.
Half asleep, he was roused by a sense rather than a sound of someone moving along the catwalk.
“Who goes there?” he challenged.
“Me. Mistress Crego.”
“What’s your business on my deck?”
Quaila was making the rounds with her basket of curatives, hoping to find some trade and pick up a few pennies. She launched into her formula.
“Herbs and simples for the humors. Seng for heated blood and aching head. Bitter willow for a lazy bowel. Sleep potions and love potions and proven relief from the gulping dyspepsy.”
“And witchcraft for silly brains,” he grumbled. He half believed in it. Had her foot so much as touched the planking, in her silent descent upon him? He doubted it. Witches floated. Doubtless she had dropped overboard the poker whereon she flew, where, notwithstanding that it was iron, it would float until she reclaimed it.
“White magic,” said she in her deep, persuasive contralto. “White only. What ails your leg, brave captain?”
“I got a gathering,” he admitted, “but I don’t know how you twigged it.”
“By the stars.” She had the information from a canal-rat whom she fed when casual jobs were insufficient to keep him alive. “Let Quaila see, brave captain.”
Muttering, he drew up his trouser-leg. By the light of a candle which she fired with tow from her flint-and-steel box, she examined the sore.
“A soothing poultice,” she pronounced, “which I will prepare over your fire. First we shall expel the evil.”
Setting down her basket, she gave the ulcer a hearty squeeze. With a yell, the agonized captain kicked her clean overside. It was involuntary muscular reaction rather than intent, but, having gone so far, he hurled her basket after her and added a string of imprecations for good measure. The profanity died on his lips. For Quaila, rising from the mud and standing, armpit deep in water, overmatched him with an output of objurgations beside which his choicest vocabulary was but a thin, diaconal piping.
Without pause for breath she cursed him, his boat, his crew, his cargo, and his horses. From that she passed to the adjacent craft, cursing each by name, together with its entire personnel and equipment. Rising from the particular to the general, she cursed the canal, lock, berm and towpath, from Hudson flow to Erie Water, from Governor Clinton to the meanest hostler in the local relay stable. She then (so Captain Gadley asserted to his dying day) spat a flame at him and waded ashore. His leg burned with all the fires of hell.
Before morning all four boats rested on bottom.
In spite of appearances, this was no magic, black or white. It was the very practical experiment of a practical mind. Jim Cronkhite, the local politician, had taken over the Welcome Lantern Coffee House, toughest of the new taverns, and was having financial troubles. Several of the captains, as well as lesser canal folk, were indebted to him for bed, board and drink, a reckoning which, as he judged from former disillusioning experiences, was likely to remain on the slate indefinitely, unless settled while hot. The debtors, it was whispered, were casting off at sunrise. After consideration of the problem over a mixture of his own drinks, Host Cronkhite borrowed an auger from a carpenter who was sleeping it off behind the woodpile, crept unnoticed into the water, and bored four neat holes, fore and aft, through the sheathing of each boat. Whether all four of them belonged to his debtors he could not be certain. It did not matter. The more boats tied up, the better for trade.
Loud and bitter was the outcry in the morning. On the basis of Job Gadley’s report of his interview, public hostility focused upon Mistress Crego. Captain Job whetted his sheath-knife and declared his unalterable intention of slitting the witch’s weazand if he swung for it. First catch your witch. Quaila’s friendly rat brought her warning. She flew away, presumably on her poker, to wait for emotions to calm down. When the auger holes were identified, Captain Gadley’s version lost support. What would a witch be doing with a bit-and-brace, cooler heads asked. Quaila reappeared and offered an alibi. Nevertheless there were many who looked askance at her. There was no doubt of her having cursed the canal and all its works. Henceforth anything that went wrong with the traffic would be likely to be attributed to her supernatural ill-will.
Such as chose to twist evidence to a preconceived text, found further proof in what befell Captain Horgan. The “Bull” was left to languish in durance vile for a day of meditation and perhaps contrition. In the evening, the jailer called at Dr. Amlie’s office.
“My prisoner’s havin’ a fit, Doctor,” said he.
“What kind of fit?”
“I dunno. Spasms, like. I wisht you’d come.”
“Horgan is Dr. Murchison’s patient. Call him.”
“He’s sittin’ up for a baby and won’t come. I wisht you would, Doctor. I wouldn’t want him to die on us. Folks might blame me.”
Unwillingly pursuant to his rule of never refusing a critical case, which this might well be by the evidence though he suspected nothing worse than delirium tremens, Horace went with the official. The jail was a trim and stout little edifice with a heavy, oaken door and a high window, heavily barred. More attention had been paid to the exterior than the interior. This consisted of a single room with no other furnishings than a twelve-inch-plank bench.
On the floor groveled and twisted Bull Horgan. His face was gray, his breathing difficult.
“We’ve got to get him out of here,” said Horace.
“What’ll I do with him?” asked the perturbed official.
“I’ll take him to the tavern. Look up a trustee and get a release. I’ll be responsible.”
Late-faring residents were edified by the sp
ectacle of their young and respected physician trundling a patient through Main Street in a Brainard barrow, for want of other conveyance. Having got his man into bed, Horace, something at a loss, bethought himself of Donie Smith. She came at call.
“Oh, Bull! What is it?” she wept. “What ails you?”
“It’s witchings, that’s what it is,” moaned the sufferer. “I seen the hex-fires in the woods last Friday.”
Dr. Gail Murchison bustled importantly in. “My patient, Doctor,” he said to Horace.
“Take him and welcome, Doctor,” returned Horace.
“Don’t go,” begged Donie, clutching him. “Give him some medic. Save him.”
As Murchison bent over the bed, a dreadful convulsion racked the man. His back arched in an incredible curve until heels and head nearly touched.
“Ah!” said the old physician in a tone of satisfaction. “Foul play. The man has been poisoned.”
To Horace it seemed at first only too probable. The symptoms were identical with those of nux vomica poisoning. But he had never heard of delayed action from strychnia. And how would the jailed man have had access to the drug? Donie, her face ashy, was plucking at his sleeve.
“The love potion,” she whispered. “It couldn’t have been! Could it?”
“When did you last give it to him?”
“Three nights ago.”
He breathed a sigh of relief. “Have you any of it left?”
“Yes. Three powders.”
“Keep them for me.”
The sick man was trying now to throw himself out of bed. Horace jumped to help his colleague. In the struggle the bandage on the wounded wrist was displaced, revealing a furiously inflamed area. Horace stared at it in quick enlightenment.
“I think, Dr. Murchison, that your patient has tetanus,” he said.
“Huh? Tet … Oh, lockjaw!” He peered into the strained face. The jaws were firmly clamped. “Perhaps he has,” he grudged.
“If you have no opium,” said Horace smoothly, “I shall be pleased to place mine at your disposal.”
Having thus adroitly suggested the line of treatment, he watched until the drug took effect and the patient’s agony eased. Murchison fumbled about a dressing for the wrist, applied a sinapism to the back of the neck, and brought out his lancet. Instinctively Horace started to intervene, then shrugged his shoulders in resignation. It probably did not matter.
Horgan died at dawn.
There was a tremendous to-do along the waterfront; talk of arresting Donie Smith; talk of arresting Quaila Crego; dangerous mutterings of violence toward the two women. It might have come to that but for Horace’s prompt action. He made a chemical analysis of the love-medicine. No strychnia or allied drug was to be found, nor evidence of any other poison. For his further satisfaction, the physician administered a whacking dose to a tomcat that had been haunting his premises. Though evincing evidence of a strong dislike for the flavor, the tom exhibited no untoward symptoms. He did not even manifest any enhanced fervor on the prowl. By Horace’s guess, Mistress Crego’s stimulant was not as advertised.
All this he set forth in a lucid report for the village trustees. Dr. Murchison was induced to sign a certification of death from lockjaw. The two women were exculpated in the general mind. But suspicion against the witch of Poverty’s Pinch still rankled in the hearts of the canallers.
At midnight of a Saturday which had been notable (and should have been suspicious) for its comparative peace and quiet, Horace was roused by a frenzied hammering at the office door. He had long reconciled himself to that peculiarity of pregnant womanhood which leads it habitually to start childbirth at the most inconvenient hour possible. He drowsily reached for his trousers, divided in surmise as to whether this would be Mrs. Seth Howard with her seventh, conveniently near on the next street, or the young wife of Sam’l Terry (Heaven forbid!), a primapara and two miles the other side of the ropewalk, at that.
“Coming,” he yelled crossly. “Quit that pounding.”
He opened the door. Tip Crego staggered in. The boy had been cruelly mishandled. He was soaked and muddied from head to foot.
“Come quick!” he panted. “They’re trying Aunt Quaila.”
“Who?” said Horace stupidly.
“The canallers.”
“What for?”
“Witchcraft.”
“Where is she?”
“They’ve got her on the Anna Maria.”
This was bad business. But the physician’s immediate concern was with the boy, whose hand half covered his face. Horace drew it away.
“Here! Let me look at that eye,” he said.
Tip fought him off, sobbing. “Oh, come! Please come!”
Horace pushed him into a chair, dressed the eye, and plugged the nose which he judged to be broken. Through the window, as he worked swiftly, he could see a reddening of the low clouds above the Pinch.
“They’re getting ready to burn her,” wailed the boy.
It shocked Horace into action. Instinctively he reached for his fowling-piece, but reconsidered, a counsel of caution which he had reason to regret presently. On a sheet of paper he scrawled a dozen names.
“Get these men,” he directed. “Tell ’em the canallers are out and there’s going to be trouble at the Pinch.”
Daggett, Jessup, Cronkhite, Turnbull Lay, Billy Dorch, Jed Parris, Carlisle Sneed, he could rely upon them. Even Silas Bewar, the Quaker of the smithy, could be counted upon in a case of saving human life. For good measure he added Tom Daw and Bill Simmons, the town drunkard and a willing fighter. Not all would be available, but those who were would rally others to them. If only they got there on time! He heard Silverhorn Ramsey’s bugle in the distance, and ran.
As he crossed the little rise beyond which there was a drop to Ganargwa Creek at the point nearest the canal, the scene spread before him, lighted by a glowing brush fire. Gesturing men were clustered on the deck of Captain Job Gadley’s freighter. Some were laughing, some talking eagerly, others bending above the hatch to listen to what was going on between decks. The trial, then, was still in progress. Boldly he advanced to the gangplank. A slim figure rose lazily from the coaming.
“Hullo, Young Æsculapius.”
“Hullo, Ramsey. What’s going on here?”
“Private doings. You’d better go home.”
“Thanks for the advice. I think I’ve got a friend aboard.” He was resolved to match the other for coolness.
“She’s in good hands. She’ll be looked after.”
A screech of abject terror followed by a babble of pleadings from below cut him off. Horace started up the plank, to be confronted by Silverhorn’s ready knife. Bitterly he regretted that he had not brought his gun. With that threat he might have held the self-constituted “court” helpless on board until aid came. As it stood, he was one man, unarmed, against a mob.
“That’s far enough,” warned Silverhorn.
“Will you come down and fight it out, man to man?” invited Horace.
“It would be a pleasure,” replied the other. “Later perhaps. Duty first. I’m on guard.”
“Are you going to stand by and see a woman burned?”
“There’s no question of burning her. What d’you take us for—Choctaws? We’ll just give her a bit of ducking at the end of a fender-pole.”
The wretched woman, pealing shriek on shriek, was bundled to the deck, gagged, and neatly spliced to a stout twelve-foot pole.
“Take her to the swimmin’-hole,” directed a voice. “ ’Tain’t deep enough here for the job.”
Horace recognized a small, wiry, chin-bearded Down East ruffian named Cambling who, it was said, had fled Massachusetts after kicking to death a discharged tow-boy for asking his wages.
“Ramsey,” said Horace earnestly, “if they duck her with the gag in her mouth, she’ll drown.”
“Witches don’t drown. Not that I believe in ’em. Now, you take a friend’s advice and vammy. What can you do?”
Nothing, Horace perceived. Yet, to leave the unhappy Quaila to her tormentors was unthinkable. It was a question of how effectually Tip was raising the town. There came to Horace’s mind an expedient of delay.
Above the deep hole to which the court was now conducting its prisoner the current rippled over stony shallows. The strand was covered with cobble-sized rocks as sweetly rounded as if nature had fashioned them for handy missiles. Horace flexed his throwing muscles.
“I’ll hold you responsible for any harm that comes to her, Ramsey,” said he crisply, and vanished into the shadows.
Keeping to their shelter he crossed the creek at a bend, skirted the far side, and scrabbled together a supply of the stones back of a bush where he hid. The mob appeared, with Quaila Crego in the midst. No sound came from her. She had fainted. The canallers lined up along the shore. All was to be done in order.
“What is the court’s pleasure, Judge, your Honor?” humorously piped one of the attendants.
The harsh nasality of the Yankee answered, “Duck her three times till she confesses. Duck her three more till she recants. Then cast her loose to sink or swim.”
And this—thought Horace—is the Nineteenth Century, the golden era of Science, of Christian Enlightenment, of Progress and Democracy, of Internal Improvements and the Grand Canal. The captive, reviving, began to moan. Several men laid hold on the pole, half-lifting, half-shoving the writhing form toward the water. One of them loosed his grip with a surprised grunt. Another combined a yelp with an oath, and toppled over.
“Hey! What the hell is this?” shouted Cambling.
Horace let fly with a sidefling, missed him, tried again and felled Gadley. His right arm had lost nothing of its prowess.
“There he is,” yelled one of the assailed, spotting the dark figure insufficiently shielded by the shrubbery. “Get the son-of-a-bitch!”
The time was come for retreat. Running at his swiftest to escape being cut off from the shallows, the fugitive saw that it was going to be a tight thing. Four pursuers had drawn ahead of the rest. Here was the danger. Horace paused for a hasty shot to check them. By the splash in the water he knew that it had gone wild. So, he was the more surprised to hear a thud and a cry. On the opposite bank a bulky form emerged from cover. It stooped, rose and flung. Thump! Yelp! The check saved Horace; he splattered through the ford.
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