The Hallowell Partnership

CHAPTER II

TRAVELLERS THREE

"Ready, Marian? The Limited starts in thirty minutes. We haven't a minute to spare."

"Y-yes." Marian caught up her handbag and hurried into the cab. "Only my trunk keys – I'm not sure – "

"Your trunk keys! You haven't lost them, of all things!"

"No. Here they are, safe in my bag. But Empress has been so frenzied I haven't known which way to turn."

Poor insulted Empress, squirming madly in a wicker basket, glared at Rod, and lifted a wild, despairing yowl.

"You don't propose to leave Mount Vernon Street for the wilds of Illinois without a struggle, do you, Empress?" chuckled Rod. "Never you mind. You'll forget your blue silk cushion and your minced steak and cream, and you'll be chasing plebeian chipmunks in a week. Look at the river, Marian. You won't see it again in a long while."

Marian followed his glance. It was a silver hoar-frost morning. The sky shone a cloudless blue, the cold, delicious air sparkled, diamond-clear. Straight down Mount Vernon Street the exquisite little panel of the frozen Charles gleamed like a vista of fairyland. Marian stared at it a little wistfully.

"It will all be very different out West, I suppose. I wonder if any Western river can be half as lovely," she pondered.

Roderick did not answer. A sudden worried question stirred in his thought. Yes, the West would be "different." Very different.

"Maybe I've done the worst possible thing in dragging Marian along," he thought. "But it's too late to turn back now. I can only hope that she can stand the change, and that she'll try to be patient and contented."

Marian, on her part, was in high spirits. She had been shut up for so long that to find herself free, and starting on this trip to a new country, delighted her beyond bounds. At South Station, a crowd of her Wellesley chums stormed down upon her, in what Rod described later as a mass-play, laden with roses and chocolates and gay, loving farewells. Marian tore herself from their hands, half-laughing, half-crying with happy excitement.

"Oh, Rod, I know we're going to have the grandest trip, and the most beautiful good fortunes that ever were!" she cried, as he put her carefully aboard the train. "But you aren't one bit enthusiastic. You stodgy tortoise, why can't you be pleased, too?"

"I'm only too glad if you like the prospect, Sis," he answered soberly.

Marian's spirits soared even higher as the hours passed. Roderick grew as rapt as she when the train whirled through the winter glory of the Berkshires. Every slope rose folded in dazzling snow. Every tree, through mile on mile of forest, blazed in rainbow coats of icy mail. The wide rolling New York country was scarcely less beautiful.

At Buffalo, the next morning, a special pleasure awaited them. A party of friends met them with a huge touring car, and carried them on a flying trip to the ice-bridge at Niagara Falls. To Marian, every minute spelled enchantment. She forgot her dizzy head and her aching bones, and fairly exulted in the wild splendor of the blue ice-walled cataract. Roderick, on his part, was so absorbed by the marvellous engineering system of the great power-plant that for once he had no eyes nor thought for his sister, nor for any other matter.

Their wonderful day closed with an elaborate dinner-party, given in their honor. Neither Marian nor Rod had ever been guests at so grand an affair. As they dashed to their train in their host's beautiful limousine, Marian looked up from her bouquet of violets and orchids with laughing eyes.

"If this is the West, Rod, I really think it will suit me very well!"

Rod's mouth twisted into a rueful grin.

"Glad you enjoy it, Sis. Gloat over your luxury while you may. You'll find yourself swept out of the limousine zone all too soon. By this time next week you'll be thankful for a spring wagon."

By the next morning, Marian's spirits began to flag. All day they travelled in fog and rain, down through a flat, dun country. Not a gleam of snow lightened those desolate, muddy plains. There seemed no end to that sodden prairie, that gray mist-blotted sky. Marian grew more lonely and unhappy with every hour. She struggled to be good-humored for Roderick's sake. But she grew terribly tired; and it was a very white-faced girl who clung to Roderick's arm as their train rolled into the great, clanging terminal at Saint Louis.

Roderick hurried her to a hotel. It seemed to her that she had scarcely dropped asleep before Rod's voice sounded at the door.

"Sorry, Sis, but we'll have to start right away. It's nearly eight o'clock."

"Oh, Rod, I'm so tired! Please let's take a later train."

"There isn't any later train, dear. There isn't any train at all. We're going up-river on a little steamer that is towing a barge-load of coal to our camp. That's the only way to reach the place. There is no railroad anywhere near. There won't be another steamer going up for days. It's a shame to haul you out, but it can't be helped."

An hour later, they picked their way down the wet, slippery stones of the levee to where the Lucy Lee, a tiny flat-bottomed "stern-wheeler," puffed and snorted, awaiting them. As they crossed the gang-plank, the pilot rang the big warning bell. Immediately their little craft nosed its way shivering along the ranks of moored packets, and rocked out into mid-channel.

Marian peered back, but she could see nothing of the city. A thick icy fog hung everywhere, shrouding even the tall warehouses at the river's edge, and drifting in great, gray clouds over the bridges.

"The river is still thick with floating ice," said the captain, at her elbow. "The Lucy is the first steam-boat to dare her luck, trying to go up-stream, since the up-river ice gorge let go. But we'll make it all right. It's a pretty chancy trip, yet it's not as dangerous as you'd think."

Marian twinkled. "It looks chancy enough to me," she confessed. She looked out at the broad, turbid stream. Here and there a black patch marked a drifting ice cake, covered with brush, swept down from some flooded woodland. Through the mist she caught glimpses of high, muddy banks, a group of sooty factories, a gray, murky sky.

"I don't see much charm to the Mississippi, Rod. Is this all there is to it? Just yellow, tumbling water, and mud, and fog?"

"It isn't a beautiful stream, that's a fact," admitted Rod. Yet his eyes sparkled. He was growing more flushed and alert with every turn of the wheels that brought him nearer to his coveted work, his man's game. "This is too raw and cold for you, Marian. Come into the cabin, and I'll fix you all snug by the fire."

"The cabin is so stuffy and horrid," fretted Marian. Yet she added, "But it's the cunningest place I ever dreamed of. It's like a miniature museum."

"A museum? A junk-shop, I'd call it," Rod chuckled, as he settled her into the big red-cushioned rocker, before the roaring cannon stove.

The tight little room was crowded with solemn black-walnut cabinets, full of shells and arrowheads, and hung thick with quaint, high-colored old pictures. Languishing ladies in chignons and crinoline gazed upon lordly gentlemen in tall stocks and gorgeous waistcoats; "Summer Prospects," in vivid chromos fronted "Snow Scenes," made realistic with much powdered isinglass. Crowning all, rose a tall, cupid-wreathed gilt mirror, surmounted by a stern stuffed eagle, who glared down fiercely from two yellow glass eyes. His mighty wings spread above the mirror, a bit moth-eaten, but still terrifying.

"Look, Empress. Don't you want to catch that nice birdie?"

Poor bewildered Empress glared at the big bird, and sidled, back erect, wrathfully sissing, under a chair. Travel had no charms for Empress.

"Will you look at that old yellowed pilot's map and certificate in the acorn frame? '1857!'" chuckled Rod. "And the red-and-blue worsted motto hung above it: 'Home, Sweet Home!' I'll wager Grandma Noah did that worsted-work."

"Not Grandma Noah, but Grandma McCloskey," laughed the captain. "She was the nicest old lady you ever laid eyes on. She used to live on the boat and cook for us, till the rheumatism forced her to live ashore. Her husband is old Commodore McCloskey; so everybody calls him. He has been a pilot on the Mississippi ever since the day he got that certificate, yonder. He's a character, mind that. He shot that eagle in '58, and he has carried it around with him ever since, to every steamer that he has piloted. You must go up to the pilot-house after a bit and make him a visit. He's worth knowing."

"I think I'd like to go up to the pilot-house right away, Rod. It is so close and hot down here."

Obediently Rod gathered up her rugs and cushions. Carefully he and the captain helped her up the swaying corkscrew stairs, across the dizzy, rain-swept hurricane deck, then up the still narrower, more twisty flight that ended at the door of the high glass-walled box, perched like a bird-cage, away forward.

Inside that box stood a large wooden wheel, and a small, twinkling, white-bearded old gentleman, who looked for all the world like a Santa Claus masquerading in yellow oilskins.

"Ask him real pretty," cautioned the captain. "He thinks he runs this boat, and everybody aboard her. He does, too, for a fact."

With much ceremony Roderick rapped at the glass door, and asked permission for his sister to enter. With grand aplomb the little old gentleman rose from his wheel and ushered her up the steps.

"'Tis for fifty-four years that I and me pilot-house have been honored by the ladies' visits," quoth he, with a stately bow. "Ye'll sit here, behind the wheel, and watch me swing herself up the river? Sure, 'tis a ticklish voyage, wid the river so full of floatin' ice. I shall be glad of yer gracious presence, ma'am. It will bring me good luck in me steerin'."

Marian's eyes danced. She fitted herself neatly into the cushioned bench against the wall. The pilot-house was a bird-cage, indeed, hardly eight feet square. The great wheel, swinging in its high frame, took up a third of the space; a huge cast-iron stove filled one corner. For the rest, Marian felt as if she had stepped inside one of the curio-cabinets in the cabin below; for every inch of wall space in the bird-cage was festooned with mementoes of every sort. A string of beautiful wampum, all polished elks' teeth and uncut green turquoise; shell baskets, and strings of buckeyes; a four-foot diamond-back rattlesnake's skin, beautiful and uncanny, the bunch of five rattles tied to the tail. Close beside the glittering skin hung even an odder treasure-trove: a small white kid glove, quaintly embroidered in faded pink-and-blue forget-me-nots.

"Great-Aunt Emily had some embroidered gloves like that in her trousseau," thought Marian. "I do wonder – "

"Ye're lookin' at me keepsakes?" The pilot sighted up-stream, then turned, beaming. "Maybe it will pass the time like for me to tell ye of them. There is not one but stands for an adventure. That wampum was given to me by Chief Ogalalla; a famous Sioux warrior, he was. 'Twas back in sixty-wan, and the string was the worth of two ponies in thim days. Three of me mates an' meself was prospectin' down in western Nebraska. There came a great blizzard, and Chief Ogalalla and three of his men rode up to our camp, and we took them in for the night."

"And he gave you the wampum in payment?"

"Payment? Never! A man never paid for food nor shelter on the plains. No more than for the air he breathed. 'Twas gratitude. For Chief Ogalalla had a ragin' toothache, and I cured it for him. Made him a poultice of red pepper."