The Hallowell Partnership Part 3

"Will you look at that old yellowed pilot's map and certificate in the acorn frame? '1857!'" chuckled Rod. "And the red-and-blue worsted motto hung above it: 'Home, Sweet Home!' I'll wager Grandma Noah did that worsted-work."

"Not Grandma Noah, but Grandma McCloskey," laughed the captain. "She was the nicest old lady you ever laid eyes on. She used to live on the boat and cook for us, till the rheumatism forced her to live ash.o.r.e.

Her husband is old Commodore McCloskey; so everybody calls him. He has been a pilot on the Mississippi ever since the day he got that certificate, yonder. He's a character, mind that. He shot that eagle in '58, and he has carried it around with him ever since, to every steamer that he has piloted. You must go up to the pilot-house after a bit and make him a visit. He's worth knowing."

"I think I'd like to go up to the pilot-house right away, Rod. It is so close and hot down here."

Obediently Rod gathered up her rugs and cus.h.i.+ons. Carefully he and the captain helped her up the swaying corkscrew stairs, across the dizzy, rain-swept hurricane deck, then up the still narrower, more twisty flight that ended at the door of the high gla.s.s-walled box, perched like a bird-cage, away forward.

Inside that box stood a large wooden wheel, and a small, twinkling, white-bearded old gentleman, who looked for all the world like a Santa Claus masquerading in yellow oilskins.

"Ask him real pretty," cautioned the captain. "He thinks he runs this boat, and everybody aboard her. He does, too, for a fact."

With much ceremony Roderick rapped at the gla.s.s door, and asked permission for his sister to enter. With grand aplomb the little old gentleman rose from his wheel and ushered her up the steps.

"'Tis for fifty-four years that I and me pilot-house have been honored by the ladies' visits," quoth he, with a stately bow. "Ye'll sit here, behind the wheel, and watch me swing herself up the river? Sure, 'tis a ticklish voyage, wid the river so full of floatin' ice. I shall be glad of yer gracious presence, ma'am. It will bring me good luck in me steerin'."

Marian's eyes danced. She fitted herself neatly into the cus.h.i.+oned bench against the wall. The pilot-house was a bird-cage, indeed, hardly eight feet square. The great wheel, swinging in its high frame, took up a third of the s.p.a.ce; a huge cast-iron stove filled one corner. For the rest, Marian felt as if she had stepped inside one of the curio-cabinets in the cabin below; for every inch of wall s.p.a.ce in the bird-cage was festooned with mementoes of every sort. A string of beautiful wampum, all polished elks' teeth and uncut green turquoise; sh.e.l.l baskets, and strings of buckeyes; a four-foot diamond-back rattlesnake's skin, beautiful and uncanny, the bunch of five rattles tied to the tail. Close beside the glittering skin hung even an odder treasure-trove: a small white kid glove, quaintly embroidered in faded pink-and-blue forget-me-nots.

"Great-Aunt Emily had some embroidered gloves like that in her trousseau," thought Marian. "I do wonder----"

"Ye're lookin' at me keepsakes?" The pilot sighted up-stream, then turned, beaming. "Maybe it will pa.s.s the time like for me to tell ye of them. There is not one but stands for an adventure. That wampum was given to me by Chief Ogalalla; a famous Sioux warrior, he was. 'Twas back in sixty-wan, and the string was the worth of two ponies in thim days. Three of me mates an' meself was prospectin' down in western Nebraska. There came a great blizzard, and Chief Ogalalla and three of his men rode up to our camp, and we took them in for the night."

"And he gave you the wampum in payment?"

"Payment? Never! A man never paid for food nor shelter on the plains.

No more than for the air he breathed. 'Twas grat.i.tude. For Chief Ogalalla had a ragin' toothache, and I cured it for him. Made him a poultice of red pepper."

"Mercy! I should think that would hurt worse than any toothache!"

"Maybe it did, ma'am. But at least it disthracted his attention from the tooth itself. That rattlesnake, I kilt in a swamp near Vicksburg.

Me and me wife was young then, and we'd borrowed a skiff, an' rowed out to hunt pond-lilies. Mary would go in the bog, walkin' on the big tufts of rushes. Her little feet were that light she didn't sink at all. But the first thing I heard she gave a little squeal, an' there she stood, perched on a tuft, and not three feet away, curled up on a log, was that great s.h.i.+nin' serpent. Just rockin' himself easy, he was, makin' ready to strike. An' strike he would. Only"--the small twinkling face grew grim--"only I struck first."

Marian s.h.i.+vered.

"And the little white glove?"

The old pilot beamed.

"Sure, I hoped ye'd notice that, miss. That glove points to the proud day f'r me! It was the summer of '60. I was pilotin' the _Annie Kilburn_, a grand large packet, down to Saint Louis. We had a wonderful party aboard her. 'Twas just the beginnin' of war times, an'

'twould be like readin' a history book aloud to tell ye their names.

Did ever ye hear of the Little Giant?"

"Of Stephen A. Douglas, the famous orator? Why, yes, to be sure. Was he aboard?"

"Yes. A fine, pleasant-spoke gentleman he was, too. But 'tis not the Little Giant that this story is about. 'Twas his wife. Ye've heard of her, sure? Ah, but I wish you could have seen her when she came trippin' up the steps of me pilot-house and pa.s.sed the time of day with me, so sweet and friendly. Afterward they told me what a great lady she was. Though I could see that for meself, she was that gentle, and her voice so quiet and low, and her look so sweet and kind. I was showin' her about, an' feelin' terrible proud, an' fussy, an' excited.

I was a young felly then, and it took no more than her word an' her smile to turn me foolish head. An' I was showin' her how to handle the wheel, and by some mischance, didn't I catch me blunderin' hand in the frame, an' give it a wrench that near broke every bone! I couldn't leave the wheel till the first mate should come to take me place. And Madame Douglas was that distressed, you'd think it was her own hand that she was grievin' over. She would tear her lace handkerchief into strips, and bind up the cut, and then what does she do but take her white glove, an' twist it round the fingers, so's to keep them from the air, till I could find time to bandage them. I said not a word.

But the minute her silks an' laces went trailin' down the hurricane ladder, I jerked off that glove an' folded it in my wallet. An' there it stayed till I could have that frame made for it. And in that frame I've carried it ever since, all these long years.

"Those were the grand days, sure," he added, wistfully. "Before the war, we pilots were the lords of the river. I had me a pair of varnished boots, an' tight striped trousers, an' a grand s.h.i.+ny stove-pipe hat, an' I wouldn't have called the king me uncle. It's sad times for the river, nowadays." He looked away up the broad, tumbling yellow stream. "Look at her, will ye! No river at all, she is, wid her roily yellow water, an' her poor miry banks, an' her bluffs, all washed away to s.h.i.+ftin' sand. But wasn't she the grand stream entirely, before the war!"

Marian looked at the framed river-chart above the wheel. She tried to read its puzzle of tangled lines. The old man sniffed.

"Don't waste yer time wid that gimcrack, miss. Steer by it? Never!" He shrugged his shoulders loftily. "It hangs there by government request, so I tolerate it to please the Department. I know this river by heart, every inch. I could steer this boat from Natchez to Saint Paul wid me eyes shut, the blackest night that ever blew!"

Marian dimpled at his majestic tone.

"Will you show me how to steer? I've always been curious as to how it is done."

"Certain I will."

Keenly interested, Marian gripped the handholds, and turned the heavy wheel back and forth as he directed. Suddenly her grasp loosened.

Down the stream, straight toward the boat, drifted a rolling black ma.s.s.

"Mercy, what is that? It looks like a whole forest of logs. It's rolling right toward us!"

"Ye're right. 'Tis a raft that's broke adrift. But we have time to dodge, be sure. Watch now."

His right hand grasped the wheel. His left seized the bell-cord. Three sharp toots signalled the engine-room for full head of steam.

Instantly the _Lucy_ jarred under Marian's feet with the sudden heavy force of doubled power. Slowly the steam-boat swung out of her course, in a long westward curve. Past her, the nearest logs not fifty feet away, the great, grinding ma.s.s of tree-trunks rolled and tumbled by, sweeping on toward the Gulf.

"'Tis handy that we met those gintlemen by daylight," remarked the pilot, cheerfully. "For one log alone would foul our paddle-wheels and give us a bad shaking up. And should all that Donnybrook Fair come stormin' into us by night, we'd go to the bottom before ye could say Jack Robinson."

Marian's eyes narrowed. She stared at the dusk stormy yellow river, the blank inhospitable sh.o.r.es. She was not by any means a coward. But she could not resist asking one question.

"Do we go on up-river after nightfall? Or do we stop at some landing?"

"There's no landing between here and Grafton, at the mouth of the Illinois River. We'll have to tie up along sh.o.r.e, I'm thinkin'." The old man spoke grudgingly. "If I was runnin' her meself, 'tis little we'd stop for the night. But the captain thinks different. He's young and notional. Tie up over night we must, says he. But 'tis all nonsense. Chicken-hearted, I'd call it, that's all."

Marian laughed to herself. Inwardly she was grateful for the captain's chicken-heartedness.

A loud gong sounded from below. The pilot nodded.

"Yon's your supper-bell, miss. I thank ye kindly for the pleasure of yer company. I shall be honored if ye choose to come again. And soon."

Marian made her way down to the cabin through the stormy dusk. The little room was warm and brightly lighted; the captain's negro boy was just placing huge smoking-hot platters of perfectly cooked fish and steak upon the clean oil-cloth table. They gathered around it, an odd company. Marian and Roderick, the captain, the _Lucy's_ engineer, a pleasant, boyish fellow, painfully embarra.s.sed and redolent of hot oil and machinery; and two young dredge-runners, on their way, like Rod, to the Breckenridge contract. Save the captain and Rod, they gobbled bashfully, and fled at the earliest possible moment. Rod and the captain were talking of the contract and of its prospects. Marian trifled with her ma.s.sive hot biscuit, and listened indifferently.

"I hope your coming on the work may change its luck, Mr. Hallowell,"

observed the captain. "For that contract has struggled with mighty serious difficulties, so far. Breckenridge himself is a superb engineer; but of course he cannot stay on the ground. He has a dozen equally important contracts to oversee. His engineers are all well enough, but somehow they don't seem to make things go. Carlisle is the chief. He is a good engineer and a good fellow, but he is so nearly dead with malaria that he can't do two hours' work in a week. Burford, his aid, is a young Southerner, a fine chap, but--well, a bit hot-headed. You know our Northern labor won't stand for much of that.

Then there is Marvin, who is third in charge. But as for Marvin"--he stopped, with a queer short laugh--"as for Marvin, the least said the soonest mended. He's a cub engineer, they call him; a grizzly cub at that. He may come out all right, with time. You can see for yourself that you haven't any soft job. With a force of two hundred laborers, marooned in a swamp seven miles from nowhere, not even a railroad in the county; with half the land-owners protesting against their a.s.sessments, and refusing to pay up; with your head engineer sick, and your coal s.h.i.+pments held up by high water--no, you won't find your place an easy one, mind that."

"I'm not doing any worrying." Rod's jaw set. His dark face glowed.

Marian looked at him, a little jealously. His whole heart and thought were swinging away to this work, now opening before him. This was his man's share in labor, and he was eager to cope with its sternest demands.

"Well, it's a good thing you have the pluck to face it. You will need all the pluck you've got, and then some." The captain paced restlessly up and down the narrow room. "Wonder why we don't slow down. We must be running a full twelve miles an hour. Altogether too fast, when we're towing a barge. And it is pitch dark."

He stooped to the engine-room speaking-tube. "Hi, Smith! Why are you carrying so much steam? I want to put her insh.o.r.e."

A m.u.f.fled voice rose from the engine-room.