by Van Reid
Stumble he did—over a fallen saddle, it was later supposed. He caught himself with his hands and found it a little easier to breath nearer the floor. He scuttled forward—or he thought it was forward—ran into a wall, then shifted direction and scuttled some more. In his hurry, he brushed past something hard. He lurched and staggered against the object again. Groping, reeling like a drunken man, his lungs on fire, Thump caught hold of a portion of someone—an elbow, he realized as he tugged at the woman. “Ma’am,” he said, though he was barely able to breathe. “Ma’am.” She seemed to be carrying something and was unwilling to loosen her arm from her side. She fell against him, and in his surprise (and having held his breath for an inordinate amount of time) he took a sudden gasp and almost killed himself then and there.
There was another shout—several shouts that sounded as if they came from within the building. There was an awful flash as something burning fell near to him. His eyes weeping, his lungs retching for air, Thump burst into a fit of coughing that only drew more poison into his lungs. For a moment, it wasn’t very plain who was being held up by whom. Then he was caught hold of and half led, half jerked toward the broad front doors of the livery, through a surging cloud of smoke and into the sweet, ravishing, resplendent air.
Someone caught hold of the woman from his arms; Big Eye Pfelt appeared and propped Thump up by the shoulders. Thump took one last involuntary breath before he was well out of the smoke, felt his mind darken, and pitched forward onto the hard-packed earth of the livery court.
“Mr. Thump?” came an astonished voice that was familiar to him, and, before he briefly lost awareness, he might have sworn he heard the voice of the Moosepath League’s grand chairman speaking his name in similar tones. If Mister Walton is here, he thought, then all will be well!
When he woke—and, truthfully, it was only moments later—his poor throbbing head was pillowed upon something very soft and warm, and he had the most unexpectedly pleasurable sensation run straight to his heart. The pillow shook slightly as the person attached to it coughed. He took a breath himself, coughed, then breathed again more easily. He relaxed and reveled in the soft place where his head lay, without really understanding what it was.
“My,” came a sweet voice above him, “he has a magnificent beard!” Soft fingers delicately brushed the hair back from his forehead. Someone bathed his face in cool water, and a flask of something strange and harsh was applied to lips.
Thump opened his eyes dreamily. He had, for a moment, forgotten where he was, and was thinking of another instance of coming to, when he had wakened in the lap of the exquisite ascensionist herself. But that was a bright day in July. It was dark now—a dark punctuated by the occasional lick of flame over the rooftops. But he found himself looking past certain womanly endowments, which were considerable, and into a pair of soft brown eyes that gazed upon him with the utmost concern. The woman’s hair was pulled back, but the dark kerchief accomplished something similar to the blue-black tresses he had seen framing comparable features the previous Independence Day.
“Mrs. Roberto!” he said in a gasp and a whisper. His heart flung out of him and tears sprung to his eyes for wholly different reasons. There were small exclamations of surprise all around them—voices, hushed, almost with reverence.
The eyes of the woman betrayed surprise, and then something like humor.
She was about to say something when he said, “You are safe!” which was everything he wanted to know, and upon which tidings he fell into a deep, impenetrable, placid sleep. The stir and excitement of the last twenty-four hours and more had taken their toll. He had eluded a falling piano, and climbed roofs, and chased after nefarious and shadowy individuals. He had got a cat from a tree. He had labored gallantly beneath the highest sort of anxiety. He was done in. “High tide at thirty-seven minutes past the hour of ten,” he said, and save for some grand and magnificent snores, this was the last thing to pass his lips for almost an hour.
Everyone within hearing distance watched Dee with great interest. There were whispers and rumors running through the crowd and many of the hoboes doffed their hats, which seemed mysterious to other people.
“We’re pleased you’re safe, Mrs. Roberto,” said Big Eye Pfelt to Dee
“That’s very kind of you, sir, but I assure you—”
“I thought we had met before,” said Mister Walton.
“And I promise you, we haven’t,” said Dee, with an odd smile.
“Oh,” said Mister Walton. He and Sundry had already exchanged bewildered looks with one another since discovering Mr. Thump, and would pass more between them when Mr. Ephram and Mr. Eagleton next arrived in the company of a retired sheriff and two captured burglars.
For now, Mister Walton simply nodded, calmly accepting this woman’s assertion that they had never met. It seemed otherwise to him, but if she were hiding something of herself (as he suspected), and for whatever reason, it was all the same to him as if she told the truth. He would press the business no further. “Miss Pilican,” he said with a gentlemanly nod.
It was beginning to rain.
BOOK SEVEN May 30-June 2, 1897
from the Eastern Argus
June 1, 1897
FIRE RAGES AT ICEBORO
___________
Volunteers Pour in from
Surrounding Towns.
___________
A Night of Heroism Capped
by Welcome Rain.
___________
Looters Captured by Retired Sheriff
with Help of Portland Club Members.
It has been said that there is but one consistent aspect of the Maine climate and that is its unpredictability: surprise does seem our weather’s most common element. Still, when a bolt of lightning comes out of a cloudless atmosphere and sets fire to a community’s largest building, people have reason to be astonished.
Such a thing occurred in the small hours of Sunday morning in the village of Iceboro, just ten miles or so south of the capital. Citizens of that busy place were long sleeping in their beds when a crash, described by some as “terrific” and others as “the loudest thing I ever did hear,” roused everyone from the worst sinner to the highest saint in the same instant. Hardly had the town adjusted its collective nightcap and peered out the window before another awful noise shook the sills-an explosion, this time, from the sawdust-filled icehouse hard by the docks along the Kennebec. The icehouse was on fire!
Some six hundred feet in length and forty feet tall, with a capacity of seventy thousand tons, the icehouse was a formidable piece of building to have ablaze in the midst of town, and, as almost two hours passed before the first drop of rain, it is something of a miracle that more was not lost.
The thunderstroke came some minutes past one in the morning. No sign of storm had arrived as yet, though reports have rain and wind reaching Owl’s Head by that hour. Two other buildings caught fire—a boardinghouse built to house many of the ice cutters in the area lost a portion of its roof, and a livery stable in the midst of town was nearly gutted.
Men and women hurried into Iceboro from the surrounding towns, many reaching the fire within half an hour, and much was saved because of their selfless attention to duty. Some forty or more “men of the road” came also, having bedded down the evening before at Blinn Hill—a nearby wood across the river. It was a night of hazard and adventure, and this journal will apprise its readers of the more interesting stories as they are reported to us.
One of the more troublesome aspects of the crisis concerned the presence of looters—some few men intent on robbing their neighbors while all and sundry were fighting for the very existence of the community.
Edward Fischer, a retired sheriff of Kennebec County, rode into Iceboro from the west at about two o’clock when he espied several suspicious figures huddled near the back of Britner’s Emporium and Dry Goods. With the skill and cunning realized in more than twenty-five years of service, Mr. Fischer advanced upon these men and was preparing
to let his presence be known by discharging his rifle into the air when two more men came running from the store. The four men already outside attempted to capture the two newcomers, and in the resulting melee, Mr. Fischer understood that the first fellows had been in fact laying in wait of looters rather than waiting to loot themselves.
Who did they turn out to be, these self-deputized police, but two “men of the road” and two members of that society which has already gone down in recent local history as harboring men of action—no other order than the Moosepath League itself, one fellow of which, less than a week ago, saved Portland’s own policeman Calvin Drum from being crushed by a falling piano. Holmes and Watson could not be busier, it seems!
Mr. Fischer cut short this business by firing a shot in the air, which had been his first intention, and soon the two felons—Clarence Sawtooth and Wallace Poole by name—were caught and collared. The two “men of the road” and the members of the Moosepath League—Mr. Christopher Eagleton of Chestnut Street and Mr. Matthew Ephram of Danforth Street—were in a great state of excitement but only too glad to except Mr. Fischer’s command of the situation. The looters have since been charged and held on bail. They await trial. The participants in this scene were interviewed, and Mr. Fischer reports that he is still looking for someone named Henry who seems to have been involved but has since disappeared.
BANGOR TELEGRAPH COMPANY
James Street Office
MAY 29, AM 11:36
DRESDEN MILLS, MAINE
MRS. JUDD PRLICAN
FOUR MEN VISITED THIS MORNING, ASKING AFTER YOUR NINE PEOPLE-IN-PEN COLLECTIVELY. REFUSED THEM INFORMATION AS TO ANY WHEREABOUTS, BUT THOUGHT IT STRANGE AND THAT YOU SHOULD KNOW. LETTER TO FOLLOW.
WILLIAM SIEGFRIED
FROM MR. WILLIAM SIEGFRIED
BANGOR, MAY 29, 1897
Dear Mrs. Pilican,
It is with great anticipation that we, here at Siegfried and Son, await the arrival of your latest manuscript, but more for the continued knowledge that you and yours are happy and well. The spring has been filled with perfect and near perfect days and we imagine with pleasure how you must take the sun of an afternoon when May is at its height.
I must apologize for my strange telegram of this morning and hope that it did not cause you more alarm than was necessary. Four men paid Mullett and myself the strangest visit today, and I thought it meet to apprise you of them and their purpose.
Three of them seemed quite honest and of the most innocent variety, which made the presence of the fourth man, who seemed anything but innocent, a puzzle. They were very much in a state of agitation—particularly over the whereabouts and safety of someone with the melodic name of Mrs. Dorothea Roberto ...
58. Briefly Ascertaining the Whereabouts of Several People
(May 30, 1897)
No one really knows what cats think of things, and that is the end of it. Dogs will lay every emotion before you, and sometimes, afterward, they will even show their shame for having done so, but a cat only looks away. A cat will narrow his eyes as if he could not bother to look with his whole sight. When a cat does widen his eyes, the expression is almost always provoked by some perception unknown to us. Ezra Porch would stare with wide, wild eyes when a phantom passed overhead or at the sound of a mouse in the field that you or I could not detect, but the great calamity across the river that night—the roar and sunlike blaze of the fire and the cries of men and women—seemed to merit only his occasional (and narrow-eyed) glance. Mr. Porch hardly moved from his perch atop the hill across from home; surely he was aware of the commotion in the west, but in appearance he remained aloof.
But a field mouse did pass almost under his nose, and several rabbits thumped below him on the other side of the hill. Mr. Porch was, in fact, hypnotized until the eastern sky grew light and the fire in the west lost its preeminence. The early hours of morning had promised rain, and finally rain came just ahead of a false dawn glowing behind an overcast sky.
Ezra Porch turned his head at the sound of a door being opened and closed. He watched with long eyes as the old man of the house hurried down the street and into town. The post office would not be open today, but two fellows were loitering in the shelter of the porch there. The old man stopped before them, cocking his rain hat up and waving his arms till they joined him on the street and followed him to the livery.
Wind and rain met Mr. Porch’s face as he turned his pads toward home and down the grassy slope. Even in the wet he barely left a trail behind him. From his perch in the lilacs he watched as a horse and carriage was pulled up before the gate. Two men sat atop, looking philosophical. Their slickers and hats glistened in the half-light. Old Fale Field climbed out of the rig and moved his rheumatic limbs down the walk and up the front steps. The cat could hear everything, though what sense he made of it is a mystery.
“Are you set on this?” the old man was saying.
“You know I am, so why do you ask?” came the voice of Mother Pilican.
“Well, get your hat on.” There was a pause, then the old fellow said, “I can find her, you know?”
“I’m not sitting here, fretting by myself. But you’re not carrying me out, either.”
“No, no. I’ve got the Sproat boy and the Fallow boy to drive us.” The door opened and Fale croaked out to the two atop the rig. “Well, come on. She’ll need the both of you.”
The two fellows climbed down from the driver’s seat, neither of them boys at all but two of Dresden’s ne’r-do-wells who had opted to consider the glow of the fire from a distance rather than risk work at closer quarters. Fale had nabbed them, however, and he had exercised all his long-abandoned military bearing to bedevil them into service. He’d left a note at the livery for Maurice Tapperly to the account of a horse and carriage and a pair of slickers he found in the back room for the boys. They had done pretty quick work, once they fell to it, and they even seemed a little curious to see what was happening in Iceboro now that most of it was probably done.
Mr. Porch looked a little wide-eyed when the two men came out carrying Mother Pilican, their locked arms like a sedan chair. They were solicitous of the old woman and packed her pretty carefully into the carriage. Fale came scurrying out with blankets, which he tossed inside before climbing after. Ezra Porch watched. He could appear fascinated as long as no one was looking at him. He had seldom seen Mother Pilican leave the house, and never in such weather or at such an hour. He watched the carriage pull away and disappear over the next knoll before he realized he was locked outside the house until someone came home.
It began to rain in earnest. Ezra Porch grew still and inscrutable. He peered through his lilac cover to the top of the hill across the way, but the ascending light of day had obscured the glow in the west.
Looking for the new day, Big Eye Pfelt peered from under his dripping hat in the direction of the Kennebec River, and the banks and hills beyond, but the smoke and steam had obscured the rising glow in the east.
By the work of man the great fire at Iceboro was contained, and by the vagaries of nature it was quelled. Like a prodigious beast the fire had roared and lay down and died, and, when it was done, the mists of that rainy morning separating from the smoke and steam of disaster, the icehouse itself resembled a ravaged giant. With the rain came wind. Sparks and hot ash flew with the driving wet so that the air about Iceboro was filled with contradiction. The bucket brigades did not leave off their work till the burned-out building swam in ash-choked water.
The firefighters gathered at a respectful distance from the catastrophe, aghast at the randomly spared timbers and posts that thrust blackened from round the core of the original explosion. Some six hundred feet of charred, skeletal ribs and shards of roof and wall had replaced the vast icehouse of the day before, and in the midst of the smoking remains there were great masses of ice—inexplicable and hardly to be believed.
“I’ve heard of it happening,” said Big Eye Pfelt about the surviving ice, “but I didn’t expect it.” Th
e rain seemed no hindrance to him, pattering in his face and running out of his beard and down his neck. Hoboes are career men when it comes to weather.
“I’ve seen it,” said a local man who held his head so that the brim of his hat would guard his face from the rain. “Back in “90,” he said, “downriver, at another fire. I’ve seen it, but I still didn’t expect it.”
“It’s a terrible shame,” said someone further back in the crowd.
“Henry says, ‘It’s a terrible shame,’” said another.
“It could have been worse,” said one philosopher. He reached out to scratch the head of the dog on Big Eye’s shoulder. “We were some glad to see you fellows come across river,” he said. “What brought you in such force?”
Big Eye Pfelt was not too sure he could explain the attendance of himself and his fellow road men. Come to think of it, he wasn’t entirely sure he could explain the Moosepath League, and the imperiled Mrs. Roberto posed yet another mystery since she arrived on the scene under a separate name, herself rescuing animals from a burning building.
Taken all together, it was perplexing, and certain necessary bits of information under several headings were striking for their truancy.
The Moosepath League itself had seemed perplexed, which perplexed Big Eye further; they had been most particularly astonished that the two halves of their society should meet one another before the burning livery; or perhaps it was merely a feigned astonishment meant to hide deeper purposes. Big Eye Pfelt had been around in his day, but, come that Sunday morning, he was not too sure what he had rubbed shoulders with since yesterday afternoon.
“I am pleased that you are safe, Miss Pili can,” said Thump when he opened his eyes and found the kerchiefed woman in a chair beside the sofa in Mrs. Mulligan’s parlor. In his mind he referred to her still as “Mrs. Roberto,” and he pronounced this new name with some difficulty, but Mister Walton had set a courteous precedent by addressing her in this manner and Thump would follow.
