3stalwarts (8 page)

His gesture, however, had been enough to renew their appetite. There had been nothing exciting at Wolff’s; they had come a long way, and the wearing off of the effect of beer had left them spoiling for action. When Jeams pointed out a heavy pole lying on the dock by the river shore, half a dozen of them ran down for it. They swung it against the door together. But the bars held solid. The sound of the blow was like the tap on a gigantic drum, sounding hollowly throughout the house.

It stopped them for an instant; then they shouted. They swung the pole again; and again they got no more than the hollow crash, as if the whole house joined in one derisive shout.

To Gil, however, the empty sound was upsetting.

“It’ll take too long to break it down,” he said. “Why don’t we open a window?”

The others let the pole drop.

“That’s right,” said Weaver. “There ain’t no sense in spoiling a good door.”

They swarmed against a window together, hacking round the shutter bolts with their hatchets. In a few minutes they had the bolts cut out, the boards pried off, and Reall had thrown his hatchet through a pane. The glass tinkled chillingly into the dark room. They lifted the sash and climbed in, one after the other.

The room was the office, with Mr. Thompson’s desk and chairs, and little else beyond the ashes of paper on the hearth where wind in the chimney had stirred them from the grate.

“Hell,” said Kast. “There ain’t anything in here. Let’s look around.”

There was a short commotion at the door, before one man at last stepped into the hall. As soon as he had crossed the threshold, the others trooped after him.

The size and darkness of the hall were impressive. The wide boards under their boots creaked a little to their shifting feet, but for the instant it sounded more as if some ghostly person were descending the staircase. While they stood still to listen, chipmunks behind one of the walls took sudden fright.

The sound of panic reassured them. The men broke apart, going from room to room. Gil and Weaver, remaining in the hall, listened to the stamp of boots overhead and back in the kitchen. When men walked overhead a thin dust sifted from the cornices.

“I can’t find the cellar stairs,” shouted Kast.

“Where are you?”

“In the pantry.”

“Try the closet off the dining room,” said Reall.

Weaver turned to Gil.

“I don’t rightly know what we’re doing here, Gil.”

“I don’t either,” Gil said.

“Maybe we’d better go around and see they don’t get too rough with things.”

“All right, I’ll go upstairs.”

Gil wanted to get away from the big downstairs rooms. The fine black-cherry dining room table and the delicate chairs worried him; for they were things he would have liked Lana to have. But seeing them against the papered wall, dark though the room was, made him realize that a per-son could not merely own them.

The holland cupboard in the hall, with its wax figures, half like persons in spite of their small size, the soft feeling of the green carpet under his boots, gave him the same uneasiness. It was not until he stepped onto the bare wood of the stair treads that he felt remotely like himself.

But even on the stairs, the voices of the militia had an alien sound, as if by their entry they had done more than violate a house. They had put an end to a life. The house, shut up, could have fallen to ruin in dignity.

On the second floor, however, seeing the bedrooms opening from the hall, with the big beds unmade, as they had been left by the Thompsons, Gil felt a kind of unreasoning anger. By abandoning it, the people, apparently, had thought no more of the house than the militia had in forcing an entrance. And those that were abovestairs felt no compunctions.

One was holding up a flimsy dressing gown.

“Would a man or woman wear this?” he was asking.

The lace that edged the sleeves hung limply, and his calloused finger-tips rasped on the silk.

“You can’t tell what they wear,” said a muffled voice. Christian Reall came backing from under the bed dragging a piece of crockery. “Look at this, Van Slyck. It’s got gilt on it.”

Van Slyck glanced down with lukewarm interest. “Yes, it’s a nice article,” he said politely. He dropped the dressing gown. “I wish I could get me one of these good and warm.”

Reall crouched over the chamber pot. “It would be a handy thing. My wife gets chilblains horrible in winter.”

They were as conscienceless as men inspecting a line of goods in a store. Gil wandered into the next room. There was less in it to interest one, perhaps, for there was only a narrow bed and a great closet of dark wood standing in the corner. He was curious to see what might be inside the closet.

He found it empty of everything except, lying in a corner, a piece of silk that might have been used as a head wrapping. It was bright green with little white birds printed on it. He picked it up almost mechanically, thinking suddenly how well it would look on Lana’s dark hair. Glancing round, he saw that he was alone. It made him feel like a thief, but he comforted himself with thinking that it had no real value. And he had meant to bring Lana something. He had not been so long away from her since they were married. Inevitably it went into his pocket.

Then he looked round him. He felt that he ought to do something, to show his zealous sense of duty.

In the corner of the room behind the door a ladder leaned against the wall. He had not noticed it at first. He would not have noticed it now ex-cept that in the pale light creeping through the shutters the dust on the rungs looked disturbed.

At first Gil thought that there might be rats in the house; but he did not see why rats should be climbing to the attic. He decided to have a look.

He had to lift a trapdoor.

The attic seemed no darker than the rest of the house, and he could see quite plainly. The two central chimneys came up side by side out of the floor and continued at a slight outward angle like the trunks of a double tree. Between them was a bed.

There was nothing else in the attic. Gil stared a long time to make sure before he hoisted himself through.

He kept well away from the chimneys until he had circled both of them. On their outside edges the dust lay thick and unmarked, but sometime recently a man had come through the trap and gone to bed. Even if it had not been for the tracks, Gil would have noticed the faint tobacco smell.

He sniffed at the blankets. It hadn’t been an Indian. The bed would have had the sickish sweet smell, a little greasy, that Indians had. It had been a white man. Gil sat down on the bed.

Whoever it was, the man must have cooked downstairs, or have got food from Wolff’s, for the bed had the appearance of being used often. But the man could not have used the fireplaces except at night or the smoke would have given him away.

Without being quite sure of what he looked for, Gil began poking round. He couldn’t find anything except the old dottles of pipes and some small bits of paper. They didn’t have writing on them. He got up and began a circuit of the attic. Coming back, he noticed that when the chimneys be-gan to slope towards the roof the bricks were laid in tiers, making small shelves. He went back to the bed and stood on it. On one of the chimneys he found a piece of black cloth. He could just reach it.

For a minute he could not tell what it was. But as he held it in his fingers, his mind went back, for some strange reason, to his wedding day. He remembered how they had left Fox’s Mills and how he had hardly been able to take his eyes off Lana, and how pretty and bashful she had seemed when they came to Billy Rose’s tavern. They had had the place to themselves except for the one-eyed man who had talked so brashly against the Continental Congress.

Gil caught his breath. It was the patch for a blind eye.

George Weaver’s voice came through the trap rather plaintively.

“You up there, Gil?”

“Come up here, George.”

George grunted and the ladder shook as he climbed. He took a slow look round him, and listened to what Gil had to tell.

“You’re right, Gil.”

“The man’s name was Caldwell.”

“Well, he ain’t here now.”

“You’re going to scold me, ain’t you?”

“Come here.”

She obeyed meekly.

He fished the green silk out of his pocket and put it round her neck.

“I ought to take you out back of the woodshed and shingle you proper.”

“Isn’t it beautiful? Oh, Gil, where did you get it?”

“The company marched up to Cosby’s. We had to break into Thompson’s house. Somebody had thrown this down when they was clearing out, as if they didn’t want it.” He felt shamefaced to tell her. “It’s hardly a real present. Only when I saw it I thought how pretty it would look on you.”

“Imagine leaving a thing like that. I wouldn’t; not if I was being driven out naked to the north pole. Oh, it’s lovely, Gil.”

She had no compunctions about wearing the thing.

“Look at those birds, those little white ones. Oh, look! Do you know what they are?”

“No.”

“They’re peacocks.”

“No!” exclaimed Gil. It made him feel better about the whole business. He put up his gun over the door and loosened his hatchet.

“You got supper ready?”

“Pretty near. I bet you’re hungry. You set down there on the stool and tell me what you did.”

He told her the whole business, seeing the Indians on the way down, mustering, the return, finding the place in the attic, and the discarded patch for a blind eye.

Lana turned white at the recital.

“Oh, Gil, supposing he’d been there! He might have killed you.”

“He wouldn’t dast shoot with all the rest downstairs. And I didn’t give him a chance to get hold of me.”

“I was afraid of that man in the tavern. He didn’t have a nice face. It wasn’t just the eye. It was all of him.”

Gil became serious.

“Suppose you’d found him here when you came home alone, Lana.”

“Him? What do you mean? What would he want here?”

“I don’t know, exactly. But this is the house furthest west in the valley except at Fort Stanwix.” He said very seriously, “You see, Lana, that’s what I meant about you waiting at Weaver’s.”

“I never thought. I will next time, Gil. It’s awful.” She returned to her cooking, speaking to him over her shoulder. Gil sat down and watched her. Even though they had been married more than a month now, she seemed like such a young girl. And for the moment he could see that she was afraid. “A man like him might be out in the woods this minute and you and I couldn’t tell it. Not till they came right to the door. And then there wouldn’t be anything we could do at all.”

“Lord,” he said. “You mustn’t get scared, Lana. Just because we arrested a man.”

“What will they do to him?”

“I don’t know.”

“I feel sorry for his wife. Maybe she felt the same way about you, the way I’d feel about that man.”

“I didn’t think of that. I guess she did. She looked scared.”

“And the Thompson people. They’d be mad if they found out who broke into their house. They’d be mad at us if they saw me now wearing this silk.”

“You don’t need to wear it, Lana.”

“I will, though. I don’t care. You thought of me when you saw it and I’d made up my mind you wouldn’t think about me all day.”

She smiled a little furtive sidelong smile, and rose from her crouch with the quick lithe movement Gil liked to see. “You can put the forks and spoons on the table, mister.”

They ate, sitting across from each other, Lana with her back to the door. They were nearly through their supper when Gil rose quietly and went round the table. He stood in the door, with his hand against the jamb, over his head, looking out.

“What is it, Gil?”

“Somebody’s coming.”

It was the mare, at the far end of the swale, that had caught his eye. She had thrown her head up. She was tossing it now, and snorting, though she was too far off for him to hear her. Then on the edge of the bushes near the river he saw a man. It was impossible to tell who or what he was, for he ducked back out of sight almost immediately. But the mare’s nose, swinging like a needle to a magnet, showed the man’s course. He was following the edge of the swale towards the house.

Lana crept up behind Gil.

“Who is it?”

“The mare acts like it was an Indian.”

“How do you mean?”

“See her stomp her hoof? She don’t like their smell.”

“Ain’t you going to shut the door, Gil?”

“No.”

“But you ain’t going to stand there in plain sight like that?”

“What’s got into you? You didn’t mind coming here alone, did you?”

She shook her head.

“I hadn’t thought.”

“Well, you needn’t act like a scared bitch just because a horse has seen a man.”

He didn’t turn around, and Lana stood stock-still, her hand halfway raised to her mouth, staring at him. After a moment she backed quietly to her place at the table and sat down with her face between her hands. She didn’t say anything. But her eyes seemed to have enlarged.

Neither did Gil say anything. He kept his eyes on the swale and the edge of the creek bed, and he kept his hand over his head, within reach of the rifle. The only sound in the cabin was the everlasting low buzz of the flies.

To Lana the wait seemed unending. But she could not force herself to look at him. “He’s got no right to say such a thing to me. I wasn’t scared only for myself. If I was near home, he wouldn’t do it. I could go home if he did. But he knows I can’t up here.”

She showed no sign of tears. But her jaw set tight, and her eyes narrowed.

“You’re going to scold me, ain’t you?”

“Come here.”

She obeyed meekly.

He fished the green silk out of his pocket and put it round her neck.

“I ought to take you out back of the woodshed and shingle you proper.”

“Isn’t it beautiful? Oh, Gil, where did you get it?”

“The company marched up to Cosby’s. We had to break into Thompson’s house. Somebody had thrown this down when they was clearing out, as if they didn’t want it.” He felt shamefaced to tell her. “It’s hardly a real present. Only when I saw it I thought how pretty it would look on you.”