Beneath the general grief and dismay in the presence of this great catastrophe were the cruel gnawings of personal anguish.
"My son Robert lies out there, just beyond the tamarack," said Colonel Samuel Campbell to me, in a hoa.r.s.e whisper.
"My brother Stufel killed two Mohawks before he died; he is on the knoll there with most of his men," said Captain Fox.
Major William Seeber, himself wounded beyond help, said gravely: "G.o.d only knows whether my boy Jacob lives or not; but Audolph is gone, and my brother Saffreness and his son James." The old merchant said this with dry eyes, but with the bitterness of a broken heart.
I told them of the shooting and capture of Paris and the death of Eisenlord. My news created no impression, apparently. Our minds were saturated with horror. Of the nine Snells who came with us, seven were said to be dead already.
The storm stopped as abruptly as it had come upon us. Of a sudden it grew lighter, and the rain dwindled to a fine mist. Great luminous ma.s.ses of white appeared in the sky, pushing aside the leaden clouds. Then all at once the sun was shining.
On that instant shots rang out here and there through the forest. The fight began again.
The two hours which followed seem to me now but the indistinct s.p.a.ce of a few minutes. Our men had seized upon the leisure of the lull to eat what food was at hand in their pockets, and felt now refreshed in strength.
They had had time, too, to learn something of the awful debt of vengeance they owed the enemy. A sombre rage possessed them, and gave to their hearts a giant"s daring. Heroes before, they became t.i.tans now.
The vapors steaming up in the sunlight from the wet earth seemed to bear the scent of blood. The odor affected our senses. We ran forth in parties now, disdaining cover. Some fell; we leaped over their writhing forms, dashed our fierce way through the thicket to where the tell-tale smoke arose, and smote, stabbed, stamped out the life of, the ambushed foe.
Under the sway of this frenzy, timorous men swelled into veritable paladins. The least reckless of us rushed upon death with breast bared and with clinched fists.
A body of us were thus scouring the wood on the crest of the hill, pushing through the tangle of dead brush and thick high brake, which soaked us afresh to the waist, resolute to overcome and kill whomsoever we could reach. Below us, in the direction of the river, though half a mile this side of it, we could hear a scattering fusillade maintained, which bespoke bush-fighting. Toward this we made our way, firing at momentary glimpses of figures in the thicket, and driving scattered groups of the foe before us as we ran.
Coming out upon the brow of the hill, and peering through the saplings and underbrush, we could see that big Captain Gardenier and his Caughnawaga men were gathered in three or four parties behind clumps of alders in the bottom, loading and firing upon an enemy invisible to us. While we were looking down and hesitating how best to go to his succor, one of old Sammons"s sons came bounding down the side-hill, all excitement, crying:
"Help is here from the fort!"
Sure enough, close behind him were descending some fourscore men, whose musket-barrels and c.o.c.ked hats we could distinguish swaying above the bushes, as they advanced in regular order.
I think I see huge, burly Gardenier still, standing in his woollen shirt-sleeves, begrimed with powder and mud, one hand holding his spear, the other shading his eyes against the sinking sun as he scanned the new-comers.
"Who"s there?" he roared at them.
"From the fort!" we could hear the answer.
Our hearts leaped with joy at this, and we began with one accord to get to the foot of the hill, to meet these preservers. Down the steep side we clambered, through the dense second-growth, in hot haste and all confidence. We had some friendly Oneidas with us, and I had to tell them to keep back, lest Gardenier, deeming them Mohawks, should fire upon them.
Coming to the edge of the swampy clearing we saw a strange sight.
Captain Gardenier was some yards in advance of his men, struggling like a mad Hercules with half a dozen of these new-comers, hurling them right and left, then falling to the ground, pinned through each thigh by a bayonet, and pulling down his nearest a.s.sailant upon his breast to serve as a shield.
While we took in this astounding spectacle, young Sammons was dancing with excitement.
"In G.o.d"s name, Captain," he shrieked, "you are killing our friends!"
"Friends be d.a.m.ned!" yelled back Gardenier, still struggling with all his vast might. "These art Tories. _Fire_! you fools! _Fire_!"
It was the truth. They were indeed Tories--double traitors to their former friends. As Gardenier shouted out his command, these ruffians raised their guns, and there sprang up from the bushes on either side of them as many more savages, with weapons lifting for a volley.
How it was I know not, but they never fired that volley. Our muskets seemed to poise and discharge themselves of their own volition, and a score of the villains, white and red, tumbled before us. Gardenier"s men had recovered their senses as well, and, pouring in a deadly fusillade, dashed furiously forward with clubbed muskets upon the unmasked foe. These latter would now have retreated up the hill again, whence they could fire to advantage, but we at this leaped forth upon their flank, and they, with a futile shot or two, turned and fled in every direction, we all in wild pursuit.
Ah, that chase! Over rotten, moss-grown logs, weaving between gnarled tree-trunks, slipping on treacherous twigs, the wet saplings whipping our faces, the boughs knocking against our guns, in savage heat we tore forward, loading and firing as we ran.
The pursuit had a malignant pleasure in it: we knew the men we were driving before us. Cries of recognition rose through the woods; names of renegades were shouted out which had a sinister familiarity in all our ears.
I came upon young Stephen Watts, the boyish brother of Lady Johnson, lying piteously p.r.o.ne against some roots, his neck torn with a hideous wound of some sort; he did not know me, and I pa.s.sed him by with a bitter hardening of the heart. What did he here, making war upon my Valley? One of the Papist Scots from Johnstown, Angus McDonell, was shot, knocked down, and left senseless behind us. So far from there being any pang of compa.s.sion for him, we cheered his fall, and pushed fiercely on. The scent of blood in the moist air had made us wild beasts all.
I found myself at last near the river, and on the edge of a mora.s.s, where the sun was shining upon the purple flowers of the sweet-flag, and tall rushes rose above little miry pools. I had with me a young Dutch farmer--John Van Antwerp--and three Oneida Indians, who had apparently attached themselves to me on account of my epaulettes. We had followed thus far at some distance a party of four or five Tories and Indians; we came to a halt here, puzzled as to the course they had taken.
While my Indians, bent double, were running about scanning the soft ground for a trail, I heard a well-known voice close behind me say:
"They"re over to the right, in that clump of cedars. Better get behind a tree."
I turned around. To my amazement Enoch Wade stood within two yards of me, his buckskin shirt wide open at the throat, his c.o.o.n-skin cap on the back of his head, his long rifle over his arm.
"In Heaven"s name, how did you come here?"
"Lay down, I tell ye!" he replied, throwing himself flat on his face as he spoke.
We were too late. They had fired on us from the cedars, and a bullet struck poor Van Antwerp down at my feet.
"Now for it, before they can load," cried Enoch, darting past me and leading a way on the open border of the swale, with long, unerring leaps from one raised point to another. The Indians raced beside him, crouching almost to a level with the reeds, and I followed.
A single shot came from the thicket as we reached it, and I felt a momentary twinge of pain in my arm.
"d.a.m.nation! I"ve missed him! Run for your lives!" I heard shouted excitedly from the bush.
There came a crack, crack, of two guns. One of my Indians rolled headlong upon the ground; the others darted forward in pursuit of some flitting forms dimly to be seen in the undergrowth beyond.
"Come here!" called Enoch to me. He was standing among the low cedars, resting his chin on his hands, spread palm down over the muzzle of his gun, and looking calmly upon something on the ground before him.
I hurried to his side. There, half-stretched on the wet, blood-stained gra.s.s, panting with the exertion of raising himself on his elbow, and looking me square in the face with distended eyes, lay Philip Cross.
Chapter x.x.xIV.
Alone at Last with My Enemy.
My stricken foe looked steadily into my face; once his lips parted to speak, but no sound came from them.
For my part I did not know what to say to him. A score of thoughts pressed upon my tongue for utterance, but none of them seemed suited to this strange occasion. Everything that occurred to me was either weak or over-violent. Two distinct ideas of this momentary irresolution I remember--one was to leave him in silence for my Oneidas to tomahawk and scalp; the other was to curse him where he lay.
There was nothing in his whitening face to help me to a decision. The look in his eyes was both sad and savage--an expression I could not fathom. For all it said to me, he might be thinking wholly of his wound, or of nothing whatever. The speechless fixity of this gaze embarra.s.sed me. For relief I turned to Enoch, and said sharply:
"You haven"t told me yet what you were doing here."
The trapper kept his chin still on its rest, and only for a second turned his shrewd gray eyes from the wounded quarry to me.