An Air That Kills
by Galen Peoples
Part One
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An Air That Kills
by Galen Peoples
Part One
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows.
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
Those happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
–A. E. Housman
Joshua had not wanted to go especially. But neither had he especially minded. The easy carelessness his brothers envied made all roads one to him, unless he were set on some lark that neither his duties as part owner of Bolt Logging nor his deep-down native prudence could forestall. This time he had gone only because his elder brother had asked him. Jason reproached himself with that knowledge a thousand times. Soon afterward his younger brother had felt against all reason something was wrong, and cursed himself (and Jeremy almost never swore seriously) for not having acted on the feeling. Whether Joshua blamed them or himself or assigned blame at all no one ever knew.
Like most happenings in Seattle it began with the brides–those girls imported from a far-off corner of civilization to answer the mating call of the less civilized. As the man who had brought them and become the sponge for their complaints, Jason had been quick to dismiss this latest one, but it had seemed like nothing. Even Aaron Stempel, Saturn to Jason's Mercury and by habit the most cautious of men, had thought so.
And the brides had not come to him with it as usual. That is, Candy Pruitt had not. Slightly older than the others and less silly in her own and the world's estimate, she was their duenna, taskmistress, and advocate before Jason and the other men. She had hoped to contain this unhappiness before it grew to demand advocacy, but all she achieved practically was to contain news of it. Biddie Cloom, her boon companion, observed the unintended success and strove to prolong it. That was how the matter came to Jason's attention while remaining shy of his understanding.
One evening near the end of an angry winter, which had worked off enough of its temper to encourage the town's hardier residents to betake them to the streets (street, rather, for they had scarcely more than one), two of the three shortest men from Jason's camp made a path toward the big white building which after the saloon had become every man's invariable destination: the Temple of the Virgins, as Jason called it in his poetic mood (though not within Candy's hearing). They were out to call on the girls to whom at autumn's ending they had been most nearly affianced. Two evenings previous they had come for the same purpose and Biddie had turned them away.
So she did again tonight. And they were not the first. Some nights Candy did the rebuffing, others a bride named Ula, but it was constant, and had been so since the last snow had fallen and the glaze on the mountain path that shifted about with such hazardous caprice had melted for good. Now the loggers were able to come again after, oh! such a brief lapse, only to find some calamity had overtaken the brides and forced them to keep to home and deny callers. Glimpsed through the screen door or an accidentally uncurtained window, they looked so pale and drifted between rooms so ghostlike the men feared some illness. Yet the doorkeepers did not behave so; rather as if they had a dirty house they were embarrassed to show.
The one who told Jason was Sam. Refused in spite of his and Billy's wheedling ("Shore they can't come out? Can we come in, then? Not even to get warm? Mighty chilly out here. S'pose we just stick our heads in and say hey?"), he left aggrieved, and when he spied Jason conversing with Stempel determined he would hear about it.
Jason had noticed the preponderance, or more exactly the universality, of uncompanioned men. Clusters of his and Aaron's workers hung about the dormitory till one by one they surrendered to the recognition of futility and faded into the night. Sam not being the kind to go without making a noise, Jason expected it at his approach and prepared to assume an appearance of listening that would free him from actually doing so. Thus it took nearly a minute for him to grasp Sam's advice the doctor was needed. "They all got it," he said. "First one, then 'nother'n, and now all of 'em, not just one like at first–"
"Now, Sam," said Jason, "got what?"
Sam's impatience brought an epithet to his lips which he stifled when he remembered he was talking to his boss. "That's why you gotta get the doc," he repeated, "'cause they all got it, first one...." Jason stopped his ears again. Aaron did not bother to mask his amusement, any more than Jason did when it was Aaron being beleaguered. Jason looked a silent question at him.
Aaron did not have to speak the answer either, but added in half-apology, "On the off chance." Jason nodded resignedly. He must ask after the brides' health, though it would mean coping with Biddie.
"Miss Cloom," he began, stretching to peer around her, "I just–ah–that is, I came to see–"
No matter how he leaned she managed somehow, slighter though she was, to block his view. "Lovely weather we're having," she said as if he were not already speaking.
"Eh? To be sure, yes–" Then the substance of the remark penetrated. "Is it?"
"Apart from being bitterly cold," she acknowledged. "But what I always say–"
Jason broke in, excusing himself: not that he was ever other than profoundly interested in what she might have to say, but just now– "You don't seem much concerned," he observed.
"Concerned to do what?"
"About this epidemic of the brides'."
"Oh, that!" She laughed shrilly. "Stuff and nonsense, pooh and piffle, pish and tush."
"Pish and tush?" he echoed hopefully.
"Nothing but an excuse to get attention. Ignore them, that'll put a stop to it, you'll see."
"But–"
"Good evening," she said briskly. He found himself facing the oak door again. He stole to the window and tried to peer between the curtains, but they overlapped snugly; tonight Candy had inspected them personally. He could have pounded at the door, yelled for her, bullied and blustered till she disclosed what was going on, but he did not care to; not just then. So he left.
Inside she listened to his retreating bootsteps while Biddie repeated what she had told him. "Tell me," said Candy. Biddie objected: hadn't she just–? "Please, Biddie." Puzzled but ever amenable, Biddie obliged. "That'll put a stop to it," she said for the third time.
Candy thanked her with an effort at a smile. Biddie felt uncertain. "You think the same, don't you?" Then she asked again, "Don't you?"
Candy was gazing into the parlor where the brides were congregated, her eyes like a skittish doe's. "I have the queerest feeling," she said, "as though it were the beginning of the end." Biddie felt a chill herself. This was not like Candy at all.
Work at the lumber camp had stopped, nearly. The men could be harangued into short spells of activity, but every effort of Jason's to pull more out of them was like trying to keep a pack of bears awake in hibernating season. A few shirkers could have been dealt with, as Joshua said, but it was three-quarters of the payroll, and they infected the rest.
The brothers saw Jeremy running towards them across the clearing, shouting wildly. He had been assigned to supervise the crew at the eastern stand, which till last week had been too deeply snowed over to work. Though too far away to make out his words, they guessed the cause of them. "The crew on the east slope," he reported on reaching them, with spaces to catch his breath, "they're doin'–they're doin'–" He looked about. "–just what this bunch is doin'."
"Nothing, you mean," said Jason. "All on account of the brides, I have no doubt. They're feeling poorly, so naturally"–he gave the word an edge more characteristic of Stempel–"their beaux feel poorly too. What I'd like to know is, what ails 'em? What?" He got only an echo in reply. One or two men looked up.
In the silence that ensued Jeremy discovered Joshua staring at him as if in expectation. "Well?" he said. On that Jason looked at him too. Under their dual scrutiny he reverted briefly to a weakness he had outgrown. "W-what would I know about it?"
"You visited with Candy last evening. Musta seen for yourself."
Jeremy protested he had seen no such thing. Yes, he had met Candy at the picket gate and they had gone for a stroll. On their return he had walked her to the porch, she had kissed him good night, withdrawn behind the screen, and when he moved to follow her– "She wouldn't let me in," he said. So sweetly had she managed it he had not been aware of it till now. The realization awoke in him a faint unease about the probable framework of their eventual married life.
He had not time to dwell on it because suddenly Jason's arm was around his shoulder, Jason's face close to his own, Jason's voice pouring like molasses into his ear–molasses with a core of hot lead. "You go back down there and demand to be let in," he said. "If she won't do it, push in and demand to know what the matter is. If she won't tell you, ask every one of those fifty girls, or however many's left–"
"Thirty-three," said Joshua. The other two stared at him, surprised at the currency of his knowledge. "Thirty-two," he amended, "when Ula–" A change in Jason's features, too slight for a stranger to have heeded, warned him to stop. He touched his lips as a seal of silence.
"Every one," Jason reiterated, "till one of 'em tells you...." He paused. "...what I need to know."
Jeremy looked as doubtful as he felt. He gave a nod, which was as good as a promise to do it.
–or something approximating to it, he amended half-wittingly, as he trudged half-willingly down the hill. By the time he reached the totem pole at the town limit his resolution had reshaped itself further: he would talk his way in somehow. And that was just how he did it. A small flash of perception hinted to him that his victory owed less to his eloquence than to Candy's dim, damp state. She lacked the spirit to fight.
He had known but not recollected that the brides owned a Holmes stereoscope, brought from New Bedford by Rachel, who upon marrying had bestowed it on the rest as a parting gift. He and Candy had used it in the early days of their courtship to while away rainy evenings in examining woodscapes (of which he for one had seen more than enough), cityscapes (of which he had seen too few), and views of assorted flora and fauna. Once in her absence he had resorted to it on his own to inspect a set of cards Clancey had smuggled in from San Francisco, featuring young ladies and a few less young in a variety of mildly titillating poses. Candy having surprised him at it, he had not been quite fast enough to extract the latest selection from the holder before she stole a look herself. "She'll catch her death" was her only comment.
He believed the brides seldom took up the implement now, having seen every picture in their stock a thousand times. Yet this morning as Candy led him wordlessly into the parlor it was the primary object of their attention; they barely registered his presence. Still confined, they were amusing themselves with it, as one might say, but its effect was something other than amusement. Each took the viewer in her turn and gazed into it long and longingly, after which she produced sometimes a sigh, sometimes a sniffle, and on the rare impulse a cross between a moan and a whimper.
Jeremy began to ask what was wrong with them but had got out barely two words when Candy turned on him so awful a look it cowed him into silence. The object made its way round to her at last, and without looking herself (for she knew what it would show) she passed it to Jeremy. His curiosity being as vast as his mystification, the image he saw when he pressed his eyes to the lenses was bound to disappoint him, notwithstanding its verisimilar depth. He recognized it at once from having once seen the original: the Seamen's Bethel in New Bedford.
Scarcely had he lowered the viewer than one of the brides pulled it out of his hands. Then she and the others took turns at the next of the thirty-six scenes from the boxed set one of them had got in the post as a Christmas gift from a sister too young to have gone west with her. Being thus unexpectedly transported home had engulfed her in a flood of sweet remembrance she could not fight, nor wished to; and from that had sprung this.
"Homesick?" Jason bellowed. Jeremy had already tried twice to answer him. "They been homesick since the day they arrived," said Jason. "How's this any different?" By the pause that ensued Jeremy knew that this time a reply was expected. He explained how the condition had originated and spread to take over the whole bridal population. Jason swore. "Always held no good would come of it."
"Of what, now?" asked Joshua, who had refrained from speech till that point. Years' practice had accustomed him to negotiating the sometimes rocky track of Jason's thought, but he tripped over this.
"Photography!" Jason cried, as if it were plain to all. "Didn't the Lord say, make thee no graven image?"
Joshua knew his Bible better than Jason, from a period in his youth when he had been persuaded he had the calling, and so he could recognize when a text was being misapplied, but he knew better than to retort as occurred to him, by mentioning who it was the Bard had said could cite scripture for his purpose.
"It's all that's on their minds," Jeremy continued. "They've stopped doing their chores...." He realized now the house should have told him that much: it was a mess by Candy's standard, but coming from a camp of rough men, he had not noticed it.
"And got their menfolk doin' the same," Jason finished. "Love...!" He would have punctuated the sentiment by spitting, had he not given up the practice on Candy's insistence ("to set a good example for the men"). "Bringin' the place to a halt," he went on, "as if they was all that mattered. Why, they're actin' like a passel of–"
"Homesick girls?" Joshua suggested.
Jason snorted. "They'll not be homesick much longer." Joshua asked what he thought he could do about it. Jason's eye traveled beyond the mountain, to that private hatchery of the empyrean where his grand schemes first saw life. "Call a meeting," he said.
The brides occupied the pews and Jason the pulpit, with his brothers standing at the side. The drumbeat of the rain against the tall west windows and the burble of the rivulet it formed at the foot of the wall would have lulled the audience to drowsing had the speaker been less bold. But nobody–except old deaf Shem Puterbaugh–ever nodded during one of Jason's perorations.
"Ladies," he began, "I'm given to understand you're missing your native soil rather keenly at present." The widened eyes that met its saying aloud proved Jeremy's information correct, and he proceeded according to design. "I sympathize, I truly do. It's a source of regret to me I was only able to see your fair metropolis the one time, and not properly then." His brothers, never having noticed any sign of this, wondered what he was up to. "S'pose you tell me all about it," he said, "all you remember best. Take notes," he whispered to Joshua, who now understood why he had been ordered to fetch along a writing tablet.
There was another whisper on his right–"Is this a good idea?"–to which Joshua deferred giving an answer till he should learn what the idea was. It appeared that might take some time, since the brides were not overleaping one another to speak. They had been cultivating their memories interiorly, hardly sharing them aloud except for wordless expulsions of an inexpressible sorrow, called on to express which they sat bewildered. "Come now," said Jason, "if it means as much to you as that, there's surely something to be said about it."
After a further silence, in which the rain continued to pat and trill softly, one woman stood up. "The smell of whale oil," she said. It was Ula, the intended of Daniel, whom she had chosen from a wide field that had included the young man now jotting down "Whale oil" on his tablet.
Jason was not sure he had heard right. "The smell of–"
"At the docks. Everything smelled like whale oil."
Jason stared at his brothers in perplexity. They stared back in double perplexity, not knowing his purpose and how this might or might not conduce to it. Ula would have laughed at their expressions had it not been for the gloom that blanketed the hall. But that was changing. The rest of the congregation hummed in agreement. Ann rose too. "The Common on the fourth of July."
Mary Ellen rose beside her. "Carriage rides around the Point Road and back across Fairhaven Bridge."
"Sledding down Bush Street Hill!" cried Ann, and then, with Mary Ellen, "Arnold's Garden!" Others clamored affirmatively. Joshua was scrawling without pause.
"The First Unitarian Church!" cried Ula. The hubbub stopped. She looked around to find all eyes on her, the brides' eager but thus far benighted. "It's in one of the pictures," she prompted. "It looks like a castle." Now they knew it, and seconded her jubilantly.
"Castle!" said Jason, his eyes asparkle. "Make a particular note of that, Joshua."
Like kernels popping in the skillet, one woman after another, or two or more together, stirred, stood, and strove for attention. Jason beamed, Joshua's hand started to cramp, Jeremy quailed at the barrage of female energy, till at last Jason waved his arms and called for silence.
"I thank you," he said. "Take your seats if you please. Seat, miss? There you are. Well"–he folded his arms–"now I see why the place of your birth glows still in your remembrance. Most natural thing in the world. All you knew and loved bundled up together in the one place. But shall I tell you something?" He left the pulpit to parade in front of them. "Your new home has something that beats it all. Shall I tell you what it is?" Their faces told him he should. "The men–your men–men that care about you and want to spend the rest of their lives with you here and now. Doesn't that count for more than a lost time in a faraway place?"
The proposition quivered in the air. "'course it does!" he answered himself. "Specially with spring comin' due. You oughta be lookin' out for it, calculatin' the perfect spot for your first picnic, your first sparkin' session–not implyin' anything improper," he quickly added with a glance in Candy's direction–"that's what you should be devotin' yourselves to. Not the past but the present, the great glorious God-given present, not the dank dark dungeon of days gone by. Girls your age!" They looked less abashed at that than he had anticipated but then people's faces didn't always show what was going on inside of them and he was in fine rolling form, had never spoke–spoken–better in his life. Thus bucking himself up, he took the last, irreversible step.
"If I was you," he exhorted, "first thing I'd do is take those pictures of yours, and any other souvenirs you got tucked under your beds, all yesterday's leavin's, throw 'em together in a heap and burn 'em!" There was no mistaking their expressions now. Jeremy tried to sound a warning but Jason, racing full throttle, paid no attention. "That's right," he exulted, "burn the whole lot! Pitch 'em in the fire where they belong! Bid prideful old New Bedford goodbye forever!"
The adjective, which had snaked out unforeseen, he regretted at once but trusted his oratorical powers to float them past it unawares. In that at least he succeeded: if they noticed the disparagement of their birthplace it did not distress them. But they had no distress to spare. One by one they began to weep. Their sobs grew and mingled with the plash and gurgle of the rain, water upon water, till no man could say for certain which was which. Then they got up to go. Jason stood dismayed. Candy, whose hopes had been warring with her sympathies and almost overcome them up till the end, glared reproachfully at him. "Really, Jason!" were the only words she could muster. She turned away to tend her flock, as she would be doing the rest of the day and into the night, and to herd them outside. Jason frowned. Joshua flung himself into a pew. "Uh, Jason," Jeremy ventured, "not sure what your plan was there...."
"Give 'em a good jolt, snap 'em out of it." Had he invented the excuse on the spot? His brothers never knew on such occasions. "Mighta worked," he said defensively.
"But, as it didn't...." said Joshua.
"As it didn't," said Jason, grabbing the tablet, "we try plan two."
He did not disclose what that was, any more than he had plan one, but the preparation for it, which occupied the rest of the morning, took them to various stops around town as the items on the list led them: the whale oil to Captain Clancey's ship, the Common to a level patch of earth down from the dormitory, and so forth, all according to a purpose Jason kept to himself but which Joshua could see dimly. Jeremy had more interest in learning whether Candy's displeasure with Jason also included him; before leaving the church she had flicked him a glance too brief to interpret.
She and Biddie watched with curiosity from a dormitory window as Jeremy hightailed it up to Perkins' Mercantile and back down a few minutes later to where his taskmaster was pacing out a square in the dirt. "Whatever are they up to?" Biddie asked. Candy shook her head. But the sight was restoring her faith in Jason. Obviously he was drawing up magic charms to conjure away the threat she sensed bode over the next horizon. If anyone could do it he could.
Jeremy reported to him that everything he had called for was on order and Ben would alert them as soon as it arrived. "Said he can't figure what the heck you want with it, though."
"None of his business," Jason said brusquely. "Now all's underway, all's summoned and subscribed for–all but one thing, and that the crowning touch." He laid an arm on each brother's shoulder. "Which I choose you," he told Joshua, "to go get fashioned, by the only man in these parts who can do it. And you," he said to Jeremy, "to fetch what he'll require."
Jeremy began to feel uneasy. "What is it?"
"Picture of the First Unitarian. That's the one they were all twitterin' about, wasn't it?"
Joshua raised an eyebrow. "Unitarian?"
"I know, sounds like they may 'a' been brought up a mite too free. But it ain't for the doctrine. You fetch it here."
"But they–" Jeremy shook his head. "They keep those pictures clutched to their–" He stopped, blushing. "Clutched to 'em. Day and night. They'll never give it up."
"Then you'll have to take without asking," Joshua interjected with a grin, which he expected to annoy his brother, as it did.
"I c-can't!"
"You can," said Jason. "You're the only one. The girls trust you."
"Won't after this," Jeremy muttered.
"Why, you mean to return it, don't you?"
Jeremy knew further protest was useless. Jason bade Joshua prepare to set out first thing next morning. He said he had some business to discuss with Stempel, which he went off to do, leaving his brothers to their assignments.
"Think he knows what he's doing?" asked Jeremy.
"He usually does, doesn't he?" Joshua did not wait for a reply and Jeremy did not offer one. To his mind it was a perpetually open question.
Biddie was sweeping the front hall of the dormitory. Candy had enlisted her and shamed another two of the older girls into action as well to perform the duties of their invalided sisters. Biddie still prided herself on being immune from the prevailing malady, and between strokes of the broom was saying to herself, but at a volume suitable for the stage, "I think it is the silliest thing. Homesick–honestly! Not that I have anything against home, or sickness–I mean, I'm not in favor of sickness–oh, what do I mean? But a girl who'd make herself sick over her home, or anybody else's home–but I suppose it would have to be her own, wouldn't it?–a girl like that hasn't a shred of self-control. Not a shred!"
Jason's inducing the brides to speak up had delivered them from their moping as he had intended, but only into a more active unhappiness (not quite active enough to inspire them to resume their chores) which in time would have revolutionary consequences. At present all it led to was a wish by Biddie's fellow workers as they dusted and polished the parlor (while their twenty-nine cohabitants were penned in the dining room) for some way of shutting her up. As it happened, these were the two who had stood up first after Ula in church.
Biddie, in the middle of her rebuke, found them suddenly close on either side of her, twin tempters. Didn't she remember? they purred. Remember the sun rising over Johnnycake Hill? The picnics on the rocks by Fort Phoenix? The gay circuses on Pope's Island? The maypole dances at (again they said it in unison) Arnold's Garden? These and other bygone joys, they funneled into her ears faster than she could resist till at last she gave way. "Well, of course I–but they're nothing to–I mean, for goodness'–" She trembled for a moment and then commenced bawling. "I want to go home!" The others smiled triumphantly. It was at that moment Jeremy came knocking.
He was waved vaguely toward the dining room, which the other brides, once there, had decided to use to its right purpose. For all their melancholy they were clearly not starving themselves, and while they were busy with first and second helpings in which Biddie's silencers now joined them, Jeremy trod softly into the parlor and combed among the momentarily neglected views of their birthplace till he found the one Jason had sent him after; at least he hoped it was. He slid it into his palm.
Where is Candy? he wondered. Turning to leave, he ran into her and quickly moved the picture behind him. She stared at him quizzically and, he thought, a little sullenly, as if she had not expected to see him there nor much cared to. This attitude (a misreading, by the way) made him feel easier over his quick getaway. What they said to each other, he hardly minded (though he worried about it later); little enough in any case.
The picture (no. 27 of 36) was actually an identical pair, sepia-toned, side by side on thick cardboard. Jason studied it a while before pronouncing "It'll do." It was tucked into Joshua's saddlebag along with two days' rations, a little cash, and a good luck charm he never traveled without and never showed anyone. All he would say about it after it was lost was that it was something he had been given when he was younger.
He was taking the Appaloosa, their best horse and the one Joshua knew best. They had few and seldom used them, being accustomed to walking except on long trips like this into the forest. Their work and the terrain they inhabited had made them stay-at-homes even if their dispositions inclined otherwise. So a part of Joshua felt grateful for the excursion.
Another part would as soon have remained to finish the budget for the coming season. Already he had determined to recommend Jason discharge half a dozen men who were not pulling their weight and parcel off a section at the foot of the mountain that was nearly worked out. He knew Jason would not hesitate to rid himself of the dead weights but would cut off a toe sooner than surrender an inch of land. "It's all I have to leave you when I'm gone," he would always say, and Joshua was not sure that was not the sounder course. His mind, when he chose to apply it, could see a question from every side; when he chose otherwise, none; let the wind blow as it might.
That was his attitude to the present trip. But his interest did flare a little when Jason revealed what exactly he was to do. Both brothers accompanied him to the head of the trail that led down the mountain and followed the curves of the lake shore north. At its end he was to continue by forest roads to the Snohomish River, which he would follow south as far as a landing whose stone fingerboard marked a path inland that would take him to the man he was to see, a stonecutter named Fertig. "Show him the picture," Jason ordered, "and tell him to make me the same tower to three-quarter scale. He's to finish inside three weeks."
"Can he do it on such short notice?"
"Mention a certain night he and I passed on the Barbary Coast." Jason smiled at the recollection. "He'll do it."
Joshua smiled too. "Maybe you should tell me the story in case he doesn't remember."
"You're not old enough to hear it," said Jason, "and if you were I certainly shouldn't tell you. Set an altogether bad example."
Joshua mounted the Appaloosa and nudged him around to face the trailhead. Sifting his mane in farewell, Jason bethought him of a last piece of advice. "As you approach the stoneworks be sure to give a hail. Shout loud, now. And be sure to get an answer before proceeding." Joshua asked why. "Fertig's apt to be a tad unsociable when strangers call unannounced. Comes of livin' alone, I reckon."
Joshua's eyes narrowed. "Brother, what kind of a place you sending me to?"
"No need to fear. Once you get to know him he's gentle as a dove."
Joshua resolved to be wary of Herr Fertig. With another nudge of the horse he started off at a canter down the hill. Jason called after him. "Once you've made him understand what's wanted, report back here. I'm relying on the two of you to put this thing over."
"What is this thing exactly?" asked Jeremy.
Jason ignored the question. "Don't dally, now!" he shouted as Joshua and his mount flickered in and out of sight amid the trees. "Fertig will invite you to stay over a few days and partake of his fine German cooking. Tell him no, politely." He waited. "You hear me?"
From below floated up the word "Sauerkraut?"
"No!"
"Wienerschnitzel?"
"No, I said!"
Finally, in a burst of inspiration: "Schnapps!"
"A schnapps or two might not come amiss," Jason conceded, "but then you head back, understand?" There was no reply. Joshua could no longer be seen. In days to come Jason would try vainly to recall the last glimpse and the sound of his last word. Thus do we live, he would reflect, poised at the brink: it was a line he had heard in a sermon.
All that day Joshua rode steadily through groves of maple, elder, and ash. At sunset he tethered his horse to an elder with a patch of dry ground next to it and there made a sparse supper of pemmican and corn bread. Besides the remote awareness of his errand he had little on his mind. The preoccupations of everyday life–the endless stacking and restacking of figures; the bother of keeping the men at their tasks even in their normal state; the settling of meaningless disputes, unavoidable in a camp of that size–fell from him as soon as he left town, to be replaced with a blank, bland repose in which, childlike, he could appreciate the world about him.
Propped against the tree under his saddle blanket, nestling his jaw in the upturned collar flaps of his coat, he stared into the deep blue, jewel-studded vastness above. How many stars were there–a thousand, ten thousand? He stopped himself: there he was, figuring again. He began to sing softly:
"Young Thomas lay on Huntley bank
When he did spy a lady gay,
A lady come all dressed in white
Like she was Queen of the May–"
A coyote howled. Joshua laughed. "And to the chorus," he said, "many thanks–many, many...." His head drooped. He shut his eyes.
Into Seattle a file of men with Jason at their head descended from the mountain bearing a long roll of canvas on their shoulders. Others behind carried poles and assorted tools. A little past the totem pole someone dropped a mallet; it made no more than a dull thud but Jason hushed the man fiercely. The dormitory seemed undisturbed, but at that distance, by no more than a darning needle of moon, he could not have seen it if the entire population had been at the windows.
One of them was. The sound, soft as it had been, had stirred Candy, who had not been sleeping anyway. As nearly as she could make out, a band of men–the big one was Jason, but where was Jeremy?–were unrolling bolts of fabric and planting poles in the ground. Now she recognized the tent P. T. Barnum had left behind after his command performance the year before. She did not know why Jason was putting it up but she said a small silent prayer for him, and for herself: a prayer of deliverance.
The next day Joshua found the landing and the fingerboard Jason had described. Remembering Fertig's skittishness about visitors, he left the Appaloosa tied to one of the bollards and took the path on foot, carrying the photograph in his coat. Tall foliage to right and left occluded a view of the stoneworks, wherever it was. From the bushes arose the occasional scurry of a small animal or the fluting of a bird; otherwise the countryside was still. A little way in he gave a hail, which went unanswered. He shouted again, identifying himself as Jason Bolt's brother. Perhaps Fertig was hard of hearing, or else–
"And what would you be wanting here?" said a high-pitched voice, so close it made him jump. He turned to see a woman dressed in white (like Queen of the May, he thought) and with hair of the blackest, stepping out of the bushes on his right. Behind them, he now saw, stood a large outbuilding; she must have come from there. He introduced himself. Pretty though she was, he went no further. For one thing he was concentrated on the task before him; for another hers was a hollow prettiness of a type he had seen before, on Tacoma's waterfront. "I asked what you were wanting with my father," she said.
"You're Fertig's daughter?" Without replying or asking again she offered to show him the way. Instead of returning through the shrubbery as he expected, she led him along the path to the front of the building. It was not so far out as he had supposed: rather, it marked the north edge of the compound. A small house and a larger workshop, as well as this warehouse and two or three sheds, stood in neglect. Creepers ran up their sides, and everywhere lay piles of tumbled and shattered stone. There was no sign of life. Joshua stared at his guide. Amidst the abandonment her hollow glamour shone forth strangely. "Are you a ghost?" he asked.
She gave a laugh; it was hollow too. "We don't keep it up as well as we ought," she said in a tone of regret, "but it's home to me."
"No, it isn't." His formless unease became solid at the recollection. "Fertig lives alone." He grabbed her by an elbow. "You're not his daughter, and you're no ghost. What are you?" There was a flicker of shadow behind him. He saw it half-aware, and too late. Hard rock struck the back of his skull, in an instant of sickening pain; then all went black.
"A robber," she answered.
"And me own dear sister," said the man who had just stepped out of the building. He had the same blackness of hair as hers, only his was stalky and unruly. He bent over Joshua's body and began feeling in his clothes.
"Don't kill him," said the woman. "He's a pretty thing."
He gave her a glance of reproach. "Sister, am I a common murderer?" She consoled him with a pat of his head. "I'll leave that task to the elements and the wild beasts." All his search yielded was a billfold, whose contents he counted before turning it over to her, and a photograph.
"Ooh, that's pretty too. Can I have it?"
He returned it to the coat. "Fella may have a sentimental attachment to it. Shouldn't like to deprive him if he's soon to be et up, or starve."
As he rose she hugged him. "Brother, you are a compassionate man."
"Best be off before he comes round."
"There's a fine horse by the river," she said merrily. Thence they repaired, leaving Joshua to his lone oblivion.
The same day, at almost the same hour, in the town he had left, Candy was making a circuit of the tent. Jason was having it guarded round the clock; this shift was Sam's. Candy believed there must be half a dozen of him since at every flap, gap, and edge she tried to peer around he confronted her anew. At last she gave up the attempt. Jason's secret must remain his. Ordinarily she would have felt piqued by all those males knowing what the females did not but right now she was too much worried. The brides had begun talking to each other in corners and out back, but not to her. She guessed what they were saying and what they were working themselves up to saying and tried not to think how she would meet it if they offered it up before Jason's circus, whatever it might be, was ready. A thing lurked inside her, an unseen presence that only awhiles and fleetingly let itself be felt; a white ghost; fear.
Over the Snohomish flats bumped a wagon full of men. The driver halted to let his horse drink and his passengers hopped down to do the same and to give their legs a stretch. He took a count: five, that was right. His eyes stayed on them as they stood or paced. One of them happened to look upriver. He did not look away, and soon the others were looking too. Following their line of sight, the driver saw the figure of a man away up near the hills, walking toward them on their side. The man waved and broke into a run but, tiring (or tired to begin with), returned to a walk. So he continued, intermittently running and then giving it up and waving at intervals, till the driver waved back to signal he meant to wait. With luck, this meeting might answer a present need of his. He dusted down his coat, which hid most of the loud green suit beneath, and arranged his face in its friendliest aspect.
The man's legs faltered somewhat, as if he had walked a long way. Indeed he must have done so unless he had lost his horse in the hills, for out here were no homesteads and the nearest town, Snohomish, lay fifteen miles distant. Though the morning was cold he wore his coat open as if accustomed to all weathers. As he approached, the other men observed that he was young and would have been quite handsome except that his features were pulled, and once having arrived he stared about him, clenching and unclenching his fists. The driver stepped up. "Jigger's the name," he said, offering his hand. The young man stared at it a moment before accepting it. This here's an odd duck and no mistake, thought Jigger.
The man considered before putting his question, which he did cautiously, fearing it still might not be right. "Can you–can you tell me who I am?"
The others exchanged looks. Jigger was struck dumb but only momentarily. "Why, don't you know?"
The young man shook his head. "There's this," he said, handing him a card. "Might be it's where I live."
It showed a picture–two pictures–of a church. Jigger began a shake of the head, which he quickly camouflaged as a shiver, his small eyes agleam. "I declare," he said, pocketing it. "And here I was thinkin' I'd never git this back."
The young man watched its disappearance with regret. "It's yours?"
"Well, ain't I the one loaned it you so's you could draw a likeness of it for your–your sweetheart?"
"Sweetheart?"
"Figgered you done run off on me and I'd never see you again. I'm relieved to find you was only lost and done found your way back to us after all." He stepped closer and clutched his arm. "That's the way of it, now, ain't it–Nate?"
The young man repeated it. "That's my name?"
The nearest of the passengers, another man of about the same age, had been listening to the conversation. He looked skeptical as Jigger produced a roll of documents tied with a ribbon. "Ain't I got the paper you signed to, same as these other gents?" He slid it out and showed it to him, holding it flat by a corner. "And ain't this your name right here?" Nate A. Pettibone, it read.
"What paper's that?"
"Work contract through the spring," said Jigger as he redid the roll and returned it to his coat. "Dollar a day, guaranteed, for three months."
"Three months!"
Jigger's little eyes grew smaller still. "Sure you don't remember nothing?" As Nate shook his head Jigger spotted a dark spot at the back, which inspection revealed to be a squarish patch of crusted blood. "This'll be the reason," he said. "'pears you've had a nasty fall." He clucked in seeming sympathy. "But you'll mend. Now git on board. Everybody!" he expanded. "We've lost too much time as it is." The others moved to obey, but not Nate. "You ain't proposin' to back out now, are you?" said Jigger, in a different tone, "'cause if you was...." He let the sentence hang. After a moment's thought Nate climbed on board.
The other young man, whose name was Espey, leaned over and whispered to the oldest of the group. "The scoundrel never saw that fellow before. I'm sure of it."
"Likely not," said the other, whose name was Sewell. "Figure there's anything you can do about it?"
"He should be seen by a doctor," Espey said stubbornly, and then repeated it louder in Jigger's direction.
"Well, ain't that where I'm fixin' to take him?" said Jigger. "Company doc'll tend to him purty as you please." Nate offered no word in defense of his own welfare but asked what company that was. "Only one you'll find this far downstream," Jigger said with no great interest. "Black River Coal."
Black River Coal, read the pinewood signboard, standing lopsided on its pair of stakes. The wagon had traveled half the day to reach the workings. For most of the way Jigger had clung loosely to the shore of a long lake, above which the sun had peeked occasionally, sunk down a little farther at each peek. Then he had veered away to cut across country and they had left the sun behind.
He pulled up at the top of a steep bank planted with plank shacks and scarred with a creek, if it could be called that, which twisted down to a sharp bend of grey water. Black dust swam in the creek, peppered the ground, and coated the shacks, a stable, and a few leafless trees. A few yards from the road and level with it sat the mine entrance. Elsewhere in the hill and in the one behind were scattered other tunnels, or the beginnings of them, which looked as though they had not been worked for months if ever. A path led down to a landing where two boats were moored, a 100-foot barge and a 30-foot packet boat, neither of the sturdiest. Men with rifles were posted by them as well as at the mine opening.
Two horses, a chestnut and a dapple grey, stood hitched to one of the trees. Saddled and bridled, they obviously belonged to visitors and not to the camp itself. Only two other inhabitants met their view: a short squarish half-breed Indian nosing among the shacks on some indeterminable quest (they later learned he had been hunting a pair of squirrels for supper) and an old man at his back, so pale and so flimsily attired, in disregard of the weather, he might have been a ghost from the mine's bygone days, presuming it to have known any.
The men surveyed the layout with more sober looks than they had worn riding in. Sewell was the first to speak. "Pretty measly outfit. Nary a mule nor pony to be seen."
"There's your mules," said a gloomy-sounding man whose name was Riggs. He pointed to a bone heap at the foot of the slope.
Another figure apeared from one of the shacks, a dark broad man with heavily muscled shoulders that made his short legs look skinny by contrast, and skinnier still as he climbed with long strides to meet them. He wore a kerchief about the neck and a coiled blacksnake under his belt. Jigger greeted him with an effort at cheer that did not quite hide the nervousness percolating beneath. "Here's your new gang, Toby, delivered as per contract."
Toby told him to uncrate them, and Jigger ordered them down in a harsher tone than he had used before. "Git, now! Line up and let Mr. Moyle have a look at you." They were slow to obey. Most of them would have been glad enough to ride out again.
Nate, last to board, was first to unboard, but no sooner had his feet touched the dirt than Moyle grabbed him by the hair and jerked his head round, causing him to cry out. "'ow's't?" barked Moyle. "'ere's damaged goods."
Espey stepped down. "He's injured. The doctor must see him straightway."
"Doctor! I'm doctor 'ere–and priest, midwife, and undertaker," he added with a laugh. Espey glared coldly at Jigger. Nate pulled himself free, causing Moyle to start. His hand moved impulsively to his whip.
"Had a little accident, is all," Jigger said hastily. "He's fit to work. You can see for yourself."
Moyle saw only a weak and wounded man who threatened to be of little use. He thrust his face into Nate's. "What's 'ee's name?" Jigger quickly answered for him. "Nate what?" The young man turned helplessly to the only rescuer he knew, whom Moyle picked up by a shoulder and dragged aside. "What are 'ee tryin' to sell me? Sooth, now!"
"Nothing, Toby, I swear." His trembling hand produced the contracts from his coat. "I got his name on the paper, y'see?"
"Be that 'is 'and?" Moyle's eyes stabbed into him.
Jigger's voice shook as badly as his fingers but he was not ready to give up the fight, and with it a part of his commission (or all, it might be, for he knew Toby's temper). "Look here," he said in a reasonable tone, "wasn't I bound to deliver six men? And when one of 'em skedaddles, and him the last able-bodied man in town, and I happen on another that'll do as good and don't know no better, what else was I to do but pack him along? That was sense, weren't it?"
Moyle rubbed his chin. "'e don't know 'eself?"
"Blow on the head knocked it clean out of him."
"And nowt on 'im to say?"
"Onliest thing he had was a picture of a church. I took it for my own self."
"Eh? What'd 'ee want with'n?"
"Don't know. Somehow does my soul good to look at it. Care to see?"
"Bah!" Moyle was studying Nate. "Mebbe I'll take 'e," he said, "but don't 'ee let on to Bascombe or–"
"Moyle!" pealed a new voice. While they had been talking another shack had ejected its occupants, who were climbing across to them. The one who had called out was small and lean, the other large and stout, and he wore a badge. Jigger wished them good afternoon. He knew the one for Hardy Bascombe and the other for Sheriff Case (his first name Jigger had never heard), who held office in the town that was the river's namesake. Between them somehow they owned the mine, and Moyle was their foreman.
Bascombe asked to see the contracts. "They seem in order," he said (he had himself drawn up the original of them) and passed them to his partner. "The sheriff will wish to see all's done according to the law." Moyle gave Jigger a glance of warning.
The workers were still lined up for inspection, which Bascombe took over from Moyle. They formed an immediate dislike for him as he surveyed each top to toe. "Bit skinny, this," he remarked of Espey, and again of one named Hounditch, who stood sniffling and shifting his feet; both outweighed him by at least thirty pounds. He barely looked at Nate. "They'll serve," he decreed. That made it a fact: they were officially in harness. Some showed the burden in their faces or their sinking shoulders. Not Nate: for all he appeared to care he might have been a thousand miles away.
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