Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (616 page)

‘How very queer!’ said Una.

Pharaoh’s eyes twinkled. ‘I’ve met many and seen much,’ he said; ‘but I haven’t yet found any better or quieter or forbearinger people than the Brethren and Sistern of the Moravian Church in Philadelphia. Nor will I ever forget my first Sunday — the service was in English that week — with the smell of the flowers coming in from Pastor Meder’s garden where the big peach tree is, and me looking at all the clean strangeness and thinking of ‘tween decks on the Embuscade only six days ago. Being a boy, it seemed to me it had lasted for ever, and was going on for ever. But I didn’t know Toby then. As soon as the dancing clock struck midnight that Sunday — I was lying under the spinet — I heard Toby’s fiddle. He’d just done his supper, which he always took late and heavy. “Gert,” says he, “get the horses. Liberty and Independence for Ever! The flowers appear upon the earth, and the time of the singing of birds is come. We are going to my country seat in Lebanon.”

‘I rubbed my eyes, and fetched ‘em out of the “Buck” stables. Red Jacket was there saddling his, and when I’d packed the saddle-bags we three rode up Race Street to the Ferry by starlight. So we went travelling. It’s a kindly, softly country there, back of Philadelphia among the German towns, Lancaster way. Little houses and bursting big barns, fat cattle, fat women, and all as peaceful as Heaven might be if they farmed there. Toby sold medicines out of his saddlebags, and gave the French war-news to folk along the roads. Him and his long-hilted umberell was as well known as the stage-coaches. He took orders for that famous Seneca Oil which he had the secret of from Red Jacket’s Indians, and he slept in friends’ farmhouses, but he would shut all the windows; so Red Jacket and me slept outside. There’s nothing to hurt except snakes — and they slip away quick enough if you thrash in the bushes.’

‘I’d have liked that!’ said Dan.

‘I’d no fault to find with those days. In the cool o’ the morning the cat-bird sings. He’s something to listen to. And there’s a smell of wild grape-vine growing in damp hollows which you drop into, after long rides in the heat, which is beyond compare for sweetness. So’s the puffs out of the pine woods of afternoons. Come sundown, the frogs strike up, and later on the fireflies dance in the corn. Oh me, the fireflies in the corn! We were a week or ten days on the road, tacking from one place to another — such as Lancaster, Bethlehem-Ephrata — ”thou Bethlehem-Ephrata.” No odds — I loved the going about. And so we jogged ‘into dozy little Lebanon by the Blue Mountains, where Toby had a cottage and a garden of all fruits. He come north every year for this wonderful Seneca Oil the Seneca Indians made for him. They’d never sell to any one else, and he doctored ‘em with von Swieten pills, which they valued more than their own oil. He could do what he chose with them, and, of course, he tried to make them Moravians. The Senecas are a seemly, quiet people, and they’d had trouble enough from white men — American and English — during the wars, to keep ‘em in that walk. They lived on a Reservation by themselves away off by their lake. Toby took me up there, and they treated me as if I was their own blood brother. Red Jacket said the mark of my bare feet in the dust was just like an Indian’s and my style of walking was similar. I know I took to their ways all over.’

‘Maybe the gipsy drop in your blood helped you?’ said Puck.

‘Sometimes I think it did,’ Pharaoh went on. ‘Anyhow, Red Jacket and Cornplanter, the other Seneca chief, they let me be adopted into the tribe. It’s only a compliment, of course, but Toby was angry when I showed up with my face painted. They gave me a side-name which means “Two Tongues,” because, d’ye see, I talked French and English.

‘They had their own opinions (I’ve heard ‘em) about the French and the English, and the Americans. They’d suffered from all of ‘em during the wars, and they only wished to be left alone. But they thought a heap of the President of the United States. Cornplanter had had dealings with him in some French wars out West when General Washington was only a lad. His being President afterwards made no odds to ‘em. They always called him Big Hand, for he was a large-fisted man, and he was all of their notion of a white chief. Cornplanter ‘ud sweep his blanket round him, and after I’d filled his pipe he’d begin — ”In the old days, long ago, when braves were many and blankets were few, Big Hand said-” If Red Jacket agreed to the say-so he’d trickle a little smoke out of the corners of his mouth. If he didn’t, he’d blow through his nostrils. Then Cornplanter ‘ud stop and Red Jacket ‘ud take on. Red Jacket was the better talker of the two. I’ve laid and listened to ‘em for hours. Oh! they knew General Washington well. Cornplanter used to meet him at Epply’s — the great dancing-place in the city before District Marshal William Nichols bought it. They told me he was always glad to see ‘em, and he’d hear ‘em out to the end if they had anything on their minds. They had a good deal in those days. I came at it by degrees, after I was adopted into the tribe. The talk up in Lebanon and everywhere else that summer was about the French war with England and whether the United States ‘ud join in with France or make a peace treaty with England. Toby wanted peace so as he could go about the Reservation buying his oils. But most of the white men wished for war, and they was angry because the President wouldn’t give the sign for it. The newspaper said men was burning Guy Fawkes images of General Washington and yelling after him in the streets of Philadelphia. You’d have been astonished what those two fine old chiefs knew of the ins and outs of such matters. The little I’ve learned of politics I picked up from Cornplanter and Red Jacket on the Reservation. Toby used to read the Aurora newspaper. He was what they call a “Democrat,” though our Church is against the Brethren concerning themselves with politics.’

‘I hate politics, too,’ said Una, and Pharaoh laughed.

‘I might ha’ guessed it,’ he said. ‘But here’s something that isn’t politics. One hot evening late in August, Toby was reading the newspaper on the stoop and Red Jacket was smoking under a peach tree and I was fiddling. Of a sudden Toby drops his Aurora.

‘“I am an oldish man, too fond of my own comforts,” he says. “I will go to the Church which is in Philadelphia. My brother, lend me a spare pony. I must be there tomorrow night.”

‘“Good!” says Red Jacket, looking at the sun. “My brother shall be there. I will ride with him and bring back the ponies.”

‘I went to pack the saddle-bags. Toby had cured me of asking questions. He stopped my fiddling if I did. Besides, Indians don’t ask questions much and I wanted to be like ‘em.

‘When the horses were ready I jumped up.

‘“Get off,” says Toby. “Stay and mind the cottage till I come back. The Lord has laid this on me, not on you. I wish He hadn’t.”

‘He powders off down the Lancaster road, and I sat on the doorstep wondering after him. When I picked up the paper to wrap his fiddle-strings in, I spelled out a piece about the yellow fever being in Philadelphia so dreadful every one was running away. I was scared, for I was fond of Toby. We never said much to each other, but we fiddled together, and music’s as good as talking to them that understand.’

‘Did Toby die of yellow fever?’Una asked.

‘Not him! There’s justice left in the world still. He went down to the City and bled ‘em well again in heaps. He sent back word by Red Jacket that, if there was war or he died, I was to bring the oils along to the City, but till then I was to go on working in the garden and Red Jacket was to see me do it. Down at heart all Indians reckon digging a squaw’s business, and neither him nor Cornplanter, when he relieved watch, was a hard task-Master. We hired a nigger-boy to do our work, and a lazy grinning runagate he was. When I found Toby didn’t die the minute he reached town, why, boylike, I took him off my mind and went with my Indians again. Oh! those days up north at Canasedago, running races and gambling with the Senecas, or bee-hunting ‘in the woods, or fishing in the lake.’ Pharaoh sighed and looked across the water. ‘But it’s best,’ he went on suddenly, ‘after the first frosts. You roll out o’ your blanket and find every leaf left green over night turned red and yellow, not by trees at a time, but hundreds and hundreds of miles of ‘em, like sunsets splattered upside down. On one of such days — the maples was flaming scarlet and gold, and the sumach bushes were redder — Cornplanter and Red Jacket came out in full war-dress, making the very leaves look silly: feathered war-bonnets, yellow doeskin leggings, fringed and tasselled, red horse-blankets, and their bridles feathered and shelled and beaded no bounds. I thought it was war against the British till I saw their faces weren’t painted, and they only carried wrist-whips. Then I hummed “Yankee Doodle” at ‘em. They told me they was going to visit Big Hand and find out for sure whether he meant to join the French in fighting the English or make a peace treaty with England. I reckon those two would ha’ gone out on the war-path at a nod from Big Hand, but they knew well, if there was war ‘twixt England and the United States, their tribe ‘ud catch it from both parties same as in all the other wars. They asked me to come along and hold the ponies. That puzzled me, because they always put their ponies up at the “Buck” or Epply’s when they went to see General Washington in the city, and horse-holding is a nigger’s job. Besides, I wasn’t exactly dressed for it.’

‘D’you mean you were dressed like an Indian?’Dan demanded.

Pharaoh looked a little abashed. ‘This didn’t happen at Lebanon,’ he said, ‘but a bit farther north, on the Reservation; and at that particular moment of time, so far as blanket, hair-band, moccasins, and sunburn went, there wasn’t much odds ‘twix’ me and a young Seneca buck. You may laugh’ — he smoothed down his long-skirted brown coat — ’but I told you I took to their ways all over. I said nothing, though I was bursting to let out the war-whoop like the young men had taught me.’

‘No, and you don’t let out one here, either,’ said Puck before Dan could ask. ‘Go on, Brother Square-toes.’

‘We went on.’ Pharaoh’s narrow dark eyes gleamed and danced. ‘We went on — forty, fifty miles a day, for days on end — we three braves. And how a great tall Indian a-horse-back can carry his war-bonnet at a canter through thick timber without brushing a feather beats me! My silly head was banged often enough by low branches, but they slipped through like running elk. We had evening hymn-singing every night after they’d blown their pipe-smoke to the quarters of heaven. Where did we go? I’ll tell you, but don’t blame me if you’re no wiser. We took the old war-trail from the end of the Lake along the East Susquehanna through the Nantego country, right down to Fort Shamokin on the Senachse river. We crossed the Juniata by Fort Granville, got into Shippensberg over the hills by the Ochwick trail, and then to Williams Ferry (it’s a bad one). From Williams Ferry, across the Shanedore, over the Blue Mountains, through Ashby’s Gap, and so south-east by south from there, till we found the President at the back of his own plantations. I’d hate to be trailed by Indians in earnest. They caught him like a partridge on a stump. After we’d left our ponies, we scouted forward through a woody piece, and, creeping slower and slower, at last if my moccasins even slipped Red Jacket ‘ud turn and frown. I heard voices — Monsieur Genet’s for choice — long before I saw anything, and we pulled up at the edge of a clearing where some niggers in grey-and-red liveries were holding horses, and half-a-dozen gentlemen — but one was Genet — were talking among felled timber. I fancy they’d come to see Genet a piece on his road, for his portmantle was with him. I hid in between two logs as near to the company as I be to that old windlass there. I didn’t need anybody to show me Big Hand. He stood up, very still, his legs a little apart, listening to Genet, that French Ambassador, which never had more manners than a Bosham tinker. Genet was as good as ordering him to declare war on England at once. I had heard that clack before on the Embuscade. He said he’d stir up the whole United States to have war with England, whether Big Hand liked it or not.

‘Big Hand heard him out to the last end. I looked behind me, and my two chiefs had vanished like smoke. Says Big Hand, “That is very forcibly put, Monsieur Genet — ”

‘“Citizen — citizen!” the fellow spits in. “I, at least, am a Republican!”

“Citizen Genet,” he says, “you may be sure it will receive my fullest consideration.” This seemed to take Citizen Genet back a piece. He rode off grumbling, and never gave his nigger a penny. No gentleman!

‘The others all assembled round Big Hand then, and, in their way, they said pretty much what Genet had said. They put it to him, here was France and England at war, in a manner of speaking, right across the United States’ stomach, and paying no regards to any one. The French was searching American ships on pretence they was helping England, but really for to steal the goods. The English was doing the same, only t’other way round, and besides searching, they was pressing American citizens into their Navy to help them fight France, on pretence that those Americans was lawful British subjects. His gentlemen put this very clear to Big Hand. It didn’t look to them, they said, as though the United States trying to keep out of the fight was any advantage to her, because she only catched it from both French and English. They said that nine out of ten good Americans was crazy to fight the English then and there. They wouldn’t say whether that was right or wrong; they only wanted Big Hand to turn it over in his mind. He did — for a while. I saw Red Jacket and Cornplanter watching him from the far side of the clearing, and how they had slipped round there was another mystery. Then Big Hand drew himself up, and he let his gentlemen have it.’

‘Hit ‘em?’ Dan asked.

‘No, nor yet was it what you might call swearing. He — he blasted ‘em with his natural speech. He asked them half-a-dozen times over whether the United States had enough armed ships for any shape or sort of war with any one. He asked ‘em, if they thought she had those ships, to give him those ships, and they looked on the ground, as if they expected to find ‘em there. He put it to ‘em whether, setting ships aside, their country — I reckon he gave ‘em good reasons — whether the United States was ready or able to face a new big war; she having but so few years back wound up one against England, and being all holds full of her own troubles. As I said, the strong way he laid it all before ‘em blasted ‘em, and when he’d done it was like a still in the woods after a storm. A little man — but they all looked little — pipes up like a young rook in a blowed-down nest, “Nevertheless, General, it seems you will be compelled to fight England.” Quick Big Hand wheeled on him, “And is there anything in my past which makes you think I am averse to fighting Great Britain?”