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Read Ebook: Allison Bain; Or By a Way She Knew Not by Robertson Margaret M Margaret Murray Edwards G H George Henry Illustrator
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Ebook has 2690 lines and 137782 words, and 54 pages
THE SOUL OF ANN RUTLEDGE
ONE APRIL DAY
"Ann! Ann! Ann Rutledge! Hallo! Hallo!"
The cheerful voice belonged to a rosy-cheeked girl who shouted in front of Rutledge Inn, one of the straggling group of log houses that made the village of New Salem, Illinois, in 1831.
Pausing in front of the Inn, the animated girl repeated her call lustily as she watched for the closed door to open.
"Hallo yourself, Nance Cameron," a clear, musical voice replied from somewhere in the rear of the weather-stained building, and the next moment Ann Rutledge came around the corner.
"Look! Springtime has come! Isn't it splendid to be alive in the springtime? I found them in the thicket!" and pausing she held out an armful of plum branches white with their first bloom.
In the moment she stood, an artist might have caught an inspiration. On one side of the background was a vista of open garden, perhaps, and meadow, with a glimpse of forest farther back, and over it all the white-flecked, spring-blue sky.
On the other side was the solid framework that told of days when there had been no meadow or garden, and of the pioneer labor that had wrought the change.
In the foreground of this brown and green and blue setting stood a slender girl in a pink-sprigged calico dress. Her violet eyes were shaded with dark lashes. Her shapely head was crowned with a wealth of golden hair in which a glint of red seemed hiding. A white kerchief was pinned low about her neck, and across her breast were tied the white strings of a ruffled bonnet which dropped on her shoulders behind. She pressed her face for a moment in the armful of blossoms, sniffing deep, and with the joy of youth exclaimed again, "Isn't it splendid to be alive in the springtime!"
But Nance Cameron had no eye for the artistic at this moment.
"Have you been to the river?"
"River? What's going on at the river?"
"Didn't Davy tell you, nor your father?"
"No, I've just come home across lots from Green's. What's happening at the river?"
"Everything, and everybody's down seeing it happen. Let's go."
"If you'll wait till I fix my flowers."
"Don't wait--drop them or bring them. Everybody but us is there."
Nance Cameron had turned to the roadway. Ann was about to join her when she turned back.
"Bad luck! Bad luck!" shouted Nance. "Don't go back!"
"I forgot to shut the back door."
Nance stopped, made a cross in the dirt and spat on it.
"You don't pay attention to your signs worth a cent," she said, as Ann rejoined her.
"I don't much believe in signs," Ann answered.
"That's where you're silly. A black cat ran across Mrs. Armstrong's path no later than yesterday after she had her soap in the kettle. And wasn't that soap a fizzle? And don't Hannah Armstrong know how to make soap? It was the cat did it, and if I hadn't changed your luck just now you'd been in for something awful--might never live to marry John McNeil."
Ann laughed, and they started on their way down the road, that stretched the length of New Salem's one street toward Sangamon River.
"What's going on at the river?" Ann asked again.
"Somebody's ark is stuck on the dam. It got stuck just before dark last night. The crew couldn't get it off and had to wait until morning. They came up to the store to get some drinks. The town men gathered in and you never on this earth heard such roars of laughter as those men let out. Ma couldn't guess what it could be about. When Pa came in he told her there was the funniest tall human being he ever set eyes on with the ark crew. Said his legs reached as high up as a common man's breech belt, his body reached up as high as another man's arms, and his head was up on top of all that. And Pa said he told the funniest stories, and the men nearly died. Pa was laughing yet when he told Ma about it."
"Is the boat stuck yet?"
"She's stuck yet. Dr. Allan and Mentor Graham just went down and I heard them talking. She's on her way to New Orleans with a load of barreled pork and stuff. Davy's been up to the store twice. He says the crew have worked like beavers to get the cargo off the big boat, but that the water is running in bad and the barrels are slipping to the end which sticks out over the dam and she's sure to go over. She's going to make a great splash, and I love splashes. Let's hurry!"
"I hope nobody gets drowned," Ann said.
"Like as not they will, and we'll get to see them fished out. Let's trot a little."
With the inspiring hope of hearing a splash and perhaps seeing the first shocking throes of a drowning, the two girls hastened on down the slope that reached to Rutledge Mill, where the dam was.
It was true, as Nance had said, New Salem was out to witness the unusual sight of a flat boat on the dam where it had been stuck nearly twenty-four hours. It was a river craft of the usual flat-boat size, about forty feet long by fifteen wide, and sides six feet high. One end was covered with a roof of boards, and there were other boards fitted with ragged sails to hasten the freight-bearer on its long journey of 1800 miles to New Orleans.
The crowd on the river bank and the platform of the mill was lavish with suggestions and advice which were shouted to the crew working desperately to save the cargo.
Ann Rutledge and Nance Cameron paused a moment to take in the view of the unfortunate boat, whose rear stuck clear of the water and into whose fore the barrels were slowly settling. It seemed nothing could prevent the impending catastrophe.
"Let's get out on the platform. I would like to see that funny, tall fellow your father told about," Ann said.
Passing through the mill, deserted for the time by the dusty miller, the girls joined the crowd on the platform and Ann found herself standing by a peculiar appearing personage, a small man of uncertain age, who wore foxed breeches and coon-skin cap, and who had but one good eye which just now was fastened on the fore of the imperiled boat.
"'Ole Bar's' come back," Ann whispered, punching Nance and turning her eye toward the old man who stood beside her.
'Ole Bar' was a person of interest, and very peculiar. He was chewing some sort of a cud rapidly. When an unusually interesting suggestion was shouted out over the roar of the dam water, he rolled his cud into a hollow made by the loss of two back teeth and kept quiet until the moment of suspense was past, when he made up time working his jaws. Nance only glanced at him now. "I wonder where that tall baboon is?" she said, craning her neck toward the raft.
"See that thar patch of something that ain't no color the Lord God ever made nor no shape He ever seen? Well, that's his hat. He's under it, squattin' in the boat, doin' something to get 'er goin'."
"What's he doing?" Ann ventured.
"Eh--that's it," Ole Bar said with a dry smile. "The rest of the crews runnin' about like chickens with their heads chopped off, and these here galoots along shore is yelping like a pack of coyotes after a buffalo bull. But he's keepin' cool. This kind generally gits something done. Howsomever, that ark's goin' over. I've been numerous in turkey-trottin' and bee-runnin' and bar-killin', but I hain't never before seen an ark in no such fix as this un is."
"Look Nance," Ann whispered. "He's rising up--look!"
A moment his body partially showed. Then he bent low again. The next moment there was a sudden spurt of water from the bottom of the boat. The water pumping its way out caught the attention of the crowd.
"He's emptying her out!" they cried. "How did he do it?"
The tall figure under the colorless, shapeless hat had now lifted himself, and, as if to straighten his muscles after a long cramped position, he stretched to a height that seemed to be that of a giant, threw out his chest, reached his long arms to a prodigious expanse and took a deep breath.
As he did so Ann felt someone touch her. It was "Ole Bar." "Some huggin' he could do with them arms in matin' season--hey, Molly," he said; and when Ann turned to look at Ole Bar he winked his good eye at her and waited for an answer.
A shout from the crowd made any answer to this remark unnecessary. For a moment the towering youth stood before them like a comical picture, slender, angular, barefooted, his faded yellow breeches scarce more than clearing his knees and showing a pair of spindle legs. His uncolored shirt was flung wide open and over one shoulder was stretched a suspender which held one breeches-leg higher than the other. As the water pumped it not a promise to yourself enough? And will you draw back if I refuse?' But he did not persist in his refusal to speak, for she looked like one who was fast losing hold of herself, and he must have been afraid of what might happen next. For he said gently, always keeping a great restraint upon himself, `Yes, I have promised. You shall stay in your father's house while your mother needs you. I promise--though I think you might have trusted to what I said before.'
"Alex, my lad, I would give all I have in the world if I had but held out another hour. For the words that made them man and wife, were hardly spoken, when that happened which might have saved to them both a lifetime of misery. They had only passed through the gate on their way home, when down the hillside, like a madman, came Willie Bain. And far and hard he must have run, for he was spent and gasping for breath when he came and put his hand upon his sister. `Allie!' he said, `Allie!' and he could say no more. But oh! the face of his sister! May I never see the like look on face of man or woman again.
"`Willie,' she said, `have you made what I have done vain? Why are you here?'
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