ROWING.
To get away with Katy immediately. These were the terms of the problem
now before Albert His plan was to take her to visit friends at the East,
and to keep her there until Westcott should pass out of her mind, or
until she should be forgotten by the Privileged Infant. This was not
Westcott's plan of the campaign at all. He was as much bent on securing
Katy as he could have been had he been the most constant, devoted, and
disinterested lover. He would have gone through fire and flood. The
vindictive love of opposition and lust for triumph is one of the most
powerful of motives. Men will brave more from an empty desire to have
their own way, than they could be persuaded to face by the most
substantial motives.
Smith Westcott was not a man to die for a sentiment, but for the time he
had the semblance of a most devoted lover. He bent everything to the
re-conquest of Katy Charlton. His pride served him instead of any higher
passion, and he plotted by night and managed by day to get his affairs
into a position in which he could leave. He meant to follow Albert and
Katy, and somewhere and somehow, by working on Katy's sympathies, to
carry off the "stakes," as he expressed it. He almost ceased trifling,
and even his cronies came to believe that he was really in love. They saw
signs of intense and genuine feeling, and they mistook its nature. Mrs.
Ferret expressed her sympathy for him--the poor man really loved Kate,
and she believed that Kate had a right to marry anybody she pleased. She
did not know what warrant there was in Scripcherr for a brother's
exercising any authority. She thought Mrs. Plausaby ought to have brought
up her son to have more respect for her authority, and to hold
Scripcherral views. If he were her son, now! What she would have done
with him in that case never fully appeared; for Mrs. Ferret could not
bring herself to complete the sentence. She only said subjunctively: "If
he were _my_ son, now!" Then she would break off and give her head two or
three awful and ominous shakes. What would have happened if such a young
man as Albert had been her son, it would be hard to tell. Something
unutterably dreadful, no doubt.
Even the charms of Miss Minorkey were not sufficient to detain Albert in
his eager haste and passionate determination to rescue Katy. But to go,
he must have money; to get money, he must collect it from Plausaby, or at
least get a land-warrant with which he could pre-empt his claim. Then he
would mortgage his land for money to pay his traveling expenses. But it
was so much easier to lend money to Plausaby, Esq., than it was to
collect it. Plausaby, Esq., was always just going to have the money;
Plausaby, Esq., had ever ready so many excuses for past failure, and so
many assurances of payment in the immediate future, that Charlton was
kept hoping and waiting in agony from week to week. He knew that he was
losing ground in the matter of Westcott and Katy. She was again grieving
over Smith's possible suicide, was again longing for the cheerful rattle
of flattery and nonsense which rendered the Privileged Infant so
diverting even to those who hated him, much more to her who loved him.
Albert's position was the more embarrassing that he was obliged to spend
a part of his time on his claim to maintain a residence. One night, after
having suffered a disappointment for the fifth time in the matter of
Plausaby and money, he was walking down the road to cool his anger in the
night air, when he met the Inhabitant of the Lone Cabin, again.
"Well, Gray," he said, "how are you? Have you written any fresh
verses lately?"
"Varses? See here, Mr. Charlton, do you 'low this 'ere's a time
fer varses?"
"Why not?"
"_To_ be shore! Why not? I should kinder think yer own heart should orter
tell you. You don' know what I'm made of. You think I a'n't good fer
nothin' but varses. Now, Mr. Charlton, I'm not one of them air fellers as
lets theirselves all off in varses that don' mean nothin'. What my pomes
says, that my heart feels. And that my hands does. No, sir, my po'try 's
like the corn crap in August. It's laid by. I ha'n't writ nary line sence
I seed you afore. The fingers that holds a pen kin pull a trigger."
"What do you mean, Gray?"
"This 'ere," and he took out a pistol. "I wuz a poet; now I'm a gardeen
angel. I tole you I wouldn' do nothin' desperate tell I talked weth you.
That's the reason I didn' shoot him t'other night. When you run him off,
I draw'd on him, and he'd a been a gone sucker ef't hadn' been fer yore
makin' me promise t'other day to hold on tell I'd talked weth you. Now,
I've talked weth you, and I don't make no furder promises. Soon as he
gits to makin' headway agin, I'll drap him."
It was in vain that Charlton argued with him. Gray said life wurn't no
'count no how; he had sot out to be a Gardeen Angel, and he wuz agoin'
through. These 'ere Yankees tuck blam'd good keer of their hides, but
down on the Wawbosh, where he come from, they didn't valley life a
copper in a thing of this 'ere sort. Ef Smith Westcott kep' a shovin'
ahead on his present trail, he'd fetch up kinder suddent all to wunst,
weth a jolt.
After this, the dread of a tragedy of some sort did not decrease Albert's
eagerness to be away. He began to talk violently to Plausaby, and that
poor gentleman, harassed now by a suit brought by the town of Perritaut
to set aside the county-seat election, and by a prosecution instituted
against him for conspiracy, and by a suit on the part of the fat
gentleman for damages on account of fraud in the matter of the two watery
lots in block twenty-six, and by much trouble arising from his illicit
speculation in claims--this poor Squire Plausaby, in the midst of this
accumulation of vexations, kept his temper sweet, bore all of Albert's
severe remarks with serenity, and made fair promises with an unruffled
countenance. Smith Westcott had defeated Whisky Jim in his contest for
the claim, because the removal of a dishonest receiver left the case to
be decided according to the law and the regulations of the General Land
Office, and the law gave the claim to Westcott. The Privileged Infant,
having taken possession of Jim's shanty, made a feint of living in it,
having moved his trunk, his bed, his whisky, and all other necessaries to
the shanty. As his thirty days had expired, he was getting ready to
pre-empt; the value of the claim would put him in funds, and he
proposed, now that his blood was up, to give up his situation, if he
should find it necessary, and "play out his purty little game" with
Albert Charlton. It was shrewdly suspected, indeed, that if he should
leave the Territory, he would not return. He knew nothing of the pistol
which the Gardeen Angel kept under his wing for him, but Whisky Jim had
threatened that he shouldn't enjoy his claim long. Jim had remarked to
several people, in his lofty way, that Minnesoty wuz a healthy place fer
folks weth consumption, but a dreffle sickly one fer folks what jumped
other folks's claims when they wuz down of typus. And Jim grew more and
more threatening as the time of Westcott's pre-emption drew near. While
throwing the mail-bag off one day at the Metropolisville post-office he
told Albert that he jest wished he knowed which mail Westcott's
land-warrant would come in. He wouldn't steal it, but plague ef he
wouldn't heave it off into the Big Gun River, accidentally a purpose, ef
he had to go to penitensh'ry fer it.
But after all his weary and impatient waiting on and badgering of
Plausaby, Albert got his land-warrant, and hurried off to the
land-office, made his pre-emption, gave Mr. Minorkey a mortgage with a
waiver in it, borrowed two hundred dollars at three per cent a month and
five after maturity, interest to be settled every six months.
Then, though it was Friday evening, he would have packed everything and
hurried away the next morning; but his mother interposed her authority.
Katy couldn't be got ready. What was the use of going to Red Owl to stay
over Sunday? There was no boat down Sunday, and they could just as well
wait till Monday, and take the Tuesday boat, and so Albeit reluctantly
consented to wait.
But he would not let Katy be out of his sight. He was determined that in
these last hours of her stay in the Territory, Smith Westcott should not
have a moment's opportunity for conversation with her. He played the
tyrannical brother to perfection. He walked about the house in a fighting
mood all the time, with brows drawn down and fist ready to clench.
He must have one more boat-ride with Helen Minorkey, and he took Katy
with him, because he dared not leave her behind. He took them both in the
unpainted pine row-boat which belonged to nobody in particular, and he
rowed away across the little lake, looking at the grassy-green shores on
the one side, and at the basswood trees that shadowed the other. Albert
had never had a happier hour. Out in the lake he was safe from the
incursions of the tempter. Rowing on the water, he relaxed the strain of
his vigilance; out on the lake, with water on every side, he felt secure.
He had Katy, sweet and almost happy; he felt sure now that she would be
able to forget Westcott, and be at peace again as in the old days when he
had built play-houses for the sunny little child. He had Helen, and she
seemed doubly dear to him on the eve of parting. When he was alone with
her, he felt always a sense of disappointment, for he was ever striving
by passionate speeches to elicit some expression more cordial than it was
possible for Helen's cool nature to utter. But now that Katy's presence
was a restraint upon him, this discord between the pitch of his nature
and of hers did not make itself felt, and he was satisfied with himself,
with Helen, and with Katy. And so round the pebbly margin of the lake he
rowed, while they talked and laughed. The reaction from his previous
state of mental tension put Albert into a sort of glee; he was almost as
boisterous as the Privileged Infant himself. He amused himself by
throwing spray on Katy with his oars, and he even ventured to sprinkle
the dignified Miss Minorkey a little, and she unbent enough to make a cup
of her white palm and to dip it into the clear water and dash a good,
solid handful of it into the face of her lover. She had never in her life
acted in so undignified a manner, and Charlton was thoroughly delighted
to have her throw cold water upon him in this fashion. After this, he
rowed down to the outlet, and showed them where the beavers had built a
dam, and prolonged his happy rowing and talking till the full moon came
up out of the prairie and made a golden pathway on the ripples. Albert's
mind dwelt on this boat-ride in the lonely year that followed. It seemed
to him strange that he could have had so much happiness on the brink of
so much misery. He felt as that pleasure party did, who, after hours of
happy sport, found that they had been merry-making in the very current of
the great cataract.
There are those who believe that every great catastrophe throws its
shadow before it, but Charlton was never more hopeful than when he lifted
his dripping oars from the water at half-past nine o'clock, and said:
"What a grand ride we've had! Let's row together again to-morrow evening.
It is the last chance for a long time."