_STORM_
Ramsay Cartou leaned on the rail of the ponderous side-wheeler, the _H.
H. Holter_, and watched without interest while a horse-drawn truck
brought another load of cattle hides on board. The sweating stevedores
who were loading the _Holter_ and the belaboring mate who supervised
them began stowing the hides into the hold. The _Holter's_ winch, either
ruined by an inexpert operator or about to fall apart anyhow, was
broken. All the work had to be done by hand.
Ramsay turned to breathe the clean air that swept in from Lake Michigan.
It was impossible, anywhere on the _Holter_, to get away from the smell
of the hides, but at least he did not have to look at them.
Not since he had left the brawling young city of Chicago two days
before, to make his way north to the equally lusty young city of
Milwaukee, had the sun shone. In those two days, while he waited for
repairs to the engine hauling the train in which he was riding, he had
seen nothing of the lake. Now, from the mouth of the river where the
_Holter_ was anchored, he had a clear view, and it was exciting.
The grays of the sky and the grays of the lake were indefinable, with no
clear separation. Ramsay shivered slightly.
The lake was a cat, he thought, a great sinewy cat, and the whitecaps
rolling into the harbor were its sheathed and unsheathed claws. It was
an awesome thing, but at the same time a wonderful one. A trembling
excitement rose within him. The lake was at once a challenge and a
promise--a threat and a mighty lure. He stared, fascinated, and tried to
trace the rolling course of the waves as they surged toward the bank. It
was impossible to follow just one for, as soon as it swelled, it
retreated, to lose itself in the immense lake and renew itself in
endless forward surges. Like recklessly charging soldiers, the waves
cast themselves up on the bank and, exhausted, fell back.
So absorbed was he in the spectacle and so fascinated by the lake, that
for a moment he was unaware of the man beside him or of the words he
spoke. Then a rough hand grasped his shoulder and, reacting instantly,
Ramsay whirled around.
"Why ain't you at work with the rest, boy?"
"Take your hand off me!"
The man who stood beside him was oddly like a rock, a great granite
boulder. Two inches taller than Ramsay's six feet, he had a barrel chest
and long, powerful arms. A leather jacket, with the sleeves cut off,
hung loosely on his upper body, and beneath it he wore a homespun shirt.
His black trousers had been fashioned by an exacting tailor but sadly
misused. They were torn and patched with anything that might have been
at hand. Black hair straggled from beneath his crushed black hat and the
hair needed cutting. His eyes, colorless, were oddly inanimate, like two
glass balls with no special warmth or feeling. A black beard sprouted
from his cheeks and half-hid his face, but the beard did not hide thick,
coarse lips. He repeated, "Them hides got to be loaded! Get to work!"
"Load them yourself!"
"I'll give you a lesson you won't forget, boy!"
"Do that!" Ramsay tensed, awaiting the anticipated attack of the bigger,
heavier man. He felt almost a grim pleasure. He had learned his fighting
the hard way, as anybody brought up on the New York water-front, and
with an irresponsible father had to learn it. The man who faced him was
heavier by a good sixty pounds, but he was a bull of a man and,
probably, he would fight like a bull. Would he know about matadors?
The man's eyes were narrowed to pinpoints, and they seemed to spark.
Sheer rage made his face livid, while his lips were distorted in a
snarl. He drew back, readying himself for the spring that would
overwhelm this brash youth who had dared dispute him. Ramsay poised on
lithe feet, prepared to side-step.
Then fat, fussy little Captain Schultz, skipper of the _Holter_, stepped
between them. He wheezed like an over-fat lap-dog, "Vot you doin'?"
"I want them hides loaded and the ship under way!" the man who faced
Ramsay snarled.
"Ach! Dis man payin' passenger!"
A deck hand, his eyes downcast, hurried past. The man who had ordered
Ramsay to get to work stood still for a moment, glaring. Then,
furiously, soundlessly, he turned on his heel and strode up the
gangplank to the pier. Ramsay watched him go, and he knew that, even if
there had not been unpleasantness between them, he could never like this
man. No matter where they met, or how, they would never get along
together.
Captain Schultz also turned to watch the man depart. Then he gave his
attention to Ramsay.
"Ach! You should be careful 'pout startin' fights, poy."
"So should other people!" Ramsay said, still smarting.
"You should, too. Yaah!"
And, as though he had settled that once and for all, Captain Schultz
waddled away to speak to the mate who was supervising the stevedores. A
little uncertainty arose in Ramsay.
This--this half-wilderness, half-civilization in which he found himself
was a land of strong contradictions. Lake Michigan, with all its fear
and all its terror, and all its inspiration, lapped the Wisconsin
shores. Yet some man could be so little impressed by the vast lake that
he could name a boat for himself. Possibly a man capable of building or
owning a ship like the _Holter_ had a right to think of himself.
Ramsay turned again to look at the lake, and his mind projected him far
away from the worn, slippery decks of the _Holter_. Almost he was
unaware of the two silver dollars in his pocket, all the money he had
left in the world, and of the uncertain future. At the same time, while
his inmost being feasted on the lake, a part of his mind reviewed the
events that had brought him here. He had an abrupt, uncomfortable
revival of a New York memory.
There was a lion, a great, black-maned lion, in the New York zoo. It was
well fed and well cared for, its every need attended. But most times the
lion had still seemed restless and unhappy, and sometimes it had been a
tired thing. Then it was hardly a lion at all but just a weary, living
thing. Ramsay had wondered often how that lion felt.
He had never decided exactly how it did feel; within himself there were
a dozen conflicting opinions. The lion paced its cage, and coming to the
end of the very narrow limits granted to it, it turned and went back the
other way. Coming to the end of the cage, it turned again. But all it
ever found was the place it had already left. Once in a great while the
lion had been very alert and very attentive. It was as though, now and
again, the great animal could scent a wind of which nothing else was
aware. That wind brought him memories of freedom, and happiness and the
unhampered jungle life that had been.
Ramsay had gone often to see the lion, and though he never understood
why, he always felt as though he had something in common with it, and he
understood it partially. New York offered an abundance of opportunities,
but they were well bound and well defined. There had always been a wild
longing, a reckless yearning, within him, and often he thought that the
newspapers which carried stories of the undeveloped Midwest were to him
what the faint jungle scents had been to the lion. He had devoured every
story eagerly. The Midwest was new, the papers had said. Good farm land,
if one wanted to be a farmer, could be had for as little as four dollars
an acre. It was the land of the future.
Again Ramsay jingled the two dollars in his pocket. He had answered the
call of the Midwest because he could not help answering it. He had to
try and to go and see for himself, but at the same time a caution,
inborn in his Scotch mother and transplanted to him, could not be
ignored. Before he burned his bridges behind him he had wanted to make
sure that there were some ahead, and correspondence with the manager of
the Three Points tannery had led to the offer of a job when he came. A
dollar and twenty-five cents a day the tannery was offering able-bodied
men, and there were too few men.
Ramsay looked out upon the lake, and a little thrill of excitement swept
through him. Sometimes he had felt doubts about the wisdom of having
left New York for the Midwest. He had been sure of a place to sleep and
enough to eat as long as he stayed in New York, and again he felt the
two dollars in his pocket.
Troubled, he looked out on the surging lake, and knew an instant peace.
It was worth seeing. It was something few New Yorkers ever saw. The
ocean was at their doorstep, and few of them even bothered looking at
that; but the ocean was not like this. Lake Michigan was fresh and
clean, different, wild and, as the papers had promised, new. Ramsay
tasted the wet air, liking it as he did so.
He turned at a sudden squealing and clatter on the pier, and saw four
men trying to fight a little black horse onto the ship. The horse, not
trusting this strange craft and certainly not liking it, lashed out with
striking hooves. Dodging, the men finally fought it into a sort of
small cage they had prepared. The horse thrust its head over the side
and bugled shrilly.
Ramsay watched interestedly, distracted for the few minutes the men
needed to get the horse into its cage. It reared as though it would
climb over the confining bars, then stood quietly. A sensible horse,
Ramsay decided, and a good one. Only fools, whether they were animals or
men, fought when there was no chance of winning or battered their brains
out against a stone wall. Good animals and good men never considered
anything hopeless, but they tried to fight with intelligence as well as
brawn. Ramsay glanced again at the horse.
It was standing quietly but not resignedly. Its head was up. Its ears
were alert and its eyes bright. It still did not like the ship, but it
had not just given in. Rather, it was waiting a good chance to get away.
Ramsay grinned. The next time, he decided, they would have a little more
trouble getting that horse onto anything that floated. Then he returned
his attention to the loading of the _Holter_.
A continuous line of horse-drawn trucks loaded with hides was coming
alongside the ship, and the stevedores were laboring mightily to stow
the hides away. Obviously whoever owned the _Holter_ intended to load
her with every last pound she would carry. He wanted a paying cargo that
would pay off to the last cent. Almost imperceptibly the ship settled
into the water. The gangplank, that had been almost even with the deck,
now tilted downward.
Once or twice Ramsay saw the bearded, jacketed man with whom he had
quarreled. But the man did not venture onto the _Holter_ again. Rather,
he seemed more interested in getting the hides loaded. Ramsay speculated
on the scene he was witnessing, and then he found the whys and
wherefores, the reasons behind it.
This Wisconsin country was still more than half a wilderness. It had its
full share of wilderness men, but its fertile farm lands were attracting
many Dutch, Swiss and German farmers. Struggling with a half-tamed
country, they did anything they could to earn a livelihood, and some of
them raised beef cattle. The hides were a by-product and the world
markets needed leather. But the leather could not be processed without
necessary materials, and the hemlock trees which provided tan bark were
being cut at Three Points. It was cheaper, and easier, to transport the
hides to Three Points than it was to carry the cumbersome tan bark to
Milwaukee or Chicago. From Three Points, harness leather, sole leather
and almost every other kind, was shipped by boat to Chicago and from
there it was carried to the eastern markets by rail.
* * * * *
It was not until mid-afternoon that the last of the hides were loaded
and the hatches battened down. The side wheel began to turn and the
_Holter_ moved cumbersomely down the river into Lake Michigan. Standing
in his enclosure, the little horse stamped restlessly and neighed again.
He was nervous, but he was not afraid.
Ramsay approved. The little black horse didn't like his cage, but he
would meet the situation as it existed rather than lose his head or
become panic-stricken. Ramsay walked over to the cage and the horse
thrust his velvet muzzle against the bars. When the boy rubbed his nose,
the horse twitched his ears and looked at him with friendly eyes.
Thick smoke belched from the _Holter's_ stack and made a long plume over
the lake, behind the plodding side-wheeler. A strong wind was screaming
in from the north and lashing the water angrily into leaping waves. The
ship nosed into the trough created by the waves and rose again on the
opposite side. Ramsay walked to the bow and leaned over the rail, and a
mighty excitement rose anew within him.
This, it seemed, was what he had wanted to find when he left New York to
go roving. The lake, storm-lashed, was a wild and terrible thing. It was
a beast, but something with a vast appeal lay behind its fury and its
anger. Lake Michigan was the place for a man. It would never be free of
challenge if there was anyone who dared to pick up the gauntlet it cast.
There was motion beside Ramsay, and the deck hand who had passed while
he argued with the bearded man fell in beside him. He glanced at the
man. The deck hand was about thirty-six, older than Ramsay by eighteen
years, and there was a seasoned, weather-beaten look about him. It was
as though he had turned his face to many a raging storm and many a
fierce wind.