Complete weird tales of.., p.1126
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1126
“I am not afraid to go,” said she. But I think I saw her shudder; and her face seemed very still and white. Then Mrs. Bowman ran out of the house and caught the girl by her homespun shift.
“Come indoors!” she cried shrilly, “or will you have us all pulling war arrows out of our bodies while you stand blinking at the woods and gossiping with Jack Drogue?”
The girl shook herself free, and asked me again to take her to Cayadutta Lodge.
But I had no more time to argue, and I flung my rifle to my shoulder and started out across the cleared land.
Once I looked back. And I saw her still standing there, the rising sun bright on her tangled hair, and her naked feet shining like silver in the dew-wet grass.
By a spring path I hastened to the house of John Putman, and found him already gone and his family drawing water and fastening shutters.
His wife, Deborah, called to me saying that the Salisburys should be warned, and I told her that I had already spoken to the Bowmans.
“Your labour for your pains, John Drogue!” cried she. “The Bowmans are King’s people and need fear neither Tory nor Indian!”
“It is unjust to say so, Deborah,” I retorted warmly. “Dries Bowman is already on his way to answer the militia call!”
“Watch him!” she said, slamming the shutters; and fell to scolding her children, who, poor things, were striving at the well with dripping bucket too heavy for their strength.
So I drew the water they might need if, indeed, it should prove true that Little Abe’s Mohawks at the Lower Castle had painted themselves and were broken loose; and then I ran back along the spring path to the Salisbury’s, and found them already well bolted in, and their man gone to Stoner’s with rifle and pack.
And now comes Johnny Silver, who had ridden my mare from Varick’s, but had no news, all being tranquil along Frenchman’s Creek, and nobody able to say what the Block House bell was telling us.
“Did you stable Kaya?” I asked.
“Oui, mon garce! I have bolt her in tight!”
“Good heavens,” said I, “she can not remain bolted in to starve if I am sent on to Canada! Get you forward to Stoner’s house and say that I delay only to fetch my horse!”
The stout little French trapper flung his piece to his shoulder and broke into a dog-trot toward the west.
“Follow quickly, Sieur Jean!” he called gaily. “By gar, I have smell Iroquois war paint since ver’ long time already, and now I smell him strong as old dog fox!”
I turned and started back through the woods as swiftly as I could stride.
As I came in sight of my log house, I was astounded to see my mare out and saddled, and a woman setting foot to stirrup. As I sprang out of the edge of the woods and ran toward her, she wheeled Kaya, and I saw that it was the Caughnawaga wench in my saddle and upon my horse — her yellow hair twisted up and shining like a Turk’s gold turban above her bloodless face.
“What do you mean!” I cried in a fury. “Dismount instantly from that mare! Do you hear me?”
“I must ride to Caughnawaga!” she called out, and struck my mare with both heels so that the horse bounded away beyond my reach.
Exasperated, I knew not what to do, for I could not hope to overtake the mad wench afoot; and so could only shout after her.
However, she drew bridle and looked back; but I dared not advance from where I stood, lest she gallop out of hearing at the first step.
“This is madness!” I called to her across the field. “You do not know why that bell is ringing at Mayfield. A week since the Mohawks were talking to one another with fires on all these hills! There may be a war party in yonder woods! There may be more than one betwixt here and Caughnawaga!”
“I cannot desert Mr. Fonda at such a time,” said she with that same pale and frightened obstinacy I had encountered at Bowman’s.
“Do you wish to steal my horse!” I demanded.
“No, sir.... It is not meant so. If some one would guide me afoot I would be glad to return to you your horse.”
“Oh. And if not, then you mean to ride there in spite o’ the devil. Is that the situation?”
“Yes, sir.”
Had it been any man I would have put a bullet in him; and could have easily marked him where I pleased. Never had I been in colder rage; never had I felt so helpless. And every moment I was afeard the crazy girl would ride on.
“Will you parley?” I shouted.
“Parley?” she repeated. “How so, young soldier?”
“In this manner, then: I engage my honour not to seize your bridle or touch you or my horse if you will sit still till I come up with you.”
She sat looking at me across the fallow field in silence.
“I shall not use violence,” said I. “I shall try only to find some way to serve you, and yet to do my own duty, too.”
“Soldier,” she replied in a troubled voice, “is this the very truth you speak?”
“Have I not engaged my honour?” I retorted sharply.
She made no reply, but she did not stir as I advanced, though her brown eyes watched my every step.
When I stood at her stirrup she looked down at me intently, and I saw she was younger even than I had thought, and was made more like a smooth, slim boy than a woman.
“You are Penelope Grant, of Caughnawaga,” I said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“No, sir.”
I named myself, saying with a smile that none of my name had ever broken faith in word or deed.
“Now,” I continued, “that bell calls me to duty as surely as drum or trumpet ever summoned soldier since there were wars on earth. I must go to Stoner’s; I can not guide you to Caughnawaga through the woods or take you thither by road or trail. And yet, if I do not, you mean to take my horse.”
“I must.”
“And risk a Mohawk war party on the way?”
“I — must.”
“That is very brave,” said I, curbing my impatience, “but not wise. There are others of his kin to care for old Douw Fonda if war has truly come upon us here in Tryon County.”
“Soldier,” said she in her still voice, which I once thought had been made strange by fear, but now knew otherwise— “my honour, too, is engaged. Mr. Fonda, whom I serve, has made of me more than a servant. He uses me as a daughter; offers to adopt me; trusts his age and feebleness to me; looks to me for every need, every ministration....
“Soldier, I came to Dries Bowman’s last night with his consent, and gave him my word to return within a week. I came to Fonda’s Bush because Mr. Fonda desired me to visit the only family in America with whom I have the slightest tie of kinship — the Bowmans.
“But if war has come to us here in County Tryon, then instantly my duty is to this brave old gentleman who lives all alone in his house at Caughnawaga, and nobody except servants and black slaves to protect him if danger comes to the door.”
What the girl said touched me; nor could I discern in her anything of the coquetry which Nick Stoner’s story of her knitting and her ring of gallants had pictured for me.
Surely here was no rustic coquette to be flattered and courted and bedeviled by her betters — no country suck-thumb to sit a-giggling at her knitting, surfeited with honeyed words that meant destruction; — no wench to hang her head and twiddle apron while some pup of quality whispered in her ear temptations.
I said: “This is the better way. Listen. Ride my mare to Mayfield by the highway. If you learn there that the Lower Castle Indians have painted for war, there is no hope of winning through to Cayadutta Lodge. And of what use to Mr. Fonda would be a dead girl?”
“That is true,” she whispered.
“Very well. And if the Mohawks are loose along the river, then you shall remain at the Block House until it becomes possible to go on. There is no other way. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you engage to do this thing? And to place my horse in safety at the Mayfield fort?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then,” said I, “in my turn I promise to send aid to you at Mayfield, or come myself and take you to Cayadutta Lodge as soon as that proves possible. And I promise more; I shall endeavour to get word through to Mr. Fonda concerning your situation.”
She thanked me in that odd, still voice of hers. Her eyes had the starry look of a child’s — or of unshed tears.
“My mare will carry two,” said I cheerfully. “Let me mount behind you and set you on the Mayfield road.”
She made no reply. I mounted behind her, took the bridle from her chilled fingers, and spoke to Kaya very gaily. And so we rode across my sunlit glebe and across the sugar-bush, where the moist trail, full of ferns, stretched away toward Mayfield as straight as the bee flies.
I do not know whether it was because the wench was now fulfilling her duty, as she deemed it, and therefore had become contented in a measure, but when I dismounted she took the bridle with a glance that seemed near to a faint smile. But maybe it was her mouth that I thought fashioned in pleasant lines.
“Will you remember, soldier?” she asked, looking down at me from the saddle. “I shall wait some news of you at the Mayfield fort.”
“I shall not let you remain there long abandoned,” said I cheerily. “Be kind to Kaya. She has a tender mouth and an ear more sensitive still to a harsh word.”
The girl laid a hand flat on my mare’s neck and looked at me, the shy caress in her gesture and in her eyes.
Both were meant for my horse; and a quick kindness for this Scotch girl came into my heart.
“Take shelter at the Mayfield fort,” said I, “and be very certain I shall not forget you. You may gallop all the way on this soft wood-road. Will you care for Kaya at the fort when she is unsaddled?”
A smile suddenly curved her lips.
“Yes, John Drogue,” she answered, looking me in the eyes. And the next moment she was off at a gallop, her yellow hair loosened with the first bound of the horse, and flying all about her face and shoulders now, like sunshine flashing across windblown golden-rod.
Then, in her saddle, the girl turned and looked back at me, and sat so, still galloping, until she was out of sight.
And, as I stood there alone in the woodland road, I began to understand what Nick Stoner meant when he called this Scotch girl a disturber of men’s minds and a mistress — all unconscious, perhaps — of a very deadly art.
* * *
CHAPTER VIII
SHEEP AND GOATS
NOW, AS I came again to the forest’s edge and hastened along the wide logging road, to make up for moments wasted, I caught sight of two neighbors, John Putman and Herman Salisbury, walking ahead of me.
They wore the regimentals of our Mohawk Regiment of district militia, carried rifles and packs; and I smelled the tobacco from their pipes, which seemed pleasant though I had never learned to smoke.
I called to them; they heard me and waited.
“Well, John,” says Putman, as I came up with them, “this is like to be a sorry business for farmers, what with plowing scarce begun and not a seed yet planted in all the Northland, barring winter wheat.”
“You think we are to take the field in earnest this time?” I asked anxiously.
“It looks that way to me, Mr. Drogue. It’s a long, long road to liberty, lad; and I’m thinking we’re off at last.”
“He believes,” explained Salisbury, “that Little Abraham’s Mohawks are leaving the Lower Castle — which God prevent! — but I think this business is liker to be some new deviltry of Sir John’s.”
“Sir John gave his parole to General Schuyler,” said I, turning very red; for I was mortified that the honour of my caste should be so carelessly questioned.
“It is not unthinkable that Sir John might lie,” retorted Salisbury bluntly. “I knew his father. Well and good. I know the son, also.... But I suppose that gentlemen like yourself, Mr. Drogue, are ashamed to suspect the honour of any of their own class, — even an enemy.”
But Putman was plainer spoken, saying that in his opinion any Tory was likely to attempt any business, however dirty, and rub up his tarnished honour afterward.
I made him no answer; and we marched swiftly forward, each engaged with a multitude of serious and sombre thoughts.
A few moments later, chancing to glance behind me, stirred by what instinct I know not, I espied two neighbors, young John, son of Philip Helmer, and Charles Cady, of Fonda’s Bush, following us so stealthily and so closely that they might decently have hailed us had they been so minded.
Now, when they perceived that I had noticed them, they dodged into the bush, as though moved by some common impulse. Then they reappeared in the road. And, said I in a low voice to John Putman:
“Yonder comes slinking a proper pair o’ tree-cats to sniff us to our destination. If these two be truly of the other party, then they have no business at John Stoner’s.”
Putman and Salisbury both looked back. Said the one, grimly:
“They are not coming to answer the militia call; they have rifles but neither regimentals nor packs.”
Said the other: “I wish we were clean split at Fonda’s Bush, so that an honest man might know when ‘neighbor’ spells ‘traitor’ in low Dutch.”
“Some riddles are best solved by bullets,” muttered the other. “Who argues with wolves or plays cat’s-cradle with catamounts!”
Glancing again over my shoulder, I saw that the two behind us were mending their pace and must soon come up with us. And so they did, Putman giving them a civil good-day.
“Have you any news, John Drogue?” inquired young Helmer.
I replied that I had none to share with him, meaning only that I had no news at all. But Cady took it otherwise and his flat-featured face reddened violently, as though the pox were coming out on him.
And, “What the devil,” says he, “does this young, forest-running cockerel mean? And why should he not share his news with John Helmer here, — yes, or with me, too, by God, or yet with any true man in County Tryon?”
I said that I had not intended any such meaning; that he mistook me; and that I had aimed at no discourtesy to anybody.
“And safer for you, too!” retorted Cady in a loud and threatening tone. “A boy’s wisdom lies in his silence.”
“Johnny Helmer asked a question of me,” said I quietly. “I replied as best I knew how.”
“Yes, and I’ll ask a dozen questions if I like!” shouted Cady. “Don’t think to bully me or cast aspersions on my political complexion!”
“If,” said I, “your political complexion be no clearer than your natural one, God only can tell what ferments under your skin.”
At which he seemed so taken aback that he answered nothing; but Helmer urgently demanded to know what political views I pretended to carry.
“I wear mine on my back,” said I pleasantly, glancing around at both Helmer and Cady, who bore no packs on their backs in earnest of their readiness for service.
“You are a damned impudent boy!” retorted Cady, “whatever may be your politics or your complexion.”
Salisbury and Putman looked around at him in troubled silence, and he said no more for the moment. But Helmer’s handsome features darkened again: and, “I’ll not be put upon,” said he, “whatever Charlie Cady stomachs! Who is Jack Drogue to flaunt his pack and his politics under my nose!
“And,” he added, looking angrily at me, “by every natural right a gentleman should be a King’s man. So if your politics stink somewhat of Boston, you are doubly suspect as an ingrate to the one side and a favour-currying servant to the other!”
I said: “Had Sir William lived to see this day in Tryon, I think he, also, would be wearing his regimentals as I do, and to the same purpose.”
Cady burst into a jeering laugh: “Say as much to Sir John! Go to the Hall and say to Sir John that his father, had he lived, would this day be sending out a district militia call! Tell him that, young cockerel, if you desire a flogging at the guard-house.”
“You know more of floggings than do I,” said I quietly. Which stopt his mouth. For, despite my scarcity of years, I had given him a sound beating the year before, being so harassed and pestered by him because I had answered the militia-call on the day that General Schuyler marched up and disarmed Sir John’s Highlanders at the Hall.
Putman, beside whom I was marching, turned to me and said, loud enough for all to hear: “You are only a lad, John Drogue, but I bear witness that you display the patience and good temper of a grown man. For if Charlie Cady, here, had picked on me as he has on you, he sure had tasted my rifle-butt before now!”
“Neighbors must bear with one another in such times,” said I, “and help each other stamp down the earth where the war-axe lies buried.”
And, “Damn you!” shouts Cady at a halt, “I shall not stir a step more to be insulted. I shall not budge one inch, bell or no bell, call or no call! — —”
But Helmer dropped to the rear and got him by the elbow and pulled him forward; and I heard them whispering together behind us as we hastened on.
Herman Salisbury said: “A pair of real tree-cats, old Tom and little Kit! I’m in half a mind to turn them back!” And he swung his brown rifle from the shoulder and let it drop to the hollow of his left arm — an insult and a menace to any man.
“They but answer their nature, which is to nose about and smell out what’s a-frying,” growled Putman. “Shall we turn them back and be done with them? It will mean civil war in Fonda’s Bush.”
“Watched hens never lay,” said I. “Let them come with us. While they remain under our eyes the stale old plan they brood will addle like a cluck-egg.”
Salisbury nodded meaningly:
“So that I can see my enemy,” growled he, “I have no care concerning him. But let him out o’ sight and I fret like a chained beagle.”
As he finished speaking we came into Stoner’s clearing, which was but a thicket of dead weed-stalks in a fallow field fenced by split rails. Fallow, indeed, lay all the Stoner clearing, save for a patch o’ hen-scratched garden at the log-cabin’s dooryard; for old Henry Stoner and his forest-running sons were none too fond of dallying with plow and hoe while rifle and fish-pole rested across the stag-horn’s crotch above the chimney-piece.
