With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga.
by W. Bert Foster.
CHAPTER I
A BOY OF THE WILDERNESS
The forest was still. A calm lay upon its vast extent, from the green-capped hills in the east to the n.o.ble river which, fed by the streams so quietly meandering through the pleasantly wooded country, found its way to the sea where the greatest city of the New World was destined to stand. The clear, bell-like note of a waking bird startled the morning hush. A doe and her fawn that had couched in a thicket seemed roused to activity by this early matin and suddenly showered the short turf with a dewy rain from the bushes which they disturbed as they leaped away toward the "lick." The gentle creatures first slaked their thirst at the margin of the creek hard by and then stood a moment with outstretched nostrils, snuffing the wind before tasting the salt impregnated earth trampled as hard as adamant by a thousand hoofs. The fawn dropped its muzzle quickly; but the mother, not so well a.s.sured, snuffed again and yet again.
In the wilderness, before the white man came, there were to be found paths made by the wild folk going to and from their watering places and feeding grounds, and paths made by the red hunter and warrior. Although hundreds of deer traveled to this lick yearly, they had not originally made the trail. It was an ancient Indian runaway, for the creek was fordable near this point. The tribesmen had used it for generations until it was worn almost knee-deep in the forest mould, but wide enough only to be traveled in single file. Along this ancient trail, and approaching the lick with infinite caution, came a boy of thirteen, bearing a heavy rifle.
Although so young, Enoch Harding was well built, and the play of his hardened muscles was easily observed under his tight-fitting, homespun garments. The circ.u.mstances of border life in the eighteenth century molded hardy men and st.u.r.dy boys. His face was as brown as a berry and his eyes clear and frankly open. The brown hair curled tightly above his perspiring brow, from which his old otter-skin cap was thrust back. His coming to the bank of the wide stream was attended with all the care and silent observation of an Indian on the trail. He set his feet so firmly and with such precision that not even the rustle of a leaf or the crackling of a twig would have warned the sharpest ear of his approach.
The wind was in his favor, too, blowing from the creek toward him. The doe, which he could not yet see but the patter of whose light hoofs he had heard as she trotted with her fawn to the drinking place, could not possibly have discovered his presence; yet she continued to raise her muzzle at intervals and snuff the wind suspiciously.
The dark aisles of the forest, as yet unillumined by the sun whose crimson banners would soon be flung above the mountain-tops, seemed deserted. In the distance the birds were beginning their morning song; but here the shadow of the mountains lay heavy upon wood and stream and the feathered choristers awoke more slowly. The two deer at the lick and the boy who now, from behind the ma.s.sive bole of a tree, surveyed them, seemed the only living objects within view.
Enoch raised his heavy rifle, resting the barrel against the tree trunk, and drew bead at the doe"s side. He was chancing a long shot, rather than taking the risk of approaching any nearer to the animals. He had seen that the doe was suspicious and she might be off in a flash into the thicker forest beyond unless he fired at once. Had he been more experienced he would have wondered what had made the creature suspicious, his own approach to the lick being quite evidently undiscovered. But he thought only of getting a perfect sight and that the larder at home was empty. And this last fact was sufficient to make the boy"s aim certain, his princ.i.p.al care being to waste no powder and to bring down his game with as little loss of time as might be.
The next moment the heavy muzzle-loading gun roared and the buckshot sped on its mission. The mother deer gave a convulsive spring forward, thus warning the poor fawn, which disappeared in the brush like a flash of brown light. The doe dropped in a heap upon the sward and Enoch, flushed with success, ran forward to view his prize. In so doing, however, the boy forgot the first rule of the border ranger and hunter.
He did not reload his weapon.
Stumbling over the widely spread roots of the great tree behind which he had hidden, he reached the opening in the forest where the tragedy had been enacted, and would have been on his knees beside the dead deer in another instant had not an appalling sound stayed him. A scream, the like of which once heard is never to be forgotten, thrilled him to the marrow. He started back, casting his glance upward. There was a rustling in the thick branches of the tree beneath which the doe had fallen.
Again the maddened scream rang out and a tawny body flashed from concealment in the foliage.
"A catamount!" Enoch shouted, and seeing the creature fairly over his head in its flight through the air, he leaped away toward the creek, his feet winged with fear. Of all the wild creatures of the Northern wilderness this huge cat was most to be avoided. It would not hesitate to attack man when hungry, and maddened and disappointed as this one was, its charge could not be stayed. At the instant when the beast was prepared to leap upon either the doe or her fawn, Enoch"s shot had laid the one low and frightened the other away. His appearance upon the scene attracted the attention of the cat and had given it a new object of attack. Possibly the creature did not even notice the fall of the deer, being now bent upon vengeance for the loss of its prey, for which it had doubtless searched unsuccessfully all the night through.
The young hunter was in a desperate situation. His gun was empty and the prospect of an encounter with the catamount would have quenched the courage of the bravest. And to run from it was still more foolish, yet this was the first thought which inspired him. The creek was beyond and although the ford was some rods above the deer-lick, he thought to cast himself into the stream and thus escape his enemy. The beast, possessing that well-known trait of the feline tribe which causes it to shrink from water, might not follow him into the creek.
A long log, the end of which had caught upon the bank, swung its length into the stream, forming a boom against which light drift-stuff had gathered; the swift current foamed about the timber as though vexed at this delay to its progress. Upon the tree Enoch leaped and ran to the further extremity. His feet, shod in home-made moccasins of deer-hide, did not slip on this insecure footing; but his weight on the stranded log set it in motion. The timber began to swing off from the sh.o.r.e and one terrified glance about him a.s.sured the boy that he was at a most deep and dangerous part of the stream.
Although so shallow above at the ford, the bed of the creek directly below was of rock instead of gravel, and ragged boulders thrust themselves up from the depths, causing many whirlpools which dimpled the surface of the water. About the boulders the current tore, the brown froth from the angry jaws of rock dancing lightly away upon the waves.
Although even with his clothing on he might have swum in a quiet pool, to do so here would be almost impossible. The boy was between two perils!
He turned about in horror to escape the flood, and was in time to see the huge cat gain the end of the log in a single bound as it was torn from the sh.o.r.e by the current. There the beast crouched, less than twenty feet away, lashing its tail and snarling menace at the victim of its wrath. The situation was paralyzing. As for loading his rifle now, the boy had not the strength to do it. The fascination of the beast"s blazing eyes held him motionless, like a bird charmed by the unwinking gaze of a black snake.
And Enoch Harding knew, if he knew anything, that the beast would not give him time to reload the clumsy gun. At his first movement it would spring. And if he leaped into the water, it might follow him, considering its present savage mood. He beheld its muscles, which slipped so easily under the tawny skin, knotting themselves for a spring. The forelegs were drawn up under the breast the curved, sabre-sharp claws scratching the bark on the floating timber. In another instant the fatal leap would be made.
Never had the boy been in such danger. He did not utterly lose his presence of mind; but he was helpless. What chance had he with an empty gun before the savage brute? He seized the barrel in both hands and raised the weapon above his head. It was too heavy for him to swing with any ease, and being so would fall but lightly on the creature, did he succeed in reaching it at all. He could not hope to stun the cat at a single blow. And beside, the tree, rocking now like a water-logged canoe, made his footing more and more insecure. In a moment it would be among the boulders and at the first collision be overturned.
But he could not drag his eyes from those of the catamount. With a fierce snarl which ended in a thrilling scream, the brute cast itself into the air! At the moment it rose, exposing its lighter colored breast to view, a gun-shot shattered the silence of river and forest. The spring of the cat was not stayed, but its yell again changed--this time to a note of agony.
"Jump, lad, jump!" shouted a voice and Enoch, as though awaking from a dream, obeyed the command. He leaped sideways, and landed upon a slippery rock, falling to his knees, yet securing a hand-hold upon a protuberance. Nor did he lose hold of his gun with the other hand.
The body of the catamount landed just where he had stood; but then rolled off the log and disappeared in the rushing stream, while the timber itself crashed instantly into one of the larger boulders. Enoch staggered to his feet, his hand bleeding and also his knee, where the stocking had been torn away by the rock. The log swung broadside to the current again, and seeing his chance, the boy ran along its length and leaped from its end into comparatively shallow water under the bank.
His rescuer was at hand and dragged him, panting and exhausted, to the sh.o.r.e, where he fell weakly on the turf, unable for a moment to utter a word. The man who leaned over him was lean, as dark as an Indian, and in a day when smoothly shaven features were the rule, his face was marked by a tangled growth of iron-gray beard. His hair hung to the fringed collar of his deerskin shirt, and straggled over his low brow in careless locks, instead of being tightly drawn back and fastened in a queue; and out of this wilderness of hair and beard looked two eyes as sharp as the hawk"s.
He was so tall that there was a slight stoop to his shoulders as though, when he walked, he feared to collide with the branches of the trees under which he pa.s.sed. Erect, he must have lacked but a few inches of seven feet and, possessing not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his big bones, his appearance was not impressive. The deerskin hunting shirt, worked in a curious pattern on the breast with red and blue porcupine quills, fitted him tightly, as did his linsey-woolsey breeches; and his thin shanks were covered with gray hose darned clumsily in more than one place. He would have been selected at first sight as a wood-ranger and hunter, and carried his long rifle with more grace than he ever held plough or wielded reaping-hook.
Indeed, Josiah Bolderwood was one of that strange cla.s.s of white men so frequently found during the pioneer era of our Eastern country. He seemed to have been born, as he often said himself, with a gun in his hands. His mother, lying on her couch behind the double wall of a blockhouse in the Maine wilderness, loaded spare guns for her husband and his comrades while they beat off the yelling redskins, when Josiah was but a few days old. He was a ranger and trapper from the beginning.
He had slept under the canopy of the forest more often than in a bed and beneath a roof made by men"s hands. From early youth he had hunted all through the northern wilderness, and had been no more able to tie himself to a farm, and earn his bread by tilling the soil, than an Indian. Indeed, he was more of an Indian than a white man in habits, tastes, and feelings; he lacked only that marvelous appreciation of signs and sounds in the forest, in which the white can never hope to equal the red man.
"Lad, that was a near chance for you!" he said, when he saw that Enoch was practically unhurt. "The Almighty surely brought me to this lick jest right. I knowed you was here when I heard the shot; but as your marm said you"d gone for a deer, I didn"t s"pose you"d be huntin" for catamounts, too! Howsomever, somethin" tol" me ter run when I heard your gun, an" run I did."
"I didn"t shoot at the wild-cat, "Siah," said the boy, getting upon his feet. "See yonder; there"s the doe I knocked over. But the critter was after her, too, and it madded him when I fired, I s"pose."
"And ye didn"t git your gun loaded again!" exclaimed Bolderwood.
His young friend blushed with shame. "I--I didn"t think. I ran over to look at the doe, and the critter jumped at me outer the tree. Then I got on the log and he follered me----"
"Jonas Harding"s boy"d oughter known better than that," declared the old ranger, with some vexation.
"I know it, "Siah. Poor father told me "nough times never to move outer my tracks till I had loaded again. An" I reckon this"ll be a lesson for me. I--I ain"t got over it yet."
"Wal," said Bolderwood, "while you git yer breath, Nuck, I"ll flay that critter and hang her up. I"m in somethin" of a hurry this mornin"; but as the widder"s needin" the meat, we won"t leave the carca.s.s to the varmints."
"You"ve been to my house, "Siah?" cried Enoch, following him across the little glade.
"Yes. Jest stopped there on my way down from Manchester. That"s how I knew you was over here hunting."
"But if you"re in a hurry, leave me to do that," said the boy. "I"m all right now."
"You"re in as big a hurry as I be, Nuck," returned the ranger, with a grim smile. "I"m going to take you with me over to Mr. James Breckenridge"s. Ev"ry gun we kin git may count to-day, lad."
"Did mother say I could go, "Siah?" cried the youngster, with undoubted satisfaction in his voice. "You"re the best man that I know to get her to say "yes"!"
Bolderwood looked up from his work with much gravity. "This ain"t no funnin" we"re goin" on, Nuck. It"s serious business. You kin shoot straight, an" that"s why I begged for ye. This may be the most turrible day you ever seen, my lad, for the day on which a man or boy sees bloodshed for the fust time, is a mem"ry that he takes with him to the grave."
CHAPTER II
ENOCH HARDING FEELS HIMSELF A MAN
Although Enoch Harding had not grasped the serious nature of the matter which the ranger"s words suggested, there was something he had realized, however, and this thought sent the blood coursing through his veins with more than wonted vigor and his eyes sparkled. He was a man. He was to play a man"s part on this day and the neighbors--even the old ranger who had stood his friend on so many occasions already--recognized him as the head of the family.
Bolderwood saw this thought expressed in his face and without desiring to "take him down" and humble his pride, wished to show him the serious side of the situation. To this end he spoke upon another subject, beginning: "D"ye remember where we be, Nuck? "Member this place? Seems strange that you sh"d have such a caper here with that catamount after what happened only last spring, doesn"t it?" He glanced keenly at young Harding and saw that his words had at once the desired effect. Enoch stood up, the skinning-knife in his hand, and looked over the little glade. In a moment his brown eyes filled with tears, which rolled unchastened down his smooth cheeks.
"Aye, Nuck, a sorry day for you an" yourn when Jonas Harding met his death here. And a sorry day was it for me, too, lad. I loved him like a brother. He an" I, Nuck, trapped this neck of woods together before the settlement was started. We knew how rich the land was and naught but the wars with the redskins an" them French kept us from comin" here long before the Robinsons. Jonas wouldn"t come "less it was safe to bring your mother an" you--an" he was right. There"s little good in a man"s roamin" the world without a wife an" fireside ter tie to. I was sayin"
the same to neighbor Allen last week, an" he agreed--though he"s wuss off than me, for he has a family back in Litchfield an" is under anxiety all the time to bring them here, if the Yorkers but leave us in peace.
As for me--well, a tough old knot like me ain"t fit to marry an" settle down. I"m wuss nor an Injin."
It is doubtful if the boy heard half this monologue. He stood with thoughtful mien and his eyes were still wet when Bolderwood"s words finally aroused him. "Do you know, Nuck, there"s many a time I stop at this ford and think of your father"s death? There"s things about it I"ll never understand, I reckon."
Enoch Harding started and flashed a quick glance at his friend. "What things?" he asked.