“Why, Dave!” said I, “how come you here, out o’ the North?”
“I travel express from Arnold to Schuyler,” said he. “Have you a gill of rum, John?”
Johnny Silver had not drunk his gill, and poured it into Dave’s pannikin.
Down it went, and he smacked his lips. Then we took him back to the fire, where the Oneidas were still a-painting, and made him eat and drink and dry him by the flames.
“Is there a horse to be had at Summer House?” he demanded, his mouth full of parched corn.
“Surely,” said I. And asked him news of the North, if he were at liberty to give us any account.
“The news I can not give you is what I shall not,” said he, laughing. “But there’s plenty besides, and damned bad.”
“Bad?”
“Monstrous bad, John. For on my forest-running south from Chambly, I saw Sir John and his crew as they gained the Canadas! They seemed near dead, too, but they were full three hundred, and I but one, so I did not tarry to mark ’em with a stealthy bullet, but pulled foot for Saint Sacrement.”
He grinned, bit a morsel from a cold pigeon, and sat chewing it reflectively and watching the Indians at their painting.
“You know what is passing in Canada?” he demanded abruptly.
“Nothing definite,” said I.
“Listen, then. We had taken Chambly, Montreal, and St. John’s. Arnold lay before Quebec. Sullivan commanded us. Six weeks ago he sent Hazen’s regiment to Arnold. Then the Canadians and Indians struck us at the Cedars, and we lost five hundred men before we were out of it.”
“What was the reason for such disaster?” I demanded, turning hot with wrath.
“Cowardice and smallpox,” said he carelessly. “They were new troops sent up to reinforce us, and their general, Thomas, died o’ the pox.
“And atop of that comes news of British transports in the St. Lawrence, and of British regulars and Hessians.
“So Sullivan sends the Pennsylvania Line to strike ‘em. St. Clair marches, Wayne marches, Irving follows with his regiment. Lord, how they were peppered, the Pennsylvania Line! And Thompson was taken, and Colonel Irving, and they wounded Anthony Wayne; and the Line ran!”
“Ran!”
“By God, yes. And our poor little Northern Army is on the run today, with thirteen thousand British on their heels.
“They drove us out o’ Chambly. They took the Cedars. Montreal fell. St. John’s followed. Quebec is freed. We’re clean kicked out o’ Canada, and marching up Lake Champlain, our rear in touch with the red-coats.
“If we stand and face about at Crown Point, we shall do more than I hope for.
“Thomas is dead, Thompson and Irving taken, Arnold and Wayne wounded, the army a skeleton, what with losses by death, wounds, disease, and in prisoners.
“Had not Arnold broke into the Montreal shops and taken food and woolen clothing, I think we had been naked now.”
“Good heavens!” said I, burning with mortification, “I had not heard of such a rout!”
“Oh, it was no rout, John,” said he carelessly. “Sullivan marched us out of that hell-hole in good order — whatever John Adams chooses to say about our army.”
“What does John Adams say?”
“Why, he says we are disgraced, defeated, dispirited, discontented, undisciplined, diseased, eaten up with vermin.”
“My God!” exclaimed Nick.
“It’s true enough,” said Dave, coolly. “And when John Adams also adds that we have no clothing, no beds, no blankets, no medicines, and only salt pork and flour to eat and little o’ these, why, he’s right, too. Why not admit truth? Does it help to conceal it? Nenni, lads! It is best always to face it and endeavour to turn into a falsehood tomorrow what is disgracefully true today.
“So when I tell you that in three months our Northern Army has lost five thousand men by smallpox, camp fever, bullets, and privation — that out of five thousand who remain, two thousand are sick, why, it’s the plain and damnable truth.
“But any soldier who loses sleep or appetite over such cursed news should be run through with a bayonet, for he’s a rabbit and no man!”
After a silence: “Who commands them now?” I asked.
“Gates is to take them over at Crown Point, I hear.”
This news chilled me, for Schuyler should have commanded. But the damned Yankees, plotting their petty New England plots to discredit our dear General, had plainly hoodwinked Congress; and now our generous and noble Schuyler had again fallen a victim to nutmeg jealousy and cunning.
“Well,” said I, “God help us all in Tryon, now; for a vain ass is in the saddle, and the counsel of the brave and wise remains unheeded. Will Guy Carleton drive us south of Crown Point?”
“I think so,” said Ellerson, carelessly.
“Then the war will come among us here in Tryon!”
“Straight as a storm from the North, John.”
“When?”
“Oh, that? God knows. We shall hold the lakes as long as we can. But unless we are reinforced by Continentals — unless every Colony sends us a regiment of their Lines — we can not hope to hold Crown Point, and that’s sure as shooting and plain as preaching.”
“Very well,” said I between clenched teeth, “then we here in Tryon had best go about the purging of that same county, and physic this district against a dose o’ red-coats.”
Ellerson laughed and rose with the lithe ease of a panther.
“I should be on my way to Albany,” says he. “You tell me there are horses at the Summer House, John?”
“Certainly.”
We shook hands.
“You find Morgan’s agreeable?” inquired Nick.
“A grand corps, lad! Tim Murphy is my mate. And I think there’s not a rifleman among us who can not shoot the whiskers off a porcupine at a hundred yards.” And to me, with a nod toward my Oneidas: “They are painting. Do you march tonight, John?”
“A matter of cleaning out a Tory nest yonder,” said I.
“A filthy business and not war,” quoth he. “Well, God be with all friends to liberty, for all hell is rising up against us. A thousand Indians are stripped for battle on this frontier — and the tall ships never cease arriving crammed with red-coats and Germans.
“So we should all do our duty now, whether that same duty lie in emptying barrack slops, or in cleaning out a Tory nest, or in marching to drum and fife, or guarding the still places of the wilderness — it’s all one business, John.”
Again we shook hands all around, then, waving aside Joe de Golyer and his proffered lantern, the celebrated rifleman passed lightly into the shadows.
“Yonder goes the best shot in the North,” said Nick.
“Saving only yourself and Jack Mount and Tim Murphy,” remarked Godfrey Shew.
“As for the whiskers of a porcupine,” quoth Nick, with the wild flare a-glimmering in his eyes, “why, I have never tried such a target. But I should pick any button on a red coat at a hundred yards — that is, if I cast and pare my own bullet, and load in my own fashion.”
Silver swore that any rifle among us white men should shave an otter of his whiskers, as a barber trims a Hessian.
“Sacré garce!” cried he, “why should we miss — we coureurs-du-bois, who have learn to shoot by ze hardes’ of all drill-masters — a empty belly!”
“We must not miss at Howell’s house,” said I, counting my people at a glance.
The Saguenay, ghastly in scarlet and white, came and placed himself behind me.
All the Oneidas were naked, painted from lock to ankle in terrific symbols.
Thiohero was still oiling her supple, boyish body when I started a brief description of the part each one of us was to act, speaking in the Oneida dialect and in English.
“Take these bloody men alive,” I added, “if it can be done. But if it can not, then slay them. For every one of these that escapes tonight shall return one day with a swarm of hornets to sting us all to death in Cou
nty Tryon!... Are you ready for the command?”
“Ready, John,” says Nick.
“March!”
At midnight we had surrounded Howell’s house, save only the east approach, which we still left open for tardy skulkers.
A shadowy form or two slinking out from the tamaracks, their guns trailing, passed along the hard ridge, bent nearly double to avoid observation.
We could not recognize them, for they were very shadows, vague as frost-driven woodcock speeding at dusk to a sheltered swamp.
But, as they arrived, singly and in little groups, such a silent rage possessed me that I could scarce control my rifle, which quivered to take toll of these old neighbors who were returning by stealth at night to murder us in our beds.
The Saguenay lay in the wild grasses on my left; the little maid of Askalege, in her naked paint, lay on my right hand. Her forefinger caressed the trigger of her new rifle; the stock lay close to her cheek. And I could hear her singing her Karenna in a mouse’s whisper to herself:
“Listen, John Drogue, Though we all die, You shall survive! Listen, John Drogue, This will happen, And it is well, Because I love you.
“Why do I love you? Because you are a boy-chief, And we are both young, Thou and I. Why do I love you? Because you are my elder brother, And you speak to the Oneidas Very gently.
“I am a prophetess; I see events beforehand; This is my Karenna: Though we all die tonight, You shall survive in Scarlet: And this is well, Because I love you.”
So, crooning her prophecy, she lay flat in the wild grasses, cuddling the rifle-stock close to her shoulder; and her song’s low cadence was like the burden of some cricket amid the herbage.
“Tharon alone knows all,” I breathed in her ear.
“Neah!” she murmured; and touched her cheek against mine.
“Only God knows who shall survive tonight,” I insisted.
“Onhteh. Ra-ko-wan-enh,” she murmured. “But I have seen you, niare, through a mist, coming from this place, O-ne-kwen-da-ri-en. And dead bodies lay about. Do you believe me?”
I made no reply but lay motionless, watching the tamaracks, ghostly in their cerements of silver fog. And I heard, through the low rhythm of her song, owls howling far away amid those spectral wastes, and saw the Oneida Dancers, very small and pale above the void.
I stared with fierce satisfaction at Howell’s house. There was no gleam of light visible behind the closed shutters; but I already had counted nine men who came creeping to that silent rendezvous. And now there arrived the tenth man, running and stooping low; and went in by the east side of the house.
I waited a full minute longer, then whistled the whitethroat’s call.
“Now!” said I to Thiohero; and we rose and walked forward through the light mist which lay knee-deep over the ground.
We had not advanced ten paces when three men, whom I had not perceived, rose up on the ridge to our right.
One of these shouted and fired a gun, and all three dropped flat again before we could realize what they had been about.
But already, out of that shadowy house, armed men swarmed like black hornets from their nest, and we ran to cut them from the tamaracks, but could not mark their flight in the so great darkness.
Then Nick Stoner struck flint, and dropped his tinder upon the remnants of a hay-stack, where wisps of last year’s marsh grass still littered the rick.
In the smoky glow which grew I saw that great villain, Simon Girty, fire his gun at us, then turn and run toward the water; and Dries Bowman took after him, shouting in his fear.
Very carefully I fired at Girty, but he was not scotched, and was lost in the dark with Dries.
Then, in the increasing glow of the marsh-hay afire, I saw and recognized Elias Cady, and his venomous son, Charlie; and called loudly upon them to halt.
But they plunged into the shore reeds; and John and Phil Helmer at their heels; and we fired our guns into the dark, but could not stop them or again even hope to glimpse them in their flight.
But the Oneidas had now arrived between the tamaracks and the log house, and my Rangers were swiftly closing in on the west and south, when suddenly a couple of loud musket shots came from the crescents in the bolted shutters, hiding the west window in a double cloud of smoke.
I called out, “Halt!” to my people, for it was death to cross that circle of light ahead while the marsh-hay burned.
There were at least five men now barricaded in Howell’s house. I called to Tahioni, the Wolf, and he came crouching and all trembling with excitement and impatience, like a fierce hound restrained.
“Take your people,” said I, “and follow those dirty cowards who are fleeing toward the tamaracks.”
Instantly his terrific panther-cry shattered the silence, and the Oneidas’ wild answer to his slogan hung quavering over the Drowned Lands like the melancholy pulsations of a bell.
The hay-rick burned less brightly now. I crept out to the dark edge of the wavering glare and called across to those in the log-house:
“If you will surrender I promise to send you to Johnstown and let a court judge you! If you refuse, we shall take you by storm, try you on the spot, and execute sentence upon you in that house! I allow you five minutes!”
At that, two of them fired in the direction from whence came my voice; and I heard their bullets passing, aimed too high.
Then John Howell’s voice bawls out, “I know you, Drogue; and so help me God, I shall cut your throat before this business ends! — you dirty renegade and traitor to your King!”
Such a rage possessed me that I scarce knew what I was about, and I ran across the grass to the bolted door of the house, and fell to slashing at it with my hatchet like a madman.
They were firing now so rapidly that the smoke of their guns made a choking fog about the house; but the log cabin had no overhang, not being built for defense, and so they over-shot me whilst my hatchet battered splinters from the door and shook it almost from its hinges.
Some one was coughing in the thick, rifle-fog near me, and presently I heard Nick swearing and hammering at the door with his gun butt.
The French trappers, not so rash as we, lay close in the darkness, shooting steadily into the shutters at short range.
Shutters and door, though splintering, held; the defenders fired at my men’s rifle-flashes, or strove to shoot at Nick and me, where we crouched low in the sheltered doorway; but they could not sufficiently depress the muzzles of their guns to hit us.
Suddenly, from out of the night, came a fire-arrow, whistling, with dry moss all aflame, and lodged on the roof of Howell’s house.
Quoth Nick: “Your Tree-eater is in action, John. God send that the fire catch!”
From the darkness, Silver called out to me that the marsh-hay had nearly burned out, and what were he and Joe to do? Then came a-whizzing another fire-arrow, and another, but whether the dew was too heavy on the roof or the moss too damp, I do not know; only that when at length the roof caught fire, it was but a tiny blaze and flickered feebly, eating a slow way along the edges of the eaves.
Nick, who had been wrenching at the imbedded door stone, finally freed and lifted it, and hurled it at the bolted shutters. In they crashed. Then the door, too, burst open, and Tom Dawling rushed upon me with his rifle clubbed high above me.
“You damned Whig!” he shouted, “I’ll knock your brains all over the grass!”
My hatchet in a measure fended the blow and eased its murderous force, but I stumbled to my knees under it; and Baltus Weed came to the window and shot me through the body.
At that, Gene Grinnis ran out o’ the house to cut my throat, where like a crippled wild beast I floundered, a-kicking and striving to find my feet; and I saw Nick draw up and shoot Gene through the face, with a load of buck, so that where were his features suddenly became but a vast and raw hole.
Down he sprawled across my hurt legs; down tumbled John Howell, too, and Silver, a-clinging to him tooth and nail, their broad knives fla
shing and ripping and whipping into flesh.
Striving desperately to free me of Grinnis, and get up, I saw Tom Dawling throw his axe at Godfrey; and saw Luysnes shoot him, then seize him and cut his throat, even as he was falling.
Johnny Silver began bawling lustily for help, with John Howell atop of him, cursing him for a rebel and striving to disembowel him. De Golyer caught Howell by the throat, and Silver scrambled to his feet, his clothing in bloody ribbons. Then Joe’s hatchet flashed level with terrific swiftness, crashing to its mark; and Howell pitched backward with his head clean split from one eye to the other, making of the top of his skull a lid which hung hinged only by the hairy skin.
Luysnes and the Saguenay were now somewhere inside the house a-chasing of Balty Weed; and I could hear Balty screaming, and the thud and clatter of loose logs as they dragged him down from the loft overhead.
Nick came panting to me where I sat on the bloody grass, feeling sick o’ my wound and now vomiting.
“Are you bad?” he asked breathlessly.
“Balty shot me.... I don’t know — —”
Somebody knelt down behind me, and I laid back my head, feeling very sick and faint, but entirely conscious.
The awful screaming in the house had never ceased; Nick sat down on the grass and fumbled at my shirt with trembling fingers.
Presently the screaming ceased. Luysnes came out o’ the house with a lighted lantern, followed by the Saguenay; and in the wavering radiance I saw behind them the feet of a man twitching above the floor.
“We hung the louse to the rafters,” said Luysnes, “and your Indian asks your leave to scalp him as soon as he’s done a-kicking.”
“Let him have the scalp,” said de Golyer, grimly. “He shot John Drogue through the body. Shine your lantern on him, Ben.”
They crowded around me. Nick opened my shirt and drew off my leggins. I saw Johnny Silver, in tatters and all drenched with blood, come into the lantern’s rays.
“Are you bad hurt, John?” I gasped.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 989