3stalwarts

by Unknown

  He had a glimpse of a group of ancient pines on the hill on his left. Their old stalwart trunks were bending; their great branches stretched southward, as if they had turned their backs to the wind.

  Then once more the forest, and the roar of wind in the trees, and a lightening of the pressure on his breath. The teams picked up pace and forged ahead, eager for the camp. The snow deepened. The horses had to lift their feet.

  Hour by hour, with no knowledge of the time. It was early afternoon when they entered the camp and saw dim lights behind the snow. Both teams were white with frost and snow; the sleighs were coated. Dan was so stiff he could hardly fight to his feet; he felt as if he must break to do it. Gradually he thawed in the kitchen; then went out again to rub his team down. Solomon sat by the fire, stretching out his hands as if he begged a precious thing, and the cook clogged back and forth with his wooden foot, making great kettles of coffee, for the men would be coming in early.

  “This ain’t going to stop,” he said. “It’s got a tail hold on all the winds in time, and it’s out to travel somewhere.”

  Wind gripped the roof of the cookhouse and shook it. It found the doors and beat upon them till they groaned like living things. When a man lifted the latch to open them, they were snatched from his hand and cracked against the wall so that a murmur broke out on the shelves of kettles. The man came in hunched over and fought the door to shut it. He was white over, though his red face sweated.

  “Palery’s hurt,” he shouted to them, and he shook his fists, as if he thought they were not listening to him. “Him and Franks was cutting a four-foot spruce,” he cried, “when the wind took hold afore they was more than half through. It buck-jumped right across his legs, right here.” He smashed his fists across the front of his thighs. “He’s a mess!” he shouted. “Can’t you hear me? He’s just a mess. They’re fetching him in.”

  Six men broke through the door, carrying a man on a stretcher of poles and coats and put him on the table and looked at him and drank coffee. He was unconscious, his face a dead white like rotten snow. The manager came in ahead of more men. He looked him over.

  “Don’t take his pants off,” cried a man shrilly. “Don’t take ‘em off, for God’s sake.”

  The manager felt of the man’s legs. “No use,” he said. “He ain’t bleeding, but we can’t do anything. He’ll have to see a doctor.”

  “You couldn’t get him down through this,” the cook said, passing out sugar.

  “We’ve got no team knows the road enough,” the manager said. “A man couldn’t see.”

  He forced whiskey into the man’s mouth. After a while they brought him to, and he screamed at them.

  The manager turned to Dan. “Could your team make it?” he asked. “They know the way.”

  “They’ve had a hard haul,” Dan said.

  “They’ll be going light.”

  “He’d freeze,” said a man.

  “We can rig him a tent back of some boards and put lanterns under the blankets.”

  Dan hesitated. His team was tired. The track was sheltered in the woods. If the snow was not drifted too high in the clearings, they might make it. He nodded. The black would smell out the track.

  “One other man, to help in a drift,” he said.

  “I’ll go,” said Franks. “I was with him— I’ll go.”

  He was a huge fellow, smooth-shaven, with a low forehead and dark sunken eyes that gleamed.

  “All right,” said Dan.

  The hurt man heard them, for he began to curse them and beg them to let him stay.

  In the barn, Dan harnessed his horses, talking to them in a low voice. The black nuzzled him inquiringly, but the big brown merely stared at the wall and shook the harness down comfortably. They had put on flesh since Dan had bought them.

  “They’re fine horses,” said the manager. “I’d like them here.”

  At the entrance to the stable the black snorted, but the brown pushed out uncompromisingly, walking to the sleigh.

  “Second link!” Dan shouted to the men who hitched them.

  Palery had been loaded aboard under blankets. The lanterns under them were bringing out the smell of horses. Dan squatted down in the lea with the big man Franks at his side. “Ged-dup!” he shouted.

  The team looked round, then lunged into the darkness, walking slow. At the edge of the woods they reared slightly to break the drift. Behind, the camp was swallowed from sight. Then they entered the woods and the wind passed over their heads, shaking the trees on either side, where branches shrieked as they fought against each other. There was a wild tumult in the storm, now, a hideous uplifting of voices as it beat the woods, and the old great pines groaned in the darkness. Only the road had comparative quiet, running under the uproar, like a tunnel of silence.

  Once inside, the team broke into a trot before Dan’s urging. He had never trotted them before, but he knew they must make their best speed to get into the city before the deepening snow stopped them altogether. Once stopped, there was no exit. The road would be a coffin and the wailing trees the mourners.

  Once in a while, during the first hour, when the wind died down to let them listen, they could hear the hurt man jabber and shout. At first Dan feared he might throw the blankets off; but when he touched the blankets to see how the man was, Franks caught his arm in a great hand and shouted close to his ear.

  “Leave him be! He’s tied.”

  There was a gleam in the big man’s eyes, a green glow in the dark, like an animal’s, as he crouched beside Dan. Now and again he would lift his face at the wind and shake his fist. But the cold, striking his throat, would make him duck down again.

  The rumps of the horses were snow-white. The deepening snow had slowed them to a walk, but they made good time. The cold came under the howl of the wind to freeze the sweat as it formed.

  At the first clearing they stopped. Then they went ahead slowly. The snow was over their bellies and they gathered their hind legs up under them until their haunches sat on the snow, and then jumped like rabbits. Between each thrust, they stopped again, panting in racking gasps, and lowered their noses, as if they smelled for the track. Then they jumped again. Once in a while they seemed to dispute a turn and stood with their heads close together. When they moved next, they would lean against the snow at their chests and push their feet forward to select the track.

  It took them fifteen minutes to buck the clearing of a hundred yards. In the shelter of the woods Dan stopped them and let them breathe a minute before he walked them ahead.

  The feeling of night came over them with added cold, but no darkening beyond the snow. The power of sight had been taken from them; Dan and Franks glued their eyes to the rumps of the horses and trusted to them. The lines were frozen in Dan’s mitten; the lids of his eyes had stiffened. He had to rub them to keep them open. But his companion sat glaring ahead from his sunken eyes, and now and then he appeared to laugh at the howling wind and the wild thrash of the trees.

  The third clearing they were barely able to win through, and the horses shook and staggered as they burst into the shelter of the woods. From here each step was a task. Gouts of snow were snapped from the branches, building the road up in lumps, and the sleigh bucked over them in jerks and shunted from side to side.

  They came to the edge of a ravine, and Dan shouted suddenly, “There’s a bridge!”

  But the fury of the storm was in the horses. They did not stop. The sleigh lurched drunkenly into the open, slipped sideways. Franks leaped to the far side and caught the tail end in his hands and drew on it with a gigantic heave; and then the team found the corduroy under their shoes and stamped as they crossed it. Franks leaped on again, his eyes gleaming, laughing and throwing his arms at the storm. He reached under the blankets and felt beside the hurt man and drew out a huge dinner bell which he swung back and forth over his head. The wind took the sound as it was born, but they could think of it rushing miles away across the valley. The team heard it, and pricked thei
r ears.

  “Three miles!” shouted Dan.

  They struggled downhill through the drifts into the valley. On and on; it took an hour or more for each of those last three miles. But the team were roused and battled the snow with a steady strength… .

  Windows lighted with warmth blossomed out of the snow beside them. In the street they heard the clamor of their bell; and the team shuddered and stopped and tried to shake themselves. Dan wrenched the lines apart in his hands and felt his mouth crack as he grinned at the bald face looking round and the great head of the brown stretched forward, waiting to be driven. Franks grabbed his arm in a monstrous mitten and rang his bell at the horses, and shouted in his ears, “The dirty sons of bitches, look at them stand there!” and he burst out crying, letting the tears freeze on his cheeks.

  They drove to a doctor’s and carried the man. in. He was still alive.

  “Come and get a drink,” cried Franks, “on me, on the camp.”

  “I got to go home,” said Dan. “I’ve got to mind the team.”

  They shook hands, and, still ringing his bell, Franks went lurching through the snow to Bentley’s to get drunk. But no liquor could make him drunk now.

  Dan drove the team to Butterfield’s barn. He turned in by the Sarsey Sal and saw a faint light burning in the cabin windows. He unhitched the horses and led them to the barn and rubbed them down. He felt weak and staggery, and they were spent.

  He pushed the cabin door open. The lamp had been turned low.

  “Molly,” he called.

  He was weaving on his feet when she came out of the cuddy, but a light of achievement burned in his face. She stood looking at him, pale in her nightdress, feeling suddenly small before him. He had acquired stature.

  Her eyes lighted.

  “Dan!”

  He sat down heavily, too tired to take off his clothes.

  “Where’d you come from?”

  He grinned, and said stiffly, “Goldbrook. There was a man had his legs broke. I brought him down with a man called Franks. I think he’s crazy.”

  She stood off a little way. Then she said, as if to herself, “It ain’t possible.”

  Both of them listened to the wind, the menacing whisper of the snow on the frosted windowpanes audible in lulls of the wind. He looked at her seriously.

  “If you’d see the horses now, you wouldn’t think it was possible. It’s a wonder they weren’t killed. They’re a team, Molly. They’re the only team I know could have done it.”

  He let his head back with an infinite satisfaction and went to sleep. She stood looking down at him, pride suffusing her, as a mother might feel who sees her son grown up.

  A knock sounded on the door, and Mrs. Gurget burst in.

  “He’s here!” she cried as she saw Dan. “A man came around from Bentley’s to tell me. A man came in busting for drink a while back saying they’d come down through the blizzard. Folks wouldn’t believe him till one of them went to the doctor. They can’t hardly believe it now. My land! There must be twenty of them out there looking at them horses, late as it is.”

  She shed her wraps right and left.

  “How is he?” she asked, her hearty voice sinking to a whisper.

  Molly said, “He just come in. He went right to sleep there.”

  Mrs. Gurget stepped forward, put her hand on his forehead.

  “I don’t want to advise, dearie, but I’d get some blankets out and heat ‘em and take his clothes off and wrap him up and feed him hot tea. And if you don’t do it I’ll do it myself.”

  Molly nodded, “It’s the best.”

  They worked over him quickly, the fat woman puffing loudly through her broad nostrils. He only half woke to take a cup of tea, grinning at them foolishly.

  “Now he’s sweating you’d better put him to bed, dearie. He’s all right-only played out. I’ll stay with you.”

  They sat together before the stove.

  “They must be a great team,” said Mrs. Gurget. “It was a fine thing bringing that feller down, poor man. They say he’ll live, but I don’t doubt he’ll be a cripple.”

  Molly nodded.

  “He’s a good boy, dearie,” said Mrs. Gurget, after a time. “Don’t you love him?”

  Molly nodded again.

  “You were a lucky gal,” said Mrs. Gurget. “I love him myself.”

  Molly said a strange thing.

  “I know how you mean.”

  The fat woman looked at her speculatively. “Such a pretty,” she said to herself. Then she nodded. “Dan’s a good boy.”

  “Yeanh,” said Molly. “He’s an awful good boy. Sometimes I think he don’t know what he wants. He just sits there looking out the window seeing things to himself. He’s so good-looking. The big shoulders and neck and them blue eyes of his’n. It scares me sometimes.” She folded her arms round her knees and leaned her head back as if she were tired. The fat woman breathed hard.

  “You started it,” she said accusingly.

  “I played up to him,” Molly said. “I let it catch me.”

  “What’re you going to do now?”

  “I don’t know. I love him. Honest, I do. If he wants me to stick, I will. It’s only fair now. But I couldn’t stand it ofFn the canal.”

  The fat woman’s broad face worked into a smile.

  “Poor pretty,” she said. “I don’t blame you. When did you find out?”

  “That gypsy told me partly. She didn’t know very good herself, I think. I’d been wondering afore.”

  “That’s how it was?” The fat woman mused. Then she sighed.

  Molly spoke softly.

  “He was so big and so nice. Right away I liked him. He didn’t seem to know nothing, and I wanted to see him take hold. I thought I could make him.”

  “It’s what you’ve got to do now. He don’t know where he’s standing,” said the fat woman.

  Molly nodded.

  “He’s thinking what he wants to do. When he knows, he’ll do it.”

  “If he stays here on the canal, you’ve got to stay with him,” said the fat woman grimly.

  “I couldn’t go with him anywheres else.”

  “If he sticks, he’ll have to fight Klore.”

  Molly nodded.

  “It’ll be a big one. Dan’s awful strong.”

  “Right now he’d want to dodge it,” Molly said.

  “Not now,” said the fat woman. “He’s commenced to wake up. I could see it on him sleeping there.”

  “If he fights Klore, he’ll lick him.”

  “It would be a good job,” said the fat woman.

  Molly stared at the clock striking three. At times she felt as if she expected to see the horse start galloping.

  “I tried to make him have a good winter,” she said.

  Mrs. Gurget patted her hand. “He’s had it, dearie.”

  She cleared her throat.

  “We’ve got our own lives we’re born with,” she observed. “Once in a while we reach outside of it, but there’s only something that’ll fit. It ain’t in us really to pick and choose like men. When it comes to the finish afterwards, you’ve got to do the best you can with it. I’ve seen women fixed like that.”

  Molly drew in her breath.

  “I do really love him.”

  “I know it,” said the fat woman.

  Toward the end of the month they began to get rains from the southeast and the roads became bad. Dan and Solomon traveled early every morning to take advantage of the frost. A thinly veiled excitement began to show in people’s faces, and one morning the fat woman came bursting in to show Molly some cotton crepe she had just bought for summer nightgowns.

  That day, coming down from the camps, Solomon, who was leading, stopped the bays until Dan had caught up. Close beside them in a sugar bush a man was tapping maple trees and hanging buckets out.

  “Look,” said Solomon, pointing the stem of his clay pipe and loosing a ring of smoke.

  Mist was hovering all along the riverbed,
and it wavered with a delicate lifting motion. While they sat there with the red sunset glow on their faces, —Dan watching the mist, not knowing what to see, for he had not lived by a river,— the horses, all four of them, suddenly pricked their ears.

  “I thought so,” Solomon said, a tremble in his voice; and he took off his hat and wiped his high bald head with his red handkerchief. “Now look at it, Dan.”

  Gradually a motion became apparent in the mist, a pulling away upstream. As the dusk settled and the violet shadows came into the valley with grey darkness on their heels, the mist stole off over the river, faster and faster, until they saw the last of it, a single streamer, vanishing.

  The tapping of a man’s hammer in the sugar bush ceased. He came out to the road.

  “If it goes up three nights,” Solomon said, “we’ll have spring.”

  The man nodded.

  That night Dan found a new excitement in Molly, a shine new in her eyes, in the place of the broodiness he had seen there all winter.

  When they crossed the river in the morning on their way into the woods, they heard the water talking under the ice. Just below the bridge, where the wind had swept snow clear, they saw bubbles passing under.

  The next afternoon they stopped again on the edge of the sugar bush. The farmer was collecting buckets with his two boys. They had worn hard trails in the snow going from tree to tree, and a small path came out to the road, from where they could see the valley. Now the man walked out, and he had to step over the top rail of the bordering snake fence.

  “The snow’s melting underneath,” he said, and he sat down on Solomon’s sleigh and took a chew.

  “Did the mist go up again last night?” Solomon asked.

  “Yeanh,” said the man.

  “Two nights,” said Solomon.