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WITH ETHAN ALLEN AT TICONDEROGA
by
W. BERT FOSTER
Author of
"With Washington at Valley Forge" etc
Illustrated by F. A. Carter
THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY
PHILADELPHIA
MCMIV
Copyright 1903 by The Penn Publishing Company
With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga
"FORWARD!" HE SHOUTED]
CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I A Boy of the Wilderness 5 II Enoch Harding Feels Himself a Man 19 III The Ambush 31 IV 'Siah Bolderwood's Stratagem 45 V The Pioneer Home 60 VI The Stump Burning 76 VII A Night Attack 94 VIII The Traitor's Way 107 IX The Otter Creek Raid 127 X The Warning 139 XI An Unequal Battle 160 XII Backwoods Justice 174 XIII The Wolf Pack 191 XIV The Testimony of Crow Wing 208 XV The Storm Cloud Gathers 220 XVI The Westminster Massacre 236 XVII The Cloven Hoof 251 XVIII "The Cross of Fire" 270 XIX The Rising of the Clans 284 XX The Rival Commanders 298 XXI The Escape of the Spy 313 XXII The End of Simon Halpen 330 XXIII The Dawn of the Tenth of May 343 XXIV The Guns of Old Ti Speak 355
WITH ETHAN ALLEN AT TICONDEROGA
CHAPTER I
A BOY OF THE WILDERNESS
The forest was still. A calm lay upon its vast extent, from thegreen-capped hills in the east to the noble river which, fed by thestreams so quietly meandering through the pleasantly wooded country,found its way to the sea where the greatest city of the New World wasdestined to stand. The clear, bell-like note of a waking bird startledthe morning hush. A doe and her fawn that had couched in a thicketseemed roused to activity by this early matin and suddenly showered theshort turf with a dewy rain from the bushes which they disturbed as theyleaped away toward the "lick." The gentle creatures first slaked theirthirst at the margin of the creek hard by and then stood a moment withoutstretched nostrils, snuffing the wind before tasting the saltimpregnated earth trampled as hard as adamant by a thousand hoofs. Thefawn dropped its muzzle quickly; but the mother, not so well assured,snuffed again and yet again.
In the wilderness, before the white man came, there were to be foundpaths made by the wild folk going to and from their watering places andfeeding grounds, and paths made by the red hunter and warrior. Althoughhundreds of deer traveled to this lick yearly, they had not originallymade the trail. It was an ancient Indian runaway, for the creek wasfordable near this point. The tribesmen had used it for generationsuntil it was worn almost knee-deep in the forest mould, but wide enoughonly to be traveled in single file. Along this ancient trail, andapproaching the lick with infinite caution, came a boy of thirteen,bearing a heavy rifle.
Although so young, Enoch Harding was well built, and the play of hishardened muscles was easily observed under his tight-fitting, homespungarments. The circumstances of border life in the eighteenth centurymolded hardy men and sturdy boys. His face was as brown as a berry andhis eyes clear and frankly open. The brown hair curled tightly above hisperspiring brow, from which his old otter-skin cap was thrust back. Hiscoming to the bank of the wide stream was attended with all the care andsilent observation of an Indian on the trail. He set his feet so firmlyand with such precision that not even the rustle of a leaf or thecrackling of a twig would have warned the sharpest ear of his approach.The wind was in his favor, too, blowing from the creek toward him. Thedoe, which he could not yet see but the patter of whose light hoofs hehad heard as she trotted with her fawn to the drinking place, could notpossibly have discovered his presence; yet she continued to raise hermuzzle at intervals and snuff the wind suspiciously.
The dark aisles of the forest, as yet unillumined by the sun whosecrimson banners would soon be flung above the mountain-tops, seemeddeserted. In the distance the birds were beginning their morning song;but here the shadow of the mountains lay heavy upon wood and stream andthe feathered choristers awoke more slowly. The two deer at the lick andthe boy who now, from behind the massive bole of a tree, surveyed them,seemed the only living objects within view.
Enoch raised his heavy rifle, resting the barrel against the tree trunk,and drew bead at the doe's side. He was chancing a long shot, ratherthan taking the risk of approaching any nearer to the animals. He hadseen that the doe was suspicious and she might be off in a flash intothe thicker forest beyond unless he fired at once. Had he been moreexperienced he would have wondered what had made the creaturesuspicious, his own approach to the lick being quite evidentlyundiscovered. But he thought only of getting a perfect sight and thatthe larder at home was empty. And this last fact was sufficient to makethe boy's aim certain, his principal care being to waste no powder andto bring down his game with as little loss of time as might be.
The next moment the heavy muzzle-loading gun roared and the buckshotsped on its mission. The mother deer gave a convulsive spring forward,thus warning the poor fawn, which disappeared in the brush like a flashof brown light. The doe dropped in a heap upon the sward and Enoch,flushed with success, ran forward to view his prize. In so doing,however, the boy forgot the first rule of the border ranger and hunter.He did not reload his weapon.
Stumbling over the widely spread roots of the great tree behind which hehad hidden, he reached the opening in the forest where the tragedy hadbeen enacted, and would have been on his knees beside the dead deer inanother instant had not an appalling sound stayed him. A scream, thelike of which once heard is never to be forgotten, thrilled him to themarrow. He started back, casting his glance upward. There was a rustlingin the thick branches of the tree beneath which the doe had fallen.Again the maddened scream rang out and a tawny body flashed fromconcealment in the foliage.
"A catamount!" Enoch shouted, and seeing the creature fairly over hishead in its flight through the air, he leaped away toward the creek, hisfeet winged with fear. Of all the wild creatures of the Northernwilderness this huge cat was most to be avoided. It would not hesitateto attack man when hungry, and maddened and disappointed as this onewas, its charge could not be stayed. At the instant when the beast wasprepared to leap upon either the doe or her fawn, Enoch's shot had laidthe one low and frightened the other away. His appearance upon the sceneattracted the attention of the cat and had given it a new object ofattack. Possibly the creature did not even notice the fall of the deer,being now bent upon vengeance for the loss of its prey, for which it haddoubtless searched unsuccessfully all the night through.
The young hunter was in a desperate situation. His gun was empty and theprospect of an encounter with the catamount would have quenched thecourage of the bravest. And to run from it was still more foolish, yetthis was the first thought which inspired him. The creek was beyond andalthough the ford was some rods above the deer-lick, he thought to casthimself into the stream and thus escape his enemy. The beast, possessingthat well-known trait of the feline tribe which causes it to shrink fromwater, might not follow him into the creek.
A long log, the end of which had caught upon the bank, swung its lengthinto the st
ream, forming a boom against which light drift-stuff hadgathered; the swift current foamed about the timber as though vexed atthis delay to its progress. Upon the tree Enoch leaped and ran to thefurther extremity. His feet, shod in home-made moccasins of deer-hide,did not slip on this insecure footing; but his weight on the strandedlog set it in motion. The timber began to swing off from the shore andone terrified glance about him assured the boy that he was at a mostdeep and dangerous part of the stream.
Although so shallow above at the ford, the bed of the creek directlybelow was of rock instead of gravel, and ragged boulders thrustthemselves up from the depths, causing many whirlpools which dimpled thesurface of the water. About the boulders the current tore, the brownfroth from the angry jaws of rock dancing lightly away upon the waves.Although even with his clothing on he might have swum in a quiet pool,to do so here would be almost impossible. The boy was between twoperils!
He turned about in horror to escape the flood, and was in time to seethe huge cat gain the end of the log in a single bound as it was tornfrom the shore by the current. There the beast crouched, less thantwenty feet away, lashing its tail and snarling menace at the victim ofits wrath. The situation was paralyzing. As for loading his rifle now,the boy had not the strength to do it. The fascination of the beast'sblazing eyes held him motionless, like a bird charmed by the unwinkinggaze of a black snake.
And Enoch Harding knew, if he knew anything, that the beast would notgive him time to reload the clumsy gun. At his first movement it wouldspring. And if he leaped into the water, it might follow him,considering its present savage mood. He beheld its muscles, whichslipped so easily under the tawny skin, knotting themselves for aspring. The forelegs were drawn up under the breast the curved,sabre-sharp claws scratching the bark on the floating timber. In anotherinstant the fatal leap would be made.
Never had the boy been in such danger. He did not utterly lose hispresence of mind; but he was helpless. What chance had he with an emptygun before the savage brute? He seized the barrel in both hands andraised the weapon above his head. It was too heavy for him to swing withany ease, and being so would fall but lightly on the creature, did hesucceed in reaching it at all. He could not hope to stun the cat at asingle blow. And beside, the tree, rocking now like a water-loggedcanoe, made his footing more and more insecure. In a moment it would beamong the boulders and at the first collision be overturned.
But he could not drag his eyes from those of the catamount. With afierce snarl which ended in a thrilling scream, the brute cast itselfinto the air! At the moment it rose, exposing its lighter colored breastto view, a gun-shot shattered the silence of river and forest. Thespring of the cat was not stayed, but its yell again changed--this timeto a note of agony.
"Jump, lad, jump!" shouted a voice and Enoch, as though awaking from adream, obeyed the command. He leaped sideways, and landed upon aslippery rock, falling to his knees, yet securing a hand-hold upon aprotuberance. Nor did he lose hold of his gun with the other hand.
The body of the catamount landed just where he had stood; but thenrolled off the log and disappeared in the rushing stream, while thetimber itself crashed instantly into one of the larger boulders. Enochstaggered to his feet, his hand bleeding and also his knee, where thestocking had been torn away by the rock. The log swung broadside to thecurrent again, and seeing his chance, the boy ran along its length andleaped from its end into comparatively shallow water under the bank.
His rescuer was at hand and dragged him, panting and exhausted, to theshore, where he fell weakly on the turf, unable for a moment to utter aword. The man who leaned over him was lean, as dark as an Indian, and ina day when smoothly shaven features were the rule, his face was markedby a tangled growth of iron-gray beard. His hair hung to the fringedcollar of his deerskin shirt, and straggled over his low brow incareless locks, instead of being tightly drawn back and fastened in aqueue; and out of this wilderness of hair and beard looked two eyes assharp as the hawk's.
He was so tall that there was a slight stoop to his shoulders as though,when he walked, he feared to collide with the branches of the treesunder which he passed. Erect, he must have lacked but a few inches ofseven feet and, possessing not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his bigbones, his appearance was not impressive. The deerskin hunting shirt,worked in a curious pattern on the breast with red and blue porcupinequills, fitted him tightly, as did his linsey-woolsey breeches; and histhin shanks were covered with gray hose darned clumsily in more than oneplace. He would have been selected at first sight as a wood-ranger andhunter, and carried his long rifle with more grace than he ever heldplough or wielded reaping-hook.
Indeed, Josiah Bolderwood was one of that strange class of white men sofrequently found during the pioneer era of our Eastern country. Heseemed to have been born, as he often said himself, with a gun in hishands. His mother, lying on her couch behind the double wall of ablockhouse in the Maine wilderness, loaded spare guns for her husbandand his comrades while they beat off the yelling redskins, when Josiahwas but a few days old. He was a ranger and trapper from the beginning.He had slept under the canopy of the forest more often than in a bed andbeneath a roof made by men's hands. From early youth he had hunted allthrough the northern wilderness, and had been no more able to tiehimself to a farm, and earn his bread by tilling the soil, than anIndian. Indeed, he was more of an Indian than a white man in habits,tastes, and feelings; he lacked only that marvelous appreciation ofsigns and sounds in the forest, in which the white can never hope toequal the red man.
"Lad, that was a near chance for you!" he said, when he saw that Enochwas practically unhurt. "The Almighty surely brought me to this lickjest right. I knowed you was here when I heard the shot; but as yourmarm said you'd gone for a deer, I didn't s'pose you'd be huntin' forcatamounts, too! Howsomever, somethin' tol' me ter run when I heard yourgun, an' run I did."
"I didn't shoot at the wild-cat, 'Siah," said the boy, getting upon hisfeet. "See yonder; there's the doe I knocked over. But the critter wasafter her, too, and it madded him when I fired, I s'pose."
"And ye didn't git your gun loaded again!" exclaimed Bolderwood.
His young friend blushed with shame. "I--I didn't think. I ran over tolook at the doe, and the critter jumped at me outer the tree. Then I goton the log and he follered me----"
"Jonas Harding's boy'd oughter known better than that," declared the oldranger, with some vexation.
"I know it, 'Siah. Poor father told me 'nough times never to move outermy tracks till I had loaded again. An' I reckon this'll be a lesson forme. I--I ain't got over it yet."
"Wal," said Bolderwood, "while you git yer breath, Nuck, I'll flay thatcritter and hang her up. I'm in somethin' of a hurry this mornin'; butas the widder's needin' the meat, we won't leave the carcass to thevarmints."
"You've been to my house, 'Siah?" cried Enoch, following him across thelittle glade.
"Yes. Jest stopped there on my way down from Manchester. That's how Iknew you was over here hunting."
"But if you're in a hurry, leave me to do that," said the boy. "I'm allright now."
"You're in as big a hurry as I be, Nuck," returned the ranger, with agrim smile. "I'm going to take you with me over to Mr. JamesBreckenridge's. Ev'ry gun we kin git may count to-day, lad."
"Did mother say I could go, 'Siah?" cried the youngster, with undoubtedsatisfaction in his voice. "You're the best man that I know to get herto say 'yes'!"
Bolderwood looked up from his work with much gravity. "This ain't nofunnin' we're goin' on, Nuck. It's serious business. You kin shootstraight, an' that's why I begged for ye. This may be the most turribleday you ever seen, my lad, for the day on which a man or boy seesbloodshed for the fust time, is a mem'ry that he takes with him to thegrave."