THE UNKNOWN FRIEND

“Well,” said Tom, “where I belong we don’t bother much with the Ashokan Reservoir; we drink spring water at camp. I guess none of these places around here get water from the big reservoir. I belong at Temple Camp. You’ve heard of that place? It’s right in among the hills over there—big boy scout camp, you know.

“You say you’ve been batting around the country for twelve years? That gets me; that’s my middle name, flopping around like a tramp—I don’t mean a tramp,” he added kindly, “but a kind of a vagabond. Wherever there’s adventure, that’s the place for me.”

His voice was cheery, his manner offhand and friendly. It was hard not to like Tom, and it was easy to fall in the way of being confidential with him. He sat there on the ground, his knees up and his hands about them. His pleasant, expectant look seemed to encourage friendliness.

“I’m assistant manager over at the camp,” he said, “and I listen to more blamed troubles every day than you could shake a stick at, kids’ quarrels’ and one thing or another. But I’ll be jiggered if I ever heard any one say anything against the Ashokan Reservoir. I always thought it was a nice big reservoir; I hiked around it once. Pretty big engineering feat, I guess,” he added, in a way that seemed to invite confidences. “It’s a regular young ocean, I’ll say that.”

“I suppose you know the ocean is cruel,” said the old man, looking straight ahead of him.

“Yes, it’s pulled some pretty brutal stuff,” said Tom. “What d’you say we swap yarns?”

There was a moment of silence, broken only by the sound of the crystal water as it bubbled up merrily in its little rocky bed. Whatever dark and criminal record the vast Ashokan Reservoir may have had, this little wayside spring seemed to carry a clear conscience; its murmuring voice was like a lullaby; it seemed as innocent and carefree as a child. And these two, whose lives were destined to be so tragically interwoven, sat there in silence, while the pure, crystal water bubbled up. And for a few moments neither spoke.

“Did you ever get a bird’s-eye view of the reservoir?” the old man asked. “You never seed it from the top of Overlook Mountain, did you?” This was the first mention that Tom had heard of Overlook Mountain, on whose towering summit fate was reserving the greatest adventure, perhaps the greatest test, in all his young life.

“No, I never did,” said Tom. “Is that the mountain where they’re building a big hotel? Or rebuilding one or something or other?”

The old man ignored his question. “You go up there,” he said in his crisp, impersonal way, “and look down from the top and you’ll see the whole reservoir at once—”

“Looks big, huh?”

“You’ll see miles and miles of it, where villages and houses used to be. Old West Hurley used to be down there; it was wiped out. My house where I lived nigh on thirty year was took down. Mother, it killed her just like if you struck her with an axe. Wouldn’ you call that murder? My boy, my grandson, he was drove away with false charges on him—lies. Wouldn’ you call that as bad as kidnapping? Old Merrick, he done that; he was conspirators with ’em. He’s dead ’n where he belongs, he is, but the murderer is still at large.”

“You mean your grandson was accused of murder?” Tom asked cautiously.

“He were, and they was all lies,” said the old man. “But it was that reservoir, and all them engineers from New York that murdered mother.”

“You mean—she was your wife?”

“Thirty years we lived there,” the old man said. “Since I been alone I never touched that water. I don’t mix with murderers.”

Tom could see that the poor old man was shaking with emotion. Whatever grievance, real or fancied, was in his mind, it was by no means clear to Tom. He thought that the old man was not altogether rational. He was rather more interested in the murder which the grandson had been charged with, than with the murder committed by the great reservoir. He was rather more curious about the smaller murderer than the larger one. But it seemed almost hopeless to get a connected and comprehensible narrative out of the poor little old man.

“Who was your grandson accused of killing?” Tom asked.

“That were old Merrick that lived in Kingston. My boy weren’t no more guilty than you are.”

“They actually charged him with it?”

“Lies, all lies,” said old Dyker.

Tom paused in thought. He was not open-minded enough to eliminate a formal accusation from his mind. Who was this poor, little queer old man that his word should be accepted against the weight of an official accusation? And moreover, if the grandson were a fugitive as the old man had said, was not that fact in itself a cause for suspicion against him?

“How old would your grandson be now?” Tom asked.

“Maybe thirty,” the old man said. “He were only a lad when they hatched up the conspiracy against him. I ain’t seed him since. Abney Borden said he seed him once, passed him right by one night near the reservoir, an’ the lad didn’ speak to him. More like it were on’y his ghost, I says. Maybe just his ghost looking for the old house; that’s what I think. Lots of ghosts of the old West Hurley folks comes back lookin’ fer their old homes.”

“Humph,” said Tom as he scrutinized his queer acquaintance musingly. He had about decided that the little old man was not altogether sane. “But the old village, I mean where it was, is under water, isn’t it?” he asked.

“In dry spells they come, them ghosts,” the old man said.

“Eh, huh,” said Tom as if this were an interesting item in the manners and customs of spooks. “They don’t expect the whole reservoir is going to be dried up, do they?”

“The old village is part on the slope of the shore,” the old man said. “When the water gets low in a drought you can see summat of the old place, ends of streets, ruins and such like.”

The old man’s rather disconcerting manner of looking straight ahead of him while he talked, and uttering each observation with a kind of mechanical air of absolute certainty, had the effect of rather squelching Tom. And so in this instance he felt properly rebuked for underrating the intelligence of spooks.

“That’s interesting,” he said; “an old ruined village coming to light now and then. Sort of reminds you of a body floating to the surface, huh?”

“Whose body?” the old man asked crisply.

“Oh, nobody’s body in particular,” Tom said. “I just meant—sort of—you know—like a story as you might say. Sort of the same as if an old ship were to rise up in the ocean. You believe in ghosts,” he added cheerily. “Now there might be such a thing as the ghost of a village, mightn’t there? A dead village? Why sure.”

The idea seemed not to impress the old man. But to Tom’s ready imagination there was something captivating in the thought of some old ship, a gallant bark of former days, rising out of the unknown depths of the ocean, and haunting the endless waste.

He did not indeed, believe in ghosts, yet after all if a village that is long since dead and gone, and withdrawn from the sight of men in its watery grave, occasionally creeps forth, a shrunken, soulless remnant of its former self, an all but intangible shadow of what was once life,—is not that a ghost? And may not one fancy this spectral, silent thing waiting in the concealment of its grave for the releasing drought, even as the shade of some departed human soul waits for the darkness in which it may steal forth? But Tom did not voice these spooky reflections, for the old man’s crisp voice recalled him front his musing.

“The reservoir, that were the murderer,” said old Dyker; “it murdered mother. Whoever done the other murder, it were not my boy. He run away but he were innocent.”

“Never seen him since, huh?” Tom asked kindly.

There was no answer, but Tom could see that the old withered hands trembled on the poor rustic cane. Probably they did not bespeak any new felt emotion, it was just the trembling of aged hands.

It seemed to Tom that his chance acquaintance had said these same things so many times that they had lost all emotional power over him. It was rather the poor little old man’s defiant attitude and a certain sturdiness about him, which somehow reached Tom’s heart. Trembling, dependent hands and a resolution of iron, that was what touched Tom.

“And you’ve just been wandering around the country ever since?” he asked. “Mostly here in the Catskills, I suppose? Sort of a—” Tramp was what he meant but he caught himself in time and said, “Sort of an outdoor bug, hey?”

But the little old man’s thoughts lingered on the main point of his interest. “Dead or alive, he were as innocent as you,” he said.

“Well,” said Tom cheerily, “I’m going to drink his health anyway. Here’s good luck to him wherever he is.” And he kneeled again and took another drink of the innocent, cool, refreshing water.