3stalwarts (56 page)

Gil found him still sitting there when he came to report that they had barreled and sacked almost a hundred and fifty bushels of oats, and thirty bushels of barley, and about ninety of wheat they could store for next fall’s planting.

“Good,” said Bellinger. “We’d better start.” He took from his pocket a written requisition he had prepared before leaving the flats, and with a sharpened bullet filled in “150” and “30” in two blank spaces of his badly formed writing. At the foot of the paper he added: “P.S. 90 Bushels wheat too. PB, Col.” He bent over to slip the sheet into the front of the sergeant’s coat and dusted his hands as he rose. “You know, Martin, I kind of like that fellow now,” he said. “Well, we better get going.”

As they emerged from the door into the late afternoon air, all misty with the spray from the falls and vibrant with the thundering water, they found Mr. Ellis, the miller, anxiously regarding the five wagons.

“The boys tell me you’ve taken oats and barley and some wheat for seed, Peter,” he yelled.

“We took only ninety bushels of wheat,” Bellinger yelled back over the noise of water.

“Where’s the guard?”

“They’re locked up in the loft. I don’t know whether they finished their card game. The sergeant’s busted a bag of flour. But he’s got my receipt.”

“How’d he do that?”

“With his head, Alec.”

The men burst out laughing, but the roar of the falls swallowed their laughter. Ellis’s jaw dropped.

“You did that, Peter?”

“Sure we did. By the way, where did all those oats come from?”

“It was shipped in last week from Stone Arabia, Klock’s, and Fox’s Mills,” bawled the miller. “I was going to mill the wheat tomorrow.” He shook his head as though to clear it of the roar of water. “You’d better take it back, Peter. Honest you’d better. I can fix the sergeant so he won’t say anything.”

“Like hell I’ll take it back.”

“Listen. Don’t be a fool, Peter. Don’t you know they’re collecting supplies all over the valley? They say Clinton will muster the line regiments up here inside of six weeks.” He watched Bellinger swing onto his starved horse, which had been nudging up to the tail of the nearest wagon and snuffing with exalted shivers of its slatty sides. “Listen, Peter. That grain’s for them.”

Bellinger leaned out of his saddle, and stared at Ellis, then wiped spray from his eyes. “Where’s the army heading for?” he shouted.

“I don’t know for sure. Some say they’re going to wipe out the Indians.”

“What Indians?” yelled Bellinger, as the men crowded up to listen.

“The Iroquois.”

“By God,” shouted Bellinger. “How?”

“I don’t know. But you take that wheat back, anyway. There’s going to be five regiments. Maybe a thousand men. You’ll get into bad trouble, Pete.”

A lull in the wind made his words startlingly loud as the roar of the falls was swept north. Bellinger was leaning on the withers of his horse. He seemed to be thinking with his whole body. He looked tired again. All his men, including Gil, watched him. Bellinger lifted his reins. His voice was as resonant as it had been at Oriskany. They all heard it.

“Like hell I’ll take anything back. They can do what they like, Alec. It’s worth it to get seed into the ground.” He moved his horse to the front, regardless of his yelling men.

The men went at the horses with their whips. The wagons lurched and groaned inaudibly and gathered a semblance of speed against the foot of the hill. The miller, watching them leave, thought they looked like animated scarecrows. Not very animated, either. He lifted his hand.

Scattered bits of news that filtered in to German Flats during the next two weeks seemed to confirm the miller’s words. The First New York had gone into garrison at Fort Stanwix and Colonel Van Schaick himself had ridden through to take command. And on Captain Demooth’s return from Schenectady in the first days of April, they learned that a great many bateaux were being built in that town for army use. Demooth said it was no secret that Congress intended an expedition, though where and when it would start, nobody knew.

The people listened to the rumors without much heart. Nothing had ever happened before to lend credulity to such reports. More pressing things occupied them— the spring ploughing and the sowing of the stolen seed. Bellinger was anxious to have it in the ground before a company was sent to reclaim it. He himself waited for court-martial papers to be served on him with a kind of grim fatality, and in the meantime thought of ways to hide the seed until it could be sown. He never was court-martialed. He never found out why not. Probably no one knew.

On the sixth of April, Gil went down with the mare and cart to secure his allotment of seed. He had already had a talk with Bellinger and Demooth, and both officers agreed that he should stay on the McKlennar place. It was the one farm that had a stone house standing that could be defended, and the soil was of the best. The other people had marked off temporary land around the forts, each man with his field to cultivate, to raise communal food. “You’ll understand we’ll expect you to bring your grain into common stock next winter if it’s necessary,” said Bellinger.

On the seventh and eighth of April, Gil sowed the oats. The earth had dried fast and worked easily. All day he marched back and forth over the soft loam while the mare on the other side of the fence watched him wistfully. Poor beast, she had been worked to death on insufficient pasturage, hauling the plough and then the drag, until she could hardly stand. Gil had got Adam down to help, and one or the other had hauled with the mare. At that they were better off than some people who hauled their drags without beasts. Now Adam Helmer was resting on the sunny porch, and the women were down by the river gathering the early marigold leaves for their first green food in months. The baby lay on a shawl in the grass at a corner of the field where Gil could keep his eye on him. The boy looked thin, lately, and seemed dull, for they had been feeding him on meat broth since Lana’s milk had given out, and the cow would not freshen until June. They borrowed a little milk from time to time— enough, Gil thought, to keep the baby from getting too sick. But he was worried that it cried so seldom.

Lana did not seem worried. She was carrying another child; they thought it would be born in August. But she looked older. She had a queer look of frailness above the waist, while her hips and thighs had grown inordinately heavy. She took no interest in anything but food. But Gil hoped that, when they were getting plenty to eat again, she would brighten up.

He was glad that Demooth was back, for that meant that John Weaver could get work. Though his wife had died, Demooth was fixing up the Herter house, of which the stone walls yet stood, and he needed a younger man than Clem Coppernol now to work what farm he had left. The old Dutchman had not wintered well. He had always been a heavy eater and the thin winter had left him sour and difficult and given to unpredictable and dangerous flights of passion. He had nearly killed a horse that had lain down with him from exhaustion. They said he would have beaten it to death if he himself had not collapsed from the exertion of swinging the fence rail.

All these things had bothered Gil like a buzzing in his head, like the sound of bees outside a window on a hot afternoon. A good many others complained of the same buzzing of the head. They thought it might be weakness that made it, or the unaccustomed warmth.

Gil himself did not put much stock in the rumors of a Continental offensive against the Indians and Tories to the west. Not even when he saw an unusually large munition train hauling west to Fort Stanwix on the sixth.

But on the seventh he had forgotten about them. He had started sowing at dawn. At first he had cast badly and unsteadily. Later the old accustomed rhythm had returned to his tired arm. This morning at last he had felt like himself and the seed fell in even sweeps, and by afternoon, with only four bushels of barley left to sow, he had felt his confidence rise.

The women came back with baskets of green leaves, Lana, Mrs. McKlennar, and the negress, walking through the still evening air. He thought Lana looked better. She picked up the baby, slinging it on her hip, and stopped before him.

“Come back,” she said. “You’ve sowed enough to-day.”

“Don’t walk on the seeding,” he said. “I’ve only a little left to do.”

She obediently stepped off the seeding and let him pass. Her eyes brightened to watch the even swing of his arm, hand from the bag, over and round and back, making a sort of figure eight that the grain traced wide in the air and spread, in touching earth, to make an even sheet. To watch it soothed her. It was a familiar gesture, elemental in faith and hope.

She said, “I wonder how they’re fixed for seed at Fox’s Mills.”

“I guess all right,” he said, turning and coming back towards her. “How’s Gilly?”

“I think the sun’s doing him good. I wish he had more flesh on his legs.”

“Where’s Joe, to-day?”

“He was back of the house in the sumacs. He had a spade. I don’t know what he was doing.”

They let Joe Boleo’s activities drop. Then Lana went on to the house. She said over her shoulder, “Daisy’s going to bake a spinach pie with the greens.”

Gil was finishing the last row of the field, at the riverside fence. He thought the buzzing was coming back to his head, but he was tired. He stopped to let his ears clear, letting the last grain trickle through his fingers. After a moment, he turned the bag inside out and shook it. He could not waste a single seed. The field lay square before him, traversed in parallels by his own footprints.

A still clear light lay all across the sky, and a flock of crows traversing the valley from north to south caught rusty flashes from it on their wings. Gil watched them turn their heads to look at the field and wondered whether they felt hungry enough to steal his oats.

Joe Boleo came down the field and said, “Gil. Your wife wants you to come home and rest.”

“I’m resting right here.”

“I figured so. But a woman don’t think a man can rest unless he’s where she can talk at him.”

Winter had not upset Joe. He looked the same— gaunt, stooped, wrinkled, lackadaisical.

“I can’t get the buzzing out of my head, Joe.”

“What buzzing?” Joe was never bothered by buzzings.

“It’s so loud I’d think you could hear it,” said Gil.

Joe pretended to listen.

Suddenly his face tilted.

“By Jesus,” he said soberly, “I do.” He waited a moment. Then he climbed onto the fence and turned his face southeast, across the river. “It ain’t buzzing, Gil,” he said excitedly. “It’s drums. They’re coming up from the falls across the river. Hear them now.”

Gil’s head cleared. He too heard them. He climbed up beside Joe and stared with him through the infinite clearness of the evening air.

“There they come,” said Joe. A file of blue was marching up the road. They saw them, but it was hard to believe.

“They’re going to camp,” said Joe. “They’re falling out in that five-acre lot of Freddy German’s.”

Gil could see the drummers with their deep drums drumming beside the single black stud that was all that remained of Getman’s house. Behind them lay the lot. Into it were wheeling a company in blue campaign coats, their muskets all on shoulder. They began to stack arms.

“What are they doing?”

“Taking the fences apart for firewood, I guess.”

Another company with white showing through the blue, white gaiters and white vests, followed the first. Then came a swinging company of men in grayish hunting shirts.

The drums were now a stirring resonance throughout the valley. Adam came loping down the field. He asked excitedly what Joe had made out. “Let’s go over,” he said.

“Sure,” said Joe. “You coming, Gil?”

Gil said he would go home. He didn’t want to leave the place alone. He was tired, too.

The two woodsmen were like two boys. “We’ll come right back and tell you,” they shouted, and piled down to where the boat was fastened. Adam rowed, forcing shiny swirls with the oars, and Joe jerked his fur cap in the stern.

Supper was nearly over when the two men returned, but Daisy had kept a plate hot for each of them. They talked together like boys, both at once, both contradicting.

“There’s a hundred and fifty soldiers,” said Adam. “Two companies. The Fourth New York.”

“No, it’s the Fourth Pennsylvania. The New York Regiment’s the fifth.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Who gives a dang? You ought to’ve gone over, Gil. Their wagons come in right behind them. Remember how we had to wait for our wagons going up to Oriskany? These bezabors were sore as boils because they had to wait for fifteen minutes for the wagons.”

“That ain’t nothing. Do you know what they had for supper?” Joe Boleo’s small eyes blinked.

“No,” said Mrs. McKlennar. “How could we know, you crazy fool?”

“He’s just like a bedbug,” said Adam. “He gets ideas from humins, but they go to his belly. They had fresh pork. Yessir, Mrs. McKlennar. Fresh pork. I et some. And they had white bread. Soft bread. God, this country’s getting luxuries now the army has soft bread.”

“You big blond-headed bug-tit,” said Joe Boleo. “Anybody could have guessed that. What they had, Mrs. McKlennar, ma’am, was white sugar in their tea!” He pursed his lips. “They offered me some tea, and I said yes. And they said how much sugar in it? And I said, well, about two and a half inches of it, with a spoonful of tea. And the son of a gun gave it to me! I brought it home in my shirt.” Chuckling, he drew the cup from inside his shirt and handed it to Mrs. McKlennar.

Mrs. McKlennar began to sniff. She tried twice to speak, and then she said, “Thank you, Joe. I wish we had tea to go with it. But we’ll have it in water. Daisy, boil some water.”

“Yas’m, sholy does. It’s ready bilin’.”

Daisy in her ragged dress fluttered round the table laying the cups. She poured the water from the kettle. With great care Mrs. McKlennar put two teaspoonfuls in each cup. Nobody spoke as they stirred. They all watched her till she lifted her cup. Then they sipped together.

“It surely is a treat,” said Mrs. McKlennar.