"And what has become of our natural protectors and leaders! Where is the landed gentry of County Tryon at this very hour? Except you, John Drogue, where are our gentlemen of the Northland?"
"Gone," said I soberly.
"Gone to Canada with the murderous Indians they were supposed to hold neutral! Guy Park stands empty and locked. It is an accursed place! Guy Johnson is fled with every Tory desperado and every Indian he could muster! May G.o.d d.a.m.n him!
"Old John Butler followed; and is brigading malcontents in Canada.
Butlersbury stands deserted. May every devil in h.e.l.l haunt that house!
Young Walter Butler is gone with many of our old neighbors of Tryon; and at Niagara he is forming a merciless legion to return and cut our throats.
"And Colonel Claus is gone, and McDonald, the b.l.o.o.d.y thief!--with his kilted lunatics and all his Scotch banditti----"
"But Sir John remains," said I quietly.
"Jack! Are you truly so blinded by your caste! Did not you yourself answer the militia call last winter and march with our good General to disarm Sir John"s popish Highlanders! And even then they lied--and Sir John lied--for they hid their broad-swords and pikes! and delivered them not when they paraded to ground their muskets!"
"Sir John has given his parole," I repeated stubbornly.
"Sir John breaks it every hour of the day!" cried Nick. "And he will break it again when we march to take him. Do you think he won"t learn of our coming? Do you suppose he will stay at the Hall, which he has pledged his honour to do?"
"His lady is still there."
"With his lady I have no quarrel," rejoined Nick. "I know her to be a very young, very wilful, very bitter, and very unhappy Tory; and she treats us plain folk like dirt under her satin shoon. But for that I care nothing. I pity her because she is the wife of that cold, sleek beast, Sir John. I pity her because she is gently bred and frail and lonely and stuffed with childish pride o" race. I pity her lot there in the great Hall, with her girl companions and her servants and her slaves. And I pity her because everybody in County Tryon, excepting only herself, knows that Sir John cares nothing for her, and that Claire Putnam of Tribes Hill is Sir John"s doxy!--and be d.a.m.ned to him! And you think such a man will not break his word?
"He broke his vows to wife and mistress alike. Why should he keep his vows to men?" He slid to the ground as he spoke, and I followed, for our three drummers had formed rank and were drawing their sticks from their cross-belts. Our fifers, also, lined up behind them; and Nick and his young brother, John, took places with them.
"Fall in! Fall in!" cried Joe Scott, our captain; and everybody ran with their packs and rifles to form in double ranks of sixteen files front while the drums rolled like spring thunder, filling the woods with their hollow sound, and the fifes shrilled like the swish of rain through trees.
Standing at ease between Dries Bowman and Baltus Weed, I answered to the roll call. Some among us lighted pipes and leaned on our long rifles, chatting with neighbors; others tightened belts and straps, b.u.t.toned spatter-dashes, or placed a sprig of hemlock above the black and white c.o.c.kades on their felt hats.
Balty Weed, who lived east of me, a thin fellow with red rims to his eyes and dry, spa.r.s.e hair tied in a queue with a knot of buckskin, asked me in his stealthy way what I thought about our present business, and if our Provincial Congress had not, perhaps, unjustly misjudged Sir John.
I replied cautiously. I had never trusted Balty because he frequented taverns where few friends to liberty cared to a.s.semble; and he was far too thick with Philip and John Helmer and with Charlie Cady to suit my taste.
We, in the little hamlet of Fonda"s Bush, were scarce thirty families, all counted; and yet, even here in this trackless wilderness, out of which each man had hewed for himself a patch of garden and a stump pasture along the little river Kennyetto, the bitter quarrel had long smouldered betwixt Tory and Patriot--King"s man and so-called Rebel.
And this was the Mohawk country. And the Mohawks stood for the King of England.
The road, I say, ended here; but there was a Mohawk path through twenty odd miles of untouched forest to those healing springs called Saratoga.
Except for this path and a deep worn war-trail north to the Sacandaga, which was the Iroquois road to Canada, and except for the wood road to Sir William"s Mayfield and Fish House settlements, we of Fonda"s Bush were utterly cut off. Also, save for the new Block House at Mayfield, we were unprotected in a vast wilderness which embodied the very centre of the Mohawk country.
True, north of us stood that little pleasure house built for his hour of leisure by Sir William, and called "The Summer House."
Painted white and green, it stood on a hard ridge jutting out into those dismal, drowned lands which we call the Great Vlaie. But it was not fortified.
Also, to the north, lay the Fish House, a hunting lodge of Sir William.
But these places were no protection for us. On the other hand, they seemed a menace; for Tories, it had been rumoured, were ever skulking along the Vlaie and the Sacandaga; and for aught we knew, these buildings were already designed to be made into block-houses and to be garrisoned by our enemies as soon as the first rifle-shot cracked out in the cause of liberty.
Our company of the Mohawk Regiment numbered thirty-six rifles--all that now remained of the old company, three-fourths of which had already deserted to the Canadas with Butler. All our officers had fled; Joe Scott of Maxon, formerly a sergeant, now commanded us; Benjamin de Luysnes was our lieutenant; Dries Bowman and Phil Helmer our sergeants--both already suspected.
Well, we got away from Stoner"s, marching in double file, and only the little creatures of the forest to hear our drums and fifes.
But the old discipline which had obtained in all our Tryon regiments when Sir William was our Major General and the landed gentry our officers seemed gone; a dull sense of bewilderment reigned, confusing many among us, as when leaderless men begin to realize how they had depended upon a st.u.r.dy staff now broken forever.
We marched with neither advanced guard nor flankers for the first half mile; then Joe Scott halted us and made Nick Stoner put away his beloved fife and sent him out on our right flank where the forest was heavy.
Me he selected to scout forward on the left--a dirty job where alders and willows grew thick above the bogs.
But why in G.o.d"s name our music played to advertise our coming I can not guess, for our men needed no heartening, having courage and resolution, only the lack of officers causing them any anxiety at all.
On the left flank of the little column I kept very easily in touch because of this same silly drumming and fifing. And I was glad when we came to high ground and breasted the hills which lead to that higher plateau, over which runs the road to Johnstown.
Plodding along in the bush, keeping a keen watch for any enemy who might come in paint or in scarlet coat, and the far rhythm of our drums thumping dully in my ears, I wondered whether other companies of my regiment were marching on Johnstown, and if other Tryon regiments--or what was left of them--were also afoot that day.
Was this, then, the beginning of the war in the Northland? And, when we made a prisoner of Sir John, would all the dusky forests glow with scarlet war-paint and scarlet coats?
Today birds sang. Tomorrow the terrific panther-slogan of the Iroquois might break out into h.e.l.l"s own uproar among these purple hills.
Was this truly the beginning? Would these still, leafy trails where the crested partridge strutted witness b.l.o.o.d.y combats between old neighbors--all the horrors of a fratricidal war?
Would the painted men of the woods hold their hands while Tory and patriot fought it out? Or was this utter and supreme horror to be added to this unnatural conflict?
Reflecting very seriously upon these matters, I trotted forward, rifle a-trail, and saw nothing living in the woods save a big hare or two in the alders, and the wild brown poultry of the woods, that ran to cover or rose into thunderous flight among the thickets.
About four o"clock came to me G.o.dfrey Shew, of Fish House, a private soldier like myself, with news of a halt on the Johnstown road, and orders that I eat a snack and rest in my tracks.
He told me that a company of horse from Albany was out scouting along the Mohawk, and that a column of three thousand men under Colonel Dayton were marching on Johnstown and had pa.s.sed Schenectady about noon.
Other news he had none, excepting that our company was to remain where we had halted, in order to stop the road to Fonda"s Bush and Saratoga, in case Sir John should attempt to retire this way.
"Well, G.o.dfrey," said I, "if Sir John truly turns out to be without shame and honour, and if he marches this way, there is like to be a lively time for us of the Bush, because Sir John has three hundred Highlanders to thirty odd of ourselves, and enough Borderers and Tory militia to double the count."
"We all know that," said Shew calmly, "and are not afraid."
"Do you think our people mean to stand?"
"Yes," said he simply.
A hot thrill of pride tingled my every vein. Suddenly I completely comprehended that these plain folk of Fonda"s Bush were my own people; that I was one of them; that, as they meant to stand for the ancient liberties of all Englishmen, now wickedly denied them, so I also meant to stand to the end.
And now, at last, I comprehended that I was in actual revolt against that King and against that n.o.bility and gentry who were deserting us when we had so desperate need of them in this coming battle for human freedom in a slave-cursed world.
The cleavage had come at last; the Northland was clean split; the red livery of the King"s men had suddenly become a target for every honest rifle in Tryon.
"G.o.dfrey," I said, "the last chance for truce is pa.s.sing as you and I stand here,--the last chance for any reconciliation and brotherly understanding between us and our Tory neighbors."