"There"s somebody over there--a tall man, but I couldn"t see his face----"
"Where?"
"Beyond the crick; "twarn"t half a mile from where father was killed at the deer-lick. I saw a light in the bushes. It was a campfire an" I couldn"t go by without seein" what it was for. So I crept up on it an"
bymeby I saw the man."
"You don"t know who he was?" asked the widow, quickly.
"No, marm."
"Did he have a dark face and was his nose hooked?"
"I couldn"t see his face. He was sittin" down all the time. His face was shaded with his cap. He sat with his back up against a tree. I was a long while gittin" near enough to see him, an" then----"
"Well, what happened, my son?"
"Then that Crow Wing--you know him; the Injin boy that useter live down the crick with his folks--Crow Wing come out of the forest an" grabbed me an" told me not to holler or he"d kill me. I wasn"t "zactly "fraid of him," added Enoch, thinking some explanation necessary, "but I saw if I fought him it would bring the man at the fire to help, and I couldn"t fight two of "em, anyway. The pesky Injin made me walk to the crick with him an" then he told me to go home and not come back. I wish "Siah Bolderwood was here. We"d fix "em!"
"The Indian threatened you!" cried the widow. "Have you done anything to anger him, Enoch? I know your father was very bitter toward them all; but I hoped----"
"I never done a thing to him!" declared the boy. "I don"t play with him much, though Lot does; but I let him alone. I useter make fun of him b"fore--b"fore "Siah told me more about his folks. Crow Wing"s father is a good friend to the whites. He fought with our folks ag"in the French Injins."
"But who could the man have been?" asked the widow, gravely. "The children saw a man lurking about the corn-field at the lower end to-day.
And when I was milking, Mary came and told me that he was then across the river at the ox-bow, looking over at the house. If it should be Simon Halpen! He will not give up his hope of getting our rich pastures, I am afraid. We must watch carefully, Enoch."
"I"ll shoot him if he comes again!" declared the boy, belligerently.
Then he closed and barred the door and rapidly prepared for bed. His mother retired to her own room, but long after Enoch was soundly sleeping on his couch, the good woman was upon her knees beside her bed.
Although she was proud to see Enoch so st.u.r.dy and helpful, she feared this controversy with the Yorkers would do him much harm; and it was for him, as well as for the safety of them all in troublous times, that she prayed to the G.o.d in whom she so implicitly trusted.
The next day "Siah Bolderwood came striding up to the cabin with the carca.s.s of the doe Enoch had shot across his shoulders, and found the widow at her loom, just within the door. She welcomed the lanky ranger warmly, for he had not only been her husband"s closest friend but had been of great a.s.sistance to her children and herself since Jonas" death.
"The children will be glad to see you, "Siah," she said. "I will call them up early and get supper for us all. I will have raised biscuit, too--it is not often you get anything but Johnny-cake, I warrant. The boys are working to clear the new lot to-day."
"Aye, I saw them as I came along," said Bolderwood, laughing. "There was Mistress Kate on top of a tall stump, her black hair flying in the wind, and Nuck"s old musket in her hands. She said she was on guard, and she hailed me before I got out of the wood. Her eyes are sharp."
"She should have been a boy," sighed the widow. "Indeed, this wilderness is no place for girls at all."
"Bless their dear little souls!" exclaimed Bolderwood, with feeling.
"What"d we do without Kate an" Mary? They keep the boys sweet, mistress!
And Kate"s as good as a boy any day when it comes to looking out for herself; while as I came through the stumpage Mary was working with the best of "em to pull roots and fire-weed."
"The boys want a stump-burning as soon as possible. Jonas got the new lot near cleared. There"s only the rubbish to burn."
"Good idea. Nuck and Bryce are doing well.... But what was the sentinel for?"
"It isn"t all play," said the widow, stopping her work and speaking seriously. "Yesterday the children saw a strange man hanging about the creek yonder. And last night on his way back from Master Breckenridge"s, Enoch saw a campfire in the forest and a man sitting by it. An Indian youth whom perhaps you have seen here--Crow Wing, he is called--was with the man. Crow Wing drove Enoch off before he could find out who the white man was."
"Crow Wing, eh?" repeated "Siah, shaking his head thoughtfully. "I know the red scamp. If he was treated right by the settlers, though, he"d be decent enough. But he got angry at Breckenridge"s yesterday, they tell me. Somebody spoke roughly to him. You can ruffle the feathers of them birds mighty easy."
This was all the comment the ranger made upon the story; but later he wandered down to the new lot which the Hardings were clearing, and instead of lending a hand inquired particularly of Enoch where he had seen the campfire the night before. Learning the direction he plunged into the wood without further ado and went to the ford, crossing it with caution and going at once to the vicinity of the fire which Enoch had observed. But the ashes had been carefully covered and little trace of the occupation of the spot left. At one point, however, "Siah found where two persons--a white man and a red one--had embarked in a canoe which had been hidden under the bank of the creek. Evidently Crow Wing had expected the place would be searched and had done all in his power to mystify the curious.
When "Siah returned Mistress Harding had called up the children and supper--a holiday meal--was almost ready. A lamb had been killed the day before and was stuffed and baked in the Dutch oven. There were light white-flour biscuits, Enoch had ridden to Bennington with the wheat slung across his saddle to have it ground, and there was sweet b.u.t.ter and refined maple sap which every family in the Grants boiled down in the spring for its own use, although as yet there was little market for it. It was a jolly meal, for when "Siah came the children were sure of something a bit extra, both to eat and to do. He taught the girls how to make doll babies with cornsilk hair, and begged powder and shot of their mother for Bryce and Enoch to use in shooting at a mark. Under his instructions Enoch had become a fairly good marksman, while Bryce, by resting his gun in the fork of a sapling set upright in the ground, did almost as well as his elder brother.
After supper Bolderwood talked with the widow while he smoked his pipe.
"We need boys like Enoch, Mistress Harding," he said. "While he"s young I don"t dispute, he"s big for his age and can handle that rifle pretty well. You must let him go up to Bennington next week and drill with the other young fellows. There will be no need of his going on any raids with the older men. We shall keep the boys out of it, and most of the beech-sealin" will be done by the men who hain"t got no fam"blies here and are free in their movements. But the drill will be good for him and the time may come when all this drillin" will pay."
"You really look for serious trouble with the Yorkers, Master Bolderwood?" she asked.
"I reckon I do. With them or--or others. Things is purty tick"lish--you know that, widder. The King ain"t treatin" us right, an" his ministers and advisers don"t care anything about these colonies, "ceptin" if we don"t make "em rich. Then they trouble us. And the governors are mostly all alike. I don"t think a bit better of Benning Wentworth than I do of these "ere New York governors. They don"t re"lly care nothin" for us poor folk."
So the widow agreed to allow Enoch to go to Bennington; and when the day came for the gathering of those youths and men who could be spared from the farms, to meet there, he mounted the old claybank mare, his shoes and stockings slung before him over the saddle bow that his great toes might be the easier used as spurs, and with a bag of corn behind him to be left for grinding at the mill, trotted along the trail to the settlement. Before he had gone far on the road he saw other men and boys bound in the same direction. Remember Baker pa.s.sed him, with Robbie, his boy, perched behind on the saddle, and clinging like a leech to his father"s coat-tails as the horse galloped over the rough road. Enoch saw Robbie later, however, and invited him to the stump burning which was to take place the following week. He saw Lot Breckenridge, too, at the Green Mountain Inn, and invited him to come, and sent word to other boys and girls in the Breckenridge neighborhood.
Lot"s mother would not let him carry a gun, but he had come to look on and see the "greenhorns" take their first lesson in the manual of arms.
Stephen Fay, mine host of the "Catamount" Inn as the hostlery had come to be called--a large, jocund individual who was a Grants man to the core and earnest in the cause of the Green Mountain Boys--made all welcome and the old house was crowded from daylight till dark. In the gallery which ran along the face of the inn, even with the second story windows, the ladies of the town sat and viewed the maneuvres of the newly formed train-band. Before the door stood the twenty-five foot post that held the sign and was likewise capped by a stuffed catamount, in a very lifelike pose, its grinning teeth and extended claws turned toward the New York border in defiance of "Yorker rule."
The leaders of the party which had suggested these drills--all staunch Whigs and active in their defiance of the Yorkers,--met together in the inn that day, too, and laid plans for a campaign against certain settlers from New York who had come into the Grants and taken up farms without having paid the New Hampshire authorities for the same. In not all cases had these New York settlers driven off people who had bought the land of New Hampshire or her agents; but if it was really the property of that colony the Yorkers had no right upon the eastern side of the Twenty-Mile Line, or on that side of the lake, at all. As far north as the opposite sh.o.r.e from Fort Ticonderoga, that key to the Canadian route which had been wrested from the French but a few years before, Yorkers had settled; and the Green Mountain Boys determined that these people must leave the Disputed Ground or suffer for their temerity.
After the failure of Ten Eyck to capture the Breckenridge farm, New York began a system of flattery and underhanded methods against the Grants men which was particularly effective. The Yorkers chose certain more or less influential individuals and offered them local offices, gifts of money, and even promised royal t.i.tles to some, if they would range themselves against the Green Mountain Boys. In some cases these offers were accepted; in this way John Munro had become a justice of the peace, and Benjamin Hough followed his example. Some foolish folk went so far as to accept commissions as New York officers, but hoped to hide the fact from their neighbors until a fitting season--when the Grants were not afflicted with the presence of the Green Mountain Boys. But in almost every case such cowardly sycophants were discovered and either made ridiculous before their neighbors by being tried and hoisted in a chair before the Catamount Inn, or were sealed with the twigs of the wilderness--and the Green Mountain Boys wielded the beech wands with no light hand.
Almost every week the military drills were held in Bennington and Enoch attended. But before the second one the "stump burning" came off at the Harding place and that was an occasion worthy of being chronicled.
CHAPTER VI
THE STUMP BURNING
Enoch and Lot Breckenridge, with Robbie Baker, had completed all the plans for the stump burning that first training day at Bennington. Lot, who lived so far from the Harding cabin, agreed to come over the night before if his mother would let him, and Robbie was to remain with Enoch the night after. The stumps and rubbish would be pretty well piled up and fired by afternoon, and then the boys could run races, and play games, and perhaps shoot at a mark, until supper-time. Mrs. Harding had already promised if the boys worked well to make a nice supper for them.
"An" we"ll have the girls," said Lot.
"Oh, what good"ll they be at a stump burnin"?" demanded young Baker, ungallantly.
"Lots o" good. They allus want good times, too," said Lot, standing up for his sisters manfully. "You have no sisters, an" that"s why you don"t want "em."
"They"ll be in the way. Their frocks"ll git torn if they help us, an"
they"ll git afire--or--or somethin"!"
"Nuck"s sisters will be there. They"ll want other girls," said the wise Lot. "An" b"sides, Mis" Harding"ll be lots better to us if the girls is there. She allus is--my marm is. Mothers like girls, but boys is only a nuisance, they says." Lot had drawn these conclusions from the remarks of his own mother, who was troubled by many children and lacked that "faculty," as New England folk used to term it, for bringing them up cheerfully.
"I guess we"ll get a better supper if the girls are there," admitted Nuck, quietly.
"But what"ll they do?" demanded Robbie, the embryo woman-hater.
"I"ll get mother ter be layin" out a quilt, or something, an" the girls can help about that."
"Zuckers!" cried Lot. "We"ll have the finest time ever was. I"ll be sure an" tell ev"rybody down my way. An" we"ll all bring powder an" shot; it won"t matter so much about guns, for them that don"t have "em can borry of them that has, when it comes to shootin"."