3stalwarts (45 page)

He did not look at Nancy. But Nancy nodded behind his funny back. She was contented for the first time in many months. Quite happy.

“Deodesote,” she repeated in a dutiful voice.

They started just at daybreak.

As the days of May went by, the settlers in German Flats became increasingly aware of the gradual closing in of the destructives. Captain Demooth was asking for volunteers to add to the Ranger service. He had been able to find only ten men willing to spend all their time in the woods. There had been thirty at first, but as the sun grew daily warmer, and the earth dried, many of them returned to work in their fields.

Gil was one of these. He knew that Mrs. McKlennar would have willingly found another man and taken care of Lana into the bargain; but the farm was on his mind. He had to see to the planting of the corn himself. When he was out with Joe and Adam, he found himself uneasy, after the first two days, to see how the wheat was growing.

“He ain’t nothing but a farming man,” Joe would say, disgustedly. They had set up a tiny lodge a few miles north of Edmeston, which was still inhabited by several Tory families. From the hillside, as he lay on his belly in the leaves, Gil could look down on the clearings and watch the small ploughings; the women putting in the hills of corn and squash and beans; the children fetching the cattle at dusk and dawn.

The children were the only people they had to be careful of. Sometimes the cattle strayed near the shanty and had to be driven off, though once or twice, before he did so, Gil took their kettle and filled it with fresh milk.

The other two would never allow Gil to make one of the weekly solitary scouts to the southward. They said he had no sense in the woods; he would get killed surely. An Indian squaw could hear him coming half a mile. They made him stay at the lodge, and when they thought they had any news, he had to run up the back trail fifteen miles to the next station. There a man was always waiting to relay the word.

Gil was not as bad in the woods as they made him out to be. He be-came quieter as time went on, and they admitted that he was turning into a good runner— not in Adam’s class, of course, but better than middling. But he had no eye for things. He couldn’t tell what a crow or jay or king-fisher was chattering of. They said tolerantly that he would never learn.

There were odd times when he felt the lazy contentment creeping into him. When for days they just lay round on a hilltop, when the sun was hot and the sky dry, watching the tops of the trees to the south and particularly the east.

Once old Blue Back came into the camp. He had taken his wife on a spring tour to Unadilla to visit a Tuscarora family as soon as she had her planting done. He had left her there and struck north to give them the news.

They saw him sauntering up the hill, shifting his eyes left and right, looking everywhere but in their direction. Joe muttered, “The old twerp seen us a hundred yards back. He looked me right in the eye. Now he’s going to act surprised.”

He did.

He beamed all over and said “How” to all of them, shaking hands and holding his hat up to each in turn. He had not shaved his head. He looked greasy and brown and dirty and he smelled of fish. He said they had been curing bullheads for three days in his friend’s cabin. They had all the windows and doors closed to keep the smoke in the cabin. He said it got pretty hot, sometimes, so he came up to see how Joe Boleo was, and his friend, Gil Martin. He said an Indian couldn’t get any drink in Unadilla or Oghkwaga either. The white men laid hold of all of it. He thought somebody up north might have a drink. He had a twitching in his right leg when he went without it too long himself. Did Joe ever have that?

Joe resignedly handed him a small swallow of rum and Blue Back sat down. He said he needed a new hat.

“Go to hell,” said Joe. “You can’t have mine.”

“Too big,” agreed Blue Back. “Yours too big.” He pointed at Helmer.

“What you going to do about that, Gil?”

Gil grinned and said he needed his own hat himself.

“Me make trade,” suggested Blue Back.

“No, thanks,” said Gil.

“What’s on your mind?” asked Joe.

The old Oneida sighed and said that Joseph Brant was in Unadilla. He was gathering the Indians. There were already about fifty whites under Captain Caldwell there, and quite a lot of runaway negroes. He hadn’t talked to Captain Caldwell himself, because he thought they might not be friends. But Captain Caldwell drank a great deal. All the white men drank a great deal. Sometimes it seemed to Blue Back that they were sick or afraid of the woods.

“Brant still there?”

Brant, said Blue Back, had gathered together about two hundred and taken the party eastward. But he was due to return soon. He had to meet with John Butler at Unadilla in the end of June.

Boleo whistled under his breath.

“Adam,” he said, “you better take a cut through Springfield and pass out a warning. They won’t pay no attention, though.”

“No,” said the Indian. He had been that way himself. People just kicked him out. He hadn’t even had a drink. He had only managed to steal a couple of young pigs.

“What did you do with them?” asked Adam hopefully.

It appeared that they were eaten.

Joe said, “When did Brant move out of Unadilla?”

A week ago, said Blue Back.

Joe swore. “Why didn’t you come here right away, you old timber beast?”

“No good.”

He’s right, thought Gil. The people wouldn’t move, now that crops were in the earth, and there were no troops to send to them. He looked at Joe. Joe was standing up and staring eastward.

“By God,” he said, “Brant’s on the loose already!”

Gil could not see the smoke for a long time. It was such a pale, frail, insubstantial thing, a mere mist in the sky.

“You better pull foot for home, Gil. Tell ‘em Brant’s burning Springfield way. Me and Adam will make a scout, and Adam will come back here and I’ll report at Herkimer.”

They had their own path marked out. They did not use the old Iroquois trail. Their route lay along the ridges, above it, following deer runs.

Gil hit a steady pace. He was going all the way through to the forts. On such long running— even on this one, when he knew that the destructives were loose— he had a singular feeling of freedom. Often he thought that if he were making such a run with Adam, he would quite easily break off with the easy-going giant to a party with the Bowers girls. Adam had pestered him about it more than once when they were lying before their fire at night.

The sunset was fading when Gil came out on the top of Shoemaker hill. He paused for a moment to get his breath for the last miles down to the river.

The sky was like a great silken sheet over all the world, misty in the north, but edged with sunset to the west. Under it, on a level with Gil’s eyes, the wilderness rolled northward— mile upon mile, ridge upon ridge, until the mountains lifted against the sky. The color of it in the late spring was like water, gray-green, with darker shades where the evergreens marked out the long pine ridges or the balsam swamps, and with occasional frothy streaks of white of the wild cherries in bloom. As the light waned, the whole panorama conveyed a sense of motion; the ridges rolling higher and higher, as the hollows of the balsam swamps were deepened.

The valley itself was like a crystal under his feet through which he could look down on a picture painted in miniature. The bright line of the river was still tinged with the sunset; the two forts— from this elevation they looked close together— were geometrical shapes in the irregular varicolored fields; the fences between the fields were like small stitches painstakingly made to patch the surface of the flats. But the houses and barns alone in the farther clearings were infinitesimal blocks in the crooked fingers of the wilderness.

As he started down the bald slope of the hill, Gil’s eyes searched across the river, picking up the line of the Kingsroad and following it towards McKlennar’s. He could see house and barn, and the stone house behind the blooming apple tree. The sunset made the windows blind burning eyes in the stone face. But the rest of the place was clear, even to young John Weaver turning the cows into the yard. Lana, of course, would not be milking. She was two weeks overdue. Gil trotted downward.

Then he saw a familiar figure moving along the road. He knew at once who it was. It moved into a lighted stretch, showing the gray horse and the heavy, upright, black-clad rider. He was going out from German Flats. He was approaching McKlennar’s. Now he turned in, and John Weaver’s small dog rushed out barking to meet him.

It was Dr. Petry. For some reason, Gil remembered what Mrs. McKlennar had once called the doctor, when she saw him riding his gray horse along the road. “Like death on a pale horse,” she had said.

Young John Weaver tingled with excitement, curiosity, and dread. He could tell by Daisy’s voice that things had started in the stone house. He had just finished the milking; it had taken longer with the spotted cow freshened, as she had that morning; one hind quarter of her bag had shown a sign of caking and he had to work on her. The negress stuck her calico-wrapped head in the barn door and called, “You, boy!” He knew it then, but he didn’t like being called “You, boy,” by a nigger, even though he was hired help; and he didn’t answer. Daisy peered in and said, “Oh, white boy!”

“What is it?” John asked gruffly.

Immediately Daisy put on her importance.

“You got to fotch me mo’ wood.”

“I took it in before I went after the cows.”

“Dat trash! I want birch. I want a lot of it. Fust thing dey’ll holler fo’ hot water, and whar Daisy den? W’en ol’ Miss wants something she wants it first off, immeedjut, and now. I got to have birch split fine to fotch de bilin’ wid de fust bref. Here, give me dat milk and get on de mare and go tell Doc Petry. And don’ you spare de hickory stick on’r.”

John wrenched the halter off the mare, bridled her, and mounted bare-back. He rode hard, hunching himself over the withers, and wondering, “Will I be in time?” He drew up at the doctor’s and called in through the window.

“They just told me to fetch you.”

With agonized eyes he watched the doctor pop in a tart of preserved currants and wipe his mouth. “I thought it might start tonight,” said Doc. “Well, well. You might unhitch my horse-he’s all saddled-and bring him round here.”

John flung off the reeking mare and got the doctor’s horse, lugging him by main force. He waited till the doctor came out and mounted. “Hup,” said Dr. Petry. It was like winding a piece of clockwork: the spring seemed jammed for a minute; then the insides of the gray animal whirred and rumbled and his legs started to gesticulate, and all of a sudden you realized that he was actually walking away. John clambered onto the mare and caught up. The mare was hot and full of fettle.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said to Doc. “I think I’d better get on back. They want me to split some more wood.”

The doctor, who had got the hiccoughs from starting out on a new-filled stomach, put his hand to his mouth, and then turned his staring eyes on John.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Split wood. Just what we need. Half a cord.”

But the mare was already helling away up the road like the backsides of forty rabbits. John rushed her into her stall and yanked his axe out of the shed and got to work on the wood. As soon as he had three or four armfuls he delivered them to the kitchen. He could hear Mrs. McKlennar moving round the front room and talking. Daisy bustled in. “Dat’s enough in here,” she said. But John still stood there. He wasn’t sure. Yes, it was —her voice! Mrs. Martin was talking! Thank God she was still alive!

He went back to the woodpile and chopped and split enough wood to boil water for all the babies this side of China. But he was thinking, wouldn’t this be an awful time to have the destructives strike the flats? Of course the scouts were out. Of course there would be some warning. But to move her! Move her now! It was too late. Why hadn’t she moved into a house close to the fort? When the doctor came there would be two of them, though. John left off chopping and got down his musket and reprimed it. He wished that Gil was back. He felt a tremendous responsibility. But he wished now that the doctor would hurry up. Then he remembered that he hadn’t turned the cows out, so he did that. And then the doctor arrived.

“Chopped the wood?” he inquired gravely as John took his horse.

“Yes, sir,” said John.

The doctor went into the house. When John came back to the porch and sat down with the musket on his knees, he could hear the doctor’s heavy voice rumbling away to Mrs. McKlennar, a pause, laughter, and then Lana’s voice joining in.

Young John felt the blood rush all through him. He positively burned with the thought, “By God, women were brave!”

He thought what it would be like when he and Mary got married. What it would be like, being in there, watching her, seeing her go through it. It seemed awful. Mary was even slimmer than Mrs. Martin was. But it had to be. A man couldn’t get away from facing it. It was right, too. It was what you expected.

He heard silence fall heavily in the room. Then he heard Mrs. Martin give a gasp and the doctor say with unction, “They’re picking up, aren’t they?”

“Well, for God’s sake, John Weaver!”

He turned to see the widow looking at him. Her horse face was flushed high with excitement. But she appeared to struggle with something in her own inside.

“What on earth are you doing, John?”

He tried to explain. But Mrs. McKlennar seemed to understand. “Very good idea,” she said. “Yes indeed. But I think you ought to patrol the place. You better keep marching round the buildings. Suppose an Indian should be coming up from the back?”

John wasn’t a fool. He blushed. He knew that she meant he wasn’t to sit there right outside the window. He couldn’t imagine how he had come to do it.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Now he was marching round the yard. Now he was down on the road, looking to see if anybody were coming. He leaned against the fence rails, and thought, “Even if we get able to marry this summer, that couldn’t hap-pen for quite a while.”