The Riverman Part 49

"Did intend to ship by rail," said he. "They're all 'uppers,' so it would pay all right. But we can save all kinds of money by water, and they ought to skip over there in twelve to fifteen hours."

Accordingly, the three vessels were laid alongside the wharves at the mill, and as fast as possible the selected lumber was pa.s.sed into their holds. Orde departed for the woods to start the cutting as soon as the first belated snow should fall.

This condition seemed, however, to delay. During each night it grew cold. The leaves, after their blaze and riot of colour, turned crisp and crackly and brown. Some of the little, still puddles were filmed with what was almost, but not quite ice. A sheen of frost whitened the house roofs and silvered each separate blade of gra.s.s on the lawns. But by noon the sun, rising red in the veil of smoke that hung low in the snappy air, had mellowed the atmosphere until it lay on the cheek like a caress. No breath of wind stirred. Sounds came clearly from a distance.

Long V-shaped flights of geese swept athwart the sky, very high up, but their honking came faintly to the ear. And yet, when the sun, swollen to the great dimensions of the rising moon, dipped blood-red through the haze; the first premonitory tingle of cold warned one that the grateful warmth of the day had been but an illusion of a season that had gone.

This was not summer, but, in the quaint old phrase, Indian summer, and its end would be as though the necromancer had waved his wand.

To Newmark, sitting at his desk, reported Captain Floyd of the steam barge NORTH STAR.

"All loaded by noon, sir," he said.

Newmark looked up in surprise.

"Well, why do you tell me?" he inquired.

"I want your orders."

"My orders? Why?"

"This is a bad time of year," explained Captain Floyd, "and the storm signal's up. All the signs are right for a blow."

Newmark whirled in his chair.

"A blow!" he cried. "What of it? You don't come in every time it blows, do you?"

"You don't know the lakes, sir, at this time of year," insisted Captain Floyd.

"Are you afraid?" sneered Newmark.

Captain Floyd's countenance burned a dark red.

"I only want your orders," was all he said. "I thought we might wait to see."

"Then go," snapped Newmark. "That lumber must get to the market. You heard Mr. Orde's orders to sail as soon as you were loaded."

Captain Floyd nodded curtly and went out without further comment.

Newmark arose and looked out of the window. The sun shone as balmily soft as ever. English sparrows twittered and fought outside. The warm smell of pine shingles rose from the street. Only close down to the horizon lurked cold, flat, greasy-looking clouds; and in the direction of the Government flag-pole he caught the flash of red from the lazily floating signal. He was little weatherwise, and he shook his head sceptically. Nevertheless it was a chance, and he took it, as he had taken a great many others.

x.x.xIV

To Carroll's delight, Orde returned unexpectedly from the woods late that night. He was so busy these days that she welcomed any chance to see him. Much to his disappointment, Bobby had been taken duck-hunting by his old friend, Mr. Kincaid. Next morning, however, Orde told Carroll his stay would be short and that his day would be occupied.

"I'd take old Prince and get some air," he advised. "You're too much indoors. Get some friend and drive around. It's fine and blowy out, and you'll get some colour in your cheeks."

After breakfast Carroll accompanied her husband to the front door. When they opened it a blast of air rushed in, whirling some dead leaves with it.

"I guess the fine weather's over," said Orde, looking up at the sky.

A dull lead colour had succeeded the soft gray of the preceding balmy days. The heavens seemed to have settled down closer to the earth.

A rising wind whistled through the branches of the big maple trees, s.n.a.t.c.hing the remaining leaves in handfuls and tossing them into the air. The tops swayed like whips. Whirlwinds scurried among the piles of dead leaves on the lawns, scattering them, chasing them madly around and around in circles.

"B-r-r-r!" shivered Carroll. "Winter's coming."

She kept herself busy about the house all the morning; ate her lunch in solitude. Outside, the fierce wind, rising in a crescendo shriek, howled around the eaves. The day darkened, but no rain fell. At last Carroll resolved to take her husband's advice. She stopped for Mina Heinzman, and the two walked around to the stable, where the men harnessed old Prince into the phaeton.

They drove, the wind at their backs, across the drawbridge, past the ship-yards, and out beyond the mills to the Marsh Road. There, on either side the causeway, miles and miles of cat-tails and reeds bent and recovered under the s.n.a.t.c.hes of the wind. Here and there showed glimpses of ponds or little inlets, the surface of the water ruffled and dark blue. Occasionally one of these bayous swung in across the road. Then the two girls could see plainly the fan-like cat's-paws skittering here and there as though panic-stricken by the swooping, invisible monster that pursued them.

Carroll and Mina Heinzman had a good time. They liked each other very much, and always saw a great deal to laugh at in the things about them and in the subjects about which they talked. When, however, they turned toward home, they were forced silent by the mighty power of the wind against them. The tears ran from their eyes as though they were crying; they had to lower their heads. Hardly could Carroll command vision clear enough to see the road along which she was driving. This was really unnecessary, for Prince was buffeted to a walk. Thus they crawled along until they reached the turn-bridge, where the right-angled change in direction gave them relief. The river was full of choppy waves, considerable in size. As they crossed, the SPRITE darted beneath them, lowering her smokestack as she went under the bridge.

They entered Main Street, where was a great banging and clanging of swinging signs and a few loose shutters. All the sidewalk displays of vegetables and other goods had been taken in, and the doors, customarily wide open, were now shut fast. This alone lent to the street quite a deserted air, which was emphasised by the fact that actually not a rig of any sort stood at the curbs. Up the empty roadway whirled one after the other clouds of dust hurried by the wind.

"I wonder where all the farmers' wagons are?" marvelled the practical Mina. "Surely they would not stay home Sat.u.r.day afternoon just for this wind!"

Opposite Randall's hardware store her curiosity quite mastered her.

"Do stop!" she urged Carroll. "I want to run in and see what's the matter."

She was gone but a moment, and returned, her eyes shining with excitement.

"Oh, Carroll!" she cried, "there are three vessels gone ash.o.r.e off the piers. Everybody's gone to see."

"Jump in!" said Carroll. "We'll drive out. Perhaps they'll get out the life-saving crew."

They drove up the plank road over the sand-hill, through the beech woods, to the bluff above the sh.o.r.e. In the woods they were somewhat sheltered from the wind, although even there the crash of falling branches and the whirl of twigs and dead leaves advertised that the powers of the air were abroad; but when they topped the last rise, the un.o.bstructed blast from the open Lake hit them square between the eyes.

Probably a hundred vehicles of all descriptions were hitched to trees just within the fringe of woods. Carroll, however, drove straight ahead until Prince stood at the top of the plank road that led down to the bath houses. Here she pulled up.

Carroll saw the lake, slate blue and angry, with white-capped billows to the limit of vision. Along the sh.o.r.e were rows and rows of breakers, leaping, breaking, and gathering again, until they were lost in a tumble of white foam that rushed and receded on the sands. These did not look to be very large until she noticed the twin piers reaching out from the river's mouth. Each billow, as it came in, rose sullenly above them, broke tempestuously to overwhelm the entire structure of their ends, and ripped insh.o.r.e along their lengths, the crest submerging as it ran every foot of the ma.s.sive structures. The piers and the light-houses at their ends looked like little toys, and the compact black crowd of people on the sh.o.r.e below were as small as Bobby's tin soldiers.

"Look there--out farther!" pointed Mina.

Carroll looked, and rose to her feet in excitement.

Three little toy ships--or so they seemed compared to the mountains of water--lay broadside-to, just inside the farthest line of breakers. Two were sailing schooners. These had been thrown on their beam ends, their masts pointing at an angle toward the beach. Each wave, as it reached, stirred them a trifle, then broke in a deluge of water that for a moment covered their hulls completely from sight. With a mighty suction the billow drained away, carrying with it wreckage. The third vessel was a steam barge. She, too, was broadside to the seas, but had caught in some hole in the bar so that she lay far down by the head. The sh.o.r.eward side of her upper works had, for some freakish reason, given away first, so now the interior of her staterooms and saloons was exposed to view as in the cross-section of a model ship. Over her, too, the great waves hurled themselves, each carrying away its spoil. To Carroll it seemed fantastically as though the barge were made of sugar, and that each sea melted her precisely as Bobby loved to melt the lump in his chocolate by raising and lowering it in a spoon.

And the queer part of it all was that these waves, so mighty in their effects, appeared to the woman no different from those she had often watched in the light summer blows that for a few hours raise the "white caps" on the lake. They came in from the open in the same swift yet deliberate ranks; they gathered with the same leisurely pauses; they broke with the same rush and roar. They seemed no larger, but everything else had been struck small--the tiny ships, the toy piers, the ant-like swarm of people on the sh.o.r.e. She looked on it as a spectacle. It had as yet no human significance.

"Poor fellows!" cried Mina.

"What?" asked Carroll.

"Don't you see them?" queried the other.

Carroll looked, and in the rigging of the schooner she made out a number of black objects.