In the Days of Poor Richard Part 42

"We got to git back quick," said the latter. "I see sign o' an ambush."

They hurried to their command and warned the General. He halted and faced his men about and began a retreat. Jack and Solomon hurried out ahead of them some twenty rods apart. In five minutes Jack heard Solomon's call again. Thoroughly alarmed, he ran in the direction of the sound. In a moment he met Solomon. The face of the latter had that stern look which came only in a crisis. Deep furrows ran across his brow. His hands were shut tight. There was an expression of anger in his eyes. He swallowed as Jack came near.

"It's an ambush sure as h.e.l.l's ahead," he whispered.

As they were hurrying toward the regiment, he added:

"We got to fight an' ag'in' big odds--British an' Injuns. Don't never let yerself be took alive, my son, lessen ye want to die as Scott did.

But, mebbe, we kin bu'st the circle."

In half a moment they met Herkimer.

"Git ready to fight," said Solomon. "We're surrounded."

The men were spread out in a half-circle and some hurried orders given, but before they could take a step forward the trap was sprung. "The Red Devils of Brant" were rus.h.i.+ng at them through the timber with yells that seemed to shake the tree-tops. The regiment fired and began to advance. Some forty Indians had fallen as they fired. General Herkimer and others were wounded by a volley from the savages.

"Come on, men. Foller me an' use yer bayonets," Solomon shouted.

"We'll cut our way out."

The Indians ahead had no time to load. Scores of them were run through. Others fled for their lives. But a red host was swarming up from behind and firing into the regiment. Many fell. Many made the mistake of turning to fight back and were overwhelmed and killed or captured. A goodly number had cut their way through with Jack and Solomon and kept going, swapping cover as they went. Most of them were wounded in some degree. Jack's right shoulder had been torn by a bullet. Solomon's left hand was broken and bleeding. The savages were almost on their heels, not two hundred yards behind. The old scout rallied his followers in a thicket at the top of a knoll with an open gra.s.s meadow between them and their enemies. There they reloaded their rifles and stood waiting.

"Don't fire--not none o' ye--till I give the word. Jack, you take my rifle. I'm goin' to throw this 'ere bunch o' lightnin'."

Solomon stepped out of the thicket and showed himself when the savages entered the meadow. Then he limped up the trail as if he were badly hurt, in the fas.h.i.+on of a hen partridge when one has come near her brood. In a moment he had dodged behind cover and crept back into the thicket.

There were about two hundred warriors who came running across the flat toward that point where Solomon had disappeared. They yelled like demons and overran the little meadow with astonis.h.i.+ng speed.

"Now hold yer fire--hold yer fire till I give ye the word, er we'll all be et up. Keep yer fingers off the triggers now."

He sprang into the open. Astonished, the foremost runners halted while others crowded upon them. The "bunch of lightning" began its curved flight as Solomon leaped behind a tree and shouted, "Fire!"

"'Tain't too much to say that the cover flew off o' h.e.l.l right thar at the edge o' the b.l.o.o.d.y Medder that minnit--you hear to me," he used to tell his friends. "The air were full o' bu'sted Injun an' a barrel o'

blood an' grease went down into the ground. A dozen er so that wasn't hurt run back ercrost the medder like the devil were chasin' 'em all with a red-hot iron. I reckon it'll allus be called the b.l.o.o.d.y Medder."

In this retreat Jack had lost so much blood that he had to be carried on a litter. Before night fell they met General Benedict Arnold and a considerable force. After a little rest the tireless Solomon went back into the bush with Arnold and two regiments to find the wounded Herkimer, if possible, and others who might be in need of relief. They met a band of refugees coming in with the body of the General. They reported that the far bush was echoing with the shrieks of tortured captives.

"Beats all what an amount o' sufferin' it takes to start a new nation,"

Solomon used to say.

Next day Arnold fought his way to the fort, and many of St. Leger's Rangers and their savage allies were slain or captured or broken into little bands and sent flying for their lives into the northern bush.

So the siege of Fort Schuyler was raised.

"I never see no better fightin' man than Arnold," Solomon used to say.

"I seen him fight in the middle bush an' on the Stillwater. Under fire he was a regular wolverine. Allus up ag'in' the hottest side o' h.e.l.l an' sayin':

"'Come on, boys. We kin't expec' to live forever.'

"But Arnold were a sore head. Allus kickin' over the traces an'

complainin' that he never got proper credit."

CHAPTER XXII

THE BINKUSSING OF COLONEL BURLEY

Solomon had been hit in the thigh by a rifle bullet on his way to the fort. He and Jack and other wounded men were conveyed in boats and litters to the hospital at Albany where Jack remained until the leaves were gone. Solomon recovered more quickly and was with Lincoln's militia under Colonel Brown when they joined Johnson's Rangers at Ticonderoga and cut off the supplies of the British army. Later having got around the lines of the enemy with this intelligence he had a part in the fighting on Bemus Heights and the Stillwater and saw the defeated British army under Burgoyne marching eastward in disgrace to be conveyed back to England.

Jack had recovered and was at home when Solomon arrived in Albany with the news.

"Wal, my son, I cocalate they's goin' to be a weddin' in our fam'ly afore long," said the latter.

"What makes you think so?" Jack inquired.

"'Cause John Burgoyne, High c.o.c.kylorum and c.o.c.kydoodledo, an' all his army has been licked an' kicked an' started fer hum an' made to promise that they won't be sa.s.sy no more. I tell ye the war is goin' to end.

They'll see that it won't pay to keep it up."

"But you do not know that Howe has taken Philadelphia," said Jack.

"His army entered it on the twenty-sixth of September. Was.h.i.+ngton is in a bad fix. You and I have been ordered to report to him at White Marsh as soon as possible."

"That ol' King 'ud keep us fightin' fer years if he had his way," said Solomon. "He don't have to bleed an' groan an' die in the swamps like them English boys have been doin'. It's too bad but we got to keep killin' 'em, an' when the bad news reaches the good folks over thar mebbe the King'll git spoke to proper. We got to keep a-goin'. Fer the fust time in my life I'm glad to git erway from the big bush. The Injuns have found us a purty tough bit o' fodder but they's no tellin', out thar in the wilderness, when a man is goin' to be roasted and chawed up."

Solomon spent a part of the evening at play with the Little Cricket and the other children and when the young ones had gone to bed, went out for a walk with "Mis' Scott" on the river-front.

Mrs. Irons had said of the latter that she was a most amiable and useful person.

"The Little Cricket has won our hearts," she added. "We love him as we love our own."

When Jack and Solomon were setting out in a hired sloop for the Highlands next morning there were tears in the dark eyes of "Mis'

Scott."

"Ain't she a likely womern?" Solomon asked again when with sails spread they had begun to cut the water.

Near King's Ferry in the Highlands on the Hudson they spent a night in the camp of the army under Putnam. There they heard the first note of discontent with the work of their beloved Was.h.i.+ngton. It came from the lips of one Colonel Burley of a Connecticut regiment. The Commander-in-Chief had lost Newport, New York and Philadelphia and been defeated on Long Island and in two pitched battles on ground of his own choosing at Brandywine and Germantown.

The two scouts were angry.

It had been a cold, wet afternoon and they, with others, were drying themselves around a big, open fire of logs in front of the camp post-office.

Solomon was quick to answer the complaint of Burley.

"He's allus been fightin' a bigger force o' well trained, well paid men that had plenty to eat an' drink an' wear. An' he's fit 'em with jest a shoe string o' an army. When it come to him, it didn't know nothin'

but how to shoot an' dig a hole in the ground. The men wouldn't enlist fer more'n six months an' as soon as they'd learnt suthin', they put fer hum. An' with that kind o' an army, he druv the British out o'

Boston. With a leetle bunch o' five thousand unpaid, barefoot, ragged backed devils, he druv the British out o' Jersey an' they had twelve thousan' men in that neighborhood. He's had to dodge eround an' has kep' his army from bein' et up, hide, horns an' taller, by the power o'

his brain. He's managed to take keer o' himself down thar in Jersey an' Pennsylvaney with the British on all sides o' him, while the best fighters he had come up here to help Gates. I don't see how he could 'a' done it--d.a.m.ned if I do--without the help o' G.o.d."

"Gates is a real general," Burley answered. "Was.h.i.+ngton don't amount to a hill o' beans."