"What is your purpose, Enoch?"

"Well, to begin with, it is to make your hair stand on end. I started from Buck's Island, on the St. Lawrence, on the 9th of this month. Do you know who I left there? Seven hundred uniformed soldiers, English and Tory, with eight cannons, commanded by a British colonel—Sillinger they called him—and Sir John Johnson. They are coming to Oswego, where they will meet the Butlers with more Tories, and Dan Claus with five hundred Indians. Then the whole force is to march on Fort Stanwix, capture it, and come down the Valley!"

You may guess how eagerly I listened to the details which Enoch gave—details of the gravest importance, which I must hasten to send west to Herkimer and east to Schuyler. When this vital talk was ended, I returned to the personal side of the matter with a final query:

"But why get yourself arrested?"

"Because I wanted to see you. My errand wasn't finished till I had given you Philip Cross's message. 'Tell that Dutchman,' he said, 'if you can contrive to do it without peril to yourself, that when I come into the Valley I will cut out his heart, and feed it to a Missisague dog!'"



Chapter XXIX.

The Message Sent Ahead from the Invading Army.



The whole forenoon of this eventful day was occupied in transmitting to the proper authorities the great tidings which had so fortuitously come to us.

For this purpose, after breakfast, John Frey, who was the brigade major as well as sheriff, rode down to Caughnawaga with me, four soldiers bringing Enoch in our train. It was a busy morning at the Fonda house, where we despatched our business, only Jelles Fonda and his brother Captain Adam and the staunch old Samson Sammons being admitted to our counsels.

Here Enoch repeated his story, telling now in addition that one-half of the approaching force was composed of Hanau Chasseurs—skilled marksmen recruited in Germany from the gamekeeper or forester class—and that Joseph Brant was expected to meet them at Oswego with the Iroquois war party, Colonel Claus having command of the Missisaguesor Hurons from the Far West. As he mentioned the names of various officers in Sir John's regiment of Tories, we ground our teeth with wrath. They were the names of men we had long known in the Valley—men whose brothers and kinsmen were still among us, some even holding commissions in our militia. Old Sammons could not restrain a snort of rage when the name of Hon-Yost Herkimer was mentioned in this list of men who wore now the traitor's "Royal Green" uniform, and carried commissions from King George to fight against their own blood.

"You saw no Sammons in that damned snake's nest, I'll be bound!" he shouted fiercely at Enoch.

"Nor any Fonda, either," said Major Jelles, as firmly.

But then both bethought them that these were cruel words to say in the hearing of the stalwart John Frey, who could not help it that his brother, Colonel Hendrick, was on parole as a suspected Tory, and that another brother, Bernard, and a nephew, young Philip Frey, Hendrick's son, were with Johnson in Canada. So the family subject was dropped.

More or less minute reports of all that Enoch revealed, according to the position of those for whom they were intended, were written out by me, and despatched by messenger to General Schuyler at Albany; to Brigadier-General Herkimer near the Little Falls; to Colonel Campbell at Cherry Valley; and to my old comrade Peter Gansevoort, now a full colonel, and since April the commandant at Fort Stanwix. Upon him the first brunt of the coming invasion would fall. He had under him only five hundred men—the Third New York Continentals—and I took it upon myself to urge now upon General Schuyler that more should be speeded to him.

This work finally cleared away, and all done that was proper until the military head of Tryon County, Brigadier Herkimer, should take action, there was time to remember my own affairs. It had been resolved that no word of what we had learned should be made public. The haying had begun, and a panic now would work only disaster by interfering with this most important harvest a day sooner than need be. There was no longer any question of keeping Enoch in prison, but there was a real fear that if he were set at large he might reveal his secret. Hence John Frey suggested that I keep him under my eye, and this jumped with my inclination.

Accordingly, when the noon-day heat was somewhat abated, we set out down the Valley road toward the Cedars. There was no horse for him, but he walked with the spring and tirelessness of a grey-hound, his hand on the pommel of my saddle. The four soldiers who had come down from Johnstown followed in our rear, keeping under the shade where they could, and picking berries by the way.

The mysterious letter from Philip to his deserted wife lay heavily upon my thoughts. I could not ask Enoch if he knew its contents—which it turned out he did not—but I was unable to keep my mind from speculating upon them.

During all these fourteen months Daisy and I had rarely spoken of her recreant ruffian of a husband—or, for that matter, of any other phase of her sad married life. There had been some little constraint between us for a time, after Mr. Stewart's childish babbling about us as still youth and maiden. He never happened to repeat it, and the embarrassment gradually wore away. But we had both been warned by it—if indeed I ought to speak of her as possibly needing such a warning—and by tacit consent the whole subject of her situation was avoided. I did not even tell her that I owed the worst and most lasting of my wounds to Philip. It would only have added to her grief, and impeded the freedom of my arm when the chance for revenge should come.

That my heart had been all this while deeply tender toward the poor girl, I need hardly say. I tried to believe that I thought of her only as the dear sister of my childhood, and that I looked upon her when we met with no more than the fondness which may properly glow in a brother's eyes. For the most part I succeeded in believing it, but it is just to add that the neighborhood did not. More than once my mother had angered me by reporting that people talked of my frequent visits to the Cedars, and faint echoes of this gossip had reached my ears from other sources.

"You did not stop to see Mistress Cross open her letter, then?" I asked Enoch.

"No: why should I? Nothing was said about that. He paid me only to deliver it into her hands."

"And what was his mood when he gave it to you?"

"Why, it was what you might call the Madeira mood—his old accustomed temper. He had the hiccoughs, I recall, when he spoke with me. Most generally he does have them. Yet, speak the truth and shame the devil! he is sober two days to that Colonel Sillinger's one. If their expedition fails, it won't be for want of rum. They had twenty barrels when they started from La Chine, and it went to my heart to see men make such beasts of themselves."

I could not but smile at this. "The last time I saw you before to-day," I said, "there could not well have been less than a quart of rum inside of you."

"No doubt! But it is quite another thing to guzzle while your work is still in hand. That I never would do. And it is that which makes me doubt these British will win, in the long-run. Rum is good to rest upon—it is rest itself—when the labor is done; but it is ruin to drink it when your task is still ahead of you. To tell the truth, I could not bear to see these fellows drink, drink, drink, all day long, with all their hard fighting to come. It made me uneasy."

"And is it your purpose to join us? We are the sober ones, you know."

"Well, yes and no. I don't mind giving your side a lift—it's more my way of thinking than the other—and you seem to need it powerfully, too. But"—here he looked critically over my blue and buff, from cockade to boot-tops—"you don't get any uniform on me, and I don't join any regiment. I'd take my chance in the woods first. It suits you to a 't,' but it would gag me from the first minute."

We talked thus until we reached the Cedars. I left Enoch and the escort without, and knocked at the door. I had to rap a second time before Molly Wemple appeared to let me in.

"We were all up-stairs," she said, wiping her hot and dusty brow with her apron, "hard at it! I'll send her down to you. She needs a little breathing-spell."

The girl was gone before I could ask what extra necessity for labor had fallen upon the household this sultry summer afternoon.

Daisy came hurriedly to me, a moment later, and took both my hands in hers. She also bore signs of work and weariness.

"Oh, I am so glad you are come!" she said, eagerly. "Twice I have sent Tulp for you across to your mother's. It seemed as if you never would come."

"Why, what is it, my girl? Is it about the letter from—from——"

"You know, then!"

"Only that a letter came to you yesterday from him. The messenger—he is an old friend of ours—told me that much, nothing more."

Daisy turned at this and took a chair, motioning me to another. The pleased excitement at my arrival—apparently so much desired—was succeeded all at once by visible embarrassment.

"Now that you are here, I scarcely know why I wanted you, or—or how to tell you what it is," she said, speaking slowly. "I was full of the idea that nothing could be done without your advice and help—and yet, now you have come, it seems that there is nothing left for you to say or do." She paused for a moment, then added: "You know we are going back to Cairncross."

I stared at her, aghast. The best thing I could say was, "Nonsense!"

She smiled wearily. "So I might have known you would say. But it is the truth, none the less."

"You must be crazy!"

"No, Douw, only very, very wretched!"

The poor girl's voice faltered as she spoke, and I thought I saw the glisten of tears in her eyes. She had borne so brave and calm a front through all her trouble, that this suggestion of a sob wrung my heart with the cruelty of a novel sorrow. I drew my chair nearer to her.

"Tell me about it all, Daisy—if you can."

Her answer was to impulsively take a letter from her pocket and hand it to me. She would have recalled it an instant later.

"No—give it me back," she cried. "I forgot! There are things in it you should not see."

But even as I held it out to her, she changed her mind once again.

"No—read it," she said, sinking back in her chair; "it can make no difference—between us. You might as well know all!"

The "all" could not well have been more hateful. I smoothed out the folded sheet over my knee, and read these words, written in a loose, bold character, with no date or designation of place, and with the signature scrawled grandly like the sign-manual of a duke, at least:

"Madam:—It is my purpose to return to Cairncross forthwith, though you are not to publish it.

"If I fail to find you there residing, as is your duty, upon my arrival, I shall be able to construe the reasons for your absence, and shall act accordingly.

"I am fully informed of your behavior in quitting my house the instant my back was turned, and in consorting publicly with my enemies, and with ruffian foes to law and order generally.

"All these rebels and knaves will shortly be shot or hanged, including without fail your Dutch gallant, who, I am told, now calls himself a major. His daily visits to you have all been faithfully reported to me. After his neck has been properly twisted, I may be in a better humor to listen to such excuses as you can offer in his regard, albeit I make no promise.

"I despatch by this same express my commands to Rab, which will serve as your further instructions.

"Philip."

One clearly had a right to time for reflection, after having read such a letter as this. I turned the sheet over and over in my hands, re-reading lines here and there under pretence of study, and preserving silence, until finally she asked me what I thought of it all. Then I had perforce to speak my mind.

"I think, if you wish to know," I said, deliberately, "that this husband of yours is the most odious brute God ever allowed to live!"

There came now in her reply a curious confirmation of the familiar saying, that no man can ever comprehend a woman. A long life's experience has convinced me that the simplest and most direct of her sex must be, in the inner workings of her mind, an enigma to the wisest man that ever existed; so impressed am I with this fact that several times in the course of this narrative I have been at pains to disavow all knowledge of why the women folk of my tale did this or that, only recording the fact that they did do it; and thus to the end of time, I take it, the world's stories must be written.

This is what Daisy actually said:

"But do you not see running through every line of the letter, and but indifferently concealed, the confession that he is sorry for what he has done, and that he still loves me?"

"I certainly see nothing of the kind!"

She had the letter by heart. "Else why does he wish me to return to his home?" she asked. "And you see he is grieved at my having been friendly with those who are not his friends; that he would not be if he cared nothing for me. Note, too, how at the close, even when he has shown that by the reports that have reached him he is justified in suspecting me, he as much as says that he will forgive me."

"Yes—perhaps—when once he has had his sweet fill of seeing me kicking at the end of a rope! Truly I marvel, Daisy, how you can be so blind, after all the misery and suffering this ruffian has caused you."

"He is my husband, Douw," she said, simply, as if that settled everything.

"Yes, he is your husband—a noble and loving husband, in truth! He first makes your life wretched at home—you know you were wretched, Daisy! Then he deserts you, despoiling your house before your very eyes, humiliating you in the hearing of your servants, and throwing the poverty of your parents in your face as he goes! He stops away two years—having you watched meanwhile, it seems—yet never vouchsafing you so much as a word of message! Then at last, when these coward Tories have bought help enough in Germany and in the Indian camps to embolden them to come down and look their neighbors in the face, he is pleased to write you this letter, abounding in coarse insults in every sentence. He tells you of his coming as he might notify a tavern wench. He hectors and orders you as if you were his slave. He pleasantly promises the ignominious death of your chief friends. And all this you take kindly—sifting his brutal words in search for even the tiniest grain of manliness. My faith, I am astonished at you! I credited you with more spirit."

She was not angered at this outburst, which had in it more harsh phrases than she had heard in all her life from me before, but, after a little pause, said to me quite calmly:

"I know you deem him all bad. You never allowed him any good quality."

"You know him better than I—a thousand times better, more's the pity. Very well! I rest the case with you. Tell me, out of all your knowledge of the man, what 'good quality' he ever showed, how he showed it, and when!"

"Have you forgotten that he saved my life?"

"No; but he forgot it—or rather made it the subject of taunts, in place of soft thoughts."

"And he loved me—ah! he truly did—for a little!"

"Yes, he loved you! So he did his horses, his kennel, his wine cellar; and a hundred-fold more he loved himself and his cursed pride."

"How you hate him!"

"Hate him? Yes! Have I not been given cause?"

"He often said that he was not in fault for throwing Tulp over the gulf-side. He knew no reason, he avowed, why you should have sought a quarrel with him that day, and forced it upon him, there in the gulf; and as for Tulp—why, the foolish boy ran at him. Is it not so?"

"Who speaks of Tulp?" I asked, impatiently. "If he had tossed all Ethiopia over the cliff, and left me you—I—I——"

The words were out!

I bit my tongue in shamed regret, and dared not let my glance meet hers. Of all things in the world, this was precisely what I should not have uttered—what I wanted least to say. But it had been said, and I was covered with confusion. The necessity of saying something to bridge over this chasm of insensate indiscretion tugged at my senses, and finally—after what had seemed an age of silence—I stammered on:

"What I mean is, we never liked each other. Why, the first time we ever met, we fought. You cannot remember it, but we did. He knocked me into the ashes. And then there was our dispute at Albany—in the Patroon's mansion, you will recall. And then at Quebec. I have never told you of this," I went on, recklessly, "but we met that morning in the snow, as Montgomery fell. He knew me, dark as it still was, and we grappled. This scar here," I pointed to a reddish seam across my temple and cheek, "this was his doing."

I have said that I could never meet Daisy in these days without feeling that, mere chronology to the opposite notwithstanding, she was much the older and more competent person of the two. This sense of juvenility overwhelmed me now, as she calmly rose and put her hand on my shoulder, and took a restful, as it were maternal, charge of me and my mind.

"My dear Douw," she said, with as fine an assumption of quiet, composed superiority as if she had not up to that moment been talking the veriest nonsense, "I understand just what you mean. Do not think, if I seem sometimes thoughtless or indifferent, that I am not aware of your feelings, or that I fail to appreciate the fondness you have always given me. I know what you would have said——"

"It was exactly what I most of all would not have said," I broke in with, in passing.

"Even so. But do you think, silly boy, that the thought was new to me? Of course we shall never speak of it again, but I am not altogether sorry it was referred to. It gives me the chance to say to you"—her voice softened and wavered here, as she looked around the dear old room, reminiscent in every detail of our youth—"to say to you that, wherever my duty may be, my heart is here, here under this roof where I was so happy, and where the two best men I shall ever know loved me so tenderly, so truly, as daughter and sister."

There were tears in her eyes at the end, but she was calm and self-sustained enough.

She was very firmly of opinion that it was her duty to go to Cairncross at once, and nothing I could say sufficed to dissuade her. So it turned out that the afternoon and evening of this important day were devoted to convoying across to Cairncross the whole Cedars establishment, I myself accompanying Daisy and Mr. Stewart in the carriage around by the Johnstown road. Rab was civil almost to the point of servility, but, to make assurance doubly sure, I sent up a guard of soldiers to the house that very night, brought Master Rab down to be safely locked up by the sheriff at Johnstown, and left her Enoch instead.



Chapter XXX.

From the Scythe and Reaper to the Musket.



And now, with all the desperate energy of men who risked everything that mortal can have in jeopardy, we prepared to meet the invasion.

The tidings of the next few days but amplified what Enoch had told us. Thomas Spencer, the half-breed, forwarded full intelligence of the approaching force; Oneida runners brought in stories of its magnitude, with which the forest glades began to be vocal; Colonel Gansevoort, working night and day to put into a proper state of defence the dilapidated fort at the Mohawk's headwaters, sent down urgent demands for supplies, for more men, and for militia support.

At the most, General Schuyler could spare him but two hundred men, for Albany was in sore panic at the fall of Ticonderoga and the menace of Burgoyne's descent in force through the Champlain country. We watched this little troop march up the river road in a cloud of dust, and realized that this was the final thing Congress and the State could do for us. What more was to be done we men of the Valley must do for ourselves.

It was almost welcome, this grim, blood-red reality of peril which now stared us in the face, so good and wholesome a change did it work in the spirit of the Valley. Despondency vanished; the cavillers who had disparaged Washington and Schuyler, sneered at stout Governor Clinton, and doubted all things save that matters would end badly, ceased their grumbling and took heart; men who had wavered and been lukewarm or suspicious came forward now and threw in their lot with their neighbors. And if here and there on the hillsides were silent houses whence no help was to come, and where, if the enemy once broke through, he would be welcomed the more as a friend if his hands were spattered with our blood—the consciousness, I say, that we had these base traitors in our midst only gave us a deeper resolution not to fail.

General Herkimer presently issued his order to the Tryon militia, apprising them of the imminent danger, and summoning all between sixteen and sixty to arms. There was no doubt now where the blow would fall. Cherry Valley, Unadilla, and the Sacondaga settlements no longer feared raids from the wilderness upon their flanks. The invaders were coming forward in a solid mass, to strike square at the Valley's head. There we must meet them!

It warms my old heart still to recall the earnestness and calm courage of that summer fortnight of preparation. All up and down the Valley bottom-lands the haying was in progress. Young and old, rich and poor, came out to carry forward this work in common. The meadows were taken in their order, some toiling with scythe and sickle, others standing guard at the forest borders of the field to protect the workers. It was a goodly yield that year, I remember, and never in my knowledge was the harvest gathered and housed better or more thoroughly than in this period of genuine danger, when no man knew whose cattle would feed upon his hay a month hence. The women and girls worked beside the men, and brought them cooling drinks of ginger, molasses, and vinegar, and spread tables of food in the early evening shade for the weary gleaners. These would march home in bodies, a little later, those with muskets being at the front and rear; and then, after a short night's honest sleep, the rising sun would find them again at work upon some other farm.

There was something very good and strengthening in this banding together to get the hay in for all. During twenty years of peace and security, we had grown selfish and solitary—each man for himself. We had forgotten, in the strife for individual gain and preferment, the true meaning of that fine old word "neighbor"—the husbandman, or boer, who is nigh, and to whom in nature you first look for help and sympathy and friendship. It was in this fortnight of common peril that we saw how truly we shared everything, even life itself, and how good it was to work for as well as to fight for one another—each for all, and all for each. Forty years have gone by since that summer, yet still I seem to discover in the Mohawk Valley the helpful traces of that fortnight's harvesting in common. The poor bauers and squatters from the bush came out then and did their share of the work, and we went back with them into their forest clearings and beaver-flies and helped them get in their small crops, in turn. And to this day there is more brotherly feeling here between the needy and the well-to-do than I know of anywhere else.

When the barns were filled, and the sweet-smelling stacks outside properly built and thatched, the scythe was laid aside for the musket, the sickle for the sword and pistol. All up the Valley the drums' rattle drowned the drone of the locusts in the stubble. The women moulded bullets now and filled powder-horns instead of making drinks for the hay-field. There was no thought anywhere save of preparation for the march. Guns were cleaned, flints replaced, new hickory ramrods whittled out, and the grindstones threw off sparks under the pressure of swords and spear-heads. Even the little children were at work rubbing goose-grease into the hard leather of their elders' foot-gear, against the long tramp to Fort Stanwix.

By this time, the first of August, we knew more about the foe we were to meet. The commander whom Enoch had heard called Sillinger was learned to be one Colonel St. Leger, a British officer of distinction, which might have been even greater if he had not embraced the Old-World military vice of his day—grievous drunkenness. The gathering of Indians at Oswego under Claus and Brant was larger than the first reports had made it. The regular troops, both British and German, intended for our destruction, were said to alone outnumber the whole militia force which we could hope to oppose to them. But most of all we thought of the hundreds of our old Tory neighbors, who were bringing this army down upon us to avenge their own fancied wrongs; and when we thought of them we moodily rattled the bullets in our deerskin bags, and bent the steel more fiercely upon the whirling, hissing stone.

I have read much of war, both ancient and modern. I declare solemnly that in no chronicle of warfare in any country, whether it be of great campaigns like those of Marlborough and the late King of Prussia, and that strange Buonaparte, half god, half devil, who has now been caged at last at St. Helena; of brutal invasions by a foreign enemy, as when the French overran and desolated the Palatinate; or of buccaneering and piratical enterprise by the Spaniards and Portuguese; or of the fighting of savages or of the Don Cossacks—in none of these records, I aver, can you find so much wanton baseness and beast-like bloodthirstiness as these native-born Tories showed toward us. Mankind has not been capable of more utter cruelty and wickedness than were in their hearts. Beside them the lowest painted heathen in their train was a Christian, the most ignorant Hessian peasant was a nobleman.

Ever since my talk with Colonel Dayton I had been trying to look upon these Tories as men who, however mistaken, were acting from a sense of duty. For a full year it seemed as if I had succeeded; indeed, more than once, so temperately did I bring myself in my new philosophy to think of them, I was warned by my elders that it would be better for me to keep my generous notions to myself. But now, when the stress came, all this philanthropy fell away. These men were leading down to their old home an army of savages and alien soldiers; they were boasting that we, their relatives or whilom school-fellows, neighbors, friends, should be slaughtered like rats in a pit; their commander, St. Leger, published at their instigation general orders offering his Indians twenty dollars apiece for the scalps of our men, women, and children! How could one pretend not to hate such monsters?

At least I did not pretend any longer, but worked with an enthusiasm I had never known before to marshal our yeomanry together.

Under the pelting July sun, in the saddle from morning till night—to Cherry Valley, to Stone Arabia, to the obscure little groups of cabins in the bush, to the remote settlements on the Unadilla and the East Creek—organizing, suggesting, pleading, sometimes, I fear, also cursing a little, my difficult work was at last done. The men of the Mohawk district regiment, who came more directly under my eye, were mustered at Caughnawaga, and some of the companies that were best filled despatched forward under Captain Adam Fonda, who was all impatience to get first to Fort Dayton, the general rendezvous. In all we were likely to gather together in this regiment one hundred and thirty men, and this was better than a fortnight ago had seemed possible.

They were sturdy fellows for the most part, tall, deep-chested, and hard of muscle. They came from the high forest clearings of Kingsland and Tribes Hill, from the lower Valley flatlands near to Schenectady, from the bush settlements scattered back on Aries Creek, from the rich farms and villages of Johnstown, and Caughnawaga, and Spraker's. There were among them all sorts and conditions of men, thrifty and thriftless, cautious and imprudent, the owners of slaves along with poor yokels of scarcely higher estate than the others' niggers. Here were posted thick in the roll-call such names as Fonda, Starin, Yates, Sammons, Gardenier, and Wemple. Many of the officers, and some few of the men, had rough imitations of uniform, such as home-made materials and craft could command, but these varied largely in style and color. The great majority of the privates wore simply their farm homespun, gray and patched, and some had not even their hat-brims turned up with a cockade. But they had a look on their sunburned, gnarled, and honest faces which the Butlers and Johnsons might well have shrunk from.

These men of the Mohawk district spoke more Dutch than anything else, though there were both English and High German tongues among them. They had more old acquaintances among the Tories than had their Palatine friends up the river, for this had been the Johnsons' own district. Hence, though in numbers we were smaller than the regiments that mustered above at Stone Arabia and Zimmerman's, at Canajoharie and Cherry Valley, we were richer in hate.

At daybreak on August 2, the remaining companies of this regiment were to start on their march up the Valley. I rode home to my mother's house late in the afternoon of the 1st, to spend what might be a last night under her roof. On the morrow, Samson Sammons and Jelles Fonda, members of the Committee of Safety, and I, could easily overtake the column on our horses.

I was greatly perplexed and unsettled in mind about Daisy and my duty toward her, and, though I turned this over in my thoughts the whole distance, I could come to no satisfactory conclusion. On the one hand, I yearned to go and say farewell to her; on the other, it was not clear, after that letter of her husband's, that I could do this without unjustly prejudicing her as a wife. For the wife of this viper she still was, and who could tell how soon she might not be in his power again?

I was still wrestling with this vexatious question when I came to my mother's house. I tied the horse to the fence till Tulp should come out for him, and went in, irresolutely. At every step it seemed to me as if I ought instead to be going toward Cairncross.

Guess my surprise at being met, almost upon the threshold, by the very woman of whom of all others I had been thinking! My mother and she had apparently made up their differences, and stood together waiting for me.

"Were you going away, Douw, without coming to see me—to say good-by?" asked Daisy, with a soft reproach in her voice. "Your mother tells me of your starting to-morrow—for the battle."

I took her hand, and, despite my mother's presence, continued to hold it in mine. This was bold, but there was little enough of bravery in my words.

"Yes, we go to-morrow; I wanted to come—all day I have been thinking of little else—yet I feared that my visit might—might——"

Very early in this tale it was my pride to explain that my mother was a superior woman. Faults of temper she may have had, and eke narrow prejudices on sundry points. But she had also great good sense, which she showed now by leaving the room.

"I came to you instead, you see," my dear girl said, trying to smile, yet with a quivering lip; "I could not have slept, I could not have borne to live almost, it seems, if I had let you ride off without a word, without a sign."

We stood thus facing each other for a moment—mumbling forth some commonplaces of explanation, she looking intently into my eyes. Then with a sudden deep outburst of anguish, moaning piteously, "Must you truly go?" she came, nay, almost fell into my arms, burying her face on my shoulder and weeping violently.

It is not meet that I should speak much of the hour that followed. I would, in truth, pass over it wholly in silence—as being too sacred a thing for aught of disclosure or speculation—were it not that some might, in this case, think lightly of the pure and good woman who, unduly wrung by years of grief, disappointment, and trial, now, from very weariness of soul, sobbed upon my breast. And that would be intolerable.

We sat side by side in the little musty parlor. I did not hold her hand, or so much as touch her gown with my knee or foot.

We talked of impersonal things—of the coming invasion, of the chances of relieving Fort Stanwix, of the joy it would be to me if I could bear a good part in rescuing my dear friend Gansevoort, its brave young commandant. I told her about Peter, and of how we two had consorted together in Albany, and later in Quebec. And this led us back—as we had so often returned before during these latter hateful months—to the sweet companionship of our own childhood and youth. She, in turn, talked of Mr. Stewart, who seemed less strong and contented in his new home at Cairncross. He had much enjoyment now, she said, in counting over a rosary of beads which had been his mother's, reiterating a prayer for each one in the Romish fashion, and he was curiously able to remember these long-disused formulas of his boyhood, even while he forgot the things of yesterday. I commented upon this, pointing out to her that this is the strange quality of the Roman faith—that its forms and customs, learned in youth, remain in the affections of Papists to their dying day, even after many years of neglect and unbelief; whereas in the severe, Spanish-drab Protestantism to which I was reared, if one once loses interest in the tenets themselves, there is nothing whatever left upon which the mind may linger pleasantly.

Thus our conversation ran—decorous and harmless enough, in all conscience. And if the thoughts masked by these words were all of a forbidden subject; if the very air about us was laden with sweet influences; if, when our eyes met, each read in the other's glance a whole world of meaning evaded in our talk—were we to blame?

I said "no" then, in my own heart, honestly. I say it now. Why, think you! This love of ours was as old as our intelligence itself. Looking back, we could trace its soft touch upon every little childish incident we had in common memory; the cadence of its music bore forward, tenderly, sweetly, the song of all that had been happy in our lives. We were man and woman now, wise and grave by reason of sorrow and pain and great trials. These had come upon us both because neither of us had frankly said, at a time when to have said it would have been to alter all, "I love you!" And this we must not say to each other even now, by all the bonds of mutual honor and self-respect. But not any known law, human or divine, could hold our thoughts in leash. So we sat and talked of common things, calmly and without restraint, and our minds were leagues away, in fields of their own choosing, amid sunshine and flowers and the low chanting of love's cherubim.

We said farewell, instinctively, before my mother returned. I held her hands in mine, and, as if she had been a girl again, gently kissed the white forehead she as gently inclined to me.

"Poor old father is to burn candles for your safety," she said, with a soft smile, "and I will pray too. Oh, do spare yourself! Come back to us!"

"I feel it in my bones," I answered, stoutly. "Fear nothing, I shall come back."

The tall, bright-eyed, shrewd old dame, my mother, came in at this, and Daisy consented to stop for supper with us, but not to spend the night with one of my sisters as was urged. I read her reason to be that she shrank from a second and public farewell in the morning.

The supper was almost a cheery meal. The women would have readily enough made it doleful, I fancy, but my spirits were too high for that. There were birds singing in my heart. My mother from time to time looked at me searchingly, as if to guess the cause of this elation, but I doubt she was as mystified as I then thought.

At twilight I stood bareheaded and watched Daisy drive away, with Enoch and Tulp as a mounted escort. The latter was also to remain with her during my absence—and Major Mauverensen almost envied his slave.



Chapter XXXI.

The Rendezvous of Fighting Men at Fort Dayton.



I shall not easily forget the early breakfast next morning, or the calm yet serious air with which my mother and two unmarried sisters went about the few remaining duties of preparing for my departure. For all they said, they might have been getting me ready for a fishing excursion, but it would be wrong to assume that they did not think as gravely as if they had flooded the kitchen with tears.

Little has been said of these good women in the course of my story, for the reason that Fate gave them very little to do with it, and the narrative is full long as it is, without the burden of extraneous personages. But I would not have it thought that we did not all love one another, and stand up for one another, because we kept cool about it.

During this last year, in truth, my mother and I had seen more of each other than for all the time before since my infancy, and in the main had got on admirably together. Despite the affectation of indifference in her letter, she did not lack for pride in my being a major; it is true that she exhibited little of this emotion to me, fearing its effect upon my vanity, doubtless, but her neighbors and gossips heard a good deal from it, I fancy. It was in her nature to be proud, and she had right to be; for what other widow in the Valley, left in sore poverty with a household of children, had, like her, by individual exertions, thrift, and keen management, brought all that family well up, purchased and paid for her own homestead and farm, and laid by enough for a comfortable old age? Not one! She therefore was justified in respecting herself and exacting respect from others, and it pleased me that she should have satisfaction as well in my advancement. But she did ruffle me sometimes by seeking to manage my business for me—she never for a moment doubting that it was within her ability to make a much better major than I was—and by ever and anon selecting some Valley maiden for me to marry. This last became a veritable infliction, so that I finally assured her I should never marry—my heart being irrevocably fixed upon a hopelessly unattainable ideal.

I desired her to suppose that this referred to some Albany woman, but I was never skilful in indirection, and I do not believe that she was at all deceived.

The time came soon enough when I must say good-by. My carefully packed bags were carried out and fastened to the saddle. Tall, slender, high-browed Margaret sadly sewed a new cockade of her own making upon my hat, and round-faced, red-cheeked Gertrude tied my sash and belt about me in silence. I kissed them both with more feeling than in all their lives before I had known for them, and when my mother followed me to the horse-block, and embraced me again, the tears could not be kept back. After all, I was her only boy, and it was to war in its deadliest form that I was going.

And then the thought came to me—how often in that cruel week it had come to fathers, husbands, brothers, in this sunny Valley of ours, leaving homes they should never see again!—that nothing but our right arms could save these women, my own flesh and blood, from the hatchet and scalping-knife.

I swung myself into the saddle sternly at this thought, and gripped the reins hard and pushed my weight upon the stirrups. By all the gods, I should not take this ride for nothing!

"Be of good heart, mother," I said, between my teeth. "We shall drive the scoundrels back—such as we do not feed to the wolves."

"Ay! And do you your part!" said this fine old daughter of the men who through eighty years of warfare broke the back of Spain. "Remember that you are a Van Hoorn!"

"I shall not forget."

"And is that young Philip Cross—her husband—with Johnson's crew?"

"Yes, he is."

"Then if he gets back to Canada alive, you are not the man your grandfather Baltus was!"

These were her last words, and they rang in my ears long after I had joined Fonda and Sammons at Caughnawaga, and we had started westward to overtake the regiment. If I could find this Philip Cross, there was nothing more fixed in my mind than the resolve to kill him.

We rode for the most part without conversation along the rough, sun-baked road, the ruts of which had here and there been trampled into fine dust by the feet of the soldiers marching before. When we passed houses near the highway, women and children came to the doors to watch us; other women and children we could see working in the gardens or among the rows of tall corn. But save for now and then an aged gaffer, sitting in the sunshine with his pipe, there were no men. All those who could bear a musket were gone to meet the invasion. Two years of war in other parts had drained the Valley of many of its young men, who could not bear peace at home while there were battles at the North or in the Jerseys, and were serving in every army which Congress controlled, from Champlain and the Delaware to Charleston. And now this levy for home defence had swept the farms clean.

We had late dinner, I remember, at the house of stout old Peter Wormuth, near the Palatine church. Both he and his son Matthew—a friend of mine from boyhood, who was to survive Oriskany only to be shot down near Cherry Valley next year by Joseph Brant—had of course gone forward with the Palatine militia. The women gave us food and drink, and I recall that Matthew's young wife, who had been Gertrude Shoemaker and was General Herkimer's niece, wept bitterly when we left, and we shouted back to her promises to keep watch over her husband. It is curious to think that when I next saw this young woman, some years later, she was the wife of Major John Frey.

It was a stiff ride on to overtake the stalwart yeomen of our regiment, which we did not far from a point opposite the upper Canajoharie Castle. The men had halted here, weary after their long, hot march, and were sprawling on the grass and in the shade of the bushes. The sun was getting low on the distant hills of the Little Falls, and there came up a refreshing stir of air from the river. Some were for encamping here for the night; others favored going on to the Falls. It annoyed me somewhat to find that this question was apparently to be left to the men themselves, Colonel Visscher not seeming able or disposed to decide for himself.

Across the stream, in the golden August haze, we could see the roofs of the Mohawks' village—or castle as they called it. Some of the men idly proposed to go over and stampede or clear out this nest of red vermin, but the idea was not seriously taken up. Perhaps if it had been, much might have been changed for the better. Nothing is clearer than that Molly Brant, who with her bastard brood and other Mohawk women was then living there, sent up an emissary to warn her brother Joseph of our coming, and that it was upon this information he acted to such fell purpose. Doubtless if we had gone over and seized the castle and its inmates then, that messenger would never have been sent. But we are all wise when we look backward.

* * * * *

By the afternoon of the next day, August 3, the mustering at Fort Dayton was complete. No one of the thirty-three companies of Tryon County militia was absent, and though some sent barely a score of men, still no more were to be expected Such as the little army was, it must suffice. There were of more or less trained militiamen nearly six hundred. Of artisan volunteers, of farmers who had no place in the regular company formations, and of citizens whose anxiety to be present was unfortunately much in excess of their utility, there were enough to bring the entire total up to perhaps two-score over eight hundred. Our real and effective fighting force was about half-way between these two figures—I should say about seven hundred strong.

It was the first time that the whole Tryon militia had been gathered together, and we looked one another over with curiosity. Though called into common action by a common peril, the nearness of which made the Mohawk Valley seem a very small place and its people all close neighbors, the men assembled here represented the partial settlement of a country larger than any one of several European monarchies.

As there were all sorts and grades of dress, ranging from the spruce blue and buff of some of the officers, through the gray homespun and linsey-woolsey of the farmer privates, to the buckskin of the trappers and huntsmen, so there were all manner of weapons, all styles of head-gear and equipment, all fashions of faces. There were Germans of half a dozen different types, there were Dutch, there were Irish and Scotch Presbyterians, there were stray French Huguenots, and even Englishmen, and here and there a Yankee settler from New England. Many there were who with difficulty understood each other, as when the Scotch Campbells and Clydes of Cherry Valley, for example, essayed to talk with the bush-Germans from above Zimmerman's.

Notable among the chief men of the communities here, so to speak, huddled together for safety, was old Isaac Paris, the foremost man of Stone Arabia. He should now be something over sixty years of age, yet had children at home scarce out of the cradle, and was so hale and strong in bearing that he seemed no less fit for battle and hardship than his strapping son Peter, who was not yet eighteen. These two laid their lives down together within this dread week of which I write. I shall never forget how fine and resolute a man the old colonel looked, with his good clothes of citizen make, as became a member of the State Senate and one of the Committee of Safety, yet with as martial a bearing as any. He was a Frenchman from Strasbourg, but spoke like a German; no man of us all looked forward to fighting with greater appetite, though he had been always a quiet merchant and God-fearing, peaceful burgher.

Colonel Ebenezer Cox, a somewhat arrogant and solitary man for whom I had small liking, now commanded the Canajoharie regiment in place of Herkimer the Brigadier-General; there were at the head of the other regiments stout Colonel Peter Bellinger, the capable and determined Colonel Jacob Klock, and our own Colonel Frederick Visscher. Almost all of the Committee of Safety were here—most of them being also officers in the militia; but others, like Paris, John Dygert, Samson Sammons, Jacob Snell, and Samuel Billington, coming merely as lookers-on. In short, no well-known Whig of the Valley seemed absent as we looked the gathering over, and scarcely a familiar family name was lacking on our lists, which it was now my business to check off.

Whole households of strong men marched together. There were nine Snells, all relatives, in the patriot ranks; so far as I can remember, there were five Bellingers, five Seebers, five Wagners, and five Wollovers—and it may well be five of more than one other family.

The men of the different settlements formed groups by themselves at the first, and arranged their own separate camping-places for the night. But soon, as was but natural, they discovered acquaintances from other parts, and began to mingle, sitting in knots or strolling about the outer palisades or on the clearing beyond. The older men who had borne a part in the French war told stories of that time, which, indeed, had now a new, deep interest for us, not only in that we were to face an invading force greater and more to be dreaded than was Belletre's, but because we were encamped on historic ground.

From the gentle knoll upon which the block-house and stockade of Fort Dayton were now reared we could see the site of that first little Palatine settlement that had then been wiped so rudely from the face of the earth; and our men revived memories of that dreadful night, and talked of them in a low voice as the daylight faded.

The scene affected me most gravely. I looked at the forest-clad range of northern hills over which the French and Indian horde stole in the night, and tried to picture their stealthy approach in my mind. Below us, flowing tranquilly past the willow-hedged farms of the German Flatts settlers, lay the Mohawk. The white rippling overcast on the water marked the shallow ford through which the panic-stricken refugees crowded in affright in the wintry darkness, and where, in the crush, that poor forgotten woman, the widow of an hour, was trampled under foot, swept away by the current, drowned!

How miraculous it seemed that her baby girl should have been saved, should have been brought to Mr. Stewart's door, and placed in the very sanctuary of my life, by the wilful freak of a little English boy! And how marvellous that this self-same boy, her husband now, should be among the captains of a new and more sinister invasion of our Valley, and that I should be in arms with my neighbors to stay his progress! Truly here was food enough for thought.

But there was little time for musing. After supper, when most of the rest were free to please themselves, to gossip, to set night-lines in the river against breakfast, or to carve rough initials on their powder-horns in emulation of the art-work displayed by the ingenious Petrie boys, I was called to the council held by General Herkimer in one of the rooms of the fort. There were present some of those already mentioned, and I think that Colonel Wesson, the Massachusetts officer whose troops garrisoned the place, was from courtesy also invited to take part, though if he was there he said nothing. Thomas Spencer, the Seneca half-breed blacksmith, who had throughout been our best friend, had come down, and with him was Skenandoah, the war-chief of the Oneidas, whom Dominie Kirkland had kept in our interest.

The thing most talked of, I remember, was the help that these Oneidas could render us. General Schuyler had all along shrunk from the use of savages on the Continental side, and hence had required only friendly neutrality of the Oneidas, whose chief villages lay between us and the foe. But these Indians now saw clearly, that, if the invasion succeeded, they would be exterminated not a whit the less ruthlessly by their Iroquois brothers because they had held aloof. In the grim code of the savage, as in the softened law of the Christian, those who were not for him were against him. So the noble old Oneida war-chief had come to us to say that his people, standing as it were between the devil and the deep sea, preferred to at least die like men, fighting for their lives. Skenandoah was reputed even then to be seventy years of age, but he had the square shoulders, full, corded neck, and sharp glance of a man of forty. Only last year he died, at a great age—said to be one hundred and ten years—and was buried on Clinton Hill beside his good friend Kirkland, whom for half a century he had loved so well.

There were no two opinions in the council: let the Oneidas join us with their war-party, by all means.

After this had been agreed upon, other matters came up—the quantity of stores we should take, the precedence of the regiments, the selection of the men to be sent ahead to apprise Gansevoort of our approach. But these do not concern the story.

It was after this little gathering had broken up, and the candles been blown out, that General Herkimer put his hand on my shoulder and said, in his quaint German dialect:

"Come, walk with me outside the fort."

We went together across the parade in the growing dusk. Most of those whom we passed recognized my companion, and greeted him—more often, I am bound to say, with "Guten Abend, Honikol!" than with the salute due to his rank. There was, indeed, very little notion of discipline in this rough, simple militia gathering.

We walked outside the ditch to a grassy clearing toward the Flatts where we could pace back and forth without listeners, and yet could see the sentries posted at the corners of the forest enclosure. Then the honest old Brigadier laid open his heart to me.

"I wish to God we were well out of this all," he said, almost gloomily.

I was taken aback at this. Dejection was last to be looked for in this brave, stout-hearted old frontier fighter. I asked, "What is wrong?" feeling that surely there must be some cause for despondency I knew not of.

"I am wrong," he said, simply.

"I do not understand you, Brigadier."

"Say rather that they, who ought to know me better, do not understand me."

"They? Whom do you mean?"

"All these men about us—Isaac Paris, Ebenezer Cox the colonel of my own regiment, Fritz Visscher, and many more. I can see it—they suspect me. Nothing could be worse than that."

"Suspect you, Brigadier! It is pure fancy! You are dreaming!"

"No, I am very much awake, young man. You have not heard them—I have! It has been as much as flung in my face to-day that my brother Hon-Yost is a colonel with Johnson—up yonder."

The little man pointed westward with his hand to where the last red lights of day were paling over the black line of trees.

"He is with them," he said, bitterly, "and I am blamed for it. Then, too, my brother Hendrick hides himself away in Stone Arabia, and is not of us, and his son is with the Tories—up yonder."

"But your brother George is here with us, as true a man as will march to-morrow."

"Then I have a sister married to Dominie Rosencranz, and he is a Tory; and another married to Hendrick Frey, and he is a Tory, too. All this is thrown in my teeth. I do not pass two men with their heads together but I feel they are talking of this."

"Why should they? You have two other brothers-in-law here in camp—Peter Bellinger and George Bell. You imagine a vain thing, Brigadier. Believe me, I have seen or heard no hint of this."

"You would not. You are an officer of the line—the only one here. Besides, you are Schuyler's man. They would not talk before you."

"But I am Valley born, Valley bred, as much as any of you. Wherein am I different from the others? Why should they keep me in the dark? They are all my friends, just as—if you would only believe it—they are yours as well."

"Young man," said the General, in a low, impressive voice, and filling and lighting his pipe as he slowly spoke, "if you come back alive, and if you get to be of my age, you will know some things that you don't know now. Danger makes men brave; it likewise makes them selfish and jealous. We are going out together, all of us, to try what, with God's help, we can do. Behind us, down the river, are our wives or our sweethearts; some of you leave children, others leave mothers and sisters. We are going forward to save them from death or worse than death, and to risk our lives for them and for our homes. Yet, I tell you candidly, there are men here—back here in this fort—who would almost rather see us fail, than see me win my rank in the State line."

"I cannot credit that."

"Then—why else should they profess to doubt me? Why should they bring up my brothers' names to taunt me with their treason?"

Alas! I could not tell. We walked up and down, I remember, until long after darkness fell full upon us, and the stars were all aglow—I trying my best to dissuade the honest Brigadier from his gloomy conviction.

To be frank, although he doubtless greatly exaggerated the feeling existing against him, it to a degree did exist.

The reasons for it are not difficult of comprehension. There were not a few officers in our force who were better educated than bluff, unlettered old Honikol Herkimer, and who had seen something of the world outside our Valley. It nettled their pride to be under a plain little German, who spoke English badly, and could not even spell his own name twice alike. There were at work under the surface, too, old trade and race jealousies, none the less strong because those upon whom they acted scarcely realized their presence. The Herkimers were the great family on the river from the Little Falls westward, and there were ancient rivalries, unexpressed but still potent, between them and families down the Valley. Thus, when some of the Herkimers and their connections—a majority, for that matter—either openly joined the enemy or held coldly apart from us, it was easy for these jealous promptings to take the form of doubt and suspicions as to the whole-hearted loyalty of the Brigadier himself. Once begun, these cruelly unjust suspicions rankled in men's minds and spread.

All this I should not mention were it not the key to the horrible tragedy which followed. It is this alone which explains how a trained Indian fighter, a veteran frontiersman like Herkimer, was spurred and stung into rushing headlong upon the death-trap, as if he had been any ignorant and wooden-headed Braddock.

We started on the march westward next day, the 4th, friendly Indians bringing us news that the van of the enemy had appeared on the evening of the 2d before Fort Stanwix, and had already begun an investment. We forded the river at Fort Schuyler, just below where Utica now stands, and pushed slowly forward through the forest, over the rude and narrow road, to the Oneida village of Oriska, something to the east of the large creek which bears the name Oriskany.

Here we halted a second time, encamping at our leisure, and despatching, on the evening of the 5th, Adam Helmer and two other scouts to penetrate to the fort and arrange a sortie by the garrison, simultaneous with our attack.



Chapter XXXII.

"The Blood Be on Your Heads."



A bright, hot sun shone upon us the next morning—the never-to-be-forgotten 6th. There would have been small need for any waking rattle of the drums; the sultry heat made all willing to rise from the hard, dry ground, where sleep had been difficult enough even in the cooler darkness. At six o'clock the camp, such as it was, was all astir.

Breakfast was eaten in little groups squatted about in the clearing, or in the shade of the trees at its edges, members of families or close neighbors clustering together in parties once more, to share victuals prepared by the same housewives—it may be from the same oven or spit. It might well happen that for many of us this was the last meal on earth, for we were within hearing of the heavy guns of the fort, and when three of these should be fired in succession we were to take up our final six-miles' march. But this reflection made no one sad, apparently. Everywhere you could hear merry converse and sounds of laughter. Listening, no one would have dreamed that this body of men stood upon the threshold of so grave an adventure.

I had been up earlier than most of the others, and had gone over to the spot where the horses were tethered. Of these animals there were some dozen, all told, and their appearance showed that they had had a bad night of it with the flies. After I had seen them led to water and safely brought back, and had watched that in the distribution of the scanty store of oats my steed had his proper share, I came back to breakfast with the Stone Arabia men, among whom I had many acquaintances. I contributed some sausages and slices of bread and meat, I remember, to the general stock of food, which was spread out upon one of Isaac Paris's blankets. We ate with a light heart, half-lying on the parched grass around the extemporized cloth. Some of the young farmers, their meal already finished, were up on their feet, scuffling and wrestling in jest and high spirits. They laughed so heartily from time to time that Mr. Paris would call out: "Less noise there, you, or we shall not hear the cannon from the fort!"

No one would have thought that this was the morning before a battle.

Eight o'clock arrived, and still there had been no signal. All preparations had long since been made. The saddle-horses of the officers were ready under the shade, their girths properly tightened. Blankets had been rolled up and strapped, haversacks and bags properly repacked, a last look taken to flints and priming. The supply-wagon stood behind where the General's tent had been, all laden for the start, and with the horses harnessed to the pole. Still no signal came!

The men began to grow uneasy with the waiting. It had been against the prevalent feeling of impatience that we halted here the preceding day, instead of hastening forward to strike the blow. Now every minute's inaction increased this spirit of restlessness. The militiamen's faces—already saturnine enough, what with broken rest and three days' stubble of beard—were clouding over with dislike for the delay.

The sauntering to and fro began to assume a general trend toward the headquarters of the Brigadier. I had visited this spot once or twice before during the early morning to offer suggestions or receive commands. I went again now, having it in mind to report to the General the evident impatience of the men. A doubt was growing with me, too, whether we were not too far away to be sure of hearing the guns from the fort—quite six miles distant.

The privacy of the commander was indifferently secured by the posting of sentries, who guarded a square perhaps forty feet each way. In the centre of this enclosure was a clump of high bushes, with one or two young trees, bunched upon the bank of a tiny rivulet now almost dried up. Here, during the night, the General's small army-tent had been pitched, and here now, after the tent had been packed on the wagon, he sat, on the only chair in camp, under the shadow of the bushes, within full view of his soldiers. These were by this time gathered three or four deep around the three front sides of the square, and were gradually pushing the sentries in. Five or six officers stood about the General, talking earnestly with him and with one another, and the growing crowd outside the square were visibly anxious to hear what was going on.

I have said before, I think, that I was the only officer of the Continental line in the whole party. This fact, and some trifling differences between my uniform and that of the militia colonels and majors, had attracted notice, not wholly of an admiring sort. I had had the misfortune, moreover, to learn in camp before Quebec to shave every day, as regularly as if at home, with the result that I was probably the only man in the clearing that morning who wore a clean face. This served further to make me a marked man among such of the farmer boys as knew me only by sight. As I pushed my way through the throng to get inside the square, I heard various comments by strangers from Canajoharie or Cherry Valley way.

"There goes Schuyler's Dutchman," said one. "He has brought his friseur with him."

"It would have been more to the point if he had brought some soldiers. Albany would see us hang before she would help us," growled another.

"Make way for Mynheer," said a rough joker in the crowd, half-laughing, half-scowling. "What they need inside yonder is some more Dutch prudence. When they have heard him they will vote to go into winter quarters and fight next spring!"

All this was disagreeable enough, but it was wisest to pretend not to hear, and I went forward to the groups around the Brigadier.

The question under debate was, of course, whether we should wait longer for the signal; or, rather, whether it had not been already fired, and the sound failed to reach us on the sultry, heavy air. There were two opinions upon this, and for a time the difference was discussed in amiability, if with some heat. The General felt positive that if the shots had been fired we must have heard them.

I seem to see him now, the brave old man, as he sat there on the rough stool, imperturbably smoking, and maintaining his own against the dissenting officers. Even after some of them grew vexed, and declared that either the signal had been fired or the express had been captured, and that in either case it would be worse than folly to longer remain here, he held his temper. Perhaps his keen black eyes sparkled the brighter, but he kept his tongue calm, and quietly reiterated his arguments. The beleaguering force outside the fort, he said, must outnumber ours two to one. They had artillery, and they had regular German troops, the best in Europe, not to mention many hundreds of Indians, all well armed and munitioned. It would be next to impossible to surprise an army thus supplied with scouts; it would be practically hopeless to attack them, unless we were backed up by a simultaneous sortie in force from the fort. In that, the Brigadier insisted, lay our only chance of success.

"But I say the sortie will be made! They are waiting for us—only we are too far off to hear their signal!" cried one of the impatient colonels.

"If the wind was in the east," said the Brigadier, "that might be the case. But in breathless air like this I have heard the guns from that fort two miles farther back."

"Our messengers may not have got through the lines last night," put in Thomas Spencer, the half-breed. "The swamp back of the fort is difficult travelling, even to one who knows it better than Helmer does, and Butler's Indians are not children, to see only straight ahead of their noses."

"Would it not be wise for Spencer here, and some of our young trappers, or some of Skenandoah's Indians, to go forward and spy out the land for us?" I asked.

"These would do little good now," answered Herkimer; "the chief thing is to know when Gansevoort is ready to come out and help us."

"The chief thing to know, by God," broke forth one of the colonels, with a great oath, "is whether we have a patriot or a Tory at our head!"

Herkimer's tanned and swarthy face changed color at this taunt. He stole a swift glance at me, as if to say, "This is what I warned you was to be looked for," and smoked his pipe for a minute in silence.

His brother-in-law, Colonel Peter Bellinger, took the insult less tamely.

"The man who says Honikol Herkimer is a Tory lies," he said, bluntly, with his hand on his sword-hilt, and honest wrath in his gray eyes.

"Peace, Peter," said the Brigadier. "Let them think what they like. It is not my affair. My business is to guard the lives of these young men here, as if I were their father. I am a childless man, yet here I am as the parent of all of them. I could not go back again and look their mothers in the eye if I had led them into trouble which could be avoided."

"We are not here to avoid trouble, but rather to seek it," shouted Colonel Cox, angrily.

He spoke loud enough to be heard by the throng beyond, which now numbered four-fifths of our whole force, and there rolled back to us from them a loud answering murmur of approval. At the sound of this, others came running up to learn what was going on; and the line, hitherto with difficulty kept back by the sentries, was broken in in more than one place. Matters looked bad for discipline, or wise action of any sort.

"A man does not show his bravery by running his head at a stone wall," said the Brigadier, still striving to keep his temper, but rising to his feet as he spoke.

"Will you give the order to go on?" demanded Cox, in a fierce tone, pitched even higher.

"Lead us on!" came loud shouts from many places in the crowd. There was a general pushing in of the line now, and some men at the back, misinterpreting this, began waving their hats and cheering.

"Give us the word, Honikol!" they yelled.

Still Herkimer stood his ground, though with rising color.

"What for a soldier are you," he called out, sharply, "to make mutiny like this? Know you not your duty better?"

"Our duty is to fight, not to sit around here in idleness. At least we are not cowards," broke in another, who had supported Cox from the outset.

"You!" cried Herkimer, all roused at last. "You will be the first to run when you see the British!"

There was no longer any pretence of keeping the square. The excited farmers pressed closely about us now, and the clamor was rising momentarily. All thought of order or military grade was gone. Men who had no rank whatever thrust their loud voices into the council, so that we could hear nothing clearly.

There was a brief interchange of further hot words between the Brigadier, Colonel Bellinger, and John Frey on the one side, and the mutinous colonels and men on the other. I heard the bitter epithets of "Tory" and "coward" hurled at the old man, who stood with chin defiant in air, and dark eyes ablaze, facing his antagonists. The scene was so shameful that I could scarce bear to look upon it.

There came a hurly-burly of confusion and tumult as the shouts of the crowd grew more vehement, and one of the refractory colonels impetuously drew his sword and half turned as if to give the command himself.

Then I heard Herkimer, too incensed to longer control himself, cry: "If you will have it so, the blood be on your heads." He sprang upon the stool at this, waved his sword, and shouted so that all the eight hundred could hear:

"VORWAERTS!"

The tall pines themselves shook with the cheer which the yeomen raised.

There was a scramble on the instant for muskets, bags, and belongings. To rush was the order. We under-officers caught the infection, and with no dignity at all hurried across the clearing to our horses. We cantered back in a troop, Barent Coppernol leading the Brigadier's white mare at a hand-gallop by our side. Still trembling with excitement, yet perhaps somewhat reconciled to the adventure by the exultant spirit of the scene before him, General Herkimer got into the saddle, and watched closely the efforts of the colonels, now once more all gratified enthusiasm, to bring their eager men into form. It had been arranged that Cox with his Canajoharie regiment should have the right of the line, and this body was ready and under way in less time, it seemed, than I have taken to write of it. The General saw the other three regiments trooped, told Visscher to bring the supply-wagon with the rear, and then, with Isaac Paris, Jelles Fonda, and myself, galloped to the head of the column, where Spencer and Skenandoah with the Oneida Indians were.

So marching swiftly, and without scouts, we started forth at about nine in the morning.

The road over which we hurried was as bad, even in those hot, dry days of August, as any still to be found in the Adirondacks. The bottom-lands of the Mohawk Valley, as is well known, are of the best farming soil in the world, but for that very reason they make bad roads. The highway leading to the fort lay for the most part over low and springy land, and was cut through the thick beech and hemlock forest almost in a straight line, regardless of swales and marshy places. These had been in some instances bridged indifferently by corduroys of logs, laid the previous spring when Gansevoort dragged up his cannon for the defence of the fort, and by this time too often loose and out of place. We on horseback found these rough spots even more trying than did the footmen; but for all of us progress was slow enough, after the first excitement of the start had passed away.

There was no outlook at any point. We were hedged in everywhere by walls of foliage, of mossy tree-trunks covered with vines, of tangled undergrowth and brush. When we had gained a hill-top, nothing more was to be seen than the dark-brown band of logs on the gully bottom before us, and the dim line of road losing itself in a mass of green beyond.

Neither Herkimer nor Paris had much to say, as we rode on in the van. Major Fonda made sundry efforts to engage them in talk, as if there had been no recent dispute, no harsh words, no angry recriminations, but without special success. For my part, I said nothing whatever. Surely there was enough to think of, both as to the miserable insubordination of an hour back, and as to what the next hour might bring.

We had passed over about the worst of these patches of corduroy road, in the bottom of a ravine between two hills, where a little brook, dammed in part by the logs, spread itself out over the swampy soil on both sides. We in the van had nearly gained the summit of the farther eminence, and were resting for the moment to see how Visscher should manage with his wagon in the rear. Colonel Cox had also turned in his saddle, some ten yards farther down the hill, and was calling back angrily to his men to keep in the centre of the logs and not tip them up by walking on the ends.

While I looked Barent Coppernol called out to me: "Do you remember? This is where we camped five years ago."

Before I could answer I heard a rifle report, and saw Colonel Cox fall headlong upon the neck of his horse.

There was a momentary glimpse of dark forms running back, a strange yell, a shot or two—and then the gates of hell opened upon us.



Chapter XXXIII.

The Fearsome Death-Struggle in the Forest.



Were I Homer and Shakespeare and Milton, merged all in one, I should still not know how fitly to depict the terrible scene which followed.

I had seen poor headstrong, wilful Cox pitch forward upon the mane of his horse, as if all at once his spine had been turned, into limp string; I saw now a ring of fire run out in spitting tongues of flame around the gulf, and a circle of thin whitish smoke slowly raise itself through the dark leaves of the girdling bushes. It was an appalling second of mental numbness during which I looked at this strange sight, and seemed not at all to comprehend it.

Then Herkimer cried out, shrilly: "My God! here it is!" and, whirling his mare about, dashed down the hill-side again. I followed him, keeping ahead of Paris, and pushing my horse forward through the aimlessly swarming footmen of our van with a fierce, unintelligent excitement.

The air was filled now with shouts—what they were I did not know. The solid body of our troops on the corduroy bridge were huddling together like sheep in a storm. From the outer edges of this mass men were sinking to the ground. The tipping, rolling logs tossed these bodies on their ends off into the water, or under the feet of the others. Cox's horse had jumped sidelong into the marsh, and now, its hind-quarters sinking in the mire, plunged wildly, flinging the inert body still fastened in the stirrups from side to side. Some of our men were firing their guns at random into the underbrush.

All this I saw in the swift gallop down the hill to rejoin the Brigadier.

As I jerked up my horse beside him, a blood-curdling chorus of strange barking screams, as from the throats of maniac women, rose at the farther side of the ravine, drowning the shouts of our men, the ping-g-g of the whistling bullets, and even the sharp crack of the muskets. It was the Indian war-whoop! A swarm of savages were leaping from the bush in all directions, and falling upon our men as they stood jammed together on the causeway. It was a horrible spectacle—of naked, yelling devils, daubed with vermilion and ghastly yellow, rushing with uplifted hatchets and flashing knives upon this huddled mass of white men, our friends and neighbors. These, after the first bewildering shock, made what defence they could, shooting right and left, and beating down their assailants with terrific smashing blows from their gun-stocks. But the throng on the sliding logs made them almost powerless, and into their jumbled ranks kept pouring the pitiless rain of bullets from the bush.

By God's providence there were cooler brains and wiser heads than mine, here in the ravine, to face and grapple with this awful crisis.

Old Herkimer seemed before my very eyes to wax bigger and stronger and calmer in the saddle, as this pandemonium unfolded in front of us. His orders I forget now—or what part I played at first in carrying them out—but they were given swiftly and with cool comprehension of all our needs. I should think that within five minutes from the first shot of the attack, our forces—or what was left of them—had been drawn out of the cruel helplessness of their position in the centre of the swamp. This could never have been done had not Honikol Herkimer kept perfectly his self-control and balance, like an eagle in a tempest.

Visscher's regiment, in the rear, had not got fairly into the gulf, owing to the delay in dragging the wagon along, when the ambushed Indians fired their first volley; and he and his men, finding themselves outside the fiery circle, promptly ran away. They were followed by many of the Indians, which weakened the attacking force on the eastern side of the ravine. Peter Bellinger, therefore, was able to push his way back again from the beginning of the corduroy bridge into the woods on both sides of the road beyond, where cover was to be had. It was a noble sight to see the stalwart Palatine farmers of his regiment—these Petries, Weavers, Helmers, and Dygerts of the German Flatts—fight their path backward through the hail of lead, crushing Mohawk skulls as though they had been egg-shells with the mighty flail-like swing of their clubbed muskets, and returning fire only to kill every time. The bulk of Cox's Canajoharie regiment and of Klock's Stone Arabia yeomen were pulled forward to the rising ground on the west side, and spread themselves out in the timber as well as they could, north and south of the road.

While these wise measures were being ordered, we three horsemen had, strangely enough, been out of the range of fire; but now, as we turned to ride back, a sudden shower of bullets came whizzing past us. My horse was struck in the head, and began staggering forward blindly. I leaped from his back as he toppled, only to come in violent collision with General Herkimer, whose white mare, fatally wounded, had toppled toward me. The Brigadier helped extricate himself from the saddle, and started with the rest of us to run up the hill for cover, but stumbled and stopped after a step or two. The bone of his right leg had been shattered by the ball which killed his steed, and his high boot was already welling with blood.

It was in my arms, never put to better purpose, that the honest old man was carried up the side-hill. Here, under a low-branched beech some two rods from the road, Dr. William Petrie stripped off the boot, and bandaged, as best he could, the wounded leg. The spot was not well sheltered, but here the Brigadier, a little pale, yet still calm and resolute, said he would sit and see the battle out. Several young men, at a hint from the doctor, ran down through the sweeping fire to the edge of the morass, unfastened the big saddle from his dead mare, and safely brought it to us. On this the brave old German took his seat, with the maimed leg stretched out on some boughs hastily gathered, and coolly lighting his pipe, proceeded to look about him.

"Can we not find a safer place for you farther back, Brigadier?" I asked.

"No; here I will sit," he answered, stoutly. "The men can see me here; I will face the enemy till I die."

All this time the rattle of musketry, the screech of flying bullets, the hoarse din and clamor of forest warfare, had never for an instant abated. Looking down upon the open space of the gully's bottom, we could see more than two-score corpses piled upon the logs of the road, or upon little mounds of black soil which showed above the level of the slough, half-hidden by the willows and tall, rank tufts of swamp-grass. Save for the dead, this natural clearing was well-nigh deserted. Captain Jacob Seeber was in sight, upon a hillock below us to the north, with a score of his Canajoharie company in a circle, firing outward at the enemy. Across the ravine Captain Jacob Gardenier, a gigantic farmer, armed with a captured Indian spear, had cut loose with his men from Visscher's retreat, and had fought his way back to help us. Farther to the south, some of the Cherry Valley men had got trees, and were holding the Indians at bay.

The hot August sun poured its fiercest rays down upon the heaps of dead and wounded in this forest cockpit, and turned into golden haze the mist of smoke encircling it. Through this pale veil we saw, from time to time, forms struggling in the dusk of the thicket beyond. Behind each tree-trunk was the stage whereon a life-drama was being played, with a sickening and tragic sameness in them all. The yeoman from his cover would fire; if he missed, forth upon him would dart the savage, raised hatchet gleaming—and there would be a widow the more in some one of our Valley homes.

"Put two men behind each tree," ordered keen-eyed Herkimer. "Then, when one fires, the other's gun will be loaded for the Indian on his running forward." After this command had been followed, the battle went better for us.

There was a hideous fascination in this spectacle stretched before us. An hour ago it had been so softly peaceful, with the little brook picking its clean way in the sunlight through the morass, and the kingfisher flitting among the willows, and the bees' drone laying like a spell of indolence upon the heated air. Now the swale was choked with corpses! The rivulet ran red with blood, and sluggishly spread its current around barriers of dead men. Bullets whistled across the gulf, cutting off boughs of trees as with a knife, and scattering tufts of leaves like feathers from a hawk stricken in its flight. The heavy air grew thick with smoke, dashed by swift streaks of dancing flame. The demon-like screams of the savages, the shouts and moans and curses of our own men, made hearing horrible. Yes—horrible is the right word!

A frightened owl, I remember, was routed by the tumult from its sleepy perch, and flew slowly over the open space of the ravine. So curious a compound is man!—we watched the great brown-winged creature flap its purblind way across from wood to wood, and speculated there, as we stood in the jaws of death, if some random ball would hit it!

I am writing of all this as if I did nothing but look about me while others fought. Of course that could not have been the case. I recall now these fragmentary impressions of the scene around me with a distinctness and with a plenitude of minutiae which surprise me, the more that I remember little enough of what I myself did. But when a man is in a fight for his life there are no details. He is either to come out of it or he isn't, and that is about all he thinks of.

I have put down nothing about what was now the most serious part of the struggle—the combat with the German mercenaries and Tory volunteers on the high ground beyond the ravine. I conceive it to have been the plan of the enemy to let the Indians lie hidden round about the gulf until our rear-guard had entered it. Then they were to disclose their ambuscade, sweeping the corduroy bridge with fire, while the Germans and Tories, meeting our van up on the crown of the hill beyond, were to attack and drive it back upon our flank in the gulf bottom, when we should have been wholly at the mercy of the encircling fusilade from the hills. Fortunately St. Leger had given the Indians a quart of rum apiece before they started; this was our salvation. The savages were too excited to wait, and closed too soon the fiery ring which was to destroy us all. This premature action cut off our rear, but it also prevented our van reaching the point where the white foe lay watching for us. Thus we were able to form upon our centre, after the first awful shock was over, and to then force our way backward or forward to some sort of cover before the Germans and Tories came upon us.

The fighting in which I bore a part was at the farthest western point, where the remnants of four or five companies, half buried in the gloom of the impenetrable wood, on a line stretching along the whole crest of the hill, held these troops at bay. We lay or crouched behind leafy coverts, crawling from place to place as our range was reached by the enemy, shooting from the shield of tree-trunks or of tangled clumps of small firs, or, best of all, of fallen and prostrate logs.

Often, when one of us, creeping cautiously forward, gained a spot which promised better shelter, it was to find it already tenanted by a corpse, perhaps of a near and dear friend. It was thus that I came upon the body of Major John Eisenlord, and later upon what was left of poor Barent Coppernol, lying half-hidden among the running hemlock, scalpless and cold. It was from one of these recesses, too, that I saw stout old Isaac Paris shot down, and then dragged away a prisoner by the Tories, to be handed over to the hatchets of their Indian friends a few days hence.

Fancy three hours of this horrible forest warfare, in which every minute bore a whole lifetime's strain and burden of peril!

We knew not then how time passed, and could but dimly guess how things were going beyond the brambled copse in which we fought. Vague intimations reached our ears, as the sounds of battle now receded, now drew near, that the issue of the day still hung in suspense. The war-yells of the Indians to the rear were heard less often now. The conflict seemed to be spreading out over a greater area, to judge from the faintness of some of the rifle reports which came to us. But we could not tell which side was giving way, nor was there much time to think of this: all our vigilance and attention were needed from moment to moment to keep ourselves alive.

All at once, with a terrific swoop, there burst upon the forest a great storm, with loud-rolling thunder and a drenching downfall of rain. We had been too grimly engrossed in the affairs of the earth to note the darkening sky. The tempest broke upon us unawares. The wind fairly roared through the branches high above us; blinding flashes of lightning blazed in the shadows of the wood. Huge boughs were wrenched bodily off by the blast. Streaks of flame ran zigzag down the sides of the tall, straight hemlocks. The forest fairly rocked under the convulsion of the elements.

We wrapped our neckcloths or kerchiefs about our gunlocks, and crouched under shelter from the pelting sheets of water as well as might be. As for the fight, it ceased utterly.

While we lay thus quiescent in the rain, I heard a low, distant report from the west, which seemed distinct among the growlings of the thunder; there followed another, and a third. It was the belated signal from the fort!

I made my way back to the hill-side as best I could, under the dripping brambles, over the drenched and slippery ground vines, upon the chance that the Brigadier had not heard the reports.

The commander still sat on his saddle under the beech-tree where I had left him. Some watch-coats had been stretched over the lowest branches above him, forming a tolerable shelter. His honest brown face seemed to have grown wan and aged during the day. He protested that he had little or no pain from his wound, but the repressed lines about his lips belied their assurance. He smiled with gentle irony when I told him of what I had heard, and how I had hastened to apprise him of it.

"I must indeed be getting old," he said to his brother George. "The young men think I can no longer hear cannon when they are fired off."

The half-dozen officers who squatted or stood about under the tree, avoiding the streams which fell from the holes in the improvised roof, told me a terrible story of the day's slaughter. Of our eight hundred, nearly half were killed. Visscher's regiment had been chased northward toward the river, whither the fighting from the ravine had also in large part drifted. How the combat was going down there, it was difficult to say. There were dead men behind every tree, it seemed. Commands were so broken up, and troops so scattered by the stern exigencies of forest fighting, that it could not be known who was living and who was dead.

What made all this doubly tragic in my ears was that these officers, who recounted to me our losses, had to name their own kinsmen among the slain. Beneath the general grief and dismay in the presence of this great catastrophe were the cruel gnawings of personal anguish.

"My son Robert lies out there, just beyond the tamarack," said Colonel Samuel Campbell to me, in a hoarse whisper.

"My brother Stufel killed two Mohawks before he died; he is on the knoll there with most of his men," said Captain Fox.

Major William Seeber, himself wounded beyond help, said gravely: "God only knows whether my boy Jacob lives or not; but Audolph is gone, and my brother Saffreness and his son James." The old merchant said this with dry eyes, but with the bitterness of a broken heart.

I told them of the shooting and capture of Paris and the death of Eisenlord. My news created no impression, apparently. Our minds were saturated with horror. Of the nine Snells who came with us, seven were said to be dead already.

The storm stopped as abruptly as it had come upon us. Of a sudden it grew lighter, and the rain dwindled to a fine mist. Great luminous masses of white appeared in the sky, pushing aside the leaden clouds. Then all at once the sun was shining.

On that instant shots rang out here and there through the forest. The fight began again.

The two hours which followed seem to me now but the indistinct space of a few minutes. Our men had seized upon the leisure of the lull to eat what food was at hand in their pockets, and felt now refreshed in strength. They had had time, too, to learn something of the awful debt of vengeance they owed the enemy. A sombre rage possessed them, and gave to their hearts a giant's daring. Heroes before, they became Titans now.

The vapors steaming up in the sunlight from the wet earth seemed to bear the scent of blood. The odor affected our senses. We ran forth in parties now, disdaining cover. Some fell; we leaped over their writhing forms, dashed our fierce way through the thicket to where the tell-tale smoke arose, and smote, stabbed, stamped out the life of, the ambushed foe. Under the sway of this frenzy, timorous men swelled into veritable paladins. The least reckless of us rushed upon death with breast bared and with clinched fists.

A body of us were thus scouring the wood on the crest of the hill, pushing through the tangle of dead brush and thick high brake, which soaked us afresh to the waist, resolute to overcome and kill whomsoever we could reach. Below us, in the direction of the river, though half a mile this side of it, we could hear a scattering fusillade maintained, which bespoke bush-fighting. Toward this we made our way, firing at momentary glimpses of figures in the thicket, and driving scattered groups of the foe before us as we ran.

Coming out upon the brow of the hill, and peering through the saplings and underbrush, we could see that big Captain Gardenier and his Caughnawaga men were gathered in three or four parties behind clumps of alders in the bottom, loading and firing upon an enemy invisible to us. While we were looking down and hesitating how best to go to his succor, one of old Sammons's sons came bounding down the side-hill, all excitement, crying:

"Help is here from the fort!"

Sure enough, close behind him were descending some fourscore men, whose musket-barrels and cocked hats we could distinguish swaying above the bushes, as they advanced in regular order.

I think I see huge, burly Gardenier still, standing in his woollen shirt-sleeves, begrimed with powder and mud, one hand holding his spear, the other shading his eyes against the sinking sun as he scanned the new-comers.

"Who's there?" he roared at them.

"From the fort!" we could hear the answer.

Our hearts leaped with joy at this, and we began with one accord to get to the foot of the hill, to meet these preservers. Down the steep side we clambered, through the dense second-growth, in hot haste and all confidence. We had some friendly Oneidas with us, and I had to tell them to keep back, lest Gardenier, deeming them Mohawks, should fire upon them.

Coming to the edge of the swampy clearing we saw a strange sight.

Captain Gardenier was some yards in advance of his men, struggling like a mad Hercules with half a dozen of these new-comers, hurling them right and left, then falling to the ground, pinned through each thigh by a bayonet, and pulling down his nearest assailant upon his breast to serve as a shield.

While we took in this astounding spectacle, young Sammons was dancing with excitement.

"In God's name, Captain," he shrieked, "you are killing our friends!"

"Friends be damned!" yelled back Gardenier, still struggling with all his vast might. "These art Tories. Fire! you fools! Fire!"

It was the truth. They were indeed Tories—double traitors to their former friends. As Gardenier shouted out his command, these ruffians raised their guns, and there sprang up from the bushes on either side of them as many more savages, with weapons lifting for a volley.

How it was I know not, but they never fired that volley. Our muskets seemed to poise and discharge themselves of their own volition, and a score of the villains, white and red, tumbled before us. Gardenier's men had recovered their senses as well, and, pouring in a deadly fusillade, dashed furiously forward with clubbed muskets upon the unmasked foe. These latter would now have retreated up the hill again, whence they could fire to advantage, but we at this leaped forth upon their flank, and they, with a futile shot or two, turned and fled in every direction, we all in wild pursuit.

Ah, that chase! Over rotten, moss-grown logs, weaving between gnarled tree-trunks, slipping on treacherous twigs, the wet saplings whipping our faces, the boughs knocking against our guns, in savage heat we tore forward, loading and firing as we ran.

The pursuit had a malignant pleasure in it: we knew the men we were driving before us. Cries of recognition rose through the woods; names of renegades were shouted out which had a sinister familiarity in all our ears.

I came upon young Stephen Watts, the boyish brother of Lady Johnson, lying piteously prone against some roots, his neck torn with a hideous wound of some sort; he did not know me, and I passed him by with a bitter hardening of the heart. What did he here, making war upon my Valley? One of the Papist Scots from Johnstown, Angus McDonell, was shot, knocked down, and left senseless behind us. So far from there being any pang of compassion for him, we cheered his fall, and pushed fiercely on. The scent of blood in the moist air had made us wild beasts all.

I found myself at last near the river, and on the edge of a morass, where the sun was shining upon the purple flowers of the sweet-flag, and tall rushes rose above little miry pools. I had with me a young Dutch farmer—John Van Antwerp—and three Oneida Indians, who had apparently attached themselves to me on account of my epaulettes. We had followed thus far at some distance a party of four or five Tories and Indians; we came to a halt here, puzzled as to the course they had taken.

While my Indians, bent double, were running about scanning the soft ground for a trail, I heard a well-known voice close behind me say:

"They're over to the right, in that clump of cedars. Better get behind a tree."

I turned around. To my amazement Enoch Wade stood within two yards of me, his buckskin shirt wide open at the throat, his coon-skin cap on the back of his head, his long rifle over his arm.

"In Heaven's name, how did you come here?"

"Lay down, I tell ye!" he replied, throwing himself flat on his face as he spoke.

We were too late. They had fired on us from the cedars, and a bullet struck poor Van Antwerp down at my feet.

"Now for it, before they can load," cried Enoch, darting past me and leading a way on the open border of the swale, with long, unerring leaps from one raised point to another. The Indians raced beside him, crouching almost to a level with the reeds, and I followed.