“I go south,” I replied, cautiously.
“Oh, you do, eh?” said Mount, fumbling in his pockets for the flint he had taken from my rifle. “Are you bound for Cresap’s camp, too?”
“Are you?” I asked, reddening.
He rubbed his chin, watching me with sulky eyes.
“You answer ever with a question!” he complained, fretfully. “I ask you this and you ask me that — tom tiddle! tiddle tom! — and I be no wiser now for all I have heard your name.”
“I know Michael Cardigan,” observed the Weasel, quietly coming up, buckling on his pack.
“It’s an honourable name,” I began, in desperation, striving to stop him, but the Weasel ignored me and addressed himself to Mount.
“He’s one of Sir William Johnson’s household. That accounts for those peace-belts of wampum. Shemuel, yonder, knows the lad.”
“Oho!” exclaimed Mount, staring at me. “So you come on Sir William’s business to the Cayugas? Ha! Now I begin to grasp this pretty game. Sir William wishes his Cayugas to sit tight while Cresap builds forts—”
“Hush, for God’s sake!” I pleaded, seeing that he had guessed all.
“Oh, I’ll hush,” he replied, eying me with frank curiosity. “I am no enemy to Sir William. A fairer and more honest gentleman lives not in these colonies, be he Tory or patriot! Oh, I’ll hush, but every one knows Sir William will not have the Indians take sides in this same war that’s coming so fast upon us. It’s no secret, lad; every pot-house, every tavern tap-room is full o’ gossip that Butler means to rouse the Indians against us, and that Sir William will not have it!”
“Since when have you come from Johnstown?” I asked, astonished.
“Oh, a week after you left,” replied the Weasel. “We saw your tracks, but we went another way after the first week. You lost too much time.”
Mount had now hoisted his pack to his shoulders and stood watching Shemuel, the Hebrew peddler, strapping up his dingy boxes, tucking in bits of lace and ribbon and cheap finery.
“Come on, Shemmy, you pigeon-toed woodchuck!” growled Mount, cracking a fresh lump of spruce-gum in his glistening teeth.
The little Jew looked up at me slyly, his grimy fists buried in the bowels of his gewgaws.
“Perhaps the gendleman cares to look at som goots?” he observed, interrogatively. “I haff chains, buckles, pins, needles, buttons, laces, knifes, ribbons for queue and gollarettes—”
Mount, with the toe of his moccasin, gently reversed Shemuel into one of his own boxes, then warning him to pack up if he valued his scalp, took my arm in friendly fashion and moved out into the gray woods.
“Touching this mission of yours to the Cayugas,” he said, frankly, “I see no good to come of it, and I say this with all respect to Sir William. By-the-bye, Sir William has much to trouble him these days.”
“I know that,” said I, sadly.
“Oh no, you don’t,” smiled Mount. “There have been strange doings in Johnstown since you left: a change has come in a single week, lad; neighbours no longer speak; the town is three parts Tory to one part patriot; even brothers hate each other. Two taverns known to be the meeting-places of patriots have been set afire and shot into; and old John Butler is gone north, where, they say, he is raising a bloody crew of cut-throats, rangers, half-breeds, and young Mohawks. Sir William is holding long talks with Brant and Red Jacket at the upper castle. Oh, the sands begin to run faster now, and men must soon take one side or t’other, for there’s more troops going to Boston, and that means the end of King George!”
I did not perhaps realize the importance of all he said; I had seen too little of the rebels themselves to credit the seriousness of the situation. But here was an opportunity to sound Mount on the Cresap affair, and I began earnestly.
“Can you not see that Colonel Cresap is driving the Cayugas into the King’s ranks?”
“What do we care for the Cayugas?” replied Mount, contemptuously; and it was in vain I wasted argument on this man who had been born a woodsman, but who knew the 161 savages only from the outside. I could not make him see the foolish uselessness of angering the Six Nations. He was one of that kind who detested all Indians, who professed to hold them in scorn, and who had passed his life in killing all he could.
“What are we to do?” he demanded, sarcastically. “Give up the frontier and go back to Virginia with tails between our legs?”
“Better that than serve as silly tools for Dunmore!” I retorted hotly.
“Dunmore!” sneered Mount. “We his tools, when the silly ass hasn’t wits to twiddle his own thumbs?”
“He had the wit to send Butler to stop me!” I answered, bitterly.
Mount began to grin again and wink his eyes slyly.
“Butler came for something else, too,” he said. “Dunmore’s suite travelled south the day you left, and ought to be in Fortress Pitt by this hour to-morrow.”
“What of it?” I asked.
“Ay, that’s it, you see. Since you left Johnstown, all are talking of the new beauty who threw over Walter Butler — what’s her name — a certain Miss Warren, ward of Sir William; and it is commonly reported that the dispute over the Indians and the quarrel betwixt Butler and Sir William stopped the match.”
“What of it!” I broke out, hoarsely.
“Only that this beautiful Miss Warren came with Lord Dunmore’s suite to Pittsburg, and Walter Butler has openly boasted he will marry her spite of Sir William or the devil himself. And here is the lady — and here comes her rash gallant tumbling after his jill!”
To hear her name in the southern wilderness, to hear these things in this place, told coarsely, told with a wink and a leer, raised such a black fury in me that I could scarce see the man before me. As for speaking, my throat closed and my breast heaved as though to burst the very straps on my pack. Oh, that I had killed Butler! I clutched my rifle and glared into the gray waste of misty trees. Somewhere out there that devil was lurking; and when I had fulfilled my trust I would seek him and end everything for good and all.
“Are you certain that Miss Warren is already in Pittsburg?” I managed to ask.
“We saw the ladies and the escort a week since,” said Mount. “The trail is good for horses below Crown Gap, and they were well mounted, ay, nobly horsed, ladies and troopers, by Heaven! Was it not a splendid sight, Cade?”
“Gay and godless,” replied the Weasel, buckling the straps on his pack more tightly and shifting the weight with a grunt. “Are you ready, Jack?”
Mount looked at me.
“Join us and welcome,” he said, briefly. “It’s safer than going alone. Our friend, Mr. Sheriff Butler, will be watching for us, and we mustn’t keep the gentleman on tenter-hooks too long, eh, Cade?”
“Certainly not,” said Cade; and we moved off due west, Mount leading, then Shemuel the peddler, then I, the Weasel trotting furtively in the rear.
At times the little peddler twisted his greasy neck to look back at me with an inscrutable expression that puzzled me; but he said nothing, so I only scowled at him, meaning to imply my disgust at his treachery. However, as we strung out through the forest, I quickened my pace and came up beside him, saying, “It was not very wise of you, Shemuel; the next time you come to our house you get no permit to peddle.”
“Ach!” he said, spreading his fingers in deprecation, “don’d speag aboud it, Mr. Cardigan. Sir William he has giff me so many permids mitout a shilling to pay. Oh, sir, he iss a grand gendleman, Sir William, ain’t he?”
“What made you betray my name and quality then, Shemuel?” I asked, curiously.
His small eyes sought mine, then dropped meekly, as he plodded on in silence. Nor could I get another word from him; so I fell back into my place, with a glance at the sun, which was still shining directly in my face.
“The Fort Pitt trail lies west by south,” I suggested, over my shoulder, to the Weasel.
“There’s a shorter cut to Cresap,” he replied, cunningly.
“Shorter than the Pitt trail?” I asked, astonished.
“Shorter because healthier,” he returned. And, answering 163 my puzzled smile, he added, “A long life on a long trail, but there’s ever a shorter cut to the gibbet!”
Mount, who had fallen back beside us, grinned at me and rubbed his nose.
“Butler will be sitting up like a bereaved catamount in the Pitt trail for us,” he said. “I’ve no powder to waste on him and his crew. However, Mr. Cardigan, if you want to take a long shot, now’s your chance to mark their hides.”
He took me by the arm and led me cautiously a few rods to the left, then crouched down and parted the bushes with his hand. We were kneeling on the very edge of a precipice which I never should have seen, and over which I certainly should have walked had I been here alone. Deep down below us the Ohio flowed, a dark, slow stream, with jutting rocks on the eastern bank and a long flat sand-spit on the west.
At the point of this spit a man was standing, leaning on a rifle. It was not Butler.
“There’s another fellow on that rock,” whispered Mount, pointing. “Butler will be watching the slope below our camp.”
“Let him watch it,” observed the Weasel; “we’ll be with Cresap by moon-rise!”
“You can take a safe shot from here,” smiled Mount, looking around at me; “but it’s too far to go for the scalp.”
I shook my head, shuddering, and we resumed our march, filing away into the west in perfect silence until the sun stood in mid-heaven and the heated air under the great pines drove us to the nearest water, which I had been sniffing for some time past.
Resting there to drink, I looked curiously at my three companions. Such a company I had never beheld. There was the notorious Mount, a giant in stringy buckskins, with a paw like a bear and a smooth, boyish face cut by the single, heavy crease of a scar below the right eye. With his regular features and indolent movements, he appeared to me like some overgrown village oaf, too stupid to work, too lazy to try.
Beside him squatted the little Jew, toes turned in, dirty thumbs joined pensively, musing in his red beard. His boots 164 had left the foreign mark which I had seen the day before in the trail; the Weasel’s moccasins were those of Albany make.
I examined the Weasel. Such a shrunken, serene, placid little creature, all hunting-shirt and cap, with two finely chiselled flat ears, which perhaps gave him that alert allure, as though eternally listening to some sound behind his back.
But the mouths of these three men were curiously well made, bespeaking a certain honesty which I began to believe they perhaps possessed after all. Even Shemuel’s mouth, under his thin, red beard, was not the mouth of treachery, though the lips were shrewd enough, God wot!
“Well,” cried Mount suddenly, “what do you think of us?”
Somewhat embarrassed, I replied politely, but Mount shook his head.
“You were thinking, what a row of gallows-birds for an honest man to flock with! Eh? Oh, don’t deny it. You can’t hurt my feelings, but you might hurt the Weasel’s — eh, Cade?”
“I have sensitive feelings,” said the Weasel dryly.
“I think you all stood by me when I was in distress,” said I. “I ask no more of my friends than that.”
“Well, you’re a good lad,” said Mount, getting to his feet and patting my shoulder as he passed me.
“Give him something to wreck his life and he’d make a rare ranger,” observed the Weasel.
“Cade was in love,” explained Mount soberly; “weren’t you Cade?”
The weazened little man nodded his head and looked up at me sentimentally.
“Yes,” went on Mount, “Cade was in love and got married. His wife ran away somewheres — didn’t she Cade?”
Again the little creature nodded, looking soberly at me for sympathy.
“And then,” continued Mount, “he just hunted around till he found me, and we went to hell together — didn’t we, Cade, old friend?”
Two large tears stole down the Weasel’s seamy cheeks. He rubbed them off with his smoky fists, leaving smears beside his nose.
“She took our baby, too,” he sniffed; “you forgot that, Jack.”
“So I did, so I did,” said Mount, pityingly. “Come on, friends, the sun’s sliding galley west, and it’s a longer road to the devil than Boston preachers tell you. Come, Shemmy, old chuck, hoist that pretty nose up on both feet! Now, Mr. Cardigan!”
We marched on heavily, bearing southwest, descending the great slope of mountain and table-land which was but a vast roof, shedding a thousand streams into the slow Ohio, now curving out below us, red as blood in the kindling coals of sunset.
The river seemed but a mile distant, so clear was the air in the mountains, but we journeyed on, hour after hour, until the big yellow moon floated above the hills, and the river faded into the blue shadows of a splendid night.
Mount had thrown aside all caution now. He strode on ahead, singing a swinging air with full-chested lungs:
“Come, all you Tryon County men,
And never be dismayed,
But trust in the Lord,
And He will be your aid!”
And one by one we all took up the stirring song, singing cheerily as we marched in file, till the dark forest rang back word for word.
And I do remember Shemuel, his thumbs in his arm-pits, and cap over one eye, singing right lustily and footing it proudly beside Mount.
Suddenly a light twinkled on the edge of a clearing, then another broke out like a star in the bush, and soon all about us cabin-windows gleamed brightly and we were marching down a broad road, full of stones and stumps, and lined on either side by cultivated land and cabins enclosed in little stockades.
“Shoulder arms! Right wheel!” cried Mount; and we filed between two block-houses, and across a short bridge, and halted, grounding arms under the shadow of a squatty fort built with enormous logs.
The sentry had called out the guard, and the corporal in 166 charge came up to us, lifting his lanthorn. He greeted Mount cheerfully, nodding and smiling at Renard also.
“Who the devil is this he-goat with red whiskers?” he demanded, illuminating Shemuel’s cheerful features.
“Friend of liberty,” said Mount, in a low voice. “Is Colonel Cresap in the fort, corporal?”
“No,” said the corporal, looking hard at me; “he’s off somewhere. Who is this gentleman, Jack?”
I looked at Mount, perhaps appealingly, wondering what he would say.
But he did not hesitate; he laid his great paw on my shoulder and said, “He’s a good lad, corporal; give him a bed and a bowl o’ porridge, and it’s a kindness to Jack Mount you will do.”
Then he held out his hand to me, and I took it.
“Good-night lad,” he said, heartily. “We’ll meet again to-morrow. I’ve a few friends to see to-night. Sleep tight to the bed and think not too much ill of this same Catamount Jack they write books about.”
The Weasel sidled up and offered his small, dry hand.
“If you were ruined,” he said, regretfully, “you’d make a rare wood-runner.”
I thanked him uncertainly and returned Shemuel’s low obeisance with an unforgiving nod.
“Pray, follow me, sir,” said the corporal, with a civil bow, and I walked after him through the postern, out across the moonlit parade, and into the western barracks, where he lighted me to a tiny casemate and pointed to a door.
“We have messed, but there’s some cold meat and a jug of cider for you,” he said, affably. “Yonder’s a bucket of water, and I’ll leave this lanthorn for you. Open that door, and you’ll find food and drink. Good-night, sir.”
“Good-night,” I said, “and pardon my importunity, but I have a message for Colonel Cresap.”
“He returns to the fort to-morrow,” said the soldier. Then, lingering, he asked the news from Boston and whether any more troops had been sent thither. But I did not know and he retired presently, whistling “The White Cockade,
” and making passes at the moonbeams with his bright bayonet.
As for me, I sat down on the bed, and slipping my sack 167 from my shoulders, I rolled over on the blanket, meaning only to close my eyes for a minute. But dawn was shining in through the loopholes of the casemate ere I unclosed my eyes to the world again, and the drums and fifes were playing, the sun above the horizon.
Bang! went a cannon from the parapet, and, leaning out of the porthole, I saw the flag of England crawling up the halyards over my head.
I sprang out of bed, and without waiting for food, though I was half famished, I dressed hurriedly and ran out across the parade to the postern.
“How far is the Cayuga castle?” I asked the sentinel.
“About a mile up the river,” he replied, adding: “It’s not very safe to go there just now. The Indians have been restless these three weeks, and I guess there’s deviltry hatching yonder.”
“Don’t they come in to the village at all?” I inquired, glancing around at half a dozen men who had gathered at the postern to watch the morning parade.
“There’s a Cayuga, now,” said the sentry, pointing to a short, blanketed figure squatting outside the drawbridge.
I walked across the bridge and approached the Indian, who immediately rose when he saw me, as though he expected ill-treatment, a kick perhaps. The movement was full of sad significance to me, like the cowering of a mistreated hound. Shame to those who inspire cringing in beasts! Double dishonour on those before whom men cower!
So this was the result of Cresap’s coming! I saw it all in an instant; the bullying, overbearing pioneers were here to stay, backed by cannon and fort and a thousand long rifles, backed, too, by my Lord Dunmore, to play for a stake, the winning of which meant woe unspeakable to my native land.
The Indian was watching me sullenly. I held out my hand and said: “Peace, brother. I am a belt-bearer.”
There was a silence. After a moment he took my hand.
“Peace, bearer of belts,” he said, quietly.
“Our council fire is at Onondaga,” I said.
“It burns on the Ohio, too,” he replied, gravely.
“It burns at both doors of the Long House,” I said. “Go to your sachems and wise men. Say to them that Quider is 168 dead; that the three clans who mourn shall be raised up; that Sir William has sent six belts to the Cayuga. I bear them.”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 98