Lot, although he had been often a companion of the Indian when the latter lived near his uncle"s farm, looked upon him just as he did upon Sambo, Breckenridge"s slave boy. He had played with him, swam with him, learned to use the bow and arrow under Crow Wing"s instruction, and had gained something of forest lore from the Indian youth; but he had no respect for him, or for his peculiarities. He had not learned at "Siah Bolderwood"s knee of the really admirable qualities of these people whom the whites were pleased to call "savages." Lot made no objection to Crow Wing"s joining them, for his presence, and the use of his traps, was a very good thing for them. He patronized the Indian, however, and was not above suggesting that, as the redman was so ignorant, it would not really be necessary to divide the pelts in even thirds at the end of the season.
"The trader won"t give him but about so much for them, anyway, no matter how many he offers," he said to Enoch. "You know how it is with them.
Injins can"t count and the traders fool "em and cheat "em. We"d better take some of his ourselves and so get some good out of them."
"That isn"t honest, Lot!" cried Enoch, hotly.
"Huh! it"s honest enough. We won"t be cheating the Injin, for they"ll do him no good. And there"s no use in the traders makin" so much on him."
"Then we"ll go with him and see that the traders treat him honestly,"
declared young Harding.
"Zuckers!" exclaimed the careless Lot. "Catch me putting myself out that way for a redskin."
"You"re glad enough to use his traps, Lot!" cried Enoch. And the two old friends came very near having a falling out over the matter. Lot simply followed the example of the older settlers whom he knew. It was no particular sin to cheat an Indian. They were too much like children to look out for themselves in a bargain, anyway.
But as week followed week, Crow Wing"s manner toward Enoch Harding showed that he had adopted him, Indian fashion, as "brother." Not that the red youth displayed any affection; that was beneath a brave. But he appreciated Enoch"s respectful treatment of him. Crow Wing treasured this in his mind and, when the spring came, and they packed their bales of furs by canoe and hand-sled to Bennington, and Enoch took pains to make the traders pay the Indian quite as liberally as they did Lot and himself for his furs, his grat.i.tude blossomed in its fulness.
Lot went home to see his mother; but Enoch took Crow Wing to the Harding house with him and gave him an old canoe in which the red youth could make his way by water and portage to his home on the sh.o.r.es of Lake George. Crow Wing did not go near the house when Enoch met his mother and the younger Hardings after his long absence; but he sat down to dinner with them and if he used his fingers oftener than his hunting knife to prepare his food it was not remarked, for forks were not always used by the settlers themselves at that day. His gravity awed the younger children, while Bryce admired his proportions openly. The Indian youth was certainly a magnificently built fellow.
Before he went away he sat beside the creek and silently smoked a farewell pipe while his white friend waited for his last words. Enoch believed Crow Wing had something to tell him regarding Simon Halpen and that the time for speech had come; but knowing his nature the white youth had not tried to hurry this confidence.
"Hawknose come here once more--what you do?" Crow Wing asked, when the pipe was finished.
"Simon Halpen is my enemy. If you have an enemy what do you do?"
returned Enoch, with some emotion.
The Indian nodded. "Hawknose, Jonas Harding"s enemy. No deer kill Jonas Harding. Hawknose yonder then," and he waved his hand toward the deer-lick at which the dead settler had been found three years before.
"How does Crow Wing know that?" queried the white boy, eagerly.
"Crow Wing there, too."
"You saw him----" began Enoch, but the Indian cut him short with an emphatic "Umph! No see. Hear shot. Shot kill doe. Jonas Harding kill doe. Gun empty."
"Yes, we found the gun and the dead doe. And there were marks of a big buck all about the place and father--was dead."
"Hawknose there," said the Indian, gravely. "Crow Wing see him--running.
Pa.s.s him--so," with a gesture which led Enoch to believe that the running Halpen had crossed the Indian"s path within a few feet. "He no see Crow Wing. He run fast--look back over shoulder. And blood--blood on shirt--blood on hands--blood on gun! Go wash "em in river. Then run more."
"You saw him running away from the lick?" gasped Enoch. "But there were no footprints but father"s near the place. Only the hoof prints of the big buck."
"Umph! Crow Wing no see big deer; no hear "um. But see Hawknose run,"
said the Indian significantly.
"But I can"t understand how Halpen could have killed him, Crow Wing. He did not shoot him, and if he had been near enough to strike father down, why did his moccasins leave no mark?"
The Indian rose gravely. "Some time we see. Crow Wing come back here.
Harding go with him to deer-lick. Look, look--find out, mebbe."
"But after three years how can anything be found?" demanded Enoch, in despair.
"Will see," returned Crow Wing, and, without further word, entered the canoe and pushed out into the river. Nor did he turn about to look at the white youth once while the canoe was in sight. But he left Enoch Harding stirred to his depths by the brief and significant conversation.
The youth did not understand how Simon Halpen could have compa.s.sed his father"s death; yet Crow Wing evidently suspected something which he had not seen fit to divulge.
CHAPTER XV
THE STORM CLOUD GATHERS
Enoch scarce knew Bryce after his winter"s absence. The younger boy had felt the responsibility of his position as head of the family pro tem and although he had lost none of his cheeriness and love of action, he had gained some cautiousness. His care for little Henry and the girls was delightful and Mrs. Harding was undoubtedly proud of him. Although kept at home almost continually by his duties, Bryce had been able to trap enough beavers to buy the rifle which he had long wanted and on the first training day after the roads dried up in the spring, he went with Enoch to Bennington and was enrolled in Captain Baker"s company.
And during this year of "74 the train bands became of more importance than ever before. While in Boston and in other cities of the colonies, meetings were held in secret and companies of minute men were drilled by stealth, here in the Grants the Whigs trained openly, and the reason for it was known, too. The course of the foolish King and his ministers was widening the breach between the mother country and the American colonies until, when the Continental Congress met on September 5th of this year, royal authority was suspended almost everywhere but in the New York Colony. Within its confines were the strongest and most influential Tories, while the Dutch, who made up a goodly share of the population, although becoming good patriots in the end and warmly supporting the struggling nation which was born of that Congress, were phlegmatic of nature and slow to rouse.
During these months so pregnant with coming trouble, the controversy between the land jobbers and the Grants waned but little. The Yorkers had received so many sharp lessons, however, that they were careful to attack no settlers who were within reach of a.s.sistance from any body of Green Mountain Boys. And as Allen, Warner, and Cochran had many "hide-outs" in the hills, where they kept munitions of war and to which they summoned their followers by means which actually seemed to savor of the Black Art to their enemies, it was difficult for the Yorkers to know where it was really safe to carry on their attacks against the peaceful grantees. Being "viewed" became a most serious matter indeed, and many a luckless surveyor or other underling of the sheriff of Albany, carried the blue-seal of the Green Mountain Boys upon his person for months after an unexpected meeting with those rangers of the forest.
But the Yorkers kept away from Benningford and the surrounding district.
More farms had been taken up there by Hampshire grantees than in other parts of the disputed ground and the reign of the Green Mountain Boys was supreme. The Hardings had been very happy since the building of the new house, and, as there had been a school established in the vicinity, the girls and Harry attended for six months in the year. Kate had grown to be a tall girl and looked like her mother, while Mary and Harry were becoming of considerable use outside of, as well as in, the house.
Enoch and Bryce cleared a piece of woodland that year and late in the fall there was another stump-burning. "Siah Bolderwood came down from his "farm" near Old Ti to join in the festivities; but several of the young people who had attended the stump-burning three years before were not present. Robbie Baker was up north with his father, and Lot Breckenridge had moved away from the vicinity of Bennington; Crow Wing did not come to try his skill at wrestling with Enoch, so the latter sat by with "Siah as one of the judges, for he was older than the other contestants. Lot"s mother had married a man named Lewis who owned and worked a farm much nearer the Connecticut River, in the town of Westminster, and after his return from their winter"s trapping the spring before, Lot had gone across the mountains to work for his stepfather.
Lot had always been his dearest friend and Enoch missed him sorely, and as he could not go trapping with him this winter, he agreed to visit Westminster for a fortnight or so, some time during the idle months. It was March when he started to cross the range and although the roads were still full of snow, he went horseback. A sleigh was a luxury that few Bennington people owned, although Nuck might have hitched the old wood-sled to Dobbin. He spent one night at a farmer"s on the road, and was welcomed at supper time the next evening at the Lewis house.
"Zuckers!" exclaimed Lot, running out to drag his friend off his horse, "I tell ye, I"m glad to see ye! And so"ll marm be--if the young uns don"t bother her too much. There"s three Lewis young uns, too, besides the baby, and I tell ye, they"re a wild lot. I"d rayther tackle them wolves that you"n Crow Wing got mixed up with last winter. Seen the Injin since?"
"Not since I sent him home with more money than he had ever seen before in his life," replied Enoch.
"Very foolish of you! We might have had some of his pelts just as well"s not."
"You don"t mean that, Lot," said Enoch, who knew that young Breckenridge talked a deal more recklessly than he really felt.
"Well, never mind all that," said Lot. "Tell me the news. What"s goin"
on "tother side the mountings? Did ye know that lots more red-coats had come to Boston? And they say--leastways, a pedlar that come through here told us so last week--that the Boston folks have got a lot of guns and ammunition stored in the country towns and the minute men are drilling day and night. Do you s"pose there"ll be war there, Nuck?"
"If the Ma.s.sachusetts people feel like we do here in the Grants, there"ll be fighting," said Enoch, his eyes flashing. "What d"you suppose would happen if troops were quartered on us?"
"I"m goin" to Boston if there"s a fight," declared his friend. "Mr.
Lewis says I can. He"s a nice man--marm"s second husband--and he"s strong for the Grants, too. He"s got a Hampshire t.i.tle. But there"s lots of Tories around here. The court"s goin" to sit next week an" there"ll be trouble then, mark my word. Lots of the cases these Tories have hatched up against our people are goin" to be tried, an" the Whigs ain"t goin" to stand it. Judge Chandler ain"t so bad a man; but Judge Sabin and the others are dead set ag"in all our folks. They say the sheriff has sworn in a big lot of deperties. Mebbe you"ll see some fun before you go back to Bennington, Nuck."
As Lot"s idea of "fun" was pretty sure to be a scrimmage of some kind, it can be easily seen how strained the relations were then between the Whigs and the Tory court of the district. Whereas Tories and Whigs had lived at peace before, now they became bitter in controversy and even families were divided upon the questions of the hour.
Enoch found Lot"s stepfather to be a very quiet, pleasant man, who made it a point to be at harmony with all his neighbors, yet whose personal feelings and opinions as a Whig were well known. Lot delighted in being where the older men of the community discussed the trend of public affairs and it was due to him that Enoch, the second night after his arrival, gained some little notoriety in Westminster by an encounter he had at the Royal Inn, kept by one John Norton.
The tap-room and parlors of the inn were occupied every evening at this time by the men of Westminster, and by certain visitors who had, for some days, been gathering for the meeting of the General Court. And all these visitors were not attorneys, or plaintiffs and defendants in the several cases which would come up for hearing before their Worships the justices. The sheriff was already at Westminster and there were more armed men about the town than had ever been seen there before at one time. Until the closing hour earnest discussions were carried on in the inn, for although the Royal, or "Norton"s house" as it was called, was the headquarters of the Tories, many Whigs frequented it, too.
Naturally, the young men and half-grown boys wished to listen on the outskirts of these groups, and Lot Breckenridge was desirous of hearing all that went on. Enoch went with him to the inn rather against his will. Mistress Harding did not approve of such places for youths and Enoch had not grown so old or so big as to wish to disobey his mother, or even to believe that she was less able to guide him than she had formerly been.
The inn was well filled, indeed, that night and Master Norton was bustling about from group to group, dropping a word here and another there, determined to keep all his guests pleased as maybe; for despite his Tory principles, the innkeeper was first for his own pocket and would not antagonize any man knowingly. Mine Host was particularly attentive to a party of ten or a dozen gentlemen who, having eaten, now sat grouped before one of the fires engaged in earnest, and somewhat noisy, conversation. The figure of the sheriff was the centre of this group.