Part 18 (1/2)
”And what has become of our natural protectors and leaders! Where is the landed gentry of County Tryon at this very hour? Except you, John Drogue, where are our gentlemen of the Northland?”
”Gone,” said I soberly.
”Gone to Canada with the murderous Indians they were supposed to hold neutral! Guy Park stands empty and locked. It is an accursed place! Guy Johnson is fled with every Tory desperado and every Indian he could muster! May G.o.d d.a.m.n him!
”Old John Butler followed; and is brigading malcontents in Canada.
Butlersbury stands deserted. May every devil in h.e.l.l haunt that house!
Young Walter Butler is gone with many of our old neighbors of Tryon; and at Niagara he is forming a merciless legion to return and cut our throats.
”And Colonel Claus is gone, and McDonald, the b.l.o.o.d.y thief!--with his kilted lunatics and all his Scotch banditti----”
”But Sir John remains,” said I quietly.
”Jack! Are you truly so blinded by your caste! Did not you yourself answer the militia call last winter and march with our good General to disarm Sir John's popish Highlanders! And even then they lied--and Sir John lied--for they hid their broad-swords and pikes! and delivered them not when they paraded to ground their muskets!”
”Sir John has given his parole,” I repeated stubbornly.
”Sir John breaks it every hour of the day!” cried Nick. ”And he will break it again when we march to take him. Do you think he won't learn of our coming? Do you suppose he will stay at the Hall, which he has pledged his honour to do?”
”His lady is still there.”
”With his lady I have no quarrel,” rejoined Nick. ”I know her to be a very young, very wilful, very bitter, and very unhappy Tory; and she treats us plain folk like dirt under her satin shoon. But for that I care nothing. I pity her because she is the wife of that cold, sleek beast, Sir John. I pity her because she is gently bred and frail and lonely and stuffed with childish pride o' race. I pity her lot there in the great Hall, with her girl companions and her servants and her slaves. And I pity her because everybody in County Tryon, excepting only herself, knows that Sir John cares nothing for her, and that Claire Putnam of Tribes Hill is Sir John's doxy!--and be d.a.m.ned to him! And you think such a man will not break his word?
”He broke his vows to wife and mistress alike. Why should he keep his vows to men?” He slid to the ground as he spoke, and I followed, for our three drummers had formed rank and were drawing their sticks from their cross-belts. Our fifers, also, lined up behind them; and Nick and his young brother, John, took places with them.
”Fall in! Fall in!” cried Joe Scott, our captain; and everybody ran with their packs and rifles to form in double ranks of sixteen files front while the drums rolled like spring thunder, filling the woods with their hollow sound, and the fifes shrilled like the swish of rain through trees.
Standing at ease between Dries Bowman and Baltus Weed, I answered to the roll call. Some among us lighted pipes and leaned on our long rifles, chatting with neighbors; others tightened belts and straps, b.u.t.toned spatter-dashes, or placed a sprig of hemlock above the black and white c.o.c.kades on their felt hats.
Balty Weed, who lived east of me, a thin fellow with red rims to his eyes and dry, spa.r.s.e hair tied in a queue with a knot of buckskin, asked me in his stealthy way what I thought about our present business, and if our Provincial Congress had not, perhaps, unjustly misjudged Sir John.
I replied cautiously. I had never trusted Balty because he frequented taverns where few friends to liberty cared to a.s.semble; and he was far too thick with Philip and John Helmer and with Charlie Cady to suit my taste.
We, in the little hamlet of Fonda's Bush, were scarce thirty families, all counted; and yet, even here in this trackless wilderness, out of which each man had hewed for himself a patch of garden and a stump pasture along the little river Kennyetto, the bitter quarrel had long smouldered betwixt Tory and Patriot--King's man and so-called Rebel.
And this was the Mohawk country. And the Mohawks stood for the King of England.
The road, I say, ended here; but there was a Mohawk path through twenty odd miles of untouched forest to those healing springs called Saratoga.
Except for this path and a deep worn war-trail north to the Sacandaga, which was the Iroquois road to Canada, and except for the wood road to Sir William's Mayfield and Fish House settlements, we of Fonda's Bush were utterly cut off. Also, save for the new Block House at Mayfield, we were unprotected in a vast wilderness which embodied the very centre of the Mohawk country.
True, north of us stood that little pleasure house built for his hour of leisure by Sir William, and called ”The Summer House.”
Painted white and green, it stood on a hard ridge jutting out into those dismal, drowned lands which we call the Great Vlaie. But it was not fortified.
Also, to the north, lay the Fish House, a hunting lodge of Sir William.
But these places were no protection for us. On the other hand, they seemed a menace; for Tories, it had been rumoured, were ever skulking along the Vlaie and the Sacandaga; and for aught we knew, these buildings were already designed to be made into block-houses and to be garrisoned by our enemies as soon as the first rifle-shot cracked out in the cause of liberty.