University of Virginia Library

13. CHAPTER XIII.
A SHELTER.

ALBERT drove up the stream, and in a fit of
desperation again essayed to ford it. The
staying in the rain all night with Katy was so
terrible to him that he determined to cross at all
hazards. It were better to drown together than to
perish here. But again the prudent stubbornness of the
old horse saved them. He stood in the water as immovable as
the ass of Balaam. Then, for the sheer sake of doing something,
Charlton drove down the stream to a point opposite where the
bluff seemed of easy ascent. Here he again attempted to cross,
and was again balked by the horse's regard for his own safety.
Charlton did not appreciate the depth and swiftness of the
stream, nor the consequent certainty of drowning in any attempt
to ford it. Not until he got out of the buggy and tried to cross
afoot did he understand how impossible it was.

When Albert returned to the vehicle he sat still. The
current rippled against the body of the horse and the wheels
of the buggy. The incessant rain roared in the water before
him. There was nothing to be done. In the sheer exhaustion
of his resources, in his numb despondency, he neglected even
to drive the horse out of the water. How long he sat there
it would be hard to say. Several times he roused himself to

utter a “Halloo!” But the roar of the rain swallowed up his
voice, which was husky with emotion.

After a while he heard a plashing in the water, which was
not that of the rain. He thought it must be the sound of a
canoe-paddle. Could anybody row against such a torrent?
But he distinctly heard the plashing, and it was below him.
Even Katy roused herself to listen, and strained her eyes against
the blackness of the night to discover what it might be. It
did not grow any nearer. It did not retreat. At the end of
ten minutes this irregular but distinct dipping sound, which
seemed to be in some way due to human agency, was neither
farther nor nearer, neither slower nor more rapid than at first.
Albert hallooed again and again at it, but the mysterious cause
of this dipping and dashing was deaf to all cries for help. Or
if not deaf, this oarsman seemed as incapable of giving reply
as the “dumb old man” that rowed the “lily maid of Astolat”
to the palace of Arthur.

But it was no oarsman, not even a dumb one. The lightning
for which Albert prayed came at last, and illumined the
water and the shores, dispelling all dreams of canoe or oarsman.
Charlton saw in an instant that there was a fence a few
rods away, and that where the fence crossed the stream, or
crossed from bank to bank of what was the stream at its average
stage, long poles had been used, and one of these long
and supple poles was now partly submerged. The swift current
bent it in the middle until it would spring out of the water
and drop back higher up. It was thus kept in a rotary motion,
making the sound which he had mistaken for the paddling
of a canoeman. With this discovery departed all thought of
human help from that quarter.

But with the dissipating of the illusion came a new hope.
Charlton turned the head of the horse back and drove him out
of the water, or at least to a part of the meadow where the
overflowed water did not reach to his knees. Here he tied
him to a tree, and told Katy she must stay alone until he should
cross the stream and find help, if help there should be, and
return. It might take him half an hour. But poor Katy said
that she could not live half an hour longer in this rain. And,
besides, she knew that Albert would be drowned in crossing.
So that it was with much ado that he managed to get away
from her, and, indeed, I think she cried after he had gone. He
called back to her when he got to the brook's bank, “All right,
Katy!” but Katy heard him through the roar of the rain, and
it seemed to her that he was being swallowed up it a Noachian
deluge.

Charlton climbed along on the precarious footing afforded
by the submerged pole, holding to the poles above while the
water rushed about his feet. These poles were each of them
held by a single large nail at each end, and the support was
doubly doubtful. He might fall off, or the nails might come
out. Even had he not been paralyzed by long exposure to the
cold, he could have no hope of being able to swim in such a
torrent.

In the middle of the stream he found a new difficulty. The
posts to which these limber poles were nailed at either end
sloped in opposite directions, so that while he started across
on the upper side he found that when he got to the middle the
pole fence began to slant so much up the stream that he must
needs climb to the other side, a most difficult and dangerous
performance on a fence of wabbling popple poles in the middle

of a stream on a very dark night. When at last he got across
the stream, he found himself in the midst of a hazel thicket higher
than his head. He hallooed to Katy, and she was sure this
time that it was his last drowning cry. Working his way out
of the hazel-brush, he came to a halt against a fence and waited
for lightning. That there was a house in the neighborhood he
could not doubt, but whether it were inhabited or not was a
question. And where was it?

For full five minutes—an eternal five minutes—the pitiless
rain poured down upon Charlton as he stood there by the
fence, his eyes going forward to find a house, his heart running
back to the perishing Katy. At last the lightning showed
him a house, and from the roof of the house he saw a stovepipe.
The best proof that it was not a deserted claim-shanty!

Stumbling round the fence in the darkness, Charlton came
upon the house, a mere cabin, and tried three sides of it before
he found the entrance. When he knocked, the door was opened
by a tall man, who said:

“Right smart sprinkle, stranger! Where did you come
from? Must 'a' rained down like a frog.”

But Albert had no time for compliments. He told his story
very briefly, and asked permission to bring his sister over.

“Fetch her right along, stranger. No lady never staid in
this 'ere shed afore, but she's mighty welcome.”

Albert now hurried back, seized with a fear that he would
find Katy dead. He crossed on the poles again, shouting to
Katy as he went. He found her almost senseless. He quickly
loosed old Prince from the buggy, and tethered him with the
lines where he would not suffer for either water or grass, and
then lifted Kate from the buggy, and literally carried her to

the place where they must needs climb along the poles. It was
with much difficulty that he partly carried her, partly persuaded
her to climb along that slender fence. How he ever got the
almost helpless girl over into that hazel-brush thicket he never
exactly knew, but as they approached the house, guided by a
candle set in the window, she grew more and more feeble,
until Albert was obliged to carry her in and lay her down in
a swoon of utter exhaustion.

The inhabitant of the cabin ran to a little cupboard, made
of a packing-box, and brought out a whisky-flask, and essayed
to put it to her lips, but as he saw her lying there, white and
beautiful in her helplessness, he started back and said, with a
rude reverence, “Stranger, gin her some of this 'ere—I never
could tech sech a creetur!”

And Albert gave her some of the spirits and watched her
revive. He warmed her hands and chafed her feet before the
fire which the backwoodsman had made. As she came back
to consciousness, Charlton happened to think that he had no
dry clothes for her. He would have gone immediately back
to the buggy, where there was a portmanteau carefully stowed
under the seat, but that the Inhabitant had gone out and he
was left alone with Katy, and he feared that she would faint
again if he should leave her. Presently the tall, lank, long-haired
man came in.

“Mister,” he said, “I made kinder sorter free with your
things. I thought as how as the young woman might want to
shed some of them air wet feathers of her'n, and so I jist
venter'd to go and git this yer bag 'thout axin' no leave nor
license, while you was a-bringin' on her to. Looks pooty peart,
by hokey! Now, mister, we ha'n't got no spar rooms here.

But you and me'll jes' take to the loff thar fer a while, seein'
our room is better nor our comp'ny. You kin change up stars.”

They went to the loft by an outside ladder, the Inhabitant
speaking very reverently in a whisper, evidently feeling sure
that there was an angel down-stairs. They went down again
after a while, and the Inhabitant piled on wood so prodigally
that the room became too warm; he boiled a pot of coffee, fried
some salt-pork, baked some biscuit, a little yellow and a little
too short, but to the hungry travelers very palatable. Even
Charlton found it easy to forego his Grahamism and eat salt-pork,
especially as he had a glass of milk. Katy, for her part,
drank a cup of coffee but ate little, though the Inhabitant
offered her the best he had with a voice stammering with emotion.
He could not speak to her without blushing to his temples.
He tried to apologize for the biscuit and the coffee, but could
hardly ever get through his sentence intelligibly, he was so full
of a sentiment of adoration for the first lady into whose presence
he had come in years. Albert felt a profound respect for the
man on account of his reverence for Katy. And Katy of
course loved him as she did everybody who was kind to her or
to her friends, and she essayed once or twice to make him feel
comfortable by speaking to him, but so great was his agitation
when spoken to by the divine creature, that he came near dropping
a plate of biscuit the first time she spoke, and almost
upset the coffee the next time. I have often noticed that the
anchorites of the frontier belong to two classes—those who have
left humanity and civilization from sheer antagonism to men, a
selfish, crabbed love of solitude, and those who have fled from
their fellows from a morbid sensitiveness. The Inhabitant was
of the latter sort.