Chambers Robert William
The Little Red Foot
Then again, and broad on his surprised and silly face, fell her little hand like the clear crack of a drover's whip.
And, "There!" she falters, out o' breath, "there's for you, friend Nicholas!"
"My God!" says he, in foolish amaze, "why do you that, Penelope!"
"I kiss whom I please and none other!" says she, fast breathing, and her dark eyes wide and bright.
"Whom you please," quoth Nick, abashed but putting a bold face on it – "well then, you please me, and therefore ought to kiss me – "
"No, I will not! John Drogue hath shown me what is my privilege in this idle game of bussing which men seem so ready to play with me, whether I will or no!.. Have I hurt you, Nick?"
She came up to him, still flushed and her childish bosom still rising and falling fast.
"You love Jack Drogue," said he, sulkily, "and therefore belabour me who dote on you."
"I love you both," said she, "but I am enamoured of neither. Also, I desire no kisses of you or of Mr. Drogue, but only kindness and good will."
"You entertain a passion for Steve Watts!" he muttered sullenly, "and there's the riddle read for you!"
But she laughed in his face and took up her pan of crullers and set them on the shelf.
"I am châtelaine of Summer House," said she, "and need render no account of my inclinations to you or to any man. Who would learn for himself what is in my mind must court me civilly and in good order… Do you desire leave to court me, Nick?"
"Not I! – to be beaten by a besom and flouted and mocked to boot! Nenni, my pretty lass! I have had my mouthful of blows."
"Oh. And your comrade? Is he, do you think, inclined to court me?"
"Jack Drogue?"
"The same."
"You have bedeviled him," said Nick sulkily, "as you have witched all men who encounter you. He hath a fever and is sick of it."
She was slicing hot johnnycake with a knife in the pan; and now looked up at him with eyes full of curiosity.
"Bewitched him? I?"
"Surely. Who else, then?"
"You are jesting, Nick."
"No. Like others he has taken the Caughnawaga fever. The very air you breathe is full of it. But, with a man like my comrade, it is no more than a fever. And it passes, pretty maid! – it passes."
"Does it so?"
"It does. It burns out folly and leaves him the healthier."
"Oh, then – with a gentleman like your comrade, Mr. Drogue – l'amour n'est qu'une maladie légère qui se guérira sans médecin, n'est-ce pas?"
"Say that in Canada and doubtless the very dicky-birds will answer wee-wee-wee!" he retorted. "But if you mean, does John Drogue mate below his proper caste, then there's no wee-wee-wee about it; for that the Laird of Northesk will never do!"
"I know that," said she coolly. And opened the pot to fork the steaming stew, then set on the cover and passed her hand over her brow where a slight dew glistened and where her hair curled paler gold and tighter, like a child's.
"Friend Nick?"
"I hear thee, breeder of heart-troubles."
"Listen, then. No thought of me should trouble any man as yet. My heart is not awake – not troublesome, – not engaged, – no, not even to poor Stephen Watts. For the sentiment I entertain for him is only pity for a boy, Nick, who is impetuous and rash and has been too much flattered by the world… Poor lad – in his play-hour regimentals! – and no beard on his smooth cheek… Just a fretful, idle, and self-indulgent boy!.. Who protests that he loves me… Oh, no, Nick! Men sometimes bewilder me; but I think it is our own passion that destroys us women – not theirs… And there is none in me, – only pity, and a great friendliness to men… And these only have ever moved me."
He was sitting on a pine table and munching of a cruller. "Penelope," says he, "your honesty and wholesome spirit should physic men of their meaner passions. If you are servant to Douw Fonda, nevertheless you think like a great lady. And I for one," he added, munching away, "shall quarrel with any man who makes little of the mistress of Summer House Point!"
And then – oh, Lord! – she turns from her oven, takes his silly head between both hands, and gives him a smack on the lips!
"There," says she, "you have had of your sister what you never should have had of the Scottish lass of Caughnawaga!"
He got off the table at that, looking mighty pleased but sheepish, and muttered something concerning relieving me on post.
And so, lest I should be disgraced by my eavesdropping, and feeling mean and degraded, yet oddly contented that Penelope loved no man with secret passion, I slunk away, my moccasins making no sound.
So when Nick came to relieve me he discovered me still on post; and said he pettishly: "Penelope Grant hath clouted me, mind and body; and I am the better man by it, though somewhat sore; and I shall knock the head of any popinjay who fails in the respect all owe this girl. And I wish to God I had a hickory stick here, and Sir John Johnson across my knee!"
I went into my chamber and laid me down on my trundle bed.
I was contented. I no longer seemed to burn for the girl. Also, I knew she burned for no man. A vast sense of relief spread over me like a soft garment, warming and soothing me.
And so, pleasantly passed my sick passion for the Scottish girl; and pleasantly I fell asleep.
CHAPTER XXIII
WINTER AND SPRING
Snow came as it comes to us in the Northland – a blinding fall, heavy and monotonous – and in forty-eight hours the Johnstown Road was blocked.
Followed a day of dazzling sunshine and intense cold, which set our timbers cracking; and the snow, like finest flour, creaked under our snow-shoes.
All the universe had turned to blue and silver; and the Vlaie Water ran fathomless purple between its unstained snows. But that night the clouds returned and winds grew warmer, and soon the skies opened with feathery white volleys, and the big, thick flakes stormed down again, obliterating alike the work of nature and of man.
Summer House was covered to the veranda eaves. We made shovels and cleared the roofs and broke paths to stable and well.
Here, between dazzling ramparts, we lived and moved and had our being, week after week; and every new snow-storm piled higher our palisades and buried the whole land under one vast white pall.
Vlaie Water froze three feet solid; fierce winds piled the ice with gigantic drifts so that no man could mark the course of the creeks any more; and a vast white desolation stretched away to the mountains, broken only by naked hard-wood forests or by the interminable ocean of the pines weighted deep with snow.
Only when a crust came were we at any pains to set a watch against a war party from the Canadas. But none arrived; no signal smoke stained the peaks; nothing living stirred on that dead white waste save those little grey and whining birds which creep all day up and down tree-trunks, or a sudden gusty flight of snow-birds, which suddenly arrive from nowhere and are gone as suddenly.
Once a white owl with yellow eyes sat upon the ridge-pole of our barn; but our pullets were safe within, and Penelope drove him away with snowballs.
The deer yarded on Maxon; lynx-tracks circled our house and barn, and we sometimes heard old tassel-ears a-miauling on the Stacking Ridge.
And, toward the end of February, there were two panthers that left huge cat-prints across the drifts on the Johnstown Road; but they took no toll of our sheep, which were safe in a stone fold, though the oaken door to it bore marks of teeth and claws, where the pumas had striven hard to break in and do murder.
Save when a crust formed and we took our turns on guard, my Indian rolled himself in bear-furs by the kitchen oven, and like a bear he slept there until hunger awoke him long enough to gorge for another stretch of sleep.
Nick and I took axes to the woods and drew logs on a sledge to split for fire use. Our tasks, too, kept us busy feeding our live creatures, fetching water, keeping paths open, and fishing through the ice.
In idler intervals we carved devices upon our powder-horns, cured deer-skins in the Oneida fashion, boiled pitch and mended our canoe, fashioned paddles, poles, and shafts for fish-spears, strung snow-shoes, built a fine sledge out of ash and hickory, and made Kaya draw us on the crust.
So, all day, each was busy with tasks and duties, and had little leisure left for that dull restlessness which, in idle people, is the root of all the mischief they devise to do.
Penelope mended our clothing and knitted mittens and jerkins. All house-work and cooking she accomplished, and milked and churned and cared for the pullets. Also, she dipped candles and moulded bullets from the lead bars I found in the gun-room. And when our deer-skins were cured and softened, she made for us soft wallets, sacks, and pouches, and sewed upon them bright beads in the Oneida fashion, from the pack of trade beads in Sir William's gun-room. She sewed upon every accoutrement a design done in scarlet beads, showing a picture of a little red foot.
Lord, but we meant to emerge from our snows in brave fashion, come spring-tide; for now our deer-skin garments were splendid with beads, and our fringes were green and purple. Also, Nick had trapped it some when opportunity offered, setting his line from Summer House along Vlaie Water to Howell's house, thence across the frozen Drowned Lands to the Stacking Ridge, and from there back over the Spring Pool, and thence down-creek to the Sacandaga, where Fish House stood with its glazed windows empty as a blind man's eyes.
He had, by March, a fine pack of peltry; and of these we cured and used sufficient muskrat to sew us blankets, and made a mantle of otter for Penelope and a hood and muff to match.
For ourselves we made us caps out of black mink, and sewed all together by our dip-lights in the red firelight, where apples slowly sizzled with the rich, sweet perfume I love to smell.
Sometimes Nick played upon his fife; and sometimes we all told stories and roasted chestnuts. Nick had more stories and more imagination than had I, and a livelier wit in the telling of tales. But chiefly I was willing to hear Penelope when she told us of her childhood in France, and how folk lived in that warm and sweet country, and what were their daily customs.
Also, she sang sometimes children's songs of France, and other pretty ballads, mostly concerning love. For the French occupy themselves chiefly with love and cooking and the fine arts, I judge, and know how to make an art of eating, also. For there in France every meal is a ceremony; but in this land we eat not for the pleasurable taste which, in savory food, delights and tempts, but we eat swiftly and carelessly and chiefly to stay our hunger.
Yet, at times, food smacks smartly to my tongue; as when at Christmas tide I shot a great wild turkey on the Stacking Ridge; and when Penelope basted it in the kitchen my mouth watered as I sniffed the door-crack.
And again, gone stale with soupaan and jerked meat and fish soused or dried with salt, Nick shot a yearling buck near our barn at daylight; and the savour of his cooking filled all with pleasure.
Upon the New Year we made a feast and had a bottle of Sir William's port, another of Madeira, a punch of spirits, and three pewters of buttery ale.
Lord! there was a New Year. And first, not daring to give drink to my Saguenay, we fed him till he was gorged, and so rolled him in a pile of furs till he slept by the oven below. Then we set twenty dips afire by the chimney, and filled it up with dry logs… I am sorry we had so little sense; for I was something fuddled, and sang ballads – which I can not – and Nick would dance, which he did by himself; and his hornpipes and pigeon-wings and shuffles and war-dances made my head spin and my heavy eyes desire to cross.
Penelope's cheeks burned, and she fanned and fanned her with a turkey wing and laughed to see Nick caper and to hear the piteous squalling which was my way of singing.
But she complained that the dip-lights danced and that the floor behaved in strange fashion, running like ripples on Vlaie Water in a west wind.
She had sipped but one glass of Sir William's port, but I think it was a glass too much; for the wine made her so hot, so she vowed, that her body was all one ardent coal, and so presently she pulled the hair-pegs from her hair and let it down and shook it out in the firelight till it flashed like a golden scarf flung about her.
Her pannier basque of rose silk – gift of Claudia and made in France – she presently slipped out of, leaving her in her petticoat and folded like a Quakeress in her crossed foulard, and her white arms as bare as her neck.
Which innocently concerned her not a whit, nor had she any more thought of her throat's loveliness than she had of herself in her shift that morning at Bowman's.
She sat cooling her face with the turkey-wing fan and watching Nick's contre-dancing – his own candle-cast shadow on the wall dancing vis-à-vis – and she laughed and laughed, a-fanning there, like a child delighted by the antics of two older brothers, while Nick whirled on moccasined feet in his mad career, and I fifed windily to time his gambolading.
Then we played country games, but she would not kiss us as forfeit, defending her lips and vowing that no man should ever again take that toll of her.
Which contented me, though I remonstrated; and I was glad that Nick should not cheapen her lips though it cost me the same privilege. For we played "Swallow! Swallow!" and I guessed correctly how many apple pips she held in her hand when she sang:
"Who can count the swallow's eggs?
Try it, Master Nimble-legs!
Climb and find a swallow's nest,
Count the eggs beneath her breast,
Take an egg and leave the rest
And kiss the maid you love the best!"
But it was her hand only we might kiss, and but one finger at that – the smallest – for, says she, "John Drogue hath said it, and I am mistress of Summer House! What I choose to give – or forgive – is of my proper choice… And I do not choose to be kissed by any man whether he wears silk puce or deer-skin shirt!"
But the devil prompted me to remember Steve Watts, and my countenance changed.
"Do you bar regimentals?" I asked, forcing a wry smile.
She knew what was in my mind, for jealousy grinned at her out of my every feature; and she came toward me and laid her light hand upon my arm.
"Or red coat or blue, my lord," she said, her smile fading to a glimmer, "men have had of me my last complaisance. Are you not content? You taught me, sir."
"If he taught you that a kiss is folly, he taught you more folly than is in a thousand kisses!" cries Nick. "Why," said he, turning on me, "you pitiful, sober-faced, broad-brimmed spoil-sport!" says he, "what are lips made for, you meddlesome ass, and be damned to you!"
Instantly we were in clinch like two bears; and we wrestled and strained and swayed there, panting and nigh stifled with our laughter, till we fell with a crash that shook the house and set the bottles clinking; and there thrashed like a pair o' pups till I got his shoulders flat.
But it was nothing – he being the younger – and he leaped up and fell to treading an Oneida battle-dance, while Penelope and I did beat upon the table, singing:
"Ha-wa-sa-say!
Hah!
Ha-wa-sa-say – "
till the door opened and there stands my Saguenay, bleary-eyed, sleep-muddled, but his benumbed brain responsive to the thumping cadence of the old scalp-song.
But I pushed him down stairs ere he had sniffed a lung-full of our punch, having no mind to face a drink-mad Indian that night or any other.
So I went below and piled the furs upon him and waited till he snored before I left him to his hibernation.
Such childishness! Who would believe it of us that were no longer children! And all alone there in a little house amid a vast and wintry wilderness, where no living thing stirred abroad save the white hare's ghost in the starlight, and the shadow of the lean, weird beast that tracked her.
Well, if we conducted like children we were as light-minded and as innocent. There was in our behaviour no lesser levity; in our mirth no grossness; in our jests and stories no license of the times nor any country coarseness in our speech.
Nor, in me, now remained aught of that sick-heart jealousy nor sentimental disorder which lately had seized me and upset my sense and reason.
My sentiments concerning Penelope seemed very clear to me now; – a warm liking; a chivalrous desire for her well-being and happiness; a pride that I had been, in some measure, the instrument which had awakened her to her own prerogatives in a world whose laws are made by men.
And if, on such an occasion as this, she gave us her countenance and even frolicked with us, there was a new and clearer note in her laughter, a swifter confidence in her smile, and, in voice and look and movement, a subtle and shy authority which had not been there in the inexperienced and candid child whose heart seemed bewildered when assaulted, and whose lips, undefended, rendered them to the first marauder.
I said as much, one day, to Nick.
"You've turned the child's head," said he, "with your kingly benefactions. You have but to woo her if you want her to wife."
"Wife!" said I, scared o' the very word. "What the devil shall I do with a wife, who am contented as I am? Also, it is not in her mind, nor in mine, who now are pleasant friends and comrades… Also," I added, "love is a disorder and begets a brood of jealousies to plague a man to death! I am calm and contented. I am enamoured of no woman, and do not desire to be so… Although, when I pass thirty, and possess estates, doubtless I shall desire an heir."
"And go a-hunting a mother for this same heir among the gilt-hats of New York," said Nick. "Which is your destiny, John Drogue, for like seeks like, and a yeoman is born, not made; – and wears his rings in his ears – "
"Have done!" said I impatiently. "I am of the soil! I love it! I love plowed land and corn and the smell of stables! I love my log house and my glebe and the smell of English grass!"
"But a servant is a servant, John Drogue, and the mistress of your roof shall have walked in silk before she ever puts on homespun and pattens for love of you! Lord, man! I am I, and you are you! And we mate not with the same breed o' birds. No! For mine shall be a ground-chick of sober hue and feather; and your sweetheart shall have bright wings and own the air for a home.
"That is already written: 'each after its kind.' So God send you your rainbow lady from the clouds, and give you a pretty heir in due event; and as for me, if I guess right, my mate to be hath never fluttered higher than her garret nor worn a shred of silk till she sews her wedding dress!"
On the last day of March maple sap ran.
Nick and I set out that day to seek a sugar-bush for the new mistress of Summer House.
Snow was soft and our snow-shoes scarce bore us, but we floundered along the hard woods, and presently discovered a grove of stately maples.
All that day we were busy in the barn making buckets out o' staves stored there; and on the first day of April we waded the softening snow to the new sugar-bush, tapped the trees, set our spouts and buckets, and also drew thither a kettle and dry wood against future need.
I remember that the day was clear and warm, where, in the sun, the barn doors stood open and the chickens ventured out to scratch about, where the sun had melted the snow.
All day long our cock was a-crowing and a-courting; the south wind came warm with spring and fluttered the wash which Penelope was hanging out to dry and whiten under soft, blue skies.
In pattens she tripped about the slushy yard, her thick, bright hair pegged loosely, and her child's bosom and arms as white as the snow she stepped on.
Save only for my Saguenay, who stood on the veranda roof, resting upon his rifle, the scene was sweet and peaceful. Sheep bleated in yard and fold; cattle lowed in their manger; our cock's full-throated challenge rang out under sunny skies; and everywhere the blue air was murmurous with the voice of rills running from the melting snows like mountain brooks.
On Vlaie Water the ice rotted awash; and already black crows were walking there, and I could see them busily searching the dead and yellow sedge, from where I sat hooping my sap-buckets and softly whistling to myself.
Nick made a snowball and flung it at me, but I dodged it. Then Penelope made another and aimed it at me so truly that the soft lump covered my cap and shoulders with snow.
But her quick peal of laughter was checked when I sprang up to chasten her, and she fled on her pattens, but I caught her around the corner of the house under the lilacs.
"You should be trussed up and trounced like any child," said I, holding her with one hand whilst I scraped out snow from my neck with t'other.
At that she bent and flung a handful of snow over me; and I seized her, bent her back, and scrubbed her face till it was pink.
Choked with snow and laughter, we swayed together, breathless, she still defiant and snatching up snow to fling over me.
"You truss me up!" she panted. "Do you think you are more than a boy to use me as a father or a husband only has the right?"
"You little minx!" said I, when I had spat out a mouthful of snow, "is not anyone free to trounce a child! – "
At that I slipped, or she tripped me; into a drift I went, and she pounced on me and sat astride with a cry of triumph.
"Now," says she, "I shall take your scalp, my fine friend"; and twisted one hand in my hair.
"Hiu-u! Kou-ee!" she cried, "a scalp taken means war to the end! Do you cry me mercy, John Drogue?"
I struggled, but the snow was soft and I sank the deeper, and could not unseat her.
"I drown in snow," said I. "Get up, you jade!"
"Jade!" cries she, and stopped my mouth with snow.
I struggled in vain; under her clinging weight the soft snow engulfed and held me like a very quicksand. I looked up at her and she laughed down at me.
"Do you yield you, John Drogue?"
"It seems I must. But wait! – "
"You threaten!"
"No! Do you mean to drown me, you vixen!"
"You engage not to seek revenge?"
"I do so."
"Why? Because you love me tenderly?"
"Yes," said I, half choked. "Let me up, you plague of Egypt!"
"That is not a loving speech, John Drogue. Do you love me or no?"
"Yes, I do, – you little, – "
"Little what?"
"Object of my heart's desire!" I fairly yelled. "I am like to smother here! – "
"This is All Fools' Day," says she, sick with laughter to see me mad and at her mercy. "Therefore, you must tell me lies, not truths. Tell me a pretty lie, – quickly! – else I scrub your features!"
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.
"Passionately?"
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 cock-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 passionless 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 cock's clarion sounding clear.
But it was mid-April before the first Forest Runner, with pelts, passed through the Sacandaga, twelve days out from Ty, and the woods nigh impassable, 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 God; 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 – God! 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 Dick 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.
