3stalwarts

by Unknown

  “Ain’t it?”

  “When I think of the way they traveled through here in the wilderness, in rain and snow, and you and me now riding in a palace on the distillation, as it were, of all those honest brains, I can’t but feel an urge to seize even a humble spade.”

  “I should think the diggers had the hardest job.”

  “Diggers! My boy, they hadn’t anything to do but dig!”

  “That’s it, it seems to me.”

  “My boy, think of the vision. The responsibility!”

  “Yes,” said Jerry humbly.

  “The young don’t stop to consider those things,” Mr. Blue said kindly. “I think of Elkanah Watson planning this all out on his first journey, even to some of the locks. You ought to hear him speak. He’s a friend of mine.

  We’ve much in common. Washington, too, immortal George. He had an idea of it. Geddes! It’s the greatest thing in the world.”

  Jerry looked out beyond the horses. They were traveling the curves of the swamp section west of Rome. He saw a workman’s shanty half grown over by the woods. He thought of Self Rogers groaning over his toothache.

  But Mr. Blue was following his gaze. .

  “Isn’t it amazing? There’s that work barrack set up by a carpenter, and half destroyed by woods. But here’s this mighty work right by it, clear and strong, untouched.”

  He rambled on. He showed Jerry sights he ought to notice.

  “We’re coming into Limestone Creek. Let’s get up on top deck and view the aqueduct. It’s small, but well constructed. My boy, you ought to show more interest. Some day you’ll tell your child, ‘I was an early traveler on the Grand Canal.’ “

  He urged Jerry up.

  “You don’t want to look at that farm, nice as it is. That’s not the wonder. The wonder is the canal that made this farm to prosper— Look.” His voice burbled louder than the creek. But Jerry saw the barn. A sidehill barn, it had been moved. A store stood on the towpath and a woman off a boat was buying eggs. He saw her through the door. He heard a strong, clear voice asking happy questions.

  Dencey Burns. It seemed a miracle to him that a thrush in the balsams should begin to sing so early in the afternoon… .

  “Wait till we get to Syracuse,” continued Blue. “Then you’re going to see a lock. That’s the most wonderful thing, in my estimation, in the whole tremendous structure. Harnessing the power of water to lift a whole great boat upward or to set it downward, gently as a boy might float a leaf.”

  But Jerry was not listening. His eyes were on a sight by the bank. The horses were coming into Oneida Creek, and as the boat slid up to the easy curve, he saw a red-faced man with a bald and sweaty head who stood on the deck of the half-painted, brand-new boat. The boat was up on land, showing its belly clear, and the man, who had finished his painting for the day, was striding back and forth across the steersman’s deck.

  Mr. Blue observed the sight with a little laugh.

  “A quaint old fellow. The whole idea’s very quaint, isn’t it?”

  “What idea?”

  “Why, he was a salt-water sailor who got impressed in 1812. He wouldn’t work for a British boat, so they stuck him into Dartmoor Prison. That’s the story I’ve heard of him. His name, by the way, is Hank McNab.” Mr. Blue rolled his cigar between his lips. “An ignorant man, he wouldn’t go to sea any more after he was released in fourteen. But he came up here— why, I can’t imagine— and built himself that house in what was wilderness then. He married a half-breed Indian woman. He didn’t farm. They say he used to just sit in the door all day long, smoking, looking at nothing —a perfect picture of the sotted peasant. He wouldn’t speak to a living soul. He never even noticed the surveyors. The diggers meant nothing to him. All day long he used to sit there like a sot. Even when the water was let through I’ve heard he would not go down to the bank. He never budged until one day a neighbor, going by, heard him yelling for his spy-glass. He had an old brass one. His wife brought it and he fixed it on the eastern view. He’d seen a boat. The neighbor waited to see what he would do. He got up and walked down to the canal and watched the boat pass —the longest walk he’d had in seven years. He said ‘Good evening’ to his neighbor— the first word he’d ever addressed to him. Next day the neighbor saw him in the mill selecting seasoned timber. Since then he’s been building the boat. They say it’s all fitted out with fine wood, and really very well made. I’d like to see inside it, though. It must be comical.”

  Jerry did not join his laughter.

  But when the sailor waved his arm and shouted, “Ahoy, Montezuma!” he joined the steersman’s answer with a wave.

  “A loutish face, isn’t it?” said Mr. Blue.

  “Yes, very.”

  The self-styled savant turned at the tone of Jerry’s voice. His eyebrows were scornfully arched.

  “Fowler, I believe you’ve scarcely listened to my conversation.”

  “You’re right about that, anyway, Mr. Blue.”

  “What do you mean? ‘About that, anyway’?”

  “I worked on this line of the canal,” said Jerry. “As a matter of fact, I was the man who built the locks.”

  Mr. Blue drew a deep breath. His cheeks slowly crimsoned. His eyes grew blank as tapioca. Then he rallied.

  “By George,” he said, “I’ve always wanted to know the man that built those locks!”

  But Jerry had turned his back; and by the tiller the steersman choked a good guffaw.

  Night Travel

  They ate supper as they traveled, and after supper Jerry went on deck again. He wanted to see his locks in action. At dusk the captain hung a lantern in the bow. And along the line of the canal now and then they saw other lights gliding like unwinking fireflies. At the change stables, the hostlers had the new team ready so that the boat never lost its way. A new driver came with each team.

  The land spread out again in farms, but the houses showed as lighted windows. The barns were shapes in blackness. Unseen cowbells sounded in the back pastures. A dog barked at the passing lantern. The crickets shrilled in the woods, the bullfrogs roared their autumn choruses. The sounds mingled in a great wave, before them and behind, but the boat it-self seemed to be traveling in a well of silence.

  They came to Number One at last, and Jerry saw the level ready for them, and the tender in his nightshirt; and the captain’s bugle call hung behind them in the darkness. Jerry felt still and cold as the upper gates closed and the water gushed in the sluices and the sound of the tumble bay ceased. He saw the lock walls rise past them, he saw bats crossing the lanterns, he saw the lower gates open and the sheen of the canal mirror-like ahead. The team drew out.

  “Pretty neat, ain’t it?” asked the steersman. “Reckon it looks different from the way you knowed it.”

  Jerry just nodded. He was thinking of the timbers out of sight under the water, of Hayward Lewis dubious over mortar, of Nathan Roberts on his pony, and of Mary coming up in time to see Hammil and Cosmo work the empty gates. He heard her say again, “I’m not crying now.”

  Behind them the water crept round the tumble bay again; but the sound gradually faded. A hundred feet ahead,, the horses made scarcely any sound. A muskrat slithered in the mud; the dry marsh grass rattled its blades, though there was no wind; and the moon was small. He watched the banks slide into the light and pass. He heard the sleeping passengers stir on their hard beds. A boat came by, its team drawn over to one side and its towrope rasping along the packet’s bottom. A child in the cabin cried, a thin wailing among the night sounds. A woman moved in the cabin and a light went on. As they slid forward Jerry heard her voice singing low:—

  “The trees they are tall and the leaves they are green, And many a time my true love I’ve seen. Oh, many an hour I’ve passed all alone— My bonnie lad’s a long time a-growing.”

  “That the Montezuma?”

  “Yeanh. Night shift now. How’s the boy, Jake?”

  “Fine. Fine. Getting a tooth, that’s all.”

  “B
y docket, is he?”

  “Yeanh. Upper… .”

  The voices swam farther and farther apart.

  Another lock, a light on the right beyond: Cossett’s. Then Jerry saw shapes of new houses. A canal opened north.

  “Salina side cut,” said the steersman. “Since your time, I expect. There’s a salt boat now.”

  More houses and a warehouse. All dark. Time for a man to sleep. But Jerry stayed out in the warm stillness. He wouldn’t have to dream tonight.

  “Next year this time,” the steersman volunteered, “we’ll be giving you a ride as far as Irondequot. Maybe into Rochester if they get the embankment laid up.”

  “That will take another year,” Jerry said. “We only laid the culvert this summer.”

  “That so?”

  The steersman leaned against the stick. He seemed to steer by instinct. His narrow face was hard-cut in the faint light.

  “Jake’s got a handsome boy.”

  Jerry said nothing.

  “I only just got married myself, mister. But I reckon I’ll be cutting teeth afore long, too.”

  They went on, and on, meeting a boat now and then, with the night against their eyes, moving with a silence as earthless as the wheel of the stars over their heads… .

  Boat-builder

  Roger Hunter looked keenly at Jerry.

  “Colonel Rochester took a shine to you.”

  “He’s a fine-looking old man.”

  “Yes, he is. As fine as they come. It’s a great thing for Rochester. We won’t be held back the way Rome was by Lynch. But it was handsome of him letting us have the land for our yard on such an easy mortgage.”

  The silver-haired, keen old gentleman had given Jerry an understanding look. “We old fellows have laid out this town,” he said. “But it’s you young ones who’ll make a city of it. Good luck to you.”

  “What are we going to do now?” Jerry asked.

  “What we want to do is get the jump. We want two boats ready anyway by the time they open the Feeder and the Embankment. It seems to me you’d better get after the plans and models. I’ve collected a few. Order timber. John Biden’s ready to give us good prices. You’ll have to set up your cradles.”

  Jerry grinned.

  “What’ll you do, Roger?”

  Hunter laughed.

  “Sounds kind of one-sided, don’t it?”

  They were standing on the lot of ground the Colonel had assigned to them. At their feet the wide-dug channel for Hill’s Basin showed a surface of baked mud interlaced with cracks. Eastward the diggers had left the shape of the canal in their wake.

  “I’ve got to get ready for business. I’ve seen Ely— we can handle his flour if we have the boats ready. But I’ve got my Pennsylvania horses. And I’m trying to do a dicker with the Navigation Company to share their barns. They’ll have a chain from Rochester to Albany. They haven’t planned on further west yet.”

  Behind them the river roared towards its falls. The first attempt at an aqueduct had been washed downstream. Brittin had died, and Hovey had taken over the contract. The state had offered him convict labor at a nom-inal price and Nathan Roberts was the engineer in charge.

  Jerry looked back at the town. A low site, a cluster of frame buildings, its one beauty the river with its falls; and even these were obscured by the gaunt sides of the mills. A perpetual thunder lay over the town, mingled of the falling water and the grind of wheels. But it conveyed a sense of excitement, of a power for growth completely disproportionate with its newness.

  “Rochester’ll never be a town in the right sense,” Hunter said. “To-day she’s an overgrown village and tomorrow she’ll be a city.”

  Townsmen spoke of their village as a city already. “Give us a bank and a city charter— that’s all we need.”

  The sun was setting beyond the river. It had passed down the line of the serpentine hill; but as it vanished long arms of crimson began to spread across the sky. As they reached up they began to open, fanwise, until from north to south the whole sky was made vibrant.

  As Jerry looked at it, his heart shook off its deadness. He saw it as an omen. In the time of waiting, he would work.

  “I’ll have the boats for you, Roger. But along with it there’s something else I want to do.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Buy land and build a house.”

  Four ERIE WATER

  1

  “To build the double flight”

  An easterly breeze was springing up, bending the smokes of the village away westward after the setting sun. Storekeepers were shutting up their stores. Along the river, the mills were slowing down; the race mouths ceased to froth; the wheels clacked slower and slower over their ratchets. A slight evening mist was playing over the swift slide of the river, and the roar of the falls was gaining strength.

  On the aqueduct sounded the chisel and hammer as the grey-clad knot of workers placed the last post for the iron guard rail. The engineer and the contractor were walking back and forth over the length of the empty trunk. The sunset brought out the pink sandstone, coloring it like blood. Solid stone, ten arches, nine of fifty feet, one of thirty, set twelve inches in the solid rock to stand the worst the Genesee could do against it: their two faces were quiet and their eyes expressed a kind of wonder at the massive creature they had wrought.

  Over in Hill’s Basin, Roger Hunter asked the yard foreman, “Where’s Fowler gone, Self?”

  Self Rogers leaned himself against the hull of the last new boat.

  “I guess he’s gone back to his house.”

  He took hold of the helves of his long moustache and looked sad.

  “He clears out every evening about four. Leaves me a list, he does, for the completion of the day. He ain’t bothered with no toothache. All he thinks about is finishing that house.”

  “Have you seen it?”

  “Me? Well, just the outside. It ain’t a bad piece of work. But he won’t let me touch so much as a one-inch board inside of it. Why, Mr. Hunter, ‘tweren’t so long ago I was his boss. What does he know about building?”

  Hunter looked serious.

  “You know what I’d do if I was you, Self?”

  “No. What would you do if you was me, Mr. Hunter?”

  “I’d have my teeth pulled out.”

  Self Rogers stroked his jaw.

  “Well, Mr. Hunter, that ain’t a bad idea at all. But it’s only got one trouble with it. You ain’t me.”

  Hunter grinned.

  “That’s so.” He stepped back a moment to look the boat over. “She’s a nice boat. I’m glad we picked on white with grey for the line colors. It makes a boat look speedier.”

  “Well, white or grey or red or yeller all look pretty much identical once one of them dock wallopers gets to dragging barrels over it.” But Self Rogers took a look himself.

  The boat rested on her carriage, ready to slide into the filled basin. For a month now, the canal had been open over the Irondequot. The two sister boats of the new Rochester six-day line were somewhere east, one traveling for Schenectady, the other probably in Utica waiting for a load of beer, whiskey, and cloth, a pick-up haul.

  “This boat,” said Hunter, “is going to be the first to travel west. I’m picking up a load of cattle in Brockport, Self, and taking them down to Albany. We’ll be the farthest western boat into Albany when they open it up next month. It ought to make them take some notice of us down there.”

  “Oh, they’re going to open up down there, be they?” Self Rogers slapped the hull. “Well, it’s all the same to me. It just means I’ll have to build another. It’s just about as bad as raising shanties.”

  But the old man’s eyes were proud. The boat was a good job. Sixty-one feet by seven and a half, to draw three and a half feet when she was loaded up to thirty tons, she had the general lines of a packet. But the cabin took up only twenty feet of her. The rest was cargo space.

  She had two windows on each side of her cabin, and sliding doors and
a top-hatch for loading freight.

  “She’s a dandy. I consider you and Fowler turn out the best freights on the canal, Self.”

  “I guess that’s right,” old Self said modestly. He gathered up his tools.

  Hunter grinned.

  “Good night, Self.”

  The old man did not answer, and Hunter strode off. He crossed the river by the Exchange Street bridge and then turned up Spring Street. This was the newer section of the town. The house foundations wore a bare, earth look; the roadway still was roughly crowned in dirt; and the footwalk was a path that wound where the going was easiest.

  A robin in a maple called for rain, over and over, showering the stillness with his liquid notes. A couple of dogs were getting together for a night’s philandering. Two little boys stopped by a hitching post to feel each other’s shirts.

  “How’s the water to-day?” Hunter asked them as he passed. They started guiltily, paled, then grinned.

  “Not so bad, mister.”

  “Warm enough for a fast swimmer,” said the other.

  As he crossed Fitzhugh Street he heard the brass band playing on the

  Corners to advertise Mr. Bishop’s latest waxwork. It had been announced that morning. A lively presentation of the notorious Love Duel between Commodore Barron and Decatur, complete with seconds. The brasses of the band came in strong to the tune of “John Bull Caught a Tartar,” and Hunter hummed as he went along. Crossing Sophia Street, he saw Jerry’s house ahead on the corner of Eagle. He had chosen the lot because the slant in Spring Street gave him an uninterrupted view straight west.

  It was a two-story house, rather small, with a dormered roof, and well shaded by the maples. A spring welled out of some rocks behind the house, and on such a still afternoon the tinkle of water came plainly to the street. Hunter vaulted the fence, strode up to the kitchen door, and let himself in.