The Maid-At-Arms Part 50

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 "a.s.sociate 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 "G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 s.h.i.+ning and their epaulets striking fire in the suns.h.i.+ne.

"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 c.o.x, 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:

"h.e.l.lo! 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! h.e.l.lo, 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 pa.s.sing:

"Py Gott! dere's Jack Mount! Look alretty, Jacob! h.e.l.lo, 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 pa.s.sed 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 d.a.m.ned British rag when I was fifteen. Lord! it makes me boil to think that they've forgot 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 pa.s.sionate 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 anch.o.r.ed 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 embarra.s.sment and spat a quid of spruce-gum into the camp-fire.

Yet humanity demands some outlet for acc.u.mulated 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 sc.r.a.ping whine of a two-string fiddle in a sugar-camp.

The magic of June faded from the forests, smothered under the magnificent and deeper glory of July's golden green; the early summer ripened into August, finding us still afoot in the Kingsland district gathering in the loyal, warning the rash, comforting the down-cast, threatening the suspected. Twice, by expresses bound for Saratoga, I sent full reports to Schuyler, but received no further orders. I wondered whether he was displeased at my failure to arrest Walter Butler; and we redoubled our efforts to gain news of him. Three times we heard of his presence in or near the Kingsland district: once at Tribes Hill, once at Fort Plain, and once it was said he was living quietly in a farm-house near Johnstown, which he had the effrontery to enter in broad daylight. But we failed to come up with him, and to this day I do not know whether any of this information we received was indeed correct.

It was the first day of August when we heard of Butler's presence near Johnstown; we had been lying at a tavern called "The Brick House," a two-story inn standing where the Albany and Schenectady roads fork near Fox Creek, and there had been great fear of McDonald's renegades that week, and I had advised the despatch of an express to Albany asking for troops to protect the valley when I chanced to overhear a woman say that firing had been heard in the direction of Stanwix.

The woman, a slattern, who was known by the unpleasant name of Rya's Pup, declared that Walter Butler had gone to Johnstown to join St. Leger before Stanwix, and that the Tories would give the rebels such a drubbing that we would all be crawling on our bellies yelling for quarter this day week. As the wench was drunk, I made little of her babble; but the next day Murphy and Elerson, having been in touch with Gansevoort's outposts, returned to me with a note from Colonel Willett:

"FORT SCHUYLER (STANWIX), "August 2d,

"DEAR SIR,--I transmit to you the contents of a letter from Colonel Gansevoort, dated July 28th:

"'Yesterday, at three o'clock in the afternoon, our garrison was alarmed with the firing of four guns. A party of men was instantly despatched to the place where the guns were fired, which was in the edge of the woods, about five hundred yards from the fort; but they were too late. The villains were fled, after having shot three young girls who were out picking raspberries, two of whom were lying scalped and tomahawked; one dead and the other expiring, who died in about half an hour after she was brought home. The third had a bullet through her face, and crawled away, lying hid until we arrived. It was pitiful. The child may live, but has lost her mind.

"'This was accomplished by a scout of sixteen Tories of Colonel John Butler's command and two savages, Mohawks, all under direction of Captain Walter Butler.'

"This, sir, is a revised copy of Colonel Gansevoort's letter to Colonel Van Schaick. Permit me to add, with the full approval of Colonel Gansevoort, that the scout under your command warns the militia at Whitestown of the instant approach of Colonel Barry St. Leger's regular troops, reinforced by Sir John Johnson's regiment of Royal Greens, Colonel Butler's Rangers, McCraw's outlaws, and seven hundred Mohawk, Seneca, and Cayuga warriors under Brant and Walter Butler. I will add, sir, that we shall hold this fort to the end. Respectfully,

"MARINUS WlLLETT, Lieutenant-Colonel."

Standing knee-deep in the thick undergrowth, I read this letter aloud to my riflemen, amid a shocked silence; then folded it for transmission to General Schuyler when opportunity might offer, and signed Murphy to lead forward.

So Rya's Pup was right. Walter Butler had made his first mark on the red Oswego trail!

We marched in absolute silence, Murphy leading, every nerve on edge, straining eye and ear for a sign of the enemy's scouts, now doubtless swarming forward and to cover the British advance.

But the wilderness is vast, and two armies might pa.s.s each other scarcely out of hail and never know.

Towards sundown I caught my first glimpse of a hostile Iroquois war-party. We had halted behind some rocks on a heavily timbered slope, and Mount was scrutinizing the trail below, where a little brook crossed it, flowing between mossy stones; when, without warning, a naked Mohawk stalked into the trail, sprang from rock to rock, traversing the bed of the brook like a panther, then leaped lightly into the trail again and moved on. After him, in file, followed some thirty warriors, naked save for the clout, all oiled and painted, and armed with rifles. One or two glanced up along our slope while pa.s.sing, but a gesture from the leader hastened their steps, and more quickly than I can write it they had disappeared among the darkening shadows of the towering timber.

"Bad luck!" breathed Murphy; "'tis a rocky road to Dublin, but a shorter wan to h.e.l.l! Did you want f'r to shoot, Jack? Look at Dave Elerson an'

th' thrigger finger av him twitchin' all a-thremble! Wisha, lad! lave the red omadhouns go. Arre you tired o' the hair ye wear, Jack Mount?

Come on out o' this, ye crazy divil!"

Circling the crossing-place, we swung east, then south, coming presently to a fringe of trees through which the red sunset glittered, illuminating a great stretch of swamp, river, and cleared land beyond.

"Yonder's the foort," whispered Murphy--"ould Stanwix--or Schuyler, as they call it now. Step this way, sorr; ye can see it plain across the Mohawk shwamps."

The red suns.h.i.+ne struck the three-cornered bastions of the rectangular fort; a distant bayonet caught the light and twinkled above the stockaded ditch like a slender point of flame. Outside the works squads of troops moved, relieving the nearer posts; working details, marching to and from the sawmill, were evidently busy with the unfinished abattis; a long, low earth-work, surmounted by a stockade and a block-house, which. Murphy said, guarded the covered way to the creek, swarmed with workmen plying pick and shovel and crowbar, while the sentries walked their beats above, watching the new road which crossed the creek and ran through the swamp to the sawmill.

"It is strange," said Mount, "that they have not yet finished the fort."

"It is stranger yet," said Elerson, "that they should work so close to the forest yonder. Look at that fatigue-party drawing logs within pistol-shot of the woods--"

Before the rifleman could finish, a sentinel on the northwest parapet fired his musket; the entire scene changed in a twinkling; the fatigue-party scattered, dropping chains and logs; the workmen sprang out of ditch and pit, running for the stockade; a man, driving a team of horses along the new road, jumped up in his wagon and lashed his horses to a gallop across the rough meadow; and I saw the wagon swaying and b.u.mping up the slope, followed by a squad of troops on the double.

Behind these ran a dozen men driving some frightened cattle; soldiers swarmed out on the bastions, soldiers flung open the water gates, soldiers hung over parapets, gesticulating and pointing westward.

Suddenly from the bastion on the west angle of the fort a shaft of flame leaped; a majestic cloud buried the parapet, and the deep cannon-thunder shook the evening air. Above the writhing smoke, now stained pink in the sunset light, a flag crept jerkily up the halyards of a tall flag-staff, higher, higher, until it caught the evening wind aloft and floated lazily out.