Chambers Robert William
The Little Red Foot

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 pass on the crust; and they had fresh scalps which dripped on the snow.

"And, near Niagara, I saw Butler's Rangers manœuvring on snow-shoes, with drums and curly bugle-horns."

"Did you know any among them?" I asked sombrely.

"Why, yes. There was Michael Reed, kin to Henry Stoner."

"My cousin, damn him!" quoth Nick, calmly.

"He was a drummer in the Rangers of John Butler," nodded Jessup. "And I saw Philip Helmer there in a green uniform, and Charles Cady, too, of Fonda's Bush."

"All I ask," says Nick, "is to get these two hands on them. I demand no weapons; I want only to feel my fingers closing on them." He sat staring into space with the blank glare of a panther. Then, "Were they painted?" he demanded.

"No," said Jessup, "but Simon Girty was and Newberry, too. There were a dozen painted Tories or blue-eyed Indians, – whatever you call 'em, – and they sat at a Seneca fire where the red post stood, and all eating half-raw venison, guts and all – "

Penelope averted her pallid face and leaned her head on her hand.

Jessup took no notice: "They burned a prisoner that day. I was sick, where I lay hidden, to hear his shrieks. And the British in their cantonments could hear as plainly as I, yet nobody interfered."

"There could have been no British officer there," said Penelope, in the ghost of a voice.

"Well, there were, then," said Jessup bluntly. Turning to me he added: "There's a gin'rall there at Niagara, called St. Leger, and he's a drunken son of a slut! We should not be afeard of that puffed up bladder, and I hope he comes against us. But Butler has some smart officers, like his son Walter, and Lieutenant Hare, and young Stephen Watts – "

"You saw him there!" exclaimed Penelope.

"Yes, I saw him in a green uniform; and, with him also, a-horse, rode Sir John Johnson, all in red, and Walter Butler in black and green, and his long cloak a-trail to his spurs. By God, there is a motley crew for you – what with Brant in the saddle, in paint and buckskins and fur robe, and shaved like any dirty Mohawk; and Hiakatoo, like a blackened devil out o' hell, all barred with scarlet and wearing the head of a great wolf for a cap, as well as the pelt to cover his war-paint! – and McDonald, with his kilt and dirk, and the damned black eyes of him and the two buck-teeth shining on his lips! – God!" he breathed; and took a long pull at his pannikin of spiced rum.

That evening Jessup left for Johnstown on his way to Albany with his peltry; and took with him a letter which I wrote to the Commandant at Johnstown fort.

But it was past the first of May before I had any notice taken of my letter; and on a Sunday came an Oneida runner, bearing two letters for me; one from the Commandant, acquainting me that it was not his intention to garrison Fish House or Summer House, that Nick and I were sufficient to stand watch on the Mohawk Trail and Drowned Lands and report any movement threatening the Valley from the North, and that what few men he had must go to Stanwix, where the fort had not yet been completed.

The other letter was writ me from Fonda's Bush by honest John Putman:

"Friend Jack" (says he), "this Bush is a desert indeed and all run off, – the Tories to Canady, – such as the Helmers, Cadys, Bowmans, Reeds, and the likes, – save Adam Helmer, who is of our complexion, – and our own people who are friends to liberty have fled to Johnstown excepting me, – all the women and children, – Jean De Silver's family, De Luysnes' people, the Salisburys, Scotts, Barbara Stoner, who married Conrad Reed and has gone to New York now; and all the Putmans save myself, who shall go presently in fear of the savages and Sir John.

"Sir, it is sad to see our housen empty and our fields fallow, and weeds growing in plowed land. There remain no longer any cattle or fowls or any beasts at all, only the wild poultry of the woods come to the deserted doorsteps, and the red fox runs along the fence.

"Your house stands empty as it was when you marched away. Only squirrels inhabit it now, and porcupines gnaw the corn-crib.

"Well, friend Jack, this is all I have to say. I shall drive my oxen to Johnstown Fort tomorrow, and give this letter to the first runner or express.

"I learn that you have bought the Summer House of the Commission. I wish you joy of it, but it seems a perilous purchase, and I fear that you shall soon be obliged to leave it.

"So, wishing you health, and beholden to you for many kindnesses – as are we all who come from Fonda's Bush – I close, sir, with respect and my obedience and duty to my brave young friend who serves liberty that we old folk and our women and children shall not perish or survive as British slaves.

"Sir, awaiting the dread onset of Sir John with that firmness which becomes a good American, I am,

"Your obliged and humble servant,

"John Putman.

The Oneida left in an hour for Ty.

And it was, I think, an hour later when Nick comes a-running to find me.

"A fire at Fish House," he cries, "and a dense smoke mounting to the sky!"

I flung aside my letter, ran to the kitchen, and called Penelope.

"Pack up and be ready to leave!" said I. And, to Nick: "Saddle Kaya and be ready to take Penelope a-horse to Mayfield block-house. Call my Indian!"

As I belted my shirt and stood ready, my Saguenay came swiftly, trailing his rifle.

"Come," said I, "we must learn why that smoke towers yonder to the sky."

Penelope took me by the sleeve:

"Do nothing rash, John Drogue," she said in a breathless way.

"Get you ready for flight," said I, fixing a fresh flint. "Nick shall run at your stirrup if it comes to that pinch – "

"But you!"

"Why, I am well enough; and if the Iroquois are at Fish House then I retreat through Varick's, and so by Fonda's Bush to Mayfield Fort."

She clasped her hands.

"I do not wish to leave Summer House," she said pitifully. "What is to happen to our sheep and cattle – and to our fowls and all our stores – and to Summer House itself?"

"God knows," said I impatiently. "Why do you stand there idle when you must make ready for flight!"

"I – I can not bear to have you go to Fish House – all alone – "

"I have the Yellow Leaf, and can keep clear o' trouble. Come, Penelope! – "

"When you move toward trouble I do not desire to flee the other way, toward safety! – "

"Pack up, Penelope!" shouted Nick, leading Kaya into the orchard, all saddled; and fell to making up his pack on the grass.

"At Mayfield Fort!" I called across to Nick. "And if I be not there by night, then take Penelope to Johnstown, for it means that the Iroquois are on the Sacandaga!"

"I mark you, Jack!" he replied. I turned to the girl:

"Farewell, Penelope," I said. "You shall be safe with Nick."

"But you, John Drogue?"

"Safe in the forest, always, and the devil himself could not catch me," said I cheerily.

She stretched out her hand. I took it, looked at her, then kissed her fingers. And so went away swiftly, to where our canoe lay, troubled because of this young girl whom I had no desire to fall truly in love with, and yet knew I had been near to it many times that spring.

I got into the canoe and took the stern paddle; my Saguenay kneeled down in the bow; and we shot out across the Vlaie Water.

Once I turned and looked back over my shoulder; and I saw Penelope standing there on the grass, and Nick awaiting her with Kaya.

But I did not wish to feel as I felt at that moment. I did not desire to fall in love. No!

"Au large!" I said to my Indian, and swept the birchen craft out into the deep and steady current.

CHAPTER XXIV
GREEN-COATS

Nothing stirred on the Drowned Lands as we drove our canoe at top speed between tall bronzed stalks of rushes and dead water-weeds. Vlaie Water was intensely blue and patched with golden débris of floating stuff – shreds of cranberry vine, rotting lily pads, and the like – and in twenty minutes we floated silently into the Spring Pool, opposite the Stacking Ridge, where hard earth bordered both shores and where maples and willows were now in lusty bud.

Two miles away, against Maxon's sturdy bastion, a vast quantity of smoke was writhing upward in dark and cloudy convolutions. I could not see Fish House – that oblong, unpainted building a story and a half in height, with its chimneys of stone and the painted fish weather vane swimming in the sky. But I was convinced that it was afire.

We beached our canoe and drew it under the shore-reeds, and so passed rapidly down the right bank of the stream along the quick water, holding our guns cocked and primed, like hunters ready for a hazard shot at sight.

There was no snow left; all frost was out of the ground along the Drowned Lands; and the earth was sopping wet. Everywhere frail green spears of new grass pricked the dead and matted herbage; and in sheltered places tiny green leaves embroidered stems and twigs; and I saw wind-flowers, and violets both yellow and blue, and the amber shoots of skunk cabbage growing thickly in wet places. The shadbush, too, was in exquisite white bloom along the stream, and I remember that I saw one tree in full flower, and a dozen bluejays sitting amid the snowy blossoms like so many lumps of sapphire.

Now, on the mainland, a clearing showed in the sunshine; and beyond it I saw a rail fence bounding a field still black and wet from last autumn's plowing.

We took to the brush and bore to the right, where on firm ground a grove of ash and butternut forested the ridge, and a sandy path ran through.

I knew this path. Sir William often used it when hunting, and his cows, kept at Fish House when his two daughters lived there, travelled this way to and from pasture.

Between us and the Sacandaga lay one of those grassy gulleys where, in time of flood, back-water from the Sacandaga spread deep.

My Indian and I now lay down and drew our bodies very stealthily toward the woods' edge, where the setback from the river divided us from Fish House.

Ahead of us, through the trees, dense volumes of smoke crowded upward and unfolded into strange, cloudy shapes, and we could hear a loud and steady crackling noise made by feeding flames.

Presently, through the trees, I saw Fish House all afire, and now only a glowing skeleton in the sunshine. But the dense smoke came not now from Fish House, but from three barracks of marsh-hay burning, which vomited thick smoke into the sky. Near the house some tall piles of hewn logs were blazing, also a corn-crib, a small barn, and a log farmhouse, where I think that damned rascal, Wormwood, once lived. And it had been bought by a tenant of Sir William, – one of the patriot Shews or Helmers, if I mistake not, who was given favourable advantages to undertake such a settlement, but now had fled to Johnstown.

Godfrey Shew's own house, just over the knoll to the eastward, was also on fire: I could see the flames from it and a thin brownish smoke which belched out black cinders and shreds of charred bark.

I did not see a living creature near these fires, but farther toward the east clearing I heard voices and the sound of picks and axes; and my Saguenay and I crept thither along the bank of the flooded hollow.

Very soon I perceived the new earthwork and log-stockade made the previous summer by our Continentals; and there, to my astonishment, I saw a motley company of white men and Indians, who were chopping down the timbers of the palisades, levelling the earthwork with pick and shovel.

So near were they across the flooded hollow that I recognized Elias Beacraft, brother to Benjy, who had gone off with McDonald. Also, I saw and knew Captain James Hare, brother to Lieutenant Henry Hare, of Butler's regiment; and Henry, also, was there; and Captain Nellis, of the forester service. Both the Hares and Nellis were dressed in green uniforms, and there were two other green-coats whom I knew not, but all busy with their work of destruction, and their axes flashing in the sunshine.

The others I had, of course, taken for very savages, for they were feathered and painted and wore Indian dress; but when one of these came down to the flooded hollow to fill his tin cup and drink, to my horror I saw that the eyes in that hideously-painted face were a light blue!

"Nai! Yengese!" whispered the Yellow Leaf.

The painted Tory was not ten yards from where we lay, and, as I gazed intently at those hideously daubed features, all at once I knew the man.

For this horrid and grotesque figure, all besmeared with ochre and indigo, and wearing Indian dress, was none other than an old neighbour of mine in Tryon County, one George Cuck, who lived near Jan Zuyler and his two buxom daughters, and who had gone off with Sir John last May.

As I stared at him in ever-rising astonishment and rage, comes another blue-eyed Indian– Barney Cane, – wearing Iroquois paint and feathers, and all gaudy in his beaded war-dress. And, at his belt, I saw a fresh scalp hanging by its hair, —the light brown hair of a white man!

I could hear Cane speaking with Cuck in English. Beacraft came down to the water; and Billy Newberry[22] and Hare²² also came down, both wearing the uniform of the forester service. And I was astounded to see Henry Hare back again after his narrow escape at Summer House last autumn, the night I got my hurt.

But he wore no Valley militia disguise now; all these men were in green-coats, openly flaunting the enemy uniform in County Tryon, – save only those painted beasts Cuck and Cane.

It was a war party, and it had accomplished a clean job at Fish House; and now they all were coming down to the flooded hollow and looking across it where lay the short route west to Summer House.

Presently I heard a great splashing to our left, and saw a skiff and two green-coats and two Mohawk Indians in it pulling across the back-water.

And these latter were real Mohawks, stripped, oiled, their heads shaved, and in their battle-paint, who squatted there in the skiff, scanning with glowing eyes the bank where my Saguenay and I lay concealed.

It was perfectly plain, now, what they meant to do. Beacraft, Cane, and Cuck went back to the ruined redoubt, and presently returned loaded with packs. Baggage and rifles were laid in the skiff.

I touched Yellow Leaf on the arm, and we wriggled backward out of sight. Then, rising, we turned and pulled foot for our canoe.

Now my chiefest anxiety was whether Penelope and Nick had got clean away and were already well on the road to the Mayfield Block House.

We found our canoe where we had hid it, and we made the still water boil with our two paddles, so that, although it seemed an age to me, we came very swiftly to our landing at Summer House Point.

Here we sprang out, seized the canoe, ran with it up the grassy slope, then continued over the uncut lawn and down the western slope, where again we launched it and let it swing on the water, held anchored by its nose on shore.

House, barn, orchard, all were deathly still there in the brilliant sunshine; I ran to the manger and found it empty of cattle. There were no fowls to be seen or heard, either. Then I hastened to the sheep-fold. That, also, was empty.

Perplexed, I ran down to the gates, found them open, and, in the mud of the Johnstown Road, discovered sheep and cattle tracks, the imprint of Kaya's sharp-shod hoofs, a waggon mark, and the plain imprint of Nick's moccasins.

So it was clear enough what he and Penelope had done. A terrible anxiety seized me, and I wondered how far they had got on the way to Mayfield, with cattle and sheep to drive ahead of a loaded waggon and one horse.

And now, more than ever, it was certain that my Indian and I must make a desperate stand here to hold back these marauders until our people were safe in Mayfield without a shadow of doubt.

The Saguenay had gone to the veranda roof with his rifle, where he could see any movement by land or water.

I called up to him that the destructives might come by both routes; then I went to my room, gathered all the lead bars and bags of bullets, seized our powder keg, and dragged all down to the water, where I stored everything in the canoe.

That was all I could take, save a sack of ground corn mixed with maple sugar, a flask of rum, and a bag of dry meat.

These articles, with our fur robes and blankets, a fish-spear, and a spontoon which I discovered, were all I dared attempt to save.

I stood in the pretty house, gazing desperately about me, sad to leave this place to flames, furious to realize that this little lodge must perish, which once was endeared to me because Sir William loved it, and now had become doubly dear because I had given it to a young girl whom I loved – and tenderly – yet desired not to become enamoured with.

Sunshine fell through the glazed windows, where chintz curtains stirred in the wind.

I looked around at the Windsor chairs, the table where we had supped together so often. I went into Penelope's room and looked at her maple bed, so white and fresh.

There was a skein of wool yarn on the table. I took it; gazed at it with new and strange emotions a-fiddling at my throat and twitching eyes and lips; and placed it in the breast of my hunting shirt.

Then I listened; but my Indian overhead remained silent. So I went on through the house, and then down to the kitchen, where I saw all sweetly in order, and pan and china bright; and soupaan still simmering where Penelope had left it.

There was a bowl of milk there, and the cream thick on it. And she had set a dozen red apples handy, with flour and spices and a crock of lard for to fashion a pie, I think.

Slowly I went up stairs and then out the kitchen door, across the grass. The Saguenay saw me from above and made a sign that all was still quiet on the Drowned Lands.

So I went to the manger again, and thence to the barn and around the house.

The lilacs had bursted their buds, and I could see tiny bunches pushing out on every naked stem where the fragrant, grape-like bunches of bloom should hang in May.

Then I looked down, and remembered where I had lain in the snow under these same lilacs, and how there Penelope had bullied me and then consented to kiss me on the mouth… And, as I was thinking sadly of these things, – bang! went my Indian's rifle from the veranda roof.

I sprang out upon the west lawn and saw the powder cloud drifting over the house, and my Indian, sheltered by the roof, reloading his piece on one knee.

"By water!" he called out softly, when he saw me.

At that I ran into the house by the front door, which faced south; closed and bolted the four heavy green shutters in the two rooms on the ground floor, barred the south door and the west, or kitchen door below; and sprang up the ladder to the low loft chamber, from whence, stooping, I crept out of the south-gable window upon the veranda.

This piazza promenade was nearly as high as the eaves. The gable ends of the roof, in which were windows, faced north and south, but the promenade ran all around the east end and sides, which, supported by columns, afforded a fine rifle-platform for defense against a water attack, and gave us a wide view out over the mysterious Drowned Lands.

It was a vast panorama that lay around us – a great misty amphitheatre more than a hundred miles in circumference. At our feet lay that immense marsh of fifteen thousand acres, called the Great Vlaie; mountains walled the Drowned Lands north, east, west; and to the south stretched a wilderness of pine and spectral tamaracks.

Lying flat on the roof, and peering cautiously between the spindles of the railing, I saw, below on the Vlaie Water, the same skiff I had seen at Fish House.

In the heavy skiff, the gunwales of which were barricaded with their military packs, lay six green-coats, – Captains Hare and Nellis, Sergeant Newberry, Beacraft, and two strangers in private's uniform.

They had a white flag set in the prow.

But the two blue-eyed Indians, Barney Cane and George Cuck, were not with them, nor were the two Mohawks. And in a whisper I bade my Saguenay go around to the south gable and keep his eye on the gate and the Johnstown Road on the mainland.

Hare took the white flag from the prow and waved it, the two rowers continuing up creek and heading toward our landing.

Then I called out to them to halt and back water; and, as they paid no heed, I fired at their white flag, and knocked the staff and rag out of Hare's hand without wounding him.

At that two or three cried out angrily, but their rowers ceased and began to back water hastily; and I, reloading, kept an eye on them.

Then Hare stood up in the skiff and bawled through his hollowed hand:

"Will you parley? Or do you wish to violate a flag?"

"Keep your interval, Henry Hare!" I retorted. "If you have anything to say, say it from where you are or I'll drill you clean!"

"Is that John Drogue, the Brent-Meester?" he shouted.

"None other," said I. "What brings you to Summer House in such fair weather, Harry Hare?"

"I wish to land and parley," he replied. "You may blindfold me if you like."

"When I put out your lights," said I, "it will be a quicker job than that. What do you wish to do – count our garrison?"

Captain Nellis got up from his seat and replied that he knew how many people occupied Summer House, and that, desiring to prevent the useless effusion of blood, he demanded our surrender under promise of kind treatment.

I laughed at him. "No," said I, "my hair suits my head and I like it there rather than swinging all red and wet at the girdle of your blue-eyed Indians."

As I spoke I saw Newberry and Beacraft bring the butts of their rifles to their shoulders, and I shrank aside as their pieces cracked out sharply across the water.

Splinters flew from the painted column on the corner of the house; the green-coats all fell flat in their skiff and lay snug there, hidden by their packs.

Presently, as I watched, I saw an oar poked out.

Very cautiously somebody was sculling the skiff down stream and across in the direction of the reeds.

As the craft turned to enter the marsh, I had a fleeting view of the sculler – only his head and arm – and saw it was Eli Beacraft.

I was perfectly cool when I fired on him. He let go his oar and fell flat on the bottom of the boat. The echo of my shot died away in wavering cadences among the shoreward woods; an intense stillness possessed the place.

Then, of a sudden, Beacraft fell to kicking his legs and screeching, and so flopped about in the bottom of the boat, like a stranded fish all over blood.

The boat nosed in between the marsh-grasses and tall sedge, and I could not see it clearly any more.

But the green-coats in it were no sooner hid than they began firing at Summer House, and the storm of lead ripped and splintered the gallery and eaves, tore off shingles, shattered chimney bricks, and rang out loud on the iron hinges of door and shutter.

I fired a few shots into their rifle-smoke, then lay watching and waiting, and listening ever for the loud explosion of my Indian's piece, which would mean that the painted Tories and the Mohawks were stealing upon us from the mainland.

Every twenty minutes or so the men in the batteau-skiff let off a rifle shot at Summer House, and the powder-cloud rising among the dead weeds, pinxters, and button-ball bushes, discovered the location of their craft.

Sometimes, as I say, I took a shot at the smoke; but time was the essence of my contract, and God knows it contented me to stand siege whilst Penelope and Nick, with waggon and cattle, were plodding westward toward Mayfield.

About four o'clock in the afternoon I was hungry and went to get me a piece in the pantry.

Then I took Yellow Leaf's place whilst he descended to appease his hunger.

We ate our bread and meat together on the roof, our rifles lying cocked across our knees.

"Brother," said I, munching away, "if, indeed, you be, as they say, a tree-eater, and live on bark and buds when there is no game to kill, then I think your stomach suffers nothing by such diet, for I want no better comrade in a pinch, and shall always be ready to bear witness to your bravery and fidelity."

He continued to eat in silence, scraping away at his hot soupaan with a pewter spoon. After he had licked both spoon and pannikin as clean as a cat licks a saucer, he pulled a piece of jerked deer meat in two and gravely chewed the morsel, his small, brilliant eyes ever roving from the water to the mainland.

Presently, without looking at me, he said quietly:

"When I was only a poor hunter of the Montagnais, I said to myself, 'I am a man, yet hardly one.'²³ I learned that a Saguenay was a real man when my brother told me.

"My brother cleared my eyes and wiped away the ancient mist of tears. I looked; and lo! I found that I was a real man. I was made like other men and not like a beast to be kicked at and stoned and driven with sticks flung at me in the forest."

"The Yellow Leaf is a warrior," I said. "The Oneida Anowara²⁴ bear witness to scalps taken in battle by the Yellow Leaf. Tahioni, the Wolf, took no more."

"Ni-ha-ron-ta-kowa,"²⁵ said the Saguenay proudly, "onkwe honwe!²⁶ Yet it was my white brother who cleared my eyes of mist. Therefore, let him give me a new name – a warrior's name – meaning that my vision is now clear."

"Very well," said I, "your war name shall be Sak-yen-haton!"²⁷– which was as good Iroquois as I could pronounce, and good enough for the Montagnais to comprehend, it seemed, for a gleam shot from his eyes, and I heard him say to himself in a low voice: "Haiah-ya! I am a real warrior now!.. Onenh! at last!"

A shot came from the water; he looked around contemptuously and smiled.

"My elder brother," said he, "shall we two strip and set our knives between our teeth, and swim out to scalp those muskrats yonder?"

"And if they fire at us in the water?" said I, amused at his mad courage, who had once been "hardly a man."

"Then we dive like Tchurako, the mink, and swim beneath the water, as swims old 'long face' the great wolf-pike!²⁸ Shall we rush upon them thus, O my elder brother?"

Absurd as it was, the wild idea began to inflame me, and I was seriously considering our chances at twilight to accomplish such a business, when, of a sudden, I saw on the mainland an officer of the Indian Department, who bore a white rag on the point of his hanger and waved it toward the house.

He came across the Johnstown Road to our gate, but made no motion to open it, and stood there slowly waving his white flag and waiting to be noticed and hailed.

"Keep your rifle on that man," I whispered to my Indian, "for I shall go down to the orchard and learn what are the true intentions of these green-coats and blue-eyed Indians. Find a rest for your piece, hold steadily, and kill that flag if I am fired on."

I saw him stretch out flat on his belly and rest his rifle on the veranda rail. Then I crawled into the garret, descended through the darkened house, and, unbolting the door, went out and down across the grass to the orchard.

"What is your errand?" I called out, "you flag there outside our gate?"

"Is that you, John Drogue?" came a familiar voice.

I took a long look at him from behind my apple tree, and saw it was Jock Campbell, one of Sir John's Highland brood and late a subaltern in the Royal Provincials.

And that he should come here in a green coat with these murderous vagabonds incensed me.

"What do you want, Jock Campbell!" I demanded, controlling my temper.

"I want a word with you under a flag!"

"Say what you have to say, but keep outside that gate!" I retorted.

"John Drogue," says he, "we came here to burn Summer House, and mean to do it. We know how many you have to defend the place – "

"Oh, do you know that? Then tell me, Jock, if you truly possess the information."

"Very well," said he calmly. "You are two white men, a Montagnais dog, and a girl. And pray tell me, sir, how long do you think you can hold us off?"

"Well," said I, "if you are as thrifty with your skins as you have been all day, then we should keep this place a week or two against you."

"What folly!" he exclaimed hotly. "Do you think to prevail against us?"

"Why, I don't know, Jock. Ask Beacraft yonder, who hath a bullet in his belly. He's wiser than he was and should offer you good counsel."

"I offer you safe conduct if you march out at once!" he shouted.

"I offer you one of Beacraft's pills if you do not instantly about face and march into the bush yonder!" I replied.

At that he dashed the flag upon the road and shook his naked sword at me.

"Your blood be on your heads!" he bawled. "I can not hold my Indians if you defy them longer!"

"Well, then, Jock," said I, "I'll hold 'em for you, never fear!"

He strode to the fence and grasped it.

"Will you march out? Shame on you, Stormont, who are seduced by this Yankee rabble o' rebels when your place is with Sir John and with the loyal gentlemen of Tryon!

"For the last time, then, will you parley and march out? Or shall I give you and your Caughnawaga wench to my Indians?"

I walked out from behind my tree and drew near the fence, where he was standing, his sword hanging from one wrist by the leather knot.

"Jock Campbell," said I, "you are a great villain. Do you lay aside your hanger and your pistols, and I will set my rifle here, and we shall soon see what your bragging words are worth."

At that he drove his sword into the earth, but, as I set my rifle against a tree, he lifted his pistol and fired at me, and I felt the wind of the bullet on my right cheek.

Then he snatched his sword and was already vaulting the gate, when my Saguenay's bullet caught him in mid-air, and he fell across the top rail and slid down on the muddy road outside.