Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “Steve Watts! Dead!”

  “I saw him. I saw one of our soldiers take his watch from his body. God! What a shambles was there at Oriska!”

  But I was thinking of young Stevie Watts, Polly Johnson’s brother, and my one-time friend, lying dead in his blood. And I thought of his boyish passion for Penelope. And her kindness for him. And remembered how last I had seen him.... And now he lay dead; and I had seen his sister but a few hours ago — seen her for the last time I should ever behold her.

  I drew a breath like a deep and painful sigh.

  “And the Fort?” I asked in a low voice.

  “Stanwix holds fast, John Drogue. Willett is there, and Gansevoort with the 3rd New York of the Line.”

  “Have you news of McDonald, Dan?”

  “None.”

  “Whither do you travel express?”

  “To Johnstown with the news if I can get there.”

  I warned him concerning conditions in Schoharie. We shook hands, and I watched the brave militia man stride away through the forest all alone.

  When we camped that night, Thiohero touched her brow and breasts with ashes from our fire. That was her formal symbol of mourning for Spencer. Later we all should mourn him in due ceremony.

  Then she came and lay down close against me and rested her child’s face on my hollow’d arm. And so slept all night long, trembling in her dreams.

  I know not how it chanced that I erred in my scouting and lost direction, but on the tenth day of August my Indians and I came out into a grassy place where trees grew thinly.

  The first thing I saw was an Indian, hanging by the heels from a tree, and lashed there with the traces from a harness.

  At the same time one of my Oneidas discovered a white man lying with his feet in a pool of water. But when Tahioni drew the cocked hat from his head to see his countenance, hair and skin stuck to it, and a most horrid smell filled the woods.

  And now, everywhere, we beheld evidences of the Oriska combat, for here lay a soldier’s empty knapsack, and yonder a ragged shirt, and there a rusting tin cup, and here a boot all bloody and slit to the toe.

  And now, looking about me, I suddenly comprehended that we were nearer to Stanwix Fort than to Oriska; and had no business any nearer to either place.

  We now were in a most perilous region and must proceed with every caution, for in this forest Brant’s Iroquois must be roaming everywhere in the rear of the troops which had invested Stanwix.

  My Oneidas understood this without explanation from me; and they and I also became further alarmed when, to our astonishment, we came upon a broad road running through a forest where I swear no road had existed a twelve-month past.

  Where this road led, and from whence, neither my Oneidas nor I knew. It was a raw and new road, yet it had been heavily travelled both ways by horse, foot, and waggons. It seemed to have as many windings as the Kennyetto at Fonda’s Bush; and I saw it had been builded to run clear of hills and swampy land, as though made for a traffic heavier than a log road might easily sustain.

  We left the road but scouted eastward along its edge, I desiring to learn more of it; for it seemed to bear toward Wood Creek; and if there were enemy batteaux to be seen I wished to count them.

  Suddenly Thiohero touched my arm, — caught my sleeve convulsively.

  “Hahyion — Royaneh — my elder brother — O my white Captain!” she stammered, clinging to me in her excitement, “here is the place! Here is the place I saw in my vision! Here I saw strange uniforms and cannon smoke — and a strange white shape — and you — O Hahyion — my Captain! — —”

  I looked around me, suddenly chilled and shivering in spite of the heat of a summer afternoon. But I perceived nobody except my Oneidas. We were on a long, sparsely-wooded hillock where juniper spread waist high. Below I could see the new road curving sharply to the eastward. But nobody moved down there; there was not a sound to be heard, not a movement in the forest. All around us was still as death.

  Something about the abrupt bend in the empty road below me attracted my attention. I examined it intently for a while, then, cautioning my Indians, I ventured to move forward and around the south slope of the hillock, wading waist-deep in juniper, in order to get a look at what might lie behind the bend in this road of mystery.

  The road appeared to end abruptly just around the curve, as though it had been opened only so far and then abandoned. This first amazed me and then alarmed me, because I knew it could not be so as I had seen on the roadbed evidences of recent and heavy travel.

  I stood peering down at it where it seemed to stop short against the green and tangled barrier of the woods which blocked it like a living abattis ——

  God! It was an abattis! — a mask!

  As I realized this I saw a man in a strange, outlandish uniform run out from the green and living barrier, look up at me where I stood in the juniper, shout out something in German, and stand pointing up at me while a score of soldiers, all in this same outlandish uniform, swarmed out upon the road and started running toward where I stood.

  Then I came to my senses, clapped my rifle to my cheek and fired, stopping one of these strange soldiers and curing him of his running habits forever.

  To me arrived swiftly my Oneidas, and dropped in the juniper, kneeling and firing upon the soldiers below. Two among them fell down flat on the road, and then the others turned and fled straight into their green barrier of branches. From there they fired at us wildly, keeping up a strange, hoarse shouting.

  “Hessian chasseurs!” I exclaimed. “These troops can be no other than the filthy Germans hired by King George to come here and cut our throats!”

  “Those men wear the uniform I saw in my vision of this place!” whispered Thiohero, quietly reloading her rifle. “I think that this is truly your battle, my Captain.”

  Then, as her prophecy of cannon came into my mind, there was a blinding flash from that green barrier below; a vast cloud blotted it from view; the pine beside which I stood shivered as though thunder-smitten; and the entire top of it crashed down upon us, burying us all in lashing, writhing branches.

  So stunned and stupefied was I that I lay for an instant without motion, my ears still deafened by that clap of thunder.

  But now I floundered to my feet amid the pine-top’s débris; around me rose my terrified Oneidas, nearly paralyzed with fright.

  “Come,” said I, “we should pull foot ere they blow us into pieces with their damned artillery. Thiohero, where are you?”

  “I come, Royaneh!”

  “Tahioni! Kwiyeh! Hanatoh!” I called anxiously.

  Then I saw them all creeping like weasels from under the green débris.

  “Hasten,” I muttered, “for we shall have all the Iroquois in North America on our backs in another moment.”

  As we started to retreat, the Germans emptied their muskets after us; but I did not think anybody had been hit.

  We now were running in single file, our rifles a-trail, Tahioni leading, and I some distance in the rear, turning my head over my shoulder from moment to moment to see if we were followed.

  And now, as I ran on, I understood that this accursed road had been made expressly to transport their siege artillery; that their guns were still in transit; that they had masked a cannon and manned it with Hessian chasseurs to keep their gun-road safe against surprise from any party scouting out of Oriska.

  Lord, what an ambuscade! And what an escape for us!

  As I jogged on at the heels of my Indians, still dazed and shaken by the deadly surprise of it all, I saw Thiohero, who was some little distance in front of me, reel sideways as though out o’ breath, and stand still near a beech tree, holding her scarlet blanket against her body.

  When I came up to her she was leaning against the tree, clutching her blanket to her face and breast with both hands. But she heard me and lifted her head from the gaily coloured folds.

  “Hahyion — Royaneh!” she panted, “this was your battle.... And now �
�� it is over ... and you shall live!...”

  My Oneidas had halted and were looking back at us. And now they returned rapidly and clustered around us.

  “Are you exhausted, little sister?” I demanded, drawing nearer. “Are you hurt — —”

  “Listen — my brother and — my Captain!” she burst out breathlessly. “This was the battle of my vision! — the strange uniforms — the cannon-cloud — the white shape!... I saw it near you where — where you stood in the cannon smoke! — a shape like mist at sunrise.... Haihee! It was the face and shape of the Caughnawaga girl!... It was Yellow Hair who floated there beside you in the cannon smoke! — covered to her eyes in white and flowers — —”

  The Little Maid of Askalege clutched her gay blanket closer to her breast and began to sway gently on her feet as though the thumping of a distant partridge were a witch-drum.

  “Haihya Hahyion!” she whispered— “Thiohero Oyaneh salutes — her Captain.... I speak — as one dying.... Haiee! Haie — e! Yellow Hair is — is quite — a witch! — —”

  Her voice failed; down on her knees she sank. And, as I snatched her from the ground and lifted her, she looked up into my face and smiled. Then, in a long-drawn sigh, her soul escaped between my arms that could not stay its flight to Tharon.

  Her face became as wax; her head fell forward on my breast; her eyes rolled upward. And, as I pressed her in my arms, all my body grew warm and wet with bright blood pouring from her softly parted lips.

  CHAPTER XXIX

  THE WOOD OF BRAKABEEN

  It was the 12th day of August when we came again to the Wood of Brakabeen, — we four young warriors of the clan of the Little Red Foot.

  We were ragged and bruised and weary, and starving; but the fierce rage burning in our breasts gave to each a strength and purpose that nerved our briar-torn and battered bodies to effort inexhaustible.

  Under scattered and furtive shots from German muskets we had retreated through the forest with our dead prophetess, until night ended pursuit by the chasseurs, and we ourselves had lost our direction.

  All the next day we travelled southwest with our dead. On the tenth day we came out on Otsego Lake, near to Croghan’s new house.

  Where he had cleared the bush and where Indian grass was growing as tall as a man’s head, we made a deep grave. And here we four clansmen buried the Little Maid of Askalege; and sodded the mound with wild grasses where strawberries grew, and blue asters and plumes of golden-rod.

  A Canada whitethroat called sweetly, sadly, from the forest in the sunset glow. We made for the grave a white cross of silver birch. We placed parched corn and a cup of water at the foot of the cross; and her bow and scarlet arrows against her needs where deer, God willing, should be plenty. And near these we set her little moccasins lest in that unknown land her tender feet should suffer on the trail.

  In the morning we made a fire of ozier, sweet-birch, cherry wood, and samphire.

  When the aromatic smoke blew over us I rose and spoke. After I had finished, the others in turn rose and spoke their mind, saying very simply what was in their hearts concerning their little prophetess, who had died wearing a little red foot painted on her body.

  So we left her at rest under the wild flowers and Indian grass, near to Croghan’s empty house, with a vast wilderness around to guard the sanctuary, and the sad whitethroats to mourn her.

  And now, fierce and starved and ragged, we came once more to the Wood of Brakabeen. And heard McDonald’s guns in the valley and his pibroch on the hills.

  The afternoon was still and hot, the deep blue sky cloudless. Over Vrooman’s Land a brown smoke hung; more smoke was rising above Clyberg; more rolled up beyond the swampy ground near the Flockey.

  From the edge of Brakabeen Wood, looking out over the valley, we could hear firing in the direction of Stone House, more musketry toward Fox Creek.

  “McDonald is in Schoharie,” I said to Tahioni. “There will be many dead here, women and children and the grey-haired. Are my brothers of the Little Red Foot too weary to strike?”

  The young Oneida warrior laughed. I looked at my ragged comrades where they crouched in their frightful paint, listening excitedly to the distant firing, and I saw their lean cheeks twitching and their nostrils a-flare as they scented the distant fighting.

  The wild screaming of the pibroch, too, seemed to madden them; and it enraged me, also, because I saw that Sir John’s Highlanders were here with McDonald’s fantastic crew and had come to slaughter us all with their dirks and broad-swords as they had threatened before Sir John fled North.

  We turned to the left and I led my Oneidas in a file through the ferny glades of Brakabeen Wood, and amid still places where clear streams ran deep in greenest moss; where tall lilies nodded their yellow Chinese caps in the flowery swale; where, in the demi-light of forest aisles, nothing grew save the great trees bedded there since the dawn of time, which sprung their vast arches high above us to support their glowing tapestry of leaves.

  It was mid-afternoon when, smelling hot smoke, we came near the woods by the river; and saw, close to us, a barn afire, and three men carrying guns, running hither and thither in a hay field and setting every stack aflame with their torches.

  One o’ the fellows was a drummer in the green uniform of Butler’s Rangers, and his drum was slung on his back. And I knew him. He was Michael Reed of Fonda’s Bush, and cousin to Nick Stoner.

  And then, to my astonishment and rage, I saw Dries Bowman in his farmer’s clothes; and the other man was a huge German — one of their chasseurs, who wore a stiff pig-tail that was greased, and a black mustache, and waist-high spatter-dashes — a very barbarian in red and blue and green; and grunting and puffing as he ran about in the hot sunshine to set the hay-cocks afire with his torch.

  I remember giving no command; we sprang out of the woods, trailing our rifles in our left hands; and Bowman fired at me and, missing, started to run; but I got him by his collar and knocked him over with my gun-butt.

  The Hessian chasseur instantly drew up and fired in our direction; and Tahioni shot him dead in his tracks, where he fell heavily on his back and lay in the grass with limbs outspread.

  “You may take his scalp! I care not!” shouted I, watching my Oneidas, who had got at Micky Reed and were striving to take him alive as I had ordered.

  But Reed had a big dragoon’s pistol in his belt and would have used it had not Kwiyeh killed him swiftly with his hatchet.

  But I would not permit them to take Reed’s scalp, and bade them despoil the body quickly and bring the leather cross-belts and girdle to me.

  Hanatoh ran up and caught Dries Bowman by the collar; and we jerked him to his feet and dragged and hustled him into the woods. And here despoiled him, pulling from his pockets a Royal Protection and a bundle of papers, which revealed him as a spy sent down to preach treason in Schoharie and carry what men he might corrupt as recruits to McDonald and Sir John.

  “That’s enough to hang him!” I said sharply to Tahioni. “Link me up those drummer’s cross-belts!”

  “What — what do you mean, John Drogue!” stammered the wretch. “Would you murder an old neighbour?”

  “That same old neighbour would have murdered me at Howell’s house. And now is come disguised in civilian clothing to Schoharie with a spy’s commission, to raise the district in arms against us.”

  “My God!” he shrieked, as Tahioni flung the leather halter about his neck, “is it a crime if honest men stand by their King?”

  “Not when they stand out in plain day and wear a red coat or a green,” said I, flinging the leather halter over the oak tree’s limb.

  Hanatoh swiftly pinioned his arms and tied his wrists; I tossed the halter’s end to Kwiyeh. Tahioni also took hold of it.

  “Hoist that spy!” I said coldly. And in a second more his feet were kicking some half dozen inches above the ground.

  My Oneidas fastened the halter to a stout bush; I was shaking all over and felt sick and dizzy to hear
him raling and choking in the leather noose which was too stiff for the ghastly business.

  But at that instant Tahioni shouted a shrill warning; I looked over my shoulder and saw a great number of soldiers wearing red patches on their hats, running across the burning hayfield to surround us.

  Yet it needed better men than McDonald’s to take me and my Oneidas in Brakabeen Wood. We turned and plunged into the bush, leaving the wretched spy hanging to the oak, his convulsed body now spinning dizzily round and round above the ground.

  Looking back as I ran, I soon saw that the men who were chasing us had little stomach for a pursuit which must presently lead to bush-fighting. They shouted and halooed, but lagged as they arrived at the denser woods; and they seemed to have no officers to encourage them, or if they indeed possessed any I saw none.

  Tahioni came fiercely to me, where I had halted, to watch the red-patch soldiers, saying that we had now been out thirteen days and had taken but three scalps. He said that to hang a man was not a proper vengeance to atone the death of Thiohero; and wanted to know why my prisoners should not be delivered to him and his Oneida comrades, who knew how to punish their enemies.

  Which speech so angered me that I had a mind to take him by the throat. Only the sudden memory of our Red Foot clan-ship, and of Thiohero, deterred me. Also, that was no way to treat any Indian; and to lose my self-control was to lose the Oneidas’ respect and my authority over them.

  “My brother, Tahioni,” said I coldly, “should not forget that he is my younger brother.

  “If Tahioni were older, and possessed of more wisdom and experience, he would know that unless a chief asks opinions none should be offered.”

  The youth’s eyes flashed at me and he stiffened under a rebuke that is hard for any Iroquois to swallow.

  “My younger brother,” said I, “ought to know that I am not like an officer of Guy Johnson’s Indian Department, who delivers prisoners to the Mohawks. I deliver no prisoner to any Indian. I obey my orders, and expect my Indians to obey mine. They are free always to take Indian scalps. The scalps of white men they take only if permitted by me.”