University of Virginia Library

21. CHAPTER XXI.
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 Albert 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.”