3stalwarts

by Unknown

  Gil came up, harrying the cow. He walked directly to the innkeeper and asked for a night’s lodging. “Two shilling for you and the missis,” said the innkeeper, “and one for the mare. You can turn the cow in by the apple tree.”

  “We’ll want a room to ourselves then,” said Gil.

  “You can have the top room,” said Mr. Rose. “I can’t guarantee not to have to stick in someone else, though.”

  Gil never so much as batted his eye. He held his purse open in one hand and put his fingers in. “Would two fips be worth a guarantee, Mr. Rose?”

  “Seeing it’s the top room,” said Mr. Rose, “I’ll guarantee it.” He took the two fips and slipped them into a pocket under his apron; and after that he became most obliging, addressing Lana continually as “Mrs. Martin” and calling Gil “Mister,” and once even “Esquire.”

  Lana fixed her hair in the back shed with Mrs. Rose’s glass, shook the dust from her dress with a whisk of twigs, and came back to Gil. They had supper at a table for themselves in the tap, as quietly as any well-wedded couple in the world. There was only one other man there and he hardly noticed them. He was a one-eyed man, a stranger, Mr. Rose said, on his way up from Albany.

  They had had some blood sausage with pig greens, sauerkraut, and smoked trout, and Gil had insisted on her taking a small glass of gin with him. “Seeing it’s tonight,” he managed to whisper. “Just especial.” The whole affair seemed to Lana ruinously expensive, but after the drink she found herself flooded with a feeling of utter irresponsibility. She even enjoyed it when a small stout man named Captain Small, with a couple of friends, dropped down from Eldridge’s and started talking in loud voices about Sir John Johnson’s having broken his parole and taken off the Highlanders to Canada. One side said that that was a good thing, getting the Scotch out of the valley; and the other said that it meant there would be nothing to hold back the Tories. But Mr. Rose reminded them that it had happened two months ago, nearly to the day, and there had been no change in the war.

  Lana felt herself very mature to be sitting in a taproom listening to men, and she tried to understand what they were saying about the army’s being driven back out of Canada. Small said, “Georgie Helmer come back last month. He was with Montgomery’s regiment. He said it all went fine till the last day of last year when they didn’t take Quee-bec. Then he said everything went to pieces. Arnold got hurt and since then the smallpox has got into the army. He had it. He said he bought an inoculation off a Dr. Barker for fifteen cents cash money. And he was the first man in his company to get it. Everybody that bought inoculations off Barker got the disease. They thought it was because his hands was dirty and he didn’t clean his nail, which he scratched them with. Then they found out he’d been all through the army and everybody he touched got it. Ain’t that an awful way to fight, though?”

  Everybody nodded. Lana watched the shadow of Mr. Rose’s queue nodding up and down along the neck of a bottle. When she looked at him, he was still nodding, and the eelskin his hair was clubbed in glistened a greenish gray.

  “The trouble is,” he said, “there ain’t anybody up there worth two cents except Arnold, and Captain Brown.”

  “Brown says Arnold is no better than the rest.”

  “John Brown’s a good man.”

  They argued. The one-eyed man in the corner, who hadn’t said anything, now raised his voice. He had a pursy mouth and spoke softly.

  “The trouble with the American army is your Continental Congress,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” It was Gil who asked, and the truculence in his voice thrilled Lana. All the others were looking from him to the stranger.

  But the stranger said calmly, “I mean what I said. It’s no better than a cesspool. What good there is in it is hid by the scum that keeps getting on top.”

  Captain Small said, “I guess you mean Adams and that Yankee bunch.”

  The one-eyed man nodded, looking at Gil. The patch over his eye gave his face an oddly sinister expression.

  “They’re a bunch of failures and they talk loud to keep themselves in power. I wouldn’t put the dependence in them I’d put in a bedbug. They all bite when you’re asleep. Why, if I lived up here, I wouldn’t take chances playing with them.”

  “Wouldn’t you?” said Gil. “Why not?”

  “Because they only play politics with the army. How many regulars do they send up here? None. Why not? Because you don’t count to them for votes. You can’t bring pressure on them. And I hear there’s seven hundred British troops moving up to Oswego this fall. But that won’t bother them, safe in Philadelphia. Why, anybody could see this war would have to be won up north.”

  “Say, what’s your business up here?”

  “My business is to see what’s going on,” the man said equably, “and my name’s Caldwell.” He got up from his corner and moved towards Billy Rose. “How about my tally?” he asked.

  Nobody said anything as he paid across the plank bar. But when he stopped in the door to ask how far it was to Shoemaker’s, they told him it was eight miles.

  “He’s a queer-acting cuss,” observed Small.

  Rose said, “There’s a lot of queer people in the valley, now. Did he mean the Indians was coming down?”

  “I think,” said Gil, “that there’s a lot of foolish talk about this Indian business. Just because it happened in the French war, don’t mean it will now.”

  “Listen, young man,” said Captain Small. “How would you feel if you’d been drove out of your land and house? If you was a mean man naturally?”

  “You mean the Butlers and Johnsons?”

  “Them,” said Small. “Them and all their bunch.”

  “But that don’t mean they’ll bring the Indians.”

  “Listen, Mr. Martin. The Mohawks went west with them. They’ve got to feed them, hain’t they? They plain can’t do that in Niagara. Ten to one they get them foraging down here.”

  “Well,” said Gil, “I guess we can look after them all right.”

  “I guess we’ll have to, young man.”

  Gil rose and, feeling his hand on her arm, Lana rose with him. As she saw the others watching her, she went suddenly pink. She felt she was blushing all over while they said good-night. Mr. Rose picked up his Betty lamp and took them to the stairs.

  “Have a good sleep,” he said.

  “Good night,” they said.

  Gil went first. When Lana climbed through the trapdoor into the small stuffy room with its cord bed in the middle, like a fortress in a little clearing, he was facing her.

  “You didn’t get scared with what they said?” he asked anxiously. “You hear that kind of talk all over the place.”

  She was still faintly tingling from the unaccustomed drink. And she looked at him, so straight and tall, with his good features and his blue eyes, and lean broad shoulders, remembering the way he had picked her out of the flax kiln. She felt proud and reckless and gay.

  “Not of Indians,” she said.

  Then her eyes dropped and she couldn’t look at him again as they undressed.

  It was odd that in the morning she felt fidgety under Mr. Rose’s eyes as they prepared to leave the inn. Mr. Rose brought a small book of blank paper and a pen. He said apologetically, “The way George Herkimer’s rangers check up on a man he has to keep record of whoever stays in his place. Would you just sign your name, Mr. Martin?”

  Gil complied. He took the pen and filled in beside the date, “Gilbert Martin and wife, Magdelana.”

  Watching round his arm, Lana thought it marked the beginning of a life. She wondered whether she had pleased him, and now she was thinking, whatever came, it would be her duty to please him, and she swore a small oath to herself that she would always be a good wife to him.

  The mare went slowly and the cow kept up to the cart without trouble. They passed through the German Flats where the new fort was being built. It was called Dayton, after the colonel in charge. Peeled logs were being skidded down from
the spruce-covered hills behind the village; and soldiers, militia, and hired farmers were working together at setting the stockade.

  Gil must have seen her watching it as they went past, for shortly after they had left the settlement behind, he came up beside the cart. He had been silent all morning, and now as she looked down into his face he seemed to her to be troubled.

  “How are you?” he said, fetching a grin.

  She smiled back timidly, wanting to ask him what was worrying him.

  “Just fine.”

  He said, “It isn’t so far now. It’s not above fifteen miles.” He looked at her again. “We ought to get there before dark, Lana.”

  “That will be nice,” she said.

  She looked so pretty and young to him, high up on the cart, with her feet in their cloth shoes demurely side by side. Her face was shaded by a calico bonnet to match her short gown. Her hair curved away under the wide brim; it was almost black. When she met his look, she flushed a little, and her brown eyes grew solemn. He thought of her gay lightheartedness, and he looked ahead to where the road entered the woods towards the Schuyler settlement. But instead of saying what was on his mind, he described the place to her.

  “They’ve got nice bottom land. And they’ve built big framed houses. You’ll like it, Lana, I think.”

  She said, “The country’s nice.”

  They lunched before they came to Schuyler, by a little stream in a patch of hemlocks, eating bread and cheese side by side on the carpet of short brown needles and tossing crumbs to the chipmunks. It was cool there, for the trees held the sunlight far above them. In front of them the mare drowsed in the shafts and the cow found a cud to chew.

  Looking at the cart, Lana imagined placing her things in the cabin be-fore dark.

  “Will we set the bed up downstairs,” she said, “or put it in the loft?” He looked at her. “I’ve heard Mother say that in the cabins when she first came to Klock’s they sometimes had the bed set up in the kitchen.”

  If he was worrying about her, she would show him that she was prepared.

  “You’re not scared coming west so far with me, like this?”

  She shook her head.

  “It’ll be different from living in a house.” He poked the needles with a stick. “It seemed so fine to me, because I built it, that I didn’t think it might look different to a girl who was raised in a big house like yours.”

  He was trying to prepare her.

  “Mother started the same way,” she said. “In a few years we’ll have all those things. But beginning this way, Gil, we’ll like them better when we get them.” She glanced sidewise. “I’ve always thought it would be nice living in a cabin. It’ll be handy to look after if it’s small.”

  He said, “It ain’t much cleared.”

  “We won’t have to buy much now,” she added. “Mother was awfully good to me.”

  He touched her hand.

  Quite unexpectedly they came out on Schuyler. The open land, well cleared and cultivated, with men mowing hay along the river, and broad-framed houses, was like a release after the woods. Lana knew, as she looked about her, that their place was only a few miles farther on. It would not seem so far out of the world, now that she had seen these healthy farms.

  Some people came to the fences to watch them by. They greeted Gil by name and looked curiously towards Lana. They asked for news, and when Gil said he hadn’t heard any worth telling, they smiled and said, “You’ve brought along quite a piece of news of your own, though.”

  They were half an hour traversing Schuyler. Then once more the woods closed in on the road and river, great elms, and willows and hemlock along the brooks. Now and then through swampy pieces the cart lurched and tottered over corduroy, and the mare had to set her feet carefully.

  When they reached Cosby’s Manor, it seemed to Lana a queer lost place. There was a fine house by the river, and a store built of logs, and a tenant’s house. But all had a forgotten aspect.

  A woman came to the door of the store, shading her eyes with her hand. She did not seem like a live and healthy person. She seemed like someone in a trance. And she did not call to them, but met Lana’s shy nod with a dull stare.

  Gil came hurrying up beside the cart.

  “Never mind her, Lana. She’s queer. They’re Johnson people here, and they haven’t got friends.”

  “Who is she?”

  “It’s Wolff’s wife. I get along with Wolff all right, but people here don’t speak to them much. I guess she gets lonely.”

  He lifted his voice to call good-day to her.

  “Hello,” she said, flatly, and turned as if to reenter the store.

  “You all alone, Mrs. Wolff?” Gil asked.

  “John’s round somewhere,” she replied over her shoulder. “You want him?”

  “No. I only thought the place looked lonely.”

  “Thompsons left last Thursday,” she said.

  “Left?”

  “Yeah. They went for Oswego. They say the Congress is going to fix the fort at Stanwix, and that means trouble. I wanted John to go, but he said he couldn’t afford to. You can’t leave if you ain’t got cash money to live on up there, he says.” She tilted her head to the northwest, stared at them, and then went into the store.

  Gil and Lana looked after her. Then he turned to the house. “They’ve boarded the windows,” he said. That explained the blankness. “I guess they’ve taken their cattle, too.”

  In spite of herself, Lana shivered.

  “Do just she and Mr. Wolff live here?”

  “I guess so. He’s got a daughter married to Dr. Petry. But Doc’s a Committee member, and I guess he don’t let her come up here any more.”

  “It’s a terrible thing,” whispered Lana.

  Gil glanced quickly at her.

  “It don’t have to bother us,” he said. “We’re all the right party.”

  Lana did not answer. They were in the woods again now, and the road had become both narrower and rougher. Their pace was reduced to a mere crawl under the hazy slanting bars of sunlight, yet for the first time every step the mare took seemed to Lana to be drawing her an irrecoverable distance from her home. She told herself, “But we’re going home.” But it didn’t mean the same thing any more.

  The light through the leaves softened, became more golden. Off on a hill to the right a cock grouse began drumming, starting with slow beats, and gradually gathering pace.

  A great mess of flies collected round the mare’s head, like sparks in the sunlight, deer flies, and horseflies an inch long, that drew blood when they bit. The mare kept shaking herself. She stopped to bite at them, and kicked and snorted, and then went on with a sullen resignation. Lana could have cried. She looked back at Gil and saw that he was switching the cow with a branch of maple; and the cow had moved up close behind the wagon.

  “Are they always like this, Gil?” Lana asked.

  “There’s always flies in the real woods,” he said shortly. “It must be going to rain, though, the way they take hold.”

  He had a lump on his forehead, with a red trickle issuing from it. She said, “They never are so thick at home.”

  “You’ll have to get used to it then. Here, take this and slap them off her.”

  He gave her the branch and stopped to cut himself another. Lana kept switching the mare, and after a moment she was glad of the occupation. There had been no driving for her to do for some time, for the mare had to have her head in getting over the rough spots. Lana became so absorbed in batting off the flies that she did not notice the small side road turning off to the left, or the clearing through a narrow fringe of trees. It was only when Gil said, in a pleasanter voice, “That was Demooth’s place,” that she realized she had missed something.

  “Where?”

  “We’ve passed it. But Weaver’s is just ahead.”

  She raised her eyes to see the leaves thinning at last. The sun was just ahead, nearing the horizon, and putting fiery edges on some overta
king slate-gray clouds.

  While she watched, the clouds overlapped the sun, and at the same mo-ment a fresh east wind struck the road, dispersing the flies, and they emerged into the clearing with the rain.

  Lana saw Weaver’s, dimly, through the slanting spear-like fall of rain. A square cabin, with a small wing added on, in which the logs were un-weathered, a roof of bark, and a chimney sending up smoke. It stood in the midst of the clearing, surrounded on three sides by Indian corn through which the stumps, blackened by their burning, still showed. In front of the house, like a showpiece, was a three-acre patch of wheat in well-worked ground. A track ran through it toward a low log barn, and just in front of the cabin door two hollyhock plants, one red, one yellow, stood together with a small border of pinks.

  Nowhere was there any sign of people. But on the edge of the woods a new road ran off, making a Y, which Gil told her led to Reall’s on the creek.

  “We’re straight ahead,” he said.

  The Kingsroad burrowed into the woods again, but they ended shortly, and Lana looked out over a long swamp of alder. Half a mile to the left lay the river, sluggish and dark. Beyond, behind a fringe of old willow trees, the ground rose again. Suddenly the road turned left down to the alders, going straight through to the ford.

  The mare stopped there, and Gil came alongside with the cow. His face was streaming wet, but he smiled at her.

  “Well,” he said, “we’re here at last.”

  “Where?” asked Lana, dully.

  “Home.”

  He looked at her.

  “Giddap,” he said roughly to the mare.

  She turned off the road onto a winding pair of wheel tracks. Then Lana saw.

  A small new cabin standing on the higher ground. Beyond, a muddy brook flowed widely through some scattered alders. On the far side the land widened out in swamp grass for perhaps two acres. She saw, almost without seeing these things.

  Her heart was in her throat. “You mustn’t cry,” she said to herself, over and over, “you mustn’t start crying.”

  It seemed to her so utterly forlorn. Behind the cabin were the marks of Gil’s first struggle with the land: the stumps, half burnt, surrounded by corn of all heights, the most uneven patch she ever saw. All round the cabin the earth was bared to the rain and fast turning into mud. Beyond was a low shed to shelter the horse and cow.