3stalwarts (72 page)

The dawn of October 28 was windless and cold. When Gil got out of bed to start the fire up, the valley was white with snow and all the trees metallic from the frozen mist. The sky was so clear, just before sunrise, that it looked colorless.

There had been no sound from the fort. Lana dressed and moved furtively about the cabin as the first sticks caught.

“Do you think you’ll have to go to-day, dear?”

“I don’t know,” he whispered. “We’re waiting to hear from Willett.”

After that they were silent. The children, Joe Boleo, Mrs. McKlennar, and the negress lay like logs of wood under their blankets, heads covered for warmth. The paleness of the light dimly entering the paper panes increased the sense of cold and made them look as if they would sleep forever. Crouching down before the tiny fire, side by side, Lana and Gil had this waking moment to themselves, and though they could not talk, they were conscious of each other’s nearness. In their unspoken thoughts affection served as well as speech. When, without looking from the fire, Gil put out his hand, Lana’s was ready to meet it. They stayed so, watching the fire grow, watching the vapor of their breaths diminish, for several minutes, until the first thin warmth made itself felt beyond the confines of the hearth.

Gil stepped outside for more wood, and then took the bucket and his axe down to the nearest spring. When he had gone, Lana’s tears welled up. For an instant she let them come in the sheer luxury of her love; then she wiped them away to smile and take the icy bucket from Gil’s red cold fist, and fill the kettle for their morning mush. Again they stayed together till the first faint tinkles of the heating water roused the negress, as any sound of warmth invariably did. Probably she had been awake all along, but fire sounds meant nothing to Daisy unless they were hot enough to cook with. Gil and Lana relinquished each other for the day.

The men left the cabin after breakfast. They found the Herkimer militia already cooking at the fort and Bellinger sorting provisions in the magazine. No word had come in from the east. None came all morning.

But in the afternoon a man who stood watch beyond the Canada Creek ford let off his musket. The men mounted the rifle platforms to look out. During the day the frost had melted from the trees and the limbs were black and wet against the sky and the soft gray indistinctness of the hills. The wind, which had returned more gently towards noon, was carrying a high scud of cloud, shadowing the valley. The universe looked cold and smelled of coming snow.

Underneath, along the straight road, they saw the line of men in double files marching towards them. They walked like tired men. They hunched themselves against the wind which picked at their nondescript clothes, and kept the locks of their muskets under their arms, the barrels pointing forward and down. But their pace kept them moving with a dogged steadiness that had the teams on the three provision wagons reeking to keep up in the half-frozen muddy ruts.

Bellinger let off no cannon salute. There was no powder to spare for salutes, and he knew that Willett wasn’t the kind of man that wanted one. The arrival of the weary downriver militia and the entrance to the fort were accomplished in a silence as grim as the gray passing of the day.

Willett went straight to Bellinger’s room and called him in. He had discarded his long campaign coat for a woolen hunting shirt and high fur cap; except for his square shoulders he looked like any farmer of militia. But under his fatigue was the inevitable twinkle of the small blue eyes. He wiped the drop from his nose and shook hands.

“I hear you licked them,” Bellinger said.

Willett grinned.

“We didn’t actually whip them. They ran away. It was too dark for me to chase them.” He glanced away from Bellinger. “We ran away once. But Rowley took their flank, and, by God, we came back again.”

He let himself down on his chair.

“I followed them to Stone Arabia, but they’d struck north of there. I sent a scout after them to see if they were heading for Oneida Lake or straight for Buck’s Island through the woods. The scout’s to send an express as soon as they find out. So I marched up here. It was hard going. Have you got your ninety men?”

“They’re waiting.”

“Fine. Got any boys who really know the woods north of here?”

“Yes. Boleo and Helmer do.”

“Good. I’ve got about fifty Oneida Indians under a fat old fool called Blue Back. They turned up after the fighting was over. But I don’t want to trust them for scouts.”

“Blue Back knows every leaf on the West Canada that’s fallen in the last forty years. It’s his private hunting ground.”

“I’m glad to know it. I’ll use him with your two men.”

“Do you want me to keep the men belonging to this fort inside? The Herkimer men are staying here.”

“Let your men go home. We won’t start now before tomorrow. Can you help me out with five days’ rations for four hundred men? I’ve brought along about three hundred, including the Indians.”

“I think so.”

“One thing more. You’re to stay here.”

“That’s not fair,” said Bellinger.

Willett grinned wearily in his face.

“I’m not going to argue. They’re orders. Look here, Bellinger. You’ve got to. If anything goes wrong we’ve got to leave one man here who knows how to hold onto this land. You’ve had more practice than me.”

Bellinger glowered. “It’s a dirty trick, Willett.”

“If you think you’re going to lose credit, you needn’t worry. Nobody’s going to get credit going with me. I’m supposed to be turning up at Ballston to protect Albany from Ross and Butler.”

“I don’t give a damn about the credit, Willett. I just want to get at them once and see some of them knowing they’re licked.”

“I know,” said Willett quietly. “I wish I had a drink.”

“Verdammt! You’ll have it then, for not stealing my medical supply.”

Both men turned round to confront Dr. Petry, who held a small keg in both arms as a man might hold a baby on his chest. He peered at them for a moment through his bushy eyebrows, then advanced to set the keg on the table in front of Willett.

” ‘For wounds and surgical needs,’ ” he read the label. “Well, I’m prescribing now. A little glass apiece— and one for the doctor, Peter. I’d get a hemorrhage watching you drink if I didn’t have some too.”

John had gone home again— the second time after he had said good-bye —and he felt foolish about it. He was beginning to think that maybe after all the army would not march. But the way Mary’s face lit up when he came through the door dispelled all his uneasiness.

He told them at supper the extraordinary news that Willett had brought with him, that General Washington had taken his army south to confront Cornwallis in Virginia. They had no idea, any of them, what it could mean; but Gil Martin had heard Willett telling Bellinger in a very excited way, as if it were a tremendous thing for Washington to have done.

Cobus’s eyes glistened.

“Next year I’m going to ‘list with the army,” he said.

John laughed.

“Enlist for what? A drummer boy?”

Cobus’s face was still a round one, and now the -sullenness of it on top of his skinny body made even Emma smile.

She said to him, “Don’t you mind John. I’ll let you go, next year, if you want to. But come along with me now.”

“Where?”

“I want to visit with Mrs. Volmer.”

“I don’t want to go. What do I have to for, anyway?”

Mrs. Weaver took him firmly by the hand. “You come along.” She said from the door, “We’ll be down there for a couple of hours.”

As she closed the door, John smiled at Mary. Both of them realized that Emma had never been a special friend of Widow Volmer.

“Ma’s making up,” John said. “She’ll go on making up to you now all her life. You’ll see.”

Mary said loyally, “She’s been good to me ever since we got married, John.”

It made him deeply happy.

The wind was not strong enough to make the cabin cold when the fire drew so well. They were like an old married couple sitting side by side upon the hearth, John thought, and he said, “You ought to have some fleece to spin.”

Mary smiled. She had been thinking the same thing. She would not need much wool.

“You with a pipe and reading out of a book to me.”

“I never read very good,” John said.

“You would if you practised at it. My Pa used to read real fine. I think he read better than Mr. Rozencrantz. …”

Her face stilled with her voice. But even memory of Christian Reall’s death at Oriskany could not deprive them of their contentment at having the cabin to themselves. All that was long ago; and John had a queer sense of the three of them sitting there.

“Suppose it’s a girl, how can we name it after Pa?”

Mary said, “I knew a woman named Georgina once.”

“Why, yes,” said John.

The fire popped and sparked and they watched the exploded coal gradually glimmer out on the damp dirt floor.

“Do you suppose that battle down in Johnstown means this war is getting over, John?”

“I don’t know. It’s only a little battle the way they think of things, I guess. Not like Burgoyne’s army. Nor not like General Washington’s in Virginia. I guess down there they don’t think it’s much.”

“I mean, would it end the war up here, John?”

“I don’t know. I guess not.”

She said, “It would be nice, wouldn’t it? We could live in our own cabin. Have you figured where it would be, John?”

“Why, I guess we’d go back to Deerfield on Pa’s place.”

“I’d like that. It used to be nice there.”

“Yes,” he said.

She lifted her face and looked across at him. She smiled with her eyes. She felt so still, watching his intent face studying the fire. It didn’t matter in a moment like this what you said, so long as you talked softly… .

The express from Stone Arabia arrived in the darkness before dawn; the horse dead lame and the man’s hands so cold he could hardly let loose the bridle reins.

He brought the scout’s dispatch. Butler and Ross had taken a circle straight north. The scout thought they must have got lost. Now they were heading west so far above the valley he thought they surely must be striking towards Buck’s Island.

Willett and Bellinger, shivering in their drawers, read it in the light of the coals.

“Where would they hit the Creek?” Willett asked.

“I guess about twenty miles north. Blue Back could probably tell you, or Joe Boleo, but Joe’s sleeping out.”

“Let’s get Blue Back.”

A sentry routed out the Indian, bringing him in, blinking his sleepy eyes and hugging himself with his blanket. “How,” he said to Bellinger, and then to Willett, “How? I fine.”

Immediately he squatted in front of the fire where the heat drew an unholy smell from him, and lighted the greasy rounds of his brown cheeks with shiny moons.

Bellinger explained while Blue Back slowly rubbed his belly underneath his shirt and fetched up silent belches one by one.

“Where do you think they’d cross, Blue Back?”

“Indians lost,” said Blue Back. “Senecas, Mohawks, no damn good. Get lost. White men go for Fairfield. Make find Jerseyfield road.”

“I think he’s right,” Bellinger said.

“Sure,” said Blue Back. “Ask Joe Boleo.”

“How far north is that?” Willett asked.

“One day.”

“How many miles?”

“One day,” Blue Back repeated with firm politeness.

Willett gave up.

“Do you think we can find the army up there?”

“Sure yes,” said Blue Back. “Like rum. Like drink.”

“I haven’t any likker.”

“Sorry,” said Blue Back. “Walking bad. More snow.”

“What time is it?”

Bellinger replied.

“About five.”

“We’ll have daylight enough in about an hour. You’d better get your men.”

As Bellinger went towards the door, Blue Back asked anxiously, “Shoot cannon?”

Bellinger grinned stiffly, nodded, and went out. He felt the cold against his empty belly.

Willett said, “You better get back to your boys and cook breakfast.”

“Stay here,” said Blue Back quietly. He drew his blanket over head and hat and crouched beneath it, motionless as a dormant toad beneath a basswood leaf.

When the swivel thudded, he gave one convulsive flop, but he did not emerge until he heard Bellinger shouting in the parade. Then he poked out his head and eyed Willett dubiously.

“You take cannon?”

Willett shook his head impatiently.

“Fine,” said Blue Back, standing up. “I go too.”

The muster was as silent a business as the arrival on the afternoon be-fore. The men entering the fort from the surrounding cabins were told to return for their breakfasts and report in half an hour. The men cooking over the open fires in the parade had little to say. The feeling of winter hung in the air. The sky was lustreless. The wind drew steadily from the north, and though they did not feel it in the shelter of Fort Dayton, they could hear its voice in the woods.

Gil and Joe Boleo ate together with Lana and Daisy waiting on them, and the two little boys, staring like owls, pressed close together across the hearth where they had been told to stay. Their fascinated eyes had watched their father and Uncle Joe oiling their rifles; they had seen the yet more wonderful operation of Joe whetting his knife and Indian hatchet on a stone, sinking the edges into the board table when he was satisfied. He ate between these implements, knife to right and tomahawk to left. The hinges of his jaw worked visibly and audibly in the thin leather above his cheeks. Only occasionally his eye slid round toward the children’s solemn faces.

There was a hush in the cabin; partly from the belly-shrinking cold, partly from the thinness of the dawn light, which made one wish to yawn; partly from the anxiety in Lana’s eyes that seemed to have affected Mrs. McKlennar as well as Daisy. The widow lay on her low hemlock bed with her coat still thrown over her blankets. Her long pale face was tilted forward awkwardly by her hands behind her head. She had not even a snort this morning, nor a single caustic word to relieve her feelings. But when Gil and Joe got up she said, “Come kiss me, Gil.”