by Unknown
“Now you’re back,” he said, “maybe it would be all right for me to get on home.”
“Yes, yes, go ahead, John. And thank you for all you’ve done.” Mrs. McKlennar grinned at his retreating back. “I keep forgetting John’s a married man.”
They sat down together while John whistled to his dog and set out for Fort Dayton.
“You look healthy,” observed Mrs. McKlennar.
“I’m fine,” said Gil. He felt Lana pressing his hand under cover of her petticoat. “How have you all been? How’s Gilly?”
“Everything’s been fine.”
“How’s the cow?”
“She freshened day before yesterday. She’s in good shape,” said Mrs. McKlennar.
“What was it?”
Lana smiled.
“A heifer. A nice one. Brown and white.”
“That’s fine.” It was better than fine. It would have been tragic if the cow had dropped a bull calf. With the few remaining cows in German Flats one bull was enough for service for the entire district.
The next evening at sundown the army came from the west, a long line of bateaux rowing steadily down the river. They camped on Getman’s farm, and in the morning they continued for the east. Two days later their munition wagons hauled through with a company for escort. The commanding officer brought an order to Colonel Bellinger demanding levies to fill out one squad, and the militia was mustered and lots drawn.
Gil was miserable with the dread of having to leave the farm again; but he did not draw a long straw; and he was able then to feel sorry that young John Weaver was one of the unlucky ones. He could see Mary’s face, thin and tragic; and he thought of how Lana would have looked if John’s bad luck had happened to him. He tried to cheer John, telling him that he would draw pay for the three months and get a campaign coat, but John only nodded. He had almost an hour to see if he could buy himself off, but having no money to trade with, he was unable to interest anyone else.
He went to see Demooth about it. The captain said he would get Mary for his housekeeper, so that at least she should be taken care of. John marched at sunrise.
In May, having planted his corn and squash and pumpkins, Gil finished the barn roof. It was a great day on the farm. Mrs. McKlennar got out a bottle of Madeira, the last she had, and they drank it together.
Then in June the news came that the army was mustering at Canajoharie. They would have been slow to believe it had not Mary Weaver had a letter from John. She brought it up to McKlennar’s to have it read, and Mrs. McKlennar read it aloud to them all. John wrote badly, but his letter was confirmation of the report.
Dear wife Mary I am now at CONJHARY I am in Col Willets regiment Cap bleeckers comp. Hav a new blew cote am well Nothing remarkabel has happened we have 1500 men, & Pars rifle comp, They say we will merch for Springfeld nex Satday the 19 i think I think of you Mary & wonder if you have found out you are to have a baby yet I send my love with this and also beg you will give love to ma and Cobus
Your husband, recpectfully,
John Weaver
There was a silence in the kitchen after Mrs. McKlennar finished. They could hear outside a man far away whetting his scythe, and across the river Casler shouting to his team as he brought in logs for his cabin. Casler was rebuilding.
“It’s a good, manly letter, Mary,” said Mrs. McKlennar.
“Yes,” the girl gave a sort of gasp. She reached out for the letter and folded it over and over and stuck it inside her dress. She seemed to be ready to cry. Gil went outdoors. It was no place for a man. He drove down to the hayfield with the mare and cart.
When the bumping and creaking had died away, Mary looked up at Mrs. McKlennar and blushed painfully.
“Colonel Bellinger said he had to send an express down tomorrow and I could send a letter, but I can’t write.”
“Would you like me to write for you?”
“Yes. Please. John’s mother can’t write either, and I couldn’t ask any-one else.”
Mrs. McKlennar snorted softly as she fetched her desk and ink. She sat down again opposite Mary with the desk on her knees, and dipped the quill.
“Now what would you like to tell him? You just say it and I’ll write it down.”
“Dear husband John” and then, appalled, she listened to the scratching of the quill and saw Mrs. McKlennar’s capable wrist arching along the paper, and she burst into a flood of tears.
“Now, now, child. You mustn’t act like that. Remember that he’s probably homesick and wants this letter more than anything in the world.”
“I can’t do it. I can’t. I don’t know how,” wailed Mary.
“Well, what do you want to tell him? He’s anxious, you know.”
“Yes, he was worried about it. About me having a baby. He didn’t know how we could buy flannel for it. His mother doesn’t think I could ever be a good breast feeder and we’ve got no cow.”
“Well, dear, are you going to have a baby?”
Mary shook her head. Her face crimsoned, and suddenly she covered it with her hands.
“Then tell him.” Mrs. McKlennar drew herself up, without being aware of it, and looked formidable. “Just imagine I’m John and say it to me.”
With an effort Mary governed herself. “I’ll try.”
And Mrs. McKlennar wrote:
Dear husband John,
I am well and I hope you are really well. -I am not going to have the baby now but will surely some day. I am sure I could feed a baby even though your mother thinks not. She is well and so is Cobus. I am keeping house for Capt Demooth and he is nice to me but it is not nice to cook for him like cooking for you. I think of you every night and do you think of me? It is my hope to see you home safe soon. I pray for you, and that is my prayer.
Your loving wife …
“Would you say ‘Mary Weaver,’ or just ‘Mary’?”
Her breast was rising and falling as if she had run.
“I would say just ‘Mary,’ I think, myself, though the other is dignified.”
“I think John would like ‘Mary Weaver’ best.”
Mrs. McKlennar wrote “Mary Weaver.”
They did not hear from John again, except through general news of the movement of the army. On the twenty-third the word came by an express to Colonel Van Schaick at Fort Stanwix that the army was not to march west through the Mohawk Valley, as many people hoped, but to join Major
General Sullivan’s huge corps at Tioga. Clinton had already started his first troops south from Canajoharie and was hauling bateaux overland to the head of Otsego Lake.
The same express coming east again the following day reported to Colonel Bellinger that Oneida Indians had brought news to Fort Stanwix that John Butler was taking an army up the Genesee, planning to cross above the Indian Lakes and mobilize the Indians at Tioga. That John Butler not only knew of the American rendezvous but knew the names of all regiments and the numbers of men contained in them. As proof, the Indian named what he could remember, and his figures were correct. That was how Peter Bellinger was first informed of the numbers and personnel of the southern army, and that was how the people of German Flats first heard of it information supplied by their own spies from observations of the British.
Five thousand men would move against the Iroquois, with cannon and Morgan’s rifle regiment, and four states supplying the infantry. It was an impressive thing to think of. To people like Demooth, and Gil Martin, and Bellinger, came the first realization that there was a power in their own country, the country that had been made theirs. A power beyond the unlimited muddleheadedness of Yankee politicians.
They felt that now they would be safe from the Indians as long as that army was campaigning in the wilderness. The whole settlement breathed easier. The women went out on the haying parties, and the last of the hay was brought in with a rush. Gil Martin abandoned his first plan of stacking his hay in small lots hidden in the near-by woodland and stacked it all against the barn. The sight of the new barn,
and the high mound of hay which Lana had thatched, working in the cool of the late afternoon, was an emblem of their new security.
Towards the middle of July, Joe Boleo and Adam Helmer returned from a scout to the southeast and reported having been all the way to Otsego Lake to see the army.
“We got down beyond Butternuts and there was a lot of Indian signs heading east, and we figured they was watching the army, so we thought we might as well get a look at it ourselves.”
Adam bubbled over with descriptions of the tents, the boats. “They’ve dammed up the entire lake,” he said. “And when they start they’ll bust the dam and have four foot of water to float their boats downriver.” They had seen the execution of two Tory spies and listened to a sermon by the Reverend Mr. Kirkland and had a drink with Marinus Willett, who wanted them to serve with him as scouts. “Joe figured the rum wouldn’t hold out as far as Chinisee,” Adam explained, “so we didn’t go.”
“I wanted to see what fifteen hundred men looked like, all together,” Joe said. “I didn’t want to make it bigger than it was, though. Somebody would have had to go without his rations.”
Bellinger was thankful that they hadn’t gone. He gave them each a present of liquor and a little cash, and after Adam had spent one more fruit-less day with Betsey Small, he and Joe went into the woods again.
Then people heard that the army had set off. They heard it in the prayer of Reverend Rozencrantz, who gave credit to Rimer Van Sickler, who had returned from Otsego. He was one of the levies taken at the same time as John Weaver. He turned up in church and listened to himself being quoted by the domine, and explained to his friends that he had come back to finish his barn. He figured that the army under Clinton could do just about as well with one less man, but that he himself couldn’t get along without a barn next winter. And all it needed was the roofing of one bent, if a log barn could be said to have a bent. It would take him only three days. He said the army had made him lame in the left foot. On Monday he got cheerfully to work. On Tuesday he had finished the roof. He told Bellinger that even if he was a deserter and got taken for it, it was worth more than the regular thirty-dollar fine to roof his barn.
On the night of the twenty-fourth, Lana was restless. She was suffering continually from pains in her legs, and therefore she heard the gallop along the road in time to wake Gil. They sat up side by side in the dark, hearing the furious thudding swell towards them through the night, pass, and die rapidly away.
They got up and went out onto the porch, searching the night instinctively for fires. Mrs. McKlennar woke and came out to join them with an old red coat drawn over her nightdress. They held their breath to listen, but heard nothing except the whimper of the whippoorwills in the wheatfield.
For a while they thought it must have been an ordinary express, though expresses seldom went by at night. But before they had decided to get back to bed, the sound of galloping again was born in the west and swept towards them.
As the horse came round the bend in the road, the rider began shouting, “McKlennar’s! McKlennar’s!”
“Hello!” shouted Gil.
“That you, Mr. Martin?”
“Yes, who’s that?”
They could see him now, the hoofbeats stilling as the horse pulled up, a shadow on the vague pale ribbon of the road.
“Fred Kast. Bellinger says for you to come to the fort. The Onondagas are out! They killed some soldiers up to Stanwix this afternoon.”
Lana gave a choked cry, but Mrs. McKlennar said, “Get the baby. I’ll close and bolt the shutters.”
The horse was stamping. “I’ve got to get to Eldridge’s,” yelled Kast. He was off again.
As he hitched the mare to the cart, Gil had a dull feeling that nothing was any use. The destructives would be there. They would burn his new barn. He couldn’t turn the cow out either, because of the calf. Better to leave them in the barn than chance a bear’s getting the calf. He set down a pail of water for the cow and dragged in some forkfuls of hay.
It was just like the start for Fort Herkimer almost a year ago, except that this time they would go all the way in a cart. Thank God the wheat wasn’t yet quite ripe enough to burn!
They were two thirds of the way to the fort when Kast overtook them. Eldridge’s was warned. “They’ve only got powder for about twelve rounds,” he said. “Jake Small ain’t been able to get any anywhere.”
At Dayton the squad of regular soldiers with whom Van Schaick had garrisoned the fort assigned them to a space along the barrack wall and told them to keep out of the way. The night continued clear, warm, and uneventful, except for an outraged screech owl, and the myriad mosquitoes.
But late the next afternoon they were informed that reinforcements would be with them in twenty-four hours. The army had not yet left Otsego. About three hundred men were marching under Gansevoort.
Everyone breathed easier, except Van Sickler.
Towards sunset of the following day the drums were heard approaching, and within the hour the little army was encamped outside the fort. Gansevoort rode in with his pink Dutch face delighted at having made the swiftest march the valley had ever seen two days from the foot of Otsego Lake to German Flats. He promised to wait until the Rangers came in, and in the meantime he arrested and court-martialed Van Sickler for desertion.
But Gansevoort was so pleased with himself that he let Van Sickler off with a fine of thirty-one dollars, and, since the man could not possibly pay it, announced that he would have to be on fatigue for the rest of the campaign.
Van Sickler himself was dubious about it all. At first he figured he had lost sixty-one dollars; but later he decided that he had got his barn roofed for a dollar, and that was a bargain.
As soon as the information was brought in that the Onondagas had passed to the south of Springfield, Gansevoort departed. His troops moved fast, their three light wagons keeping close up, their drums banging a quickstep.
The people watched them go and, long after they had disappeared, listened for the last faint mutter of the drums. That sound, hauntingly faint, was the last sound of war in the valley until the same detachment appeared, surprisingly, from the west in September.
In the meantime, it seemed as if the great army had disappeared from the face of the earth. They heard no news at all of it, but what it might be doing, whether it had met the army under John Butler, Rangers, Greens, British, Tories, Senecas, and Mohawks, whether it would reach Niagara, or even the Seneca towns, was the one thing men talked about in the settlement.
Gil thought little of it. During the last week in August Lana’s labor started, and they lived for three days with Dr. Petry in the house. Mrs. McKlennar, and Daisy, and Betsey Small, who had come down to help from Eldridge’s, were all worn-out and haggard.
To Gil it seemed as if the thing would never finish. Now and then, even in the wheatfield, he thought he heard her crying. Dr. Petry seemed helpless. He blamed it on the lack of food, on the drain that nursing the first baby had put on her. “Last winter took about everything out of her. And this is a big baby. I don’t see how she got to have such a big one.”
“Can’t you help her some way?” demanded Mrs. McKlennar.
“How can I help her? It’s part of a woman’s job that’s all. We can’t do anything but wait.”
“But it’s unnatural!” Mrs. McKlennar’s voice grew harsh. “It’s terrible.”
Betsey Small remembered her own painful childbed, but that had been full of violence, and quickly over. Once when Petry was alone with her, he said, “Do you still want another one?” He tilted his head towards the room in which Lana lay.
Though Betsey’s eyes were shadowed, her mouth shaped itself impudently. “It’s part of a woman’s job that’s all. I wonder whether a man or a woman said that first.”
“Don’t talk to me like that,” he growled. “I hear tales about you and the fool Adam Helmer.”
“Well, you needn’t believe them! I’m fond of Jakey.” Her eyes brighten
ed. “But I would like some more, if you want to know. Plenty of them. Poor Jake.” She turned her eyes away.
The doctor grunted.
“Will she die?” asked Betsey.
“I don’t think so. But you might.”
“Not with you looking after me, Bill.”
“Oh hell,” he said.
Mrs. McKlennar was beckoning him to the door.
The baby was born at noon on the fourth day, a huge and handsome boy. It looked so big to Gil that Lana’s body seemed to him completely caved in after the birth. She did not speak to him, but lay inert, eyes closed.
“She’s all right,” said Dr. Petry. “You needn’t whisper. She wouldn’t hear the trump right now. She won’t be good for much for quite a spell, though. No, don’t thank me. I didn’t do anything. I just sat here to earn some money.”
He growled, and wearily mounted his old horse, and rode away.
“Bill’s aging lately,” Mrs. McKlennar said.
Betsey Small was dandling the child and calling it her lusty man.
“I’m just as glad Adam’s not around,” thought Mrs. McKlennar, watching her.
7. The Hard Winter
Throughout the summer and fall their feeling of security was strengthened. After each scout Joe and Adam reported the same emptiness of the woods. Maybe a lone Indian: if they followed his tracks up, they found he was an Oneida or Tuscarora going fishing. Or sometimes they saw the tracks of several Indians; but these parties always included squaws. They weren’t war parties. They were Indians looking for the blueberries. “They say it’s going to be a hard winter. They’re doing a lot of berrying.”
It got so that the two men hated to go out. Especially Joe; for Adam generally dropped off a scout and came back to spend a while with Betsey Small, and, when he got sick of getting nothing from that red-haired woman, to make a night excursion somewhere with Polly Bowers. But with the latter he went out just enough to keep his own inside track with her. Betsey Small had infatuated him. It got so that he would pick her a bunch of flowers, maybe, besides bringing her in a good fish or two, or some venison, or a couple of prime partridge. Once he asked her whether she would think any more of him if he brought her a couple of scalps.
