by Unknown
Young John shouldered his musket and marched back to the road with his little brown dog trotting before him like a fox. He wondered how long the dog had been with him; he had not noticed; he had not even noticed that he had strayed away from the road. With surprise he saw that it had become dark. A still, black night, in which sounds carried long distances. He could hear a whippoorwill in the cornfield as plain as though it were in the road beside him. The peepers down by the river began to whimper into their night singing. John shivered, and looked back up the slope towards the stone house.
The windows of the bedroom were lighted. Against the curtains he saw the silhouettes of the doctor, bent over like a grubbing bear, and the dragoon-like figure of the widow.
“God,” thought John. “It’s happening now.”
The sweat came pouring out of him. Then there was one uncontrollable welling of sound that he would never have taken for Mrs. Martin’s voice. The doctor ducked down. Mrs. McKlennar bent forward. They were like people smitten out of the power of life.
And then the doctor straightened up, and John suddenly relaxed weakly against the fence. He had forgotten all about destructives, Indians, war, Mary, his mother, himself. It was over. But John stayed still and struggled with himself, to make himself go up, to find out what had happened.
Then the little brown dog started growling.
“Shut your mouth,” said John savagely. He aimed a cuff at the beast, but the dog eluded him and spun off down the road barking high and shrill. Then John heard a man running towards him.
“Hello, hello. That you, John?”
“Is it Mr. Martin?”
“Yes. I saw Dr. Petry coming up when I was on the hill. What’s happened?”
John said with a strangely controlled voice:
“The baby’s just got born.”
“Is everything all right?”
“I was just going up to see,” said John, “when I heard you coming.”
They turned towards the house. They saw the door open and a path of light shoot towards them down the slope. Mrs. McKlennar was standing there with a bundle.
“John! John Weaver!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“It’s all right. I thought you’d like to know.”
John’s throat filled.
“Yes, ma’am. Here’s Mr. Martin. He just got back.”
He felt Gil take hold of his arm. They ran that way, full tilt up to the porch. Mrs. McKlennar stood waiting for them, grinning wide, but with tears sliding bumpily down beside her nose. She was snorting and sniffing like a dog with a breathful of smoke.
Gil shoved right past her and went into the room; and John couldn’t help peering through behind him. Dr. Petry was in the act of covering up Mrs. Martin. But the thing that surprised John was that Mrs. Martin had her eyes open. She gave Gil a small smile.
The doctor grunted.
“Everything went off first rate, young man.”
There it was. There in Mrs. McKlennar’s arms. She pulled back the wrapping and showed John the red small face with its intimations of humanity quite plainly to be seen already.
John breathed hard.
“It’s a perfectly beautiful boy,” said Mrs. McKlennar.
10. Andrustown
Whatever she might be doing, Mrs. McKlennar beamed like the rising sun. She would not hear of Lana’s working more than to wash the baby and change its diaper cloths. One day when Lana was bathing herself and the baby started to yell, Lana asked Mrs. McKlennar whether she would change the cloths for her. Mrs. McKlennar did. “Nasty, nasty,” she said. “He’s just like a man already, the way he don’t care how he musses.” That afternoon, when John showed up to say good-bye, she gave him the brightest shilling she had in the house. “Don’t you put it away,” she said to him. “You go down to Petry’s and buy your girl a hair ribbon with it.” John was amazed. He looked at the shilling in his soiled palm and he looked at Mrs. McKlennar. Her horselike face was still beaming because she had been asked to change the baby’s dirty cloths.
John went down to the hay piece to see Mr. Martin. He had already been paid; he had nearly three dollars in his pocket, but he thought he ought to say good-bye again. And he hated to leave the farm. Somehow it had become associated in his mind with the life he and Mary were going to start as soon as they were able. He had lately imagined themselves in such a place.
Gil was mowing some of the corners along the bottom land and he rested his scythe on the point of the snathe when he saw John coming and began to whet the blade. The stone against the steel gave ringing notes in the still heat.
“Well, John. You’re going?”
“Yes, Mr. Martin.”
“I hate to let you go.”
“I kind of hate to go myself, Mr. Martin.”
“I’d keep you here if I could afford to. The hay’s standing heavy and I’m going to have a lot of work with it, now my wife can’t help on the cart.”
They accepted this gravely. But Gil was obviously proud and pleased that he was going to have to do extra work.
“Yes, sir,” said John.
“You’ve got another job, John?”
“I promised Mr. Leppard I’d make a trip over to Andrustown with him and help him get in some of his hay.”
Gil was thoughtful. “I hope it’s all right.”
“They only figure on staying a couple of nights. There’s been no news in, has there?”
“Not that I know of,” said Gil. “But it’s pretty far off.”
“I guess we’ll be all right.”
“Joe Boleo’s down towards Edmeston, right now. Who’s going?”
John said, “Mr. Leppard said him and both the Bells, and Hawyer and Staring, and then young Bell’s wife and Mrs. Hawyer and Mrs. Staring. They’re coming to rake and to cook for us.”
“They oughtn’t to take the women.”
“I guess it’ll be all right,” John said again.
“Well, good luck, John.”
John raised his hand. “You’ve treated me real well,” he said. “When I come back I’ll come around here. Maybe I can give you a couple of days if I haven’t got other work.”
Leaning on his scythe, Gil watched the lad go. John was a good worker and it would have been fine to keep him round the farm. If it hadn’t been for having to pay Dr. Petry’s fee, Gil would have hired John out of his own pocket, just for the sake of the place. Another hoeing wouldn’t hurt the corn, with all the wet there had been; there would be a big hay crop; and the wheat looked absolutely clean. It looked pretty close to a record harvest all along the line.
But Gil couldn’t lay half a dozen sweeps of hay without having to look up towards the house. And then he would naturally swing his eyes across the valley, taking in the sky line from Eldridge Blockhouse to Fort Dayton. Then he would look back to the house again.
The house was always the same. He could see Mrs. McKlennar and Daisy doing their jobs, and nowadays he could see Lana doing fine work on the verandah Mrs. McKlennar wouldn’t hear of their moving back into the farmhouse, any more than she would consider moving down to one of the forts herself. “What’s the sense of your staying in that hot cabin?” she would demand. “You ought to keep the baby cool nights like these.” And she was right about the forts, too. They were overcrowded. Since the word had come, at the end of last week, of Butler’s attack on Wyoming, the people in Schuyler had moved down. Little Stone Arabia Stockade could not contain all of the local families. Now, with the people from up the Creek Valley and from south, by Andrustown, the forts were jammed. “Me live in a fort!” Mrs. McKlennar’s voice was raucous. “Have you smelled them? Have you seen the flies? I’d rather be scalped!” But the people wouldn’t live outside even some people with near-by houses came into the fort at night, since they had heard of Wyoming. There had been Wyoming Tories in Butler’s brigade. They had been the ones who had searched out fugitives. They hadn’t hurt the women and children to speak of; they had just driven them into a swa
mp without food, to make their own way to safety as well as they were able. There weren’t any berries ripe at that season for them to live on; many of those who were lost starved to death. Of those who managed to reach the settlement of Wilkes-Barre, more than half were naked and so stung with flies and infected with ague that it wasn’t expected they would survive. Blue Back, who had got the story from his Tuscarora friend in Unadilla, said the swamp was named by the Indians “The Shades of Death.” It didn’t seem possible that civilized man could allow such things even in war.
A dog was barking over the river to the eastward. Gil’s scythe stopped. Now all he could hear was the high screech of the locusts in the woods and he cursed them silently because they obliterated any distant sound. Looking over the river, he saw that men at work in their fields had also stopped. A few were moving slowly to the places where they had left their rifles. The whole valley seemed to have become still. It had happened that way again and again, all the men Gil could see, stopping, and looking in the same direction. He glanced back at the house. That was all right. Up there the baby was squalling about something or other and they had not even noticed.
Then the dog’s barking picked up and made a fluent ascent of the hillside woods and everybody knew that he must be running a rabbit; yip-yapping for hell and gone as if the one object of creation were a rabbit and a dog to chase him. Mechanically Gil’s scythe sheared again through the standing stems of grass.
Up at the house, Lana opened her dress for the baby’s second feeding of the day. She had never felt so much contentment since her first wedded days. In her heart she felt that it was even better than that time. She no longer worried about herself and Gil. The baby was a tangible expression of their success together in the world, while at the same time he was a defense against the world and Gil. She took no thought for the future, except vaguely, thinking of the boy as a man; she was too full of love and the sense of her own easement in feeding her son to feel beyond the moment. It made her proud to know that she could feed him; small as she was, she had a splendid flow of milk; and he was a big demanding child, moreover, who had weighed ten pounds on the doctor’s estimate, a child many a larger woman would have envied having.
Mrs. McKlennar often noticed Lana’s passionate preoccupation at feeding time. She did not, like many women, take it as a chore; her whole day seemed governed by the expectation that led up to the appointed time. She was a natural mother, Mrs. McKlennar thought, and knew that she herself, supposing she had had a child, would never have felt like that. From now on, Gil would have to walk behind the family cart. He would no longer be the girl’s husband, but the father of her family. It was the patriarchal instinct from her Palatine blood. Some of those girls were wonderful things to see before they married; then they became great mothers. “She’ll shut him out of both their lives until she wants him.” It seemed queer to an Irishwoman.
And yet it was not altogether so. Lana always greeted Gil with happiness and anxiety for his comfort. He was to be pleased, to have just what he wanted. But there it was again; he was the father. Mrs. McKlennar wondered how Gil would stand up under this attitude.
Three mornings later, Joe Boleo appeared at the house for breakfast. He had reached the valley late the night before, sleeping in Demooth’s barn. Now he said he wanted a good meal, a wash and shave, and a bed with feathers in it. Nothing was up in the south that he had seen. There was no news. He must admit that he preferred Daisy’s cornbread to Adam Helmer’s idea of nocake.
After feeding he dropped down to the hay meadow to pass a few minutes with Gil.
“The boy’s a dinger,” Joe said gravely. “He’s growed since I was here before.”
Gil grinned.
“He gets lots of nourishment.”
“By God,” said Joe heartily.
“Who’s down in the lodge?” Gil asked.
“Hain’t nobody,” said Joe. “I got sick of being by myself, but Adam’s due back there tomorrow.”
“Where’s Adam?”
“He’s picking up John Butler’s trail back to Niagara. There weren’t no point in staying down. They’ve all gone from Unadilla.”
“Listen, Joe. Did you see any of the Andrustown people?”
“No, I didn’t. I didn’t come through Andrustown. I took a swing west of there. Why?”
“There’s a party gone there to cut hay.”
Joe swore. “Why didn’t they tell me?”
“They supposed you were down south.”
“Well, I can’t stay there all the time. I hain’t been out of the woods for two weeks. Everybody’s so busy cutting hay they don’t think of a poor timber beast like me. Dingman wasn’t at the second lodge, either.” He leaned against the fence. “Hell, nothing’s going to happen.”
“Dingman’s haying for Mrs. Ritter. They spent last night there.”
“No,” said Joe.
“They’ve took their women with them.”
Joe gawped. “What do they think they’re doing?” he demanded.
“Cutting hay. Like me. Like anybody else. They thought the Rangers were out.”
“Now listen,” said Joe. “Everybody’s cutting hay and nobody spells me and Adam. We got to get some time off, ain’t we? Look here.”
Gil said, “We better see Demooth. I think you and me had better go after them.” He hooked his arm through his scythe snathe and picked up his rifle.
Joe stared.
“By God, you are an earnest man, Gil.”
Gil did not answer.
They reported to Demooth and set out before seven o’clock. They kept to the road. The tracks of the two wagons were plain in the road. Joe pointed to them scornfully. “What do they think it is, a frolic?”
“What do you mean?”
“All of them riding in the wagons. Probably singing songs. I hope they took along some cider for the girls.”
Gil thought grimly that they probably weren’t singing, anyway. But it was true that they hadn’t sent a man ahead. There wasn’t a sign of a human foot anywhere. But there wasn’t a hostile sign along the road, either. The woods were still and close with the July heat. Only the locusts made a sound. Nothing moved but the two men trotting along the road.
It was eight miles south to Andrustown by the road. They had left the Mohawk Valley and were cutting through the hills when Joe pulled up sharp. “Listen.” Gil stopped beside him. He himself had thought it sounded like a shot. Now, after a short interval, they knew. Half a dozen shots were made in quick succession.
“God,” said Joe. “I wonder if they got him.”
“Got him?” Gil’s brain was dazed.
“Yes.” Joe was irascible. “That was firing after somebody running. Probably trying to reach the woods. They must have been lined up.” He started running. “Run,” he said.
It was surprising how his shambling stride covered the ground. He ran like a dog, with his head up, as if he took scent out of the wind. Now that he was started he seemed perfectly calm. He even jerked some talk over his shoulder to Gil.
“So long as they’re shooting they’ll all be watching the houses,” he said. “Must have got them inside the houses.”
Twenty minutes later, Joe slowed down. There had been two more shots, but since then there had been not a sound. He and Gil had covered a little over three miles.
“No sense in running right into their laps,” he said. “Your wind is licked anyway. You couldn’t hit a standing barn.” He himself was breathing deep but easily. The only sign of his running was the sweat on his forehead, which stood out in big drops. “We’ll kind of edge up and see what they’re doing.”
He circled to the west in order to get up on the slope of the hill. If you were going to be spotted and chased, it was good to begin running halfway up a hill. That meant that the man chasing you would put on his first spurt, nine times out of ten, the full length of the hill, so you had him licked be-fore he could ever get in shooting distance.
He and Gil circled round
till they could look through a slash in the trees down onto the little settlement. It was a small place just the seven cabins and five small log barns, and the barracks under which the crops were stored. It was familiar enough to them both, except that about four acres of hay had been mowed and half of it cocked. But the two men were not looking at the hay.
What they were looking at was the group of people on the road. There were about sixty Indians, painted for the most part. The hot sunlight glistened on their greased hides and the feathered tufts of hair on their heads. They were standing around a cabin which they had just set on fire. The flames ran along the bark on the logs. The flames were dull red and yellow and tipped with thick smoke. The smoke went up against the trees and rolled into the sky. The bark roof caught with a gush of sound, and suddenly the whole cabin seemed to be enfolded with fire. It was unbelievable that a house could burn so fast.
Joe said suddenly under his breath, “There’s somebody in that house.”
“How do you know?”
“They wouldn’t be bothered to watch it otherwise. Look, they’ve got everything they could out of the other houses.”
It was an effort for Gil to take his eyes from the burning cabin. Now he looked carefully at the crowd of Indians. He saw the three women standing among them. They were not making any demonstration. They stood perfectly still, watching the cabin with a dull kind of fascination. The way sheep will look at something dreadful. They stood like that until the roof fell in. If there were a man inside he made no sound. “Killed himself if he had sense,” Joe said. “Look, they got somebody there.”
Gil saw for the first time the body hanging on the fence. It was old Bell. He was caught with one leg through the rails up to the crotch and both arms hanging over the top rail; his head tilted to one side, against his shoulder. He had been scalped. The top of his head was like a red gape against the sunlight, with a little halo of flies.