3stalwarts (32 page)

“… For which reasons, the Indians declare, that if they do not surrender the garrison without further opposition, they will put every soul to death— not only the garrison, but the whole country— without regard to age, sex, or friends; for which reason it is become your indispensable duty, as you must answer the consequences, to send a deputation to your principal people, to oblige them immediately to what, in a very little time, they must be forced— the surrender of the garrison; in which case we will engage on the faith of Christians, to protect you from the violence of the Indians.

“Surrounded as you are by victorious armies, one half (if not the greater part) of the inhabitants friends to government, without any resource, surely you cannot hesitate a moment to accept the terms proposed to you by friends and well-wishers to the country.

“It’s signed by John Johnson, D. W. Claus, and my father John Butler. It’s plain honest sense, and the last chance you people will have to save your necks. I’m going back day after tomorrow. Every man who goes with me gets a uniform coat, a musket if he needs it, pay in good English money, and a land bounty when this war’s over.”

Again the silence, and again the low mumbling of voices.

“God, I’m sick of hearing all that, Nancy. The same thing over and over for two days.” Jurry McLonis touched her arm. “Jack can’t come out a while. Let’s go out where it’s quiet and dark.” Her eyes turned to him, large and questioning and hesitant and foolish. “He told me to look out for you, you know.”

“Yes, Mister. I don’t mind. While Hon’s busy.”

The steady sound of Butler’s voice had muddled her head. McLonis’s arm round her waist was comfortable to lean against. The Indians moved over on the steps and glanced at them, and moved back.

McLonis led her out, his arm tightening round her as she found the footing uncertain in the darkness. He took her behind Shoemaker’s barn. There he let her go and leaned against the log wall. But Nancy did not move away. She stood where he had left her, within reach of his arm, quite still, thinking that it was a long time to have to wait for Hon, but glad to be away from the house and the Indians. She could hear his steady breathing just beside her.

Suddenly she was caught again in his arm and swung in front of him. His free hand came behind her back, forcing her against him so hard she thought she could almost feel the logs through his body. She felt his face feeling for hers, his chin scraped across her shoulder in the opening of her dress, moved over her cheek, and his mouth fastened upon hers. For an instant, startled and dizzy, she was inert against his chest. Then under the pressure of his arms her strength came to life. She put her arms around him, pulling herself even closer to him, and lifted her face.

She was silent as an animal. When suddenly he let her go, she stood before him trembling and still; but when he put his hands out again, she moved hard into his embrace. Her hands pressing into the small part of his back became clumsy. Her breath came out with a little moan at the end and her breast arched. She had no recollection of Hon left, only of herself and the man in her arms. He kept saying, “You …” without finding any other word to add to it.

Nancy lay in the long grass. The soldier was standing up, like a tower in the darkness rising from her feet. For an instant he was motionless. Then without as much as saying good-bye, he broke into a run away from the barn. Not towards the house, but back up the hill from the river. For an instant her disordered senses followed his crashing progress through the underbrush. Abruptly, the sound ceased, and Nancy, coming to herself at last, knew that something had gone wrong at Shoemaker’s.

She heard men shouting, and feet stamping on the other side of the barn as men ran past. She sat up in the grass, fumbling for her shawl. Her hair was snarled and full of grass. Panic swept over her, and without thinking of Hon, only of the instinct to get hidden at home, she found the shawl and started running towards the road.

As she scrambled over the yard fence a man shouted, “There goes one!”

A musket roared behind her head, but she was too close to hear the bullet. She ran frantically, sobbing, and yanking at her skirt. For a moment she heard men pursuing, then she was out down the road and going for her life.

She did not stop until she was nearly home, and she stopped then only because she could not run another step. She veered from the road like a hurt deer and fell full length. She kept drawing her breath in great sobbing gasps.

She was still there when she heard the men tramping towards her down the road. Her first instinct was for renewed flight, but immediately afterwards she drew down into the sheltering brush like a hare in its form, to stare with horrified eyes at the approaching group.

Several of the men were carrying torches, and under the smoky light their bodies made a dark throng in the road, with the willow limbs like arms lifted above them.

They came without talking, in open files, their muskets on their shoulders, soldiers from the garrison at Fort Dayton, with the prisoners between them.

With them, at the head of the procession, Nancy’s appalled eyes recognized Captain Demooth, and Gilbert Martin, his arm still bandaged, and one of the officers from the fort, a Colonel Brooks, who had sometimes come to supper at the Herter house. But as the files passed her she took her eyes from them and stared into the prisoners’ faces. The first was the man who had been reading in Shoemaker’s house, the man she had heard addressed as Ensign Butler. It was her first sight of Walter Butler, with his whittled attorney’s face, black hair cut short, and black eyes. His mouth reminded her a little of McLonis’s, long and thin-lipped, but, unlike McLonis’s, tipped with a passion of contempt.

He was dressed in a scarlet coat with an ensign’s tabs on the shoulders, and the men who followed him between the tramping files of Massachusetts soldiers were of the same regiment. She kept looking for McLonis, but he was not with them. He must have escaped. Her heart rose, even in her fright, until, as the last of the white prisoners passed, she saw her brother.

Even in the uncertain light Hon Yost looked as she remembered him, his yellow hair reaching to his shoulders, his straight features and red cheeks, and the blue eyes, irresponsible. He walked jauntily, as if he hadn’t a fear in the world; but watching the faces of the garrison, Nancy sank down still lower in the brush, and bit her hand to keep from crying aloud. Before she could think what she should do, the tail of the procession was going by with the last torch shining on four captured Mohawk Indians.

The light flashed over their painted cheeks, picked out a wolf’s head on the chest of the first, a drooping eagle’s feather in his headdress. The light made a dark shine on their oiled skins.

It was not till long after they had gone, until she had seen the torch-lights reflected in the water of the ford, that Nancy stumbled to her feet.

The Herter place was dark when she reached it, but, though she was still sobbing softly, she moved as quietly as she could round the corner of the barn. She had crossed halfway to the house when Clem Coppernol rose up in front of her, surrounding them both with his fog of rum.

“Who’s that?” he asked unsteadily. As she tried to elude him, he stumbled forward and caught her skirt. He used it to help himself off his knees.

” ‘S a pullet anyways,” he mumbled. ” ‘S you Nancy, ain’t it?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Been out. I seen you going. I seen you. You can’t lie.” He nodded against her shoulder. “Been to Shoemaker’s. See Hon?”

She shivered and the tears gathered under her lids.

“No. No. I want to go to bed.”

“Saw somebody. You tell me and I’ll let you go,” he said slyly.

“Yes. I saw a soldier.”

He chuckled.

“Nice girl. So awful nice with me, ain’t you? Bet a dollar you got laid.”

“No,” she said frantically.

“Did, though. Or you wouldn’t act this way. Where’s Hon?”

Her sobs started again.

“They caught him. They’ve taken him to the fort. What are they going to do, Clem?”

“That’s good. Good business.” He scratched his head with his free hand. “Probably they’ll hang him. Hang the bunch. Yes, sir.”

Nancy managed to whisper, “Please let me go.”

“Maybe I will, and maybe I won’t. You got to be nice to me now, or I’ll tell.”

“I’ll be nice.”

“I’m still kind of drunk.”

“Yes.”

“But I ain’t real drunk, neither.” He paused to wipe his mouth. “You’re a good girl just the same, Nance. I’ll stand up for you. If you’ve got fixed, I’ll marry you if you want.”

Nancy sprang out of his grasp and fled for the house. He made no move to chase her. He was open-mouthed in the darkness, trying to recollect what he had just said. Long after she had crept inside the house, he remembered.

“By God!” he said aloud. “I am drunk.”

The unexpectedness of Butler’s capture and the ease with which it had been accomplished did much to hearten the Committee members of Ger-man Flats. It had had an immediate effect upon the people, checking all danger of wholesale desertion to St. Leger’s camp. Word got out about when the prisoners were permitted to exercise and curious people went to look at them in their regimental coats, walking up and down the small parade space in the middle of the fort.

It seemed a wonder to them. The last time they remembered Walter Butler was on that day in the spring two years before when he had ridden up the valley with Sheriff White to cut down the liberty pole in front of Herkimer Church. Then he had been a man to fear, as all the Johnsons and Butlers were, with the law in his fist. Now they saw that he was a slight man of nervous action, who took his exercise deliberately, making ten circles of the parade,— they counted them, always ten —looking neither right nor left, his pale face inclined slightly forward. His soldiers might stop and chat with the guard or with the Palatines themselves; Hon Yost sometimes greeted former acquaintances and asked about his family; but Walter Butler seemed unaware of his surroundings. To the spectators he was more like the four Indians who always kept apart by themselves, not even speaking to each other.

Gilbert Martin, like the others, stopped one morning to watch, and afterwards went on to speak to Captain Demooth. He found the captain at the Herter house and asked, “When will those men be tried?”

“They’re under military law. They’ll have to be court-martialed, Gil. And Weston wants to wait for General Arnold. Technically he’s under Arnold now, you see.”

Gil said, “I should think it was better to get it over with. Some people there at Shoemaker’s will lose their nerve.”

The captain smiled a little.

“There are plenty of witnesses who won’t. You, for one. That’s why I sent for you the other night.” His face grew serious. “And personally, Gil, I’m just as glad to have it put into the army’s hands. I used to know the Butlers. They’ve got powerful friends. Some of our Committee would be afraid to convict him if the responsibility was on our shoulders.”

“What will they do to him?”

“He’ll be tried for a spy,” Captain Demooth said dryly.

“How about the others?”

“I don’t know about them. They were under orders. Prison, I guess. Except Hon Yost Schuyler. He’s a deserter. He’s on the rolls of the Third Company of Tryon militia. We can’t let him off light.”

“Has Nancy seen him? I’ve heard she was very fond of him.”

“Mrs. Demooth’s been having trouble with Nancy. She was hysterical when she heard about it. We thought it was better for her not to see her brother. Her mother thought so, too.”

“He’s just a half-wit,” said Gil. “I don’t see why he should be shot.”

“It’s not in our hands, Gil. And as I said before, I’m glad it isn’t. How’s your arm?”

“It’s doing fine. But I can’t use it much yet for work. That’s one reason I came to see you. Mrs. McKlennar wants to know where she can hire a man. Our wheat’s begun dropping.”

“So has everybody’s. If it isn’t reaped inside the next two weeks we’ll lose more than half the crop.” He shook his head. “I don’t know where you can find a man. There are plenty doing nothing in the forts. But they don’t want to work. They don’t want to do anything until Arnold gets here.”

Gil said, “Yes.” He hesitated. “Mrs. McKlennar wanted to know if you’d heard how General Herkimer was. She thought she might be able to rent one of his slaves for a week.”

“I haven’t heard from Herkimer for several days. His leg got mortified. And Petry can’t get down to see it, so we don’t know much.”

“Do you think it would be all right if I went down to see him?”

“Why, yes. He’ll probably be glad to have some news. You can tell him from me we’ve heard the First New York has got as far as Klock’s.”

Gil went down on the brown mare next morning. It was the first time he had ever been at Herkimer’s house, and the size of it, together with the well-kept fields, impressed him.

A full-breasted negress met him at the door and said, “Gener’l ain’ seem’ nobody,” in an impressive voice. Gil was ready to turn away when the right-hand door opened into the hall and Mrs. Herkimer came out.

“What is it, Frailty?”

“Dish yer man he’s askin’ fo’ de Gener’l,” Frailty said contemptuously.

Gil removed his hat.

“I’m from Mrs. McKlennar, ma’am. She wanted me to come down and find out if you could rent her a slave for a few days to get her wheat in. I work for her myself, but my arm’s no good, now.”

She glanced at the arm.

“Were you at the battle?”

“Yes,” said Gil.

The pained look in her eyes increased. But she stepped back through the door.

“Come in. Honnikol’s always glad to see anyone who was with him up there.”

The general’s big bed had been set up in the northwest room with its head to the fireplace so that he could look through the windows towards the river. Herkimer was wearing a flannel nightshirt open at the throat, showing the black hair on his chest, and to Gil, seeing him against the pillows, his shoulders looked heavier than he remembered them.

Herkimer’s face was drawn, the mouth set, and it was obvious that he suffered a good deal of pain. But the black eyes stared keenly at Gil as he said, “Good morning.”