HOARDING UP: PASSIONS--MONEY--WATER
This was Ruth Fielding's introduction to the Red Mill, its occupants,
and its surroundings. The spot was, indeed, beautiful, and an hour
after she had arrived she knew that she would love it. The Lumano
River was a wide stream and from the little window of the chamber that
Aunt Alviry said would be her own, she could look both up and down the
river for several miles.
Uncle Jabez had a young man to help him in the mill. It was true, Aunt
Alviry said, that Jasper Parloe had worked for some time at the Red
Mill; but he was quarrelsome and Mr. Potter had declared he was not
honest. When the mill owner was obliged to be absent and people had
come to have corn or wheat ground, paying for the milling instead of
giving toll, Jasper had sometimes kept the money instead of turning it
over to Mr. Potter. This had finally resulted in a quarrel between the
two, and Mr. Potter had discharged Parloe without paying him for his
last month's work.
The young newcomer had learned a great deal about the big mill and the
homestead, and about the work Aunt Alviry had to do, before the first
meal was prepared. She was of much assistance, too, and when Uncle
Jabez came in, after washing at the pump, but bringing a cloud of
flour with him on his clothes, the old woman was seated comfortably in
her chair and Ruth "dished up the dinner."
At the end of his meal her uncle spoke just once to Ruth. "You have
l'arned to work, I see. Your Aunt Alviry has trouble with her back and
bones. If you make yourself of use to her you can stay here. I expect
all cats to catch mice around the Red Mill. Them that don't goes into
the sluice. There's enough to do here. You won't be idle for want of
work."
And this was every word of his welcome, in a tone that showed neither
interest nor care for the girl. It was what help she could be and how
much he could save by her. It was plain enough that Uncle Jabez Potter
was as saving as a person could possibly be. There was none too much
food on the table, and Ruth watched the ravenous hunger of the hired
man, when he came in, with a feeling as though she were watching a
half-starved dog at his meal.
Jabez Potter was not like the misers Ruth had read about, save in his
personal appearance. He was not well dressed, nor was he very clean.
But naturally the mill-dust would stick to him and to his clothing. It
seemed to have worked into the very texture of his skin during all the
years he had controlled the mill, until he was all of a dead gray.
Sometimes there were half a dozen wagons or buggies waiting at the
mill, and not all of them gave toll for their milling. Ruth, in the
afternoon, and because it had begun to rain and she could not go out,
went into the mill to quench her curiosity regarding it. She saw that
there was a tiny office over the water, with a fireproof safe in it.
Her uncle brought the money he took from his customers and put it in a
little locked, japanned box, which he kept upon a shelf. The safe
appeared to be full of ledgers.
Farther down the mill was a wide door and platform overhanging the
water (this was below the dam) where flour and meal could be loaded
upon barges for transportation to Osago Lake, some miles away. There
were great bins of wheat and corn, many elevator pipes, several mills
turning all the time, grinding different grains, and a great
corn-sheller that went by power, and which the young man fed when he
had nothing else to do.
All the time the building trembled and throbbed, and this throbbing
was communicated to the house. As she sat with Aunt Alvirah, and sewed
carpet-rags for a braided mat, the distant thunder of the mills and
the trembling of the machinery made the whole house vibrate.
Late in the afternoon Ruth heard the honking of an auto horn and ran
out upon the covered porch. Between the scuds of rain that drove along
the valley she saw the gray automobile coming slowly past the mill.
There was a man driving it now, and he stopped and let Helen Cameron
out so that she could run up to great Ruth under the shelter of the
porch.
"Oh, you dear! How are you getting on?" cried Helen, kissing her
impulsively and as glad to see Ruth as though they had been separated
for days instead of for only a few hours. "Colfax wanted to drive down
to the station alone for Daddy--for we won't bring poor Tom home in
this rain--but I just couldn't resist coming to see how you were
getting on." She looked around with big eyes. "How does the Ogre treat
you?" she whispered.
But Ruth could laugh now and did so, saying, cheerfully: "He hasn't
eaten me up yet! And Aunt Alvirah is the dearest little lady who ever
lived."
"She likes you, then?"
"Of course she does."
"I knew she would, she was bound to love you. But I don't know about
the Ogre," and she shook her head. "But there! I must run. We don't
want to be late for the train. That will put Daddy out. And I must
stop and see Tom at the doctor's, too."
"I hope you will find your brother ever so mach better," cried Ruth,
as her friend ran down the walk again.
"You'll see him come by here to-morrow, if it quits raining," returned
Helen, over her shoulder.
But it did not stop raining that night, nor for a full week. The scuds
of rain, blowing across the river, slapped sharply against the side of
the house, and against Ruth's window all night. She did not sleep that
first night as well as she had in the charitable home of the station
master and his good wife. The evening meal had been as stiff and
unpleasant as the noon meal. The evening was spent in the same room--
the kitchen. Aunt Alviry knitted and sewed; Uncle Jabez pored over
certain accounts and counted money very softly behind the uplifted
cover of the japanned cash-box that he had brought in from the mill.
She got in time to know that cash-box very well indeed. It often came
into the house under Uncle Jabez's arm at dinner, too. He scarcely
seemed willing to trust it out of his sight. And Ruth was sure that he
locked himself into his room with it at night.
A loaded shotgun lay upon rests over the kitchen door all the time,
and there was a big, two-barreled, muzzle-loading pistol on the stand
beside Uncle Jabez's bed. Ruth was much more afraid of these loaded
weapons than she was of burglars. But the old man evidently expected
to be attacked for his wealth at some time although, Aunt Alvirah told
her, nobody had ever troubled him in all the years she had lived at
the Red Mill.
So it was not fear of marauders that kept Ruth so wakeful on this
first night under her uncle's roof. She thought of all the kind
friends she had left in Darrowtown, and her long journey here, and her
cold welcome to what she supposed would be her future home. Without
Helen, and without Aunt Alvirah, she knew she would have gotten up,
put on her clothing, packed her bag, and run away in the rain to some
other place. She could not have stood Uncle Jabez alone.
Jabez Potter was hoarding up something besides money, too. Ruth did
not understand this until it had already rained several days, and the
roaring of the waters fretting against the river banks and against the
dam, had become all but deafening in her ears.
Then, during a lull in the storm, and on the afternoon that Tom
Cameron was taken home from Dr. Davison's, the old doctor himself
stopped at the mill and shouted for Jabez to come out. The doctor
drove a very fast red and white mare and had difficulty in holding her
in, for she was eager to be moving.
Uncle Jabez came out and seemed to look upon the doctor in no very
friendly way. Ruth, standing at the open door of the kitchen, could
hear Dr. Davison's voice plainly.
"Jabez," he said, "do you know how the river is at Minturn?"
"No," returned the miller, briefly.
"It's higher than it's ever been. That dam is not safe. Why don't you
let your water out so that, if Minturn should break, she'd have free
sweep here and so do less damage below? Let this small flood out and
when the greater one comes there'll be less danger of a disaster."
"And how do I know the Minturn dam will burst, Dr. Davison?" asked Mr.
Potter, tartly.
"You don't know it. I'm only advising that precaution."
"And if it don't burst I'll have my pains for my trouble--and no
water for the summer, perhaps. They wouldn't let me have water later,
if I needed it."
"But you're risking your own property here."
"And it's mine to risk, Dr. Davison," said Potter, in his sullen way.
"But there are other people to think of--"
"I don't agree with you," interrupted the miller. "I have enough to do
to attend to my own concerns. I don't bother about other people's
business."
"Meaning that I do when I speak to you about the water; eh?" said the
old doctor, cheerfully. "Well, I've done my duty. You'll learn some
time, Jabez."
He let out the impatient mare then, and the mud spattered from his
wheels as he flew up the road toward Cheslow.