trader could not help being struck by him, especially when he remembered each of their meetings — meetings in which he discerned a keen, young mind of good judgment, one that could decide quickly.
Gazing at the lithe, red-checked lad, he said: “Say, Rolf, air ye an Injun??”
“No, sir.”
“Air ye a half-breed?”
“No, I’m a Yank; my name is Kittering; born and bred in Redding, Connecticut.”
“Well, I swan, ye look it. At fust I took ye fur an Injun; ye did look dark (and Rolf laughed inside, as he thought of that butternut dye), but I’m bound to say we’re glad yer white.”
“Here, Bill, this is Rolf, Rolf Kittering, he’ll go with ye to Albany.” Bill, a loose-jointed, middle-aged, flat- footed, large-handed, semi-loafer, with keen gray eyes, looked up from a bundle he was roping.
Then Warren took Rolf aside and explained: “I’m sending down all my fur this trip. There’s ten bales of sixty pounds each, pretty near my hull fortune. I want it took straight to Vandam’s, and, night or day, don’t leave it till ye git it there. He’s close to the dock. I’m telling ye this for two reasons: The river’s swarming with pirates and sneaks. They’d like nothing better than to get away with a five-hundred-dollar bundle of fur; and, next, while Bill is A1 on the river and true as steel, he’s awful weak on the liquor; goes crazy, once it’s in him. And I notice you’ve always refused it here. So don’t stop at Troy, an’ when ye get to Albany go straight past there to Vandam’s. You’ll have a letter that’ll explain, and he’ll supply the goods yer to bring back. He’s a sort of a partner, and orders from him is same as from me.”
“I suppose I ought to go myself, but this is the time all the fur is coming in here, an’ I must be on hand to do the dickering, and there’s too much much to risk it any longer in the storehouse.”
“Suppose,” said Rolf, “Bill wants to stop at Troy?”
“He won’t. He’s all right, given he’s sober. I’ve give him the letter.”
“Couldn’t you give me the letter, in case?”
“Law, Bill’d get mad and quit.”
“He’ll never know.”
“That’s so; I will.” So when they paddled away, Bill had an important letter of instructions ostentatiously tucked in his outer pocket. Rolf, unknown to any one else but Warren, had a duplicate, wrapped in waterproof, hidden in an inside pocket.
Bill was A1 on the river; a kind and gentle old woodman, much stronger than he looked. He knew the value of fur and the danger of wetting it, so he took no chances in doubtful rapids. This meant many portages and much hard labour.
I wonder if the world realizes the hard labour of the portage or carry? Let any man who seeks for light, take a fifty-pound sack of flour on his shoulders and walk a quarter of a mile on level ground in cool weather. Unless he is in training, he will find it a heavy burden long before he is half-way. Suppose, instead of a flour sack, the burden has sharp angles; the bearer is soon in torture. Suppose the weight carried be double; then the strain is far more than doubled. Suppose, finally, the road be not a quarter mile but a mile, and not on level but through swamps, over rocks, logs, and roots, and the weather not cool, but suffocating summer weather in the woods, with mosquitoes boring into every exposed part, while both hands are occupied, steadying the burden or holding on to branches for help up steep places — and then he will have some idea of the horror of the portage; and there were many of these, each one calling for six loaded and five light trips for each canoe-man. What wonder that men will often take chances in some fierce rapid, rather than to make a long carry through the fly-infested woods.
It was weighty evidence of Bill’s fidelity that again and again they made a portage around rapids he had often run, because in the present case he was in sacred trust of that much prized commodity — fur.
Eighty miles they called it from Warren’s to Albany, but there were many halts and carries which meant long delay, and a whole week was covered before Bill and Rolf had passed the settlements of Glens Falls, Fort Edward, and Schuylerville, and guided their heavily laden canoe on the tranquil river, past the little town of Troy. Loafers hailed them from the bank, but Bill turned a deaf ear to all temptation; and they pushed on happy in the thought that now their troubles were over; the last rapid was past; the broad, smooth waters extended to their port.
Chapter 54. Albany
Only a man who in his youth has come at last in sight of some great city he had dreamed of all his life and longed to see, can enter into Rolf’s feelings as they swept around the big bend, and Albany — Albany, hove in view. Albany, the first chartered city of the United States; Albany, the capital of all the Empire State; Albany, the thriving metropolis with nearly six thousand living human souls; Albany with its State House, beautiful and dignified, looking down the mighty Hudson highway that led to the open sea.
Rolf knew his Bible, and now he somewhat realized the feelings of St. Paul on that historic day when his life- long dream came true, when first he neared the Eternal City — when at last he glimpsed the towers of imperial, splendid Rome.
The long-strung docks were massed and webbed with ship rigging; the water was livened with boats and canoes; the wooden warehouses back of the docks were overtopped by wooden houses in tiers, until high above them all the Capitol itself was the fitting climax.
Rolf knew something of shipping, and amid all the massed boats his eyes fell on a strange, square-looking craft with a huge water-wheel on each side. Then, swinging into better view, he read her name, the Clermont, and knew that this was the famous Fulton steamer, the first of the steamboat age.
But Bill was swamped by no such emotion. Albany, Hudson, Clermont, and all, were familiar stories to him and he stolidly headed the canoe for the dock he knew of old.
Loafers roosting on the snubbing posts hailed him, at first with raillery; but, coming nearer, he was recognized. “Hello, Bill; back again? Glad to see you,” and there was superabundant help to land the canoe.
“Wall, wall, wall, so it’s really you,” said the touter of a fur house, in extremely friendly voice; “come in now and we’ll hev a drink.”
“No, sir-ree,” said Bill decisively, “I don’t drink till business is done.”
“Wall, now, Bill, here’s Van Roost’s not ten steps away an’ he hez tapped the finest bar’l in years.”
“No, I tell ye, I’m not drinking — now.”
“Wall, all right, ye know yer own business. I thought maybe ye’d be glad to see us.”
“Well, ain’t I?”
“Hello, Bill,” and Bill’s fat brother-in-law came up. “Thus does me good, an’ yer sister is spilin’ to see ye. We’ll hev one on this.”
“No, Sam, I ain’t drinkin’; I’ve got biz to tend.”
“Wall, hev just one to clear yer head. Then settle yer business and come back to us.”
So Bill went to have one to clear his head. “I’ll be back in two minutes, Rolf,” but Rolf saw him no more for many days.
“You better come along, cub,” called out a red-nosed member of the group. But Rolf shook his head.
“Here, I’ll help you git them ashore,” volunteered an effusive stranger, with one eye.
“I don’t want help.”
“How are ye gain’ to handle ’em alone?”
“Well, there’s one thing I’d be glad to have ye do; that is, go up there and bring Peter Vandam.”
“I’ll watch yer stuff while you go.”
“No, I can’t leave.” “Then go to blazes; d’yte take me for yer errand boy?” And Rolf was left alone.
He was green at the business, but already he was realizing the power of that word fur and the importance of the peltry trade. Fur was the one valued product of the wilderness that only the hunter could bring. The merchants of the world were as greedy for fur as for gold, and far more so than for precious stones.
It was a commodity so light that, even in those days, a hundred weight of fur might range in value from one hundred to five thousand dollars, so that a man with a pack of fine furs was a capitalist. The profits of the business were good for trapper, very large for the trader, who doubled his first gain by paying in trade; but they were huge for the Albany middleman, and colossal for the New Yorker who shipped to London.
With such allurements, it was small wonder that more country was explored and opened for fur than for
