CHAPTER XXIX
We entered Albany on the 22d of April; the town had heard the newsfrom Lexington ere we sighted the Albany hills, the express havingpassed us as we crossed the New York line, tearing along theriver-bank at a breakneck gallop.
So, when we rode into Albany, the stolid, pippin-cheeked Dutchmen hadlater news than had we, and I learned then, for the first time, how myLord Percy's troops had been hurled headlong through Cambridge Farmsinto Charlestown, where they lay like panting, slavering, senselessbeasts under the cannon of the _Somerset_ and _Asia_. And allMassachusetts 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 Shemuelcould procure medicine and such medical attendance as he so sorelystood in need of.
With Peter Weaver I prepared to arrange my affairs as best I might, itbeing impossible for me to undertake a voyage to Ireland at this time,though my succession to the title and estates of my late uncle, SirTerence, made it most necessary.
For the first time in my life I now became passably acquainted with myown affairs, though when we came to figure in pounds, shillings, andpence, 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, andasked some questions which caused the ponderous lawyer to addresshimself to her rather than to me, seeing clearly that either I carednothing for my own affairs or else was stupid past all belief.
Sir William's legacies to me and to Silver Heels were discussed mostseriously; and Mr. Weaver would have it that the law should deal withmy miserable kinsman, Sir John, for the fraud he had wrought. Yet, itwas exactly _that_; and, because he _was_ my kinsman, I could not draghim 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 itthat we at length made up our minds to accept it at all.
This I made plain to Mr. Weaver, then relapsed into a dull inspectionof his horn spectacles as he discoursed of mortgages and bonds andinterests and liens with stupefying monotony.
"It is like the school-room, Micky," murmured Silver Heels, close tomy ear, and composed her countenance to listen to a fluent perorationon percentage and investments in terms which were to me as vain astinkling cymbals.
"Then I am wealthy?" I interposed, again and again, yet could drawfrom that fat badger, Weaver, neither a "yes" nor "no," nor any plainspeech fit for a gentleman's comprehension.
So when at length we quitted Mr. Weaver a sullen mood possessed me andI felt at bay with all the learned people in the world, as I had oftenfelt, 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 Ipossess 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 roastfor Christmas."
"I be serious," said I, anxiously, "and I would know if I have meansto support a large family--"
"Hush!" said Silver Heels. What I could see of her face,--one smallear,--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 futurewith a hopeful gravity that befitted.
"As for a house," said I, "there is a pleasant place of springs calledSaratoga, dearly loved by Sir William."
"I know," said she, quickly; "it comes from 'asserat,' sparklingwaters."
"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 herflushed, defiant face, her bright eyes, the poise of her youthfulbody, brought back with a rush that day, a year ago, when I, sneakingout of the house to avoid the school-room, met her in the hallway, andwas 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 ofpretty malice, the same beauty of brow and mouth and hair was here,and something added--a maid's delicate mockery which veiled thetenderness 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 bythe 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 withyour fish-rod like a guilty dunce--"
"You wore a skirt o' buckskin and tiny moccasins and stockings withscarlet thrums; and you were a-nibbling a cone of maple-sugar," saidI.
"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 inmemory," said I, and kissed her.
"Oonah! All is lost," she said; "he does with me as he will!" and sherendered me my kiss, saying, "Bearer of belts, thy peace-belt isreturned."
So was perfect peace established, not only for the shadowy children ofthat unforgotten past, but for us, and for all time betwixt us; andour belts were offered and returned, and the sign was the touching ofher lips and mine.
For Shemuel's sake, and because we would not desert him, we continuedin Albany until near the end of April.
Taking counsel together, we had determined to build a mansion, whenthe times permitted, midway on the road 'twixt Johnstown and Fonda'sBush, our lands joining at that place. But I feared much that the warwhich now flamed through Massachusetts Bay might soon creep northwardinto our forest fastness and set the border ablaze from the Ohio toSaint Sacrement. Much, too, I feared that the men of the woods whoseskin was red would league with the men whose coats were red. All hislater days Sir William had striven to avert this awful pact; Dunmoreplayed against him, Butler betrayed him, Cresap was tricked, and SirWilliam lost. Now, into his high place sneaked a pygmy, slow,uncertain, sullen, treacherous--his own son, who would undo the lastknot which bound the Indians to a fair neutrality. Perhaps he himselfwould even lead them on to the dreadful devastation all men dreaded;and, if he, men must also count on the Butlers, father and son, tocarry terror through our forests and hunt to death without mercy allwho stood for freedom and the rights of man.
One of these I had held in my hand and released. Yet still that oldcertainty haunted me, the belief that one day I was to meet and killhim, not in honourable encounter, now, for he had lost the right toask such a death from me; but in the dark forest, somewhere among thecorridors of silent pines, I would slay him as sachems slay ferociousbeasts that track men through ghost-trails down to hell.
Then should we be free at last of this fierce, misshapen soul, wePeople of the Morning, Tierhansaga, and the shrinking forest shouldstraighten, and Oya should be Oyabanh, and the red witch-flower shouldwither to a stalk, to a seed, and sprout a fair white blossom for alltime, 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 Ientered 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 aforest-runner.
"Peter!" I cried, for it was he, my dusky kinsm
an on the left hand;then my eyes fell on his companion, a short, squat savage, clad inred, 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 abear-cub in November; Red Jacket raised his sullen eyes, then droppedthem.
Suddenly, as I stood there, at a loss what next to say, came a heavyman, richly clothed, flabby face bent on the ground. Nor would he havediscovered me, so immersed in brooding reverie was he, had not Petertouched 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 SirJohn Johnson, for it was he, moved back a pace and laid his heavy handon 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 himwith steady, kindling eyes.
We started next day at dawn, Silver Heels riding Warlock in her newkirtle and little French three-cornered hat with its gilt fringe, towhich 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 doubtless theonly decent horseflesh in all that town of rusty rackers and patroons'sorry hacks. Mount and the Weasel, leather-clad, and gay with quilledmoccasins 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 aQuaker 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 hisarmpits, 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 swingingstrides measured to our horses' steady pacing; beside him trotted thelittle Weasel, his hand holding tightly to the giant's arm; andsometimes he took three steps to Mount's one, and sometimes hetoddled, his little, leather-bound legs twinkling like spokes in awheel, 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 oldroute-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 flighto' 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 littleWeasel had gone moon-mad.
"On many--every third or fourth year since I first knew him," saidMount, soberly. "But never before did he leave me to follow his poormad phantoms--always the phantom of his wife, lad, in divers guises.He saw her in a silvery bush o' moonlight nights, and talked with hertill my goose-flesh rose and crawled on me; he saw her mirrored incold, deep pools at dawn, looking up at him from the golden-ribbedsands, and I have laid in the canoe to watch the trouts' quick shadowsmoving on the bottom, and he a-talking sweet to his dear wife asthough she hid under the lily-pads like a blossom."
He glanced up at me pitifully as he walked beside my stirrup; I laidmy hand on his leather-tufted shoulder.
"Sir, it is sad," he muttered; "a fair mind nobly wrecked. But griefcannot 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?" askedSilver Heels, gently.
"I think he does," whispered Mount.
Silver Heels turned her sorrowful eyes on poor Cade Renard.
Riding that afternoon near sunset, at the False Faces' Carrying-Placeupon the Mohawk, we spoke of Johnson Hall and the old life, sadly, fornever again could we hope to enter its beloved portals.
Naught that belonged to us remained in the Hall, save only thememories none might rob us of.
"If only I might have Betty," said Silver Heels, wistfully.
"Betty? Did she not attend you to Boston with Sir John?" I asked.
"Yes, but she was slave to Sir John. I could not buy her; you know howpoor I awoke to find myself in Boston town."
"Would not that brute allow you Betty?" I asked, angrily.
"No; I think he feared her. Poor, blubbering Betty, how she wept androared her grief when Sir John bade her pack up, and called her'hussy.'"
That night we lay at Schenectady, where also was camped a body of SirWilliam's Mohawks, a sullen, watchful band, daubed in hunting-paint,yet their quivers hung heavy with triple-feathered war-arrows, andtheir knives and hatchets and their rifles were over-bright and cleanto please me.
Some of them knew me, and came to talk with me over a birch-fire. Igave them tobacco, and we tarried by the birch-fire till the starswaned in the sky and the dawn-stillness fell on land and river; butfrom them I could learn nothing, save that Sir John and Colonel Guyhad vowed to scalp their own neighbours should they as much as cry,"God save our country!" Evil news, truly, yet only set me firmer in mydesign to battle till the end for the freedom that God had given andkings would take away.
Silver Heels, quitting the inn with Mount, came to warn me that I mustsleep if we set out at sunrise. Graciously she greeted the Mohawks whohad risen to withdraw; they all knew her, and watched her like tamepanthers with red coals in their eyes.
"But they are panthers yet; forget it not," muttered Jack Mount.
At sunrise we rode out into the blue hills. Homeless, yet nearing homeat last, my heart lifted like a singing bird. Dew on the sweet-fernexhaling, dew on the ghost-flower, dew on the scented brake!--and thewhistle of feathered wings, and the endless ringing chorus of thebirds of Tryon! Hills of pure sapphire, streams of gems, limpidnecklaces festooned to drip diamonds from crags into some frothingpool! Pendent pearls on vines starred white with bloom; a dun deer atgaze, knee-deep in feathering willow-grass; a hermit-bird his morninghymn, cloistered in the vaulted monastery where the great organ stirsamong the pines!
Hills! Hills of Tryon, unploughed, unharrowed, save by the gallopingdeer; hills, sweet islands in the dark pine ocean, over whose wastethe wild hawk's mewing answers the cry of its high-wheeling mate;hills of the morning, aromatic with spiced fern, and perfumed of thegum of spruce and balsam; hills of Tryon; my hills! my hills!
* * * * *
"The spring is with us," said Jack Mount, stooping to pluck a frailflower.
"Ka-nah-wah-hawks, the cowslip!" murmured Silver Heels.
"Savour the wind; what is it?" I asked, sniffing.
"O-neh-tah, the pine!" she cried.
"O-ne-tah, the spruce!" I corrected.
"The pine, silly!"
"The spruce!"
"No, no, the pine!"
"So be it, sweet."
"No, I am wrong!"
And we laughed, and she stretched out her slender hand to me from hersaddle.
Then we galloped forward together, calling out greeting to our oldfriends as we passed; and thus we saluted Jis-kah-kah, the robin, andKivi-yeh, the little owl, and we whistled at Koo-koo-e, the quail, andmocked at old Kah-kah, the watchful crow.
Han-nah-wen, the butterfly, came flitting along the roadside, raggedwith his long winter's sleep.
"He should not have slept in h
is velvet robe for a night-shift," saidSilver Heels; "he is a summer spendthrift, and Nah-wan-hon-tah, thespeckled trout, lies watching him under the water."
Which set me thinking of my feather-flies; and then the dear old riverflashed in sight.
"I see--I see--there, very far away on that hill--" whispered SilverHeels.
"I see," I muttered, choking.
Presently the sunlight glimmered on a window of the distant Hall.
"We are on our own land now, dear heart," I said, choking back the sobin my throat.
I called out to Jack Mount and unslung my woodaxe. He drew hishatchet, and together we cut down a fair young maple, trimmed it, anddrove a heavy post into the soil.
"Here we will build one day," said I to Silver Heels. She smiledfaintly, but her eyes were fixed on the distant Hall.
I had leased, from my lawyer, Peter Weaver, a large stone mansion inJohnstown, which stood next to the church where Sir William lay; thisuntil such time as I might return from the war and find leisure tobuild on my own land the house which Silver Heels and I had planned tostand on a hill, in full view of the river and of the old Hall whereour childhood had been passed.
It was night when we rode into Johnstown. I could discover no changesin the darkness, save that a few new signs swung before lighted shops,and every fifth house hung out a lanthorn and a whole candle-light.
Our stone house was vast, damp, and scantily furnished, but Jack Mountlighted a fire in the hallway, and Silver Heels went about with a songon her lips, and Cade Renard sent servants from the nearest inn withcloth and tableware, and meats smoking hot, not forgetting a greatbowl of punch and a cask of ale, which the scullions rolled into thegreat hall and hoisted on the skids.
So we were merry, and silent, too, at moments, when our eyes met infaint smiles or wistful sympathy.
Shemuel, with his peddling panniers, had strangely disappeared, norcould we find him high or low when Mount and Cade had set their owntable by the fire and the room smelled sweet with steaming toddy.
"Thrift! Thrift!" muttered Mount, rattling his toddy-stickimpatiently; "now who could have thought that little Jew would havecut away to make up time in trade this night!"
But Shemuel had traded in another manner, for, ere Mount had set hisstrong, white teeth in the breast-bone of a roasted fowl, I heardSilver Heels cry out: "Betty! Betty! Oh dear, dear Betty!" And theblubbering black woman came rolling in, scarlet turban erect,ear-rings jingling.
"Mah li'l dove! Mah li'l pigeon-dove! Oh Gord, mah li'l MissHoney-bee!"
"You must keep her, lad," muttered Mount.
"I think Sir John will sell," I said, grimly.
And so he did, or would have, had not his new wife, poor Lady Johnson,whom I had never seen, writing from the Hall, begged me to acceptBetty as a gift from her. And I, having no quarrel with the unhappylady, accepted Betty as a gift, permitting Lady Johnson to secure fromthe incident what comfort she might.
All through the sweet May-tide, Jack Mount and Cade Renard sunnedthemselves under the trees in our garden, or sprawled on the warmporch like great, amiable wolf-hounds, dozing and dreaming of mightydeeds.
Ale they had for the drawing, yet abused it not, respecting thehospitality of the house and its young mistress, and none could pointthe shameful finger at either to cry: "Fie! Pottle-pot! Malt-worm!Painted-nose! Go swim!" At times, sitting together on the grass, cheekby jowl, I heard them singing hymns; at times strolling through themoon-drenched garden paths they lifted up their souls in song:
"The hunter has taken the trail to the East; The little deer run! The little deer run! Fear not, little deer, for he hunts the Red Beast; Ye are not for his gun! Ye are not for his gun!
"The hunter lies cold on the trail to the East; His bosom is rent! His bosom is rent! He died for his country, to slay the Red Beast; To Heaven he went! To Heaven he went!"
In the moonlight the doleful chant droned on, night after night, underthe dewy lilacs; and the great horned-owl answered, hooting from thepines; and Silver Heels and I listened from the porch, hand claspinghand in fearsome content. For out in the dark world God was busyshaping the destiny of a people; even the black forest knew it, andthrilled like a vast harp at the touch of the free winds'fingers--unseen fingers, delicate, tentative, groping for the key to achord of splendid majesty. And when at last the chord should be foundand struck, resounding to the deep world's rock foundation, a freepeople's voices should repeat, singing forever and for all timethroughout the earth:
"Amen!"
Meanwhile, stillness, moonlight, and a "_Miserere_" from the lips oftwo strange forest-runner folk, free-born and ready when the Lord ofall led forth His prophet to command.
On that night I heard a man in the street repeat a name, Washington.And all that night I thought of it, and said it, under my breath. Butwhat it might portend I knew not then.
* * * * *
May ended, smothered in flowers; and with the thickening leaves ofJune came to us there in the North rumours of the times which were totry men's souls. And again I heard, somewhere in the darkness of thevillage streets, the name I heard before; and that night, too, I layawake, forming the word with silent lips, close to my young wife'sbreast.
The full, yellow moon of June creamed all our garden now; Mount andRenard sat a-squat upon the grass, chin on fist, to muse and muse andwait--for what? The King of England did not know; but all the worldwas waiting, too.
Then, one dim morning, while yet the primrose light tinted the farhills, I awoke to see Silver Heels in her white night-robe, leaningfrom the casement, calling out to me in a strange, frightened voice:"Michael! Michael! They are coming over the hills--over the hills,dear heart, to take you with them!"
At the window, sniffing the fresh dawn, I listened.
"Footfalls in the hills!" she said, trembling. "Out of the morning menare coming! God make me brave! God make me brave!"
For a long time we stood silent; the village slept below us; thestillness of the dawn remained unbroken, save by a golden-robin'snote, fluting from a spectral elm.
"It is not yet time," I said: "let us sleep on, dear heart."
But she would not, and I was fain to dress me in my leather, lest thesummons coming swift might find me all unready at the call.
Then she roused Betty and the maid and servants, bidding them call upMount and Renard, for the hour was close upon us all.
"Dear love," I said, "this is a strange fear that takes you from yourpillows there, at dawn."
"Strange things befall a blindly loving heart," she said; "I heardthem in my dreams, and knew them, all marching with their yellowmoccasins and raccoon-caps and green thrums blowing in the wind."
"Riflemen?"
"Ay, dear love."
"Foolish prophetess!"
"Too wise! Too wise!" she whispered, wearily, nestling within my arms,a second only, then:
"Sir Michael!" roared Mount below my window; "Cresap is on the hillswith five hundred men of Maryland!"
Stunned, I stared at Silver Heels; her face was marble, glorified.
As the sun rose I left her, and, scarce knowing what I did, threw mylong rifle on my shoulder and ran out swiftly through the garden.
Suddenly, as though by magic summoned, the whole street was filledwith riflemen, marching silently and swiftly, with moccasined feet,their raccoon caps pushed back, the green thrums tossing on sleeve andthigh. On they came, rank on rank, like brown deer herding through arock run; and, on the hunting-shirts, lettered in white across eachbreast, I read:
LIBERTY OR DEATH.
Mount and the Weasel came up, rifles shouldered, coon-skin capsswinging in their hands. Mount shyly touched the hand that SilverHeels held out; Cade Renard took the fingers, and, bending above themwith a flicker of his aged gallantly, pressed them with his shrivelledlips.
"We will watch over your husband, my lady," he said, raising his dimeyes to hers.
"Ay, we wi
ll bring him back, Lady Cardigan," muttered Jack Mount,twisting his cap in his huge paws.
Silver Heels, holding them each by the hand, strove to speak, but thevoice in her white throat froze, and she only looked silently fromthem to me with pitiful gray eyes.
"To kill the Red Beast," muttered Mount; "it is quickly done, LadyCardigan. Then your husband will return."
"To kill the Beast," repeated Renard; "the Red Beast with twin heads.Ay, it can be done, my lady. Then he will return."
"I swear it!" cried Mount, flinging up his great arm. "He willreturn."
"To doubt it is to doubt God's grace, child. He will return," saidCade Renard.
She looked at me, at Mount, at the Weasel, then at the torrent ofdusty riflemen steadily passing without a break.
"If he--he must go--" she began. Her voice failed; she caught my handsand kissed them.
"For our honour--go!" she gasped. "Michael! Michael! Come back tome--"
"Truly, dear heart--truly! truly!"
"Ho! Cardigan!" rang out a voice like a pistol-shot from the passingranks.
Through my tear-dimmed eyes I saw Cresap, sword shining in his hand.
"We come," cried Mount, shaking his rifle towards the rising sun;"death to the Red Beast!"
"Death to the Beast!" shouted Cresap, shaking his shining sword.
Half a thousand heavy rifles shook high; half a thousand deep voicesroared thunderously through the stony street:
"Liberty! Liberty or Death!"