The Little Red Foot Part 64

After a helpless heave or two I lay still.

"You say you love me tenderly. That is a lie, John Drogue--it being All Fools' Day. So you shall vow, instead, that you hate me. Come, then!"

"I hate you!" said I, licking the snow from my lips.

"Pa.s.sionately?"

I looked up at her where deep in the snow, under the lilacs, I lay, my arms spread and her two hands pinning my wrists. She was flushed with laughter and I saw the devils o' mischief watching me deep in her dark eyes.

"It was under these lilacs," said I, "that I had my first hurt of you.

You should heal that hurt now."

That confused her, and she blushed and swore to punish me for that fling; but I grinned at her.

"Come," said I, "heal me of my ancient wound as you dealt it me--with your lips!"

"I did not kiss Steve Watts!"

"But he kissed you. So do the like by me and I forgive you all."

"All?"

"Everything."

"Even what I have now done?"

"Even that."

"And you will not truss me up to chasten me when you go free? For it would shame me and I could not endure it."

"I promise."

She looked down at me, smiling, uncertain.

"What will you do to me if I do not?" she asked.

"Drown you in snow three times every day."

"And I needs must kiss you to buy my safety?"

"Yes, and with hearty good will, too."

She glanced hastily around, perhaps to seek an avenue for escape, perhaps to see who might spy us.

Then, looking down at me, a-blush now, yet laughing, she bent her head slowly, very slowly to mine, and rested her lips on mine.

Then she was up and off like a young tree-lynx, fleeing, stumbling on her pattens; but, like a white hare, I lay very still in my form, unstirring, gazing up into the bluest, softest sky that my dazzled eyes ever had unclosed upon.

There was a faint fragrance in the air. It may have been arbutus--or the trace of her lips on mine.

In my ears trilled the pretty melody of a million little snow rills running in the sunshine. I heard the gay c.o.c.k-crow from the yard, the restless lowing of cattle, the distant caw of a crow flying high over the Drowned Lands.

When at last I got to my feet a strange, new soberness had come over me, stilling exhilaration, quieting the rough and boyish spirits which had possessed me.

Penelope, hanging out linen to sweeten, looked at me over her shoulder, plainly uncertain concerning me. But I kept my word and did not offer to molest her, and so went about my cooper's work again, where Nick also squatted, matching bucket staves, whilst I fell to shaping sap-pans.

It was very still there in the sunshine. And, as I sat there, it seemed to me that I was putting more behind me than the icy and unsullied months of winter,--and that I should never be a boy any more, with a boy's pa.s.sionless and untroubled soul.

And so came spring upon us in the Northland that fateful year of '77, with blue skies and melting snow and the c.o.c.k's clarion sounding clear.

But it was mid-April before the first Forest Runner, with pelts, pa.s.sed through the Sacandaga, twelve days out from Ty, and the woods nigh impa.s.sable, he gave account, what with soft drifts choking the hills and all streams over their banks.

And then, for the first, we learned something concerning the great war that was waging everywhere around our outer borders,--how His Excellency had surprised the Hessians at Trenton, and had tricked Cornwallis and beat up the enemy at Princeton. It was amazing to realize that His Excellency, with only the frozen fragments of a meagre and defeated army, had recovered all the Jerseys. But this was so, thank G.o.d; and we wondered to hear of it.

All this the Forest Runner told us as he ate and drank in the kitchen,--and how Lord Stirling had been made a major-general, and that we had now enlisted four fine regiments of horse to curb DeLancy's bold riders; and how that great Tory, John Penn, who was lately Governor of Pennsylvania, Thomas Wharton, and Benjamin Chew, had been packed off with other villains as prisoners into Virginia. Which pleased me, because of all that Quaker treachery in the proprietary; and I deemed them mean and selfish and self-righteous dogs who whined all day of peace and brotherhood and non-resistance, and did conduct most cruelly by night for greed and sordid gain.

Not that I liked the New Englanders the better; but, of the two, preferred them and had rather they settled the Pennsylvania wilds than that the sly, smug proprietaries multiplied there and nursed treason at the breast.

Well, our Coureur-du-Bois, in his greasy leather, quills, and scarlet braid, had other news for us less palatable.

For it seemed that we had lost two thousand men and all their artillery when Fort Washington fell; that we had lost a hundred more men and eleven vessels to Sir Guy Carleton on Lake Champlain; that the garrison at Ty was a slim one and sick for the most, and the relief regiments were so slow in filling that three New England states were drafting their soldiery by force.

There were rumours rife concerning the summer campaign, and how the British had a plan to behead our new United States by lopping off all New England.

It was to be done in this manner: Guy Carleton's army was to come down from the North through the lakes, driving Gates, descend the Hudson to Albany and there join Clinton and his British, who were to force the Highlands, march up the river, and so hold all the Hudson, which would cut the head--New England--from the body of the new nation.

And to make this more certain, there was now gathering in the West an army under Butler and Brant, to strike the Mohawk Valley, sweep through it to Schenectady, and there come in touch with Burgoyne.

To oppose this terrible invasion from three directions we had forts on the Hudson and a few troops; but His Excellency was engaged south of these points and must remain there.

We had, at Ty, a skeleton army, and Gates to lead it, with which to face Burgoyne. We had, in the Mohawk Valley, to block the west and show a bold front to Brant and Butler, only fragments of Van Schaick's and Livingston's Continental line, now digging breastworks at Stanwix, a company at Johnstown, and at a crisis, our Tryon County militia, now drilling under Herkimer.

And, save for a handful of Rangers and Oneidas, these were all we had in Tryon to resist the hordes that were gathering to march on us from north, west and south,--British regulars with horse, foot, and magnificent artillery; partizans and loyalists numbering 1200; a thousand savages in their paint; Highlanders, Canadians, Hessians; Sir John Johnson's regiment of Royal Greens; Colonel John Butler's regiment of Rangers; McDonald's renegades and painted Tories--G.o.d! what a murderous horde; and all to make their common tryst here in County Tryon!

Our grim, lank Forest Runner sprawled on the settle by the kitchen table, smoking his bitter Indian tobacco and drinking rum and water, well sugared; and Penelope and Nick and I sat around him to listen, and look gravely at one another as we learned more and more of what it seemed that Fate had in storage for us.

The hot spiced rum loosened the Runner's tongue. His name was d.i.c.k Jessup; and he was a hard, grim man whose business, from youth--which was peltry--had led him through perilous ways.

He told us of wild and horrid doings, where solitary settlers and lone trappers had been murdered by Guy Carleton's outlying Iroquois, from Quebec to Crown Point.

Scores and scores of scalps had been taken; wretched prisoners had suffered at the Iroquois stake under tortures indescribable--the mere mention of which made Penelope turn sickly white and set Nick gnawing his knuckles.

But what most infuriated me was the thought that in the regiments of old John Butler and Sir John Johnson were scores of my old neighbors who now boasted that they were coming back to cut our throats on our own thresholds,--coming back with a thousand savages to murder women and children and ravage all with fire so that only a blackened desert should remain of the valleys and the humble homes we had made and loved.

Jessup said, puffing the acrid willow smoke from his clay: "Where I lay hidden near Oneida Lake, I saw a Seneca war party pa.s.s on the crust; and they had fresh scalps which dripped on the snow.