The Reckoning Part 35

"Nothing," she echoed, leaning toward me and resting in my arms for a moment, then laid her hands on my shoulders, and, raising herself to a sitting posture, fell a-laughing to herself.

"While you were gone this afternoon," she said, "and I was lying here, eyes wide open, seeming to feel the bed sway like the s.h.i.+p, I fell to counting the ticking of the stair-clock below, and thinking how each second was recording the eternity of my love for you. And as I lay a-listening and thinking, came one by the window singing 'John O'Bail', and I heard voices in the tap-room and the clatter of pewter flagons.

On a settle outside the tap-room window, full in the sun, sat the songster and his companions, drinking new ale and singing 'John O'Bail'--a song I never chanced to hear before, and I shall not soon forget it for lack of schooling"--and she sang softly, sitting there, clasping her knees, and swaying with the quaint rhythm:

"'Where do you wend your way, John O'Bail, Where do you wend your way?'

'I follow the spotted trail Till a maiden bids me stay,'

'Beware of the trail, John O'Bail, Beware of the trail, I say!'

"Thus it runs, Carus, the legend of this John O'Bail, how he sought the wilderness, shunning his kind, and traveled and trapped and slew the deer, until one day at sunrise a maid of the People of the Morning hailed him, bidding him stay:

"'Turn to the fire of dawn, John O'Bail, Turn to the fire of dawn; The doe that waits in the vale Was a fawn in the year that's gone!'

And John O'Bail he heeds the hail And follows her on and on.

"Oh, Carus, they sang it and sang it, hammering their pewters together, and roaring the chorus, and that last dreadful verse:

"'Where is the soul of you, John O'Bail, Where is the soul you slew?

There's Painted Death on the trail, And the moccasins point to you.

Shame on the name of John O'Bail----'"

She hesitated, peering through the shadows at me: "Who _was_ John O'Bail, Carus? What is the Painted Death, and who are the People of the Morning?"

"John O'Bail was a wandering fellow who went a-gipsying into the Delaware country. The Delawares call themselves 'People of the Morning.' This John O'Bail had a son by an Indian girl--and that's what they made the ballad about, because this son is that mongrel demon, Cornplanter, and he's struck the frontier like a catamount gone raving mad. He is the 'Painted Death.'"

"Oh," she said thoughtfully, "so that is why they curse the name of John O'Bail."

After a moment she went on again: "Well, you'll never guess who it was singing away down there! I crept to my windows and peeped out, and there, Carus, were those two queer forest-running fellows who stopped us on the hill that morning----"

"Jack Mount!" I exclaimed.

"Yes, dear, and the other--the little wrinkled fellow, who had such strangely fine manners for a Coureur-de-Bois----"

"The Weasel!"

"Yes, Carus, but very drunk, and boisterous, and cutting most amazing capers. They went off, finally, arm in arm, shuffling, reeling, and anon breaking into a solemn sort of dance; and everybody gave them wide berth on the street, and people paused to look after them, marking them with sour visages and wagging heads--" She stopped short, finger on lips, listening.

Far up the street I heard laughter, then a plaintive, sustained howling, then more laughter, drawing nearer and nearer.

Elsin nodded in silence. I sprang up and descended the stairs. The tap-room was lighted with candles, and the sober burghers who sat within, savoring the early ale, scarce noted my entrance, so intent were they listening to the approaching tumult.

The peculiar howling had recommenced. Stepping to the open door I looked out, and beheld a half-dozen forest-runners, in all the glory of deep-fringed buckskin and bright wampum, slowly hopping round and round in a circle, the center of which was occupied by an angry town watchman, lanthorn lighted, pike in hand. As they hopped, lifting their moccasined feet as majestically as turkeys walking in a muddy road, fetching a yelp at every step, I perceived in their grotesque evolutions a parody upon a Wyandotte scalp-dance, the while they yapped and yowled, chanting:

"Ha-wa-sa-say Ha! Ha!

Ha-wa-sa-say!"

"Dance, watchman, dance!" shouted one of the rangers, whom I knew to be Jack Mount, poking the enraged officer in the short ribs with the muzzle of his rifle; and the watchman, with a snarl, picked up his feet and began to tread a reluctant measure, calling out that he did not desire to dance, and that they were great villains and rogues and should pay for it yet.

I saw some shopkeepers putting up the shutters before their lighted windows, while the townspeople stood about in groups, agape, to see such doings in the public streets.

"Silence!" shouted Mount, raising his hand. "People of Albany, we have shown you the famous Wyandotte dance; we will now exhibit a dancing bear! Houp! Houp! Weasel, take thy tin cup and collect s.h.i.+llings! Ow!

Ow!" And he dropped his great paws so that they dangled at the wrist, laid his head on one side, and began sidling around in a circle with the grave, measured tread of a bear, while the Weasel, drinking-cup in hand, industriously trotted in and out among the groups of scandalized burghers, thrusting the tin receptacle at them, and talking all the while: "Something for the bear, gentlemen--a trifle, if you please.

Everybody is permitted to contribute--you, sir, with your bones so nicely wadded over with fat--a s.h.i.+lling from you. What? How dare you refuse? Stop him, Tim!"

A huge ranger strode after the amazed burgher, blocking his way; the thrifty had taken alarm, but the rangers herded them back with persuasive playfulness, while the little Weasel made the rounds, talking cheerfully all the time, and Mount, great fists dangling, minced round and round, with a huge simper on his countenance, as though shyly aware of his own grace.

"Tim Murphy should go into the shops," he called out. "There are a dozen fat Dutchmen a-peeking through the shutters at me, and I dance before no man for less than a s.h.i.+lling. Houp! Houp! How much is in thy cup, Cade? Lord, what a thirst is mine! Yet I dance--villains, do you mark me? Oh, Cade, yonder pretty maid who laughs and shows her teeth is welcome to the show and naught to pay--unless she likes. Tim, I can dance no more! Elerson, bring the watchman!"

The Weasel trotted up, rattling the coins so unwillingly contributed by the economical; the runner addressed as Elerson tucked his arm affectionately into the arm of the distracted watchman and strolled up, followed by Tim Murphy, the most redoubtably notorious shot in North America.

Laughing, disputing, shouting, they came surging toward the Half-Moon Tavern, dragging the watchman, on whom they lavished many endearments.

The crowd parted with alacrity as Mount, thumbs in his armpits, silver-moleskin cap pushed back on his cl.u.s.tering curls, swaggered ahead, bowing right and left as though an applauding throng heralded the progress of an emperor and his suite.

Here and there a woman laughed at the handsome, graceless fellows; here and there a burgher managed to pull a grin, spite of the toll exacted.

"Now that our means permit us, we are going to drink your healths, good people," said Mount affably, shaking the tin cup; "and the health of that pretty maid who showed her teeth at me. Ladies of Albany, if you but knew the wealth of harmless frolic caged in the heart that beats beneath a humble rifle-frock! Eh, Tim? Off with thy c.o.o.nskin, and sweep the populace with thy courtly bow!"

Murphy lifted his c.o.o.nskin cap, flouris.h.i.+ng it till the ringed fur-tail became a blur. Elerson, in a spasm of courtesy, removed the watchman's tricorn as well as his own; the little Weasel backed off, bowing step by step, until he backed past me into the tap-room, followed by the buckskinned crew.

"Now, watchman, have at thee!" roared Mount, as the sloppy pewters were brought.

And the watchman, resigned, pulled away at his mug, furtive eyes on the landlord, who, with true delicacy, looked the other way. At that moment Mount espied me and rose, pewter in hand, with a shout that brought all to their feet.

"Death to the Iroquois!" he thundered, "and a health to Captain Renault of the Rangers!"

Every eye was on me; the pewters were lifted, reversed, and emptied.

The next instant I was in the midst of a trampling, buckskinned mob; they put me up on their shoulders and marched around the tap-room, singing "Morgan's Men"; they set me on their table amid the pools of spilled ale, and, joining hands, danced round and round, singing "The New Yorker" and "John O'Bail," until more ale was fetched and a cup handed up to me.

"Silence! The Captain speaks!" cried Mount.

"Captain?" said I, laughing. "I am no officer."

There was a mighty roar of laughter, amid which I caught cries of "He doesn't know." "Where's the 'Gazette'?" "Show him the 'Gazette'!"

The stolid landlord picked up a newspaper from a table, spread it deliberately, drew his horn spectacles from his pocket, wiped them, adjusted them, and read aloud a notice of my commission from Governor Clinton to be a senior captain in the Tryon County Rangers. Utterly unprepared, dumb with astonishment, I stared at him through the swelling din. Somebody thrust the paper at me. I read the item, mug in one hand, paper in t'other.

"Death to the Iroquois!" they yelled. "Hurrah for Captain Renault!"

"Silence!" bawled Mount. "Listen to the Captain!"

"Rangers of Tryon," I said, hesitating, "this great honor which our Governor has done me is incomprehensible to me. What experience have I to lead such veterans?--men of Morgan's, men of Hand's, men of Saratoga, of Oriska, of Stillwater?--I who have never laid rifle in anger--I who have never seen a man die by violence?"

The hush was absolute.

"It must be," said I, "that such service as I have had the honor to render has made me worthy, else this commission had been an affront to the Rangers of Tryon County. And so, my brothers, that I may not shame you, I ask two things: obedience to orders; respect for my rank; and if you render not respect to my character, that will be my fault, not your own."

I raised my pewter: "The sentiment I give you is: 'The Rangers! My honor in their hands; theirs in mine!' Pewters aloft! Drink!"

Then the storm broke loose; they surged about the table, cheering, shaking their rifles and pewters above their heads, crying out for me to have no fear, that they would aid me, that they would be obedient and good--a mob of uproarious, overgrown children, swayed by sentiment entirely. And I even saw the watchman, maudlin already, dancing all by himself in a corner, and waving pike and lanthorn in martial fervor.