by Paul Boor
Besides machinist’s tools, Nicolas had accumulated all the instruments of a professional meteorologist in his shed. On one bench top sat a barometric apparatus—silver filled—and a sling psychrometer. Mounted on the tin roof were a weather vane, anemometer for taking wind velocity, and rain gauge. Fixed to the outer walls of the shed were Nicolas’s mercury thermometer and a glass cylinder filled with oil extracted from shark’s liver—an ancient and accurate mariners’ device for forecasting weather.
Nicolas made several entries in his log. He repeated all measurements three times. He found the wind velocity minimal from the south, the air temperature still well above the freezing mark, and the level of silver in his barometric apparatus steady. The shark oil appeared clear; the thin layer of white sediment on the bottom of the cylinder indicated the weather would hold. As he rechecked his entries, he noted that the barometer had fallen three marks, a slight change, over the past two hours. A chance for snow? The clarity of the shark oil suggested otherwise. It would be at least two or three days. Nothing indicated a movement of cold air from Canada.
Nicolas dutifully recorded his dismal observations. Back in the kitchen, he heard movement in Ruth’s room and went to her. Ruth had changed into a long, somber dress with a tightly bound bodice. She’d tied her hair back and pulled her boots from under the bed.
Just past dusk, a large landau drawn by two bay horses pulled up at the front porch. Behind the driver sat five middle-aged ladies wearing fur hats and wrapped in shawls and afghans far too warm for such a mild evening.
Nicolas knew whose carriage this was . . . Valdis! Valdis’s landau, with Valdis’s hired man at the reins and foot warmers stoked for ladies of a delicate constitution on their way to a snake oil show.
“He’s speaking at the Grange hall this evening,” Ruth said.
“Ruth, please don’t.”
“I must be off. My friends are waiting.” She climbed into the carriage in a lightly falling snow, and the carriage clattered down the hill.
In his study, Nicolas cleared his Chippendale secretary of the ledger books and tallies of his southern successes. Galveston, he knew, lay under a bright Texas sun, far from this village of tightly shut, simple frame structures. The medical college, its noble faculty and dedicated students, the scientists’ troubles and their search for a cure for yellow fever—all of it came to mind with crystal clarity, unobscured by distance or time. He pulled a clean sheet of paper from a drawer.
He’d promised to take up a pen, had he not? Was he so false a person that he could not complete a simple letter to keep a promise?
36
The Willing Daughter
Nicolas’s concentration was broken when Adam strode through the back door of the Van Horne household with Abigail Van Horne in tow. Both were breathless. It was well into the evening hours.
“We heard all about it, boss,” Adam said. “They got something for us at the Moose River outfit. See, Chubb was coming out of Stillman’s—”
“Stumbling out, I’d say,” Abby added, pulling a face.
“Chubb said there’s quite a number.”
Chagrined, Nicolas said, “Watch how you talk, Adam.” He threw a glance at Abigail.
“Come now, boss. Abby’s no fool. While you were gone—”
Abigail nudged Adam out of the way and faced her father. “Let’s drop the pretense, Father dear. I’m no longer a child. I know about your business. Everything.”
“Well we needn’t talk about it.”
“Look at it this way, Father—Adam can use help fetching what’s in the woods. Chubb wasn’t sure how many there were in the cave, but it sounds like more than one man can handle.”
Nicolas looked into the clear, knowing blue eyes of his daughter, so much like his own, and shook his head. “No, Abby, you shouldn’t go.”
“Adam says it’s fine by him”—Adam gave a nod—“and it’ll go much faster with two of us. We’ll be off soon as we can ready a sledge to haul them out.”
“This isn’t for you, Abby. This is men’s business.”
“To hell with men’s business,” she replied with a scowl. “I know woodsmen as well as you, at Moose River, Big Tupper, Little Tupper, everywhere. And the damned woodsmen know me.”
“I wish you wouldn’t talk like that. They’re lumberjacks. Anyway, you’d be more help with business in the village.”
“To pay off Thomas Chubb? No thank you,” she said. She crossed her arms and turned her back to him.
“Why not spend some time at the house with your mother, then? She’d like that.”
“Father . . .”
With another nod, Adam tiptoed to the door. “I’ll rig a sledge for us,” he said softly. “The snowpack’s still plenty heavy in the woods.”
In the cold silence, Nicolas couldn’t think what to say. She was strong headed, like him. She had always been that way. Now, a grown girl, she needed someone for herself, didn’t she? There was once that young fellow who’d been sweet on her, a nice young man, a classmate of hers. If only she’d take to a boy like that, someone who’d work the Van Horne ice with them.
“Abigail, dear, whatever happened to—”
“Father. Don’t. Just don’t.”
Late that evening Adam and Abigail pulled out of the Van Horne wagon barn under cover of darkness. Nicolas saw them off, watched them slip down the hill and turn into the woods. Then he went to his Chippendale secretary and raised the wick on the lamp.
“I’ll make the midnight train with this. I will.”
37
First Letter
15 March 1889
Forestport, New York
My dear Renée,
It is with the greatest trepidation that I pen this brief missive. I hope, my sweet new friend, that you shall not find my ramblings unwarranted or undesirable. I fear I have little talent at this writing business. Nevertheless, I will try my hand.
I must tell you that on my return trip I uncovered unsettling facts about the delivery I made to you. Other puzzling and troubling occurrences, and a warm spell that may kill my planned ice harvest, have made these first days on my return to the mountains trying indeed, & my nights are long and dark. (Perhaps a correspondence of some regularity will prove the remedy?)
I think of you often, Renée. Each morning upon awakening I worry that you have forgotten the humble gentleman who deals in ice. All through the long day I relive my first sight of you in your laboratory & especially at our lovely supper, where we held such brisk & illuminating personal discussions. Our brief friendship has come to mean much to me.
Please write! I must know if my new friend thinks of me as I think of her. Write, no matter how briefly. I assure you, your words will be worn out by my reading.
I trust that your work goes well & a cure for the fever will soon be at hand. Your uncle has a great mind in you, Renée. Serve him well & your work will be rewarded.
Entreating you to convey my warmest regards to your lovely mother, that rascally Basil & your kind uncle, I remain,
yrs most respectfully,
Nick
p.s. I have wondered, by the bye, if you received the feathers & the fan?
38
Bodies from the Woods
Where the Moose River joined the Black, the road narrowed to a footpath. Adam took the reins from Abigail and drew their sledge, a low-slung but sturdy affair, into the underbrush. They jumped down, unhitched the two horses, and hauled the sledge far enough from the trail to hide it from sight. The snow was still deep in the woods and the going had been slow in the darkness of early morning. Abigail hadn’t said much, and Adam hadn’t forced a conversation . . . not with the grisly job that lay ahead.
Once they’d stashed the sledge, they mounted the two dappled horses Adam had chosen for the trip, a perfect pair for the heavy woods and mountains, barely larger than ponies but powerful through the shoulders and haunches. Two hours later they’d crossed the Moose River Plains and were riding the trail along th
e upper reaches of the Moose River.
Logging had badly scarred the mountains. Devastated forest stretched along the river for miles. Giant stacks of logs called “skidways” lined the barren riverbanks. The logs, virgin white pine cut in twenty-foot lengths, awaited the spring melt, when they’d be rolled off the skidways and ridden downriver on a torrent to the mills at McKeever and Forestport. After passing dozens of skidways, Adam and Abby arrived at the advancing edge of the logging operation. A handful of lumberjacks were skidding fresh-cut pine on sledges downhill to the riverbank; they’d nearly completed a fifteen-foot-high stack. From atop the pile, an older man yelled, “Well, if it ain’t Adam Klock.”
“Sure as hell is,” Adam replied. “Hiya, Fred.”
As the fellow climbed down, a second lumberjack—the sledge driver—hauled up on his pair of played-out horses and jumped down wearing a broad grin. A clapping of strong hands on hard backs ensued. “Who ya got with ya there, Adam?”
Playing it up with a debonair wave of his hand, Adam said, “This here’s Nicolas Van Horne’s girl.”
Fifteen feet above, a young man’s face brightened. “Abigail, innit?” he said. “The daughter of the schoolmarm?”
“Hell if it isn’t Jimmy Lamphear,” Abigail replied. “Haven’t seen you since sixth grade.”
“You got it right, Miss Smarty Pants. My family moved this way, got a place in Old Forge. Your mom still teaching?”
“Hasn’t in years, to tell the truth.”
A flask of whiskey was brandished. The lumberjacks pulled their pipes from their pockets and leaned against their stack of fresh-cut timber, glad for the chance to chat with visitors and pass a bottle at the edge of the river.
“What’s your guess on when you’ll ride these logs outta here?” Adam asked.
“Shouldn’t be long. Heard the ice is already out in the lakes south of Big Tupper.”
“I heard the same,” Adam said. “Damn early spring, huh?”
“Ice’ll break up in a week, maybe two if the weather holds warm. Then the real fun begins.”
“What they paying log drivers nowadays?” Adam asked.
“Moose company gives us four dollars a day. It’s up to five on the Beaver River. Not looking for work, are ya, Adam?”
“Nah,” Adam laughed. “Me and Abby are looking to find Big Mike.” He hesitated and looked downriver. His voice went soft. “I drove logs once, ya know.”
Every woodsman listened hard; even the youngest among them had heard the stories of Adam Klock’s feats, his handiness with a crosscut saw and a pike pole . . . or how Adam had once paddled a canoe eighty miles through the Chain of Lakes, from sunup till sundown, to take a fellow lumberjack to his dying brother’s side.
“Say, Adam, why don’tcha sign up again? Make yourself some real money.”
“Nope,” Adam replied. “You won’t catch me wrestling no logjams no more. Had too many close calls.”
Abigail and Adam mounted their ponies and left the woodsmen to their skidway of logs, the last of the Adirondack giants they’d soon ride downriver on a flood tide of melted snow and ice. Adam and Abigail made their way through a maze of stumps, mangled tree limbs, and wood chips known as “slash” to the upper border of cleared forest, where they found the man they were after, Big Mike Shaw.
The section foreman for the Moose River Lumber Company was a burly bear of a man twice Adam’s size and three times Abigail’s. Like the other lumberjacks, Big Mike was wrapped in woolens darkened by a winter’s worth of wood smoke. The leather of his Croghan boots was molded to his feet by labor, and a rich-smelling pipe stuck from the side of his mouth like a permanent fixture.
“Whatcha got here, Adam?” Mike asked, smirking at Abigail from inside a pungent blue cloud.
“She’s Van Horne’s daughter.”
“Name’s Abigail,” Abigail added.
“A Van Horne, huh?” The rough-hewn woodsman offered his hand with a flourish and a broad, brown-toothed grin. “And a charmin’ young thing you are,” he said, holding Abigail’s hand as if it were bone china. “Keepin’ rough company, aren’t you, miss?”
Abigail chortled. “Sure am, but it’s strictly business.” She gestured across the ugliness of the slash to the standing forest. “That’s some real pretty saw timber you’re taking out there, Mike.”
“Not much of it left, though. Up top of this sled road”—Mike pointed with his pipe to the mountain’s peak—“ain’t nothin’ but pulpwood. Not a sawlog in it. Other side’s all hemlock, and that’s got no size to it.”
“The tanneries paying much for hemlock these days?”
“Not much. They’re boilin’ more and more hides, but payin’ us less for the bark.” Mike paused to strike a match on his trousers and put it to his pipe. “Your dad’s ice business doing good, Miss Abigail?”
Abigail shook her head. “I’m afraid not. We’re in dire need of a cold spell to fill the icehouse.”
“Huh. Never can tell. Been a rough winter up this way, what with the two blizzards. We survived it, though. Most of us, that is.”
Abigail glanced at Adam, then looked Mike in the eye and broached the real subject at hand.
“As you probably surmised, Mike, we’re here on my father’s business.” Mike nodded. “We heard you have something for us.”
Adam chimed in. “How many ya got, Mike?”
“A gawd-awful collection,” Mike replied with a shake of his head. “First off, ’bout a month ago two of my crazy Canucks got themselves killed skiddin’ logs. A sledge full of timber run right over the middle of ’em both. They had no family, couldn’t find nobody to notify. Crazy French Canucks, couldn’t barely speak American. Then another—the craziest of ’em all—caught a widow maker off one of the big pines. Biggest damn limb I ever saw, come outta nowhere. And no widow to claim the body.”
“That’s three.”
“Back in early February the crew on the Beaver River lost six men to a nasty grippe. Run through the whole camp. One body went unclaimed, so I stowed ’em with the others.”
“In your cave?” Abigail asked.
“Yep. I guess Adam told ya about the ice cave, huh?” he said with a snicker.
“So that makes four,” Adam said. “A damned bonanza. Same price as always be good?”
At Mike’s nod, Adam pulled out a billfold and began counting bills. Big Mike tucked the bills into his pants pocket, then said, “You and the young lady best stay for supper.”
“Naw,” Adam said. “We need to get going, Mike. With this warm weather—”
“Sun’s dropping fast,” Mike said. “And them bodies are froze hard into that cave, ya know. Get some supper, stay overnight, and we’ll getcha an early start.”
At Abigail’s nod, Adam agreed.
Mike said, “I’ll give you two a hand tomorrow. We’ll start at daybreak. Besides,” he added, “I don’t much care for that cave. I’d hate to be loadin’ ’em in the dark, if you catch my meaning.”
Canada blew a breath of winter that night, and the mercury dropped. The dining hall was toasty, the food hearty. In honor of the visitors, the rules of the camp—silence at mealtimes and early to bed—were suspended. Mike broke out six bottles of whiskey and the men entertained Abigail and Adam with tales of North Country hermits and larger-than-life lumberjacks. Adam tried to talk his way into a hand of pitch but got no takers. By midnight, the whiskey was gone.
At first daylight, the men climbed groggy from their bunks and pulled on their Croghans. Big Mike loaded a wagon with three kerosene lanterns along with pickaxes, sledgehammers, ropes, and chisels. He had their camp cook fix a package of bacon warm off the stove, then, without a word to his crew, he rode off with Adam and Abigail, leading the Van Hornes’ two dappled horses behind the wagon. The three passed the package of breakfast between them as they rolled down the skid road.
The cave with the corpses was nestled in an outcropping of limestone only a few minutes’ tramp above the river. They hauled their tools
up an overgrown footpath to the mouth of the cave, which was covered by a thatch of wild blackberry and brambles. Big Mike put on heavy leather gloves and pushed aside the cave’s thorny cover, revealing a slit in the limestone barely wide enough for him to slip through. Mike lit one of the lanterns, turned sideways, and edged his bulk into the entrance holding the lantern ahead of him. Adam and Abigail followed his lead, squeezing into the passageway with a lantern held ahead and tools and ropes dragged behind.
The narrow passage was a good ten yards long. At the halfway point, Abigail’s breathing went fast and hard. The damp limestone closed in. “I don’t like this,” she called ahead to Adam, her voice pitched higher with each word. “I don’t like this one bit!”
“Keep your eyes fixed ahead,” Adam said. “On me.”
“You know, Adam, we gotta pull ’em out this way.”
“Well, hell . . . Mike got ’em in.”
Big Mike already stood in the cave’s main room. “Come along now, Miss Abigail,” he called to her. “Gotta admit you got a point,” he added with a chuckle. “With all the ice on them bodies, it’ll be harder hauling them out than it was getting ’em in.”
Abigail fought to quell her racing heart. “I . . . suppose,” she gasped as she stumbled into the main room.
They stood in a large cavern, cold as a grave. From the ceiling twenty feet above, stalactites twisted down like ghostly fingers. The floor of the cavern was damp and slick, and covered by irregular, three-foot humps of stone that looked like Chinese pagodas.
