CHAPTER VI.—THE DISMAL CANAL.
The waggon was loaded with barrels and bags, and plainly Mr. Todd was taking produce to some market. The great lean mules hung their heads and flopping ears hear the ground.
“Hiop!” said Mr. Todd. “Here you be! An' the cap'n pine blank mad like a teeter end hornet! Well, sirs, I'm s'prised!”
Calhoun went up calmly, as if he had naturally supposed Mr. Todd would be resting his mules about there. I remember that Calhoun once said to me: “If a man expects corn for dinner, and finds it's turnips, what will he do? It depends on the man, Bennie. I generally eat turnips.” And in the way of a figure of speech, he did, taking events easily, as they came to him.
“Going my way!” said Calhoun, “I declare! And here's Bennie Cree with cramps in his legs and crimps in his chest, just waiting for you.”
“Why, get aboard,” cried Mr. Todd. “Get aboard.”
And presently we were riding comfortably, Calhoun beside Mr. Todd, and I on a bag behind that had something lumpy inside it.
“Mad, was he?” said Calhoun. “So as to miss his boat?”
“Not he. No, sir. But he went off r'arin' an' tearin' like he'd caught the Old Boy. He cer'nly did. He ac' rippanacious. He say you two Yanks fool him both ends, an' he'd plough up Vaginia an' sow grass seed but he'd get you. He did so.”
“Offered a reward, did he? Say, about a hundred apiece. Course, he isn't foolish. More, was it?”
“Jemima! How——”
Mr. Todd looked startled and suspicious.
“Left some of his men, too? Course he did. And if they catch us you don't get the reward. That's what's in it for you.”
“Hiop! No, that's so.”
“And where are you bound for now, Mr. Todd?”
“Canal,” said Mr. Todd, seeming a little subdued.
“Going to ship market stuff to Norfolk?”
“You're a clean guesser,” grumbled Mr. Todd. “Cleanest I ever see. I was goin' to take it there myself.”
“I see. Norfolk's blockaded. You're going to take a boat load by the Swamp Canal. Use your own mules, maybe. Good idea.”
“Jemima!” said Mr. Todd, “you're a clean guesser.”
The old negro sat on a barrel, looking down at me, so bent over that his solemn, wrinkled face, with its fringe of dusty grey beard, was near his knees. He gave a soft chuckle and motioned to the two men in front.
“Marse Tommy, he gettin' he min' wukkin'. Oomm! He studyin'! Don' git no fish 'way fom him. No-o-o!”
He began to hug his knees with pleasure at thinking how clever Mr. Todd was about to be; and so we were believing very earnestly, both of us, each in the greater brilliancy of his own hero.
“Dey's oodles an' oodles o' folks meek out dey play kiyi wi' Marse Tommy, an' hit tu'n out quar. I don' know, but hit peahs to me dey's pow'ful misfo'tu-nate.”
Turpentine shook his head and chuckled again.
“Well,” said Calhoun, “you're after that reward naturally.”
“Oh!” said Mr. Todd, “'tain't likely I'd get it, no, other folks bein' smarte'n me.”
“But suppose, being in trouble and seeing no other way out, we thought we might as well go to Norfolk with you and take our chances. Course, we'd try to slip you there. That would be our point. And your point would be to see we didn't.”
“Jemima!” said Mr. Todd sarcastically. “Ain't you fixin' things pretty nice?”
“Well, course, I don't know that we could get clear of you any better than we could Cavarly's men. Likely we'd slip up either way. We take our chances. But how's your point? Why, if Cavarly's men catch sight of us, they grab us. Course, they want the reward. Give and take's the rule. We give you a chance at the reward, and take a chance to cut loose, sort of exchanging commodities. Now, that's square.”
“My, my!” said Mr. Todd with bland admiration, “ain't it the beatenest thing, the way you go on makin' plans! Saves me a heap o' trouble. Ain't got a jackknife to trade for a mule, have ye? Jemima!”
“Well, what do you say?”
“Me! I don' say nothin'.''
“Tha's it!” said Turpentine softly. “He don' say nothin'. Oomm! He min' wukkin'.”
We went on now jogging steadily, rather to the west than north, and the sand ridges, that had lain along between creek and creek, disappeared from the landscape. It was a continuous swampy country, a wall of reeds and matted briars on either side of the road, and great, gloomy trees standing apart, with mosses hanging. In breaks of the reeds there would be black pools, and creeks like ditches for the stillness of the water, secret, furtive, with twisted knees of cypress root sticking out of the banks, and half-sunken logs, from which the turtles plumped off solidly. The moss dripped, the very air was wet. The wind made always a hissing in the reeds.
The road was bad, full of deep holes, and sometimes made of uncertain logs, which the mules tiptoed over in an experienced manner. I learned to roll about with the waggon. Turpentine swung on his barrel like a weathervane, and seemed often to be going off into the reeds.
It grew dark, and the stars came out. The frogs were gulping about us. Turpentine crawled down from his barrel grumbling, and pulled out a blanket from below the seat; and I was glad to take a corner of it and be friendly, though neither of us made conversation, being fretful with the cold and damp.
So we went on many hours, all for the most part silently, and at last—but how late I do not know—drew up beside a house. Two or three other buildings were near, standing blackly in the night. There was a huge negro with a lantern, and a white man, lean and tall, who said, “Howdy, Tommy.” And after that I lay down somewhere on a corn-husk mattress, fever and aches for company, not thinking where we might be, or knowing till morning that we were come to the great canal.
I sat up in the dim morning, and looked about. It was a small, low room. Calhoun lay on a mattress against the door. It struck me with wonder and some shame, how careful he was, how watchful of little things. Yet for this matter, it seemed to me, if Mr. Todd had wished to make us prisoners there, he would have had no need to surprise us in the night.
Presently there were noises outside, and, when Calhoun woke, we rose and opened the door, which led into a kind of kitchen where a young woman in a neat apron was cooking. Outdoors we found Turpentine and the black giant I had seen the night before unloading the waggon into a canal boat, somewhat small, perhaps forty feet long. For the broad canal ran close to the house, with a wet, slippery tow path beside it. Mr. Todd was down in the hold of the boat, which seemed well laden, and, as I judged, for the most part, with garden stuff, fish in barrels, and vegetables in bags. But the middle of it was free for living in. I made out, by peering in, a pile of corn husks and straw for sleeping, and a stove with the pipe wired along, to take the smoke to where it could float up freely through the scuttle. The scuttle door was lifted back on hinges, and a padlock hung from it. A ladder ran down inside.
After breakfast, where the woman with the apron sat at the head of the table, and Calhoun talked with the lean man and Mr. Todd, we went back to the boat, and found one of the mules at the tow rope, and the other aboard, tied forward. Mr. Todd took the helm. Turpentine started the tow mule, shouting at him, “G'long now! You hyah me! I skin you toof.” The young woman waved her apron from the door. But this seemed surprising, that the big negro, Gamp, did not go ashore but sat with his feet hanging down the scuttle, and his bulk of shoulders slouched forward. He seemed ready to go to sleep in the sun.
Calhoun looked at him a moment, then at Mr. Todd, and afterwards went fore, where he leaned against the rail whistling to himself.
Big Gamp showed that Mr. Todd had surely been working his mind. Calhoun and I had no purpose to escape while in the Swamp, where we would be lost forever likely in its jungles and black gulfs. But Mr. Todd might think us desperate to that extent, and cause us to be tied up below by the monstrous black man, big enough to throttle an ox, and silent, and savage-eyed. For though I was stout for my age, and Calhoun a sinewy, enduring man, and both of us ready to fight, yet we could clearly do nothing with Gamp. Old Turpentine might count for little, but Mr. Todd seemed stronger, heavier than either of us.
I went forward to Calhoun, and he was not cheerful, though it seemed to be not the prospect which troubled him so much, but that he suspected himself of a mistake.
“That man, Todd, Bennie,” he said, “I figured him wrong. I didn't put him high enough. He's cornered me.”
“Why doesn't he make sure of us now?”
“Maybe he'd rather keep things agreeable while he can. That's good sense. Why, he's figuring right. He's a better man than Cavarly. Why, look here! We can't light out into this swamp. The nigger'd corral us in ten minutes.”
Calhoun fell again into gloomy silence, staring at the wild, tangled, and hopeless jungle that slipped slowly past us. Old Turpentine was plodding ahead behind his mule, and even the hump of his stolid shoulders was discouraging. “Folks meek out dey play kiyi wi' Marse Tommy. Peahs to me dey pow'ful misfo'tunate.”
I had grown almost to think Calhoun infallible with his courage and wits. It went hard with us both to have him beaten by that farmer and seine-fisher, with two negroes. It was Calhoun's pride—a weakness, if one chooses, at least what gave him most delight—to look at life and every experience as a kind of game, which he played to win, measuring himself with other men.
“I've pulled you into it, Bennie,” he said slowly. “I shouldn't have done it. Cavarly'd have seen you out, if I'd let you alone to begin with.”
“That's not square,” I said half angrily.
“Why?”
“Don't we go together? Anyhow I want my share. Why, Calhoun, I say—I don't like that talk. I say, you're all right with me, and I won't have it.”
Calhoun looked at me curiously and said:
“Shake, Bennie.”
We shook hands secretly below the rail.
But nothing of importance came that day. We crawled through the same black water, past the same wet, tangled growth and towering dark trees, with sometimes a shift of mules, and sometimes Turpentine at the helm and big Gamp on the tow path.
Calhoun and I went below before dark, with the hope of quieting Mr. Todd's mind, supposing him to be uneasy; and later, when the boat was fastened and the mule brought aboard, we all ate together, though saying little. Big Gamp took down the ladder and slept with his head on it. More threatening still it was that Mr. Todd lay with a shot gun across his knees, an odd-looking weapon, with a great lump of a hammer. So that I lay long awake, watching the dim red glimmer of the lantern, and listening to the hoarse breathing of the great negro. But my “crimps and cramps” were mainly gone.
The night passed quietly, and so too the following morning. Mr. Todd carried his shot gun about, and said nothing. By afternoon we were out of the wilderness of swamp, for there were open fields in sight, and we passed under a bridge, and saw small shanties, and little pickaninnies fishing and playing about the tow path. And though the mouths of cannon were hot that day a few miles to the north, it was peaceful on the old canal boat, or appeared so. The water rippled, the tow rope sagged, and we lay about in the sun and were silent.
In this way the time of action came jump upon us, out of the quiet and the waiting.
The sun was just set; the canal boat had stopped; the tow mule was nibbling grass by the path. Mr. Todd stepped forward, gun in hand, and Gamp behind him:
“I reckon we'll go below.”
And Calhoun said, referring to Gamp and the gun:
“It appears to be about as you say.”
Below Turpentine had taken the top off the little stove and was frying something on the coals. Gamp shuffled into a corner, and came out with his fists full of rope, of the size of lanyards or clothesline, and his fists looked like quarters of beef or the ends of battering rams.
“Now, I'm puttin' it to ye,” said Mr.
Todd, “ain't I treated ye reasonable? But a man's got to be precautions, ain't he? Jemima! Such slippery chaps as you's not goin' to follow me into Norfolk same as trained pups.”
“Your argument,” said Calhoun, standing up straight and slim, “is fine, sir, fine.”
“My, my!” said Mr. Todd soothingly. “An' I see you an' me's goin' to agree. Business, jus' business. Gamp!”
Gamp shuffled up to Calhoun, and Mr. Todd turned to me. But now, so swift an impulse came over me to fight, to run, to leap into the midst of things, that it seemed like a flash and burst, an explosion within me; and I crouched, dodged Mr. Todd, and ran blind-headlong into old Turpentine. We fell together against the stove, sending it flying along the floor, with a crash of pipe and scatter of coals and burning wood all over the com husks and straw. I jumped for the ladder. The straw and husks blazed up behind me. Mr. Todd dropped his gun and ran into the midst of the flame and smoke, stamping and shouting.
From the top of the ladder I saw big Gamp dragging Calhoun by the collar, as if he weighed no more than an old coat, dragging him over the gun on the floor. Calhoun's hand touched the gun, and gripped it. How he twisted his feet under him I could not guess. It was something too limber and swift to follow. It seemed one movement to stand up, to swing the old gun two-handed with a crash on big Gamp's head, who dropped in a heap. The gun snapped, the butt spun across the floor, and Calhoun came up the ladder with the barrel.
I caught but a glimpse from the deck into the smoky red pit below, saw Mr. Todd stamping, saw big Gamp rising, with horrible, glaring eyes and dripping mouth, heard him roar like a bull from the bottom of his throat. Turpentine sat up on the floor, rubbing his scalp: “An' mah name's Tuppentine.” Then Calhoun slammed down the scuttle and slipped the padlock.
We jumped for the shore and ran. There were woods beyond the tow path but a short distance, and no house was in sight.
“They'll burn!” I cried, as we reached the woods.
“Burn!” said Calhoun. “The nigger'll smash the scuttle with his finger. Burn!”
I looked over my shoulder, and half saw the great black head and shoulders heave up through the splintered scuttle.
We ran on through the open woods, circling towards the north. It was growing dusky, and, when we came to the open fields, it was dark enough for lights to be burning in a distant cluster of cabins. Then we found a railroad track running east and west.
“They'll hunt us this way!” I said gasping, and Calhoun:
“The other side the canal!”
We ran westward along the track to a trestle-bridge over the canal, on which we crawled hands and knees, seeing stars reflected in the dark water, and beyond came at last upon a road that seemed to lead as we wished, under the pole star, northward, where should lie the blockading ships.
CHAPTER VII.—WE COME TO A RIVER CALLED ELIZABETH, AND TO ANOTHER CALLED JAMES—CONCLUSION.
We left the railroad behind us and took that northern highway. It was still early in the night when we passed a big plantation. There was a white house hack from the road, with pillars and lighted windows. We had slipped aside, hearing the sound of a galloping horse. It came up swiftly from the south, a white horse or light grey, and the rider turned him in at the wide gate into the shadows of the driveway. Then the front door went open: there were women's voices, and the cries of laughter, of children; the man ran up the steps, and the light from the hall shone on his grey uniform and braided bat; the door closed, and we plodded on in the dark.
Beyond were cabins scattered in the fields, and presently a wood, and a little peak-roofed building close by the road, lighted and noisy with singing; and we slipped aside again, avoiding the light. It was a negro service. We could see the crowded black heads through the windows, and even hear the words of the hymn, following a queer, plaintive tune. The preacher on the platform shouted and swung his arms:
“Oh, don' you heah the trumpet blow?
Lulah! Lulah!
Don' you heah the trumpet blow?
All the mountains fall.”
“Notheh!” cried the preacher. “Thank God foh' notheh! Don' drap 'im!”
“Someone meet me in the dark—
Lulah! Lulah!
Someone meet me in the dark,
Lif' me when I fall.”
And we plodded on “in the dark.” The wood gave way to open flat fields, and glimmering sky, where the Dipper hung, with its pointers signaling the pole star.
“Looks like we're most out of it, Bennie,” said Calhoun; “but you can't tell. I'm not figuring so much as I was.”
“Why not?''
“Well, it's this way. Why, look at it! I figured the thing out, but it was you that flopped the ship around, and nothing in it but trouble for you. You had no use for it. And what made the old lady pull Tommy Todd off us? Not me. I didn't count on her at all. Then I figured us into the hold of Tommy Todd's canal boat in a bad way, and it was you bumped heads with Turpentine and fired Tommy Todd's bedding, sort of off-hand-how-d'ye-do; and I'd been figuring all day, like x plus y. Shucks! Flip a cent. Hear those niggers singing?”
“What did it mean, 'Meet me in the dark, Lift me when I fall,' and all that?”
“Don't know. Means you might quit figuring. It's too dark, this world, too dark.”
I said, “That other man was glad to get home,” and Calhoun was silent. He seemed to be low in his mind.
It was a half-hour later that we heard again the galloping of a horse behind us. It came up and passed where we hid; it was the white horse or light grey; but if the rider had seen us and wished to see more, he misjudged his distance badly. He stopped far beyond, rode through the low bushes to the fence and looked over; then rode to and fro, peering about him, I suppose, for the light was not enough to be sure. But we heard the trampling of his horse too clearly, and he came as near as fifty feet; finally he turned into the road and went northward at a gallop.
We saw no one any more, and all along the way the cabins and dwelling-houses were dark. It might have been three o'clock when we came upon a broad river or inlet, which the road followed closely from there on, circling around to the east along a bushy and swampy shore. Houses were frequent, piers running into the river, rowboats drawn among the reeds, sailboats anchored, piles of oyster shells, and the smell of the oyster trade everywhere. Calhoun thought the river should be the west branch of the Elizabeth River, and that Portsmouth and Norfolk should lie to the east a few miles. At last the opposite shore was quite lost, for we were come to the open tideway of the Elizabeth River, and there, somewhere across the water and through the dimness, lay the James and the northern ships.
The morning was breaking now, with a thick mist on the river. Between the road and shore was a broad space of reeds and thick tangled undergrowth. A path led through it from the pier where the boats lay, and across the road to a large house, rather new and flimsy-looking, with long piazzas, and a sign, which I have heard read at that time, “Smith's Hotel,” but we did not go near enough to read it.
We went down the path to the boats, and thought out which to take when the time came, and found the place where the oars were thrust among the reeds, for a poor attempt to hide them, if that were meant. One of the boats was covered on the bottom with oysters in their knotted shells. We were glad enough of that, and carried maybe half a bushel into the thicket, and fell to breakfasting on them, feeling more cheerful, though raw oysters in a damp thicket of a misty morning are no luxury.
I woke from a sleep, that I thought had been short and surely was uncomfortable, to hear a voice shouting from the path to someone down by the pier.
“Hey, landlo'd!” it said. “Can I put up a bill on your post?” and I thought it was familiar, but could not place it. Calhoun was motioning me to lie still. The steps of several men crunched the sand on the beach, and the speaker went to meet them. The “landlo'd” seemed to be deaf, and spoke very loudly himself.
“Wha'd you say? What you got there?”
They probably stood in a group at the end of the path, and the first speaker read his “bill” aloud, the others perhaps reading too, for I caught only certain words: “Reward—forty years—slim, lively—boy—well grown—Redwood, South Ca'lina”; and then it came upon me that he was reading a placard and description of Calhoun and me, and that himself was no other than Gerry, the steersman. That was unpleasant, but I wished he would read the description more clearly and read it all.
“Well, now,” said the landlord, “tha's a circumstance, ain't it?”
He seemed to be appealing to the others about him, for there was a murmur which amounted to agreement that it was a circumstance. “Why, I'm reckonin' you're near the right track. Eh? Why, Major Sandfo'd—You know him?”
“Ho.”
“Eh? Where'd you come from? Major Sandfo'd, Sandfo'd Plantation. He rode th'ough here las 'night; said your men came up by the canal an' got loose below his place somewhere an' mos' bu'nt up the canal boat. Eh? He said he thought he saw someone on the road, but mought a' been wrong, 'cause he met his niggers comin' f'om their-meetin', an' they tol' him nobody had passed. Niggers mought lie. Eh? But he didn' find 'em, if he saw 'em. But they came by the canal. Major said so. Don' you know him?”
They all went up the path together making various comments, but the last I heard of Gerry's voice was when he said:
“Fetches us inside ten miles, don' it? Might a took the fork to Po'tsmouth. But you better watch your boats, landlo'd.”
Someone else said:
“Hot work down the river,” meaning the cannonading.
The cannonading kept up its beat and thrill all through the afternoon. It was the 8th of March. We did not know anything peculiar about the 8th of March. There was an iron-sided thing careering around the James River the while, and eating up tall ships, and feeling much too comfortable over it. We were thinking about Gerry, and the landlord, and the boats.
Towards dusk someone came stamping and puffing in the bushes, and we made out that he was come to hide the oars back among the brakes and leaves. We argued it must be the landlord, who seemed to be fat and short of wind, as well as deaf.
We waited again a long time. Calhoun rose once and peered about, but lay down again and said there was still a light at the hotel. At last everything was dark and silent, so far as we could make out.
We crept along till we found the oars, thrust here and there among the brakes, and took four of them, and so out into the starlight on the beach. I stepped into a boat, and Calhoun shoved the prow. But we had surely made a noise—some unnoticed clatter of oars—for the feet of men were coming now, thumping and stamping down the path. Calhoun shoved and leaped in, and we shot out over the shallow. But one of the men ran across the strip of beach into the water and caught the prow; and Calhoun thrust with his oar handle, so that he fell over and made a splash; and we got the oars in and rowed away.
They were the landlord and two other men. The two others fell to shouting in the landlord's ear, “Oars! oars!” and all three ran into the bushes. We had gotten away so far that the shore was too dim to see, but I thought they had given up. Calhoun listened and heard their oarlocks. So we fell to, and pulled till my ears sang and my arms felt wooden, north by west, down the river, which was there broad like a bay; and we kept this pace some two miles, and were near the island they call Craney Island, where were Confederate batteries.
They were good watermen. They out-rowed us fairly, drew nearer and nearer till I could see that there were two in the stem with an oar apiece, and the third man pulling two oars.
“They've got no guns,” said Calhoun. “They'd have drawn on us.”
But I only gasped and grunted for answer. Calhoun stopped rowing.
“Will you fight, Bennie?”
There was almost a laugh in his voice, as if he were happy, like a little boy thinking of a fine new game. And somehow I was glad too, and cried, “Yes!” feeling I would rather fight the Confederate batteries than pull through another half-hour so desperately.
“Turn out in the river then. Let's have room.”
And so, when they caught us, we were near the middle of the river and far away from either shore.
“Hoi!” said the one in the prow.
“Ye would, would ye!”
He leaned over to catch the stern of our boat. I stood up and swung my oar behind.
“Go easy, sonny,” said one of those in the stem. “You're wo'th money, wo'th money. Look out there!”
I brought the oar down with a flat slap on the first man's head, who pitched into the water, hitting our boat with his shoulder. And Calhoun pulled hard and sudden, so that I fell forward across my oar, and scrambled up very bewildered.
The other boat had swung around with the shove of the man who went over, for he came up away from it. Either he could not swim or had lost his head with the blow, for he cried out and sank again: and one from the stem, but not the landlord, dove in, while the landlord howled words at us that had no sense except to express anger, which they did very well.
We pulled away. I seemed to make out from the sounds that they were lifting the half-drowned man aboard, but we saw no more of them. Someone on Craney Island fired his gun off. It sounded very sharp and near. There was a light-boat ahead, marking the channel, and someone there who shouted; but we turned aside, and went far over to the right till we touched the reeds along the eastern shore, and so came out into the James.
There followed a silent, dogged, weary space of time—of rowing and resting, and rowing again—dark water slapping the boat sides, and the same thing on and on.
The moon rose late, and when there should have been dawn, came a mist instead, which was worse than the night, for now we might row past the ships and not see them, whereas in the dark we should have seen the lights.
We came suddenly close to a tall ship: the watch heard us first, and called “Ahoy!” a voice dropping down from overhead in the white mist.
“Is this the Saratoga?”
A lantern came down on a rope and stopped over us, and heads were thrust out over the rail. They seemed to be satisfied we were not dangerous; I think we did not look so, only two men in a small rowboat, with faces white and weary, who spoke in thin voices. I thought my voice sounded queer and dreary.
“Is this the Saratoga?”
“Who are you?”
“Escaped from the south.”
“You don't say!” The heads consulted.
“Is this the Saratoga?”
“What? The Saratoga lies two hundred yards astern of us.”
“Captain Benson?”
“What? Aye, Cap'n Benson.” lanterns traveled and gathered to the stern of the ship to watch us move away. They looked like a cluster of dim stars in the mist.
“Ahoy!” the voice cried after us, and we stopped rowing. “Are you Ben Cree?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I'll be dished!”
And here is evidently where this story ends, since it is not a biography; for a story should know its own right beginning and end, just as a biography should not maunder over neighboring generations. The rest is only coming aboard the Saratoga—where I had a dim, weary notion of familiar faces, and went to sleep in a bunk, and woke to see Uncle Benson standing over me, very prim and natty. “Well, Bennie!” he said, “it seems to me you've been out pretty late nights.” And I had slept near a dozen hours, while the Monitor and the Merrimac were rubbing the muzzles of their cannon together, in plain sight from the Saratoga's deck, making a mess of naval warfare.
Calhoun afterwards went off and enlisted, and fell in some Western fighting. Cavarly I have seen since, indeed not so long ago, and shaken hands with quite friendly, and Ben Cree has worn a captain's title these years and has wondered whether he ever deserved it.
For while a man is in the thick of his life he speculates little; he fights, he stays quiet, he runs, as seems best to his sense and suited to his feelings or the way he has been trained; he has few opinions on the subject, and those only fitting each event. Everything about him seems at that time but a stage, where he plays his part hastily and quite absorbed.
But afterwards he would like to think he has played his part well, and he hardly knows. Sometimes there is a bit of handclapping here and there, but the Author and Master of the play says nothing till it is all over and the curtain has fallen.
“Some folks,” Calhoun used to say, “want to know everything before they've done anything. Why, Bennie, you don't know two and two make four till you've put 'em together. Why? Because they don't make four till you've put 'em together.”
“But you know they will make four,” I would answer for the argument.
“Well,” he would say, “I've known a two and two that was as good as a dozen. And I've known another two and two that was worse than nothing.”
That was an odd man whom I never understood.
But I think if I were to choose one man to go with into the wilderness, it would be Calhoun and no other; and I suppose that is one kind of friendship, as the old poets declare. For the matter of knowing and doing, it is good arithmetic for a man to know how to put two and two together so as to make whatever he needs. That is Ben Cree's saying, the sense of which he learned from one Sabre Calhoun, when they lay out nights on sand or in undergrowth and watched the pole star hopefully.