The Maid-At-Arms Part 24

The woman folded her bony arms in her ap.r.o.n, cast one tragic glance at her children, then faced us again, hollow-eyed but undaunted.

"My man is with Stoner's scout," she said, with dull pride.

"Then you must go to the block-house," began Dorothy, but the woman pointed to the fields, shaking her head.

"We shall build a block-house here," she said, stubbornly. "We cannot leave our corn. We must eat, Mistress Varick. My man is too poor to be a Provincial soldier, too brave to refuse a militia call--"

She choked, rubbed her eyes, and bent her stern gaze on the hills once more. Presently we rode on, and, turning in my saddle, I saw her standing as we had left her, gaunt, rigid, staring steadily at the dreaded heights in the northwest.

As we galloped, cultivated fields and orchards became rarer; here and there, it is true, some cabin stood on a half-cleared hill-side, and we even pa.s.sed one or two substantial houses on the flat ridge to the east, but long, solid stretches of forest intervened, and presently we left the highway and wheeled into a cool wood-road bordered on either side by the forest.

"Here we find our first landmark," said Dorothy, drawing bridle.

A white triangle glimmered, cut in the bark of an enormous pine; and my cousin rode up to the tree and patted the bark with her little hand. On the triangle somebody had cut a V and painted it black.

"This is a boundary mark," said Dorothy. "The Mohawks claim the forest to the east; ride around and you will see their sign."

I guided my horse around the huge, straight trunk. An oval blaze scarred it and on the wood was painted a red wolf.

"It's the wolf-clan, Brant's own clan of the Mohawk nation," she called out to me. "Follow me, cousin." And she dashed off down the wood-road, I galloping behind, leaping windfalls, gullies, and the shallow forest brooks that crossed our way. The road narrowed to a trodden trail; the trail faded, marked at first by cut undergrowth, then only by the white scars on the tree-trunks.

These my cousin followed, her horse at a canter, and I followed her, halting now and again to verify the white triangle on the solid flank of some forest giant, pa.s.sing a sugar-bush with the shack still standing and the black embers of the fire scattered, until we came to a logging-road and turned into it, side by side. A well-defined path crossed this road at right angles, and Dorothy pointed it out. "The Iroquois trail," she said. "See how deeply it is worn--nearly ten inches deep--where the Five Nations have trodden it for centuries. Over it their hunting-parties pa.s.s, their scouts, their war-parties. It runs from the Kennyetto to the Sacandaga and north over the hills to the Canadas."

We halted and looked down the empty, trodden trail, stretching away through the forest. Thousands and thousands of light, moccasined feet had worn it deep and patted it hard as a sheep-path. On what mission would the next Mohawk feet be speeding on that trail?

"Those people at Fonda's Bush had best move to Johnstown," said Dorothy.

"If the Mohawks strike, they will strike through here at Balston or Saratoga, or at the half-dozen families left at Fonda's Bush, which some of them call Broadalbin."

"Have these poor wretches no one to warn them?" I asked.

"Oh, they have been warned and warned, but they cling to their cabins as cats cling to soft cushions. The Palatines seem paralyzed with fear, the Dutch are too lazy to move in around the forts, the Scotch and English too obstinate. n.o.body can do anything for them--you heard what that Sch.e.l.l woman said when I urged her to prudence."

I bent my eyes on the ominous trail; its very emptiness fascinated me, and I dismounted and knelt to examine it where, near a dry, rotten log, some fresh marks showed.

Behind me I heard Dorothy dismount, dropping to the ground lightly as a tree-lynx; the next moment she laid her hand on my shoulder and bent over where I was kneeling.

"Can you read me that sign?" she asked, mischievously.

"Something has rolled and squatted in the dry wood-dust--some bird, I think."

"A good guess," she said; "a c.o.c.k-partridge has dusted here; see those bits of down? I say a c.o.c.k-bird because I know that log to be a drumming-log."

She raised herself and guided her horse along the trail, bright eyes restlessly scanning ground and fringing underbrush.

"Deer pa.s.sed here--one--two--three--the third a buck--a three-year old,"

she said, sinking her voice by instinct. "Yonder a tree-cat dug for a wood-mouse; your lynx is ever hanging about a drumming-log."

I laid my hand on her arm and pointed to a fresh, green maple leaf lying beside the trail.

"Ay," she murmured, "but it fell naturally, cousin. See; here it parted from the stalk, clean as a poplar twig, leaving the shiny cup unbruised.

And nothing has pa.s.sed here--this spider's web tells that, with a dead moth dangling from it, dead these three days, from its brittle sh.e.l.l."

"I hear water," I said, and presently we came to it, where it hurried darkling across the trail.

There were no human signs there; here a woodc.o.c.k had peppered the mud with little holes, probing for worms; there a racc.o.o.n had picked his way; yonder a lynx had left the great padded mark of its foot, doubtless watching for yonder mink nosing us from the bank of the still pool below.

Silently we mounted and rode out of the still Mohawk country; and I was not sorry to leave, for it seemed to me that there was something unfriendly in the intense stillness--something baleful in the silence; and I was glad presently to see an open road and a great tree marked with Sir Lupus's mark, the sun shining on the white triangle and the painted V.

Entering a slashing where the logging-road pa.s.sed, we moved on, side by side, talking in low tones. And my cousin taught me how to know these Northern trees by bark and leaf; how to know the shrubs new to me, like that strange plant whose root is like a human body and which the Chinese value at its weight in gold; and the aromatic root used in beer, and the bark of the sweet-birch whose twigs are golden-black.

Now, though the birds and many of the beasts and trees were familiar to me in this Northern forest, yet I was constantly at fault, as I have said. Plumage and leaf and fur puzzled me; our gray rice-bird here wore a velvet livery of black and white and sang divinely, though with us he is mute as a mullet; many squirrels were striped with black and white; no rosy lichen glimmered on the tree-trunks; no pink-stemmed pines softened sombre forest depths; no great tiger-striped b.u.t.terflies told me that the wild orange was growing near at hand; no whirring, olive-tinted moth signalled the hidden presence of the oleander. But I saw everywhere unfamiliar winged things, I heard unfamiliar bird-notes; new colors perplexed me, new shapes, nay, the very soil smelled foreign, and the water tasted savorless as the mist of pine barrens in February.

Still, my Maker had set eyes in my head and given me a nose to sniff with; and I was learning every moment, tasting, smelling, touching, listening, asking questions unashamed; and my cousin Dorothy seemed never to tire in aiding me, nor did her eager delight and sympathy abate one jot.

Dressed in full deer-skin as was I, she rode her horse astride with a grace as perfect as it was unstudied and unconscious, neither affecting the slothful carriage of our Southern saddle-masters nor the dragoons'

rigid seat, but sat at ease, hollow-backed, loose-thighed, free-reined and free-stirruped.

Her hair, gathered into a golden club at the nape of the neck, glittered in the sun, her eyes deepened like the violet depths of mid-heaven.

Already the sun had lent her a delicate, creamy mask, golden on her temples where the hair grew paler; and I thought I had never seen such wholesome sweetness and beauty in any living being.

We now rode through a vast flat land of willows, headed due north once more, and I saw a little river which twisted a hundred times upon itself like a stricken snake, winding its shimmering coils out and in through woodland, willow-flat, and reedy marsh.

"The Kennyetto," said Dorothy, "flowing out of the great Vlaie to empty its waters close to its source after a circle of half a hundred miles.

Yonder lies the Vlaie--it is that immense flat country of lake and marsh and forest which is wedged in just south of the mountain-gap where the last of the Adirondacks split into the Mayfield hills and the long, low spurs rolling away to the southeast. Sir William Johnson had a lodge there at Summer-house Point. Since his death Sir George Covert has leased it from Sir John. That is our trysting-place."

To hear Sir George's name now vaguely disturbed me, yet I could not think why, for I admired and liked him. But at the bare mention of his name a dull uneasiness came over me and I turned impatiently to my cousin as though the irritation had come from her and she must explain it.

"What is it?" she inquired, faintly smiling.

"I asked no question," I muttered.

"I thought you meant to speak, cousin."

I had meant to say something. I did not know what.

"You seem to know when I am about to speak," I said; "that is twice you have responded to my unasked questions."

"I know it," she said, surprised and a trifle perplexed. "I seem to hear you when you are mute, and I turn to find you looking at me, as though you had asked me something."

We rode on, thoughtful, silent, aware of a new and wordless intimacy.

"It is pleasant to be with you," she said at last. "I have never before found untroubled contentment save when I am alone.... Everything that you see and think of on this ride I seem to see and think of, too, and know that you are observing with the same delight that I feel.... Nor does anything in the world disturb my happiness. Nor do you vex me with silence when I would have you speak; nor with speech when I ride dreaming--as I do, cousin, for hours and hours--not sadly, but in the sweetest peace--"

Her voice died out like a June breeze; our horses, ear to ear moved on slowly in the fragrant silence.

"To ride ... forever ... together," she mused, "looking with perfect content on all the world.... I teaching you, or you me; ... it's all one for the delight it gives to be alive and young.... And no trouble to await us, ... nothing malicious to do a harm to any living thing.... I could renounce Heaven for that.... Could you?"

"Yes.... For less."