Part 13 (2/2)

”An antlered stag in the blue-coat that brooks no other near his herd!”

cried he with a burst of laughter. And fell to smiting his thighs and tossing up both arms, riding like a very centaur there, with his hair flowing and his thrums streaming in the starlight.

And, ”Lord G.o.d of Battles!” he cried out to the stars, stretching up his powerful young arms. ”Thou knowest how I could love tonight; but dost Thou know, also, how I could fight if I had only a foe to destroy with these two empty hands!”

”Thou murderous Turk!” I cried in his ear. ”Pray, rather, that there shall be no war, and no foe more deadly than the pretty wench of Pigeon-Wood!”

”Love or war, I care not!” he shouted in his spring-tide frenzy, galloping there unbridled, his lean young face in the wind. ”But G.o.d send the one or the other to me very quickly--or love or war--for I need more than a plow or axe to content my soul afire!”

”Idiot!” said I, ”have done a-yelling! You wake every owl in the bus.h.!.+”

And above his youth-maddened laughter I heard the weird yelping of the forest owls as though the Six Nations already were in their paint, and blood fouled every trail.

So we galloped into Fonda's Bush, pulling up before my door; but Nick would not stay the night and must needs gallop on to his own log house, where he could blanket and stall his tired and sweating horse--I owning only the one warm stall.

”Well,” says he, still slapping his thighs where he sat his saddle as I dismounted, and his young face still aglow in the dim, silvery light, ”--well, John, I shall ride again, one day, to Pigeon-Wood. Will you ride with me?”

”I think not.”

”And why?”

But, standing by my door, bridle in hand, I slowly shook my head.

”There is no prettier bit o' baggage in County Tryon than Jessica Browse,” he insisted--”unless, perhaps, it be that Scotch girl at Caughnawaga, whom all the red-coats buzz about like sap flies around a pan.”

”And who may this Scotch la.s.sie be?” I asked with a smile, and busy, now, unsaddling.

”I mean the new servant to old Douw Fonda.”

”I have not noticed her.”

”You have not seen the Caughnawaga girl?”

”No. I remain incurious concerning servants,” said I, drily.

”Is it so!” he laughed. ”Well, then,--for all that they have a right to gold binding on their hats,--the gay youth of Johnstown, yes, and of Schenectady, too, have not remained indifferent to the Scotch girl of Douw Fonda, Penelope Grant!”

I shrugged and lifted my saddle.

”Every man to his taste,” said I. ”Some eat woodchucks, some porcupines, and others the tail of a beaver. Venison smacks sweeter to me.”

Nick laughed again. ”When she reads the old man to sleep and takes her knitting to the porch, you should see the ring of gallants every afternoon a-courting her!--and their horses tied to every tree around the house as at a quilting!

”But there's no quilting frolic; no supper; no dance;--nothing more than a yellow-haired slip of a wench busy knitting there in the sun, and looking at none o' them but intent on her needles and with that faint smile she wears----”

”Go court her,” said I, laughing; and led my mare into her warm stall.

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