3stalwarts

by Unknown

  “For God’s sake give it to me.”

  “Why, if that’s what you want, come along.” She leaned heavily upon her stick. “Now don’t go hurrying me too much. I ain’t nearly spry as I used to be. It don’t do no good to hurry me. I can’t go just so fast. My stars! How did I know it was the parcel you was after? Give me time, mister. And leave go my arm. Leave go or I’ll lambaste you. You can’t get it without me. So just hold your check. I’m coming along.”

  She fumbled at her kitchen door, led him into her kitchen. She shuffled over to a cupboard and fished in a sugar crock. Her skinny hand withdrew in tantalizing slowness a folded piece of paper sealed with tallow.

  “There ‘tis,” she said breathlessly and let herself down in her rocker. She rocked jerkily, fighting for her breath.

  “My stars! I’ve not scampered this way in a good ten years.”

  Jerry shook off the grains of sugar. He broke the flap and put his hands inside.

  “What’s into it, gallanter? Let me see.”

  In a panic he ruffled the contents. There was no word, no letter. Mary couldn’t write. There was not even any sign.

  “Speak up, boy. It’s money, ain’t it?” Her eyes gleamed avidly. “Count it, mister. That’s what a sane body generally does when he gets money.”

  Jerry could not think. Mechanically he took the money to the table. All in papers. They were sorted. Most were on the Canandaigua bank, but there were bills for Oriskany Mills, Devereux, and the Utica banks, fifty and seventy-five cent bills, a dollar and two dollars. While he counted, he heard the quick, light rocking of Mrs. Peck’s chair. She edged for the table and reached out to take a half -filled glass. She began to sip it; her swallows made little rattles in her throat.

  Forty dollars, forty-five, fifty, fifty-two, fifty-two seventy-five, fifty-three twenty-five, fifty-four… . The little bills made slower counting.

  “Seventy dollars, if you want to know,” he said at last.

  Slowly he patted the bills into a sheaf, folded them into the paper, and buttoned it into his inside pocket.

  “Well,” said Mrs. Peck. “That’s quite a word!”

  “Yes.”

  “My land, boy, you look sick.”

  “I’ve had the fever,” he said politely.

  He could only think of her riding off with Harley Falk. He seemed to see the white eyes of the horse in the white face. Even if she wouldn’t have him he must find her before she came to harm.

  “Seventy dollars,” said Mrs. Peck. “It’s quite a word.”

  “Yes.”

  Interlude “Buy land and build a house’

  The Driver

  He had caught the Pioneer stage for Rochester in Cayuga village; and he sat next the driver, for the stage was traveling light.

  “You was quite a surprise to me,” the driver said, skillfully passing the whip to his rein hand and fishing for a flat bottle in his pocket. “The Pioneer line don’t go very good. I can’t see how Aristarchus Chapman can make money on it. People won’t take a stage line that stops all travel Sunday.”

  He pulled the stopper with his teeth and drank through the side of his mouth— the way he himself would drench a horse.

  “But then he’s just as crazy as Josiah Bissel. People won’t stand for it. They’ve run pieces in the paper against the line. ‘Shall we become slaves to an order of men that style themselves Presbyterians?’ Have a drink? It’s cold this morning. It wouldn’t hurt you to be a Presbyterian for a minute.”

  Jerry had a nip from the flat bottle. The driver slapped the stopper in, put away the bottle, took back the whip, and snapped the nine-foot, yellow rawhide lash.

  “Yes, sir, you surprised me. Just stepping on beyond the station. ‘Can I get on?’ says you. ‘Sure,’ says I. ‘How far?’ says I; and you says, ‘To the White Bear this side of Waterloo.’ Why wouldn’t I be surprised? You pay-ing stage fare for a trip you could walk inside four hours.”

  “I’m in a hurry,” Jerry said shortly.

  “Well, that’s your business, mister. Though why a man would be in a hurry to get to the White Bear is a peculiar thought. Well, here we are on top the grade, and if you are in a hurry I’ll drive you, mister.”

  His whip snapped. A clever thing to see, the green bow on the lash-end became a green wasp stinging the four sleek horses. The off right cheek of the off leader, the nigh of the nigh. They caught the stage like a feather and broke into a hard canter. The driver eyed them speculatively as the stage careened in a rut.

  “One thing I’ll say for Aristarchus. He don’t feed his drivers no crow-bait.”

  Jerry had to grip the outside rail as they swung round a freight wagon. The outside wheel just trembled on the shoulder and the rear wheel spun for an instant. But the driver squinted between his horses and continued the easy mastication of his quid.

  “A shave,” he remarked. “I’m pretty cute to shave the road shoulder. I was a mite slow,” he admitted. “If I’d had them running proper you wouldn’t have felt a feather. It’s my idee that if you’re going fast enough you can most generally track a stage past anything.”

  He watched the sweat break out upon the horses.

  “Well, I guess I might as well let them out a while.”

  His whip snarled through the air and the horses laid down their ears and backs. The stage under Jerry felt lighter than the dust the wheels rolled back. The wind was in his teeth.

  The driver took one look at his face and chuckled. Here was a man who wanted fast driving. He wasn’t even looking at the road. By dog it! Maybe he was in a hurry. Well, if he wanted speed, Russ Cooper was the man to offer it.

  And he did. It seemed scarcely five minutes before he swung his lathered team into the yard of the White Bear.

  Jerry sprang out.

  “Thank you, driver; that was a rapid twist. What’s your charge?”

  The driver turned away his eyes with pleasure at the praise.

  “Oh, shucks! I guess the company can stand the loss of that fare.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Luck,” said the driver, turned his leaders, and drew off down the road.

  Mrs. Sammons

  Jerry heard a stir behind the closed door of the tavern. The night latch was still drawn in. He knocked. The stirring hushed. He knocked louder. Over his head, the white bear looked out from his signboard in an icy calm. He used his fist on the door.

  It swung open.

  Mrs. Sammons stood there with her hands adjusting her morning dust-cap.

  “Listen here, young smarty. What do you mean by hammering my door that way? At five o’clock in morning, too.”

  “Mrs. Sammons?”

  “Yes. I’m Mrs. Sammons. What’s your business? Breakfast? Then you’ll have to wait till my fire draws, that’s all I can say. And be polite about it, or I’ll have Rube in upon you.” Her hands dropped down to tie her apron strings. “My land of heaven, such a howdy-do I never heard.”

  “Mrs. Sammons, I want to ask you something.”

  Her snapping eyes fell on his face. He had taken off his hat; the dawn made his skin pale; and he had dark circles under his eyes. She thought from the set of his mouth that he would cry if she gave him a chance.

  “Good gracious, boy. Maybe I’ve been kind of flustered. That dratted fire! Come inside and tell me what you want.”

  Jerry followed her into the tap. She paused to poke the new fire in the stove and led the way into her kitchen. There, on the broad hearth, flames crackled briskly under a simmering kettle and a pan was laid ready with its pale slices of bacon.

  “Do you remember me, Mrs. Sammons? Two nights ago I was here with Issachar Bennet.”

  “The boy that Rube wanted to give beer! And I got buttermilk for. Why, yes indeed, now I look at you. What’s the matter?”

  “Was there a cobbler nighting here? A blind white horse? With a woman and a little girl?”

  Mrs. Sammons fluttered.

  “I said she was a lovely person. I remember
telling it myself. So pretty, too. Her hair all red-like. Yes indeed.”

  “Do you know where they were heading for?”

  Mrs. Sammons gave him a shrewd look.

  “What’s she to you?”

  “My wife.”

  Mrs. Sammons finished her examination.

  “I believe you. Poor boy, is she leaving of you?”

  Jerry nodded.

  “Poor boy.” Mrs. Sammons’s sympathies had been instantly enlisted. “You do look miserable. And you never set eyes on her. Oh, dear! I feel so sorry. You thinking of getting home, and she here all the while. Poor boy!”

  “It’s my fault.”

  “Yes, naturally. But you do look so sorry, I declare she would forgive you. She looked so kind of sad herself. It grieved me so I took up water for her. If I’d just made her fetch her own, you might have seen her. Oh, dear!”

  “I’ve got to find her.”

  “Yes, yes. I wished I knowed.”

  “Didn’t she tell you anything?”

  “I did lay out a hint for her to answer… . But she didn’t let on anything. And she looked so sad, I just left her be. Oh, dear!”

  A vision of the reconciliation that might have taken place beneath her roof watered Mrs. Sammons’s romantic eyes.

  But Jerry sat as if he had been crushed. He did not hear her voice run on asking him to think of it. “So long as her eyes light on you.” It was like a gospel that he had been repeating these past three days. She was gone.

  “You’ve got to find her,” Mrs. Sammons ended her rambling with finality. “I didn’t like the look of that cobbler at all. He made me afraid to look at him. Not that he wasn’t polite to. her. But his horse and the way he looked …” She shivered.

  “That’s it,” said Jerry, heavily.

  “Of course it is. That’s just it. So I’ve been thinking every minute. I said to Rube last night, ‘That’s it,’ I said. She’s so confiding for a person.”

  “Which way did she go?”

  “Let me see. They came in from Bridgeport. I remember that real plain. I was out collecting my eggs when they drove up with that noisy wagon. Yes, now I recollect, of course. They went on toward Waterloo.”

  “West.”

  “Naturally, Waterloo is west of here,” she said with a spice of tartness. “Everybody knows that. Let’s see: they might have took the Geneva route, holding the pike for Canandaigua, but they might have turned south at Lima instead of following on to Batavia; or they could have turned off —for Manchester— on the north road.” For the moment even Mrs. Sammons looked blank. “Good gracious! … They could have gone most anyways … but they did start west… . I’m positive of that… . That’s something anyways.”

  Jerry got heavily to his feet.

  “Now what are you up to?”

  “I’m going on.”

  “Not without breakfast, you ain’t. No, sir. I’ll call Rube if you do; and Rube will handle you like paper. A powerful man with his hands, Rube is. Bacon, and tea and bread and a fresh egg. My gracious, boy, you’ll make the time up in the first two miles.”

  The Forks

  At Waterloo, in the tavern yard, a hostler was polishing the silver trimmings of a harness. He was leaning back against the whiffletree of a high wheeled cart whose hood was folded back, and as he rubbed he sang in a liquorish voice.

  “Bound prentice to waterman, I learned a bit to row, But bless your heart I always was so gay, That to treat a little water nymph that took my heart in tow I runned myself in debt a bit, and then I runned away.”

  “Well, mister, how does that shine in your eye?” “Very bright.”

  “It’s got to be bright or I lose my job.” “You’ve made it shine.”

  “Haven’t I, though? A man might trim his whiskers in that blinker mon-nygram, considering he had whiskers.” “Yes, he could.”

  “Mr. Van Buren’s friend ain’t got whiskers, but he’s out raising votes for his Bucktail party. Well, he’ll raise a few tails this way, maybe.”

  “Do you think so?”

  The hostler winked and rubbed his freckled nose with the polishing rag.

  “Oh yes, though I don’t guarantee he’ll find a vote under them.”

  He gathered the harness over his shoulder and stepped into the barn. He hung it over the hook.

  “Would you like a look at John Quincy Adams?”

  “Yes,” said Jerry, humoring him.

  “There he is,” said the hostler. He pointed to a rawboned, powerful horse with a canny eye. “That’s what he calls him. A good joke, says he, and gives a penny for beer to the hostler and drives off. Well, to my mind he looks a danged sight more like Andrew Jackson.”

  He leaned himself against the stable door.

  “What are you after, mister?”

  “I’m trying to find someone.”

  “Oh, you are? And you want me to tell you where she is, is it? Well, now, what time ought I to have seen the lady?”

  He looked waggishly at Jerry for a moment. Then he grinned.

  “I didn’t hit you, mister. Come on now, I’ll do the best I can. But it’s dusty work, as I can tell by your boots. So just remember.”

  “He’d have been through here yesterday round ten o’clock.”

  “Morning?”

  “Yes. He has a wagon that squeaks and he drives a white horse, with white-blind eyes. He had a woman with him and a little girl.”

  The hostler popped a short whistle.

  “It so happens I saw him. I saw the horse go by. Look out under the tunnel into the square. He walked right through that piece of sun. And he turned his face this way. But, mister, the wheel was greased.”

  “Thanks. What time?”

  “Nearer eleven. I judge it by the cook getting the lard off the back stoop.”

  “You didn’t see where they went?”

  “No, they were headed for the forks. You might ask there, though it’s unlikely. Women commencing dinner. Men working. It’s unlikely. It’s all right, mister. Dusty, though. Dusty work.”

  He half reached out his hand.

  “Thanks,” said Jerry. “I’m no Bucktail like Van Buren’s friend, though.”

  The hostler swore. Then, as he took in Jerry’s light satchel and work clothes, he grinned.

  “One for you, mister. Welcome, too.”

  As Jerry went out of the yard he heard the hostler’s whistle traipse into the barn.

  “I was born on a day when my mother was out. …”

  A chestnut tree spread a broad shade over the forks. Against its bole an iron horse trough was mounted on a block. The ground between forks rose into a knoll, that gave back on a wood lot. A spring welled in the slope above the trough, and a grooved puncheon had been laid to conduct the water. Jerry bent over to drink the trickle as it fell clear. The water was cold enough to start his teeth aching. It seeped all through him, livening his nerves and easing the parch the sun had wrought in his skin.

  To the left the turnpike stretched straight as a cord, meadows on either hand, with fine rail fencing. To the right, the Manchester road came down from the woods. Turnpike or road, left or right. Both west. He looked round him. There were no houses from which a person might readily observe the choice of a driver. But sitting against the bole of the chestnut an old man was niddering on a stick of licorice. His sharp eyes met Jerry’s. He said with an asthmatic roar:—

  “I was wondering when you’d take (herrr-rop) notice of me.”

  “Morning. It’s a hot day.”

  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.