With the Men of the Woods whose Skins were Red
Was riveted, forged, and sealed.
Now, by the blood of our Splendid Dead,
God save our sons from the League of Red!
R. W. C.
Broadalbin.
PREFACE
Those who read this romance for the sake of what history it may contain will find the histories from which I have helped myself more profitable.
Those antiquarians who hunt their hobbies through books had best drop the trail of this book at the preface, for they will draw but a blank covert in these pages. Better for the antiquarian that he seek the mansion of Sir William Johnson, which is still standing in Johnstown, New York, and see with his own eyes the hatchet-scars in the solid mahogany banisters where Thayendanegea hacked out polished chips. It would doubtless prove more profitable for the antiquarian to thumb those hatchet-marks than these pages.
But there be some simple folk who read romance for its own useless sake.
To such quiet minds, innocent and disinterested, I have some little confidences to impart: There are still trout in the Kennyetto; the wild ducks still splash on the Vlaie, where Sir William awoke the echoes with his flintlock; the spot where his hunting-box stood is still called Summer-House Point; and huge pike in golden-green chain-mail still haunt the dark depths of the Vlaie water, even on this fair April day in the year of our Lord 1900.
The Author.
CHAPTER I
On the 1st of May, 1774, the anchor-ice, which for so many months had silver-plated the river’s bed with frosted crusts, was ripped off and dashed into a million gushing flakes by the amber outrush of the springtide flood.
On that day I had laid my plans for fishing the warm shallows where the small fry, swarming in early spring, attract the great lean fish which have lain benumbed all winter under their crystal roof of ice.
So certain was I of a holiday undisturbed by school-room tasks that I whistled up boldly as I sat on my cot bed, sorting hooks according to their sizes, and smoothing out my feather-flies to make sure the moths had not loosened wing or body. It was, therefore, with misgiving that I heard Peter and Esk go into the school-room, stamping their feet to make what noise they were able, and dragging their horn-books along the balustrade.
Now we had no tasks set us for three weeks, for our schoolmaster, Mr. Yost, journeying with the post to visit his mother in Pennsylvania, had been shot and scalped at Eastertide near Fort Pitt — probably by some drunken Delaware.
My guardian, Sir William Johnson, who, as all know, was Commissioner of Indian Affairs for the Crown, had but recently returned from the upper castle with his secretary, Captain Walter Butler; and, preoccupied with the lamentable 2 murder of Mr. Yost, had found no time to concern himself with us or our affairs.
However, having despatched a messenger with strings and belts to remonstrate with the sachems of the Lenni-Lenape — they being, as I have said, suspected of the murder — we discovered that Sir William had also written to Albany for another schoolmaster to replace Mr. Yost; and it gave me, for one, no pleasure to learn it, though it did please Silver Heels, who wearied me with her devotion to her books.
So, hearing Esk and fat Peter on their way to the school-room, I took alarm, believing that our new schoolmaster had arrived; so seized my fish-rod and started to slip out of the house before any one might summon me. However, I was seen in the hallway by Captain Butler, Sir William’s secretary, and ordered to find my books and report to him at the school-room.
I, of course, paid no heed to Mr. Butler, but walked defiantly down-stairs, although he called me twice in his cold, menacing voice. And I should have continued triumphantly out of the door and across the fields to the river had not I met Silver Heels dancing through the lower hallway, her slate and pencil under her arm, and loudly sucking a cone of maple sugar.
“Oh, Michael,” she cried, “you don’t know! Captain Butler has consented to instruct us until the new schoolmaster comes from Albany.”
“Oh, has he?” I sneered. “What do I care for Mr. Butler? I’m going out! Let go my coat!”
“No, you’re not! No, you’re not!” retorted Silver Heels, in that teasing sing-song which she loved to make me mad withal. “Sir William says you are to take your ragged old book of gods and nymphs and be diligent lest he catch you tripping! So there, clumsy foot!” — for I had tried to trip her.
“Who told you that?” I answered, sulkily, snatching at her sugar.
“Aunt Molly; she set me to seek you. So now who’s going fishing, my lord?”
The indescribable malice of her smile, her sing-song 3 mockery as she stood there swaying from her hips and licking her sugar-cone, roused all the sullen obstinacy in me.
“If I go,” said I, “I won’t study my books anyway. I’m too old to study with you and Peter, and I won’t! You will see!”
Sir William’s favourite ferret, Vix, with muzzle on, came sneaking along the wall, and I grasped the lithe animal and thrust it at Silver Heels, whereupon she kicked my legs with her moccasins, which did not hurt, and ran up-stairs like a wild-cat.
There was nothing for me but to go to the school-room. I laid my rod in the corner, pocketed the ferret, dragged my books from under the library table, and went slowly up the stairs.
At sixteen I was as wilful a dunce as ever dangled feet in a school-room, knowing barely sufficient Latin to follow Cæsar through Gaul, loathing mathematics, scorning the poets, and even obstinately marring my pen-writing with a heavy backward stroke in defiance of Sir William and poor Mr. Yost.
As for mythology, my tow-head was over-crammed with kennel-lore and the multitude of small details bearing upon fishing and the chase, to accommodate the classics.
Destined, against my will, for Dartmouth College by my guardian, who very well understood that I desired to be a soldier, I had resolutely set myself against every school-room accomplishment, with the result that, at sixteen, I presented an ignorance which should have shamed a lad of ten, but did not mortify me in the least.
And now, to my dismay and rage, Sir William had set me once more in the school-room — and under Mr. Butler, too!
“Master Cardigan,” said Mr. Butler when I entered the room, “Sir William desires you to prepare a recitation upon the story of Proserpine.”
I muttered rebelliously, but jerked my mythology from the pile of books and began to thumb the leaves noisily. Presently tiring of dingy print, I moved up to the bench where sat the children, Peter and Esk, a-conning their horn-books.
Silver Heels pulled a face at me behind her French grammar book, and I pinched her arm smartly for her impudence. 4 Then, casting about for something to do, I remembered the ferret in my pocket, and dragged it out. Removing the silver bit I permitted the ferret to bite Peter’s tight breeches, not meaning to hurt him; but Peter screeched and Mr. Butler birched him well, knowing all the while it was no fault of Peter’s; yet such was the nature of the man that, when angry, the innocent must suffer when the guilty were beyond his wrath.
I had remuzzled the ferret, and Peter was smearing the tears from his cheeks, when Sir William came in, very angry, saying that Mistress Molly could hear us in the nursery, and that the infant had fallen a-roaring with his new teeth.
“I did it, sir,” said I, “and Mr. Butler punished Peter—”
“Silence!” said Sir William, sharply. “Put that ferret out the window!”
“The ferret is your best one — Vix,” I answered. “She will run to the warren and we shall have to dig her out—”
“Pocket her, then,” said Sir William, hastily. “Who gave you leave to pouch my ferrets? Eh? What has a ferret to do in school? Eh? Idle again? Captain Butler, is he idle?”
“He is a dunce,” said Mr. Butler, with a shrug.
“Dunce!” echoed Sir William, quickly. “Why should he be a dunce when I have taught him? Granted his Latin would shame a French priest, and his mathematics sicken a Mohawk, have I not read the poets w
ith him?”
Mr. Butler, a gentleman and an officer of rank and fortune, whose degraded whims led him now to instruct youth as a pastime, sharpened a quill in silence.
“Gad,” muttered Sir William, “have I not read mythology with him till I dreamed of nymphs and satyrs and capered in my dreams till Mistress Molly — but that’s neither here nor there. Micky!”
“Sir,” I replied, sulkily.
Then he began to question me concerning certain gods and demi-gods, and I gaped and floundered as though I were no better than the inky rabble ruled over by Mr. Butler.
Sir William lounged by the window in his spurred boots and scarlet hunting-coat, and smelling foul of the kennels, which, God knows, I do not find unpleasant; and at every 5 slap of the whip over his boots, he shot me through and through with a question which I had neither information nor inclination to answer before the grinning small fry.
Now to be hectored and questioned by Sir William like a sniffling lad with one eye on the birch and the other on Mr. Butler, did not please me. Moreover, the others were looking on — Esk with ink on his nose, Peter in tears, a-licking his lump of spruce, and that wild-cat thing, Silver Heels —
With every question of Sir William I felt I was losing caste among them. Besides, there was Mr. Butler with his silent, deathly laugh — a laugh that never reached his eyes — yellow, changeless eyes, round as a bird’s.
Slap came the whip on the polished boot-tops, and Sir William was at it again with his gods and goddesses:
“Who carried off Proserpine? Eh?”
I looked sullenly at Esk, then at Peter, who put out his tongue at me. I had little knowledge of mythology beyond what concerned that long-legged goddess who loved hunting — as I did.
“Who carried off Proserpine?” repeated Sir William. “Come now, you should know that; come now — a likely lass, Proserpine, out in the bush pulling cowslips, bless her little fingers — when — ho! — up pops — eh? — who, lad, who in Heaven’s name?”
“Plato!” I muttered at hazard.
“What!” bawled Sir William.
I felt for my underlip and got it between my teeth, and for a space not another word would I speak, although that hollow roar began to sound in Sir William’s voice which always meant a scene. His whip, too, went slap-slap! on his boots, like the tail of a big dog rapping its ribs.
He was perhaps a violent man, Sir William, yet none outside of his own family ever suspected it or do now believe it, he having so perfect a control over himself when he chose. And I often think that his outbursts towards us were all pretence, and to test his own capacity for temper lest he had lost it in a long lifetime of self-control. At all events, none of us ever were the worse for his roaring, although it frightened us when very young; but we soon came to understand that it was as harmless as summer thunder.
“Come, sir! Come, Mr. Cardigan!” said Sir William, grimly. “Out with the gentleman’s name — d’ye hear?”
It was the first time in my life that Sir William had spoken to me as Mr. Cardigan. It might have pleased me had I not seen Mr. Butler sneer.
I glared at Mr. Butler, whose face became shadowy and loose, without expression, without life, save for the fixed stare of those round eyes.
Slap! went Sir William’s whip on his boots.
“Damme!” he shouted, in a passion, “who carried off that slut Proserpine?”
“The Six Nations, for aught I know!” I muttered, disrespectfully.
Sir William’s face went redder than his coat; but, as it was ever his habit when affronted, he stood up very straight and still; and that tribute of involuntary silence which was always paid to him at such moments, we paid, sitting awed and quiet as mice.
“Turn the children free, Captain Butler,” said Sir William, in a low voice.
Mr. Butler flung back the door. The children followed him, Esk bestowing a wink upon me, Peter grinning and toeing in like a Devon duck, and that wild-cat thing, Silver Heels —
“You need not wait, Captain Butler,” said Sir William, politely.
Mr. Butler retired, leaving the door swinging. Out in the dark hallway I fancied I could still see his shallow eyes shining. I may have been mistaken. But all men know now that Walter Butler hath eyes that see as well by dark as by the light of the sun; and none know it so well as the people of New York Province and of Tryon County.
“Michael,” said Sir William, “go to the slate.”
I walked across the dusty school-room.
“Chalk!” shouted Sir William, irritated by my lagging steps.
I picked up a lump of chalk, balancing it in my palm as boys do a pebble in a sling.
Something in my eyes may have infuriated Sir William.
The next moment he had me by the arm, then by the collar, 7 whip whistling like the chimney wind — and whistling quite as idly, for the blow never fell.
I freed myself; he made no effort to hold me.
“Keep your lash for your hounds!” I stammered.
He did not seem to hear me, but I planted myself in a corner and cried out that he dare not lay his whip on me, which was a shameful thing to taunt him with, for he had promised me never to lay rod to me; and I knew, as all the world knows, that Sir William Johnson had never broken his word to man or savage.
But still I faced him, now hurling safe defiance, now muttering revenge, until the scornful rebuke in his eyes began to shame me into silence. Tingling already with self-contempt, I dropped my head a little, not so low but what I could see Sir William’s bulk motionless before me.
Presently he said, as though to himself: “If the boy’s a coward, no man can lay the sin to me.”
“I am not a coward!” I burst out, all a-quiver again, “and I ask your pardon, sir, for daring you to lay whip on me, — knowing your promise!”
Sir William scowled at me.
“To prove it,” I went on, desperately, still trembling at the word “coward,” “I will give you leave to drive a fish-hook through my hand and cut it out with your knife; and I’ll laugh at the pain — as did that Mohawk lad when you cut the pike-hook out of his hand!”
“What the devil have I to do with your fish-hook and your Mohawks!” shouted Sir William, with a hearty oath.
Mortified, I shrank back while he fumed and cracked his whip and swore I was doomed to folly and a most vicious future.
“You assume the airs of a man,” he roared— “you with your sixteen unbirched years — you with your gross ignorance and grosser impudence! A vicious lad, a bad, undutiful, sullen lad, ever at odds with the others, never diligent save with the fishing-rod — a lazy, quarrelsome rustic, a swaggering, forest-running fellow, without the polish or the presence of a gentleman’s son! Shame on you!”
I set my teeth and shut both eyes, opening one, however, when I heard him move.
“I’ll polish you yet!” he said, with an oath; “I’ll polish you, and I’ll temper you like the edge on a Mohawk hatchet.”
“One red belt,” I added, impudently, meaning that I defied him.
“Which you will cover with a white belt before the fires in this hearth are dead,” he answered, gulping down the disrespect.
He laid his heavy hand on the door, then, turning, he bade me write with the chalk on the slate the history of Proserpine in verse, and await his further pleasure.
Sir William had shut the school-room door upon me. I listened. Had he locked it I should have kicked the panelling out into the hallway.
Standing there alone in the school-room beside the great slate, I read in dull anger the names of those who, tasks ended, were now free of the hateful place; here Esk had left his name above his sum, all smears; here fat Peter had written seven times, “David did die and so must I.”
With a bit of buckskin I dusted these scrawls from the slate, slowly, for I was not yet of a mind to begin my task.
I opened the window behind me. A sweet spring wind was blowing. Putting up my nose to scent it, I saw the sky bluer than a
heron’s egg, and a little white cloud a-sailing up there all alone.
That year the snow had gone out in April, and the same day the blue-birds flew into the sheep-fold. Now, on this second day of May, robins were already running over the ground below the school-room window, a-tilting for worms like jack-snipes along the creek.
Folding my arms to lean on the sill, I could see a corner of the northern block-house, with a soldier standing guard below in the sunshine, and I peppered him well with spit-balls, he being a friend of mine.
His mystified anger brought but temporary pleasure to me. Behind me lay that villanous slate, and my task to deal with the ravishment of that silly creature, Proserpine — and that, too, in verse! Had it been my long-legged Diana with her view-halloo and her hounds and shooting her arrows like a Huron squaw from the lakes! But no! — my business lay with a puny, cowslip-pulling maid who had strayed from the stockade and got her deserts, too, for aught I know.
Leaning there in the breezy casement I tried to forget the jade, attentively observing the birds and the young fruit-trees, Sir William’s pride. Now that the snow had melted I could see where mice, working under the crust in midwinter, had fatally girdled two young apple-trees; and I was sorry, loving apples as I do.
For a while my mind was occupied in devising a remedy against girdling; then the distant sparkle of the river caught my eye, and straightway my thoughts slipped into their natural channel, smoothly as the river flowed there in the sunshine; and I laid my plans for the taking of that bull-trout who had so grossly deceived and flouted me the past year — ay, not only me, but also that master of the craft, Sir William himself.
Thinking of Sir William, my lagging thoughts drifted back again to my desk. It madded me to pine here, making rhymes, while outside the sweet wind whispered: “Come out, Michael — come out into the green delight!”
Now Sir William had bidden me, not only to write my verses, but also to bide here awaiting his good pleasure. That meant he would return by-and-by. I had no stomach for further quarrels. Besides, I was ashamed of my disrespect and temper, and indeed, selfish, idle beast that I was, I did truly love Sir William because I knew he was the greatest man of our times — and because he loved me.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 81
