CHAPTER V--THE EVERGREEN SPRIG
Understanding the importance of his errand and guessing its purpose,Nathan skulked stealthily along the heavily-wooded border of the highwaytill past all chance of discovery, when he took the easier course of theroad. The ecstatic melody of the thrushes' song and the pensive strainof the pewee had not changed, yet now they were instinct with cheer andacceleration, as was the merry drumbeat of the flicker on a dry branchoverhead.
Presently, as he held his steady pace, splashing through puddles andpattering along firmer stretches, he heard sharp and loud footfalls inrapid approach. Before his first impulse to strike into the ready coverof the woods was carried into effect, a horseman galloped around theturn, and he was face to face with a handsome stranger, whose tall,well-knit figure, heightened by his seat on horseback, towered above theboy like a giant.
"Hello," said the man, reining up his horse, "and where are you bound insuch a hurry, and who might you be?" His clear gray eyes were fixed onNathan, who noticed pistols in the holsters, a long gun across thesaddle bow, and, in the cocked hat, a sprig of evergreen.
"I'm Seth Beeman's boy," Nathan answered, pointing in the direction ofhis home, "and I'm goin' to neighbor Newton's of an arrant."
"Ah,--Beeman,--a good man, I'm told. And what might take you to neighborNewton's in such a hurry? Has that hemlock twig in your hand anything todo with your errand?" demanded the stranger, in an imperative but kindlyvoice. "Speak up. You need not be afraid of me."
Nathan looked up inquiringly at the bold, handsome face smiling down onhim.
"Did you ever hear of Ethan Allen?" asked the stranger.
"Oh, yes; only yesterday father told about Ethan Allen's throwing theYorker's millstones over the Great Falls at New Haven."
"Right and true! Well, I am Ethan Allen." As he gave his name in adeep-toned voice of proud assurance, it seemed in itself a strong host."Your father sent you with that twig to say there's trouble at Beeman's,didn't he?"
Nathan looked up in wonder, admiration, and gladness, and then, with theinstinctive, unreasoned confidence that the famous chieftain of theGrants was wont to inspire, told unreservedly his father's troubles anddirections. When Allen had heard it, he wheeled his horse beside thenearest stump and bade Nathan mount behind him.
"My horse's feet will help you make your rounds quicker than yours, myman. We've no time to lose, for there's no telling what those scoundrelsmay be at. Eight Yorkers! Well, we'll soon raise good men enough to makeshort work of them."
Nathan mounted nimbly to his assigned place, and, clasping as far as hecould the ample waist of his new friend, was borne along the road at aspeed that soon brought them to the log house of the Newtons. A man ofthe herculean mould so common to the early Vermonters came out of thehouse to meet the comers, with an expression of pleased surprise on hisgood-humored face.
"Why, colonel, we wa'n't expectin' on you so soon, but we hain't no lessglad to see you. 'Light and come in. Mother'll hev potluck ready torights. Why, is that the Beeman boy stickin' on behind you? Anything thematter over to Beeman's?"
"No, we can't 'light," Allen replied; and then, looking down over hisshoulder, "Do your errand, my boy, and we'll push on."
Nathan held out the carefully kept sprig of evergreen and repeated hismessage.
"Trouble to Beeman's, now."
"Yea, verily," said Allen to Newton, whose face flashed at the boy'swords. "Rise up and gird on your swords, you and your sons. ThePhilistines are upon you even as it has been prophesied. Felton and hisgang of land thieves. The son of Belial was warned to depart from theland of the elect, but he heeds not those who cry in the wilderness.Confound the rascal! He must be 'viewed'! You and your two boys takeyour guns and jog down that way, and as you go cut a goodly scourge ofblue beech, for verily there shall be weeping and wailing and gnashingof teeth. We'll rally the Callenders, and Jones, and Harrington, andNorth, and my friend Beeman here will tell Job. We'll gather a gooddozen. Enough to mete out the vengeance of the Lord to eight Yorkers,I'll warrant!"
Strange and abrupt as were the transitions from Allen's favoriteScriptural manner of speech to the ordinary vernacular, no one thoughtof laughing. As the boy dismounted, Allen said:
"You go straight to Job and do as he tells you;" and as he rode awaycalled back, "everybody lay low and keep dark till you hear the owlhoot."
Soon Nathan turned from the road into an obscure footpath that led inthe direction of Job Carpenter's cabin. The gloom and loneliness of themysterious forest, through which the narrow footpath wound, so pervadedit that the song birds seemed awed to silence, and the woodpeckerstapped cautiously, as if afraid of being heard by some enemy. No boy,even of backwoods breeding, would care to loiter had his errand beenless urgent, and he gave but a passing notice to things ordinarily ofabsorbing interest.
A mother partridge fluttered along the ground in simulated cripplednesswhile her callow brood vanished among the low-spread leaves. A shy woodbird disclosed the secret of her nest as he sped by. Against a dark pinegleamed the fiery flash of a tanager's plumage. A wood mouse stirred thedry leaves. His own foot touched a prostrate dead sapling, and the drytop rustled unseen in the wayside thicket. There was a sound of long,swift bounds, punctuating the silence with growing distinctness, and ahare, in his brown summer coat, wide-eyed with terror, flashed like adun streak across the path just before him, and close behind theterrified creature a gray lynx shot past, eager with sight and scent ofhis prey, closing the distance with long leaps. Before the intermittentscurry of footfalls had faded out of hearing they ceased, and a wail ofagony announced the tragical end of the race. The cry made him shiver,and he could but think that the lynx might have been a panther and thehare a boy.
His heart grew lighter when he saw the sunshine showing golden greenthrough the leafy screen that bordered the hunter's little clearing. Hefound Job leaning on his hoe in his patch of corn, looking wistfully onthe creek, where the fish were breaking the surface among the weeds thatmarked the expanse of marsh with tender green, and where the sinuouscourse of the channel was defined by purple lines of lily pads. Themessage was received with a show of vexation, and the old man exclaimed:
"Plague on 'em all with their pitches and surveyin' and squabblin'. Whycan't folks let the woods alone? There's room enough in the settlementsfor sech quarrels without comin' here to disturb God's peace withbickerin's over these acres o' desart. I thought I'd got done wi' warsand fightin's, exceptin' with varmints, when the Frenchers and Injinswas whipped. But I guess there won't never be no peace on airth and goodwill to men for all it's ben preached nigh onto eighteen hundred years.Plague on your Hampshire Grants and your York Grants, the hul bilin'!Wal, if it must come it must, and I'll be skelped if I'll see Yorkers arunnin' over my own Yankee kin. Yorkers is next to Reg'lars for toppin'ways. I never could abear 'em."
While he spoke he twirled Nathan's hemlock sprig between his fingers andnow set it carefully in the band of his hat and led the way to hiscabin.
"And Ethan Allen's in these betterments? Well, them Yorkers'll wishthey'd stayed to home. He's hard-handed, is Ethan."
The two were now in the cabin, and Job set forth a cold johnny-cake andsome jerked venison that Nathan needed no urging to partake of. "'Tain'tyour mother's cookin', but it's better'n nothin'," Job said, as betweenmouthfuls he counted out a dozen bullets from a pouch and put them inhis pocket. Then he held up his powder horn toward the light aftergiving it a shake, and, being satisfied of its contents, slung it overhis shoulder. Their hunger being satisfied, he took the long smooth-borefrom its hooks, examined the flint, and, nodding to Nathan to follow,went down to his canoe, that lay bottom up on the bank.
"It's quicker goin' by water'n by land," said Job, as he set the canoeafloat and stepped into it, while Nathan took his place forward.Impelled by the two paddles, the light craft went swiftly gliding downthe creek, and then northward, skirting the wooded shore of the lake.