They were brave men, these British officers; I saw a young ensign of the Tenth Foot fall with a ball through his stomach, yet rise and face the storm until shot to death by a dozen Alarm Men on the Bedford Road.

  It was dreadful; it was doubly dreadful when a company of grenadiers suddenly faced about and poured a volley into our tavern, for, ere the crashing and splintered wood had ceased, the tavern fairly vomited flame into the square, and the British went down in heaps. Through the smoke I saw an officer struggling to disengage himself from his fallen and dying horse; I saw the massed infantry reel off through the village, firing frenziedly right and left, pouring volleys into farm-houses, where women ran screaming out into the barns, and frantic watch-dogs barked, tugging at their chains.

  It was not a retreat, not a flight; it was a riot, a horrible saturnalia of smoke and fire and awful sound. As a maddened panther, wounded, rushes forth to deal death right and left, even tearing its own flesh with tooth and claw, the British column burst south across the land, crazed with wounds, famished, athirst, blood-mad, dealing death and ruin to all that lay before it.

  Terrible was the vengeance that followed it, hovered on its gasping flanks, scourged its dwindling ranks, which withered under the searching fire from every tuft of bushes, every rock, every tree-trunk.

  Already the ghastly pageant had rushed past us, leaving a crimson trail in its wake; already the old tavern door was flung wide, and our Minute Men were running down the Boston Road and along the ridges on either side, firing as they came on.

  I, with Mount and the Weasel, hung to their left flank till two o’clock, when, about half a mile from Lexington Meeting-house, we heard cannon, and understood that the relief troops from Boston had come up.

  Then, knowing that there were guns enough and to spare without ours, we shouldered our hot rifles and trudged back to “Buckman’s Tavern,” through the dust, behind a straw-covered 496 wain which was driving slowly under the heat of an almost vertical sun.

  Mount, parched with thirst, hailed the driver of the wain, asking him if he carried cider.

  “Only a wounded man,” he said, “most dead o’ the red dragoons.”

  I stepped to the slowly moving wagon and looked over the tail-board down into the straw.

  “Shemuel!” I cried.

  “Shemuel!” roared Mount.

  The little Jew opened his sick eyes under his bandage. The Weasel climbed nimbly over the tail-board and settled down beside the wounded man, taking his blood-smeared hand.

  “Shemuel! Shemuel! We saw them split your head!” stammered Mount, in his astonishment and joy.

  “Under my hat I did haff a capful of shillings,” replied Shemuel, weakly; “I — I go back — two days’ time to find me my money by dot Lechemere swamp — eh, Jack?”

  “God bless you, old nosey!” cried Mount; “we’ll get your money, lad! Won’t we, Cardigan?”

  The little Jew turned his heavy eyes on me.

  “You haff found Miss Warren?” he gasped. “Ach, so iss all well. I go back — two days’ time — find me my money.” He smiled and closed his eyes.

  So we re-entered Lexington, Jack Mount, the Weasel, Saul Shemuel, and I; and on the tavern steps Silver Heels stood, her tired, colourless face lighted up, her outstretched hands falling on my shoulders; and I to take her in my arms, for she had fallen a-weeping. Above us the splendid blue of the sky spread its eternal tent, our only shelter, our only home on the long trail through the world; our lamp was the sun, our fireplace a continent, and the four winds our walls, and our estates were bounded by two oceans, washing the shores of a land where the free, at last, might dwell.

  In the south the thunder of the British cannon muttered, distant and more distant; the storm had passed.

  Had the storm passed? The smoke hung in the north where Concord town was burning, yet around us birds sang.

  And now came Jack Mount, riding postilion on the horses which drew the post-chaise; behind him trotted the Weasel, 497 leading out Warlock. Silver Heels saw them and stood up, smiling through her tears.

  “Truly, we stayed and did our duty, did we not, dear heart?”

  “With your help, sweet.”

  “And deserted not our own!”

  “Yours the praise, dear soul.”

  “And did face our enemies like true people all; is it not so, Michael?”

  “It is so.”

  “Then let us go, my husband. I am sick for my own land, and for the happiness to come.”

  “Northward we journey, little sweetheart.”

  “To the blue hills and the sweet-fern?”

  “Ay, home.”

  And so we started for the north, out of the bloody village where our liberty was born at the first rifle-shot, out of the sound of the British cannon, out of the land of the salt sea, back to the inland winds and the incense of our own dear forests, and the music of sweet waters tumbling where the white pines sing eternally.

  I rode Warlock beside the chaise; Shemuel lay within; Silver Heels sat beside the poor, hurt creature, easing his fevered head; but her eyes ever returned to me, and the colour came and went in her face as our eyes spoke in silence.

  “Good-bye,” said Foxcroft, huskily.

  Mount squared himself in his saddle; the Weasel, rifle on thigh, set his horse’s head north.

  Slowly the cavalcade moved on; the robins sang on every tree; far to the southward the thunder of the British cannon rolled and re-echoed along the purple hills; and over all God’s golden light was falling on life, and love, and death.

  CHAPTER XXIX

  WE ENTERED ALBANY on the 22d of April; the town had heard the news from Lexington ere we sighted the Albany hills, the express having passed us as we crossed the New York line, tearing along the river-bank at a breakneck gallop.

  So, when we rode into Albany, the stolid, pippin-cheeked Dutchmen had later news than had we, and I learned then, for the first time, how my Lord Percy’s troops had been hurled headlong through Cambridge Farms into Charlestown, where they lay like panting, slavering, senseless beasts under the cannon of the Somerset and Asia. And all Massachusetts sat watching them, gun in hand.

  We lay at the house of Peter Weaver, my lawyer, Silver Heels and I; Jack Mount and Cade Renard lay at the “Half Moon,” where poor Shemuel could procure medicine and such medical attendance as he so sorely stood in need of.

  With Peter Weaver I prepared to arrange my affairs as best I might, it being impossible for me to undertake a voyage to Ireland at this time, though my succession to the title and estates of my late uncle, Sir Terence, made it most necessary.

  For the first time in my life I now became passably acquainted with my own affairs, though when we came to figure in pounds, shillings, and pence, I yawned, yet made pretence of a wisdom in mathematics which, God knows, is not in me.

  Silver Heels, her round chin on my shoulder, listened attentively, and asked some questions which caused the ponderous lawyer to address himself to her rather than to me, seeing clearly that either I cared nothing for my own affairs or else was stupid past all belief.

  Sir William’s legacies to me and to Silver Heels were discussed 499 most seriously; and Mr. Weaver would have it that the law should deal with my miserable kinsman, Sir John, for the fraud he had wrought. Yet, it was exactly that; and, because he was my kinsman, I could not drag him out to cringe for his infamy before the rabble.

  The land and the money left to us by Sir William we would now, doubtless, receive, but it was only because Sir William had desired it that we at length made up our minds to accept it at all.

  This I made plain to Mr. Weaver, then relapsed into a dull inspection of his horn spectacles as he discoursed of mortgages and bonds and interests and liens with stupefying monotony.

  “It is like the school-room, Micky,” murmured Silver Heels, close to my ear, and composed her countenance to listen to a fluent peroration on percentage and investments in terms which were to me as vain as tinkling cymbals.

  “Then I am wealthy?” I interposed, again and again, yet could draw from that fat badger, Weaver, neither a “yes” nor “no,” nor any plain speech fit for a gentleman’s comprehension.

  So when at length we quitted Mr. Weaver a sullen mood possessed me and I felt at bay with all the learned people in the world, as I had often felt, penned in the school-room.

  “Am I?” I asked Silver Heels.

  “What?”

  “Rich or poor? Tell me in one word, dear heart, for whether or not I possess a brass farthing in the world, I do not know, upon my honour!”

  “Poor innocent,” she laughed; “poor unlearned and harassed boy! Know, then, that you have means to purchase porridge and a butcher’s roast for Christmas.”

  “I be serious,” said I, anxiously, “and I would know if I have means to support a large family—”

  “Hush!” said Silver Heels. What I could see of her face, — one small ear, — was glowing in rich colour.

  “Because—” I ventured. But she plucked at my arm with lowered eyes, nor would hear me to explain that I, newly wedded, viewed the future with a hopeful gravity that befitted.

  “As for a house,” said I, “there is a pleasant place of springs called Saratoga, dearly loved by Sir William.”

  “I know,” said she, quickly; “it comes from ‘asserat,’ sparkling waters.”

  “It comes from ‘Soragh,’ which means salt, and ‘Oga,’ a place—”

  “It does not, Micky!”

  “It does!”

  “No!”

  “It does!”

  “Oc-qui-o-nis! He is a bear!” said Silver Heels, to herself.

  We stopped in the hallway, facing each other. Something in her flushed, defiant face, her bright eyes, the poise of her youthful body, brought back with a rush that day, a year ago, when I, sneaking out of the house to avoid the school-room, met her in the hallway, and was balked and flouted and thrust back to the thraldom of the school. Here was the same tormentor — the same child with her gray eyes full of pretty malice, the same beauty of brow and mouth and hair was here, and something added — a maid’s delicate mockery which veiled the tenderness of womanhood; a sweetheart and a wedded wife.

  “I am thinking of a morning very, very long ago,” I said, slowly.

  “I, too,” said Silver Heels.

  “Almost a year ago,” I said.

  “A year ago,” said Silver Heels.

  “You little wild-cat thing!” I whispered, tenderly, and took her by the waist so that her face lay upturned on my shoulder.

  “Stupid,” she said, “I loved you that very day.”

  “What day?”

  “The day we both are thinking on: when you met me in the hall with your fish-rod like a guilty dunce—”

  “You wore a skirt o’ buckskin and tiny moccasins and stockings with scarlet thrums; and you were a-nibbling a cone of maple-sugar,” said I.

  “And you strove to trip me up!”

  “And you pushed me!”

  “And you thrust Vix at me!”

  “And you kicked my legs and ran up-stairs like a wild-cat thing.”

  There was a silence; she looked up into my face from my shoulder.

  “This, for a belt of peace betwixt those two children who live in memory,” said I, and kissed her.

  “Oonah! All is lost,” she said; “he does with me as he will!” and she rendered me my kiss, saying, “Bearer of belts, thy peace-belt is returned.”

  So was perfect peace established, not only for the shadowy children of that unforgotten past, but for us, and for all time betwixt us; and our belts were offered and returned, and the sign was the touching of her lips and mine.

  For Shemuel’s sake, and because we would not desert him, we continued in Albany until near the end of April.

  Taking counsel together, we had determined to build a mansion, when the times permitted, midway on the road ‘twixt Johnstown and Fonda’s Bush, our lands joining at that place. But I feared much that the war which now flamed through Massachusetts Bay might soon creep northward into our forest fastness and set the border ablaze from the Ohio to Saint Sacrement. Much, too, I feared that the men of the woods whose skin was red would league with the men whose coats were red. All his later days Sir William had striven to avert this awful pact; Dunmore played against him, Butler betrayed him, Cresap was tricked, and Sir William lost. Now, into his high place sneaked a pygmy, slow, uncertain, sullen, treacherous — his own son, who would undo the last knot which bound the Indians to a fair neutrality. Perhaps he himself would even lead them on to the dreadful devastation all men dreaded; and, if he, men must also count on the Butlers, father and son, to carry terror through our forests and hunt to death without mercy all who stood for freedom and the rights of man.

  One of these I had held in my hand and released. Yet still that old certainty haunted me, the belief that one day I was to meet and kill him, not in honourable encounter, now, for he had lost the right to ask such a death from me; but in the dark forest, somewhere among the corridors of silent 502 pines, I would slay him as sachems slay ferocious beasts that track men through ghost-trails down to hell.

  Then should we be free at last of this fierce, misshapen soul, we People of the Morning, Tierhansaga, and the shrinking forest should straighten, and Oya should be Oyabanh, and the red witch-flower should wither to a stalk, to a seed, and sprout a fair white blossom for all time, Ahwehhah.

  That night, as I stood on the steps of Peter Weaver’s red brick house, turning to look once more into the coals of the setting sun ere I entered the door, a hand twitched at my coat-skirt, and, looking down, I saw below me on the pavement an Indian dressed in the buckskins of a forest-runner.

  “Peter!” I cried, for it was he, my dusky kinsman on the left hand; then my eyes fell on his companion, a short, squat savage, clad in red, and painted hideous with strange signs I could not read.

  “Red Jacket,” said Peter, calmly.

  I looked hard at Peter; he had grown big and swart and fat like a bear-cub in November; Red Jacket raised his sullen eyes, then dropped them.

  Suddenly, as I stood there, at a loss what next to say, came a heavy man, richly clothed, flabby face bent on the ground. Nor would he have discovered me, so immersed in brooding reverie was he, had not Peter touched his elbow.

  A bright flush stained his face; he looked up at me where I stood. Then I descended the steps, shoving Peter from between us, and Sir John Johnson, for it was he, moved back a pace and laid his heavy hand on his sword-belt as I came close to him, looking into his cold eyes.

  “Liar!” I said; “liar! liar!” And that was all, for he gave ground, and his hand fell limply from his dishonoured hilt.

  So I left him, there in the darkening street, the Indians watching him with steady, kindling eyes.

  We started next day at dawn, Silver Heels riding Warlock in her new kirtle and little French three-cornered hat with its gilt fringe, to which she had a right, as she was now My Lady Cardigan, if she chose.

  I rode a bay mare, bought in Albany, yet a beauty, and 503 doubtless the only decent horseflesh in all that town of rusty rackers and patroons’ sorry hacks. Mount and the Weasel, leather-clad, and gay with quilled moccasins and brilliant thrums, journeyed afoot, on either side o’ Shemuel, who bestrode a little docile ass.

  His noddle, neatly mended and still bound up, he had surmounted with a Quaker hat so large that it rested on his large flaring ears; peddlers’ panniers swung on either flank, crammed deep with gewgaws; he let his bridle fall on the patient ass’s neck, and, thumbs in his armpits, joined lustily the chorus raised by Mount and Renard:

  “Come, all ye Tryon County men,

  And never be dismayed;

  But trust in the Lord,

  And He will be your aid!”

  Roaring the rude chorus, Jack Mount marched in the lead, his swinging strides measured to our horses’ steady pacing; beside him trotted the little Weasel, his hand holding tightly to the giant’s arm; and sometimes he took three steps to Mount’s one, and sometimes he toddled, his little, leather-bound legs twinkling like spokes in a wheel, but ever he chanted manfully as he marched:

  “O trust in the Lord,

  And He will be your aid!”

  And Shemuel’s fervent whine from his lowly saddle rounded out the old route-song.

  An hour later I summoned Jack Mount, and he fell back to my stirrups, resting his huge hand on my saddle as he walked beside me.

  “Jack,” I said, “is poor Cade cured o’ fancy and his mad imaginings?”

  “Ay, lad, for the time.”

  “For the time?”

  “A year, two years, three, perhaps. This is not the first mad flight o’ fancy Cade has taken on his aged wings.”

  “You never told me that,” I said, sharply.

  “No, lad.”

  “Why not?”

  “Do you spread abroad the sorry secrets of your kin, Mr. Cardigan?”

  “He is not your kin!”

  “He is more,” said Mount, simply.

  After a silence I asked him on what previous occasion the little Weasel had gone moon-mad.

  “On many — every third or fourth year since I first knew him,” said Mount, soberly. “But never before did he leave me to follow his poor mad phantoms — always the phantom of his wife, lad, in divers guises. He saw her in a silvery bush o’ moonlight nights, and talked with her till my goose-flesh rose and crawled on me; he saw her mirrored in cold, deep pools at dawn, looking up at him from the golden-ribbed sands, and I have laid in the canoe to watch the trouts’ quick shadows moving on the bottom, and he a-talking sweet to his dear wife as though she hid under the lily-pads like a blossom.”

  He glanced up at me pitifully as he walked beside my stirrup; I laid my hand on his leather-tufted shoulder.

  “Sir, it is sad,” he muttered; “a fair mind nobly wrecked. But grief cannot deform the soul, Mr. Cardigan.”

  “He knows you now?”

  “Ay, and knows that he has dwelt for months in madness.”

  “Does he know that it was me he loved so deeply in his madness?” asked Silver Heels, gently.

  “I think he does,” whispered Mount.

 

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