Drums Along the Mohawk

by Walter D. Edmonds

“If you think you’re going to lose credit, you needn’t worry. Nobody’s going to get credit going with me. I’m supposed to be turning up at Ballston to protect Albany from Ross and Butler.”

  “I don’t give a damn about the credit, Willett. I just want to get at them once and see some of them knowing they’re licked.”

  “I know,” said Willett quietly. “I wish I had a drink.”

  “Verdammt! You’ll have it then, for not stealing my medical supply.”

  Both men turned round to confront Dr. Petry, who held a small keg in both arms as a man might hold a baby on his chest. He peered at them for a moment through his bushy eyebrows, then advanced to set the keg on the table in front of Willett.

  “ ‘For wounds and surgical needs,’ ” he read the label. “Well, I’m prescribing now. A little glass apiece—and one for the doctor, Peter. I’d get a hemorrhage watching you drink if I didn’t have some too.”

  John had gone home again—the second time after he had said good-bye—and he felt foolish about it. He was beginning to think that maybe after all the army would not march. But the way Mary’s face lit up when he came through the door dispelled all his uneasiness.

  He told them at supper the extraordinary news that Willett had brought with him, that General Washington had taken his army south to confront Cornwallis in Virginia. They had no idea, any of them, what it could mean; but Gil Martin had heard Willett telling Bellinger in a very excited way, as if it were a tremendous thing for Washington to have done.

  Cobus’s eyes glistened.

  “Next year I’m going to ’list with the army,” he said.

  John laughed.

  “Enlist for what? A drummer boy?”

  Cobus’s face was still a round one, and now the sullenness of it on top of his skinny body made even Emma smile.

  She said to him, “Don’t you mind John. I’ll let you go, next year, if you want to. But come along with me now.”

  “Where?”

  “I want to visit with Mrs. Volmer.”

  “I don’t want to go. What do I have to for, anyway?”

  Mrs. Weaver took him firmly by the hand. “You come along.” She said from the door, “We’ll be down there for a couple of hours.”

  As she closed the door, John smiled at Mary. Both of them realized that Emma had never been a special friend of Widow Volmer.

  “Ma’s making up,” John said. “She’ll go on making up to you now all her life. You’ll see.”

  Mary said loyally, “She’s been good to me ever since we got married, John.”

  It made him deeply happy.

  The wind was not strong enough to make the cabin cold when the fire drew so well. They were like an old married couple sitting side by side upon the hearth, John thought, and he said, “You ought to have some fleece to spin.”

  Mary smiled. She had been thinking the same thing. She would not need much wool.

  “You with a pipe and reading out of a book to me.”

  “I never read very good,” John said.

  “You would if you practised at it. My pa used to read real fine. I think he read better than Mr. Rozencrantz.…”

  Her face stilled with her voice. But even memory of Christian Reall’s death at Oriskany could not deprive them of their contentment at having the cabin to themselves. All that was long ago; and John had a queer sense of the three of them sitting there.

  “Suppose it’s a girl, how can we name it after Pa?”

  Mary said, “I knew a woman named Georgina once.”

  “Why, yes,” said John.

  The fire popped and sparked and they watched the exploded coal gradually glimmer out on the damp dirt floor.

  “Do you suppose that battle down in Johnstown means this war is getting over, John?”

  “I don’t know. It’s only a little battle the way they think of things, I guess. Not like Burgoyne’s army. Nor not like General Washington’s in Virginia. I guess down there they don’t think it’s much.”

  “I mean, would it end the war up here, John?”

  “I don’t know. I guess not.”

  She said, “It would be nice, wouldn’t it? We could live in our own cabin. Have you figured where it would be, John?”

  “Why, I guess we’d go back to Deerfield on Pa’s place.”

  “I’d like that. It used to be nice there.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She lifted her face and looked across at him. She smiled with her eyes. She felt so still, watching his intent face studying the fire. It didn’t matter in a moment like this what you said, so long as you talked softly.…

  The express from Stone Arabia arrived in the darkness before dawn; the horse dead lame and the man’s hands so cold he could hardly let loose the bridle reins.

  He brought the scout’s dispatch. Butler and Ross had taken a circle straight north. The scout thought they must have got lost. Now they were heading west so far above the valley he thought they surely must be striking towards Buck’s Island.

  Willett and Bellinger, shivering in their drawers, read it in the light of the coals.

  “Where would they hit the Creek?” Willett asked.

  “I guess about twenty miles north. Blue Back could probably tell you, or Joe Boleo, but Joe’s sleeping out.”

  “Let’s get Blue Back.”

  A sentry routed out the Indian, bringing him in, blinking his sleepy eyes and hugging himself with his blanket. “How,” he said to Bellinger, and then to Willett, “How? I fine.”

  Immediately he squatted in front of the fire where the heat drew an unholy smell from him, and lighted the greasy rounds of his brown cheeks with shiny moons.

  Bellinger explained while Blue Back slowly rubbed his belly underneath his shirt and fetched up silent belches one by one.

  “Where do you think they’d cross, Blue Back?”

  “Indians lost,” said Blue Back. “Senecas, Mohawks, no damn good. Get lost. White men go for Fairfield. Make find Jerseyfield road.”

  “I think he’s right,” Bellinger said.

  “Sure,” said Blue Back. “Ask Joe Boleo.”

  “How far north is that?” Willett asked.

  “One day.”

  “How many miles?”

  “One day,” Blue Back repeated with firm politeness.

  Willett gave up.

  “Do you think we can find the army up there?”

  “Sure yes,” said Blue Back. “Like rum. Like drink.”

  “I haven’t any likker.”

  “Sorry,” said Blue Back. “Walking bad. More snow.”

  “What time is it?”

  Bellinger replied.

  “About five.”

  “We’ll have daylight enough in about an hour. You’d better get your men.”

  As Bellinger went towards the door, Blue Back asked anxiously, “Shoot cannon?”

  Bellinger grinned stiffly, nodded, and went out. He felt the cold against his empty belly.

  Willett said, “You better get back to your boys and cook breakfast.”

  “Stay here,” said Blue Back quietly. He drew his blanket over head and hat and crouched beneath it, motionless as a dormant toad beneath a basswood leaf.

  When the swivel thudded, he gave one convulsive flop, but he did not emerge until he heard Bellinger shouting in the parade. Then he poked out his head and eyed Willett dubiously.

  “You take cannon?”

  Willett shook his head impatiently.

  “Fine,” said Blue Back, standing up. “I go too.”

  The muster was as silent a business as the arrival on the afternoon before. The men entering the fort from the surrounding cabins were told to return for their breakfasts and report in half an hour. The men cooking over the open fires in the parade had little to say. The feeling of winter hung in the air. The sky was lustreless. The wind drew steadily from the north, and though they did not feel it in the shelter of Fort Dayton, they could hear its voice in the woods.

  Gil and Joe Boleo ate
together with Lana and Daisy waiting on them, and the two little boys, staring like owls, pressed close together across the hearth where they had been told to stay. Their fascinated eyes had watched their father and Uncle Joe oiling their rifles; they had seen the yet more wonderful operation of Joe whetting his knife and Indian hatchet on a stone, sinking the edges into the board table when he was satisfied. He ate between these implements, knife to right and tomahawk to left. The hinges of his jaw worked visibly and audibly in the thin leather above his cheeks. Only occasionally his eye slid round towards the children’s solemn faces.

  There was a hush in the cabin; partly from the belly-shrinking cold, partly from the thinness of the dawn light, which made one wish to yawn; partly from the anxiety in Lana’s eyes that seemed to have affected Mrs. McKlennar as well as Daisy. The widow lay on her low hemlock bed with her coat still thrown over her blankets. Her long pale face was tilted forward awkwardly by her hands behind her head. She had not even a snort this morning, nor a single caustic word to relieve her feelings. But when Gil and Joe got up she said, “Come kiss me, Gil.”

  Gil got down on his knees on the floor to kiss her and she took one hand from behind her head. Her fingers seemed fleshed with ivory.

  “Good-bye, lad,” she said. Then, “Good-bye, Joe.”

  Joe took off the hat he had just put on and said, “Good-bye, ma’am.” He turned to Daisy. “When I get back I want one of them hot pones.”

  Then the two men at last came to the two boys, and Gil kissed them and Joe tossed them once in the air.

  They went out through the door with Lana following them, huddling her clothes about her against the cold. The door closed for a moment, then Gilly yelled, “Uncle Joe!” He had been watching that knife and tomahawk all along. When Joe put in his head and saw them, he said, “How’d I come to do that?” He closed the door behind him and put them in his sheath and belt and said to Gilly, “I ought to have you along with me to look after me.”

  He hesitated with his hand on the doorlatch and met Mrs. McKlennar’s eye.

  “You’ve got a good heart, Joe.”

  Joe blushed brick red and bolted.

  The men marched off over the thin snow side by side. Lana, her face all pinched against the cold, watched their bodies merge among the tree trunks, and then pass round the corner of the fort. She put her hand to her mouth. It felt frosty where Gil had kissed her. A few snowflakes, hard as shot, drove scatteringly after them.

  The muster in the parade was performed quietly. Willett and Bellinger stood side by side. Once Willett shouted, “I want no dead pans. Keep your priming covered.” The men formed lines, holding their rifles under their arms. They kept shifting from foot to foot with the cold. The dim light and the snow ran the assorted faded colors of their clothes into one indistinguishable muddy brown.

  Bellinger said, “Every man carries his own rations.”

  The rations were passed out and folded inside the blankets and the blankets strapped to the backs.

  “We’re going to march fast,” Willett said quietly. “No straggling. Any man we leave behind will have to look out for himself.”

  For one cold moment more he spoke to Bellinger. Then he called for Demooth’s company.

  Young Lieutenant Tygert stepped forward, followed by the twelve men. Willett looked them over.

  “You boys are to be our advance. I want Helmer, Boleo, and Martin to step forward.” They did so. For an instant Willett eyed Helmer’s huge bulk; what he thought of him was impossible to tell. “Better have one more. Name one,” he said to Martin.

  Gil never knew why he called for John. He had not seen him; perhaps it was because John and Mary had been on his mind. As John stepped forward, Willett said, “You look pretty young.”

  John saluted, and Bellinger said over Willett’s shoulder, “Corporal Weaver served with General Sullivan.”

  “You’ll do,” Willett said without changing expression. “I want you four men to scout ahead. I’m telling you before the army that Ross and Butler are running away. We’re going to try and head them. They’ve still got more men than we are, but they’re running. Blue Back, the Indian, says they’ll head for Fairfield.”

  Joe, characteristically holding his rifle by the muzzle and resting his chin on his hands, nodded. “They’ll head for the Jerseyfield road and pass Mount’s mill. That takes them on the upper trail across the West Canada, to strike the Black River. Where do you want to hit them, General?”

  Willett did not bat an eye.

  “I leave it to you where. I want to hit them, that’s all.”

  “We’d better cross the Crick this side of Schell’s Bush, by the shallow ford, and then we’ll hit for Jerseyfield. Better pick up their trail than take a chance they’ll get lost again.”

  “It’s up to you,” said Willett. “Strike your own pace, but make it a fast one. We’ll keep up. Good-bye, Bellinger.”

  He shook hands, picked up his rifle, and followed Demooth’s company through the gates. Outside they were joined by the fifty Oneidas. These, it was arranged, should screen the flanks, but Blue Back, beaming and saying, “How!” joined the four men at the head. He trotted along with a paunchy jounce, covering the ground as fast as Adam and going as quietly as Joe. Gil and John found themselves pressed to keep up.

  They rapidly drew away from the main force, along the Schell’s Bush road, and for fifteen minutes held the pace. Then Joe lifted his hand. They jogged more comfortably. The first burst had warmed them, and they thought that the men behind would be a long time getting warm. There was not enough snow to keep the frost from getting at your feet.

  “We won’t spread out till after we’ve got over the ford,” said Joe.

  They jogged along in single file. First Joe, making pace, then Blue Back padding in his tracks, then Gil, then John. Adam, hitching up his blanket, came easily in the rear, swinging his big shoulders and humming to himself.

  5

  The Two Camps in Jerseyfield

  The West Canada Creek rolled down through the hills, opaque and brown and swift, a thigh-deep flood even on the shallow ford. It thrust against them icily as they worked their way across holding each other with their left hands, their right hands keeping their rifles over their heads. Adam stemmed the current for them, surefooted, solid as a rock.

  The five men jogged into the woods to make a short circle. Finding all clear, Joe brought them back to the ford. A few moments after their return they saw Lieutenant Tygert lead the advance down to the water’s edge. “Tell him they better cut poles and march across in squads,” Joe said to Adam. Adam lifted his stentorian voice just as Willett’s long red face appeared. In a moment, unheard across the rushing water, they saw the men take hatchets to the nearest maple saplings.

  The snow was thickening, falling with a steady slant into the current of the stream as if it urged it onward. On the pointed hills, the pines were swaying their boughs against the sky.

  Joe sniffed the air.

  “It’s making up,” he said. “We’d better not get too far ahead.” He turned to the Indian. “How about it, Blue Back?”

  Blue Back, the only one of them who had not started shivering, grunted. He said his Indians would keep track of them, and pointed. Already two groups of Indians were trotting down from the flanks and taking to the water one behind the other.

  “All right,” said Joe.

  He trotted off, keeping along the eastern shore of the creek, following a trail that was little more than a deer run. He kept Gil and John with him and sent Adam and Blue Back out to right and left.

  All morning they trotted into the blinding snow, winding back and forth to find the easier going, but always going north.

  At noon they halted briefly to build a fire and soften some salt beef in Joe’s small kettle, fishing out the meat with sticks, swallowing the hot lumps whole and feeling them in their bellies, and taking turns at the resulting broth. The Indian and Adam drifted in through the snow while the three were finish
ing, and Adam cooked his own food. The Indian huddled in his blanket and gnawed a piece of quitcheraw, but accepted a drink or two from the kettle afterwards. While they were still at it, Joe sent John up a tree to see out over the woods, and he reported smoke visible in the south.

  “They’re keeping close just like Willett promised. That man has got the makings of a regular timber beast.” Joe tilted his face and yelled, “Look north!”

  They watched John edge around the tree trunk, but after a minute he shouted down that he could not see anything against the snow.

  “They wouldn’t be this far south,” Joe said. “Come down, John.”

  They left their little fire to be put out by the snow, which was now beginning to drift. The going became heavier, and they dropped to a much slower pace. By four o’clock they were coming out on the black moss country that stretched from above Fairfield to the Mount’s Creek Valley.

  The wind swept over these uplands unhindered except by small stands of poplar. As the men stood with their shoulders to the storm, the snow appeared to drive horizontally past their eyes. They had to shout when they wanted to make themselves heard.

  “We can’t find them to-night,” Adam shouted.

  Blue Back shook his head, and Joe said, “This snow would cover their tracks in twenty minutes the way it’s drifting.”

  The wind was hitting the flats so hard that it lifted the fallen snow in clouds that disappeared in the air like blown dust. The shirts of the men were already stiff and white with it.

  Gil and John, less hardened to woods running than the other three, stood side by side, fighting for their breath. Gil thought the boy looked cold. “All right?” he said close to his ear.

  John turned his head. The snow had whitened his eyebrows and lashes. His thin pale cheeks suddenly shot up spots of color.

  “Yes,” he yelled, and once more turned his face into the wind. Gil looked north. It was getting dark—not dark exactly. He had not been conscious of the fading of light. Instead the whiteness of the storm appeared to increase, draw closer, causing an illusion of emptiness in the land beyond it.

  But now as he looked with John he had a glimpse of the conical tops of hills, revealed for a moment between the snowstorm and the sky. Blue Back also saw them.