CHAPTER I

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 itself out and the boat began to right, they knew that he had bored a hole.

The cheers continued, he lifted his shapeless hat and, with the grace of a gentleman, waved it a couple of times at the cheering crowd. Then he pushed back a mop of black hair, clapped his head-covering down on it and turned to help reload the cargo that had been moved into small boats.

To bore a hole in the bottom of a water-filled boat was no great physical task. But the crowd cheered uproariously as the boat righted herself. Men shouted, women waved their bonnets and kerchiefs, and Ann Rutledge shook her branches of wild plums.

Again the ungainly young giant waved his hat.

"He's waving at you, Ann," John McNeil, who had joined the girls, said, coming up behind her. "Wave at him." And she did and laughed as he swung his limp and tattered hat.

"Where do you suppose that kind grow?" Nance asked. "He looks like a giant scarecrow, but he's had lessons in manners, the identical same kind Mentor Graham tells about."

It took but a short time to reload the boat. As she started on her way the cheers died, and most of the crowd went up the hill to the village.

"Let's stay to see the last of it," Ann said to Nance.

"You want him to wave at you some more," John McNeil said to Ann. "Well, go ahead--you'll never see him again."

The boat sailed on. To those on board who looked back a few moments later, the mill and dam were resolving themselves into an indistinct patch of gray and brown, against which a bit of pink, waving something white, stood out. As a farewell answer to the waving of the white, the mellow music of the boat horn came floating back.

The sun went down behind the forests bordering the smoothly flowing Sangamon; the crude craft passed from view.

And yet once again the mellow tones of the primitive horn came floating back over the forest and across the river.

"What a good sound!" Ann exclaimed. "It's soft as the first shadows, and it's strong."

"Yes, strong as that man's arms in mating season--hey, Molly?" And Nance punched Ann in the side.

The girls laughed merrily. "Isn't 'Ole Bar' funny?" Ann said. "He's just back from an awful exciting trip to Arkansas, wherever that is. He'll have lots to tell."

"Davy and father will get his stories. But say, Nance, do sounds make you think of smells?"

"I never thought of such a thing."

"Don't cow-bells make you think of hay and dandelions and grass and the smell of the cow-lot in the evening?"

"They do go together."

"And don't water running over roots make you think of willow blooms, and water dripping over stones sound like ferns when the stems are crushed? And the sound of crows--don't they bring the smell of the field furrows? And don't bees and honey-locust, and robins and apple blossoms, go together? I could name a hundred sounds that have smells for partners.

"Yes, but you're funny, Ann, to think of such things."

"Now I have a new pair. The sound of that horn, away off behind the trees, will always make me think of the first plum blossoms. The smell and the sound came together as I shook the branches, and the smell right here seemed to me exactly the same thing told in another way as the sound away over the water. O Nance--don't you love plum blossoms?"

"I don't know as they're any better than dogwood or haw blooms and I'm not crazy about any of them."

"You're just like John McNeil. John don't like plum blossoms. I nearly cried when he told me he was going to chop out all the plums and wild vines on his place. But those on our place will not be cut. Father has promised me the thicket and the dell on the creek for my flower garden forever."

"I'd rather have a new belt-buckle. But let's go."

"I'm ready--I'll race you to the top of the bill before the sun drops behind the trees. One--two--three--off," and with her spring flowers in her arms and her bonnet flying, Ann with Nance ran shouting up the hillside in the slanting rays of the April sun.