A burning, August sun scorched the long stretches of the St. Lawrence River Valley. For two weeks it had blazed down from a cloudless sky, evaporating the last remaining moisture from the soil. Ronnie came out of the house and crossed the barnyard, his bare feet stirring dust clouds that hung behind him and marked his path. The powder-dry dust felt as soft as talcum against the soles of his feet.
Ronnie made his way toward the orchard. Here it was cooler, for the earth was wet from days of irrigation.
Ronnie spied his father’s blue overalls and white T shirt among the peach trees to the right. “Pa?” he called.
“Yes, Ronnie?” Mr. Rorth was reeling out a section of rubber hose, a feeder line to connect to the main metal pipe that ran to the brook.
“I got a call from Mr. Mercer just a while ago. You know him—he’s the president of the historical society in town. He wants Bill and me to come to a meeting tonight. He says the Seaway people will have a big official there to discuss the village.”
“That’s wonderful!”
“Dad, will you drive us in?” Ronnie asked.
“Tonight?” Mr. Rorth thought it over. “I think so. In fact, I’d kind of like to sit in on that meeting myself. Maybe Gramps would like to go, too.”
“The heat’s got him bad,” Ronnie reminded his father.
“Yes, I know. But when it comes to the village, Gramps would go from here to Timbuktu in the hottest weather.”
Ronnie grinned. “Yes, I know.”
He left his father then and swung off toward the village. He’d been there only a few minutes when he saw two men approaching. One of them was carrying a transit. They set up the transit on a level spot at the top of the east side of the gap. One man stayed with the instrument, while the other climbed to the other side of the stream and held up a long measured stick. Ronnie went over to him. “What’re you doing, mister?”
“Surveying.”
“I mean, how come you’re surveying?”
“Because the boss sent me here, that’s why.” He looked over at the boy and saw that Ronnie was more than just idly curious. “Well, it seems there’s going to be a meeting tonight and the boss wants some figures about whether it’s possible to build a cofferdam across this gap,” he added.
“Do you think itcanbe built?” Ronnie asked—and held his breath while he waited for the answer.
The man looked about him, examining the narrow valley with its steep, tree-filled slopes. “Sure,” he answered. “Of course, that’s onlymyopinion. Now beat it, kid. You’re taking my mind off the job.”
Despite the heat, Ronnie began to run. He felt light all over. His feet hardly seemed to touch the ground. The damcouldbe built. Now, ifonlythe Seaway would agree to have it done. If the meeting tonight was a success, he vowed, then there would be nothing more he could ask for.
He broke out of a thick clump of hemlock saplings and came out on the riverbank just as his brother swung himself off the fallen tree trunk on the end of their “ducking” rope. Phil arched out over the water with his legs curled up against his body and then, letting go, dropped like a bullet. He came up sputtering and spitting water and brushing his hair from his eyes.
“Come on in, Ron!” he yelled.
Ronnie undressed quickly and soon he was in the water beside his brother. Bill appeared minutes later. His leg was still in a cast. “Darn old doctor!” he grumbled good-naturedly. “I sure wish he’d let me go in.”
However, Ronnie had devised a way by which Bill could at least get cooled off. After Bill had undressed, Ronnie and Phil bound his cast with a strip of canvas they had on hand for this purpose. Then the two bombarded Bill with bucketful after bucketful of water. “O.K.! O.K.!” Bill called for mercy. “Enough!”
The three lay down on a moss bank to dry, while Ronnie described his meeting with the surveyors. “And, Bill,” he went on, “we’ve been asked to a meeting tonight with the historical society, and Dad says he’ll drive us into town.”
Bill grinned. “It’s really beginning to look as though we might save the village after all!” he exclaimed. “We made over a hundred dollars exhibiting the glassware. Altogether, counting the money we found down in the culvert, and what we earned during the past two months taking tourists around the village, and what we got from selling the goldand silver coins to a collector, plus the exhibition money—why, we’ve got over three thousand dollars!”
Exhibiting the glassware had been Ronnie’s idea, but it was Mr. Caldwell who had done a great deal to make it a success. He had sent announcements to antique dealers throughout the vicinity, and many of them had come. Curious townspeople had come, too, and each visitor had been charged an admission fee of fifty cents.
“I wonder when Mr. Caldwell will be back,” Bill said as he struggled to get his pants over the cast and metal support. “He’s been gone almost two weeks now.”
“I guess it takes time to work out all those legal matters,” Ronnie answered.
Ronnie thought about Mr. Caldwell as he and Phil started for home. The day after Mr. Caldwell and the boys had been rescued from the culvert, Caldwell had paid a call on Grandfather. “I want to get a lawyer to make out papers that will relinquish all Jacob Williams’ claims to the deserted village,” he had announced. “Then I’ll go up to the penitentiary and have my brother sign them, too.”
“Supposing he refuses?” Grandfather had asked.
Caldwell had smiled. “I don’t think he will. He’s got ten years of his old sentence to finish—plus whatever he gets for escaping. I think if I offer him a small amount of money, he’ll see my way!”
“Well, now,” Grandfather had said, “that’s very decent of you, Mr. Caldwell. But why should you go to all this trouble and expense?”
“I was hoping, sir,” Caldwell had answered, “that you and Ronnie might consider letting me select a few pieces of the Rorth glassware. That would more than repay me.”
Caldwell left a week later with the papers the lawyer had drawn up. He promised to return as soon as he’d visited his brother. “I’ve got plenty of work left on my book,” he had told Ronnie, “so keep my place cleaned and ready for me!”
When Ronnie and Phil reached the house, supper was already on the table. Grandfather was dressed in his best summer suit with a white shirt and necktie. “How come, Grandpa?” Phil asked.
“How come? Why, you don’t think for one minute I’m going to miss that meeting tonight. Thunderation, they won’t get anywhere unless I’m there to lend a hand.”
Grandfather did lend his hand that night—and his voice, too! But it was Ronnie’s plea, perhaps, which did the most toward convincing the Seaway official that the village had to be saved. “Mister,” Ronnie told him, sitting on one side of the long conference table, “every building down in the village has got a story to tell about its past. Gramps told me all of them when I was a boy, and I’ve never forgotten a one. Lots of these stories I’ve told to the tourists who have come to see the village. And do you know what so many of them have said to me when they left? They said they’d never been anywhere that helped them so much to understand how people lived and worked back in the last century. And if the village can be saved, you know what we can do? Well, we’ve got enough of the old furnishings left from the general store, for instance, to fit it out just like it was a hundred years ago. And Gramps says that with some fixing up we can do the same thing for the gristmill, the smith shop, and even the main glassworks. Can’t we, Gramps?” Ronnie asked, smiling across at his grandfather.
“Why, you bet we can, boy! That village is just chuck-full of history.”
After the meeting Mr. Mercer, Ronnie’s grandfather and father, a lawyer whom the historical society had hired, and the official from the Seaway went into a smaller room in the back of the building and closed the door. Ronnie, Phil, and Bill waited in the car. It was almost an hour later before Gramps and Dad joined them.
Grandfather was smiling. “Well, we did it, lad!” he said to Ronnie and the others. “We’ve got ourselves a proposition that’ll save the village.”
During the ride home Gramps did most of the talking. “You’ve got to put in the money you boys have earned and the money you found,” he explained the terms of the agreement. “The historical society will lend another three thousand—you’ve got to pay that back, Ronnie, from money you get showing people around the village. The Seaway will pay the rest of the bill, build the dam, and maintain it.”
“Yipee!” Ronnie exclaimed.
“I’m right proud of you, Ronnie—proud of all you boys,” Grandfather added. “That Seaway fellow told me that it was what you boys have done this summer that convinced him. He said any youngsters who would put their hearts and souls and time into something worthwhile like this, why, they deserved to get what they were working for.”
Late that night a thunderstorm broke. Thunder boomed incessantly, and the lightning was so vivid that Ronnie’s room was as bright as noonday. But twenty minutes later the storm had stopped and when Ronnie opened his window again a cool breeze blew through.
When Grandfather came into the kitchen for breakfastthe next morning he was as full of life and pep as a puppy. “Prayed for this cool weather, I did!” he exclaimed. “Prayed for cool weather and I prayed for the village, too. Seems like I got both my wishes.”
After breakfast Ronnie and Grandfather took a walk. “I want to see the village again,” Grandfather said. “I want to see it again knowing that it’ll be here after I’m gone, and even after you’re gone, Ronnie.” He stepped along briskly as if suddenly he’d found a new pair of legs.
They stood at the top of the bluff near a large bull hickory tree. Below, the village lay peaceful and quiet in the early morning light. The red brick of the glassworks caught the sunlight and reflected it, glowing like molten lava.
“I’m proud of you, lad.” Grandfather was talking again. “I’m proud of you for helping to save the village and bringing back honor and respect to the Rorth name. And you know, boy, you took to yourself a little bit of what we Rorths stand for, just from the working and fighting you’ve been doing. Folks become what they believe in and fight for. You understand what I’m trying to say to you, boy?”
Ronnie blushed. “No, sir, I don’t,” he answered.
“Well, you will some day. Yes, sir, boy,” he said, “we’ve had everything pretty much the way we wanted it, haven’t we? EverythingIwanted anyway. All but one thing, that is.”
“What’s that, Gramps?”
“Well, darned if I didn’t lose the chess game to that old fox Donavon! But then, guess I can’t hog the whole barrel of apples, can I?”