Part 48 (2/2)

Never before had I so deeply felt the desolation of the northland. In a wilderness there is nothing forbidding to me; its huge earth-bedded, living pillars supporting the enormous canopy of green, its vastness, its mystery, its calm silence, may awe yet nothing sadden. But a vague foreboding enters when man enters. Where his corn grows amid the cinders of primeval things, his wanton gashes on tree and land, his beastly pollution of the wild, crystal waters, all the restlessness, and barrenness, and filth, and sordid deformity he calls his home--these sadden me unutterably.

I know, too, that Sir William Johnson felt as I do, loving the forest for its own beautiful, n.o.ble sake; and the great Virginian, who cared most for the majestic sylvan gardens planted by the Almighty, grieved at destruction, and, even in the stress of anxiety, when his carpenters and foresters were dealing pitilessly with the woods about West Point in order to furnish timber for the redoubts and the floats for the great chain, he thought to warn his engineers to beware of waste caused by ignorance or wantonness.

Where rich and fertile soil is the reward for the desperate battle with an iron forest, I can comprehend the clearing of a wilderness, and admire the transformation into gentle hills clothed in green, meadows, alder-bordered waters, acres of grain, and dainty young orchards; but here, in this land, only the flats along the river-courses are worthy of cultivation; the rest is sand and rock deeply covered with the forest mast, and fertile only while that lasts. And the forest once gone, land and water shrivel, unnourished, leaving a desert amid charred stumps and the white phantoms of dead pines. I was ever averse to the cutting of the forests here, except for selected crops of ripened timber to be replaced by natural growth ere the next crop had ripened; and Sir William Johnson, who was wise in such matters, set us a wholesome example which our yeomen have not followed. And already lands cleared fifty years since have run out to the sandy subsoil; yet still the axes flash, still the great trees groan and fall, cras.h.i.+ng through and smas.h.i.+ng their helpless fellows; and in G.o.d's own garden waters shrink, and fire pa.s.ses, and the deer flee away, and rain fails, because man pa.s.ses in his folly, and the path of the fool is destruction.

Where Thendara was, green trees flourish to the glory of the Holder of Heaven.

Where the forest whitens with men, the earth mourns in ashes for the lost Thendara--Thendara! Thendara no more!

CHAPTER XIV

THE BATTLE OF JOHNSTOWN

Two weeks of maddening inactivity followed the arrival at the Yellow Tavern of an express from Colonel Willett, carrying orders for me to remain at Oswaya until further command, bury all apples, pit the corn, and mill what buckwheat the settlers could spare as a deposit for the army.

Not a word since that time had I heard from Johnstown, although it was rumored in the settlement that the Rangers had taken the field in scouts of five, covering the frontier to get into touch with the long-expected forces that might come from Niagara under Ross and Walter Butler, or from the east under St. Leger and Sir John, or even perhaps under Haldimand.

Never had I known such hot impatience, such increasing anxiety; never had I felt so bitterly that the last chance was vanis.h.i.+ng for me to strike an honest blow in a struggle wherein I, hitherto inert, had figured so meanly, so ingloriously.

To turn farmer clodhopper now was heart-breaking. Yet all I could do was to organize a sort of home guard there, detail a different yokel every day to watch the road to Varicks, five miles below, by which the enemy must arrive if they marched with artillery and wagons, as it was rumored they would. At night I placed a sentinel by the mill to guard against scalping parties, and another on the hill to watch the West and South. Meager defenses, one might say, and even the tavern was unstockaded, and protected only by loops and oaken shutters; but every man and woman was demanded for the harvest; even the children staggered off to the thres.h.i.+ng-barns, laden with sheaves of red-stemmed buckwheat, or rolled pumpkins and squashes to the wagons, or shook down crimson apples for the men to cart away and bury.

The little Norris boy labored with the others--a thin, sallow child, heavy-eyed and silent. He had recovered somewhat from the shock of the tragedy he had witnessed, and strove to do what was asked of him, but when spoken to, seemed confused and slow of comprehension; and the tears were ever starting or smeared over his freckled face from cheek to chin.

Being an officer, the poor, heavy-witted folk looked to me for the counsel and wisdom my inexperience lacked. All I could do for them was to arrange their retreat to the tavern at the first signal of danger, and to urge that the women and children sleep there at night. My advice was only partly followed. As the golden October days pa.s.sed, with no fresh alarm from the Sacandaga, their apathetic fatalism turned to a timid confidence that their homes and lands might yet be spared.

Wemple sold his buckwheat on promise of pay in paper dollars, and we milled it and barreled it, and made a deposit in Klein's sugar-bush.

Distant neighbors came a-horseback to the mill with news from neighbors, still more distant, that Sir John had retreated northward from the Sacandaga, toward Edward; that the Tories threatened b.a.l.l.ston; that Indians had been seen near Galway; that the garrison at Schenectady had been warned to take the field against St. Leger; that on Champlain General Haldimand had gathered a great fleet, and his maneuvers were a mystery to the scouts watching him. But no rumors were carried to us concerning Ross and Butler, except that strange vessels had been seen leaving Bucks Island.

The tension, the wearing anxiety, and harrowing chagrin that I had been left here forgotten, waxed to a fever that drove me all day restlessly from field to field, from house to barn, and back to the tavern, to sit watching the road for sign of a messenger to set me free of this dreary, hopeless place.

And on one bright, cold morning in late October, when to keep warm one must seek the sunny lee of the tavern, I sat brooding, watching the crimson maple-leaves falling from the forest in showers. Frost had come, silvering the stiffened earth, and patches of it still lingered in shady places. Oaks were brown, elms yellow; birches had shed their leaves; and already the forest stretched bluish and misty, set with flecks of scarlet maple and the darker patches of the pine.

On that early morning, just after sunrise, I sensed a hint of snow in the wind that blew out of the purple north; and the premonition sickened me, for it meant the campaign ended.

In an ugly and sullen mood I sat glowering at the blackened weeds cut by the frost, when, hearing the sound of horses' feet on the hill, I rose and stood on tiptoe to see who might be coming at such a pace.

People ran out to the rear to look; nearer and nearer came the dull, battering gallop, then a rider rushed into view, leaning far forward, waving his arm; and a far cry sounded: ”Express, ho! News for Captain Renault!”

An express! I sprang to the edge of the road as the horse thundered by; and the red-faced rider, plastered with mud, twisted in his saddle and hurled a packet at me, shouting: ”Butler is in the Valley! Turn out!

Turn out!” sweeping past in a whirlwind of dust and flying stones.

As I caught up the packet from the gra.s.s Farris ran out and fired his musket, then set the conch-horn to his mouth and sent a long-drawn, melancholy warning booming through the forest.

”Close up those shutters!” I said, ”and fill the water-casks!”

Men came running from barn and mill, shouting for the women and children; men ran to the hill to look for signs of the enemy, to drive in cattle, to close and latch the doors of their wretched dwellings, as though bolt and bar could keep out the red fury now at last unloosened.

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