by Unknown
Mary knew how lucky she was without being told. She was growing up. She would be eighteen before long, and John told her that she was getting prettier every day. Her breasts were filling out, and she had more flesh on her shoulders, and her cheeks were rounder. Her legs were still the slim hard legs of a girl; but John liked them, even though he used to tease her about how long they were. “When the war’s over,” he said one day, “I’m going to buy you a print dress. I’m going to get it made. With a long skirt. Right to your toes. Your legs won’t show, and you’ll be beautiful.”
“I’ll powder my hair,” she said. “There’ll be flour then.”
Imagine it, flour enough to use it on your hair.
“I’ll ride you over on a pillion saddle. You’ll look like a lady, Mary. With your bonnet tied with bows.”
These thoughts seemed so possible and real when they looked at the McKlennar house. As if the house might be their own, waiting for them to ride across the river and enter it.
The time would surely come. She did not tell John how she hoped he would look in a new blue coat and snuff-colored pants and polished boots, perhaps, and certainly a cocked hat. She felt too shy; his talking about her like that always made her remember with humility the way he had first noticed her in this same fort, the way he had talked to her and they had got engaged to one another. She was a little skinny brat then, with one braid down her back and one plain petticoat to her name; and he had stood out before his mother for her, and kept on loving her, and finally they had got married. Now he was getting to be a great man. He had been noticed and had started upwards. She had no doubt that the war would be won with people such as John in power. They would make it a fine free country afterwards, and maybe it was not too much to think of owning a black house servant.
Down in the yard there would be a shout for the changing of the sentries and John would have to get up and pull his boots on and go down and stand his watch. The square black room would become blacker after his going down. Mary would huddle herself against the wall and listen to the sounds of changing watch: the sound of men clambering onto the rifle platforms; the thump of Smith’s or Stale’s feet on the blockhouse ladder; his boots dropped on the floor; his little grunt as he stooped to take his pants off; one of the women, whichever wife it was, murmuring querulously in the hot darkness as she made room on the straw bed. Mary would lie straight and narrow, trying to shut out the sounds from her ears. The gross-ness of these men compared to John was sickening to her.
The militia reaped the wheat systematically along the valley from west to east and the McKlennar fields were, consequently, the last to be visited. As the farm was so far from Fort Dayton, both Bellinger and Demooth agreed with Gil that it would be simpler to move down ten or fifteen men to the house and let them camp there while the grain was harvested. But Mrs. McKlennar would not hear of a herd of men let loose in her home un-less she went along.
“It’s my house,” she said, looking the colonel in the eye.
Bellinger sighed.
“Besides,” pursued the widow, “with a couple of women looking after their food they’ll do the work a whole lot quicker.”
Lana was delighted that they were allowed to go. It seemed quite safe with all those men close by. The last scout had reported the Indians moving west towards Tioga. The frequency and magnitude of the earlier raids led people to suppose that nothing much more could be expected to happen that fall.
As the first wagon turned off the road and drew up to the porch, the mystery of the immunity of Mrs. McKlennar’s house was explained. Just above the front steps a horse’s skull lay on the porch floor.
The men noticed it at once, and one asked suspiciously, “How’d that get there?”
“I put it there myself,” said Mrs. McKlennar proudly.
“It’s a Tory sign,” the man said.
“Of course it is; that’s why I put it there.”
“It’s a Tory sign,” he repeated, eyeing her.
“Where’d you get that skull?” another asked her.
Mrs. McKlennar snorted.
“It’s the skull of my own mare. I found it this spring when I was strawberrying. She was killed two years ago.”
The fact that the skull could be identified seemed to make them feel better about it. One man laughed; it was a joke on the destructives; and they all began to lug in their bedding and spread it on the porch.
But when Mrs. McKlennar went into the house she found that someone had been making free with it. Men apparently had cooked at the fireplace, for the hearthstones were greasy. They found a bit of bloody bandage on the floor. Some of the destructives must have used the place, keeping it securely shuttered and lighting a fire with no fear of detection. Mrs. McKlennar grinned wryly. “I guess I didn’t have my whole joke to myself, Lana, and I’ll bet these men have left their bugs in here.” The women opened all the windows to let in the sun and clear away the mustiness, and then, while Lana mopped the floor, Mrs. McKlennar attacked the sooty cobwebs.
She was in a fine temper by the time they had the kitchen habitable. “I’ll not leave this house alone again,” she said. “I’d rather lose my scalp than go through this again.”
Gil had brought wood and Daisy was cooking before her fireplace once more, muttering to herself, as she had to clean one pot after another, “Dear, dear, dear, dear,” with a clucking noise like an offended hen. But she had the men’s food ready by sundown and they came up from the wheatfield to eat it on the porch, where they sat admiring the swathe they had cut through the grain and eyeing the full moon that rose through a shelf of mist upon the hills by Little Falls.
They spent a week at bringing the wheat up to the barn, and the second week they started threshing. Some of the men had returned to their cabins, a new lot succeeding them, and as fast as the grain was threshed it was barreled and carted to Fort Dayton.
The women worked longer hours than the men. The cooking and washing were far more than Daisy, the negress, could handle alone, and before the wheat had been threshed Gil began pulling ears from the corn and expected Lana to help him. Mrs. McKlennar therefore had to assist the negress.
But they all enjoyed it, even the cow, which had been led down from the fort when it was decided to thresh at the farm. The feeling that they were in a house, that they had a place to themselves, made up for all their labor.
Gil decided to talk to Bellinger about their staying. His first argument was that if the destructives had actually been using the house for a hideout, it was better either to burn it to the ground or else to have a guard upon it. His second argument had more effect. The McKlennar wheatfields were among the best in the valley. It would be of advantage to the whole community if Gil were allowed to plough them in the fall. He thought if he could have six men on hand continually that he could safely keep on at the house. In case of any large raid, naturally, the family would withdraw again to one of the forts. If Bellinger realized that Gil’s principal idea was to keep his fields in order, it only agreed with his own passionate conviction that the one hope for the settlers was to hold their land and feed themselves. He agreed. And though the tiny garrison changed personnel every day or so, there were always six men working with Gil at the ploughing or helping Lana to gather the apples which were just beginning to fall.
The leaves were turning and the nights growing colder. Though there had been no frost as yet in the valley, it had touched the hills, and the maples were already scarlet and crimson and flaming orange. The afternoons were hazy and full of silence and without wind.
The two children began to put on flesh, eating the new wheat in mushes and samp from the new corn. It was a quiet time. Though Daisy fell ill of a queer fever and was sent to Dr. Petry to be treated for several days, and Lana had to do all the work, she felt a sense of peace take root in her own being, and now and then she caught herself looking forward. It was something she had not done with happiness for several years.
Mrs. McKlennar spoke of it to her one d
ay. “I can see you’re planning things. About you and Gil and the two boys, ain’t it?”
Lana nodded.
“There’s one thing I want you to know. You needn’t tell Gil now. But when I die I want you two to have this place.”
The widow’s face reminded Lana of that March morning when she and Gil had come to interview her, perhaps in the way Mrs. McKlennar drew her breath. There was a sharpness in her eye as if she dared Lana to answer her back.
“In some ways,” she continued, “I’ve been happier than I’ve been since my husband died. That’s because you two have been like children to me. I’ve appreciated it.”
Lana said softly, “It’s nothing to what you’ve been to us.”
“Nonsense. I’ve just told you. Let’s forget it.” Then she said sharply, “Maybe, though, you’ll want to go back to Deerfield if this mess ever gets done with.”
Lana shook her head. “I can’t tell. I don’t know what Gil thinks he’s never spoken of it.”
“Well,” said Mrs. McKlennar, “it’s up to you. The place is yours to leave or take.”
As she went out of the kitchen Lana thought, as she had more than once of late, that Mrs. McKlennar seemed a little frail.
Gustin Schimmel was a little man who could only be described as burly. He walked as if he weighed two hundred pounds, with a hunch to his shoulders, and his solemn face belligerently outthrust. He was a very serious person and he took his duty at McKlennar’s very hard.
Two days ago a lone Tuscarora Indian had come in to report to Bellinger a huge army of men moving east of Unadilla. He was so emphatic about the numbers of this army, whose trail he had happened on, that Bellinger wanted a scout sent out. He had summoned Gil to join Helmer and Boleo, and had sent word to Gustin Schimmel that on no account was any man to leave McKlennar’s until specific orders were received or others arrived to relieve them. It put Gustin in a very serious position, for it was his first command.
He came into the kitchen that evening to assure himself that all the shutters were bolted and the back door barred. With the colder nights, the men were sleeping in the front rooms of the house and the women and children occupied the kitchen.
“I tended to them myself, Gustin,” said Mrs. McKlennar.
“Yes, ma’am. But I got to see myself. I’m responsible.”
His eyes did not allow him to see Lana hastily veiling herself in a blanket, or to observe the widow pushing the chamber pot hastily under the bed. He wondered how such embarrassments could conceivably be avoided.
Having finished his inspection, he addressed the floor.
“I hope you sleep good, ma’am.”
“Good night,” said Mrs. McKlennar without hope.
“Good night, ma’am.” He backed himself out, closing the door. “You ain’t to bolt this door,” he said from the other side.
“There isn’t any bolt,” said Mrs. McKlennar.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
They had a good night as he had wished them, except for one interrup-tion: the sound of a horse coming from the falls. The clear chop of his hoofs on the hard road past the farm increase, diminishment, and silence. Before they went to sleep again, a light rain started to fall. In the men’s room the snoring continued on its heavy course; then they heard one man stirring in the hall and the half-stifled breathing of Gustin Schimmel deep in his perplexities beyond their door. He breathed there for some time be-fore he finally once more retired.
The morning showed them the last of the rain. A west wind had begun to blow, to clear after the rain, so powerful in its deep gusts that it was like moving silver on the hills.
The wind blew all day.
Gustin Schimmel stood on the porch from time to time, facing it. He wanted to know what that express had carried. He wished mightily that Gilbert Martin would return and relieve him of this new habit of thought he was acquiring. The unaccustomed involutions of his brain had affected his appetite. Laboriously that afternoon he wrote on the piece of paper on which he had decided to keep a journal of his command.
Thirsdey, Oct. 19. It raind some, it clerd this morning. Express went by last nit Today nothing remarkabel.
He stared awhile at the paper. For the seventeenth he had inscribed in his burly hand, “Warm to-day noboddy on the road. Skvash py for super.” Squash pie as an entry disturbed him somewhat, for it did not seem very military. He had put it down to fill out the line, since he could think of nothing else. Ultimately he decided to let it stand, folded the paper, and breathed in the widow’s direction.
“If you’ll excuse me, ma’am,” he apologized, “I think I’ll just go down to the road and see if I can see anybody.”
Mrs. McKlennar fixed him with a marble eye.
“I shall miss you, Gustin Schimmel.”
“I could send in one of the boys to keep you company,” said Gustin.
“No, thanks, since you can’t stay with us, I think we’d rather be alone.”
“That’s what I thought, ma’am. I want to see if I can find out about that express.”
Mrs. McKlennar looked at Lana.
“Do I seem like somebody who’s going crazy?”
“No,” said Lana smilingly.
“I am, though. Raving crazy. He’s making me.” She smiled in turn and went on, “Why don’t you take the children out? It would do all three of you good.”
“Won’t you come with us?”
“No, I’d like to just lie here and rest. You stay out till the cow comes in for milking. There’s no cooking to do with those four pans of beans all baked.”
Lana saw that she wanted to be alone, so she put Gilly’s deerskin jacket on him, which made him think he looked like his father, and wrapped a blanket round the baby. The baby had thriven for all the moving they had done that summer. He lay like a great fat lump on her arms, as much as she could carry. He hadn’t been christened till the spring when, one day, Domine Rozencrantz had come by McKlennar’s; and they had named him Joseph Phillip, with Joe Boleo for a sponsor. Young Gilbert, however, had never seemed to make such flesh, and Lana thought it was due to a combination of the hard winter after Brant’s raid and her own milk’s giving out when he was still so young. The last was due no doubt to the prompt occupancy of herself by Joey; and at the time it had seemed to her a strange and unjust manifestation of Providence that she should lose her milk. But now that Gilly was becoming so hardy she found it easier to ac-cept the ways of God.
For Gilly was a tough little nugget, active as a young squirrel, and for all that he was only two and a half he was able to walk for quite a little way. And he seemed to take great satisfaction in going into the woods, which, of course, meant the sumacs behind the barn.
Lana took the two children a little way up the slope, perhaps a hundred yards, to an open patch she had found one day, where the earth was smooth enough for the baby to tumble about unwatched. The patch was on the brow of the upland, and, there being no trees round about, the sumac leaves, all gold with bloody crimson tips, and the dark red tassels, seemed to touch the blue of the windy heavens overhead.
The earth was fairly dry, even after the night’s rain. The sweep of the wind hushed everything. Sitting there, Lana found herself growing drowsy, and after a while she glanced round to make sure that the children were close by and then stretched out upon her back. The house was so near that she could hear any sound that might rise from below, and yet, for all that could be seen of it, it might be under the moon.
Lana wondered briefly whether Mrs. McKlennar were having a decent rest. Then her eyelids slowly closed. The voice of the booming wind lulled her. Her face was almost girlish as she lay there, the pink whipped up in her cheeks by the wind, and her hair pulled forward under her cheek so that her mouth seemed in a nest.
A few minutes later, Gilly lifted his sharp little face. He acted as if he had heard a sound a hail from the Kingsroad, perhaps. His mother had stirred in her sleep and the little boy walked up to her and stared down gravely. H
e glanced at his brother, but his brother wasn’t much good at covering the ground, so Gilly, after another moment, walked unsteadily down the slope and into the forest of sumacs… .
The hail he had heard had been young Fesser Cox riding his first dispatch from Fort Dayton. Colonel Klock had sent up word from Schenectady that Sir John Johnson had struck the Schoharie Valley with fifteen hundred men. The seventeenth he had laid waste eight miles of the Schoharie. On the eighteenth he had entered the Mohawk and turned west, burning both sides of the river. All people were warned to enter the forts. The militia at Stone Arabia were to stand before the ravaging army. General Robert Van Rensselaer was bringing the Albany militia up the valley to take him in the rear.
Bellinger sent orders to the detail at McKlennar’s. It was at once to proceed to Ellis’s Mills at the falls and reenforce the garrison there. Fifty militia were about to march from Dayton and Herkimer to back up Colonel Brown at Stone Arabia or join Colonel Klock. A detail would be sent out in an hour to pick up the women at McKlennar’s and carry them to Eldridge’s, where the men would amplify the garrison of the blockhouse.
Gustin Schimmel did not like it. But he believed in orders. He woke Mrs. McKlennar out of a sound nap and explained that the second detail was on the way and that they would be taken to Eldridge. He himself hated to leave Mrs. McKlennar like that, but it would not be for long. He would prefer to wait until the others arrived or take them himself to Eldridge’s, but there it was, plain orders.
“Godsake, man!” cried the widow. “Get along.” (“And thank God it’s the last of you,” she thought, realizing that her cap was caught in the pins over one ear.)