Drums Along the Mohawk (40 page)

“Sit down,” said Major Butler. “We’ll row back, lads. I don’t want to see Bolton to-day.” He turned to Wolff. “I hear that Thompson’s house and your store were burnt by the rebels, Wolff. It’s too bad. It’s going to be a long while before you can get
back, I guess. With the mess St. Leger and Burgoyne made of it. We can’t get any government support for a full-sized campaign. By God, we can’t even get nails from them.”

The skiff smacked over the slight ripple. The drip from the oars had an icy sound. The air was raw and piercing.

“We’ll have to do the best we can ourselves,” said Butler. “How old are you, Wolff?”

“Fifty-odd.”

He was holding his breath to ask. He couldn’t seem to get the question out, he wished so desperately to ask.

“That’s not too old if you’re in sound health. But it’s hard work, campaigning through the woods. If you don’t feel up to it, I can give you work round here.”

“Thank you, sir. I ain’t so strong now. But I’ll be all right. I used to have good health.”

The other men kept watching him. Then he saw that Major Butler was looking too. He saw that his sleeves had drawn back showing the iron scars.

“You’ve had a hard time,” said Butler. “Maybe you can’t forget it, but it’s better to try to, Wolff.” He raised himself stiffly as the boat landed on the shore. “They’ve kept my wife and children down there. I can’t get them exchanged.”

“Yes, sir.” Wolff’s face started to work. He blurted out, “Do any women come here from the valley, sir?”

“Some got through.” He was brief. “Why?”

“You haven’t seen my wife—Alice Wolff? Ally, she’s called. Kind of a pale woman? A little younger than me?”

Butler shook his head and glanced away. The men shook their heads too. McLonis said, “It would be known if she was here. It would be bound to.” His voice was gentle with sympathy.

“Can you send letters down there, ever?”

Butler said, “I can send one under a flag, when a flag goes.
But a letter’s not likely to reach her unless you know where she is.”

John Wolff, walking behind him towards the low log barracks, said, “Yes. I’d forgot. The store got burned, didn’t it?”

The snow began to drive a little before the first breath of the wind.

Though there had been several light falls at German Flats early in November, the snow had not lasted. But now, as Lana looked out from the kitchen window of Mrs. McKlennar’s house, it seemed to her that snow must surely come soon. She had prayed for snow, as all the valley had prayed for it since the murder of the Mount boys in Jerseyfield. Deep snow alone, in the woods between themselves and Canada, could ensure their safety. Until it came, no family living beyond easy reach of the forts could feel secure; and many of them had once more moved into German Flats. At Mrs. McKlennar’s, Gil and Lana had moved into the stone house, while their own log house had been turned over to Joe Boleo and Adam Helmer. Both were homeless men, but Gil said that in the event of a raid, he and they together could hold a stone house like McKlennar’s safe as a castle.

For two days long lines of steely clouds had been moving out of the northwest. People in the valley could feel no wind; there
was no visible sign of it except the clouds, or the sudden bending of the trees on one of the higher hills.

As Lana looked through the window she saw Joe Boleo emerge from the farmhouse, drawing on his foul pipe and studying the sky. She herself was impelled to join him in the yard.

“Do you think it’s going to snow?” she asked.

He held his position, eyes aloft, the sparse hair on his half-bald head shivering as if with cold. “Women are the devil,” he replied at large.

“Why, Mr. Boleo! I only asked a question.”

He turned a sober face on her.

“That’s so,” he said in obvious surprise.

Lana flushed, then laughed. Her cheeks were bright, against the gray background of the winter trees; her eyes shone. She enjoyed this shambling, indolent, gangling man for all his musky smell that reminded her of pelts. Now she made her voice sound humble: “Well, is it going to snow, do you think, please, Mr. Boleo?”

Joe kept grinning to himself. He wasn’t like Adam Helmer, who hated the sight of a pretty girl carrying a baby in her inside because it seemed to take the point out of her good looks. Joe liked any pretty face, and he had grown especially fond of Lana’s.

“Sure,” he replied. “It’s going to snow hard. There’s a real storm coming. Feel the cold. No, you can’t feel it on your skin. You’ve got to feel it in your nose. You can smell a big snow before it comes. And look there!” He pointed his long finger at a gap in the tumbling rollers of the clouds. “Just watch there a minute.”

As Lana came close to sight along his finger, Joe’s eyes slid sidewise. He thought she looked happy to-day. She was a real nice girl, he thought, the way she brought him and Adam things to eat and cleaned their house out for them. “You keep watching.” He moved his shoulder so that it touched hers and he could feel the round soft solid curve through her dress. He even felt her draw her breath.

“Oh, the geese?”

“Geese.” He nodded. “They’ve been going by all day. Higher than hell and straight south.”

She saw them come and go, leaving the clouds in their wake, a rippling line.

“And there’s another thing,” said Joe. “Keep still. Don’t even breathe.”

He liked to see her when she held her breath.

“You mean that singing sound? What is it?”

“That’s high wind. You can hear it that way in the westward country where the land lies flat. Down here we get it when the wind blows high.”

Her lips were parted, quick and red to breathe the cold.

“Now you’d better get inside,” he said. “A girl in your shape has got responsibilities. And anyways, Gil will be hungry for his dinner. He’ll want to get started right after.”

“Oh yes,” she exclaimed. “The paymaster’s coming to-day.”

“Yes,” said Joe. “We’re going to draw militia pay. By God, we ought to be rich. Rich enough so I can buy you a present maybe.” He eyed her with sly eyes.

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Boleo. But you ought to save your money.”

“I ain’t a hand at saving. Why, sometimes I’ve made thirty pounds and spent it all in a couple of throws in Albany.”

“Throws?”

“Well, maybe I got tossed around by the girls a little.” He spoke with a kind of boastfulness. “Down there the girls get at a man like me. He can’t hardly help it.” His wrinkled face expanded. “God,” he said, “the things that have happened to me, though!”

“Why, Mr. Boleo!” Lana was bubbling with delight.

“Well, I hadn’t ought to talk this way to you.”

“I’m sure a girl wouldn’t rob you. Not up here.”

His eyes became lugubrious.

“That’s the trouble. Women are the devil.”

Gil and Adam came in at noon. Gil with the cart piled high with firewood to add to the corded tiers already in the woodshed, and Adam carrying the hog-dressed carcass of a buck on his broad shoulders. The three men hung up the deer in the woodshed, and all came up to the stone house for dinner, sitting down at the table with Mrs. McKlennar, who derived a monstrous satisfaction from all Joe’s stories. She was delighted also with Adam Helmer. Any big man could put a flutter under her ribs, and Adam, with his coarse, good-featured face and long yellow hair, pricked her mettle.

The kitchen reeked of their tobacco-tainted clothes, and there was a wet bloodstain on the shoulders of Adam’s deerskin shirt. Beside the two, Lana always noticed Gil’s cleanliness with pride. But to-day he was as excited and noisy as they. All three men were bursting with the prospect of ready money coming in. They hadn’t decided what to do with it, but Gil had earlier said to Lana that they would need the money. What little cash he had had dwindled away to nothing, and he would not receive his year’s salary of a hundred and twelve dollars until April. Militia money would be handy to buy some necessary stuff for clothes, shoes, and store flannel, out of which Lana could work things for the baby during the winter. Besides, their powder was getting short (and the price was high).

Lana and the negress, Daisy, served them with samp and pork, and slices of dried squash fried in lard and flour, and apples baked in maple sugar. In the midst of dessert, Mrs. McKlennar got up suddenly and fetched a bottle of sack from the cellar, pouring them each a glass.

“My husband always celebrated on pay day,” she explained. “I ought to start you boys off right.”

Joe Boleo rolled the liquor on his tongue.

“I’d like to have met your husband, ma’am. He must have had some right good notions,” he said politely. But as they went out of the door, he whispered to Adam, “I’ll bet that horny Irishman got him a good stiff drink of rum to wash it out with.”

Mrs. McKlennar watched them go. “Look,” she said to Lana, “it’s started snowing.”

Fine white flakes were driving down upon the valley. Already they had made a thin dusting over the earth and the three men tramping abreast towards Fort Dayton left muddy footprints in it.

“Lord,” said the widow, “they’re three fine boys.” Then she flung her arm round Lana’s shoulders and her horselike face softened. “Come upstairs,” she said. “I was in the attic before dinner and I found some things I thought you might use for the baby.”

Lana wondered what Mrs. McKlennar could possibly have that would be useful to a baby.

The house grew warmer as they went up the stairs. Then when they passed through the trap into the attic, the air was cold again. It was darker too, with the snow falling outside the one small gable window. The loose boards clattered under the widow’s tread. She bent down suddenly.

“I got these out,” she said.

Lana looked down. She saw a cradle and blankets, a miniature plate, and a silver spoon.

The widow breathed harshly through her nose. Two bright spots had flushed her gaunt cheeks.

“One of Barney’s soldiers made the cradle, and Barney got the other things and showed them to me on our wedding night for a joke. I remember how we both laughed. But we never used them. I don’t know why. We tried the best we knew, too.”

Lana said softly, “I think it’s awful nice of you to let me have them.”

“Nonsense,” snorted Mrs. McKlennar. “Don’t get sentimental.”

She rubbed her nose.

“Take them down to your room. No, I’ll carry them; you better not lift such heavy stuff.”

The snow was driving hard against their faces when the three men forded West Canada Creek and came in sight of the fort. The number of footprints on the road made Adam laugh.

“I bet the militia never turned out as good before.”

Joe Boleo grinned.

“How much do you think the pay amounts to?” Gil asked.

“Plenty,” Adam replied. “I don’t know how they figure it, but we commenced in June, going down to Unadilla, and we was pretty busy right along till Arnold went home. It’s pretty near three months, up here. Down east the campaign was longer. Maybe they’ll pay us for the whole campaign.”

They encountered George Weaver going through the gate. He was looking so solemn and embarrassed that they asked him what was bothering him.

“Why,” he said, “Mrs. Reall wanted to come along to collect what was due on Kitty’s pay. She asked if she could come with me. And Emma didn’t like it much on account of John and Mary Reall. But I said it wouldn’t be neighborly not to take her. She’s just ahead.”

Mrs. Reall, looking surprisingly cheerful, turned back to greet them. She had her daughter Mary with her. Mary, Gil thought, was growing into a nice girl. There was a still, brown earnestness in her eyes he didn’t expect to see in any Reall. And she looked a little appalled by all the men round her and her mother, a little ashamed that her mother should have come, perhaps. Gil held his hand out, introducing his two companions to the Realls.

Adam smiled at the girl and said to the mother, “You come with us, ma’am. We’ll all go in together.”

The soldiers’ mess had been turned into the paymaster’s office for the afternoon, and a couple of the garrison were assigned to guard duty at the door. When Adam worked a lane for his companions through the crowd, the soldiers barred the entrance.

“When does this paying start?” Adam demanded.

“When he gives us the say-so.” One of the soldiers jerked his head back toward the door.

They stopped and chatted with the men round them. Some people eyed Mrs. Reall and Mary curiously, but nobody took notice of them more than to say “How do you do.”

Then a pompous voice cried sharply from the messroom, “All right, lads.” One of the soldiers turned and bawled, “Do I let in the whole shebang, mister?”

“No! Let in twenty or so, that’s all the room will hold comfortably; and then close the door until they’re paid off. Then let in another lot. We can’t freeze, you know.”

With Adam’s broad shoulders clearing a path, Gil and Weaver and Joe and the Reall women were among the first to enter.

The room seemed dark after the swirling whiteness of the snow outside. And the snow itself, when one looked out at it, seemed to lend to the darkness. A log on the hearth was disintegrating into a mountain range of coals. With his back to it, in a black coat, red waistcoat, and soiled white tie, sat the paymaster, come up from Poughkeepsie at Colonel Bellinger’s request. He had the roll of the regiment before him and the colonel’s muster sheets, and these he was comparing and checking against each other. He finished as the men crowded in and barked a little in his throat. “Line up,” he said. “Line up down the table. I can’t handle you all at a time.”

As he stepped up to the table, Gil noticed that Colonel Bellinger was in the room. The colonel looked grim. Gil could not understand why.

“Hey, there,” said the paymaster. “What’s that woman doing in here?”

Mrs. Reall, who was third in the line of men, stepped out of it and drew herself up before the paymaster.

“I came to collect my husband’s pay.”

“Hak, hak, hak,”
went the little man. “No women allowed in here, ma’am.”