The Little Red Foot Part 75

"I like men.... I cared most for Stephen Watts.... Then one day I had a great fright.... Shall I tell it?"

"Yes."

"Well, then, Sir John's gallantries neither pleased nor flattered me from the first. But he was very cautious what he said and did in Douw Fonda's house, and never spoke to me save coldly when others were present, or when he was alone with us and Mr. Fonda was awake and not dozing in his great chair.... Well, there came a day when Mr. Fonda went to the house of Captain Fonda, and I was alone in the house....

"And Sir John came.... Shall I tell it?"

"Tell it, Penelope."

"I've had it long in my mind. I wished to ask you if it lessened me in your esteem.... For Sir John was drunk, and, finding me alone, he conducted roughly--and followed me and locked us in my chamber.... I was horribly afraid.... I had never struck any living being before. But I beat his red face with my hands until he became confused and stupid--and there was blood on him and on me.... And my kerchief was torn off and my hair all tangled.... I beat him till he dropped my door key, and so unlocked my door and returned again to him, silent and flaming, and drove him with blows out o' my chamber and out of the house--all over blood as he was, and stupid and drunk.... His negro man got him on his horse and rode off, holding him on.

"And none knew--none know, save Sir John and you and I."

After a silence I said in a controlled voice: "If Sir John comes this way I shall hope not to miss him.... I shall pray G.o.d not to miss this--gentleman."

"Do you think meanly of me that he used me so?"

I did not answer.

"I have told you all," she said timidly. "I am still honest. If I were not I would not have let you touch my lips."

"Why not?"

"For both our sakes.... I would not do you any evil."

I said impatiently: "No need to tell me you never had a lover. I never believed it of you from the day I saw you first. And, G.o.d willing, I mean to stop a mouth or two in Tryon, war or no war----"

"John Drogue!" she exclaimed in consternation--"you shall seek no quarrel on my account! Swear to me!"

But I made no reply. Whatever the quarrel, I knew now it was to be on my own account; for whether or no I was falling in love with this girl, Penelope Grant, I realized at all events that I would suffer no other man to interfere, however he conducted, and should hold any man to stern account who would make of this girl a toy and plaything.

And so, all hotly resolved on that point; sore, also, at the knowledge of Sir John's baseness which seemed to touch my proper honour; and swifter, too, with tenderness in my heart to rea.s.sure her, I did exactly that for which I was now prepared to cut the throats of various other gentlemen--I drew her into my arms and held her close, body and lips imprisoned.

She sought her chair and sat there silent and subdued until a maid-servant brought lights and my supper.

In the candle light she ventured to look at me and laugh.

"Such schooling" says she. "I never knew before that there was such a personage as a sweetheart pro tem! But you seem to know the role by heart, Mr. Drogue. And so, no doubt, feel warranted to instruct others.

But this is the end of it, my friend. For one day you shall have to confess you to your wife! And I think my future Lady Northesk is like to have a pretty temper and will give you a mauvais quart d'heur when she hears of this May day's folly in a Johnstown public house!"

CHAPTER XXVI

ORDERS

In June I was out o' bed and managed to set foot on ground for the first time since early spring. By the end of the month I had my strength in a measure and was able to hobble about town. Pernicious rheumatism is no light matter, for with the agony,--and weakness afterward,--a dull despair settles upon the victim; and it was mind, not body, that caused me the deeper distress, I think.

Life seemed useless; effort hopeless. Dark apprehensions obsessed me; I despaired of my country, of my people, of myself. And this all was part of my malady, but I did not know it.

All through June and July an oppressive summer heat brooded over Tryon.

Save for thunder storms of unusual violence, the heat remained unbroken day and night. In the hot and blinding blue of heaven, a fierce sun blazed; at night the very moon looked sickly with the heat.

Never had I heard so many various voices of the night, nor so noisy a tumult after dark, where the hylas trilled an almost deafening chorus and the big frogs' stringy croaking never ceased, and a myriad confusion of insects chirred and creaked and hummed in the suffocating dark.

At dawn the birds' outburst was like the loud outrush of a torrent filling the waking world; at twilight scores of unseen whippoorwills put on their shoes[30] and shouted in whistling whisper voices to one another across the wastes of night like the False Faces [31] gathering at a secret tryst.

[Footnote 30: Indian lore. The yellow moccasin flower is the whippoorwill's shoe.]

[Footnote 31: A secret society common to all nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.]

If the whole Northland languished, drooping and drowsy in the heat, the very air, too, seemed heavy with the foreboding gloom of dreadful rumours.

Every day came ominous tidings from North, from West, from South of great forces uniting to march hither and crush us. And the terrible imminence of catastrophe, far from arousing and nerving us for the desperate event, seemed rather to confuse and daze our people, and finally to stupefy all, as though the horror of the immense and h.e.l.lish menace were beyond human comprehension.

Men laboured on the meagre defences of the county as though weighted by a nightmare--as though drowsing awake and not believing in their ghostly dream.

And all preparation went slow--fearfully slow--and it was like dragging a ma.s.s of chained men, whose minds had been drugged, to drive the militia to the drill ground or force the labourers to the unfinished parapets of our few and scattered forts.

Men still talked of the Sacandaga Block House as though there were such a refuge; but there was none unless they meant the ruins at Fish House or the unburned sheep-fold at Summer House Point, or the Mayfield defenses.

There remained only one fort of consequence south of the Lakes--Fort Stanwix, now called Schuyler, and that was far from finished, far from properly armed, garrisoned, and provisioned.

Whatever else of defense Tryon County possessed were merest makes.h.i.+fts--stone farmhouses fortified by ditch, stockade, and bastions; block-houses of wood; nothing more.

Fragments of our two regular regiments were ever s.h.i.+fting garrison--a company here, a battalion there. A few rangers kept the field; a regiment of Herkimer's militia, from time to time, took its turn at duty; a scout or two of irregulars and Oneida Indians haunted the trail toward Buck Island--which some call Deer Island, and others speak of as Carleton Island, and others still name it Ile-aux-Chevreuil, which is a mistake.

But any name for the d.a.m.ned spot was good enough for me, who had been there in years past, and knew how strong it could be made to defy us and to send out armed hordes to hara.s.s us on the Mohawk.

And at that instant, under Colonel Barry St. Leger, the Western flying force of the enemy was being marshalled at Buck Island.

Our scouts brought an account of the forces already there--detachments of the 8th British regulars, the 34th regulars, the regiment of Sir John, called the Royal New Yorkers by some, by others the Greens--(though our scouts told us that their new uniforms were to be scarlet)--the Corps of Cha.s.seurs, a regiment of green-coats known as Butler's Rangers, a detachment of Royal Artillery, another of Highlanders, and, most sinister of all, Brant's Iroquois under Thayendanegea himself and a number of young officers of the Indian Department, with Colonel Claus to advise them.

This was the flying force that threatened us from the West, directed by Burgoyne.

From the South we were menaced by the splendid and powerful British army which held New York City, Long Island, and the lower Hudson, and stood ready and equipped to march on a straight road right into Albany, cleaning up the Hudson, sh.o.r.e and stream, on their way hither.

But our most terrible danger threatened us from the North, where General Burgoyne, with a superb army and a half thousand Iroquois savages, had been smas.h.i.+ng his way toward us through the forests, seizing the lakes and the vessels and forts defending them, outmanoeuvring our General St. Clair; driving him from our fortress of Ticonderoga with loss of all stores and baggage; driving Francis out of Skenesborough and Fort Anne, and destroying both posts; chasing St. Clair out of Castleton and Hubbardton, destroying two-thirds of Warner's army; driving Schuyler's undisciplined militia from Fort Edward, toward Saratoga.

Every day brought rumours or positive news of disasters in our immediate neighbourhood. We knew that St. Leger, Sir John, Walter Butler, and Brant had left Buck Island and that Burgoyne was directing the campaign planned for the most hated army that ever invaded the Northland. And we learned the horrid details of these movements from Thomas Spencer, the Oneida who had just come in from that region, and whose certain account of how matters were swiftly coming to a crisis at last seemed to galvanize our people into action.

I was now, in August, well enough to take the field with a scout, and I applied for active duty and was promised it; but no orders came, and I haunted the Johnstown Fort impatiently, certain that every man who rode express and who went galloping through the town must bring my marching orders.

Precious days succeeded one another; I fretted, fumed, sickened with anxiety, deemed myself forgotten or perhaps disdained.

Then I had a shock when General Herkimer, ignoring me, sent for my Saguenay, but for what purpose I knew not, only that old Block's loud-voiced son-in-law, Colonel c.o.x, desired a Montagnais tracker.