Complete weird tales of.., p.114
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 114
That he had instead come to us, braving all dangers, losing indeed all his comrades, on this mission of peace, most splendidly attested to the power and influence of Sir William among these savages whose first instinct is to draw the hatchet and begin the horrid vengeance which they consider their right when unjustly molested.
It is seldom the custom to reply to a speech before the following day. Custom and tradition rule among the Six Nations. Deliberation and profound reflection they give to all spokesmen who petition them, and they require it in turn, regarding with suspicion and contempt a hasty reply, which, they consider, indicates either premeditated treachery, or a shallow mind incapable of weighty and mature reflection.
I was prepared, therefore, when Sir William, holding in his right hand the three belts of wampum, rose and thanked the Cayuga for his talk, praising him and his tribe for resorting to arbitration instead of the hatchet, and promising an answer on the morrow.
The Cayuga listened in silence, then resuming his blanket turned on his heel and passed slowly and noiselessly from the room, leaving Sir William standing beside the arm-chair, and me erect in the embrasure of the casement.
Now, for the first time in my life, I saw a trace of physical decline in my guardian. His hand, holding the belts, had fallen a-trembling; he made a feeble gesture for me to be seated, and sank back into his arm-chair, listless eyes on the floor, absently running his fingers over the polished belts.
“At sixty,” he said, as though to himself, “strong men should be in that mellow prime to which a sober life conducts.”
After a moment he went on: “My life has been sober and without excess — but hard! very hard! I am an old man; a tired old man.”
Looking up to meet my eyes, he smiled, watching the sympathy which twitched my face.
“All these wars! All these wars! Thirty years of war!” 53 he murmured, caressing the belts and letting them slip through his fingers like smooth shining serpents. “War with the French, war with the Maquas, the Hurons, the Shawanese, the Ojibways! War in the Canadas, war in the Carolinas, war east and west and north and south! And — I am tired.”
He flung the slippery belts to the floor, where they twisted and coiled up in a heap.
“I have worked with my hands,” he said. “This land has drunk the sweat of my body. I have not spared myself in sickness or in health. My eyes are dim; I have used them by day, by starlight, by the glimmer of moons long dead, by candle-wood, by torch, by the flicker of smoke from green fires.
“My arms are tired; I have hewn forests away; my limbs ache; I have journeyed far through snow, through heat, from the Canadas to the Gulf — all my life I have journeyed on business for other men — for men I have never seen, and shall never see — men yet to be born!”
There came a flush of earnest colour into his face. He leaned forward towards me, elbow resting on the table, hand outstretched.
“Why, look you, Michael,” he said, with childlike eagerness; “I found a wilderness and I leave a garden! Look at the valley! Can England grow such grain? Look at Tryon County! Look at this Province of New York? Ay — look farther — wherever my Indians have set their boundaries! There are roads, lad, roads where I found runways; turnpikes where I followed Mohawk trails; mills turning where the wild-cat squatted, fishing with big flat paws! Lad, you cannot recall it, yet this village was but a carrying-place when I came. Look at it; look from the window, lad! Is it not fair and pretty to the eye? One hundred and eighty families! Three churches, counting my new stone church; a free school, a court-house, a jail, barracks — all built by me; stores with red and blue swinging signs, bravely painted, inns with the good green bush a-swing! Listen to the cock-crows; listen to the barking! Might it not be a Devonshire town? Ah — I forgot; you have never seen old England.”
Smiling still, kind eyes dreaming, his head sank a little, and he clasped his hands in his la
“Lad,” he said, softly, “the English hay smells sweet, but not so sweet as the Mohawk Valley hay to me. This is my country — my country first, last, and all the time. I am too old to change where in my youth I took root among these hills. To transplant me means my end.”
The sunlight stole into the room through leaded diamond-panes and fell across his knees like a golden robe. The music from the robins in the orchard filled my ears; soft winds stirred the lace on Sir William’s cuffs and collarette.
Presently he roused, shaking the dream from his eyes; and, watching him, it seemed to me I could see the very tide of life swelling flesh and muscle into new vigour. The colour came back into his face and hands; the light grew in his eyes.
“Come!” he said, in a voice that had lost its tremour. “Life has but one meaning — to go on, ever on, lad! ’Tis a long doze awaits us at the journey’s end.” And he fumbled for his snuff-box and lace hanker, blowing a vigorous blast and exclaiming, “Aha! Ho!” in deep tones which, when very young, awed me.
I bent and picked up the three belts, placing them on the table near him.
“Thank you, Michael,” he said, heartily; “and I must say that in this matter of the Cayuga, you have conducted admirably. Mr. Duncan has told me all; it was wisely done. Had you received the Cayuga with less welcome or more suspicion, or had you met him haughtily, I do not doubt that he would have made mischief for me among my Mohawks.”
“He had war-sticks painted red, in his pouch, sir,” I replied.
“No doubt! No doubt! And a red war-belt, too, belike! They were meant for my Mohawks had he met with a rebuff here. Oh, I know them, Michael, I know them. A painted war-belt flung between that Cayuga and the sachems of my Mohawks would have set the whole Six Nations — save, perhaps, the Oneidas — a-shining up rifle and hatchet for Cresap and his men!”
Sir William struck the mahogany table with clinched fist.
“Damn Cresap!” he bawled, in one of his familiar fits of fury — fits which were never witnessed outside his family circle. “Damn the fatuous fool to go a-meddling with the 55 Cayugas in their own lands, held by them in solemn covenant forever inviolate! What does the sorry ass want? A border war, with all this trouble betwixt King and colonies hatching? Does Colonel Cresap not know that a single scalp taken from the Cayugas will set the Six Nations on fire — ay, the Lenape, too?”
Sir William slapped the table again with the flat of his hand.
“Look, Michael; should war come betwixt King and colonies, neither King nor colonies should forget that our frontiers are crowded with thousands of savages who, if adroitly treated, will remain neutral and inoffensive. Yet here is this madman Cresap, on the very eve of a struggle with the greatest power in the world, turning the savages against the colonies by his crazy pranks on the Ohio!”
“But,” said I, “in his blindness and folly, Colonel Cresap is throwing into our arms these very savages as allies!”
Sir William stopped short and stared at me with cold, steady eyes.
“Michael,” said he, presently, “when this war comes — as surely it will come — choose which cause you will embrace, and then stand by it to the end. As for me, I cannot believe that God would let me live to see such a war; that He would leave me to choose between the King who has honoured me and mine own people in this dear land of mine!”
He raised his head and passed one hand over his eyes.
“But should He in His wisdom demand that I choose — and if the sorrow kills me not — then, when the time comes, I shall choose.”
“Which way, sir?” I said, in a sort of gasp.
But he only answered, “Wait!”
Stupefied, I watched him. It had never entered my head that there could be any course save unquestioned loyalty to the King in all things; that there could be any doubt or hesitation or pondering or praying for light when it came time to choose between King and rebel.
I now recalled what Sir William had said to me in the school-room. Putting this with what he now said, or left unsaid, together with his anger at Colonel Cresap for endangering the peace betwixt the Indians and the colonies, I 56 came to the frightened conclusion that Sir William’s loyalty might be questioned. But by whom? Who in America was great enough to call Sir William to account? Not Governor Tryon; not Lord Dunmore; not General Gage.
Feeling as though the bottom had fallen out of something, I sat there, my fascinated eyes never leaving Sir William’s sombre face.
What then were these tea-hating rebels that Sir William should defend them at breakfast and in the faces of half a dozen of his Majesty’s officers? I knew nothing of the troubles in Massachusetts save from soldiers’ talk or the gossip of the townsmen, most of them being tenants of Sir William. I had heard vaguely about one turbulent fellow named Hancock, and a mischief-making jack-at-all-trades called Franklin. I knew that the trouble concerned taxes, but as all this bother appeared to be about a few pennies, and as I myself never wanted for money, I had little sympathy for people who made such an ado about a shilling or two. Moreover, if the King needed money, the idea of not placing one’s all at his Majesty’s disposal seemed contemptible to me. It is true that I had never earned a farthing in all my life, and so had nothing to offer my sovereign, save what fortune my father had left in trust for me. It is also true that I knew nothing of the value of money, having neither earned it nor wanted for it.
Something of these thoughts may have been easily read in my face, for Sir William said, with some abruptness:
“It is not money; it is principle that men fight for.”
I was startled, although Sir William sometimes had a way of rounding out my groping thoughts with sudden spoken words which made me fear him.
“Well, well,” he said, laughing and rising to stretch his cramped limbs; “this is enough for one day, Michael. Let the morrow fret for itself, lad. Come, smile a bit! Shall we have a holiday, perhaps the last for many a month? Nay, do not look so sober, Micky. Who knows what will come? Who knows; who knows?”
“I shall stand by you, sir, whatever comes,” said I.
But Sir William only smiled, drawing me to him, one arm about me.
“Suppose,” said he, “that you and I and Mr. Duncan and Felicity and Peter and Esk take rods and bait and go a-fishing in the Kennyetto by Fonda’s Bush!”
“A peg-down fishing match!” cried I, enchanted.
“Ay, a peg-down match, and the prize whatever the victor wills — in reason. What say you, Michael?”
I was about to assent with enthusiasm when something occurred to me and I stopped.
“May I wear my uniform, sir?” I asked.
“Gad!” cried Sir William, in a fit of laughter. “’Tis a bolder man than I who dare separate you from your uniform!”
“Then I’ll carry my pistols and go a-horse!” said I, delighted.
The Baronet, hands clasped behind him, nodded absently. That old gray colour came into his face again, and he lifted a belt from the table and studied it dreamily, picking at the wampum which glowed like a snake’s skin in the sunshine.
CHAPTER V
TO FONDA’S BUSH it is a good ten miles. I rode Sir William’s great horse, Warlock, who plunged and danced at the slap of my sword-scabbard on his flanks, and wellnigh shook me from my boots.
“Spare spur, lad! Let him sniff the pistols!” called Sir William, standing up in the broad hay-wagon to observe me. “He will quiet when he smells the priming, Michael.”
I drew one of my pistols from the holster and allowed Warlock to sniff it, which he did, arching his neck and pricking forward two wise ears. After this the horse and I understood each other, he being satisfied that it was a real officer he bore and no lout pranked out to shame him before other horses.
The broad flat hay-wagon, well bedded and deep in rye-straw, was filled with the company on fishing bent; Peter and Esk already disputing over their lines, red quills, and bob-floats; Silver Heels, in flowered cotton damask and hair rolled up under a small hat of straw, always observing me with lowered, uncertain eyes; Mr. Duncan, in fustian coat and leggings, counting out fish-hooks; Sir William, in yellow-and-brown buckskin and scarlet-flowered waistcoat, singing lustily:
“A-Maying!
A-Maying!
Oh, the blackthorn and the broom
And the primrose are in bloom!”
Behind the wagon, with punch-jugs swinging on his saddle-bags, like John Gilpin rode young Bareshanks the Scot, all a-grin; while upon either side of the wagon two mounted soldiers trotted, rifles slung and hangers sheathed.
Thus we set out for Fonda’s Bush, which is a vast woods, cut into a hundred arabesques by the Kennyetto, a stream 59 well named, for in the Indian language it means “Snake-with-its-tail-in-its-mouth,” and, although it flows for forty miles, the source of it is scarce half a mile from the mouth, where it empties into the great Vlaie near to Sir William’s hunting-lodge.
In the wagon Sir William turned to the windows and waved his hat at Mistress Molly, who stood behind the nursery curtains and kissed her fingers to him. And, as the wagon with its escort rolled off with slow wheels creaking, Mr. Duncan struck up:
“Who hunts, doth oft in danger ride;
Who hawks, lures oft both far and wide;
Who uses games, may often prove
A loser; but who falls in love,
Is fettered in fond Cupid’s snare;
My angle breeds me no such care.”
And Sir William and Mr. Duncan ended the song:
“The first men that our Saviour dear
Did choose to wait upon him here,
Blest Fishers were,—”
The shrill voices of Esk and Peter joined in, then were hushed as Silver Heels’s dainty song grew from the silence like a fresh breeze:
“For Courts are full of flattery
As hath too oft been tried;
The City full of wantonness,
And both be full of Pride:
Then care away,
And wend along with me!”
So singing on their rye-straw couches, the swaying wagon bore them over the hilly road, now up, now rattling down-hill among the stones to ford some ice-clear brook, and away again across the rolling country, followed by Gillie Bareshanks, stone bottles flopping, and the trotting soldiers holding their three-cornered hats on with one hand, bridle-rein in t’other.
I galloped ahead, pistol poised, frowning at woodlands where I pretended to myself danger might hide, examining 60 all wayfarers with impartial severity; and I doubt not that, seeing me in full uniform and armed, my countenance filled them with misgivings; indeed, some called out to know if the news from Boston was bad, if the Indians meant mischief hereabouts, or if the highwayman, Jack Mount, was abroad.
“Plague on your pistols!” shouted Sir William, as I waited at a ford for the wagon. “Gad! Michael, your desperate deportment is scaring my tenants along the way! Smile as you gallop, in Heaven’s name! else they’ll take you for Jack Mount himself!”
Somewhat mortified by Sir William’s roar of laughter, I trotted on in silence, returning my pistol to its holster, and buckling the flap.
We now entered the slashings of the forest which is called Fonda’s Bush, “bush” meaning land not yet cleared of woods. The sweet, moist shadow of the forest cooled me; I made Warlock stop, for I love to listen and linger in a woodland’s quiet.
Here the field-birds which had sung everywhere by the roadside were silent, as they always are on the borders of deep forests. Slow hawks sailed along the edge of the woods; out in the clearing a few finches twittered timidly in the sunshine, but here among the hushed ranks of giant trees nothing stirred save green leaves.
But the solitude of forest depths is no solitude to those who know when and where to watch and listen. Faint sounds came to savant ears: the velvet rustle of a snake brushing its belly over soft mosses; the padded patter of the fox-hare; the husky quhit! quhit! of that ashy partridge whose eye is surmounted by a scarlet patch, and whose flesh is bitter as hemlock. Solitude! Nay, for the quick furry creatures that haunt water-ways live here, slipping among bowlders, creeping through crevices; here a mink with eyes like jet beads; here a whiskered otter peering from a cleft; now a musk-rat squatting to wash his face; now a red martin thrashing about in the thick tree-top like a mammoth squirrel at frolic.
If this be solitude, with the stream softly talking in that silly babble which is a language, too; if this be solitude, with the shy deer staring and the tiny wood-mouse in the 61 windfall scraping busily; if this be solitude, then imprison me here, and not in the cities, where solitude is in men’s hearts!
Five miles still lay before us over the moist, springy forest road, an excellent and carefully constructed thoroughfare which had been begun by Sir William and designed for a short and direct route to those healing springs of Saratoga which he loved, twenty-eight miles northeast of us. But this route had never been continued east of Fonda’s Bush, partly because the winding Kennyetto interfered too often, demanding to be bridged a dozen times in a mile, partly because an easier though longer route had been surveyed by the engineer officers from Albany, and was already roughly marked as far as the Diamond Hill, from which, in clear weather, the Saratoga lake may be seen.
The road we travelled, therefore, came to an abrupt end on the banks of the Kennyetto; and here, in a sunny clearing which was a sugar-bush lately in use, the wagon and its passengers halted, and I dismounted, flinging my bridle to one of the soldiers.
“Souse the stone jugs in the stream!” called out Sir William to young Bareshanks, who came bumping up with his bottles a-knocking and his hat crammed on his ears.
Peter and Esk wriggled out of the straw, fighting over a red and blue bob-float, and fell with a thump upon the moss, locked in conflict. Whereupon Sir William fetched them a clip with his ivory cane across their buttocks, which brought them up snivelling, but reconciled.
Meanwhile Mr. Duncan had gone to the bank of the stream with six sharp pegs, all numbered; and presently Sir William joined him, where they consulted seriously concerning the proper ground, and took snuff and hummed and hawed with much wagging of heads and many eye-squints at the sky and water.
