3stalwarts (22 page)

Then he said, “Call up the men.”

The militia, held under arms, came quickly up the hill and formed companies. At the same moment, a wild yelling burst from the woods; the brush suddenly disgorged a band of Indians. As they came into the open, they brandished their muskets, tossed up their tomahawks, and yelled again.

“Don’t anybody notice them.”

Herkimer’s voice was calm and contained. He had lit his pipe and now he stood in front of the militia, puffing it and staring up at the sky.

“God damn,” he said. “I didn’t see that storm coming up. But I guess we’ll all get wet anyway. Let’s break camp and go home.”

The Indians were still yelling and prancing at the woods’ edge. But now they too heard the thunder. The clouds suddenly engulfed the sun, a still sultry light came over the rolling valley, and then the rain, in large drops, like a volley from heaven, struck the land. The Indians dove back into the woods and the militia were left alone in the falling rain.

Then they too broke for their own camp. They heard the Indians popping off their rifles through the woods, but the sound was like play in the noise of wind and thunder.

When the last man got into camp, the general’s tent was struck and he was hunched on the back of his miserable old white horse. Joe Boleo said, “They’ve all skedaddled.”

Herkimer grinned. “They’re touchy as women about their paint when they’ve just put it on.”

“It was war paint,” said Cox.

“Yes, I saw it.” He was unruffled. “It’s time we got back home.” He raised his voice above the rain. “This trip ain’t altogether a waste. We’ve learned to march together and get along without scrapping between ourselves.” He grinned and rubbed the rain off his mouth. “Boys, it looks like a bad time was coming. But you’ve seen painted Indians, now, so you’ll know what to shoot at.”

Plenty of the men had been wondering what the expedition had been for. But as they listened to the little German talking to them through the rain, they realized that they had a man who could take them into the woods, and who wasn’t scared of Indians, and they felt that when the time came he could set his teeth in a situation and hang on. “Boys,” he said, “go back and get your haying done as early as you can. Peter,” he called to Colonel Bellinger, “I’m going back the way we came by. We have food waiting for us at Cherry Valley if the Continentals ain’t ate it all. But I give you enough extra so you can take a short cut. Follow up Butternut Creek. If these Indians ever make a shy at German Flats they’ll come that way. You ought to see the country. Joe Boleo’U show you how to go.”

So the German Flats company crossed the Susquehanna at the ford above the Unadilla and headed home straight north without more than an Indian trail to follow the course of the Creek.

It was wild land. Gil, floundering through a swamp, found Adam Hel-mer, whom he had hunted with during the winter, beside him. “It’s great hunting country,” Helmer said. “I’ve hunted it for years. I know it like my fist and I’d like to see the Indian who could catch me in it. Or that I couldn’t catch.”

When they came out at Andrustown Helmer asked permission to leave the ranks. He wanted to visit one of Bower’s girls. When he got permission he dropped back to Gil’s side. “Why don’t you stop off? Polly’s got a sister that can give you fun.”

Gil grinned and said, “I’m a hired man, Adam. I got to get back to work. You heard what Herkimer said about hurrying the crops.”

“You mean you’re married.” Helmer shook his big blond head. “But you’re kind of behind with your sowing, mister.” He laughed, stepped out of line, and entered the woods. All girls were does to Adam, and some had to be still-hunted.

The company tramped through the little cluster of eight farms while the women and children ran to the fences. For the Indian trail turned suddenly into a road that ran straight to Fort Herkimer.

That evening, on the second day of their march, the company disbanded. By dark, Gil had got home. There was no light in his house, so he went to the stone one. Looking through the door, he saw Lana and Mrs. McKlennar and Daisy, her negress, sitting together.

They all made much of him, and Mrs. McKlennar went down cellar for some sack, which all three white people drank. She snorted a good deal at his description. “It sounds just like rioters trying to get up their nerve. What we need is regular troops.”

“Herkimer has nerve enough,” said Gil.

“I don’t doubt it, when he gets pinched. But you don’t win wars by pinching.” She snorted, sipped, and grinned, showing her teeth. “But we’re glad to have you back, my lad. Ain’t we, Magdelana?”

Lana seemed subdued, and at the question she dropped her eyes to her sewing and flushed.

“Hup, hup,” said Mrs. McKlennar. “Leave that and go to bed. That’s where he ought to have found you, anyway. Go on.”

Gil hardly felt Lana’s light touch on his arm. She was looking up with tenderness in her eyes. “I’m glad you’re back, Gil.” And then, “Gil, are you glad? Because I’m real glad.”

“Yes,” he said. “But I’m hungry as sin, too.”

The summer was like any other summer in the upper Mohawk Valley, except for the heat. No one remembered such heat as came in that July.

Day after day of it, that even dried the woods so that ranging cattle returned early to their barns. The air was sultry, and there was a dusty smell in it, as if a spark dropped anywhere could set the whole world blazing.

Men swinging their scythes through standing grass could feel the brittle dryness of it through the snathe from blade edge to palm; and the women, at work with the rakes, found the hay cured almost as fast as they could handle it.

In German Flats, people, starting the haying, found it hard to believe that war was going on in other places. The plain farmer, thinking of his hay and wheat, had no real idea of what the war was about. In the evenings, reverting to the subject listlessly, all he recalled was the early days of 1775, when the Butlers and the Johnsons and their sheriff, Alexander White, had ridden the length of the valley to chop down the liberty pole in front of Herkimer Church, as they had done at Caughnawaga. But now they were all skyhooted off to Canada for these two years.

It seemed they couldn’t take account of the messengers riding horseback up and down the Kingsroad. Men who went at a gallop and didn’t stop to drink. All they thought of it was that you couldn’t find day labor any more for love or money. Congress was paying men to work up in the woods around Fort Stanwix, a crazy notion for a crazy place— as crazy as the heat.

Up at Fort Stanwix two men had taken charge. One was an apple-faced young Dutchman with a chin as sullen as a growing boy’s and very bright blue eyes. His name was Peter Gansevoort, he wore a colonel’s epaulets, and was so gentrified about his linen that one soldier, whose wife (by courtesy) had come along, was doubling the family pay. The other was the second in command, Lieutenant Colonel Marinus Willett, a man who looked like a farmer, with a lantern-like face of rusty red all over, and a nose like a grubbing hoe. When he first appeared the settlers said the very smell of him was Yankee; but he came from New York, and he was able to laugh and enjoy himself.

The five hundred men in the garrison considered that their commanding officers were slave drivers. Not only did they start rebuilding the entire cheval-de-frise, they burnt John Roof’s place to the ground, they cleared the scrub laurel from the clearing, and worse than that they sent two squads out every day to fell trees across Wood Creek. To the local labor, that didn’t make sense. What was the use of repairing the fort if, at the same time, you made it impossible for the British to get there?

Then like a thunderclap, on the seventh of July, word came up the valley that Fort Ticonderoga had been taken by Burgoyne. Though half the people did not know where Ticonderoga lay, the very sound of the sentence had the ominous ring of calamity.

All at once, George Herkimer’s company of militia was mustered and turned into squads of rangers. They blocked the roads to the four points of the compass— west at Schuyler, east at Frank’s tavern beside Little Falls, south at Andrustown, and north at Snydersbush. Rumor said that the Butlers and the Johnsons were returning to the valley, bringing their Indians and the wild Highlanders of whom the Germans were as fearful as they were of the Senecas themselves.

Reports came in of men in the woods at Schoharie, and at Jerseyfield. Overnight the little town of Fairfield was deserted. A man named Suffrenes Casselman had led the Tory villagers westward. The word was brought down by a settler on Black Creek, who described them: twenty men, women and children with them, carrying what they could.

As they finished the haying, the people of German Flats were aware of the rebirth of their old racial fears. The Committee of Safety began enforcing their new laws. A negro was shot for being out after dark without permission. Communities began repairing the old stockades. The hammering at Eldridge Blockhouse came up the valley on those still days, so that Gil Martin, struggling with Lana to get the last of the hay under the barrack roof, heard it plainly.

That evening Jacob Small rode down from Eldridge. He said, “We’ve got a cannon set up in the tower,” as proudly as though Betsey Small had borne another son. “If you hear it go off, it’s Injuns. If she shoots twice, don’t try to fetch anything, but run like sixty. If she shoots three times, try to get across the river. It means they’ve got so close you couldn’t get inside the fort.”

After supper Gil got down the Merritt rifle. And seeing him clean it, Mrs. McKlennar, who had dropped by in the dark, nodded her head from the door.

“Don’t look so scared, though, Magdelana. They haven’t got here yet.”

A canoe came down the river in the dark, cutting an arrow through the moon. In the bow a big-shouldered man stroked steadily. In the stern, Joe Boleo was paddling with his usual appearance of exhaustion.

They ran the bow aground above the falls and took the path down the hill by Warner Dygert’s. They found Nicholas Herkimer sitting on his porch.

“Who’s that?”

“It’s Spencer, Honnikol.”

Herkimer got up. The big man shook hands.

“Where you from, Tom?”

Spencer said, “Onondaga.”

“What’s up?”

“The Indians are at Oswego. Both the Butlers. Sir John Johnson.”

“How many all together?”

“They’ve got four hundred regular soldiers. The Eighth Regiment and the Thirty-fourth. There’s about six hundred Tories. They’re wearing green uniforms. All the Senecas are there. Brant and his Mohawks. The Cayugas and some Onondagas. A thousand, maybe.”

Herkimer grunted.

“Who’s in command?”

“A man named Sillinger.” (Spencer gave the local contraction of Colonel Barry St. Leger’s name.) “He has a big tent and five servants.”

“I never heard of him,” said Herkimer. “Is he an army man, Tom?”

The Indian blacksmith said, “I don’t know. He wears a red coat with gold strings.”

“Thank God for that,” said Herkimer. He yelled for a negro. “Go get Mr. Eisenlord. He’s at Frank’s. Go quick.” He turned to Joe. “I can’t write this myself. It’s too damned hot tonight.”

Eisenlord’s neat hand made English of the general’s dictation: —

Whereas it appears certain that the enemy, of about 2000 strong, Christians and savages, are arrived at Oswego, with the intention to invade our frontiers, I think it proper and most necessary for the defense of our country, and it shall be ordered by me as soon as the enemy approaches, that every male person, being in health, from 16 to 60 years of age, in this our country, shall, as in duty bound, repair immediately, with arms and accoutrements, to the place to be appointed in my orders; and will then march to oppose the enemy with vigor, as true patriots, for the just defense of their country. And those that are above 60 years, or really unwell, and incapable to march, shall then assemble, also armed, at their respective places, where women and children will be gathered together, in order for defense against the enemy, if attacked, as much as lies in their power… .

Spencer had already started back to the woods to watch Wood Creek for the first arrival of St. Leger’s advance guard.

Eisenlord had been ferried over the river with copies of his proclamation to be distributed through the county. There was nobody left but Joe Boleo. As he said to himself, he was dry enough to make a hen quack; but old Honnikol sat so grim and still in the darkness that he couldn’t bring himself to make any suggestion. He tried to think of a funny story, but the only one he remembered was the one about Lobelia Jackson and the hired man, and Honnikol had never taken much to dirty stories.

So in the kindness of his heart Joe Boleo set himself to thinking about a draft of beer. He thought about it in steins, and in a blue glass, and a pew-ter mug; and by and by he got so thirsty with his thoughts that he thought of beer in a keg, with the bung open and his mouth the same and the beer establishing a connection.

Herkimer shook himself. “Yah,” he said. “You’re thirsty, Joe.”

“How’d you guess that, Honnikol? I didn’t say nothing.”

For a moment the little German’s voice was deep with amusement.

“Yah,” he said. “That’s how.”

“Well,” Joe admitted, “if you come to mention it.”

“Maria,” called the general.

His wife came out on the stoop. She was a young, plump, serene woman, who might have been the general’s daughter. She came to the steps and he reached out and put his arm round her knees.

“Maria, Joe Boleo’s thirsty. And I think I am. Bring us both beer. In the two big mugs.”

“All right, Nicholas.”

He said apologetically, “I don’t want the niggers round just now.”

“I know,” she said.

It seemed to Joe she was a long time coming back. But she came. Her husband made her sit down beside him and held her in his arm.

“Well, Joe”— holding up his mug.

Joe almost made his usual reply about a catamount’s biological necessities; he restrained himself in time.

“Here’s to you both, Mister and Missis.”

The beer was cool from the cellar. The night was dark. The moon was low upon the falls and the rapids were a living shine. The sound of broken water reached dimly towards the house.