Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “Her heart is white!”

  And not one hand would have been raised to prevent the sacrificial test which must follow and end inevitably in a dreadful death.

  Mount and Elerson, moved by a rare delicacy, turned and walked noiselessly away towards the hill-top.

  “Wake her,” I said to Sir George.

  He knelt beside her, looking long into her face; then touched her lightly on the hand. She opened her eyes, looked up at him gravely, then rose to her feet, steadying herself on his bent arm.

  “Where have you been?” she asked, glancing anxiously from him to me. There was the faintest ring of alarm in her voice, a tint of color on cheek and temple. And Sir George, lying like a gentleman, answered: “We have searched the trails in vain for you. Where have you lain hidden, child?”

  Her lips parted in an imperceptible sigh of relief; the pallor of weariness returned.

  “I have been upon your business, Sir George,” she said, looking down at her mud-stained garments. Her arms fell to her side; she made a little gesture with one limp hand. “You see,” she said, “I promised you.” Then she turned, mounting the steps, pensively; and, in the doorway, paused an instant, looking back at him over her shoulder.

  And all that night, lying close to the verge of slumber, I heard Sir George pacing the stony yard under the great stars; while the riflemen, stretched beside the hearth, snored heavily, and the death-watch ticked in the wall.

  At dawn we three were afield, nosing the Sacandaga trail to count the tracks leading to the north — the dread footprints of light, swift feet which must return one day bringing to the Mohawk Valley an awful reckoning.

  At noon we returned. I wrote out my report and gave it to Sir George. We spoke little together. I did not see Magdalen Brant again until they bade me adieu.

  And now it was two o’clock in the afternoon; Sir George had already set out with Magdalen Brant to Varicks’ by way of Stoner’s; Elerson and Mount stood by the door, waiting to pilot me towards Gansevoort’s distant outposts; the noon sunshine filled the deserted house and fell across the table where I sat, reading over my instructions from Schuyler ere I committed the paper to the flames.

  So far, no thanks to myself, I had carried out my orders in all save the apprehension of Walter Butler. And now I was uncertain whether to remain and hang around the council-fire waiting for an opportunity to seize Butler, or whether to push on at once, warn Gansevoort at Stanwix that St. Leger’s motley army had set out from Oswego, and then return to trap Butler at my leisure.

  I crumpled the despatch into a ball and tossed it onto the live coals in the fireplace; the paper smoked, caught fire, and in a moment more the black flakes sank into the ashes.

  “Shall we burn the house, sir?” asked Mount, as I came to the doorway and looked out.

  I shook my head, picked up rifle, pouch, and sack, and descended the steps. At the same instant a man appeared at the foot of the hill, and Elerson waved his hand, saying: “Here’s that mad Irishman, Tim Murphy, back already.”

  Murphy came jauntily up the hill, saluted me with easy respect, and drew from his pouch a small packet of papers which he handed me, nodding carelessly at Elerson and staring hard at Mount as though he did not recognize him.

  “Phwat’s this?” he inquired of Elerson— “a Frinch cooroor, or maybe a Sac shquaw in a buck’s shirrt?”

  “Don’t introduce him to me,” said Mount to Elerson; “he’ll try to kiss my hand, and I hate ceremony.”

  “Quit foolin’,” said Elerson, as the two big, over-grown boys seized each other and began a rough-and-tumble frolic. “You’re just cuttin’ capers, Tim, becuz you’ve heard that we’re takin’ the war-path — quit pullin’ me, you big Irish elephant! Is it true we’re takin’ the war-path?”

  “How do I know?” cried Murphy; but the twinkle in his blue eyes betrayed him; “bedad, ’tis home to the purty lasses we go this blessed day, f’r the crool war is over, an’ the King’s got the pip, an—”

  “Murphy!” I said.

  “Sorr,” he replied, letting go of Mount and standing at a respectful slouch.

  “Did you get Beacraft there in safety?”

  “I did, sorr.”

  “Any trouble?”

  “None, sorr — f’r me.”

  I opened the first despatch, looking at him keenly.

  “Do we take the war-path?” I asked.

  “We do, sorr,” he said, blandly. “McDonald’s in the hills wid the McCraw an’ten score renegades. Wan o’ their scouts struck old man Schell’s farm an’ he put buckshot into sivinteen o’ them, or I’m a liar where I shtand!”

  “I knew it,” muttered Elerson to Mount. “Where you see smoke, there’s fire; where you see Murphy, there’s trouble. Look at the grin on him — and his hatchet shined up like a Cayuga’s war-axe!”

  I opened the despatch; it was from Schuyler, countermanding his instructions for me to go to Stanwix, and directing me to warn every settlement in the Kingsland district that McDonald and some three hundred Indians and renegades were loose on the Schoharie, and that their outlying scouts had struck Broadalbin.

  I broke the wax of the second despatch; it was from Harrow, briefly thanking me for the capture of Beacraft, adding that the man had been sent to Albany to await court-martial.

  That meant that Beacraft must hang; a most disagreeable feeling came over me, and I tore open the third and last paper, a bulky document, and read it:

  “VARICK MANOR,

  “June the 2d.

  “An hour to dawn.

  “In my bedroom I am writing to you the adieu I should have said the night you left. Murphy, a rifleman, goes to you with despatches in an hour: he will take this to you, ... wherever you are.

  “I saw the man you sent in. Father says he must surely hang. He was so pale and silent, he looked so dreadfully tired — and I have been crying a little — I don’t know why, because all say he is a great villain.

  “I wonder whether you are well and whether you remember me.” (“me” was crossed out and “us” written very carefully.) “The house is so strange without you. I go into your room sometimes. Cato has pressed all your fine clothes. I go into your room to read. The light is very good there. I am reading the Poems of Pansard. You left a fern between the pages to mark the poem called ‘Our Deaths’; did you know it? Do you admire that verse? It seems sad to me. And it is not true, either. Lovers seldom die together.” (This was crossed out, and the letter went on.) “Two people who love—” (“love” was crossed out heavily and the line continued)— “two friends seldom die at the same instant. Otherwise there would be no terror in death.

  “I forgot to say that Isene, your mare, is very well. Papa and the children are well, and Ruyven a-pestering General Schuyler to make him a cornet in the legion of horse, and Cecile, all airs, goes about with six officers to carry her shawl and fan.

  “For me — I sit with Lady Schuyler when I have the opportunity. I love her; she is so quiet and gentle and lets me sit by her for hours, perfectly silent. Yesterday she came into your room, where I was sitting, and she looked at me for a long time — so strangely — and I asked her why, and she shook her head. And after she had gone I arranged your linen and sprinkled lavender among it.

  “You see there is so little to tell you, except that in the afternoon some Senecas and Tories shot at one of our distant tenants, a poor man, one Christian Schell; and he beat them off and killed eleven, which was very brave, and one of the soldiers made a rude song about it, and they have been singing it all night in their quarters. I heard them from your room — where I sometimes sleep — the air being good there; and this is what they sang:

  “‘A story, a story

  Unto you I will tell,

  Concerning a brave hero,

  One Christian Schell.

  “‘Who was attacked by the savages.

  And Tories, it is said;

  But for this attack

  Most freely they bled.

&
nbsp; “‘He fled unto his house

  For to save his life.

  Where he had left his arms

  In care of his wife.

  “‘They advanced upon him

  And began to fire,

  But Christian with his blunderbuss

  Soon made them retire.

  “‘He wounded Donald McDonald

  And drew him in the door,

  Who gave an account

  Their strength was sixty-four.

  “‘Six there was wounded

  And eleven there was killed

  Of this said party,

  Before they quit the field.’

  “And I think there are a hundred other verses, which I will spare you; not that I forget them, for the soldiers sang them over and over, and I had nothing better to do than to lie awake and listen.

  “So that is all. I hear my messenger moving about below; I am to drop this letter down to him, as all are asleep, and to open the big door might wake them.

  “Good-bye.

  “It was not my rifleman, only the sentry. They keep double watch since the news came about Schell. “Good-bye. I am thinking of you.

  “DOROTHY.

  “Postscript. — Please make my compliments and adieux to Sir George Covert.

  “Postscript. — The rifleman is here; he is whistling like a whippoorwill. I must say good-bye. I am mad to go with him. Do not forget me!

  “My memories are so keen, so pitilessly real, I can scarce endure them, yet cling to them the more desperately.

  “I did not mean to write this — truly I did not! But here, in the dusk, I can see your face just as it looked when you said good-bye! — so close that I could take it in my arms despite my vows and yours!

  “Help me to reason; for even God cannot, or will not, help me; knowing, perhaps, the dreadful after-life He has doomed me to for all eternity. If it is true that marriages are made in heaven, where was mine made? Can you answer? I cannot. (The whimper of the whippoorwill again!) Dearest, good-bye. Where my body lies matters nothing so that you hold my soul a little while. Yet, even of that they must rob you one day. Oh, if even in dying there is no happiness, where, where does it abide? Three places only have I heard of: the world, heaven, and hell. God forgive me, but I think the last could cover all.

  “Say that you love me! Say it to the forest, to the wind. Perhaps my soul, which follows you, may hear if you only say it. (Once more the ghost-call of the whippoorwill!) Dear lad, good-bye!”

  XVII

  THE FLAG

  Day after day our little scout of four traversed the roads and forests of the Kingsland district, warning the people at the outlying settlements and farms that the county militia-call was out, and that safety lay only in conveying their families to the forts and responding to the summons of authority without delay.

  Many obeyed; some rash or stubborn settlers prepared to defend their homes. A few made no response, doubtless sympathizing with their Tory friends who had fled to join McDonald or Sir John Johnson in the North.

  Rumors were flying thick, every settlement had its full covey; every cross-road tavern buzzed with gossip. As we travelled from settlement to settlement, we, too, heard something of what had happened in distant districts: how the Schoharie militia had been called out; how one Huetson had been captured as he was gathering a band of Tories to join the Butlers; how a certain Captain Ball had raised a company of sixty-three royalists at Beaverdam and was fled to join Sir John; how Captain George Mann, of the militia, refused service, declaring himself a royalist, and disbanding his company; how Adam Crysler had thrown his important influence in favor of the King, and that the inhabitants of Tryon County were gloomy and depressed, seeing so many respectable gentlemen siding with the Tories.

  We learned that the Schoharie and Schenectady militia had refused to march unless some provision was made to protect their families in their absence; that Congress had therefore established a corps of invalids, consisting of eight companies, each to have one captain, two lieutenants, two ensigns, five sergeants, six corporals, two drums, two fifes, and one hundred men; one company to be stationed in Schoharie, and to be called the “Associate Exempts”; that three forts for the protection of the Schoharie Valley were nearly finished, called the Upper, Lower, and Middle forts.

  More sinister still were the rumors from the British armies: Burgoyne was marching on Albany from the north with the finest train of artillery ever seen in America; St. Leger was moving from the west; McDonald had started already, flinging out his Indian scouts as far as Perth and Broadalbin, and Sir Henry Clinton had gathered a great army at New York and was preparing to sweep the Hudson Valley from Fishkill to Albany. And the focus of these three armies and of Butler’s, Johnson’s, and McDonald’s renegades and Indians was this unhappy county of Tryon, torn already with internal dissensions; unarmed, unprovisioned, unorganized, almost ungarrisoned.

  I remember, one rainy day towards sunset, coming into a small hamlet where, in front of the church, some score of farmers and yokels were gathered, marshalled into a single line. Some were armed with rifles, some with blunderbusses, some with spears and hay-forks. None wore uniform. As we halted to watch the pathetic array, their fifer and drummer wheeled out and marched down the line, playing Yankee Doodle. Then the minister laid down his blunderbuss and, facing the company, raised his arms in prayer, invoking the “God of Armies” as though he addressed his supplication before a vast armed host.

  Murphy strove to laugh, but failed; Mount muttered vaguely under his breath; Elerson gnawed his lips and bent his bared head while the old man finished his prayer to “The God of Armies!” then picked up his blunderbuss and limped to his place in the scanty file.

  And again I remember one fresh, sweet morning late in June, standing with my riflemen at a toll-gate to see some four hundred Tryon County militia marching past on their way to Unadilla on the Susquehanna, where Brant, with half a thousand savages, had consented to a last parley. Stout, wholesome lads they were, these Tryon County men; wearing brown and yellow uniforms cut smartly, and their officers in the Continental buff and blue, riding like regulars; curved swords shining and their epaulets striking fire in the sunshine.

  “Palatines!” said Mount, standing to salute as an officer rode by. “That’s General Herkimer — old Honikol Herkimer — with his hard, weather-tanned jaws and the devil lurking under his eyebrows; and that young fellow in his smart uniform is Colonel Cox, old George Klock’s son-in-law; and yonder rides Colonel Harper! Oh, I know ‘em, sir; I was not in these parts for nothing in ‘74 and ‘75!”

  The drums and fifes were playing “Unadilla” as the regiment marched past; and my riflemen, lounging along the roadside, exchanged pleasantries with the hardy Palatines, or greeted acquaintances in their impudent, bantering manner:

  “Hello! What’s this Low Dutch regiment? Say, Han Yost, the pigs has eat off your queue-band! Bedad, they marrch like Albany ducks in fly-time! Musha, thin, luk at the fat dhrummer laad! Has he apples in thim two cheeks, Jack? I dunnoa! Hey, there goes Wagner! Hello, Wagner! Wisha, laad, ye’re cross-eyed an’ shquint-lipped a-playin’ yere fife hind-end furrst!”

  And the replies from the dusty, brown ranks, steadily passing:

  “Py Gott! dere’s Jack Mount! Look alretty, Jacob! Hello, Elerson! Ish dot true you patch your breeches mit second-hand scalps you puy in Montreal? Vat you vas doing down here, Tim Murphy? Oh, joost look at dem devils of Morgan! Sure, Emelius, dey joost come so soon as ve go. Ya! Dey come to kiss our girls, py cricky! Uf I catch you round my girl alretty, Dave Elerson—”

  “Silence! Silence in the ranks!” sang out an officer, riding up. The brown column passed on, the golden dust hanging along its flanks. Far ahead we could still hear the drums and fifes playing “Unadilla.”

  “They ought to have a flag; a flag’s a good thing to fight for,” said Mount, looking after them. “I fought for the damned British rag when I was fifteen. Lord! it makes me boil to think that they’ve for
got what we did for ‘em!”

  “We Virginians carried a flag at the siege o’ Boston,” observed Elerson. “It was a rattlesnake on a white ground, with the motto, ‘Don’t tread on me!’”

  I told them of the new flag that our Congress had chosen, describing it in detail. They listened attentively, but made no comment.

  It was on these expeditions that I learned something of these rough riflemen which I had not suspected — their passionate devotion to the forest. What the sea is to mariners, the endless, uncharted wilderness was to these forest runners; they loved and hated it, they suspected and trusted it. A forest voyage finished, they steered for the nearest port with all the eager impatience of sea-cloyed sailors. Yet, scarcely were they anchored in some frontier haven than they fell to dreaming of the wilderness, of the far silences in the trackless sea of trees, of the winds ruffling the forest’s crests till ten thousand trees toss their leaves, silver side up, as white-caps flash, rolling in long patches on a heaving waste of waters.

  Yet, in all those weeks I never heard one word or hint of that devotion expressed or implied, not one trace of appreciation, not one shadow of sentiment. If I ventured to speak of the vast beauty of the woods, there was no response from my shy companions; one appeared to vie with another in concealing all feeling under a careless mask and a bantering manner.

  Once only can I recall a voluntary expression of pleasure in beauty; it came from Jack Mount, one blue night in July, when the heavens flashed under summer stars till the vaulted skies seemed plated solidly with crusted gems.

  “Them stars look kind of nice,” he said, then colored with embarrassment and spat a quid of spruce-gum into the camp-fire.

  Yet humanity demands some outlet for accumulated sentiment, and these men found it in the dirge-like songs and laments and rude ballads of the wilderness, which I think bear a close resemblance to the sailor-men’s songs, in words as well as in the dolorous melodies, fit only for the scraping whine of a two-string fiddle in a sugar-camp.