Part 36 (1/2)
”Your people hold the gulf. The British have gone back. It seems they were attacked in their rear from the fort. The woods are full of dead men.”
”What is Herkimer going to do?”
”They were making a litter to carry him off the field. They are going home again--down the Valley.”
”So, then, we have lost the fight.”
”Well, seeing that every three sound men have got to tote back one wounded man, and that about half the people you brought here are dead to begin with, it don't look much like a victory, does it?”
”But the British have retreated, you say, and there was a sortie from the fort?”
”Yes, it's about six of one and half-dozen of t'other. I should say that both sides had got their bellyful of fighting. I guess they'll both want to rest for a spell.”
I made no answer, being lost in a maze of thoughts upon the hideous carnage of the day, and upon what was likely to come of it. Enoch went on:
”They seemed to be pretty nigh through with their litter-making. They must be about ready to start. You'd better be spry if you want to go along with 'em.”
”Did you speak to any one of me? Did you tell them where I was?”
”I ain't quite a fool, young man,” said the trapper, with a gaunt sort of smile. ”If they'd caught sight of me, I wouldn't have got much chance to explain about myself, let alone you. It kind of occurred to me that strangers found loafing around in the woods wouldn't get much of an opening for polite conversation just now--especially if those strangers were fellows who had come down from Sillinger's camp with letters only a fortnight ago.”
All this time Cross had been stretched at my knees, with his eyes closed.
He opened them here, at Enoch's last words, and broke into our conversation with a weak, strangely altered voice:
”I know you now--d.a.m.n you! I couldn't think before. You are the fellow I gave my letters to, there on Buck's Island. I paid you your own price--in hard gold--and now you shoot me in return. You are on the right side now.
You make a good rebel.”
”Now look here, Mr. Cross,” put in Enoch, with just a trace of temper in his tone. ”You paid me to carry those letters because I was going that way, and I carried 'em straight. You didn't pay me for anything else, and you couldn't, neither. There ain't been gold enough minted yet to hire me to fight for your King George against Congress. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!”
”Come, Enoch,” I here interrupted, ”enough of that. The man is suffering.
You must not vex him further by words.”
”Suffering or not,” returned the trapper, ”he might keep a civil tongue in his head.--Why, I even did something you didn't pay me for,” he went on, scowling down at the prostrate soldier. ”I delivered your message here to this man” (indicating me with a gesture of his thumb)--”all that, you know, about cutting out his heart when you met him, and feeding it to a Missisague dog.”
Enoch's grim features relaxed into a sardonic smile as he added: ”There may be more or less heart-eating round about here presently, but it don't look much as if it would be his, and the dogs that'll do it don't belong to anybody--not even to a Missisague buck.”
The wounded man's frame shook under a spasm of shuddering, and he glowered at us both wildly, with a look half-wrath, half-pitiful pleading, which helped me the better to make up my mind.
Enoch had turned to me once more:
”Come,” he said, ”we better hustle along. It will be all right with me so long as I am with you, and there is no time to lose. They must be starting from the gulf by this time. If we step along brisk, we'll soon catch them.
As for this chap here, I guess we'd better leave him. He won't last long anyway, and your folks don't want any wounded prisoners. They've got too many litters to carry already.”
”No,” I made answer, with my resolve clear now before me. ”We will make our own litter, and we will carry him to his home ourselves--by the river--away from the others.”
”The h.e.l.l you say!” said Enoch.