Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  Something of these thoughts may have been easily read in my face, for Sir William said, with some abruptness:

  “It is not money; it is principle that men fight for.”

  I was startled, although Sir William sometimes had a way of rounding out my groping thoughts with sudden spoken words which made me fear him.

  “Well, well,” he said, laughing and rising to stretch his cramped limbs; “this is enough for one day, Michael. Let the morrow fret for itself, lad. Come, smile a bit! Shall we have a holiday, perhaps the last for many a month? Nay, do not look so sober, Micky. Who knows what will come? Who knows; who knows?”

  “I shall stand by you, sir, whatever comes,” said I.

  But Sir William only smiled, drawing me to him, one arm about me.

  “Suppose,” said he, “that you and I and Mr. Duncan and Felicity and Peter and Esk take rods and bait and go a-fishing in the Kennyetto by Fonda’s Bush!”

  “A peg-down fishing match!” cried I, enchanted.

  “Ay, a peg-down match, and the prize whatever the victor wills — in reason. What say you, Michael?”

  I was about to assent with enthusiasm when something occurred to me and I stopped.

  “May I wear my uniform, sir?” I asked.

  “Gad!” cried Sir William, in a fit of laughter. “’Tis a bolder man than I who dare separate you from your uniform!”

  “Then I’ll carry my pistols and go a-horse!” said I, delighted.

  The Baronet, hands clasped behind him, nodded absently. That old gray colour came into his face again, and he lifted a belt from the table and studied it dreamily, picking at the wampum which glowed like a snake’s skin in the sunshine.

  CHAPTER V

  To Fonda’s Bush it is a good ten miles. I rode Sir William’s great horse, Warlock, who plunged and danced at the slap of my sword-scabbard on his flanks, and wellnigh shook me from my boots.

  “Spare spur, lad! Let him sniff the pistols!” called Sir William, standing up in the broad hay-wagon to observe me. “He will quiet when he smells the priming, Michael.”

  I drew one of my pistols from the holster and allowed Warlock to sniff it, which he did, arching his neck and pricking forward two wise ears. After this the horse and I understood each other, he being satisfied that it was a real officer he bore and no lout pranked out to shame him before other horses.

  The broad flat hay-wagon, well bedded and deep in rye-straw, was filled with the company on fishing bent; Peter and Esk already disputing over their lines, red quills, and bob-floats; Silver Heels, in flowered cotton damask and hair rolled up under a small hat of straw, always observing me with lowered, uncertain eyes; Mr. Duncan, in fustian coat and leggings, counting out fish-hooks; Sir William, in yellow-and-brown buckskin and scarlet-flowered waistcoat, singing lustily:

  “A-Maying!

  A-Maying!

  Oh, the blackthorn and the broom

  And the primrose are in bloom!”

  Behind the wagon, with punch-jugs swinging on his saddle-bags, like John Gilpin rode young Bareshanks the Scot, all a-grin; while upon either side of the wagon two mounted soldiers trotted, rifles slung and hangers sheathed.

  Thus we set out for Fonda’s Bush, which is a vast woods, cut into a hundred arabesques by the Kennyetto, a stream 59 well named, for in the Indian language it means “Snake-with-its-tail-in-its-mouth,” and, although it flows for forty miles, the source of it is scarce half a mile from the mouth, where it empties into the great Vlaie near to Sir William’s hunting-lodge.

  In the wagon Sir William turned to the windows and waved his hat at Mistress Molly, who stood behind the nursery curtains and kissed her fingers to him. And, as the wagon with its escort rolled off with slow wheels creaking, Mr. Duncan struck up:

  “Who hunts, doth oft in danger ride;

  Who hawks, lures oft both far and wide;

  Who uses games, may often prove

  A loser; but who falls in love,

  Is fettered in fond Cupid’s snare;

  My angle breeds me no such care.”

  And Sir William and Mr. Duncan ended the song:

  “The first men that our Saviour dear

  Did choose to wait upon him here,

  Blest Fishers were,—”

  The shrill voices of Esk and Peter joined in, then were hushed as Silver Heels’s dainty song grew from the silence like a fresh breeze:

  “For Courts are full of flattery

  As hath too oft been tried;

  The City full of wantonness,

  And both be full of Pride:

  Then care away,

  And wend along with me!”

  So singing on their rye-straw couches, the swaying wagon bore them over the hilly road, now up, now rattling down-hill among the stones to ford some ice-clear brook, and away again across the rolling country, followed by Gillie Bareshanks, stone bottles flopping, and the trotting soldiers holding their three-cornered hats on with one hand, bridle-rein in t’other.

  I galloped ahead, pistol poised, frowning at woodlands where I pretended to myself danger might hide, examining 60 all wayfarers with impartial severity; and I doubt not that, seeing me in full uniform and armed, my countenance filled them with misgivings; indeed, some called out to know if the news from Boston was bad, if the Indians meant mischief hereabouts, or if the highwayman, Jack Mount, was abroad.

  “Plague on your pistols!” shouted Sir William, as I waited at a ford for the wagon. “Gad! Michael, your desperate deportment is scaring my tenants along the way! Smile as you gallop, in Heaven’s name! else they’ll take you for Jack Mount himself!”

  Somewhat mortified by Sir William’s roar of laughter, I trotted on in silence, returning my pistol to its holster, and buckling the flap.

  We now entered the slashings of the forest which is called Fonda’s Bush, “bush” meaning land not yet cleared of woods. The sweet, moist shadow of the forest cooled me; I made Warlock stop, for I love to listen and linger in a woodland’s quiet.

  Here the field-birds which had sung everywhere by the roadside were silent, as they always are on the borders of deep forests. Slow hawks sailed along the edge of the woods; out in the clearing a few finches twittered timidly in the sunshine, but here among the hushed ranks of giant trees nothing stirred save green leaves.

  But the solitude of forest depths is no solitude to those who know when and where to watch and listen. Faint sounds came to savant ears: the velvet rustle of a snake brushing its belly over soft mosses; the padded patter of the fox-hare; the husky quhit! quhit! of that ashy partridge whose eye is surmounted by a scarlet patch, and whose flesh is bitter as hemlock. Solitude! Nay, for the quick furry creatures that haunt water-ways live here, slipping among bowlders, creeping through crevices; here a mink with eyes like jet beads; here a whiskered otter peering from a cleft; now a musk-rat squatting to wash his face; now a red martin thrashing about in the thick tree-top like a mammoth squirrel at frolic.

  If this be solitude, with the stream softly talking in that silly babble which is a language, too; if this be solitude, with the shy deer staring and the tiny wood-mouse in the 61 windfall scraping busily; if this be solitude, then imprison me here, and not in the cities, where solitude is in men’s hearts!

  Five miles still lay before us over the moist, springy forest road, an excellent and carefully constructed thoroughfare which had been begun by Sir William and designed for a short and direct route to those healing springs of Saratoga which he loved, twenty-eight miles northeast of us. But this route had never been continued east of Fonda’s Bush, partly because the winding Kennyetto interfered too often, demanding to be bridged a dozen times in a mile, partly because an easier though longer route had been surveyed by the engineer officers from Albany, and was already roughly marked as far as the Diamond Hill, from which, in clear weather, the Saratoga lake may be seen.

  The road we travelled, therefore, came to an abrupt end on the banks of the Kennyetto; and here, in a sunny clearing which was a suga
r-bush lately in use, the wagon and its passengers halted, and I dismounted, flinging my bridle to one of the soldiers.

  “Souse the stone jugs in the stream!” called out Sir William to young Bareshanks, who came bumping up with his bottles a-knocking and his hat crammed on his ears.

  Peter and Esk wriggled out of the straw, fighting over a red and blue bob-float, and fell with a thump upon the moss, locked in conflict. Whereupon Sir William fetched them a clip with his ivory cane across their buttocks, which brought them up snivelling, but reconciled.

  Meanwhile Mr. Duncan had gone to the bank of the stream with six sharp pegs, all numbered; and presently Sir William joined him, where they consulted seriously concerning the proper ground, and took snuff and hummed and hawed with much wagging of heads and many eye-squints at the sky and water.

  At last, the question being settled, Mr. Duncan set the six pegs ten yards apart and pushed them noiselessly down into the bank, while Sir William removed his hat and placed in the crown six bits of birch-bark with numbers written on each.

  “Now, then, young wild-cats,” he said, frowning at Esk 62 and Peter, “and you, Felicity, you, too, Mr. Duncan, and Michael, also, come and draw lots for pegs. Zounds! Peter! Ladies first, sir! Now, Felicity!”

  Silver Heels placed one hand over her eyes and groped in the hat until her fingers clutched a square of bark. Then she drew it out.

  “Number six!” she said, shyly.

  “Last peg to the left,” announced Sir William. “Who next? Draw, Mr. Duncan!”

  “Me! Me!” shouted Peter and Esk, charging at the hat and tearing their numbers from it.

  Then Mr. Duncan drew, and then I drew number five.

  “Get ready!” commanded Sir William, fumbling with his fish-rod. “Michael, take care of Felicity!”

  Now the rules for a peg-down fishing match are few and simple. Each contestant must fish from the position which his peg indicates, and he must not leave his peg to fish elsewhere until the match is ended. Furthermore, he must fish courteously and with due regard for his neighbour’s rights, employing no unfair means to attract fish to his own bait or to drive them from his neighbour’s. The contestant securing the largest number of fish is the winner; he who bags the largest single fish is adjudged worthy of a second prize; he who secures the choicest individual fish receives a crown of young oak leaves.

  At the words, “Take your stations!” we trooped to our pegs. Silver Heels was on the extreme left, I next, then Sir William, then Mr. Duncan, then Peter, and, last of all, Esk.

  “Fish!” cried Sir William, and swung his rod from the wrist, sending a green and gray and scarlet feather-fly out into the water.

  Silver Heels held her hook out to me and I garnished it with a bit of eel’s skin and red flannel. My own line I baited with angle-worm, and together we cast out into the slow, deep current.

  Farther along I heard Esk and Peter cast out with some heedless splashing, which was the occasion of mutual recrimination until Sir William silenced them.

  Yet almost immediately fat Peter caught a fish, which is like all Indians. However, it was but a spiny sun-fish with 63 blue and scarlet and yellow gills. Still it made Peter’s score one.

  “Does that count?” asked Silver Heels, turning up her nose. “See! Peter hath another one — a sun-fish, too! Pooh! Anybody can catch sun-fish.”

  “Better catch ’em then,” said Sir William, laughing, and drawing his fly over the water to recover it for another cast.

  Splash! — and Peter had a third sun-fish; and in another moment Esk jerked a fourth from the water, secured his prize with a scowl at Peter, and hurriedly rebaited, muttering and breathing thickly.

  Then Mr. Duncan’s yellow float bobbed under, once, twice, then bobbed so fast that the water dimpled all around and the little rings, spreading, succeeded each other so quickly that the wavelets covered the yellow float.

  “A barbel-pout,” quoth Mr. Duncan, coolly, and sure enough up came the bluish-black fish and flapped and squeaked, now on its white belly, now on its back, grinning with its gummy, whiskered maw agape and its three dagger fins ready to stab and poison him who rashly grasped it.

  “Silver Heels,” said I, politely; “you are having a nibble.”

  “Oh, so I am!” she cried, and drew a lovely blue and silver frost-fish to the surface, only to lose it by over-haste, and cry out in her vexation.

  I explained to her how to strike the hook before pulling in, and she thanked me very modestly. There was a new and humble tone in her voice, delicate and grateful flattery to me, due, as I knew perfectly well, to my uniform. Nor did the tribute savour of any after-sting of jealousy or resentment for my new honours.

  She recognized that I had climbed high in a single day, leaving the rounds of childhood behind forever; and she knew, too, which I did not, that she also was climbing the ladder very swiftly, a little behind me now, yet confident, and meaning to rejoin and pass me ere I dreamed of such a thing.

  About this time Sir William hooked and landed a great pink and white Mohawk chub, which had risen silently from a black pool and had sucked in his feather-fly.

  “Tush!” said Sir William. “I’ll not count that!” And 64 with a slack and a snip! he unhooked the fish, which at once slowly sank back into the black channel. Whereupon Sir William smoothed out his fly, and took snuff, singing merrily:

  “A-Maying!

  A-Maying!”

  “You bade us make no noise, sir,” spoke up Esk, reproachfully.

  “So I did, lad! So I did! But not with thy mouth. Shout all day, and never a trout budges. Stamp thy feet — ay, brush but a stone in passing, and it’s farewell, master troutling! Ho! What was that?”

  A spattering and splashing arose from Peter’s peg, and all turned to see the fat little Mohawk dragging a trout from the water and up the bank, where he fell upon the bouncing fish, whooping like the savage he was.

  “Clearly,” mused Sir William, “my eye has lost its cunning, and my arm its strength. So passes the generation that was born with me! Heigh-ho! Well done, Peter boy!”

  Silver Heels was doomed to ill-fortune. She lost a second frost-fish, and was ready to weep. So I laid my rod on the bank, leaving the baited hook in the water, and went over to her, for she seemed discouraged, having broken her hook and quill.

  “Fen dubs!” shouted Peter, from the other end of the line. “You can’t do that, Michael! I’m ahead of you all, and it is not fair!”

  “Mind your business,” said I, sitting down beside Silver Heels; and truly enough he did, for, before I was seated, Peter jumped up, struggling with a fat white perch, which he landed, yelling and dancing in his vanity.

  “Never you mind, Silver Heels,” said I, tying a plated hook on her line, and covering it with a long silvery strip of skin and pin-feathers from a pullet’s neck. “Now do as I say; toss the bait down stream, so! Now draw it slowly till it spins like a top.”

  Ere I could end my instructions I saw the nose of a great gold-green pike close after her bait.

  “Slack!” I whispered. “He has it!”

  She held the rod still. There came a twitch, more twitches, 65 but so gentle you would have vowed ’twas a tender-mouthed minnow lipping the line.

  “He gorged it,” I muttered; “strike hard!”

  “A log!” wailed Silver Heels, as she felt the rod stagger when the hook, deeply struck, embedded barb and shank.

  But it was no log, for instantly the great fish shot into the air, and lay a-wallowing and thrashing in mid-stream.

  “A chain-pike!” cried Sir William, briskly. “Do you net him, Michael, else Felicity will take a swim she has not bargained for!”

  I ran to Sir William, who thrust the net at me, and back again as fast as my legs could move to Silver Heels, who had dropped the rod and now, sprawling on the moss, lay a-pulling at the line which was cutting her tender fingers.

  “No fair!” bellowed fat Peter, jealously. “Let her bag her own game as I do! Hi-yi! Another
trout!”

  But spite of Peter’s clamour and Esk’s injured howls, I netted the floundering pike and flung it among the bushes, where young Bareshanks gaffed it and held it aloft.

  There it hung, all spray and green and gold, marked with the devil’s chain pattern; and its wolf-jaws gaping, lined with teeth.

  “Oh, Michael,” quavered Silver Heels, staring at her captive. She moved a little nearer to the fish, plucking up her skirts with her fingers, and bending forward, alarmed, amazed at the fierce, dripping creature.

  “Ugh! There’s blood on it!” she whispered, taking fast hold of my arm.

  “Is it not a noble prize!” I urged, eagerly. But she shook her head and turned away, holding me tightly by the sleeve.

  “Are you not proud?” I persisted, irritably. “It is the biggest fish any have yet caught. You will gain second prize, silly! What’s the matter with you, anyhow!” I added, in a temper.

  “I can’t help it,” she said, tremulously; “I’m not a man, and it frightens me to kill. I shall fish no more. Ugh — the blood! — and how it quivered when the gillie gaffed it! I could cry my eyes out for the life I took so lightly!”

  I was disgusted and hurt, too, for I had thought to please 66 her. I drew my sleeve from her fingers, but she only stood there like a simpleton harping on one string:

  “Oh, the brave fish! Oh, the poor brave fish! I hurt it! — I saw blood on it, Michael.”

  “Ninny,” said I; “there is blood on your fingers, too, where the line cut, and you’ve wiped it on my sleeve!”

  She looked at her bleeding fingers in a silly, startled fashion, then held them out to me so pitifully that I could do no less than wipe them clean and bind them in my handkerchief, though it was my best, and flowered and laced at that.

  “I don’t care,” she said, a-pouting at the water; “you told me that when you shot wild things it saddened you, too.”