THE SQUATTER FOLK
The lazy warmth of a May afternoon,
the spring following Orn Skinner’s release from
Auburn Prison, was reflected in the attitudes of three
men lounging on the shore in front of “Satisfied”
Longman’s shack. At their feet, the waters
of Cayuga Lake dimpled under the rays of the western
sun. Like a strip of burnished silver, the inlet
wound its way through the swamp from the elevators
and railroad stations near the foot of south hill.
Across the lake rose the precipitous slopes of East
Hill, tapestried in green, etched here and there by
stretches of winding white road, and crowned by the
buildings on the campus of Cornell University.
Stretched from the foot of State Street on either side
of the Lehigh Valley track lay the Silent City, its
northern end spreading several miles up the west shore
of the Lake. Its inhabitants were canalers, fishermen
and hunters, uneducated, rough and superstitious.
They built their little huts in the simplest manner
out of packing boxes and rough lumber and roofed them
with pieces of tin and sheet iron. Squatters they
were appropriately named, because they paid no attention
to land titles, but stuck their shacks wherever fancy
indicated or convenience dictated. The people
of the Silent City slept by day and went very quietly
about their work under the cover of darkness, for
the game laws compelled the fishermen to pull their
nets at night, and the farmers’ chickens were
more easily caught, his fruit more easily picked when
the sun was warming China.
Summers, their lives were comparatively
free from hardships. Fish were plentiful and
easy to take; the squatter women picked flowers and
berries in the woods and sold them in the city and
the men worked occasionally, as the fit struck them.
But the winters were bitter and cruel. The countryside,
buried deep in snow, made travel difficult. When
the mercury shrank timidly into the bulb and fierce
winds howled down the lake, the Silent City seemed,
indeed, the Storm Country.
“I were up to the Graves’
place yesterday, helpin’ Professor Young,”
said Jake Brewer, the youngest and most active of the
three men.
“Never had no use fer
that duffer, Dominie Graves, myself,” answered
Longman. The speaker turned a serious face to
the third member of the party. “Ner you
nuther, eh, Orn?”
Orn Skinner was an enormous man, some
six and a half feet tall. Two great humps on
his shoulders accentuated the breadth and thickness
of his chest while they tended to conceal the length
of his arms. A few months before he’d been
in the death house at Auburn. Through the efforts
of Deforrest Young, the dean of the Law College at
Cornell, he’d been pardoned and sent home.
The gigantic squatter removed his
pipe from his mouth and smoothed the thready white
beard, straggling over his chin.
“Nope, I hated ’im,”
he muttered. “He done me dirt ’nough.
If it hadn’t been fer Tess an’ Lawyer
Young, he’d a hung me sure.”
“Ye didn’t git the deed
to yer shack land afore he died, did ye, Orn?”
interrupted “Satisfied” Longman. “Tessibel
told ma the preacher promised it to ye.”
A moody expression settled in Skinner’s
eyes. “So he did promise it,” he
explained. “He writ Tess a letter.
He said as how he were sorry for his meanness an’
would give me the deed. But he didn’t!”
A shrill voice calling his name brought
“Satisfied” Longman to his feet, and he
hobbled away toward the shack.
“’Pears like ‘Satisfied’
ain’t got much strength any more,” said
Skinner. “He ain’t been worth much
of anythin’ sence I got back.”
“Him an’ Ma Longman’ve
failed a lot sence Myry an’ Ezry died,”
agreed Jake. “An’ no wonder!
Them two didn’t amount to much to my way o’
thinkin’, but their pa an’ ma set considerable
store by ’em ... Ben Letts were a bad ’un,
too. It used to make me plumb ugly to see ’im
botherin’ Tess when ye was shet up, Orn, an’
him all the time the daddy of Myry’s brat.”
“Yep, Ben were bad,” agreed
Skinner. “I were sure he done the shootin’,
but ’tweren’t till Ezry swore he saw ’im
that the lawyer could prove I didn’t do it.
But Tess says Myry loved Ben. Women air queer
critters, ain’t they?”
“Myry sure was,” assented
Brewer, thoughtfully. “In spite of Ezry’s
tellin’ her, Ben’d most drowned him, an’
done the killin’ they was goin’ to hang
you fer, up she gits an’ takes the brat
an’ goes off with Ben. It were the worst
storm of the year. No wonder him, Myry an’
their brat all was drowned.”
Longman, coming out of the shack,
overheard the last remark. The other two fell
silent. After he’d sat down again, he dissipated
their embarrassment by saying,
“But Tess says Myry air happy
now ’cause she air got Ben. Fer myself,
I dunno, though. But, if Myry air satisfied,
me an’ ma air satisfied, too.”
The other two nodded in solemn sympathy.
After a moment, Jake took out his pipe and filled
it. Holding the lighted match above the bowl,
he glanced at Skinner.
“Where air Tess?” he asked.
“She air up to Young’s.
He air learnin’ her book stuff, an’ his
sister air helpin’ the brat sing. It air
astonishin’ how the brat takes to it. Jest
like a duck to water.”
“Tess air awful smart,”
sighed Longman, “an’ she air awful good,
too. She sings fer ma ‘most every
day. I heard her only yesterday, somethin’
’bout New Jerusylem. Ma loves Tessibel’s
singin’.”
Then, for perhaps the space of three
minutes, they lapsed into silence. At length,
Jake Brewer spoke,
“Be ye goin’ to let her
marry the Student Graves, Orn?” he asked.
“I dunno,” Skinner muttered,
“but I know this much, I don’t like high
born pups like him hangin’ ’round my girl.
‘Tain’t fittin’ an’ I told
Tess so!”
Orn knocked the ashes out of his pipe and rose slowly.
“Guess I’ll be moseyin’
’long, pals,” he smiled. “The
brat’ll be back ’fore long.”
“Wait a minute, Orn,”
Longman broke in. “Ma’s got some pork
an’ beans she wants to send up to Mother Moll.
She thought, mebbe, Tess’d take ’em to
’er.”
“Sure, ‘Satisfied,’
I’ll take ’em home an’ the brat’ll
take ’em up the ravine next time she goes to
the professor’s.”
“Mother Moll were the only one
of us all,” Jake told Skinner, while Longman
was in the shack, “what stood by Tess. She
allers says Tess air a goin’ to surprise
us all. She says as how the brat’ll be rich
an’ have a fine home. I dunno but
old Moll do tell the future right good when she looks
in the pot.”
“She told the brat I were comin’
home from Auburn,” added Skinner, “when
it looked certain I were goin’ to hang.”
Longman came out of the shack with a pan in his hands.
“Yep,” he corroborated.
“An’ she told ma years ago she’d
lose her brats in a storm. Old Moll air a wise
woman, all right.”
The dish of beans in his hand, the
Bible-backed fisherman directed his steps toward his
own home, some distance away beyond the ragged rocks.
The old squatter walked slowly.
His health had broken in prison and his strength seemed
hardly sufficient to move the big body. The path,
an outcropping ledge of the precipitous cliff, was
very narrow because of the unusually high level of
the water in the lake. Picking his way slowly,
he considered reminiscently the events which had almost
destroyed him.
He recalled the long years of monotonous
existence in the shack, the hard nights pulling the
nets and the varied scrapes Tess had tumbled into.
Then, suddenly, came the shooting of the game keeper,
his own arrest, trial and conviction. The white
glare of hateful publicity had been thrown, without
warning, upon him and his motherless brat. He’d
been torn away from his quiet haunts at the lake side
and shut up in the narrow confines of a fetid cell.
The enforced separation from his daughter, at the
critical period between girl and womanhood, had left
her alone in the shanty and exposed her to countless
perils and hardships. Unmitigated calamities,
especially the long imprisonment, they had seemed
at the time, but the event proved otherwise.
Friends had arisen and helped him
establish his innocence and win his pardon. The
responsibilities thrown upon the squatter girl had
been met with love and courage and had disciplined
her high temper and awakened her ambition. The
dirt and disorder that had formerly obtained in the
shack had disappeared. Her housewifely arts had
transformed the hut into a comfortable home, rough
to be sure, small and inadequate, but immaculate and
satisfactory.
The shanty stood on a little point
of land projecting into the lake. Huge weeping
willows shrouded it from the sun in summer. They
mourned and murmured of the past, when the breezes
of morning and evening stirred their whispering leaves.
Their bare limbs thrashed and pounded the tin roof
when the storm winds tore down the lake. In front
and to one side, Tessibel’s new privet hedge
shone a dark, dusky green, and the flower beds were
beginning to show orderly life through the blackish
mold. The shack itself was rather more pretentious
than most of the squatter shanties. It had two
rooms and was thoroughly battened against the storms.
Coming into the path, Orn met his
daughter and went with her to the house.
The greatest change the year had brought
was in the girl herself. She had ripened into
the early maturity common to the squatter woman.
She was no longer the red-haired tatterdemalion who
had romped over the rocks and quarreled with the boys
of the Silent City. Her tom-boy days, amid the
ceaseless struggles against the hardships of the Storm
Country, gave to her slender body strength and lent
to it poise and grace. Bright brown eyes lighted
by loving intelligence illumined her face, tanned
by sun and wind, but very sweet and winsome, especially
when the curving red lips melted into a smile.
A profusion of burnished red curls, falling about
her shoulders almost to her hips, completed the vivid
picture. Tess of the Storm Country, the animate
expression of the joy and beauty of the lake side
in spring, was the boast of the Silent City.
Late that same night, Tessibel lay
asleep in the front room of the shanty. Four
miles to the south, Ithaca, too, slept, the
wholesome sleep of a small country town, while Cayuga
Lake gleamed and glistened in the moonlight, as if
fairies were tumbling it with powdered fingers.
Above both town and span of water, Cornell University
loomed darkly on the hill, the natural skyline sharply
cut by its towers and spires.
An unusual sound awakened her.
She lifted her lids and glanced about drowsily, then
propped herself on one elbow. Her sleep-laden
eyes fell upon the white light slanting across the
rough shanty floor. Suddenly, like a dark ghost,
a shadow darted into it the shadow of a
human head.
At the first glimpse at it, Tessibel
looked cautiously toward the window, and there, as
in a frame, was a face a man’s face.
Tess dropped on her pillow. For possibly two
minutes, she lay quietly waiting, while the shadow
moved curiously to and fro on the floor. Twice
the head disappeared, and as suddenly returned, poised
a moment, then, like an image moving across a screen,
was gone. Instantly Tess sat straight up in bed.
Perhaps one of the squatters needed her. She crept
to the floor, yawning, tiptoed to the door, and unbarred
it. Without pausing to cover her feet, she stepped
outside, the fresh scent of May blossoms sweeping
sweet to her nostrils. The warm night-wind, full
of elusive odors, brushed her face like thready cobwebs,
that broke at her touch, only to caress her anew.
Midnight held no fear for Tessibel,
for she loved every living creature, those traveling
by day being no dearer than those flying by night.
She felt no deeper thrills for the bright-winged birds
singing in the sun than for yonder owl who screeched
at her, now, from the weeping willow tree.
After picking her way to the front
of the shanty, she made a tour of the house and encircled
the mud cellar, calling softly the while. No one
appeared; no voice, either of friend or stranger, answered
the persuasive importunity of Tessibel. But,
after she was again in the doorway, she heard north
of the shanty the crackling of twigs as if some stealthy
animal were crawling over them. If there were
an intruder, he’d gone, and the girl, satisfied,
went back into the house and once more lay down to
sleep.
When she woke again, Daddy Skinner
was moving softly near the stove, kindling the fire,
and Tessibel lay in languid silence. She watched
him yearningly until he felt her gaze and looked at
her. His twisted smile of greeting brought an
exclamation of love from the girl. All the inhabitants
of the Silent City knew this crippled old man could
play on the emotions of his lovely young daughter
as the morning sun plays upon the sensibilities of
the lark. How she adored him, in spite of his
great humps and his now hobbling legs!
Soon, her father went to the lake
for a pail of water, and she sprang from the cot and
dressed hastily.