3stalwarts (115 page)

“Do you know Mrs. Quackenbush?”

“The woman that pumped the canal dry three times?” Fortune asked.

Mrs. Gurget laughed.

“That’s her. Nell Berry’s sister. Well—” She was swept into a paroxysm of laughs, her sides lifted, her face reddened, and she clutched at her bosom with a fat hand. Solomon looked up from picking up his cards with an air of disgust.

“It’s funny,” he snorted. “Jeepers, it’s the funniest story you ever heard.”

The fat woman was not at all disturbed.

“Sol’s right, at that. Mrs. Perkins up to Slab City gave Mrs. Quackenbush an order for a hat like hers last month. One of them strawy ones with decorated pansies onto it. But the old woman got to Utica and she couldn’t recollect which woman had asked her. So she went off and bought a dozen just alike. She buys clothes for a lot of them women up there, so she knew the sizes. Then when she come up she sold each one of them twelve women a hat. They was pretty, and the women was anxious to buy them; and each one figured she’d be right up in the top of style and show up in church next Sunday with a new hat right before the rest, and show off on to the others. None of them said nothing: they wanted for it to be a surprise. I wasn’t there, so I don’t rightly know, but I hear tell that a bad time was had by all.”

She bent over, slapping her knees, and let out a screech of laughter as she straightened up.

“What happened to Mrs. Quackenbush?” Fortune asked with a chuckle.

“Land! As quick as she’d sold them all she traveled out of there like all get out.”

“Two-fifty,” Solomon bid dryly.

The fat woman picked up her cards.

“Four hundred,” she said. “Any dispute?”

The playing went on until about ten o’clock, when the fat woman got up to go.

“When are you traveling to Rome?” she asked Dan.

“Tomorrow morning.”

“So’re we. The Berrys’U be coming through from Port Leyden. We might as well all go together. It’ll be a regular party.”

“Sure,” said Dan… .

Next morning the three boats started down, the Sarsey Sal, the Nancy, Berry’s boat, at the head of a line of nine.

On deck Dan stood with Molly close beside him.

“You ain’t afeard, Dan?”

He did not answer. It was early morning; there was no up traffic yet. Be-hind him the boats wound silently under the sunrise; a sweet, cool day, with dew on the meadows, and the bells of cows sweet in the night pastures. Ahead of him, somewhere, Jotham Klore was coming up with his boat.

They wound down along the valley until the roar of the falls sounded ahead and the upper gate beams of the Five Combines stood out white against the trees. Dan sounded his horn, and the gorge took the echoes back and forth, down, down, below the line of sky.

Then, at the foot of the flight of locks, another horn broke out in three sharp blasts.

Molly’s head sprang up, and she looked square at Dan.

“It’s Jotham Klore.”

Dan nodded… .

The Fight at the Five Combines

It was a morning of bright sunshine and swift white clouds. They scudded over the gorge on the breast of the wind. But in the meadows there was no feel of the wind, which passed high up, stroking the leaves of only the top-most trees.

The Lansing Kill and the overflow from the canal fell into the gorge within sixty feet of each other; and between them a diamond-shaped patch of grass made even footing for the fight. The crowd had taken up their places on two sides, so that the space of short grass resembled a square-on two sides people, on two sides the open gorge and the falling water, and the Kill seething into foam eighty feet below. The roar of it rose up, passing the ears of the crowd, until it seemed a wall against the open sky.

As their boats stopped at the lock, both Dan and Klore had gone to the lock-tender’s shanty to wake the old man. The other boaters were too far back to hear what they said, and Ben was too deaf; but they stood opposite each other by the door until the old man came out, his trousers in his hand. Then, as they stepped together, he poked his staff between them.

“No one ain’t going to fight in front of my house,” he said. “There’s a good patch of grass up by the Kill. If you’re so all-fired eager, get up there.”

“It don’t matter to me,” Klore said. “One place is as good as the next.”

“I’m agreeable,” said Dan.

“Then come along with me,” said the old man.

He walked with a long stride, his red underwear bright against the grass, his bare feet gripping the earth, his staff swinging, his white head bent, like one of the prophets. Dan and Klore walked behind him, a little apart; and after them the boaters came sprinting from their boats as the word spread that Dan Harrow was to fight Jotham Klore. As they ran they made bets.

The fat woman came running down the towpath, one hand holding her bonnet down, the other holding up her skirts; but before she reached the locks she turned, sent Solomon scurrying back for a vinegar bottle and a sponge, and then came on more slowly. Hector Berry, hanging back among the others to put money on Klore, found himself suddenly face to face with Solomon, who was returning with the vinegar. The little man’s thin nostrils were white with scorn.

“You’re betting against Dan?”

Berry flushed and screwed a new cigar into his mouth and put his hands in his pockets and crossed one foot before the other, and managed to ap-pear even more embarrassed.

“Why,” he said. “I was asking how the odds was.”

“What was they?”

“Two to one on Klore most people’re giving.”

Solomon set down his sponge and bottle carefully and yanked his wallet out.

“I wasn’t going to lay no money against him,” Hector said uneasily.

“Didn’t I hear you ask for money on Dan?”

“Well …”

“How much?”

Berry hesitated. “Ten dollars,” he said at length.

“All right,” said Solomon.

He fished out five dollars, and they looked round for a stakeholder. Fortune Friendly was going by. He affably consented to hold the money.

“Sol!” cried Mrs. Gurget.

The little man snatched up the vinegar and ran across the meadow. The fat woman was standing close beside Molly in the front of the crowd, her face flushed, her eyes dancing.

“Take off your shirt,” she said to Dan. “Here, put down your head.”

She stripped the shirt over his head and then the undershirt and laid them across Molly’s arm. Klore had taken off his shirt and waited in his undershirt. He stood now with his heavy legs spraddled, his thumbs hooked in his belt, and looked the crowd over. When his pale eyes came to Molly, he grinned slowly. She saw his teeth white through his beard.

She met his eyes squarely, and for a moment Mrs. Gurget’s quick glance caught a faint flush in her pale cheeks. She rumbled faintly some remark to herself, then smiled as Molly, without changing her expression, turned to Dan. The girl’s lips moved stiffly when she spoke; her voice was strained.

“Lick him, Dan. You’ve got to lick him.”

Solomon bustled through the crowd behind them.

“Shucks,” he exclaimed. “Dan’ll lick the poison right out of his hide.”

He reached up to rub Dan’s shoulders, found the muscles loose and easy, and grinned.

“Watch him, Dan. Watch his right. Watch it all the time. Don’t never let it get out of your sight.”

Old Ben was putting on his trousers. Years ago he had fought in a ring.

“No gouging by Ben’s lock,” he said. “No tripping nor sabutting.”

As he buttoned up his trousers, he pointed one hand to his stick.

“I’ll lay out the first one that does. I’ll douse him back of the ear.”

Jotham Klore grinned.

“No bother. I can lick him without that.”

“You’d better,” said the old man. “I’ll give the word, and then you can commence. Now I’ll announce you and make it a regular occasion.”

“Make it quick,” said Klore, clenching his heavy hands and turning his pale eyes to Dan’s.

Suddenly Dan’s eyes lighted. He had caught sight of a white head over the crowd. Julius Wilson and Ben Rae came up to him, and shook his hand.

“We’re with you, Dan,” said Julius. The Jew nodded. They stepped back.

“Say, what’re you doing up this way?” a voice asked.

Fortune stepped up to them, shook hands, introduced them to Mrs. Gur-get and Sol and Molly, and they all shook hands.

“We’re taking a minister up to Lyons Falls. Reverend Williams— him and his family.” Wilson chuckled. ” ‘What’s the delay?’ he says to Ben. And then he locks his family into the cabin and comes along to see.”

He pointed to a black-clad dignified figure on the edge of the crowd, a man with a pale face, watching the proceedings out of timid eyes. The fat woman was impatient. Her whole soul was shining in her eyes, and her eyes were on Dan. “I could dang near say a prayer, dearie,” she said to Molly.

Molly gave her a small smile. She stood stiff, trembling slightly, pale.

Mrs. Gurget patted her shoulder.

“Cheer up, dearie. He’ll win with half a chance.”

Molly did not answer, and again Mrs. Gurget saw her eyes meet Klore’s and a smile in the man’s, confident, not only of Dan but of the girl. The fat woman read it as plain as print.

“Snake’s eyes,” she said to herself— it felt like a shriek inside of her. She grabbed Molly’s arm and squeezed with all her might. “Look at Dan— he’s looking at you. He’s got to lick him, you hear me? That’s what you took up with him for, ain’t it? To make him lick Klore. You told me that yourself. Don’t tell him in that measly voice. Look like you meant it.”

She felt Molly wince.

“Remember how Klore licked you?”

She felt Molly’s arm stiffen, and saw the hot flush come for a moment into her cheeks.

“Give him a smile,” she said grimly.

She was watching Dan, now, and the fat woman thought she had never seen anything handsomer than when he grinned.

“If he’s scared,” she said to herself, “and I’ll bet he is scared hollow, he don’t show it.”

She waved her arm and shouted to him.

“Watch his right! Watch his right and break his eyes. Blind him.”

There was a little bitterness in her as she saw his eyes on Molly’s. For a moment her hand caught at her fat breast. Then she threw up her head, took a deep breath through her nose, and roared, “We’re all with you, Dan! Take off his pants and hang him over the edge for the flies to bite. Blind his eyes, Dan, blind his eyes.”

Dan heard her and gave her part of his smile. Then his glance went to Klore and fixed in an unmoved stare. It had come at last and it was to be. He heard dimly, through the roar of water, the crowd’s murmur still, and Ben’s voice, “Dan Harrow versye Jotham Klore, unbeat Bully of the Big Ditch.”

Ben’s staff fell forward to meet its shadow on the grass; the old man’s resonant voice lifted in a shout:—

“Fight!”

They met in the middle of the open square of grass, neither giving an inch, striking for the middle, landing. Then came the Jew’s voice: “Block with your elbows, Dan.”

But Dan knew no more of the science than did Klore. It became a question of which man could wear the other down. The fists of Jotham Klore came in against his belly, and he felt his own fists sink into Klore’s undershirt, felt the leap of muscles under his knuckles.

Then the fat woman: “Blind his eyes!”

He raised his hands, felt a stunning smash on his ribs, and, as he slipped a little to the left, brought his right forward to Klore’s eye. Klore snarled, shook his head, and the blood came down from the cut.

As they drew apart for an instant, measuring each other, the complete stillness of the crowd was broken by a rising mutter of voices.

“Did ye see thim belaboring?” exclaimed a red-headed driver. “Did ye ever see the loike?”

“It’s a fight,” said his captain, driving his wooden leg into the grass for a firmer stance. “The lad can stand up to him.”

“What’re they fighting for?” a man asked. He worked on a farm whose buildings stood scarce a hundred yards above the locks.

The Irishman whistled a bar of a jig.

“Phwat would they be fighting for? Sure for a girl, and there she is herself, her with the brown hair that’s holding the young feller’s shirt on her arm.”

“I wonder how our passenger’s doing?” Julius Wilson asked the Jew.

The Jew grinned, and pointed.

The Reverend Mr. Williams was shinnying up the side of a boulder, a few yards back of the crowd. His black coattails fluttered over his thin hams in an agony of excited haste.

But Mrs. Gurget and Molly and Solomon never for a moment took their eyes from the two men before them. Solomon was down on one knee, leaning his forearms on the other out in front of him, and he kept saying, over and over, like a prayer, “Watch his right, Dan. Watch his right.”

The fat woman stood with one hand on his shoulder and one on Molly’s arm. She breathed as heavily as the two men, and her eyes glared at Klore’s as if she would blister him. At every blow a little grunt escaped her, as if she had hit or been hit herself. As for Molly, the fat woman could make nothing of her, and once the fight began she tried to make nothing of her. She stood, as white as before, but a feverish shine was in her eyes and she clutched Dan’s shirt in her arm.

The two were circling warily now, taking time between their blows.

“Keep him away, Dan, keep him away!” the Jew cried suddenly. “You’ve got the reach. Don’t let him get close.”

Jotham Klore came in slowly on Dan, his arms half raised. He stamped slightly as he put down his feet, digging his toes into the sod, as a bull steps to settle himself before a rush. His pale eyes, generally on Dan’s, darted now and then to one part or another of him, as if he were selecting his point of attack. His grey undershirt clung to his back and wrinkled from one side to the other between his shoulder blades as he moved his arms. It was sweat-soaked in a darker stain round his neck, but the half-length sleeves left his massive forearms free, yellow-skinned and furred with close-curled black hair. As he moved his head, the hairs of his black beard caught on the undershirt and jumped free, like small released springs. Once in a while he snatched the blood from his right eye with the back of his hand.