The Little Red Foot Part 14

"You'll court her yourself, one day!" he shouted after me, as he gathered bridle. "And if you do, G.o.d help you, John Drogue, for they say she's a born disturber of quiet men's minds, and mistress of a very mischievous and deadly art!"

"What art?" I laughed.

"The art o' love!" he bawled as he rode off, slapping his thighs and setting the moonlit woods all a-ringing with his laughter.

CHAPTER VII

BEFORE THE STORM

Johnny Silver had ridden my mare to Varick's to be shod, the evening previous, and was to remain the night and return by noon to Fonda's Bush.

It was the first sunny May day of the year, murmurous with bees, and a sweet, warm smell from woods and cleared lands.

Already bluebirds were drifting from stump to stump, and robins, which had arrived in April before the snow melted, chirped in the furrows of last autumn's plowing.

Also were flying those frail little gra.s.s-green moths, earliest harbingers of vernal weather, so that observing folk, versed in the pretty signals which nature displays to acquaint us of her designs, might safely prophesy soft skies.

I was standing in my glebe just after sunrise, gazing across my great cleared field--I had but one then, all else being woods--and I was thinking about my crops, how that here should be sown buckwheat to break and mellow last year's sod; and here I should plant corn and Indian squashes, and yonder, G.o.d willing, potatoes and beans.

And I remember, now, that I presently fell to whistling the air of "The Little Red Foot," while I considered my future harvest; and was even planning to hire of Andrew Bowman his fine span of white oxen for my spring plowing; when, of a sudden, through the May woods there grew upon the air a trembling sound, distant and sad. Now it sounded louder as the breeze stirred; now fainter when it shifted, so that a mournful echo only throbbed in my ears.

It was the sound of the iron bell ringing on the new Block House at Mayfield.

The carelessly whistled tune died upon my lips; my heart almost ceased for a moment, then violently beat the alarm.

I ran to a hemlock stump in the field, where my loaded rifle rested, and took it up and looked at the priming powder, finding it dry and bright.

A strange stillness had fallen upon the forest; there was no sound save that creeping and melancholy quaver of the bell. The birds had become quiet; the breeze, too, died away; and it was as though each huge tree stood listening, and that no leaf dared stir.

As a dark cloud gliding between earth and sun quenches the sky's calm brightness, so the bell's tolling seemed to transform the scene about me to a sunless waste, through which the dread sound surged in waves, like the complaint of trees before a storm.

Standing where my potatoes had been hoed the year before, I listened a moment longer to the dreary mourning of the bell, my eyes roving along the edges of the forest which, like a high, green rampart, enclosed my cleared land on every side.

Then I turned and went swiftly to my house, s.n.a.t.c.hed blanket from bed, spread it on the puncheon floor, laid upon it a sack of new bullets, a new canister of powder, a heap of buckskin sc.r.a.ps for wadding, a bag of salt, another of parched corn, a dozen strips of smoked venison.

Separately on the blanket beside these I placed two pair of woollen hose, two pair of new ankle moccasins, an extra pair of deer-skin leggins, two cotton shirts, a hunting shirt of doe-skin, and a fishing line and hooks. These things I rolled within my blanket, making of everything a strapped pack.

Then I pulled on my District Militia regimentals, which same was a hunting shirt of tow-cloth, spatter-dashes of the same, and a felt hat, c.o.c.ked.

Across the breast of my tow-cloth hunting-shirt I slung a bullet-pouch, a powder-horn and a leather haversack; seized my light hatchet and hung it to my belt, hoisted the blanket pack to my shoulders and strapped it there; and, picking up rifle and hunting knife, I pa.s.sed swiftly out of the house, fastening the heavy oaken door behind me and wondering whether I should ever return to open it again.

The trodden forest trail, wide enough for a team to pa.s.s, lay straight before me due west, through heavy woods, to Andrew Bowman's farm.

When I came into the cleared land, I perceived Mrs. Bowman washing clothing in a spring near the door of her log house, and the wash a-bleaching in the early sun. When she saw me she called to me across the clearing:

"Have you news for me, John Drogue?"

"None," said I. "Where is your man, Martha?"

"Gone away to Stoner's with pack and rifle. He is but just departed. Is it only a drill call, or are the Indians out at the Lower Castle?"

"I know nothing," said I. "Are you alone in the house?"

"A young kinswoman, Penelope Grant, servant to old Douw Fonda, arrived late last night with my man from Caughnawaga, and is still asleep in the loft."

As she spoke a girl, clothed only in her shift, came to the open door of the log house. Her naked feet were snow-white; her hair, yellow as October-corn, seemed very thick and tangled.

She stood blinking as though dazzled, the glory of the rising sun in her face; then the tolling of the tocsin swam to her sleepy ears, and she started like a wild thing when a shot is fired very far away.

And, "What is that sound?" she exclaimed, staring about her; and I had never seen a woman's eyes so brown under such yellow hair.

She stepped out into the fresh gra.s.s and stood in the dew listening, now gazing at the woods, now at Martha Bowman, and now upon me.

Speech came to me with an odd sort of anger. I said to Mrs. Bowman, who stood gaping in the sunshine:

"Where are your wits? Take that child into the house and bar your shutters and draw water for your tubs. And keep your door bolted until some of the militia can return from Stoner's."

"Oh, my G.o.d," said she, and fell to s.n.a.t.c.hing her wash from the bushes and gra.s.s.

At that, the girl Penelope turned and looked at me. And I thought she was badly frightened until she spoke.

"Young soldier," said she, "do you know if Sir John has fled?"

"I know nothing," said I, "and am like to learn less if you women do not instantly go in and bar your house."

"Are the Mohawks out?" she asked.

"Have I not said I do not know?"

"Yes, sir.... But I should have escort by the shortest route to Cayadutta----"

"You talk like a child," said I, sharply. "And you seem scarcely more,"

I added, turning away. But I lingered still to see them safely bolted in before I departed.

"Soldier," she began timidly; but I interrupted:

"Go fill your tubs against fire-arrows," said I. "Why do you loiter?"

"Because I have great need to return to Caughnawaga. Will you guide me the shortest way by the woods?"

"Do you not hear that bell?" I demanded angrily.

"Yes, sir, I hear it. But I should go to Cayadutta----"