Complete weird tales of.., p.1127
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1127
And if ever they fed upon anything other than fish and flesh, I do not know; for I never saw aught growing in their garden, save a dozen potato-vines and a stray corn-stalk full o’ worms.
Around the log house in the clearing already were gathered a dozen or sixteen men, the greater number wearing the tow-cloth rifle-frock of the district militia.
Other men began to arrive as we came up. Everywhere great, sinewy hands were extended to greet us; old Henry Stoner, sprawling under an apple tree, saluted us with a harsh pleasantry; and I saw the gold rings shining in his ears.
Nick came over to where I stood, full of that devil’s humour which so often urged him into — and led him safely out of — endless scrapes betwixt sun-up and moon-set every day in the year.
“It’s Sir John we’re to take, I hear,” he said to me with a grin. “They say the lying louse of a Baronet has been secretly plotting with Guy Johnson and the Butlers in Canada. What wonder, then, that our Provincial Congress has its belly full of these same Johnstown Tories and must presently spew them up. And they say we are to march on the Hall at noon and hustle our merry Baronet into Johnstown jail.”
I felt myself turning red.
“Is it not decent to give Sir John the benefit of doubt until we learn why that bell is ringing?” said I.
“There we go!” cried Nick Stoner. “Just because your father loved Sir William and you may wear gold lace on your hat, you feel an attachment to all quality. Hearken to me, John Drogue: Sir William is dead and the others are as honourable as a pack of Canada wolves.” He climbed to the top of the rickety rail fence and squatted there. “The landed gentry of Tryon County are a pack of bloody wolves,” said he, lighting his cob pipe;— “Guy Johnson, Colonel Claus, Walter Butler, every one of them — every one! — only excepting you, John Drogue! Look, now, where they’re gathering in the Canadas — Johnsons, Butlers, McDonalds, — the whole Tory pack — with Brant and his Mohawks stole away, and Little Abraham like to follow with every warrior from the Lower Castle!
“And do you suppose that Sir John has no interest in all this Tory treachery? Do you suppose that this poisonous Baronet is not in constant and secret communication with Canada?”
I looked elsewhere sullenly. Nick took me by the arm and drew me up to a seat beside him on the rail fence.
“Let’s view it soberly and fairly, Jack,” says he, tapping his palm with the stem of his pipe, through which smoke oozed. “Let’s view it from the start. Begin from the Boston business. Now, then! George the Virginian got the Red-coats cooped up in Boston. That’s the Yankee answer to too much British tyranny.
“We, in the Northland, looked to our landed gentry to stand by us, lead us, and face the British King who aims to turn us into slaves.
“We called on our own governing class to protect us in our ancient liberties, — to arm us, lead us in our own defense! We begged Guy Johnson to hold back his savages so that the Iroquois Confederacy should remain passive and take neither the one side nor t’other.
“I grant you that Sir William in his day did loyally his uttermost to quiet the Iroquois and hold his own Mohawks tranquil when Cresap was betrayed by Dunmore, and the first breeze from this storm which is now upon us was already stirring the Six Nations into restlessness.”
“Sir William,” said I, “was the greatest and the best of all Americans.”
He said gravely: “Sir William is dead. May God rest his soul. But this is the situation that confronts us here this day on the frontier: We appealed to the landed gentry of Tryon. They sneered at us, and spoke of us as rebels, and have used us very scornfully — all excepting yourself, John!
“They forced Alec White on us as Sheriff, and he broke up our meetings. They strove by colour of law and by illegal force to stamp out in Tryon County the last spark of liberty, of manhood among us. God knows what we have endured these last few years from the landed gentry of Tryon! — what we have put up with and stomached since the first shot was fired at Lexington!
“And what has become of our natural protectors and leaders! Where is the landed gentry of County Tryon at this very hour? Except you, John Drogue, where are our gentlemen of the Northland?”
“Gone,” said I soberly.
“Gone to Canada with the murderous Indians they were supposed to hold neutral! Guy Park stands empty and locked. It is an accursed place! Guy Johnson is fled with every Tory desperado and every Indian he could muster! May God damn him!
“Old John Butler followed; and is brigading malcontents in Canada. Butlersbury stands deserted. May every devil in hell haunt that house! Young Walter Butler is gone with many of our old neighbors of Tryon; and at Niagara he is forming a merciless legion to return and cut our throats.
“And Colonel Claus is gone, and McDonald, the bloody thief! — with his kilted lunatics and all his Scotch banditti — —”
“But Sir John remains,” said I quietly.
“Jack! Are you truly so blinded by your caste! Did not you yourself answer the militia call last winter and march with our good General to disarm Sir John’s popish Highlanders! And even then they lied — and Sir John lied — for they hid their broad-swords and pikes! and delivered them not when they paraded to ground their muskets!”
“Sir John has given his parole,” I repeated stubbornly.
“Sir John breaks it every hour of the day!” cried Nick. “And he will break it again when we march to take him. Do you think he won’t learn of our coming? Do you suppose he will stay at the Hall, which he has pledged his honour to do?”
“His lady is still there.”
“With his lady I have no quarrel,” rejoined Nick. “I know her to be a very young, very wilful, very bitter, and very unhappy Tory; and she treats us plain folk like dirt under her satin shoon. But for that I care nothing. I pity her because she is the wife of that cold, sleek beast, Sir John. I pity her because she is gently bred and frail and lonely and stuffed with childish pride o’ race. I pity her lot there in the great Hall, with her girl companions and her servants and her slaves. And I pity her because everybody in County Tryon, excepting only herself, knows that Sir John cares nothing for her, and that Claire Putnam of Tribes Hill is Sir John’s doxy! — and be damned to him! And you think such a man will not break his word?
“He broke his vows to wife and mistress alike. Why should he keep his vows to men?” He slid to the ground as he spoke, and I followed, for our three drummers had formed rank and were drawing their sticks from their cross-belts. Our fifers, also, lined up behind them; and Nick and his young brother, John, took places with them.
“Fall in! Fall in!” cried Joe Scott, our captain; and everybody ran with their packs and rifles to form in double ranks of sixteen files front while the drums rolled like spring thunder, filling the woods with their hollow sound, and the fifes shrilled like the swish of rain through trees.
Standing at ease between Dries Bowman and Baltus Weed, I answered to the roll call. Some among us lighted pipes and leaned on our long rifles, chatting with neighbors; others tightened belts and straps, buttoned spatter-dashes, or placed a sprig of hemlock above the black and white cockades on their felt hats.
Balty Weed, who lived east of me, a thin fellow with red rims to his eyes and dry, sparse hair tied in a queue with a knot of buckskin, asked me in his stealthy way what I thought about our present business, and if our Provincial Congress had not, perhaps, unjustly misjudged Sir John.
I replied cautiously. I had never trusted Balty because he frequented taverns where few friends to liberty cared to assemble; and he was far too thick with Philip and John Helmer and with Charlie Cady to suit my taste.
We, in the little hamlet of Fonda’s Bush, were scarce thirty families, all counted; and yet, even here in this trackless wilderness, out of which each man had hewed for himself a patch of garden and a stump pasture along the little river Kennyetto, the bitter quarrel had long smouldered betwixt Tory and Patriot — King’s man and so-called Rebel.
And this was the Mohawk country. And the Mohawks stood for the King of England.
The road, I say, ended here; but there was a Mohawk path through twenty odd miles of untouched forest to those healing springs called Saratoga.
Except for this path and a deep worn war-trail north to the Sacandaga, which was the Iroquois road to Canada, and except for the wood road to Sir William’s Mayfield and Fish House settlements, we of Fonda’s Bush were utterly cut off. Also, save for the new Block House at Mayfield, we were unprotected in a vast wilderness which embodied the very centre of the Mohawk country.
True, north of us stood that little pleasure house built for his hour of leisure by Sir William, and called “The Summer House.”
Painted white and green, it stood on a hard ridge jutting out into those dismal, drowned lands which we call the Great Vlaie. But it was not fortified.
Also, to the north, lay the Fish House, a hunting lodge of Sir William. But these places were no protection for us. On the other hand, they seemed a menace; for Tories, it had been rumoured, were ever skulking along the Vlaie and the Sacandaga; and for aught we knew, these buildings were already designed to be made into block-houses and to be garrisoned by our enemies as soon as the first rifle-shot cracked out in the cause of liberty.
* * *
Our company of the Mohawk Regiment numbered thirty-six rifles — all that now remained of the old company, three-fourths of which had already deserted to the Canadas with Butler. All our officers had fled; Joe Scott of Maxon, formerly a sergeant, now commanded us; Benjamin de Luysnes was our lieutenant; Dries Bowman and Phil Helmer our sergeants — both already suspected.
Well, we got away from Stoner’s, marching in double file, and only the little creatures of the forest to hear our drums and fifes.
But the old discipline which had obtained in all our Tryon regiments when Sir William was our Major General and the landed gentry our officers seemed gone; a dull sense of bewilderment reigned, confusing many among us, as when leaderless men begin to realize how they had depended upon a sturdy staff now broken forever.
We marched with neither advanced guard nor flankers for the first half mile; then Joe Scott halted us and made Nick Stoner put away his beloved fife and sent him out on our right flank where the forest was heavy.
Me he selected to scout forward on the left — a dirty job where alders and willows grew thick above the bogs.
But why in God’s name our music played to advertise our coming I can not guess, for our men needed no heartening, having courage and resolution, only the lack of officers causing them any anxiety at all.
On the left flank of the little column I kept very easily in touch because of this same silly drumming and fifing. And I was glad when we came to high ground and breasted the hills which lead to that higher plateau, over which runs the road to Johnstown.
Plodding along in the bush, keeping a keen watch for any enemy who might come in paint or in scarlet coat, and the far rhythm of our drums thumping dully in my ears, I wondered whether other companies of my regiment were marching on Johnstown, and if other Tryon regiments — or what was left of them — were also afoot that day.
Was this, then, the beginning of the war in the Northland? And, when we made a prisoner of Sir John, would all the dusky forests glow with scarlet war-paint and scarlet coats?
Today birds sang. Tomorrow the terrific panther-slogan of the Iroquois might break out into hell’s own uproar among these purple hills.
Was this truly the beginning? Would these still, leafy trails where the crested partridge strutted witness bloody combats between old neighbors — all the horrors of a fratricidal war?
Would the painted men of the woods hold their hands while Tory and patriot fought it out? Or was this utter and supreme horror to be added to this unnatural conflict?
Reflecting very seriously upon these matters, I trotted forward, rifle a-trail, and saw nothing living in the woods save a big hare or two in the alders, and the wild brown poultry of the woods, that ran to cover or rose into thunderous flight among the thickets.
* * *
About four o’clock came to me Godfrey Shew, of Fish House, a private soldier like myself, with news of a halt on the Johnstown road, and orders that I eat a snack and rest in my tracks.
He told me that a company of horse from Albany was out scouting along the Mohawk, and that a column of three thousand men under Colonel Dayton were marching on Johnstown and had passed Schenectady about noon.
Other news he had none, excepting that our company was to remain where we had halted, in order to stop the road to Fonda’s Bush and Saratoga, in case Sir John should attempt to retire this way.
“Well, Godfrey,” said I, “if Sir John truly turns out to be without shame and honour, and if he marches this way, there is like to be a lively time for us of the Bush, because Sir John has three hundred Highlanders to thirty odd of ourselves, and enough Borderers and Tory militia to double the count.”
“We all know that,” said Shew calmly, “and are not afraid.”
“Do you think our people mean to stand?”
“Yes,” said he simply.
A hot thrill of pride tingled my every vein. Suddenly I completely comprehended that these plain folk of Fonda’s Bush were my own people; that I was one of them; that, as they meant to stand for the ancient liberties of all Englishmen, now wickedly denied them, so I also meant to stand to the end.
And now, at last, I comprehended that I was in actual revolt against that King and against that nobility and gentry who were deserting us when we had so desperate need of them in this coming battle for human freedom in a slave-cursed world.
The cleavage had come at last; the Northland was clean split; the red livery of the King’s men had suddenly become a target for every honest rifle in Tryon.
“Godfrey,” I said, “the last chance for truce is passing as you and I stand here, — the last chance for any reconciliation and brotherly understanding between us and our Tory neighbors.”
“It is better that way,” he said, giving me a sombre look.
I nodded, but all the horror of civil war lay heavy in my heart and I thought of my many friends in Tryon who would wear the scarlet coat tomorrow, and whom I now must try to murder with my proper hands, lest they do the like for me.
Around us, where we were standing, a golden dusk reigned in the forest, into which, through the roof of green above, fell a long sunbeam, lighting the wooded aisle as a single candle on the altar gleams athwart the gloom of some still cathedral.
* * *
At five o’clock Godfrey and I had not moved from that silent place where we stood on watch, leaning upon our rifles.
Twice soldiers came to bid us keep close guard in these open woods which, being primeval, were clear of underbrush and deep with the brown carpet of dead leaves.
At last, toward six o’clock, we heard our drums rolling in the distance — signal to scout forward. I ran out among the great trees and started on toward Johnstown, keeping Godfrey in view on my left hand.
Very soon I came out of the forest on the edge of cleared land. Against the evening sky I saw the spires of Johnstown, stained crimson in the westering sun which was going down red as a cherry.
But what held me in spell was the sight that met my eyes across the open meadows, where moving ranks of musket-barrels glanced redly in the last gleam of sunset and the naked swords and gorgets of mounted officers glittered.
Godfrey Shew emerged from the edge of the forest on my left and stood knee deep in last year’s wild grass, one hand shading his eyes.
“What troops are those?” I shouted to him. “They look like the Continental Line!”
“It’s a reg’lar rig’ment,” he bawled, “but whose I know not!”
The clanking of their armament came clearly to my ears; the timing tap of their drum sounded nearer still.
“There can be no mistake,” I called out to Godfrey; “yonder marches a regiment of the New York line! We’re at war!”
We moved out across the pasture. I examined my flint and priming, and, finding all tight and bright, waded forward waist high, through last year’s ghostly golden-rod, ready for a quick shot if necessary.
The sun had gone down; a lilac-tinted dusk veiled the fields, through which the gay evening chirruping of the robins rang incessantly.
“There go our people!” shouted Godfrey.
I had already caught sight of the Fonda’s Bush Company filing between some cattle-bars to the left of us; and knew they must be making straight for Johnson Hall.
We shouldered our pieces and ran through the dead weeds to intercept them; but there was no need for haste, because they halted presently in some disorder; and I saw Joe Scott walking to and fro along the files, gesticulating.
And then, as Godfrey and I came up with them, we witnessed the first shameful exhibition of disorder that for so many months disgraced the militia of New York — a stupidity partly cowardly, partly treacherous, which at one time so incensed His Excellency the Virginian that he said they were, as a body, more detrimental than helpful to the cause, and proposed to disband them.
In the light of later events, I now realize that their apparent poltroonery arose not from individual cowardice. But these levies had no faith in their companies because every battalion was still full of Tories, nor had any regiment yet been purged.
Also, they had no confidence in their officers, who, for the greater part, were as inexperienced as they themselves. And I think it was because of these things that the New York militia behaved so contemptibly after the battle of Long Island, and in Tryon County, until the terrific trial by fire at Oriskany had burnt the dross out of us and left only the nobler metal.
* * *
