Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “Am I then so vital to you?”

  “Utterly.”

  “To how many other women have you spoken thus?” she asked gravely.

  “To none.”

  “Truly?”

  “Truly, Lois.”

  She said in a low voice:

  “Other men have said it to me.... I have heard them swear it with tears in their eyes and calling God to witness. And I knew all the while that they were lying — perjuring their souls for the sake of a ragged, unripe jade, and a wild night’s frolic.... Well — God made men.... I know myself, too.... To love you as you wish is to care less for you than I already do. I would not willingly.... Yet, I may try if you wish it.... So that is all the promise I dare make you. Come — take me home now — if you care to walk as far with me.”

  “And I who am asking you to walk through life with me?” I said, forcing a laugh.

  We turned; she took my arm, and together we moved slowly back through the falling dusk.

  And, as we approached her door, came a sudden and furious sound of galloping behind us, and we sprang to the side of the road as the express thundered by in a storm of dust and driving pebbles.

  “News,” she whispered. “Do they bring good news as fast as bad?”

  “It may mean our marching orders,” I said, dejected.

  We had now arrived at Croghan’s, and she was withdrawing her arm from mine, when the hollow sound of a conch-horn went echoing and booming through the dusk.

  “It does mean your marching orders!” she exclaimed, startled.

  “It most certainly means something,” said I. “Good-night — I must run for the fort — —”

  “Are you going to —— to leave me?”

  “That horn is calling out Morgan’s men — —”

  “Am I not to see you again?”

  “Why, yes — I expect so — but if — —”

  “Oh! Is there an ‘if’?’ Euan, are you going away forever?”

  “Dear maid, I don’t know yet what has happened — —”

  “I do! You are going!... To your death, perhaps — for all I know — —”

  “Hush! And good-night — —”

  She held to my offered hand tightly:

  “Don’t go — don’t go — —”

  “I will return and tell you if — —”

  “‘If!’ That means you will not return! I shall never see you again!”

  I had flung one arm around her, and she stood with one hand clenched against her lips, looking blankly into my face.

  “Good-bye,” I said, and kissed her clenched hand so violently that it slipped sideways on her cheek, bruising her lips.

  She gave a faint gasp and swayed where she stood, very white in the face.

  “I have hurt you,” I stammered; but my words were lost in a frightful uproar bursting from the fort; and:

  “God!” she whispered, cowering against me, as the horrid howling swelled on the affrighted air.

  “It is only the Oneidas’ scalp-yell,” said I. “They know the news. Their death-halloo means that the corps of guides is ordered out. Good-bye! You have means to support you now till I return. Wait for me; love me if it is in you to love such a man. Whatever the event, my devotion will not alter. I leave you in God’s keeping, dear. Good-bye.”

  Her hand was still at her bruised lips; I bent forward; she moved it aside. But I kissed only her hand.

  Then I turned and ran toward the fort; and in the torch-light at the gate encountered Boyd, who said to me gleefully:

  “It’s you and your corps of guides! The express is from Clinton. Hanierri remains; the Sagamore goes with you; but the regiment is not marching yet awhile. Lord help us! Listen to those beastly Oneidas in their paint! Did you ever hear such a wolf-pack howling! Well, Loskiel, a safe and pleasant scout to you.” He offered his hand. “I’ll be strolling back to Croghan’s. Fare you safely!”

  “And you,” I said, not thinking, however, of him. But I thought of Lana, and wished to God that Boyd were with us on this midnight march, and Lana safe in Albany once more.

  As I entered the fort, through the smoky flare of torches, I saw Dolly Glenn waiting there; and as I passed she gave a frightened exclamation.

  “Did you wish to speak to me?” I asked.

  “Is — is Lieutenant Boyd going with you?” she stammered.

  “No, child.”

  She thanked me with a pitiful sort of smile, and shrank back into the darkness.

  I remained but a few moments with Major Parr and Captain Simpson; a rifleman of my own company, Harry Kent, brought me my pack and rifle — merely sufficient ammunition and a few necessaries — for we were to travel lightly. Then Captain Simpson went away to inspect the Oneida scouts.

  “I wish you well,” said the Major quietly. “Guard the Mohican as you would the apple of your eye, and — God go with you, Euan Loskiel.”

  I saluted, turned squarely, and walked out across the parade to the postern. Here I saw Captain Simpson inspecting the four guides, one of whom, to me, seemed unnecessarily burdened with hunting shirt and blanket.

  Running my eye along their file, where they stood in the uncertain torchlight, I saw at once that the guides selected by Major Parr were not all Oneidas. Two of them seemed to be; a third was a Stockbridge Indian; but the fourth — he with the hunting-shirt and double blanket, wore unfamiliar paint.

  “What are you?” said I in the Oneida dialect, trying to gain a square look at him in the shifty light.

  “Wyandotte,” he said quietly.

  “Hell!” said I, turning to Captain Simpson. “Who sends me a Wyandotte?”

  “General Clinton,” replied Simpson in surprise. “The Wyandotte came from Fortress Pitt. Colonel Broadhead, commanding our left wing, sent him, most highly recommending him for his knowledge of the Susquehanna and Tioga.”

  I took another hard look at the Wyandotte.

  “You should travel lighter,” said I. “Split that Niagara blanket and roll your hunting-shirt.”

  The savage looked at me a moment, then his sinewy arms flew up and he snatched the deerskin shirt from his naked body. The next instant his knife fairly leaped from its beaded sheath; there was a flash of steel, a ripping sound, and his blue and scarlet blanket lay divided. Half of it he flung to a rifleman, and the other half, with his shirt, he rolled and tied to his pack.

  Such zeal and obedience pleased me, and I smiled and nodded to him. He showed his teeth at me, which I fancied was his mode of smiling. But it was somewhat hideous, as his nose had been broken, and the unpleasant dent in it made horridly conspicuous by a gash of blood-red paint.

  I buckled my belt and pack and picked up my rifle. Captain Simpson shook hands with me. At the same moment, the rifleman sent to our bush-hut to summon the Mohican returned with him. And a finer sight I never saw; for the tall and magnificently formed Siwanois was in scarlet war-paint from crown to toe, oiled, shaven save for the lock, and crested with a single scarlet plume — and heaven knows where he got it, for it was not dyed, but natural.

  His scarlet and white beaded sporran swung to his knees; his ankle moccasins were quilled and feathered in red and white; the Erie scalps hung from his girdle, hooped in red, and he bore only a light pack-slung, besides his rifle and short red blanket.

  “Salute, O Sagamore! Roya-neh!” I said in a low voice, passing him.

  He smiled, then his features became utterly blank, as one by one the eyes of the other Indians flashed on his for a moment, then shifted warily elsewhere.

  I made a quick gesture, turned, and started, heading the file out into the darkness.

  And as we advanced noiselessly and swung west into the Otsego road, I was aware of a shadow on my right — soft hands outstretched — a faint whisper as I kissed her tightening fingers. Then I ran on to head that painted file once more, and for a time continued to lead at hazard, blinded with tears.

  And it was some minutes before I was conscious of the Mohican’s hand upon my arm
, guiding my uncertain feet through the star-shot dark.

  CHAPTER XI

  A SCOUT OF SIX

  We were now penetrating that sad and devastated region laid waste so recently by Brant, Butler, and McDonald, from Cobus-Kill on the pleasant river Askalege, to Minnisink on the silvery Delaware — a vast and mournful territory which had been populous and prosperous a twelvemonth since, and was now the very abomination of desolation.

  Cherry Valley lay a sunken mass of blood-wet cinders; Wyoming had gone up in a whirlwind of smoke, and the wretched Connecticut inhabitants were dead or fled; Andrustown was now no more, Springfield, Handsome Brook, Bowmans, Newtown-Martin — all these pretty English villages were vanished; the forest seedlings already sprouted in the blackened cellars, and the spotted tree-cats squalled from the girdled orchards under the July moon.

  Where horses, cows, sheep, men, women, and children had lain dead all over the trampled fields, the tall English grass now waved, yellowing to fragrant hay; horses, barns, sheds — nay, even fences, wagons, ploughs, and haycocks had been laid in cinders. There remained not one thing that could burn which had not been burned. Only breeze-stirred ashes marked these silent places, with here and there a bit of iron from wagon or plough, rusting in the dew, or a steel button from some dead man’s coat, or a bone gone chalky white — dumb witnesses that the wrath of England had passed wrapped in the lightning of Divine Right.

  But Great Britain’s flaming glory had swept still farther westward, for German Flatts was gone except for its church and one house, which were too near the forts for the destructives to burn. But they had laid in ashes more than a hundred humble homes, barns, and mills, and driven off more than a thousand cattle, horses, sheep, and oxen, leaving the barnyard creatures dead or dying, and ten thousand skipples of grain afire.

  So it was no wonder that the provisioning of our forces at Otsego had been slow, and that we now had five hundred wagons flying steadily between Canajoharie and the lake, to move our stores as they arrived by batteaux from below. And there were some foolish and impatient folk in Congress, so I heard, who cried out at our delay; and one more sinister jackass, who had said that our army would never move until a few generals had been court-martialed and shot. And our Major Parr said that he wished to God we had the Congress with us so that for once they might have their bellyful of stratagem and parched corn.

  But it is ever so with those home-loving and unsurpassed butcher-generals, baker-brigadiers, candlestick-colonels, who, yawning in bed, win for us victories while we are merely planning them — and, rolling over, go to sleep with a consciousness of work well done, the candle snuffed, and the cat locked out for the night.

  About eleven o’clock on the first night out, I halted my scout of six and lay so, fireless, until sun-up. We were not far, then, from the head of the lake; and when we marched at dawn next morning we encountered a company of Alden’s men mending roads as usual; and later came upon an entire Continental regiment and a company of Irregular Rifles, who were marching down to the lake to try out their guns. Long after we quitted them we heard their heavy firing, and could distinguish between the loud and solid “Bang!” of the muskets and the sharper, whip-lash crack of the long rifles.

  The territory that now lay before us was a dense and sunless wilderness, save for the forest openings made by rivers, lakes, and streams. And it was truly the enemy’s own country, where he roamed unchecked except for the pickets of General Sullivan’s army, which was still slowly concentrating at Tioga Point whither my scout of six was now addressed. And the last of our people that we saw was a detail of Alden’s regiment demolishing beaver dams near the lake’s outlet which, they informed us, the beavers rebuilt as fast as they were destroyed, to the rage and confusion of our engineers. We saw nothing of the industrious little animals, who are accustomed to labor while human beings sleep, but we saw their felled logs and cunningly devised dams, which a number of our men were attacking with pick and bar, standing in the water to their arm-pits.

  Beyond them, at the Burris Farm, we passed our outlying pickets — Irregular Riflemen from the Scoharie and Sacandaga, tall, lean, wiry men, whose leaf-brown rifle-dress so perfectly blended with the tree-trunks that we were aware of them only when they halted us. And, Lord! To see them scowl at my Indians as they let us through, so that I almost expected a volley in our backs, and was relieved when we were rid o’ them.

  When, later, we passed Yokam’s Place, we were fairly facing that vast solitude of twilight which lay between us and the main army’s outposts at the mouth of the Tioga. Except for a very few places on the Ouleout, and the Iroquois towns, the region was uninhabited. But the forest was beautiful after its own somewhat appalling fashion, which was stupendous, majestic, and awe-inspiring to the verge of apprehension.

  Under these limitless lanes of enormous trees no sunlight fell, no underbrush grew. All was still and vague and dusky as in pillared aisles. There were no birds, no animals, nothing living except the giant columns which bore a woven canopy of leaves so dense that no glimmer of blue shone through. Centuries had spread the soundless carpet that we trod; eons had laid up the high-sprung arches which vanished far above us where vault and column were dimly merged, losing all form in depthless shadow.

  There was an Indian path all the way from the lake, good in places, in others invisible. We did not use it, fearing an ambush.

  The Mohican led us; I followed him; the last Oneida marked the trees for a new and better trail, and a straighter one not following every bend in the river. And so, in silence we moved southward over gently sloping ground which our wagons and artillery might easily follow while the batteaux fell down the river and our infantry marched on either bank, using the path where it existed.

  Toward ten o’clock we came within sound of the river again, its softly rushing roar filling the woods; and after a while, far through the forest dusk, we saw the thin, golden streak of sunlight marking its lonely course.

  The trail that the Mohican now selected swung ever nearer to the river, and at last, we could see low willows gilded by the sun, and a patch of blue above, and a bird flying.

  Treading in file, rifles at trail, and knife and hatchet loosened, we moved on swiftly just within that strip of dusk that divides the forest from the river shrub; and I saw the silver water flowing deep and smooth, where batteaux as well as canoes might pass with unvexed keels; and, over my right shoulder, above the trees, a baby peak, azure and amethyst in a cobalt sky; and a high eagle soaring all alone.

  The Mohican had halted; an Oneida ran down to the sandy shore and waded out into mid-stream; another Oneida was peeling a square of bark from a towering pine. I rubbed the white square dry with my sleeve, and with a wood-coal from my pouch I wrote on it:

  “Ford, three feet at low water.”

  The Stockbridge Indian who had stepped behind a river boulder and laid his rifle in rest across the top, still stood there watching the young Oneida in midstream who, in turn, was intently examining the river bank opposite.

  Nothing stirred there, save some butterflies whirling around each other over a bed of purple milkweed, but we all watched the crossing, rifles at a ready, as the youthful Oneida waded slowly out into the full sunshine, the spray glittering like beaded topazes on his yellow paint.

  Presently he came to a halt, nosing the farther shore like a lean and suspicious hound at gaze; and stood so minute after minute.

  Mayaro, crouching beside me, slowly nodded.

  “He has seen something,” I whispered.

  “And I, too,” returned the Mohican quietly.

  I looked in vain until the Sagamore, laying his naked arm along my cheek, sighted for me a patch of sand and water close inshore — a tiny bay where the current clutched what floated, and spun it slowly around in the sunshine.

  A dead fish, lying partly on the shore, partly in the water, was floating there. I saw it, and for a moment paid it no heed; then in a flash I comprehended. For the silvery river-trout lying there
carried a forked willow-twig between gill and gill-cover. Nor was this all; the fish was fresh-caught, for the gills had not puffed out, nor the supple body stiffened. Every little wavelet rippled its slim and limber length; and a thread of blood trailed from the throat-latch out over the surface of the water.

  Suddenly the young Oneida in mid-stream shrank aside, flattening his yellow painted body against a boulder, and almost at the same instant a rifle spoke.

  I heard the bullet smack against the boulder; then the Mohican leaped past me. For an instant the ford boiled under the silent rush of the Oneidas, the Stockbridge Indian, and the Mohican; then they were across; and I saw the willows sway and toss where they were chasing something human that bounded away through the thicket. I could even mark, without seeing a living soul, where they caught it and where it was fighting madly but in utter silence while they were doing it to death — so eloquent were the feathery willow-tops of the tragedy that agitated each separate slender stem to frenzy.

  Suddenly I turned and looked at the Wyandotte, squatting motionless beside me. Why he had remained when the red pack started, I could not understand, and with that confused thought in mind I rose, ran down to the water’s edge, the Wyandotte following without a word.

  A few yards below the ford a giant walnut tree had fallen, spanning the stream to a gravel-spit; I crossed like a squirrel on this, the burly Wyandotte padding over at my heels, sprang to the bottom sand, and ran up the willow-gully.

  They were already dragging out what they had killed; and I came up to them and looked down on the slain man who had so rashly brought destruction upon his own head.

  He wore no paint; he was not a warrior but a hunter. “St. Regis,” said the Mohican briefly.

  “The poor fool,” I said sadly.

  The young Oneida in yellow clapped the scalp against a tree-trunk carelessly, as though we could not easily see by his blazing eyes and quivering nostrils that this was his first scalp taken in war. Then he washed the blade of his knife in the river, wiped it dry and sheathed it, and squatted down to braid the dead hair into the hunters-lock.