Part 9 (2/2)

”Go in to Knowles' window and shoot at those people,” said the sergeant hoa.r.s.ely. Afterwards he coughed. Some of the fumes of the fight had made way to his lungs.

Patterson looked at the door into this other room. He looked at it as if he suspected it was to be his death-chamber. Then he entered and stood across the body of Knowles and fired vigorously into a group of plum trees.

”They can't take this house,” declared the sergeant in a contemptuous and argumentative tone. He was apparently replying to somebody. The man who had been shot in the throat looked up at him. Eight men were firing from the windows. The sergeant detected in a corner three wounded men talking together feebly. ”Don't you think there is anything to do?” he bawled. ”Go and get Knowles' cartridges and give them to somebody who can use them! Take Simpson's too.” The man who had been shot in the throat looked at him. Of the three wounded men who had been talking, one said: ”My leg is all doubled up under me, sergeant.” He spoke apologetically.

Meantime the sergeant was re-loading his rifle. His foot slipped in the blood of the man who had been shot in the throat, and the military boot made a greasy red streak on the floor.

”Why, we can hold this place,” shouted the sergeant jubilantly. ”Who says we can't?”

Corporal Flagler suddenly spun away from his window and fell in a heap.

”Sergeant,” murmured a man as he dropped to a seat on the floor out of danger, ”I can't stand this. I swear I can't. I think we should run away.”

Morton, with the kindly eyes of a good shepherd, looked at the man. ”You are afraid, Johnston, you are afraid,” he said softly. The man struggled to his feet, cast upon the sergeant a gaze full of admiration, reproach, and despair, and returned to his post. A moment later he pitched forward, and thereafter his body hung out of the window, his arms straight and the fists clenched. Incidentally this corpse was pierced afterwards by chance three times by bullets of the enemy.

The sergeant laid his rifle against the stone-work of the window-frame and shot with care until his magazine was empty. Behind him a man, simply grazed on the elbow, was wildly sobbing like a girl. ”d.a.m.n it, shut up,” said Morton, without turning his head. Before him was a vista of a garden, fields, clumps of trees, woods, populated at the time with little fleeting figures.

He grew furious. ”Why didn't he send me orders?” he cried aloud. The emphasis on the word ”he” was impressive. A mile back on the road a galloper of the Hussars lay dead beside his dead horse.

The man who had been grazed on the elbow still set up his bleat.

Morton's fury veered to this soldier. ”Can't you shut up? Can't you shut up? Can't you shut up? Fight! That's the thing to do. Fight!”

A bullet struck Morton, and he fell upon the man who had been shot in the throat. There was a sickening moment. Then the sergeant rolled off to a position upon the blood floor. He turned himself with a last effort until he could look at the wounded who were able to look at him.

”Kim up, the Kickers,” he said thickly. His arms weakened and he dropped on his face.

After an interval a young subaltern of the enemy's infantry, followed by his eager men, burst into this reeking interior. But just over the threshold he halted before the scene of blood and death. He turned with a shrug to his sergeant. ”G.o.d, I should have estimated them at least one hundred strong.”

WYOMING VALLEY TALES

I.--THE SURRENDER OF FORTY FORT.

Immediately after the battle of 3rd July, my mother said, ”We had best take the children and go into the Fort.”

But my father replied, ”I will not go. I will not leave my property. All that I have in the world is here, and if the savages destroy it they may as well destroy me also.”

My mother said no other word. Our household was ever given to stern silence, and such was my training that it did not occur to me to reflect that if my father cared for his property it was not my property, and I was ent.i.tled to care somewhat for my life.

Colonel Denison was true to the word which he had pa.s.sed to me at the Fort before the battle. He sent a messenger to my father, and this messenger stood in the middle of our living-room and spake with a clear, indifferent voice. ”Colonel Denison bids me come here and say that John Bennet is a wicked man, and the blood of his own children will be upon his head.” As usual, my father said nothing. After the messenger had gone, he remained silent for hours in his chair by the fire, and this stillness was so impressive to his family that even my mother walked on tip-toe as she went about her work. After this long time my father said, ”Mary!”

Mother halted and looked at him. Father spoke slowly, and as if every word was wrested from him with violent pangs. ”Mary, you take the girls and go to the Fort. I and Solomon and Andrew will go over the mountain to Stroudsberg.”

Immediately my mother called us all to set about packing such things as could be taken to the Fort. And by nightfall we had seen them within its pallisade, and my father, myself, and my little brother Andrew, who was only eleven years old, were off over the hills on a long march to the Delaware settlements. Father and I had our rifles, but we seldom dared to fire them, because of the roving bands of Indians. We lived as well as we could on blackberries and raspberries. For the most part, poor little Andrew rode first on the back of my father and then on my back.

He was a good little man, and only cried when he would wake in the dead of night very cold and very hungry. Then my father would wrap him in an old grey coat that was so famous in the Wyoming country that there was not even an Indian who did not know of it. But this act he did without any direct display of tenderness, for the fear, I suppose, that he would weaken little Andrew's growing manhood. Now, in these days of safety, and even luxury, I often marvel at the iron spirit of the people of my young days. My father, without his coat and no doubt very cold, would then sometimes begin to pray to his G.o.d in the wilderness, but in low voice, because of the Indians. It was July, but even July nights are cold in the pine mountains, breathing a chill which goes straight to the bones.

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