Cardigan Part 42

Handle--cartridge! Too slow, again! As you were--ho! When I say 'cartridge!' bring your right hand short 'round to your pouch, slapping it hard; seize the cartridge and bring it with a quick motion to your mouth; bite off the top down to the powder, covering it instantly with your thumb. Now! 'Tention! Handle--cartridge! Prime!

Shut--pan! Charge with cartridge--ho! Draw--rammer! Ram--cartridge!

Return--rammer! Shoulder--arms! Front rank--make ready! Take aim--fire!"

Bang! bang! went the rifles; the parapet swam in smoke. Bang! The second rank fired as one man, and the crash was echoed by the calm, clear voice: "Half-c.o.c.k arms--ho! Handle--cartridge! Prime!"

And so it went on; volley after volley swept the still pines until a thundering report from the bra.s.s cannon ended the fusillade, and we leaned out on the epaulement, watching the riflemen who were now close to the lead-sprayed woods.

The banked cannon-smoke came driving back into our faces; all was a choking blank for a moment. Presently, through the whirling rifts, we caught glimpses of blue sky and tree-tops, and finally of the earth.

But what was that?--what men were those running towards us?--what meant that distant crackle of rifles?--those silvery puffs of smoke fringing the entire amphitheatre of green, north, east, west--ay, and south, too, behind our very backs?

"Down with your drawbridge!" thundered the officer commanding the gun-squad. I saw Cresap come running along the parapet, signalling violently to the soldiers below at the sallyport. Clank! clank! went the chain-pulleys, and the bridge fell with a rush and a hollow report, raising a cloud of amber dust.

"My G.o.d!" shouted an officer. "See the savages!"

"See the riflemen," mimicked Mount, at my elbow. "I told Cresap to wait till dark."

Along the parapets the soldiers were firing frenziedly; the quick cannon-shots shook the fort, smothering us with s.m.u.tty smoke. I had a glimpse, below me, of Cresap leading out a company of soldiers to cover the flight of his riflemen, and at intervals I saw single Indians, kneeling to fire, then springing forward, yelping and capering.

A tumult arose below. Back came the riflemen pell-mell, into the fort, followed by the militia company at quick time. The chains and pulleys clanked; the bridge rose, groaning on its hinges.

It was now almost impossible to perceive a single savage, not only because of the rifle-smoke, but also because they had taken cover like quail in a ploughed field. Every charred tree-root sheltered an Indian; the young oats were alive with them; they lay among the wheat, the bean-poles; they crouched behind manure-piles; they crawled in the beds of ditches.

"Are all the settlers in the fort?" I asked Mount, who was leaning over the epaulement, waiting patiently for a mark.

"Every man, woman, and child came in last night," he said. "If any have gone out it's against orders, and their own faults. Ho! Look yonder, lad! Oh, the devils! the devils!" And he fired, with an oath on his lips.

A house and barn were suddenly buried in a cloud of pitchy vapour; a yoke of oxen ran heavily across a field; puffs of smoke from every rut and gully and bush showed where the Indians were firing at the terrified beasts.

One ox went down, legs shot to pieces; the other stood bellowing pitifully. Then the tragedy darkened; a white man crept out of the burning barn and started running towards the fort.

"The fool!" said Mount. "He went back for his oxen! Oh, the fool!"

I could see him distinctly now; he was a short, fat man, bare-legged and bare-headed. As he ran he looked back over his shoulder frequently. Once, when he was climbing a fence, he fell, but got on his legs again and ran on, limping.

"They've hit him," said Mount, reloading hastily; "look! He's down!

He's done for! G.o.d! They've got him!"

I turned my head aside; when I looked for the poor fellow again, I could only see a white patch lying in the field, and an Indian slinking away from it, shaking something at the fort, while the soldiers shot at him and cursed bitterly at every shot.

"It's Nathan Giles's brother," said a soldier, driving his cartridge down viciously. "Can't some o' you riflemen reach him with old Brown Bess?"

The report of Mount's rifle answered; the Indian staggered, turned to run, reeled off sideways, and fell across a manure-heap. After a moment he rose again and crawled behind it.

And now, house after house burst into black smoke and spouts of flame.

Through the spreading haze we caught fleeting glimpses of dark figures running, and our firelocks banged out briskly, but could neither hinder nor stay the doom of those poor, rough homes. Fire leaped like lightning along the pine walls, twisting in an instant into a column of pitchy smoke tufted with tongues of flame. Over the whirling cinders distracted pigeons circled; fowls fluttered out of burning barns and ran headlong into the woods. Somewhere a frightened cow bellowed.

Under cover of the haze and smoke, unseen, the Indians had advanced near enough to send arrows into the parade below us, where the women and children and the cattle were packed together. One arrow struck a little girl in the head, killing her instantly; another buried itself in the neck of a bull, and a terrible panic followed, women and children fleeing to the casemates, while the maddened bull dashed about, knocking down horses, goring sheep and oxen, trampling through bundles of household goods until a rifleman shot him through the eye and cut his throat.

Soldiers and farmers were now hastening to the parapets, carrying buckets and jars of water, for Cresap feared the sparks from the burning village might fall even here. But there was worse danger than that: an arrow, tipped with blazing birch-bark, fell on the parapet between me and Mount, and, ere I could pick it up, another whizzed into the epaulement, setting fire to the logs. Faster and faster fell the flaming arrows; a farmer and three soldiers were wounded; a little boy was pierced in his mother's arms. No sooner did we soak out the fire in one spot than down rushed another arrow whistling with flames, and we all ran to extinguish the sparks which the breeze instantly blew into a glow.

I had forgotten my bruises, my weakness, and fatigue; aches and pains I no longer felt. The excitement cured me as no blood-letting popinjay of a surgeon could, and I found myself nimbly speeding after the fiery arrows and knocking out the sparks with an empty bucket.

Save for the occasional rifle-shots and the timorous whinny of horses, the fort was strangely quiet. If the women and children were weeping in the casemates, we on the ramparts could not hear them. And I do not think they uttered a complaint. We hurried silently about our work; no officers shouted; there was small need to urge us, and each man knew what to do when an arrow fell.

All at once the fiery shower ceased. A soldier climbed the flag-pole to look out over the smoke, and presently he called down to us that the savages were falling back to the forest. Then our cannon began to flash and thunder, and the militia fell in for volley-firing again, while, below, the drawbridge dropped once more, and our riflemen stole out into the haze.

I was sitting on the parapet, looking at Boyd's inn, "The Leather Bottle," which was on fire, when Mount and Cade Renard came up to me, carrying a sheaf of charred arrows which they had gathered on the parade.

"I just want you to look at these," began Mount, dumping the arrows into my lap. "The Weasel, he says you know more about Indians than we do, and I don't deny it, seeing you lived at Johnstown and seem so fond of the cursed h.e.l.l-hounds--"

"He wants you to read these arrows," interrupted the Weasel, dryly; "no, not the totem signs. What tribes are they?"

"Cayuga," I replied, wondering. "Cayuga, of course--wait!--why, this is a Seneca war-arrow!--you can see by the shaft and nock and the quills set inside the fibres!"

"I told you!" observed the Weasel, grimly nudging Mount.

Mount stood silent and serious, watching me picking up arrow after arrow from the charred sheaf on my knees.

"Here is a Shawanese hunting-shaft," I said, startled, "and--and this--this is a strange arrow to me!"

I held up a slender, delicate arrow, beautifully made and tipped with steel.

"That," said Mount, gravely, "is a Delaware arrow."

"The Lenape!" I cried, astonished. Suddenly the terrible significance of these blackened arrows came to me like a blow. The Lenni-Lenape had risen, the Senecas and Shawanese had joined the Cayugas. The Long House was in revolt.

"Mount," I said, quietly, "does Colonel Cresap know this?"

The Weasel nodded.

"We abandon the fort to-night," he said. "We can't face the Six Nations--here."

"We make for Pittsburg," added Mount. "It will be a job to get the women and children through. Cresap wishes to see you, Mr. Cardigan.

You will find him laying fuses to the magazine."

They piloted me to the casemates and around the barracks to the angle of the fort, where a stockade barred the pa.s.sage to the magazine. The sentry refused us admittance, but Corporal Cloud heard us and opened the stockade gate, where we saw Cresap on his hands and knees, heaping up loose powder into a long train. He glanced up at us quietly; his thin, grave face was very pale.

"Am I right about those arrows?" he asked Mount.

"Mr. Cardigan says there's a Seneca war-arrow among 'em, too," replied Mount.

Cresap's keen eyes questioned me.

"It's true," I said. "The Senecas guard the western door of the Long House, and they have made the Cayugas' cause their own."

"And the eastern door?" demanded Cresap, quickly.

"The eastern door of the Long House is held by our Mohawks and Sir William Johnson," I said, proudly. "And, by G.o.d's grace! they will hold it in peace."