The Reckoning Part 47

We had doubled on them now, going almost due west. Far across the Vlaie I could see dark spots moving along the Dead Water, and here and there a distant rifle glimmering as the sun struck it. Now and then a faint shout was borne to our ears as we halted, dripping and panting in the birches to reconnoiter some open swale ahead, or some cranberry-bog crimsoning under the October sun.

We swam the marshy creek miles to the west, coming out presently into a rutty wagon-trail, which I knew ran south to Mayfield; but we dared not use it, so steered the dripping horse southeast, chancing rather to cross Frenchman's Creek, four miles above Varicks, and so, by a circle bearing east and south, reaching the Broadalbin trail, or some safe road between Galway and Perth, or, if driven to it, making for Saratoga as a last resort.

My face was burned deep red, and I was soaked from neck to heels, so that my moccasins rubbed and chafed at every step. The girl had sat her saddle while the horse swam, so that her legs only were wet. As for the Oneida, his oiled and painted skin shed water like the plumage of a duck. Lord knows, we left a trail broad and wet enough for even a Hessian to follow; and for that reason dared not halt north of Frenchman's Creek or short of Vanderveer's grist-mill.

As I plodded on, rifle atrail, I began to comprehend the full import of what had occurred since the day before, when I, with soul full of bitterness, had left Burke's Inn. Was it only a day ago? By Heaven, it seemed a year since I had looked upon Elsin Grey! And what a change in fortune had come upon us in these two score hours! Free to wed now--if we dared accept the heart-broken testimony of this poor girl--if we dared deny the perjured testimony of a dishonored magistrate, leagued with his fellow libertine, who, thank G.o.d, had at length learned something of the fury he used on others. Strange that in all this war I had never laid a rifle level save at him; strange that I had never seen blood shed in anger, through all these battle years, except the blood that now dried, clotting on my cheek-bone, where his shoulder-buckle had cut me in the struggle. His spurs, too, had caught in the skirt of my hunting-s.h.i.+rt, tearing it to the fringed hem, and digging a furrow across my instep; and the moccasin on that foot was stiff with blood.

Ah, if I might only have brought him off; if I might only have carried this guilty man to Johnstown! Yet I should have known that Sir John's men were likely to be within hail, fool that I was to take the desperate chance when a little parley, a little edging toward him, a sudden blow might have served. Yet I was glad in my heart that I had not used craft; cat traits are not instinctive with me; craft, stealth, a purring ambush--faugh! I was no coward to beat him down unawares. I had openly declared him prisoner, and I was glad I had done so. Why, I might have shot him as we talked, had I been of a breed to do murder--had I been inhuman enough to slay him, unwarned, before the very eyes of the woman he had wronged, and who still hoped for mercy from him lest she pa.s.s her life a loathed and wretched outcast among the people who had accepted her as an Iroquois.

Thinking of these things which so deeply concerned me, I plodded forward with the others, hour after hour, halting once to drink and to eat a little of our parched corn, then to the unspotted trail once more, imperceptibly gaining the slope of that watershed, the streams of which feed the Mayfield Creek, and ultimately the Hudson.

Varicks we skirted, not knowing but Sir John's scouts might be in possession, the peppery, fat patroon having closed his house and taken his flock to Albany; and so traveling the forest east by south, made for the head waters of that limpid trout-stream I had so often fished, spite of the posted warnings and the indignation of the fat patroon, who hated me.

I think it was about four o'clock in the afternoon when, pressing through brush and windfall, we came suddenly out into a sunny road.

Beside the road ran a stream clattering down-hill over its stony bed--a clear, noisy stream, with swirling brown trout-pools and rapids, rus.h.i.+ng between ledges, foaming around boulders, a joyous, rolicking, das.h.i.+ng, headlong stream, that seemed to cheer us with its gay clamor; and I saw the Oneida's stern eyes soften as he bent his gaze upon it.

Poor little Lyn Montour slipped, with a sigh, from her saddle, while my horse buried his dusty nose in the sparkling water, drawing deep, cold draughts through his hot throat. And here by the familiar head waters of Frenchman's Creek we rested in full sight of the grist-mill above us, where the road curved west. The mill-wheel was turning; a man came to the window overlooking the stream and stood gazing at us, and I waved my hand at him rea.s.suringly, recognizing old Vanderveer.

Beyond the mill I could see smoke rising from the chimneys of the unseen settlement. Presently a small barefoot boy came out of the mill, looked at us a moment, then turned and legged it up the road tight as he could go. The Oneida, smoking his pipe, saw the lad's hasty flight, and smiled slightly.

"Yes, Little Otter," I said, "they take us for some of Sir John's people. You'll see them coming presently with their guns. Hark! There goes a signal-shot now!"

The smacking crack of a rifle echoed among the hills; a conch-horn's melancholy note sounded persistently.

"Let us go on to the Yellow Tavern," I said; and we rose and limped forward, leading the horse, whose head hung wearily.

Before we reached the Oswaya mill some men in their s.h.i.+rt-sleeves shot at us, then ran down through an orchard, calling on us to halt. One carried a shovel, one a rifle, and the older man, whom I knew as a former tenant of my father, bore an ancient firelock. When I called out to him by name he seemed confused, demanding to know whether we were Whigs or Tories; and when at length he recognized me he appeared to be vastly relieved. It seemed that he, Wemple, and his two sons had been burying apples, and that hearing the shot fired, had started for their homes, where already the alarm had spread. Seeing us, and supposing we had cut him off from the settlement, he had decided to fight his way through to the mill.

"I'm mighty glad you ain't shot, Mr. Renault," he said in his thin, high voice, scratching his chin, and staring hard at the Oneida.

"Seein' these here painted injuns sorter riled me up, an' I up an' let ye have it. So did Willum here. Lord, sir, we've been expecting Sir John for a month, so you must kindly excuse us, Mr. Renault!"

He shook his white head and looked up the road where a dozen armed men were already gathered, watching us from behind the fences.

"Sir John is on the Sacandaga," I said. "Why don't you go to Johnstown, Wemple? This is no place for your people."

He stood, rubbing his hard jaw reflectively.

"Waal, sir," he piped, "it's kind er hard to leave all you've got in the world." He added, looking around at his fields: "I'd be a pauper if I quit. Mebbe they won't come here, after all. Mebbe Sir John will go down the Valley."

"Besides, we ain't got our pumpkins in nor the winter corn stacked,"

observed one of his sons sullenly.

We all turned and walked slowly up the road in the direction of the big yellow tavern, old Wemple shaking his head, and talking all the while in a thin, flat, high-pitched voice: "It seems kind'r hard that Sir John can't quit his pesterin' an' leave folks alone. What call has he to come back a-dodgin' 'round here year after year, a-butcherin' his old neighbors, Mr. Renault? 'Pears to me he's gone crazy as a mad dog, a-whirlin' round and round the same stump, b.u.t.tin' and bitin' and clawin' up the hull place. Sakes alive! ain't he got no human natur'?

Last Tuesday they come to Dan Norris's, five mile down the creek, an'

old man Norris he was in the barn makin' a ladder, an' Dan he was gone for the cow. A painted Tory run into the kitchen an' hit the old woman with his hatchet, an' she fetched a screech, an' her darter, 'Liza, she screeched, too. Then a Injun he hit the darter, and he kep' a-kickin'

an' a-hittin', an' old man Norris he heard the rumpus out to the barn, an' he run in, an' they pushed him out d.a.m.n quick an' shot him in the legs. A Tory clubbed him an' ripped his skelp off, the old man on his knees, a-bellowin' piteous, till they knifed him all to slivers an'

kicked what was left o' him into the road. The darter she prayed an'

yelled, but 'twan't no use, for they cut her that bad with hatchets she was dead when Dan came a-runnin'. 'G.o.d!' he says, an' goes at the inimy, swingin' his milk-stool--but, Lord, sir, what can one man do? He was that shot up it 'ud sicken you, Mr. Renault. An' then they was two little boys a-lookin' on at it, too frightened to move; but when the destructives was a-beatin' old Mrs. Norris to death they hid in the fence-hedge. An' they both of 'em might agot clean off, only the littlest one screamed when they tore the skelp off'n the old woman; an'

he run off, but a Tory he chased him an' ketched him by the fence, an'

he jest held the child's legs between his'n, an' bent him back an' cut his throat, the boy a-squealin' something awful. Then the Tory skelped him an' hung him acrost the fence. The only Norris what come out of it was the lad who lay tight in the fence-scrub--Jimmy. He's up at my house; you'll see him. He come here that night to tell us of them goin's on. He acts kinder stupid, like he ain't got no wits, an' he jests sets an' sets, starin' at nothin'--leastways at nothin' I kin see----"

His high-pitched, garrulous chatter, and the horrid purport of it, were to me indescribably ghastly. To hear such things told without tremor or emphasis or other emotion than the sullen faces of his two strapping sons--to hear these incredible horrors babbled by an old man whose fate might be the same that very night, affected me with such an overpowering sense of helplessness that I could find no word to rea.s.sure either him or the men and boys who now came crowding around us, asking anxiously if we had news from the Sacandaga or from the north.

All I could do was to urge them to leave their homes and go to Johnstown; but they shook their heads, some a.s.serting that Johnstown was full of Tories, awaiting the coming of Walter Butler to rise and ma.s.sacre everybody; others declaring that the Yellow Tavern, which had been fortified, was safer than Albany itself. None would leave house or land; and whether these people really believed that they could hold out against a sudden onslaught, I never knew. They were the usual mixture of races, some of low Dutch extraction, like the Vanderveers and Wemples, some high Dutch, like the Kleins; and, around me, I saw, recognized, and greeted people who in peaceful days had been settled in these parts, and some among them had worked for my father--honest, simple folk, like Patrick Farris, with his pretty Dutch wife and tow-headed youngsters; and John Warren, once my father's head groom, and Jacob Klock, kinsman of the well-known people of that name.

The Oneida, pressed and questioned on every side, replied in guarded monosyllables; poor Lyn Montour, wrapped to the eyes in her blanket, pa.s.sed for an Iroquois youth, and was questioned mercilessly, until I interposed and opened the tavern door for her and for Little Otter.

"I tell you, Wemple," I said, turning on the tavern porch to address the people, "there is no safety here for you if Walter Butler or Sir John arrive here in force. It will be hatchet and torch again--the same story, due to the same strange Dutch obstinacy, or German apathy, or Yankee foolhardiness. In the grain belt it is different; there the farmers are obliged to expose themselves because our army needs bread.

But your corn and buckwheat and pumpkins and apples can be left for a week or two until we see how this thing is going to end. Be sensible; stack what you can, but don't wait to thresh or grind. Bury your apples; let the cider go; harness up; gather your cattle and sheep; pack up the clock and feather bed, and move to Johnstown with your families. In a week or two you will know whether this country is to be given to the torch again, or whether, by G.o.d's grace, Colonel Willett is to send Walter Butler packing! I'll wait here a day for you. Think it over.

"I have seen the Iroquois at the Sacandaga Vlaie. I saw Walter Butler there, too; and the woods were alive with Johnson's Greens. The only reason why they have not struck you here is, no doubt, because there was more plunder and more killing to be had along the Sacandaga. But when there remain no settlements there--when villages, towns, hamlets are in ashes, like Currietown, like Minnesink, Cherry Valley, Wyoming, Caughnawaga, then they'll turn their hatchets on these lone farms, these straggling hamlets and cross-road taverns. I tell you, to-day there is not a house unburned at Caughnawaga, except the church and that villain Doxtader's house--not a chimney standing in the Mohawk Valley, from Tribes Hill to the Nose. Ten miles of houses in ashes, ten miles of fields a charred trail!

"Now, do as you please, but remember. For surely as I stand here the militia call has already gone out, and this country must remain exposed while we follow Butler and try to hunt him down."

The little throng of people, scarcely a dozen in all, received my warning in silence. Glancing down the road, I saw one or two women standing at their house doors, and children huddled at the gate, all intently watching us.

"I want to send a message to Colonel Willett," I said, turning to the Oneida. "Can you go? Now?"

The tireless fellow smiled.

"Give us what you have to eat," I said to Patrick Farris, whose round and rosy little wife had already laid the board in the big room inside.

And presently we sat down to samp, apple-sauce, and bread, with a great bowl of fresh milk to each cover.

The Oneida ate sparingly; the girl mechanically, dull eyes persistently lowered. From the first moment that the Oneida had seen her he had never addressed a single word to her, nor had he, after the first keen glance, even looked at her. This, in the stress of circ.u.mstances, the forced and hasty marches, the breathless trail, the tension of the Thendara situation, was not extraordinary. But after excitement and fatigue, and when together under the present conditions, two Iroquois would certainly speak together.

Anxious, preoccupied as I was, I could not help but notice how absolutely the Oneida ignored the girl; and I knew that he regarded her as an Oneida invariably regards a woman no longer respected by the most chaste of all people, the Iroquois nation.

That she understood and pa.s.sionately resented this was perfectly plain to me, though she neither spoke nor moved. There was nothing for me to do or say. Already I had argued the matter with myself from every standpoint, and eagerly as I sought for solace, for a ray of hope, I could not but understand how vain it were to ask a cynical world to believe that this young girl was Walter Butler's wife. No; with his denial, with the averted faces of the sachems on the Kennyetto, as she herself had admitted, with the denial of Sir John, what evidence could be brought forward to justify me in wedding Elsin Grey? Another thing: even if Sir John should admit that, acting in capacity of a magistrate of Tryon County, he had witnessed the marriage of Walter Butler and Lyn Montour, what civil powers had a deposed magistrate; a fugitive who had broken parole and fled?

No, there was no legal tie here. I was not now free to wed; I understood that as I sat there, staring out of the window into the red west, kindling to flame behind the Mayfield hills.

The Oneida, rolling himself in his blanket, had stretched out on the bare floor by the hearth; the girl, head buried in her hands, sat brooding above the empty board. Farris fetched me ink and quill and the only sheet of paper in the settlement; but it was sufficiently large to tear in half; and I inked my rusty quill and wrote:

"Yellow Tavern, Oswaya on Frenchman's Creek.

"COLONEL MARINUS WILLETT:

"_Sir_--I have the honor to report that the scout of two, under my command, proceeded, agreeable to orders, as far as the Vlaie, called Sacandaga Vlaie, arriving there at dawn and in time for the council and rites of Thendara, which were held at the edge of the Dead Water or Vlaie Creek.

"I flatter myself that the Long House has abandoned any idea of punis.h.i.+ng the Oneidas for the present--the council recognizing my neutral right to speak for the Oneida nation. The Oneidas dissenting, naturally there could be no national unanimity, which is required at Thendara before the Long House embarks upon any Federal policy.

"Whether or not this action of mine was wise, you, sir, must judge.

It may be that what I have done will only serve to consolidate the enemy in the next enterprise they undertake.

"My usefulness as a spy in Sir John's camp must prove abortive, as I encountered Captain Walter Butler at the Dead Water, who knows me, and who is aware of my business in New York. Attempting to take him, I made a bad matter of it, he escaping by diving. Some men in green uniforms, whom I suppose were foresters from Sir John's corps, firing on us, I deemed it prudent to take to my heels as far as the settlement called Oswaya, which is on Frenchman's Creek, some five miles above Varicks.

"The settlement is practically defenseless, and the people hereabout expect trouble. If you believe it worth while to send some Rangers here to complete the harvest, it should, I think, be done at once. Patrick Farris, landlord at the Yellow Tavern, estimates the buckwheat at five thousand bushels. There is also a great store of good apples, considerable pitted corn, and much still standing unstacked, and several acres of squashes and pumpkins--all a temptation to the enemy.

"I can form no estimate of Sir John's force on the Sacandaga. This letter goes to you by the Oneida runner, Little Otter, who deserves kind treatment for his services. I send you also, under his escort, an unfortunate young girl, of whom you have doubtless heard. She is Lyn Montour, and is by right, if not by law, the wife of Captain Walter Butler. He repudiates her; her own people disown her. I think, perhaps, some charitable lady of the garrison may find a home for her in Johnstown or in Albany. She is Christian by instinct if not by profession.