3stalwarts (30 page)

As the wounded were brought into the stockades, and the last of the Palatine and Canajoharie companies departed for their own precincts, a pall of terror settled on German Flats. Even the garrisons in the two forts became irascible and bitterly sarcastic about the German race. Everyone thought it was only a matter of days before the Tories and Indians would be among them.

Word got round that among the wounded at Dr. Petry’s house was a man who had been scalped, and many people were moved by a morbid curiosity to see him. He turned out to be George Walter, a stout German farmer living below Fall Hill, well known for his good humor. It had not deserted him now. He was entirely willing that people should come and look at him and offer him drinks behind the doctor’s back.

“Ja, ja,” he would say. “I was lying behind a tree, und the Indian comes und shoots me, und then he comes with his liddle axe und hits me und takes the top off mine head, und he goes away mit it. He thought I was dead.” He would pause to grin, and say, “I thought I was dead too,” as if that were a peculiarly funny coincidence.

It was that grin that was described around the settlements. They said his face had lost all its fatness and the features seemed on the point of running out of his chin, and that when he grinned all his features seemed to get together there, down below his face. He did it so much that the stitches tore out and the doctor had to work on him all over and lock him up on the top floor. But even so, small boys climbed the maple tree across the road to look at him through the window.

Other sufferers, less picturesque than Walter, had circumstantial stories of Tories recognized in the opposing side. People began to repeat from them how Ritter had been dragged off by two Indians and how the Indians had been driven off by Ritter’s former neighbor, Casselman, who had then cut Ritter’s throat with his own hand. There were stories of some Scotch Highlanders in Sir John Johnson’s regiment scalping the militia just as if they were Indians themselves.

A few people made feeble efforts to the effect of combating these horrors. Domine Rozencrantz read in church from the Ninety-first Psalm:—

“He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shall thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.

“Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day.”

But the Lord’s presence was not an active thing like John Butler’s before Fort Stanwix. People in the stockades began to talk about how he used to be Sir William Johnson’s right-hand man when the Indians were taken care of, bribed and pampered, so that any man might take up land in safety, and Joseph Brant was just a neighbor. More than one man began to shake his head and think that he had been a fool, and wish for the old safe days back again.

The members of the Committee of Safety in German Flats were well aware of the swing of popular feeling. On the ninth of August, Peter Tygert wrote the Albany Committee as spokesman for his district by virtue of his own survival.

Demooth and Helmer and Joe Boleo had left Fort Stanwix on the night of the sixth, and it had taken them three days of circuitous traveling to elude the Indian scouting parties. They brought news to German Flats of the increasing shortage of provisions and ammunition. Colonel Gansevoort had put the garrison on a single daily ration. The one bright spot was the account of a sortie led by Lieutenant Colonel Willett against the Tory camp on the day of the battle. It was a daring raid and it resulted in the removal to the fort of all the munitions and food the enemy’s camp contained, together with Butler’s and Johnson’s papers and half a dozen flags. They spoke with admiration of Willett’s conduct. They said he was a cool, unhurried man. But they also said that the fort could not hold out indefinitely, that the Indians and the regulars were keeping a tight network of lines round the fort. They said that in Butler’s papers they had found endorsements for scalps taken, at eight dollars per scalp. When they got through, the sortie seemed a drop of victory that was ironical.

Tygert, writing these things down, continued with the battle itself:—

Gen. Herkimer is wounded; Col. Cox seemingly killed; and a great many officers are among the slain. We are surrounded by Tories, a party of 100 of whom are now on their march through the woods… .

Gentlemen, we pray you will send us succour. By the death of most of our committee members, the field officers, and Gen. Herkimer being wounded, everything is out of order; the people entirely dis-pirited; our county at Esopus unrepresented, that we cannot hope to stand it any longer without your aid; we will not mention the shocking aspect our fields do show. Faithful to our country we remain, Your sorrowful bretheren,

The Few members of this committee

But two days after this letter had been dispatched by Helmer, a scout escorted two men into Fort Dayton. One of these was a young lieutenant named Stockwell; the other was Lieutenant Colonel Marinus Willett. As soon as they arrived they were taken to Colonel Weston’s quarters, and he in turn immediately sent for Tygert, Demooth, and Dr. Petry.

These three took comfort from the very look of Colonel Willett. He was standing before the fireplace, and at their entrance withdrew his hooked nose from the glass in his hand, a drop hanging from the tip of it, and eyed them with unwavering hard blue eyes. As he was being introduced to the three Committee members, the drop fell to his waistcoat. He said to them bluntly, “Gentlemen, I’ve had you sent for to know what you’ve written to Schuyler.”

He nodded again when Tygert had repeated the gist of his letter to the Albany Committee.

“You put it to them pretty strong. But they’ll send the letter on to General Schuyler. I’m going to see him myself.” He smiled at them. “Somebody needs to raise a stink, and Gansevoort seemed to think I could do it.”

His big nose seemed to arch.

“Just how bad are things up at Stanwix?” asked Dr. Petry.

“Bad enough. We’ve got food enough for a while, but we’re low on shot. Right now St. Leger’s busy writing letters about what he’s going to do to us and to you people if we don’t surrender. But the troops are taking them right. We made a flag on the new Continental pattern and flew it over the flags we took in the sortie, and that tickled them. And then I thought to read them the passage in the Book of Joel.” His blue eyes twinkled close on either side of his high nose as he solemnly quoted:—

” ‘But I will remove far off from you the northern army, and will drive him into a land barren and desolate, with his face toward the east sea, and his hinder part toward the utmost sea; and his stink shall come up.’ “

There was a commotion in the parade yard, and an orderly looked in to announce a dispatch rider. He entered with his papers in his hand.

“Colonel Weston?”

“Yes.”

“Papers from General Schuyler.”

Weston did not ask to be excused. He immediately opened his letter. Then he looked up.

“Schuyler’s sending up General Arnold and Learned. He hopes to add the First New York Line.”

There was a silence in the room through which the panting of the dispatch rider’s horse came heavily. They all looked at one another. Then Willett wiped his mouth. “Maybe you ought to give this lad a drink,” he suggested.

“Yes, yes,” said Weston, and filled his own glass. He turned to Willett. “Do you think you’ll have to go down to headquarters, now?”

“By God, yes. I want to be damned sure they don’t waste any time. Is that decent horse you spoke of ready yet?”

“He’s outside.”

They all went to the door, then walked to the gate after he mounted. He paused there, gathering up the reins.

“Who do I have to pay if I spoil this horse?”

He grinned and kicked the horse into a canter before he was answered. They watched him down the road towards the creek ford. He sat straight in the saddle, like an electrified ploughman; but as they saw his square shoulders disappearing under the low maple branches they remembered the hardness of the blue eyes, and the big nose in the long face. He wasn’t the kind of man who would return without what he was after.

“They’ll hear him even if they hold their fingers in their ears,” the doctor said. “What was that flag he was talking about, Mark? Did you see it?”

Mark Demooth nodded.

“Yes. It’s got thirteen stripes, red and white ones, and a blue box in the upper corner, with thirteen white stars in a ring. They made it out of ammunition shirts, and a blue cloak, and a woman’s red petticoat.” He grinned thinly. “She’s got to be a heroine with the men up there. They say it’s the first time she ever took the petticoat off in an honest cause.”

Tygert looked solemn.

“I hadn’t heard of it before. It sounds like a fancy pattern for a flag, though.”

The party of one hundred Tories that Mr. Tygert had mentioned in his letter to the Albany Committee materialized in the form of a party of fifteen who turned up on the thirteenth at Rudolph Shoemaker’s house.

Shoemaker was an anomalous person. Before hostilities commenced he had been a Justice of the Peace under the King. In ‘75 he had signed the Loyalist manifesto against sedition and treason. But he had not chosen to move west with the Butlers and Johnsons later that spring. Instead, rely-ing on his kinship to Nicholas Herkimer, he had joined the German Flats Committee of Safety. Since then his public house had become a sort of neutral ground, and it caused no particular surprise when the news went through the valley that the hostile party had taken up quarters there.

Captain Demooth first heard of it when he asked Nancy at suppertime where Clem Coppernol was. She flushed, as she always did when the captain asked her a direct question.

“He said he was going up to Shoemaker’s.”

“What’s he doing there, do you know, Nancy?”

“He said there was some people from the westward.”

Captain Demooth frowned, and Nancy, looking down on his dark head, saw his neat hands hesitate as they put the pudding on his plate. He hurried to finish his supper and then went out again. He said to his wife, “I ought to ask Weston about this, Sara. He may have heard something.”

Mrs. Demooth was petulant; but Nancy hardly noticed her. It never occurred to her that this news, more than any other news, could have any importance in her life. She cleared away the dishes, washed them, wiped the table, and fetched Mrs. Demooth’s lamp, and then retired to her own corner of the room.

Nancy Schuyler had not been happy in German Flats, though she had expected to be. She had thought the life would be exciting there, with the soldiers in the two forts and the young men on the farms. In such a place she had supposed there would be unmarried men who might be interested in her.

But such men seemed not to exist for Nancy, and, if there had been, Mrs. Demooth kept her so closely under watch that she would have had no opportunity. Her one moment of excitement had been that night in early winter when Gilbert Martin had stopped in with the deer meat and she had felt so sorry for him. Whenever she thought of that night, she felt a shiver take her. She thought that she must have been in love with Gilbert Martin on that night; at the time she had thought that he was in love with her. As she had sat in his arms, she had felt her very being swim into a high kind of happiness. And then abruptly, for no reason she had ever discovered, he had left her and gone home.

Later she had recalled how her brother Hon Yost used to warn her against married men. He had said a girl should never put dependence in a married man. She supposed that must be Gilbert Martin’s trouble. Sometimes she wished that she could talk to Hon, who was the one member of her family who had ever understood her. Perhaps that was because, as he said himself, he was lightheaded too.

Nancy’s mother had made a visit at the end of the preceding year, com-ing, as she said, to see what kind of girl Nancy had grown into, and also to collect her daughter’s pay for the year, and Nancy had glowed with pride to see her mother in her black shaw facing up so well to the captain’s wife.

“I hope Nancy’s satisfactory to you, Mrs. Demooth.”

“Oh yes, Nancy means very well.” Mrs. Demooth used her chilly, lady voice; but it had no effect on Mrs. Schuyler’s dark dominant Herkimer eyes.

“She’s never been lazy,” said her mother. “I’m sure she earns every penny of her wages. Now, if you’ll kindly settle the account, Mrs. Demooth, I’ll get back to my brother, the general.”

“Will you fetch my pocket, Nancy?” Though Mrs. Demooth had not apparently noticed what Mrs. Schuyler said, Nancy was aware that she was impressed. She fetched the pocket and Mrs. Demooth took out three paper bills, saying, “Captain Demooth left the money in case you called.”

Mrs. Schuyler looked at the bills.

“Why,” she said, “these aren’t pound notes.”

“Oh, no,” said Mrs. Demooth. “They’re Continental dollars. They’re five-dollar bills.”

“They are pretty with those harps drawn on them,” Mrs. Schuyler said, “but I’d rather have the money in English if you don’t mind.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s all I have in the house. Of course, if you like, I’ll speak to Captain Demooth about it. But he says these are just as good.”

“The contract called for three pounds a year,” Mrs. Schuyler objected. “I’m not used to these new dollars.”

“They’ll buy just the same, Mrs. Schuyler. As a matter of fact Captain Demooth said you were getting more than three pounds’ worth, but as we did not have the change and Nancy had been a good girl he said you might give her the change as a present if you did not want to take more.”

That was what her mother wished to know.

“Thank you,” she said. “Maybe I’ll buy her something with it. But, you know, I think she’s better without money of her own.”

The two women bowed to each other, and then Nancy walked out with her mother to the corner of the road.

There they had parted.

“Mrs. Demooth speaks highly of you, Nancy,” her mother had said with satisfaction. “I am pleased. Your uncle will be pleased. Be a good girl.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“You don’t get homesick, do you?”