3stalwarts (70 page)

Joe Boleo didn’t think at all. He knew enough to sleep, when he had food in his inwards and a warm bed. His snores went up and down as evenly as a pendulum.

The rain fell in a continuous grayness over the valley. In the morning the stockade of the fort, only a couple of hundred yards away, was a brown shadow, indistinct, and without visible life. Lana threw a piece of horse blanket over her head and shoulders and went out with Gil and Joe to look at the valley. As soon as they stepped through the door their ears were greeted by the roar of the West Canada Creek away on their left. The sound was nothing like the usual roar of the rapids that came down through the hills. It was more a deep-toned humming, as though gigantic harp-strings had been stretched from bank to bank. Joe said, “The rocks are covered.” He thanked them for his supper and went away to the fort. Gil and Lana proceeded until they could see out across the flat land towards the river.

The Mohawk was as smooth as glass, but the color was changed from gray to a roily brown, and the shape of it was unfamiliar, reaching back in spots well south across the fields.

There was nothing on earth a man might do now, except gather firewood and wonder how far the water had risen.

No one had ever seen such a rain. When, on the third day, the wind changed to the southwest and the sky opened towards noon, and the first small space of blue appeared like a vision on the top of Shoemaker hill, they saw the flats half covered by a brown and fluid waste. The hillside streams arched out from the hills and stood like carved dark yellow columns clear in the air. Where the West Canada Creek met the Mohawk was a boiling pot of waters, in which a spruce tree, entire, from tip to roots, revolved with a kind of gigantic dismay.

People felt queerly disturbed to see the sunset reflected where they had planted wheat. Men stood in futile groups along the edge of the flood, tossing out sticks and trying to estimate the force of the current and the effect it would have on the topsoil.

Towards dusk a bateau with five soldiers shot down the main current from the west. The four men at the oars swung it into the quieter water and rowed steadily towards Fort Dayton. They were men from Fort Stanwix, carrying dispatches. The woods, they said, were impassable, but coming by river they had covered the whole distance during the afternoon.

The east and north and south walls of Fort Stanwix had been practically leveled by the flood. The parade was under two feet of water, and there were really no defenses left except the pickets on the outer glacis. If an army could have crossed the woods against them now, the garrison would have had to defend itself in the open. It was obvious that the garrison could not repair the damage.

While the men ate, Bellinger read the letter from Cochran, which confirmed the men’s story and added that the officers unanimously recommended the transfer of the Stanwix garrison to Forts Herkimer and Dayton. He did not, however, feel sure that the Albany command would receive this recommendation with any more favor than in the past, and suggested that Bellinger write a letter to the Governor endorsing the transfer.

The bare possibility of a suitable garrison of regular troops in German Flats roused a hope in Bellinger that he had not felt since the beginning of the war. He wrote a long letter to the Governor promising local labor for the erection of suitable barracks and for any other work the army officers might require.

But when the boatload of soldiers departed on the following morning Bellinger felt less confident. He had become painfully aware of Albany’s fixed habits of thought about the western settlements.

That afternoon, however, any other possibility was put out of the question by the complete destruction of the remaining fortifications at Stanwix by fire. How it had started no one ever told; why, in the saturated condition of the fort, it had not been got under control, no one ever explained.

The hope and confidence inspired at German Flats by the arrival of the garrison from Fort Stanwix were short-lived. The Albany command had conceded the necessity of their removal in May; before the first week of June they had withdrawn two companies for the defense of the Hudson Valley. At Fort Dayton were left only a few squads and at Fort Herkimer a Captain Moody with his artillery company of twenty men, and two light field pieces which were mounted on the walls.

Bellinger grimly supervised the spring planting with armed guards of militia. The small group of Rangers were no longer permitted to make long scouts, but were stationed close along the hills. It was not necessary any more to have long warning of a raid. The women and children were kept huddled to the forts, and the farming parties were instantly convertible to armed companies that might either cut their way back to the forts without assistance or, if the raid proved numerically small, attack the destructives in the open.

There was nothing left to destroy; and the parties that turned up early in June were only looking for stray scalps. More than half of the planting of wheat had been buried or washed out by the spring flood, and the spring planting of grain came up in serried patches of buckwheat, barley, and oats, put in as seed had been procured.

Gil Martin had made no attempt this spring to work the McKlennar farm. Most of his wheat had been washed out. The gutted walls of the stone house, the sashless windows, like lipless mouths, were good only to house stray hedgehogs. The empty barn, which had survived the burning of the house, was burned towards the middle of the month. The fire was seen from the two forts during the night, burning sullenly, with a small party of men surrounding it, but no one suggested going out against them.

Then, towards the end of June, as he came back to Fort Dayton from scout duty with Adam Helmer and John Weaver, Gil saw ten mounted Continentals riding east along the Kingsroad. Adam and John remained outside the fort to watch them, but Gil went in to make his report to Colonel Bellinger. While he was yet talking to Bellinger he heard the horses enter the stockade, and a moment later a sentry stuck his head in the door to announce the arrival of Lieutenant Colonel Willett.

It was a still hot evening, and the smoke from the cooking fires drew in through the windows, filling the small room. But Gil saw Bellinger’s dark eyes brighten as he got up from the table, and he himself felt a quickening of his heart. Both of them remembered Willett’s first arrival at the fort while St. Leger was investing Stanwix four years ago. Willett had come through the Indian lines; and Willett had ridden straight on to Albany to hurry up Benedict Arnold. They had forgotten Arnold in German Flats until the news had come last winter of his attempted betrayal of West Point. But for some reason no one had forgotten Marinus Willett.

“That’s all, Martin,” Bellinger said. “You can go now.”

“There’s no need of that, is there?” said the nasal voice from the door. “It’s his business as much as yours and mine, Bellinger.”

Marinus Willett looked just as they remembered him. The hard small twinkling blue eyes, close above the huge hooked nose, the red face, the square uncompromising shoulders, filled the doorway. As he came up to Bellinger he looked even taller, for Bellinger had the regular farmer’s stoop. His large nose sniffed while he shook hands, and he said, “I hope you’ve got enough extra to feed us, Bellinger.”

“I guess we can scrape up something.”

“I’m glad to know it. There’s lots of places down the valley that can’t do that. Even at my headquarters in Fort Plain we haven’t anything to drink.”

“We’ve had no liquor up here since last October, Colonel.” Bellinger stopped himself short. “Your headquarters?” he asked. “What do you mean?”

The blue eyes twinkled.

“They’ve merged the five New York Continental companies into two, and George Clinton came around and pestered me to come up here and command the Mohawk levies. He said I was going to be my own man and would have a regiment to work with and a couple of companies of regulars now in garrison. With that and the militia— me and you— we’re supposed to make this frontier safe.” Willett sat down and stared humorously along his nose. “I thought, with that, by God, I could do a lot more than anyone has done so far and I said I’d come. I’ve been up the valley for two weeks. I’ve reckoned up the men.” He didn’t look humorous now, his flat cheeks hardened. “I found Stark had drawn off the two companies: now the British won’t buy Vermont, he’s scared they’ll come and take it for nothing. God damn him.”

“God damn all Yankees,” Bellinger said fervently.

“God damn the whole shebang. I’ve got a sore tail. Man, I’ve been to every stockade and fort between Schenectady and this place like a God-damned census taker, checking the militia list Clinton gave me before I set out. That was the ‘77 list, Bellinger. There were twenty-five hundred enrolled men. Do you know how many of you there’s left?”

“I know that we’ve lost nearly half of our men in this district,” Bellinger said grimly.

Willett nodded his big head.

“There were twenty-five hundred in 1777. Now the total, including yours, is less than eight hundred.” He stared at Bellinger and Gil. “That’s why I said it was this man’s business as much as ours. God, it’s a mess. Besides the militia I’ve got one hundred and thirty levies, in good shape. But I’m responsible for Catskill and Ballston as well as this valley. And I’m sending most of them to those two places and the middle fort in Schoharie. I’ll leave Moody and his twenty men in Herkimer. For the rest of the valley I’d rather depend on the militia.” Suddenly he grinned widely, showing his large yellow teeth. “Clinton’s landed me on you, and, by the Lord, I’m not going to run off now. There’s nobody outside the forts, and I can get hold of men fast. We’ll do the job, one way or the other. Have you got a pipe around anywhere?”

Bellinger produced a clay, which Willett filled from his own pouch. “I’ve got a few exempts and a few levies not listed and I’ll keep them as my own garrison in Fort Plain and as the centre of any army I get together. This section, though, I’m going to leave to you. I’m not going to call you out, either, to go down the valley, but I want you to keep your men handy to join me if I ever come this way.”

Bellinger nodded with his usual sombreness. But for the first time in a long while there was a gleam in his eye. “We’ll be around. Can you get us a little powder?”

“I’ve got the Governor’s ear. By God, I ought to, after taking on this job! I’ll guarantee powder. Food’s hard to come by. There’s plenty of it in Albany, but the Congress has impounded it for the regular army. Even Heath can’t get it for his garrison at West Point. Lord knows what’s up. But there’s one satisfaction in it— the destructives won’t find much to eat when they come this way.”

One of Willett’s first acts was to impound the best horses at the various forts along the valley for use by his expresses. It had an immensely heartening effect on German Flats to realize that there was someone in the valley who was keeping close touch with them; and the first express to arrive brought news of an irruption in Currietown and Willett’s gathering of the militia, his quick pursuit, and total rout of the destructives at Dor-lach. For the first time a band of the destructives had actually been caught and licked.

The harvest of their mixed crops in August, after that, was comparatively undisturbed, though there were occasional brushes in the woods when stray Indians attacked the berry pickers.

Another effect of the expresses was the bringing of news from the rest of the country. Willett always included in his dispatches to Bellinger whatever word had come to him. Men began to talk about the war in the south as if it were in some way allied to their own difficulties.

It was strange how that simple illusion had restored their courage. They were not aware of it themselves. They did not know that Willett was raising heaven and earth that fall to get even one company of well-equipped regulars sent up to him. To Governor Clinton he wrote how “the prospect of this suffering country hurts me.” He even went over General Clinton’s head to General Washington, describing the valley as he had first seen it, and as it stood now. But Washington was meditating his march into the south to join Greene and Lafayette against Cornwallis, and he would not spare a man.

In the Mohawk Valley the fall was early, arriving with a long stretch of northwest weather, small cold showers that pebbled the surface of the river, and day after day of rolling clouds. The roads became heavy, and the expresses, when they traveled, were coated with mud to their thighs.

The corn was stacked about the stockades and the threshing went on in the barns close to the forts, and the winnowed grain was carried into the magazines and stored. Joe Boleo predicted a cold winter that would break early. He did not know why he thought so, when John Weaver tried to cross-examine him; but he had no doubt of it.

They were standing guard on top of the Shoemaker hill, bare to the wind, with the clouds passing over their heads, and occasional showers, which they could see entire from their height, leaving wet trails across the tossing wilderness. The trees were mostly bare, and the forests filled the air with the wintry smell of mouldering leaves. Now and then they saw small flights of duck scudding before the rain.

“Winter’s coming,” said Joe. “It’s getting cold. They hain’t ever bothered us none after October, only when Butler went to Cherry Valley.”

John was glad to believe him. All day he had been keeping scarcely half a watch. He had hardly felt the cold as he crouched down behind the windbreak Joe had constructed. It seemed to him that his whole being was filled with what Mary had told him that morning about being sure that she was going to have a baby.

He thought he would never forget her; she acted so proud.

“Do you think I should tell your mother, John?”

But he said, “Wait till I come home.” He wanted to have time to think. His mother hadn’t been herself for two years now. She kept very quiet. Sometimes it seemed to him as though a half of her mind had deserted her when George got taken; for while she did her share of work, she had fits of talking vaguely. She never wept any more as she had at first. Though she was convinced that since they had never heard a word of George he must be dead, it was plain that she could not reconcile herself. Sometimes John used to have the feeling that she was only keeping herself alive until she was sure. Now, he wondered what effect this news would have on her. Rarely, she would have flagrant bursts of temper, when she would try to take a strap to him or Cobus as if they were still children. He didn’t want to have her start a thing like that with Mary.