The Rangers; or, The Tory's Daughter Part 7

"Ditter--d.i.c.kins!" exclaimed Tom Dunning, after listening a moment to the reading of the riot act, or proclamation, as it was usually called, as, with several others, he stood just within the entrance.

"Now I wonder if they expect to rout a body of Green Mountain Boys with that sort of--ditter--ammunition?"

"There!" fiercely cried Patterson, as the reader concluded his task.

"There, you d----d rascals, now disperse, or, by Heaven, I will blow a lane through ye!"

"Only--ditter--hear that!" again remarked the hunter, contemptuously, at the menace and profanity of the haughty officer. "Natural enough, though, mayhap, for a bag of wind to blow, if it does any thing.

He is rather smart at--der--swearing, too, I think. But even at that, I guess he would have to haul in his horns a little, if old Ethan Allen was here, as I wish he was, to let off a few blasts of his--ditter--d.a.m.nations at him."

Captain Wright, after a brief consultation with the other leaders, now coming down from the court-room, opened the door, (Dunning and another strong-armed man having hold of it to guard against a rush,) and addressed the besiegers.

"Why is all this, gentlemen?" he said, in a respectful, but firm manner. "Are you come here for war? _We_ are here for no such purpose, ourselves. _We_ came with none other than peaceful intentions. And so long as we can say that, and say, also, above all, that we have come together with the approbation of the chief judge of your court, who has promised us a fair hearing of our grievances; and so long as, in direct violation of that judge's pledge to us, you appear here in arms, to intimidate us, let me a.s.sure you, we shall not disperse under your threats. We, however, will permit you to come in, if you will lay aside your arms; or we will hold a parley with you as you are."

"D----n your parley!" exclaimed Gale, furiously. "D----n the parley with such d----d rascals as you are! I will hold no parley with such d----d rascals, but by this!" he added, drawing a pistol, and brandishing it towards his opponents.

"Ay! ay!" cried Redding, who, next to the sheriff and clerk, appeared to be the most violent and officious among the a.s.sailants: "talk about being here without arms, and for peace, do ye? when you have stolen a dozen of our guns, and have now got them in there among you. Pretty fellows, to talk about parley? We will give you a parley that will send you all to h.e.l.l before morning!"

Wright here began a denial of the charge made by the last speaker; when he was interrupted by Dunning, who, jogging him said, in an undertone,--

"Let 'em-der--believe it. They are such--ditter--cowards, that the idea of a dozen guns among us will mike 'em more mannerly than all the preaching you could--ditter--do in a month."

Concluding to profit by this suggestion of the sagacious hunter Wright now retired within doors, followed by the hisses, curses and all manner of abusive epithets, of the a.s.sailants.

The besiegers, now finding that the king's proclamation, on whose potency for quelling the risings of the rebellious colonists the tory authorities, at the commencement of the revolution, seemed to have greatly counted, did not annihilate their opponents, and, not seeing fit to attempt to carry their threats into execution at present, they soon drew off a short distance, and apparently held a consultation.

While they were thus occupied, a small deputation was sent out to them from the Court House, with another offer to hold a conference. But their proposals being received with fresh insults and abuse, they returned to the house, while Patterson and his forces, evidently fearing to venture an attack, with their present strength, on the other party, whom they suspected to be armed with the lost guns, now moved off to head-quarters, to report progress, and wait for the expected reenforcement, to hasten whose arrival, expresses had been despatched several hours before.

A short time after the disappearance of Patterson's band. Judge Chandler unexpectedly came up to the Court House, wholly unattended, and being readily admitted, he at once ascended into the court-room, and entered the somewhat surprised, but unmoved a.s.sembly, bowing low to individuals on the right and left, as he pa.s.sed on to an unoffered seat, with the gratified air of one, who, after many detentions, has the satisfaction of getting at length into the company of his friends.

After a rather embarra.s.sing pause, the judge rose, and made a short speech, which left his hearers but little the wiser respecting his real wishes and intentions, though he had much to say about his solicitude for the welfare of the people, and his anxiety that they should do nothing to injure their cause. After he was seated, Wright, Carpenter, and Knowlton, each in turn, addressed him, stating, in general terms, the views and wishes of their party, and reminding him of his pledge, that no arms should be brought by the officers of the court, the recent violation of which they hoped he would be able to explain.

Upon this, the former rejoined, declaring with great a.s.surance, and not a little to the surprise of many in the room, that the arms complained of had been brought without his knowledge and against his express wishes; and he concluded by a.s.suring his friends, as he said he was proud to believe he might safely call them, that he would go and immediately secure the arms in question; so that the company might now retire, in full confidence that their pet.i.tions would obtain a fair hearing, when the court came together the next morning. The speaker then resumed his seat, and glanced persuasively around him for some tokens of a.s.sent or approbation. But the men, whom he had thus undertaken to wheedle, had been taught by experience to heed the caution so well recommended by the tuneful Burns,--

"Beware the tongue that's smoothly hung,"--

and a chilling silence was the only response that greeted him.

"You hear his honor's remarks," observed the chairman, at length breaking the ominous silence. "Have you any propositions to make before the judge retires?"

Another long interval of deep silence ensued; when Tom Dunning's tall, sinewy form, and sharp, bronzed features, screwed up with an expression of sly mischief, was seen rising from a back seat in the room.

"Seeing no one else," he said, "seems--ditter--disposed to accept your invitation, Mr. Moderator, I don't--ditter--know but I will make a small proposition on the occasion. Now, as I take it, we are to remain here to-night; and as we have now learned that the judge and the people here are the--ditter--best of friends, I would just move, Mr.

Moderator, that his honor be--der--ditter--invited to take up lodgings with us in the Court House to-night, so that, if the enemy comes," he added, imitating the manner of the judge, as described by Bart, "he can a.s.sist us to--ditter--'_temporize--temporize--till_'--"

Here the hunter bobbed down into his seat, while explosive bursts of laughter rose from several parts of the room, and a low, half-smothered t.i.tter ran through the whole a.s.sembly, at this sly, but cutting allusion to the part last night taken by the double-dealing judge, who now sat before them, looking, for the moment, like a suddenly detected criminal. He, however, while the chairman was calling to order, recovered his command of countenance, and, by the time the tumult had subsided into the less noisy expressions of mirth, he was smiling as gayly as the rest, and affecting to consider the remarks of the stammering humorist as merely a pleasant joke.

"There is no cheating our friend Dunning out of his joke. I perceive,"

he said, rising and taking up his hat; "and, indeed, I don't know that I can blame a hardy woodsman for laughing at the idea of one of our in-door and tender professional men, like myself, sleeping on floors and benches. I am afraid we deserve it for our effeminacy. Yes, yes, a good joke, truly! and a good laughter-moving joke is an excellent thing to go to bed upon, they say," he added, as with a merry, gleeful look, he bowed himself out of the a.s.sembly.

No further comments were offered by any of the company upon the communications of this official double-dealer, after his departure; for all seemed to think that the single shot of Dunning had rendered all further comments on his speech, and his motives in coming there to make it, entirely superfluous. And they therefore proceeded, as if nothing but an ordinary interruption had occurred, to the business on which they were engaged when the judge came in--that of pa.s.sing some fresh resolves expressive of their determination to hold the Court House in defiance of the threats of their opponents, and of their now settled purpose of no longer submitting, on any conditions, to the continuance of a court which had proved itself so corrupt and treacherous. After this, and making arrangements for the posting and relieving of guards at the doors for the night, a part of the company left the house to seek lodgings elsewhere, as the usual hour of rest had now arrived.

When the nonplused and disconcerted Chandler left the Court House, he rapidly took his way back to his quarters, from which he had been started out by Patterson and Gale, to see if he might not be able to accomplish by fair words what they had failed to effect by foul.

Although he had put the best possible face upon the mortifying occurrence he had just been compelled to meet, and had made, as he believed, a handsome exit from the company, yet he felt keenly conscious that he had not only utterly failed in the object of his visit, but that much of his late base conduct was known. He perceived this in the allusions of Dunning, the pith of which he had affected not to understand. He had seen it, he had felt it, in the significant and knowing glances that had been exchanged on every side around him, and especially in the bitter derisive laugh that had a.s.sailed his tingling ears. He had also been taught a new lesson in the interview!

He had seen, in the firm manner and determined looks of those he had been confronting--he had seen that which told him of a spirit at work among the people, that the loyal party, with all their boasted strength, might not long be able to quell. He began now, with the instinctive sagacity of the true office-seeker, to perceive the possibility, perhaps probability, that the power of dispensing office and patronage was about to change hands, and he inwardly trembled for his own safety. He found himself, in short, in one of those straits, to which men of his character are not unfrequently reduced--that of being wholly at a loss to decide which side was most likely to become the strongest. Could he have foreseen and decided this, his mind would have been comparatively at ease; for he could have then trimmed his sails, so as to steer clear of the political breakers which he knew were somewhere ahead. Some course, however, he must decide upon; and after lamenting his inability to pierce the future, so far as to know which party was destined to prevail, and thus secure the important advantages that might be derived from shaping his present course accordingly, he at length resolved to keep aloof, at present, from both parties, believing he had so adroitly managed thus far, that whichever side might triumph, he could put in a specious claim of having acted with it, in reality, from the first.

And having now made up his mind to this course, he avoided meeting the tory leaders again; and, seeking out a safe messenger, and sending him to tell them, that "he had left the company at the Court House as he found it," and that "a forgotten business engagement had compelled him to be absent from their councils for a few hours," he took his way to a distant part of the village, where he called on an acquaintance of neutral politics. And here becoming much engaged in conversation, and feigning to have forgotten the hour of the night, he was at last prevailed on to accept, as he did with great seeming reluctance, the invitation of his host to tarry till morning.

After Patterson and his minions retreated from the Court House, they returned to the tory tavern, and there remained several hours, alternately cursing their opponents for rebellious obstinacy in not yielding to their commands and menaces, and their expected friends for their tardiness in reaching the place. And affairs remaining in this situation till a late hour in the evening, they were on the point of giving up all thoughts of renewing the attack that night, when the long and anxiously looked for reenforcement, consisting of thirty or forty armed men, came hurrying on to the ground. The sinking spirits and waning courage of the bl.u.s.tering sheriff and his confederates now instantly revived; and, exulting that they now had the power to glut their vengeance, they resolved on making an immediate a.s.sault. And after fortifying their courage with liberal potations of brandy, the whole party, now swelled, not only by the freshly arrived forces, but by Brush, Peters, Stearns, and many others, who had declined joining in the first sally, to nearly one hundred men, eagerly set forward to the scene of action.

The other party, in the mean time, though still maintaining a watchful guard at the doors of the Court House, had yet been so long exempted from an attack of their foes, that they were now in but little expectation of being any further molested till the next morning. And some were lying stretched upon the benches in the court-room, asleep; some, with their great-coats under their heads, were reposing on the floors of the different pa.s.sages of the house; while others were sitting round the fires, engaged in smoking and conversation.

Among those taking their turns as sentries, at this juncture, were Woodburn and Bart, who, with each a stout cane or cudgel in his hand, were now stationed at the princ.i.p.al entrance.

"They are coming!" cried Bart, who, having gone out into the street to ascertain what might be the noise which they had heard at a distance, now came running up, with an excited air to his companion; "they are upon us again, with twice as many men as before, and plenty of guns!"

"In with the news!" said Woodburn, as the appearance of the hostile party wheeling up towards the Court House the next instant confirmed the other's statement--"in with the news, and tell them to man the doors, or in two minutes we shall be routed."

Instantly springing into the door, which he unfortunately left open, Bart made the announcement to French, who was restlessly moving about in the pa.s.sage, and who repeated the same in a voice which started all, both above and below to their feet.

"They are coming for our blood!" he added, in a tone of strange, wild glee. "Ay, there they come! I see them levelling their guns in the yard! Now for the victims! Let us die like----"

The report of two or three muskets, and the whistling of bullets through the pa.s.sage just over his head, cut short the speaker. A moment of breathless silence ensued; when the harsh, ruffian voice of Patterson was heard from without,--

"d.a.m.n ye, why don't you fire?"

A general discharge of the fire-arms of the a.s.sailants, flashing fiercely on the surrounding darkness, and sending them deadly missiles through the pa.s.sage, windows, and sides of the house, in every direction, instantly followed the ferocious order. And, in the expiring light, the fated French was seen to leap into the air; and then, spinning giddily round and round an instant, fall, with a low, short screech, prostrate on the floor; while mingled groans, rising from a half dozen others along the pa.s.sage, told also the fearful effect of the murderous volley.

With the discharge of their arms, the a.s.sailing force, guided by their torch-bearers, made a rush for the Court House. As they approached the door, Woodburn, who had kept his post, unhurt, on one side of the steps, sprang forward to dispute their pa.s.sage, and, after knocking up the swords and bayonets that were aimed at his breast, laid about him so l.u.s.tily with his cudgel, that the whole party were, for some moments, kept at bay. At length, however, Peters, who was near the rear of the hostile column, perceiving it was his hated opponent who was disputing the pa.s.s so resolutely, stealthily crept round those in front, and coming up partly behind his intended victim, with a protruded sabre, aimed a deadly lunge at his body, exultingly exclaiming with the supposed fatal thrust,--

"There! d----d rebel, take that!"

"And you that!" cried the other, who, having, from a lucky turn in his body at the instant, received only a flesh-wound on the inner side of his arm, now, with an upward sweep of his cudgel, knocked the sword of the detestable a.s.sa.s.sin twenty feet into the air--"and you that! ay, and that!" he added, as, with a quickly repeated blow over the head, he sent his foe reeling to the earth.

But the weapon of the intrepid young man being now caught, and his body fiercely grappled by four or five of his exasperated foes, he was soon disarmed, and, in spite of his desperate struggles, borne into the court-house with the crowd, who now rushed furiously along the pa.s.sages, wounding with their swords, and beating down with their guns and clubs, without distinction or mercy, all whom they met in their way.

"Guard the doors instantly!" shouted Patterson, who perceived that numbers of the vanquished party were retreating through the different doors; "don't let another of the d----d rascals escape! And, hallo there, jailer! bring on the keys of the prison-rooms; we will cage the whole lot, dead or alive, and let 'em be enjoying a few of the fruits of their rebellion now, and the blessed antic.i.p.ations of being hung for high treason hereafter."

The obsequious jailer soon appeared with the required keys and the doors of both prison-rooms were speedily unlocked and thrown open by the directions of the sheriff.

"Now, tumble them in, boys!" resumed the sheriff, with look and tone of savage exultation.

Eager to obey, the supple tools of arbitrary power now commenced driving all those of their prisoners who had not been too much disabled by their wounds to stand, together into the prison-rooms.

They then seized hold of the wounded, who lay weltering in their blood in different parts of the floor of the long pa.s.sage, and began dragging them along by their limbs to the same destination.

"Monster!" exclaimed Woodburn, looking back from the felon's cell which he was about to enter, and addressing Redding, who stood mimicking, with fiendish glee, the groans and contortions of French, as he lay gasping and writhing in mortal agony on the spot where he fell, just beyond the short pa.s.sage dividing the prison-rooms--"monster,"

he repeated, "would you insult the dying?"

"Yes, d--n you!" savagely interposed Gale, stepping forward; "he has got just what he deserved; and I wish there were forty more of you in the same predicament. Drag him along in there with the rest of 'em, Redding!"

"Ay, ay," responded Patterson, "in with him! And I can tell the rest of them, they had better be saving their pity for themselves, for they will all be in h.e.l.l before to-morrow night!"