Part 24 (1/2)
[Sidenote: McKINSTRY'S SCORE]
”Yes, Martin, one does not forget such things, nor how they tortured others, and then made them run the gauntlet, hacked at them with knives and tomahawks till they fell, and then scalped them. They deserve to be killed like snakes, but I don't like to do it. No matter how mean or treacherous my enemy, I want a good stand-up fair fight. I am a soldier.
I am under orders, and I shall do the work; but I hate it.”
”You needn't be squeamish, Ben. They are double our number, and if we don't kill them by a surprise, they will kill us.”
McKinstry had been listening, and said: ”It's plain, Ben, that you have never lived where there were Injuns. Your injuries are too far off. They don't touch you. I have a score to pay that I have been wiping off for the past thirty years. Here's my tally-stick. Look at the notches.”
He pulled at a string that was round his neck, and showed me a little stick with seventeen notches in it.
”I have killed that number of Indians. Every notch I have added made my heart feel lighter. Every chance I have to kill a St. Francis Indian, awake or asleep, makes me happy. I want to see the whole tribe wiped off the earth.”
The land on this side of the river was higher than the region through which we had been travelling, and we were not so much troubled by mosquitoes, which had nearly driven us crazy in the swamps.
The clear, crisp air dried our clothes before nightfall, and we slept sound, breathing in the clean smell of the fir balsams.
On the next day, the twenty-second, after we left Crown Point, we made a cautious advance. Rogers halted us and climbed a tree. He said that he could see the village about three miles off.
Rogers went ahead with Lieutenant Turner and Ensign Avery to inspect the village, and we lay down and waited. The moon was about three-quarters full. He returned at two in the morning, and said:--
”We crawled up close to their village. The Indians are having a great frolic. They have a keg of rum and are drinking it, and are dancing round the fires. I think there must be a wedding going on. They will sleep sound.”
[Sidenote: THEY ATTACK THE VILLAGE]
At three o'clock we crept up to within five hundred yards of the village, and laid aside our packs and prepared for the fight. We had one hundred and forty-two men, all told.
We lay concealed in the forest till the Indians were asleep. Rogers divided us into three parties, and about an hour before daylight ordered us to attack the village on three sides. The St. Lawrence River was on the fourth side. We rushed into the village, through its lanes, kicking the yelping dogs aside, and stationed ourselves before the huts. Above the doors were poles, from which dangled rows of scalps, as if they were garlands of flowers.
I stood by the door of a hut, and as an Indian came out I shot him; and when the next appeared, with a dazed, frightened look on his face, I brained him with the b.u.t.t of my gun, and then pulled out my hatchet and chopped away at them as they ran by. Martin, Edmund, and Amos were near me. Sometimes several Indians made a rush, and we closed up and fought them.
It was cruel, b.l.o.o.d.y butchery. But the sight of the poles with the scalps of English men, women, and children hanging from them made us mad with rage, and we killed the Indians like rats as they dashed out of their huts. Some reached the canoes, but were followed and cut down. Few escaped. Some squaws were killed too. We were all mixed up. It was impossible to spare them. They fought like wildcats with knives and hatchets, and we had to kill them or be killed ourselves.
By sunrise the b.l.o.o.d.y work was over. Almost all the Indians had been slain. As we looked round and saw nearly six hundred English scalps dangling in front of the huts, we felt no sorrow for what we had done.
Still, it was a grim, dreadful piece of work. The dead Indians lay around in the lanes between the huts, in some places in heaps, stiffening in death, smeared with blood, and the Stockbridge Indians were already at work scalping them.
[Sidenote: A GRIM PIECE OF WORK]
We ourselves were covered with blood, and looked like butchers from the shambles. It was not all Indian blood. They were not lambs, and gave us many a wound before we got the better of them. Edmund and Amos came to me.
”How did you get through it, Ben?”
”All right, but a few cuts. I hope I don't look as villanous as you or Amos.”
”I d-don't know how I look. B-But if I saw you or Edmund round my place looking as you d-do now, I'd shoot you at sight.”
Rogers ordered us to set fire to all the houses except those which were storehouses for corn. One house was a ma.s.s-house with pictures hanging up inside. We found some silver cups and plates in it, and a silver image some ten inches high. In the other houses we found many things which they had carried off from the settlements.
Most of the Rangers had lost relatives and friends in these Indian fights, and were examining the scalps carefully. McKinstry was looking them over with an intense, eager air. Seeing me, he said: ”It's a foolish search. Thirty years have pa.s.sed since they killed my sweetheart and ruined my life. I was looking for a lock of hair like this.”