said I cheerily.
She stretched out her hand. I took it, looked at her, then kissed her fingers. And so went away swiftly, to where our canoe lay, troubled because of this young girl whom I had no desire to fall truly in love with, and yet knew I had been near to it many times that spring.
I got into the canoe and took the stern paddle; my Saguenay kneeled down in the bow; and we shot out across the Vlaie Water.
Once I turned and looked back over my shoulder; and I saw Penelope standing there on the gra.s.s, and Nick awaiting her with Kaya.
But I did not wish to feel as I felt at that moment. I did not desire to fall in love. No!
"Au large!" I said to my Indian, and swept the birchen craft out into the deep and steady current.
CHAPTER XXIV
GREEN-COATS
Nothing stirred on the Drowned Lands as we drove our canoe at top speed between tall bronzed stalks of rushes and dead water-weeds. Vlaie Water was intensely blue and patched with golden debris of floating stuff--shreds of cranberry vine, rotting lily pads, and the like--and in twenty minutes we floated silently into the Spring Pool, opposite the Stacking Ridge, where hard earth bordered both sh.o.r.es and where maples and willows were now in l.u.s.ty bud.
Two miles away, against Maxon"s st.u.r.dy bastion, a vast quant.i.ty of smoke was writhing upward in dark and cloudy convolutions. I could not see Fish House--that oblong, unpainted building a story and a half in height, with its chimneys of stone and the painted fish weather vane swimming in the sky. But I was convinced that it was afire.
We beached our canoe and drew it under the sh.o.r.e-reeds, and so pa.s.sed rapidly down the right bank of the stream along the quick water, holding our guns c.o.c.ked and primed, like hunters ready for a hazard shot at sight.
There was no snow left; all frost was out of the ground along the Drowned Lands; and the earth was sopping wet. Everywhere frail green spears of new gra.s.s p.r.i.c.ked the dead and matted herbage; and in sheltered places tiny green leaves embroidered stems and twigs; and I saw wind-flowers, and violets both yellow and blue, and the amber shoots of skunk cabbage growing thickly in wet places. The shadbush, too, was in exquisite white bloom along the stream, and I remember that I saw one tree in full flower, and a dozen bluejays sitting amid the snowy blossoms like so many lumps of sapphire.
Now, on the mainland, a clearing showed in the sunshine; and beyond it I saw a rail fence bounding a field still black and wet from last autumn"s plowing.
We took to the brush and bore to the right, where on firm ground a grove of ash and b.u.t.ternut forested the ridge, and a sandy path ran through.
I knew this path. Sir William often used it when hunting, and his cows, kept at Fish House when his two daughters lived there, travelled this way to and from pasture.
Between us and the Sacandaga lay one of those gra.s.sy gulleys where, in time of flood, back-water from the Sacandaga spread deep.
My Indian and I now lay down and drew our bodies very stealthily toward the woods" edge, where the setback from the river divided us from Fish House.
Ahead of us, through the trees, dense volumes of smoke crowded upward and unfolded into strange, cloudy shapes, and we could hear a loud and steady crackling noise made by feeding flames.
Presently, through the trees, I saw Fish House all afire, and now only a glowing skeleton in the sunshine. But the dense smoke came not now from Fish House, but from three barracks of marsh-hay burning, which vomited thick smoke into the sky. Near the house some tall piles of hewn logs were blazing, also a corn-crib, a small barn, and a log farmhouse, where I think that d.a.m.ned rascal, Wormwood, once lived. And it had been bought by a tenant of Sir William,--one of the patriot Shews or Helmers, if I mistake not, who was given favourable advantages to undertake such a settlement, but now had fled to Johnstown.
G.o.dfrey Shew"s own house, just over the knoll to the eastward, was also on fire: I could see the flames from it and a thin brownish smoke which belched out black cinders and shreds of charred bark.
I did not see a living creature near these fires, but farther toward the east clearing I heard voices and the sound of picks and axes; and my Saguenay and I crept thither along the bank of the flooded hollow.
Very soon I perceived the new earthwork and log-stockade made the previous summer by our Continentals; and there, to my astonishment, I saw a motley company of white men and Indians, who were chopping down the timbers of the palisades, levelling the earthwork with pick and shovel.
So near were they across the flooded hollow that I recognized Elias Beacraft, brother to Benjy, who had gone off with McDonald. Also, I saw and knew Captain James Hare, brother to Lieutenant Henry Hare, of Butler"s regiment; and Henry, also, was there; and Captain Nellis, of the forester service. Both the Hares and Nellis were dressed in green uniforms, and there were two other green-coats whom I knew not, but all busy with their work of destruction, and their axes flashing in the sunshine.
The others I had, of course, taken for very savages, for they were feathered and painted and wore Indian dress; but when one of these came down to the flooded hollow to fill his tin cup and drink, to my horror I saw that the eyes in that hideously-painted face were a _light blue_!
"Nai! Yengese!" whispered the Yellow Leaf.
The painted Tory was not ten yards from where we lay, and, as I gazed intently at those hideously daubed features, all at once I knew the man.
For this horrid and grotesque figure, all besmeared with ochre and indigo, and wearing Indian dress, was none other than an old neighbour of mine in Tryon County, one George Cuck, who lived near Jan Zuyler and his two buxom daughters, and who had gone off with Sir John last May.
As I stared at him in ever-rising astonishment and rage, comes another _blue-eyed Indian_--Barney Cane,--wearing Iroquois paint and feathers, and all gaudy in his beaded war-dress. And, at his belt, I saw a fresh scalp hanging by its hair,--_the light brown hair of a white man_!
I could hear Cane speaking with Cuck in English. Beacraft came down to the water; and Billy Newberry[22] and Hare[22] also came down, both wearing the uniform of the forester service. And I was astounded to see Henry Hare back again after his narrow escape at Summer House last autumn, the night I got my hurt.
[Footnote 22: This same man, William Newberry, a sergeant in Butler"s regiment; and Henry Hare, lieutenant in the same regiment, were caught inside the American lines, court-martialed, convicted of unspeakable cruelties, and Were hung as spies by order of General Clinton, July 6th, 1779.]
But he wore no Valley militia disguise now; all these men were in green-coats, openly flaunting the enemy uniform in County Tryon,--save only those painted beasts Cuck and Cane.
It was a war party, and it had accomplished a clean job at Fish House; and now they all were coming down to the flooded hollow and looking across it where lay the short route west to Summer House.
Presently I heard a great splashing to our left, and saw a skiff and two green-coats and two Mohawk Indians in it pulling across the back-water.
And these latter were real Mohawks, stripped, oiled, their heads shaved, and in their battle-paint, who squatted there in the skiff, scanning with glowing eyes the bank where my Saguenay and I lay concealed.
It was perfectly plain, now, what they meant to do. Beacraft, Cane, and Cuck went back to the ruined redoubt, and presently returned loaded with packs. Baggage and rifles were laid in the skiff.
I touched Yellow Leaf on the arm, and we wriggled backward out of sight.
Then, rising, we turned and pulled foot for our canoe.
Now my chiefest anxiety was whether Penelope and Nick had got clean away and were already well on the road to the Mayfield Block House.
We found our canoe where we had hid it, and we made the still water boil with our two paddles, so that, although it seemed an age to me, we came very swiftly to our landing at Summer House Point.
Here we sprang out, seized the canoe, ran with it up the gra.s.sy slope, then continued over the uncut lawn and down the western slope, where again we launched it and let it swing on the water, held anch.o.r.ed by its nose on sh.o.r.e.
House, barn, orchard, all were deathly still there in the brilliant sunshine; I ran to the manger and found it empty of cattle. There were no fowls to be seen or heard, either. Then I hastened to the sheep-fold.
That, also, was empty.
Perplexed, I ran down to the gates, found them open, and, in the mud of the Johnstown Road, discovered sheep and cattle tracks, the imprint of Kaya"s sharp-shod hoofs, a waggon mark, and the plain imprint of Nick"s moccasins.
So it was clear enough what he and Penelope had done. A terrible anxiety seized me, and I wondered how far they had got on the way to Mayfield, with cattle and sheep to drive ahead of a loaded waggon and one horse.
And now, more than ever, it was certain that my Indian and I must make a desperate stand here to hold back these marauders until our people were safe in Mayfield without a shadow of doubt.
The Saguenay had gone to the veranda roof with his rifle, where he could see any movement by land or water.
I called up to him that the destructives might come by both routes; then I went to my room, gathered all the lead bars and bags of bullets, seized our powder keg, and dragged all down to the water, where I stored everything in the canoe.
That was all I could take, save a sack of ground corn mixed with maple sugar, a flask of rum, and a bag of dry meat.
These articles, with our fur robes and blankets, a fish-spear, and a spontoon which I discovered, were all I dared attempt to save.