The Indian Drum (1917)/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV
OLD BURR OF THE FERRY
IT was in late November and while the coal carrier Pontiac, on which he was serving as lookout, was in Lake Superior that Alan first heard of Jim Burr. The name spoken among some other names in casual conversation by a member of the crew, stirred and excited him; the name James Burr, occurring on Benjamin Corvet's list, had borne opposite it the legend "All disappeared; no trace," and Alan, whose investigations had accounted for all others whom the list contained, had been able regarding Burr only to verify the fact that at the address given no one of this name was to be found.
He questioned the oiler who had mentioned Burr. The man had met Burr one night in Manitowoc with other men, and something about the old man had impressed both his name and image on him; he knew no more than that. At Manitowoc!—the place from which Captain Stafford's watch had been sent to Constance Sherrill and where Alan had sought for, but had failed to find, the sender! Had Alan stumbled by chance upon the one whom Benjamin Corvet had been unable to trace? Had Corvet, after his disappearance, found Burr? Had Burr been the sender, under Corvet's direction, of those things? Alan speculated upon this. The man might well, of course, be some other Jim Burr; there were probably many men by that name. Yet the James Burr of Corvet's list must have been such a one as the oiler described—a white haired old man.
Alan could not leave the Pontiac and go at once to Manitowoc to seek for Burr; for he was needed where he was. The season of navigation on Lake Superior was near its close. In Duluth skippers were clamoring for cargoes; ships were lading in haste for a last trip before ice closed the lake's outlet at the Soo against all ships. It was fully a week later and after the Pontiac had been laden again and had repassed the length of Lake Superior that Alan left the vessel at Sault Ste. Marie and took the train for Manitowoc.
The little lake port of Manitowoc, which he reached in the late afternoon, was turbulent with the lake season's approaching close. Long lines of bulk freighters, loaded and tied up to wait for spring, filled the river; their released crews rioted through the town. Alan inquired for the seamen's drinking place, where his informant had met Jim Burr; following the directions he received he made his way along the river bank until he found it. The place was neat, immaculate; a score of lakemen sat talking at little tables or leaned against the bar. Alan inquired of the proprietor for Jim Burr.
The proprietor knew old Jim Burr—yes. Burr was a wheelsman on Carferry Number 25. He was a lakeman, experienced and capable; that fact, some months before, had served as introduction for him to the frequenters of this place. When the ferry was in harbor and his duties left him idle, Burr came up and waited there, occupying always the same chair. He never drank; he never spoke to others unless they spoke first to him, but then he talked freely about old days on the lakes, about ships which had been lost and about men long dead.
Alan decided that there could be no better place to interview old Burr than here; he waited therefore, and in the early evening the old man came in.
Alan watched him curiously as, without speaking to any one, he went to the chair recognized as his and sat down. He was a slender but muscularly built man seeming about sixty-five, but he might be considerably younger or older than that. His hair was completely white; his nose was thin and sensitive; his face was smoothly placid, emotionless, contented; his eyes were queerly clouded, deep-set and intent.
Those whose names Alan had found on Corvet's list had been of all ages, young and old; but Burr might well have been a contemporary of Corvet on the lakes. Alan moved over and took a seat beside the old man.
"You're from No. 25?" he asked, to draw him into conversation.
"Yes."
"I've been working on the carrier Pontiac as lookout. She's on her way to tie up at Cleveland, so I left her and came on here. You don't know whether there's a chance for me to get a place through the winter on No. 25?"
Old Burr reflected. "One of our boys has been talking of leaving. I don't know when he expects to go. You might ask."
"Thank you; I will. My name's Conrad—Alan Conrad."
He saw no recognition of the name in Burr's reception of it; but he had not expected that. None of those on Benjamin Corvet's list had had any knowledge of Alan Conrad or had heard the name before.
Alan was silent, watching the old man; Burr, silent too, seemed listening to the conversation which came to them from the tables near by, where men were talking of cargoes, and of ships and of men who worked and sailed upon them.
"How long have you been on the lakes?" Alan inquired.
"All my life." The question awakened reminiscence in the old man. "My father had a farm. I didn't like farming. The schooners—they were almost all schooners in those days—came in to load with lumber. When I was nine years old, I ran away and got on board a schooner. I've been at it, sail or steam, ever since."
"Do you remember the Miwaka?"
"The Miwaka?"
Old Burr turned abruptly and studied Alan with a slow scrutiny which seemed to look him through and through; yet while his eyes remained fixed on Alan suddenly they grew blank. He was not thinking now of Alan, but had turned his thoughts within himself.
"I remember her—yes. She was lost in '95," he said. "In '95," he repeated.
"You lost a nephew with her, didn't you?"
"A nephew—no. That is a mistake. I lost a brother."
"Where were you living then?"
"In Emmet County, Michigan."
"When did you move to Point Corbay, Ontario?"
"I never lived at Point Corbay."
"Did any of your family live there?"
"No." Old Burr looked away from Alan, and the queer cloudiness of his eyes became more evident.
"Why, do you ask all this?" he said irritably. "What have they been telling you about me? I told you about myself; our farm was in Emmet County, but we had a liking for the lake. One of my brothers was lost in '95 with the Miwaka and another in '99 with the Susan Hart."
"Did you know Benjamin Corvet?" Alan asked.
Old Burr stared at him uncertainly. "I know who he is, of course."
"You never met him?"
"No."
"Did you receive a communication from him some time this year?"
"From him? From Benjamin Corvet? No." Old Burr's uneasiness seemed to increase. "What sort of communication?"
"A request to send some things to Miss Constance Sherrill at Harbor Point."
"I never heard of Miss Constance Sherrill. To send what things?"
"Several things—among them a watch which had belonged to Captain Stafford of the Miwaka."
Old Burr got up suddenly and stood gazing down at Alan. "A watch of Captain Stafford's?—no," he said agitatedly. "No!"
He moved away and left the place; and Alan sprang up and followed him.
He was not, it seemed probable to Alan now, the James Burr of Corvet's list; at least Alan could not see how he could be that one. Among the names of the crew of the Miwaka Alan had found that of a Frank Burr, and his inquiries had informed him that this man was a nephew of the James Burr who had lived near Port Corbay and had "disappeared" with all his family. Old Burr had not lived at Port Corbay—at least, he claimed not to have lived there; he gave another address and assigned to himself quite different connections. For every member of the crew of the Miwaka there had been a corresponding, but different name upon Corvet's list—the name of a close relative. If old Burr was not related to the Burr on Corvet's list, what connection could he have with the Miwaka, and why should Alan's questions have agitated him so? Alan would not lose sight of old Burr until he had learned the reason for that.
He followed, as the old man crossed the bridge and turned to his left among the buildings on the river front. Burr's figure, vague in the dusk, crossed the railroad yards and made its way to where a huge black bulk, which Alan recognized as the ferry, loomed at the waterside. He disappeared aboard it. Alan, following him, gazed about.
A long, broad, black boat the ferry was, almost four hundred feet to the tall, bluff bow. Seen from the stem, the ship seemed only an unusually rugged and powerful steam freighter; viewed from the beam, the vessel appeared slightly short for its freeboard; only when observed from the stern did its distinguishing peculiarity become plain; for a few feet only above the water line, the stern was all cut away, and the long, low cavern of the deck gleamed with rails upon which the electric lights glinted. Save for the supports of the superstructure and where the funnels and ventilator pipes passed up from below, that whole strata of the ship was a vast car shed; its tracks, running to the edge of the stern, touched tracks on the dock. A freight engine was backing loaded cars from a train of sixteen cars upon the rails on the starboard side; another train of sixteen big box cars waited to go aboard on the tracks to the port of the center stanchions. When the two trains were aboard, the great vessel—"No. 25," in big white stencil upon her black sides were her distinguishing marks—would thrust out into the ice and gale for the Michigan shore nearly eighty miles away.
Alan thrilled a little at his inspection of the ferry. He had not seen close at hand before one of these great craft which, throughout the winter, brave ice and storm after all—or nearly all—other lake boats are tied up. He had not meant to apply there when he questioned old Burr about a berth on the ferry; he had used that merely as a means of getting into conversation with the old man. But now he meant to apply; for it would enable him to find out more about old Burr.
He went forward between the tracks upon the deck to the companionway, and ascended and found the skipper and presented his credentials. No berth on the ferry was vacant yet but one soon would be, and Alan was accepted in lieu of the man who was about to leave; his wages would not begin until the other man left, but in the meantime he could remain aboard the ferry if he wished. Alan elected to remain aboard. The skipper called a man to assign quarters to Alan, and Alan, going with the man, questioned him about Burr.
All that was known definitely about old Burr on the ferry, it appeared, was that he had joined the vessel in the early spring. Before that—they did not know; he might be an old lakeman who, after spending years ashore, had returned to the lakes for a livelihood. He had represented himself as experienced and trained upon the lakes, and he had been able to demonstrate his fitness; in spite of his age he was one of the most capable of the crew.
The next morning, Alan approached old Burr in the crew's quarters and tried to draw him into conversation again about himself; but Burr only stared at him with his intent and oddly introspective eyes and would not talk upon this subject. A week passed; Alan, established as a lookout now on No. 25 and carrying on his duties, saw Burr daily and almost every hour; his watch coincided with Burr's watch at the wheel—they went on duty and were relieved together. Yet better acquaintance did not make the old man more communicative; a score of times Alan attempted to get him to tell more about himself, but he evaded Alan's questions and, if Alan persisted, he avoided him. Then, on an evening bitter cold with the coming of winter, clear and filled with stars, Alan, just relieved from watch, stood by the pilothouse as Burr also was relieved. The old man paused beside him, looking to the west.
"Have you ever been in Sturgeon's Bay?" he asked.
"In Wisconsin? No."
"There is a small house there—and a child; born," he seemed figuring the date, "Feb. 12, 1914."
"A relative of yours?"
"Yes."
"One of your brothers' children or grandchildren?"
"I had no brothers," old Burr said quietly.
Alan stared at him, amazed. "But you told me about your brothers and about their being lost in wrecks on the lake; and about your home in Emmet County!"
"I never lived in Emmet County," old Burr replied. "Some one else must have told you that about me. I come from Canada—of French-Canadian descent. My family were of the Hudson Bay people. I was a guide and hunter until recently. Only a few years ago I came onto the lakes, but my cousin came here before I did. It is his child."
Old Burr moved away and Alan turned to the mate.
"What do you make of old Burr?" he asked.
"He's a romancer. We get 'em that way once in a while—old liars! He'll give you twenty different accounts of himself—twenty different lives. None of them is true. I don't know who he is or where he came from, but it's sure he isn't any of the things he says he is."
Alan turned away, chill with disappointment. It was only that, then—old Burr was a romancer after the manner of some old seamen. He constructed for his own amusement these "lives." He was not only not the Burr of Corvet's list; he was some one not any way connected with the Miwaka or with Corvet. Yet Alan, upon reflection, could not believe that it was only this. Burr, if he had wished to do that, might perhaps merely have simulated agitation when Alan questioned him about the Miwaka; but why should he have wished to simulate it? Alan could conceive of no condition which by any possibility could have suggested such simulation to the old man.
He ceased now, however, to question Burr since questioning either had no result at all or led the old man to weaving fictions; in response the old man became by degrees more communicative. He told Alan, at different times, a number of other "lives" which he claimed as his own. In only a few of these lives had he been, by his account, a seaman; he had been a multitude of other things—in some a farmer, in others a lumberjack or a fisherman; he had been born, he told, in a half-dozen different places and came of as many different sorts of people.
On deck, one night, listening while old Burr related his sixth or seventh life, excitement suddenly seized Alan. Burr, in this life which he was telling, claimed to be an Englishman born in Liverpool. He had been, he said, a seaman in the British navy; he had been present at the shelling of Alexandria; later, because of some difficulty which he glossed over, he had deserted and had come to "the States"; he had been first a deckhand then the mate of a tramp schooner on the lakes. Alan, gazing at the old man, felt exultation leaping and throbbing within him. He recognized this "life"; he knew in advance its incidents. This life which old Burr was rehearsing to him as his own, was the actual life of Munro Burkhalter, one of the men on Corvet's list regarding whom Alan had been able to obtain full information!
Alan sped below, when he was relieved from watch, and got out the clippings left by Corvet and the notes of what he himself had learned in his visits to the homes of these people. His excitement grew greater as he pored over them; he found that he could account, with their aid, for all that old Burr had told him. Old Burr's "lives" were not, of course, his; yet neither were they fictions. They—their incidents, at least—were actualities. They were woven from the lives of those upon Corvet's list! Alan felt his skin prickling and the blood beating fast in his temples. How could Burr have known these incidents? Who could he be to know them all? To what man, but one, could all of them be known? Was old Burr . . . Benjamin Corvet?
Alan could give no certain answer to that question. He could not find any definite resemblance in Burr's placid face to the picture of Corvet which Constance had shown him. Yet, as regarded his age and his physical characteristics, there was nothing to make his identity with Benjamin Corvet impossible. Sherrill or others who had known Benjamin Corvet well, might be able to find resemblances which Alan could not. And, whether Burr was or was not Corvet, he was undeniably some one to whom the particulars of Corvet's life were known.
Alan telegraphed that day to Sherrill; but when the message had gone doubt seized him. He awaited eagerly the coming of whoever Sherrill might send and the revelations regarding Corvet which might come then; but at the same time he shrunk from that revelation. He himself had become, he knew, wholly of the lakes now; his life, whatever his future might be, would be concerned with them. Yet he was not of them in the way he would have wished to be; he was no more than a common seaman.
Benjamin Corvet, when he went away, had tried to leave his place and power among lakemen to Alan; Alan, refusing to accept what Corvet had left until Corvet's reason should be known, had felt obliged also to refuse friendship with the Sherrills. When revelation came, would it make possible Alan's acceptance of the place Corvet had prepared for him, or would it leave him where he was? Would it bring him nearer to Constance Sherrill, or would it set him forever away from her?