Bruce Carrington came of a westward-looking race. From the low coast
where they had first settled, those of his name had followed the rivers
to their headwaters. The headwaters had sent them forth toward the
foot-hills, where they made their, clearings and built their cabins in
the shadow of the blue wall that for a time marked the furthest goal of
their desires. But only for a time. Crossing the mountains they found
the headwaters once more, and following the streams out of the hills saw
the roaring torrents become great placid rivers.
Carrington's father had put the mountains at his back thirty years
before. The Watauga settlements had furnished him a wife, and some
four years later Bruce was born on the banks of the Ohio. The senior
Carrington had appeared on horseback as a wooer, but had walked on foot
as a married man, each shift of residence he made having represented
a descent to a lower social level. On the death of his wife he had
embarked in the river trade with all that enthusiasm and hope he had
brought to half-a-dozen other occupations, for he was a gentleman of
prodigious energy.
Bruce's first memories had to do with long nights when he perched beside
his father on the cabin roof of their keel-boat and watched the stars,
or the blurred line of the shore where it lay against the sky, or the
lights on other barges and rafts drifting as they were drifting, with
their wheat and corn and whisky to that common market at the river's
mouth.
Sometimes they dragged their boat back up-stream, painfully,
laboriously; three or four months of unremitting toil sufficed for this,
when the crew sweated at the towing ropes from dawn until dark, that
the rich planters in Kentucky and Tennessee might have tea and wine for
their tables, and silks and laces for their womenfolk. More often
they abandoned their boat and tramped north, armed and watchful, since
cutthroats and robbers haunted the roads, and river-men, if they had not
drunk away their last dollar in New Orleans, were worth spoiling. Or,
if it offered, they took passage on some fast sailing clipper bound for
Baltimore or Philadelphia, and crossed the mountains to the Ohio and
were within a week or two of home.
Bruce Carrington had seen the day of barge and raft reach its zenith,
had heard the first steam packet's shrieking whistle which sounded the
death-knell of the ancient order, though the shifting of the trade was
a slow matter and the glory of the old did not pass over to the new at
once, but lingered still in mighty fleets of rafts and keel-boats and
in the Homeric carousals of some ten thousand of the half-horse,
half-alligator breed that nightly gathered in New Orleans. Broad-horns
and mud-sills they were called in derision. A strange race of aquatic
pioneers, jeans and leather clad, the rifle and the setting-pole equally
theirs, they came out of every stream down which a scow could be thrust
at flood-time; from tiny settlements far back among the hills; from
those bustling sinks of iniquity, the river towns. But now, surely, yet
almost imperceptibly, their commerce was slipping from them. At all the
landings they were being elbowed by the newcomers--men who wore brass
buttons and gold braid, and shiny leather shoes instead of moccasins;
men with white hands and gold rings on their fingers and diamonds in
their shirts--men whose hair and clothing kept the rancid smell of oil
and smoke and machinery.
After the reading of the warrant that morning, Charley Balaam had shown
Carrington the road to the Forks, assuring him when they separated that
with a little care and decent use of his eyes it would be possible to
fetch up there and not pass plumb through the settlement without knowing
where he was. But Carrington had found the Forks without difficulty. He
had seen the old mill his grandfather had built almost a hundred years
before, and in the churchyard he had found the graves and read the
inscriptions that recorded the virtues of certain dead and gone
Carringtons. It had all seemed a very respectable link with the past.
He was on his way to Fayetteville, where he intended to spend the night,
and perhaps a day or two in looking around, when the meeting with
Betty and Murrell occurred. As Murrell disappeared in the direction of
Balaam's, Carrington took a spiteful kick at the unoffending coin, and
strode off down the Fayetteville pike. But the girl's face remained with
him. It was a face he would like to see again. He wondered who she was,
and if she lived in the big house on the other road, the house beyond
the red gate which Charley Balaam had told him was called the Barony.
He was still thinking of the girl when he ate his supper that night
at Cleggett's Tavern. Later, in the bar, he engaged his host in idle
gossip. Mr. Cleggett knew all about the Barony and its owner, Nat
Ferris. Ferris was a youngish man, just married. Carrington experienced
a quick sinking of the heart. A fleeting sense of humor succeeded--had
he interfered between man and wife? But surely if this had been the case
the girl would not have spoken as she had.
He wound Mr. Cleggett up with sundry pegs of strong New England rum. He
had met a gentleman and lady on the road that day; he wondered, as he
toyed with his glass, if it could have been the Ferrises? Mounted? Yes,
mounted. Then it was Ferris and his wife--or it might have been Captain
Murrell and Miss Malroy the captain was a strapping, black-haired chap
who rode a big bay horse. Miss Malroy did not live in that part of
the country; she was a friend of Mrs. Ferris', belonged in Kentucky or
Tennessee, or somewhere out yonder--at any rate she was bringing her
visit to an end, for Ferris had instructed him to reserve a place for
her in the north-bound stage on the morrow.
Carrington suddenly remembered that he had some thought of starting
north in the morning himself, but he was still undecided. How about it
if he deferred his decision until the stage was leaving? Mr. Cleggett
consulted his bookings and was of the opinion that his chances would
not be good; and Carrington hastily paid down his money. Later in the
privacy of his own room he remarked meditatively, viewing his reflection
in the mirror that hung above the chimneypiece, “I reckon you're plain
crazy!” and seemed to free himself from all further responsibility for
his own acts whatever they might be.
The stage left at six, and as Carrington climbed to his seat the next
morning Mr. Cleggett was advising the driver to look sharp when he
came to the Barony road, as he was to pick up a party there. It was
Carrington who looked sharp, and almost at the spot where he had seen
Betty Malroy the day before he saw her again, with Ferris and Judith and
a pile of luggage bestowed by the wayside. Betty did not observe him as
the coach stopped, for she was intent on her farewells with her friends.
There were hasty words of advice from Ferris, prolonged good-byes to
Judith, tears--kisses--while a place was being made for her many boxes
and trunks. Carrington viewed the luggage with awe, and listened without
shame. He gathered that she was going north to Washington; that her
final destination was some point either on the Ohio or Mississippi,
and that her name was Betty. Then the door slammed and the stage was in
motion again.
Carrington felt sensibly enriched by the meager facts now in his
possession. He was especially interested in her name. Be liked the
sound of it. It suited her. He even tried it under his breath softly.
Betty--Betty Malroy--next he fell to wondering if those few hurried
words she had addressed to him could possibly be construed as forming a
basis for a further acquaintance. Or wasn't it far more likely she would
prefer to forget the episode of the previous day, which had clearly been
anything but agreeable?
All through the morning they swung forward in the heat and dust and
glare, with now and then a brief pause when they changed horses, and at
midday rattled into the shaded main street of a sleepy village and drew
up before the tavern where dinner was waiting them--a fact that was
announced by a bare-legged colored boy armed with a club, who beat upon
a suspended wagon tire.
Betty saw Carrington when she took her seat, and gave a scarcely
perceptible start of surprise. Then her face was flooded with a rich
color. This was the man who saw her with Captain Murrell yesterday I
What must he think of her! There was a brief moment of irresolution and
then she bowed coldly.
“You just barely managed it. I reckon nobody could misunderstand that.
By no means cordial--but of course not!” Carrington reflected. His own
handsome face had been expressionless when he returned her bow, and
Betty could not have guessed how consoled and comforted he was by it.
With great fortitude and self-denial he forbore to look in her direction
again, but he lingered at the table until the last moment that he might
watch her when she returned to the coach. Mr. Carrington entertained
ideals where women were concerned, and even though he had been the
one to profit by it he would not have had Betty depart in the minutest
particular from those stringent rules he laid down for her sex.
Consequently that distant air she bore toward him filled him with
satisfaction. It was quite enough for the present--for the present--that
three times each day his perseverance and determination were rewarded by
that curt little acknowledgment of her indebtedness to him.
It was four days to Richmond. Four days of hot, dusty travel, four
nights of uncomfortable cross-road stations, where Betty suffered
sleepless nights and the unaccustomed pangs of early rising. She
occasionally found herself wondering who Carrington was. She approved of
the manner in which he conducted himself. She liked a man who could be
unobtrusive. Traveling like that day after day it would have been so
easy for him to be officious. But he never addressed her and refused
to see any opportunity to assist her in entering or quitting the stage,
leaving that to some one else. Presently she was sorry she had bowed
to him that first day--so self-contained and unpresuming a person as he
would evidently have been quite satisfied to overlook the omission.
Then she began to be haunted by doubts. Perhaps, after all, he had not
recognized her as the girl he had met in the road! This gave her a very
queer feeling indeed--for what must he think of her? And the next time
she bowed to this perfect stranger she threw a chilling austerity into
the salutation quite at variance with her appearance, for the windy
drive had tangled her hair and blown it in curling wisps about her face.
This served to trouble Carrington excessively, and furnished him with
food for reflection through all his waking moments for the succeeding
eight and forty hours.
The next morning he found himself seated opposite her at breakfast. He
received another curt little nod, cool and distant, as he took his seat,
but he felt strongly that a mere bowing acquaintance would no longer
suffice; so he passed her a number of things she didn't want, and
presently ventured the opinion that she must find traveling as they
were, day after day, very fatiguing. Surprised at the sound of his
voice, before she knew what she was doing, Betty said, “Not at all,”
closed her red lips, and was immediately dumb.
Carrington at once relapsed into silence and ventured no further opinion
on any topic. Betty was left wondering whether she had been rude, and
when they met again asked if the stage would reach Washington at the
advertised hour. She had been consulting the copy of Badger's and
Porter's Register which Ferris had thrust into her satchel the morning
she left the Barony, and which, among a multiplicity of detail as to
hotels and taverns, gave the runnings of all the regular stage lines,
packets, canal-boats and steamers, by which one could travel over
the length and breadth of the land. “You stop in Washington?” said
Carrington.
Betty shook her head. “No, I am going on to Wheeling.”
“You're fortunate in being so nearly home,” he observed. “I am going on
to Memphis.” He felt it was time she knew this, or else she might think
his movements were dictated by her own.
Betty exclaimed: “Why, I am going to Memphis, too!”
“Are you? By canal to Cumberland, and then by stage over the National
Road to Wheeling?”
Betty nodded. “It makes one wish they'd finish their railroads, doesn't
it? Do you suppose they'll ever get as far west as Memphis?” she said.
“They say it's going to be bad for the river trade when they're built
on something besides paper,” answered Carrington. “And I happen to be a
flatboat-man, Miss Malroy.”
Betty gave him a glance of surprise.
“Why, how did you learn my name?” she asked.
“Oh, I heard your friends speak it,” he answered glibly. But Betty's
smooth brow was puckered thoughtfully. She wondered if he had--and if he
hadn't. It was very odd certainly that he should know it.
“So the railroads are going to hurt the steamboats?” she presently said.
“No, I didn't say that. I was thinking of the flatboats that have
already been hurt by the steamers,” he replied. Now to the western mind
the river-men typified all that was reckless and wild. It was their
carousals that gave an evil repute to such towns as Natchez. But this
particular river-man looked harmless. “Carrington is my name, Miss
Malroy,” he added.
No more was said just then, for Betty became reserved and he did not
attempt to resume the conversation. A day later they rumbled into
Washington, and as Betty descended from the coach, Carrington stepped to
her side.
“I suppose you'll stop here, Miss Malroy?” he said, indicating the
tavern before which the stage had come to a stand. “Yes,” said Betty
briefly.
“If I can be of any service to you--” he began, with just a touch of
awkwardness in his manner.
“No, I thank you, Mr. Carrington,” said Betty quickly.
“Good night... good-by,” he turned away, and Betty saw his tall form
disappear in the twilight.