The Maid-At-Arms

For to save his life.
Where he had left his arms
In care of his wife.

"'They advanced upon him
And began to fire,
But Christian with his blunderbuss
Soon made them retire.

"'He wounded Donald McDonald
And drew him in the door,
Who gave an account
Their strength was sixty-four.

"'Six there was wounded
And eleven there was killed
Of this said party,

Before they quit the field.'"And I think there are a hundred other verses, which I will spare you; not that I forget them, for the soldiers sang them over and over, and I had nothing better to do than to lie awake and listen.

"So that is all. I hear my messenger moving about below; I am to drop this letter down to him, as all are asleep, and to open the big door might wake them.

"Good-bye.

"It was not my rifleman, only the sentry. They keep double watch since the news came about Schell. "Good-bye. I am thinking of you.

"DOROTHY.

"Postscript.–Please make my compliments and adieux to Sir George Covert.

"Postscript.–The rifleman is here; he is whistling like a whippoorwill. I must say good-bye. I am mad to go with him. Do not forget me!

"My memories are so keen, so pitilessly real, I can scarce endure them, yet cling to them the more desperately.

"I did not mean to write this–truly I did not! But here, in the dusk, I can see your face just as it looked when you said good-bye!–so close that I could take it in my arms despite my vows and yours!

"Help me to reason; for even God cannot, or will not, help me; knowing, perhaps, the dreadful after-life He has doomed me to for all eternity. If it is true that marriages are made in heaven, where was mine made? Can you answer? I cannot. (The whimper of the whippoorwill again!) Dearest, good-bye. Where my body lies matters nothing so that you hold my soul a little while. Yet, even of that they must rob you one day. Oh, if even in dying there is no happiness, where, where does it abide? Three places only have I heard of: the world, heaven, and hell. God forgive me, but I think the last could cover all.

"Say that you love me! Say it to the forest, to the wind. Perhaps my soul, which follows you, may hear if you only say it. (Once more the ghost-call of the whippoorwill!) Dear lad, good-bye!"

XVII

THE FLAG

Day after day our little scout of four traversed the roads and forests of the Kingsland district, warning the people at the outlying settlements and farms that the county militia-call was out, and that safety lay only in conveying their families to the forts and responding to the summons of authority without delay.

Many obeyed; some rash or stubborn settlers prepared to defend their homes. A few made no response, doubtless sympathizing with their Tory friends who had fled to join McDonald or Sir John Johnson in the North.

Rumors were flying thick, every settlement had its full covey; every cross-road tavern buzzed with gossip. As we travelled from settlement to settlement, we, too, heard something of what had happened in distant districts: how the Schoharie militia had been called out; how one Huetson had been captured as he was gathering a band of Tories to join the Butlers; how a certain Captain Ball had raised a company of sixty-three royalists at Beaverdam and was fled to join Sir John; how Captain George Mann, of the militia, refused service, declaring himself a royalist, and disbanding his company; how Adam Crysler had thrown his important influence in favor of the King, and that the inhabitants of Tryon County were gloomy and depressed, seeing so many respectable gentlemen siding with the Tories.

We learned that the Schoharie and Schenectady militia had refused to march unless some provision was made to protect their families in their absence; that Congress had therefore established a corps of invalids, consisting of eight companies, each to have one captain, two lieutenants, two ensigns, five sergeants, six corporals, two drums, two fifes, and one hundred men; one company to be stationed in Schoharie, and to be called the "Associate Exempts"; that three forts for the protection of the Schoharie Valley were nearly finished, called the Upper, Lower, and Middle forts.

More sinister still were the rumors from the British armies: Burgoyne was marching on Albany from the north with the finest train of artillery ever seen in America; St. Leger was moving from the west; McDonald had started already, flinging out his Indian scouts as far as Perth and Broadalbin, and Sir Henry Clinton had gathered a great army at New York and was preparing to sweep the Hudson Valley from Fishkill to Albany. And the focus of these three armies and of Butler's, Johnson's, and McDonald's renegades and Indians was this unhappy county of Tryon, torn already with internal dissensions; unarmed, unprovisioned, unorganized, almost ungarrisoned.

I remember, one rainy day towards sunset, coming into a small hamlet where, in front of the church, some score of farmers and yokels were gathered, marshalled into a single line. Some were armed with rifles, some with blunderbusses, some with spears and hay-forks. None wore uniform. As we halted to watch the pathetic array, their fifer and drummer wheeled out and marched down the line, playing Yankee Doodle. Then the minister laid down his blunderbuss and, facing the company, raised his arms in prayer, invoking the "God of Armies" as though he addressed his supplication before a vast armed host.

Murphy strove to laugh, but failed; Mount muttered vaguely under his breath; Elerson gnawed his lips and bent his bared head while the old man finished his prayer to "The God of Armies!" then picked up his blunderbuss and limped to his place in the scanty file.

And again I remember one fresh, sweet morning late in June, standing with my riflemen at a toll-gate to see some four hundred Tryon County militia marching past on their way to Unadilla on the Susquehanna, where Brant, with half a thousand savages, had consented to a last parley. Stout, wholesome lads they were, these Tryon County men; wearing brown and yellow uniforms cut smartly, and their officers in the Continental buff and blue, riding like regulars; curved swords shining and their epaulets striking fire in the sunshine.

"Palatines!" said Mount, standing to salute as an officer rode by. "That's General Herkimer–old Honikol Herkimer–with his hard, weather-tanned jaws and the devil lurking under his eyebrows; and that young fellow in his smart uniform is Colonel Cox, old George Klock's son-in-law; and yonder rides Colonel Harper! Oh, I know 'em, sir; I was not in these parts for nothing in '74 and '75!"

The drums and fifes were playing "Unadilla" as the regiment marched past; and my riflemen, lounging along the roadside, exchanged pleasantries with the hardy Palatines, or greeted acquaintances in their impudent, bantering manner:

"Hello! What's this Low Dutch regiment? Say, Han Yost, the pigs has eat off your queue-band! Bedad, they marrch like Albany ducks in fly-time! Musha, thin, luk at the fat dhrummer laad! Has he apples in thim two cheeks, Jack? I dunnoa! Hey, there goes Wagner! Hello, Wagner! Wisha, laad, ye're cross-eyed an' shquint-lipped a-playin' yere fife hind-end furrst!"

And the replies from the dusty, brown ranks, steadily passing:

"Py Gott! dere's Jack Mount! Look alretty, Jacob! Hello, Elerson! Ish dot true you patch your breeches mit second-hand scalps you puy in Montreal? Vat you vas doing down here, Tim Murphy? Oh, joost look at dem devils of Morgan! Sure, Emelius, dey joost come so soon as ve go. Ya! Dey come to kiss our girls, py cricky! Uf I catch you round my girl alretty, Dave Elerson–"

"Silence! Silence in the ranks!" sang out an officer, riding up. The brown column passed on, the golden dust hanging along its flanks. Far ahead we could still hear the drums and fifes playing "Unadilla."

"They ought to have a flag; a flag's a good thing to fight for," said Mount, looking after them. "I fought for the damned British rag when I was fifteen. Lord! it makes me boil to think that they've forgot what we did for 'em!"

"We Virginians carried a flag at the siege o' Boston," observed Elerson. "It was a rattlesnake on a white ground, with the motto, 'Don't tread on me!'"

I told them of the new flag that our Congress had chosen, describing it in detail. They listened attentively, but made no comment.

It was on these expeditions that I learned something of these rough riflemen which I had not suspected–their passionate devotion to the forest. What the sea is to mariners, the endless, uncharted wilderness was to these forest runners; they loved and hated it, they suspected and trusted it. A forest voyage finished, they steered for the nearest port with all the eager impatience of sea-cloyed sailors. Yet, scarcely were they anchored in some frontier haven than they fell to dreaming of the wilderness, of the far silences in the trackless sea of trees, of the winds ruffling the forest's crests till ten thousand trees toss their leaves, silver side up, as white-caps flash, rolling in long patches on a heaving waste of waters.

Yet, in all those weeks I never heard one word or hint of that devotion expressed or implied, not one trace of appreciation, not one shadow of sentiment. If I ventured to speak of the vast beauty of the woods, there was no response from my shy companions; one appeared to vie with another in concealing all feeling under a careless mask and a bantering manner.

Once only can I recall a voluntary expression of pleasure in beauty; it came from Jack Mount, one blue night in July, when the heavens flashed under summer stars till the vaulted skies seemed plated solidly with crusted gems.

"Them stars look kind of nice," he said, then colored with embarrassment and spat a quid of spruce-gum into the camp-fire.

Yet humanity demands some outlet for accumulated sentiment, and these men found it in the dirge-like songs and laments and rude ballads of the wilderness, which I think bear a close resemblance to the sailor-men's songs, in words as well as in the dolorous melodies, fit only for the scraping whine of a two-string fiddle in a sugar-camp.

The magic of June faded from the forests, smothered under the magnificent and deeper glory of July's golden green; the early summer ripened into August, finding us still afoot in the Kingsland district gathering in the loyal, warning the rash, comforting the down-cast, threatening the suspected. Twice, by expresses bound for Saratoga, I sent full reports to Schuyler, but received no further orders. I wondered whether he was displeased at my failure to arrest Walter Butler; and we redoubled our efforts to gain news of him. Three times we heard of his presence in or near the Kingsland district: once at Tribes Hill, once at Fort Plain, and once it was said he was living quietly in a farm-house near Johnstown, which he had the effrontery to enter in broad daylight. But we failed to come up with him, and to this day I do not know whether any of this information we received was indeed correct. It was the first day of August when we heard of Butler's presence near Johnstown; we had been lying at a tavern called "The Brick House," a two-story inn standing where the Albany and Schenectady roads fork near Fox Creek, and there had been great fear of McDonald's renegades that week, and I had advised the despatch of an express to Albany asking for troops to protect the valley when I chanced to overhear a woman say that firing had been heard in the direction of Stanwix.

The woman, a slattern, who was known by the unpleasant name of Rya's Pup, declared that Walter Butler had gone to Johnstown to join St. Leger before Stanwix, and that the Tories would give the rebels such a drubbing that we would all be crawling on our bellies yelling for quarter this day week. As the wench was drunk, I made little of her babble; but the next day Murphy and Elerson, having been in touch with Gansevoort's outposts, returned to me with a note from Colonel Willett:

    "FORT SCHUYLER (STANWIX),
    "August 2d,

"DEAR SIR,–I transmit to you the contents of a letter from Colonel Gansevoort, dated July 28th:

"' Yesterday, at three o'clock in the afternoon, our garrison was alarmed with the firing of four guns. A party of men was instantly despatched to the place where the guns were fired, which was in the edge of the woods, about five hundred yards from the fort; but they were too late. The villains were fled, after having shot three young girls who were out picking raspberries, two of whom were lying scalped and tomahawked; one dead and the other expiring, who died in about half an hour after she was brought home. The third had a bullet through her face, and crawled away, lying hid until we arrived. It was pitiful. The child may live, but has lost her mind.

"'This was accomplished by a scout of sixteen Tories of Colonel John Butler's command and two savages, Mohawks, all under direction of Captain Walter Butler.'