3stalwarts (52 page)

Men had not felt like building again out of reach of the forts, though it meant that they must travel back and forth to work, next spring. Since the September raid several families who had gone back had been taken up by marauding parties; and as the autumn waned the Indians took fewer prisoners and more scalps. It was difficult to feed prisoners on a two-hun- dred-mile march through a snowy wilderness.

The surprising thing was that so many people stayed at all. A dozen or so of men who had relatives to the east had left the flats with their wives and children and what remained of their possessions; and a few had gone in the dubious hope of finding work. But most of them felt that they could not afford to leave. With the destruction of their wheat, their only source of income had been obliterated. Besides, many of them did not want to move. They had brought the land from wilderness to farm. In the past two years they had been tasting their first prosperity. To abandon their homes would be, it seemed to them, to give up the human right to hope.

On November first, a train of seven wagons hauled slowly up the Kingsroad. As it passed McKlennar’s, Gil came out of the stone house and hailed the driver of the leading wagon. The driver pulled in his steaming team and yelled back.

“We’re hauling to Fort Stanwix.”

“What have you got?”

“Mostly flour and salt beef.”

“You’ve got a lot of wagons.”

“Yes,” said the driver. “We’re the last train for this year. I ain’t sorry, either.”

“Haven’t you got an escort?”

“We will have. They’re sending down a company from the fort. We’ve got to wait this side of Dayton till they get to us.”

“Why this side?” asked Gil. “We haven’t heard of any Indians.”

The driver laughed. He was a red-faced, lantern-jawed man, a Continental teamster, in a battered campaign coat.

“They ain’t afraid of Indians,” he said. “They’re afraid some of you people will get together and steal one of our wagons.”

He spat between the rumps of his wheelers and swung his arms to warm his hands. He added, with a drawled tolerance, “I guess they need wheat up there, too.”

“I guess they do,” Gil said grimly.

“Ain’t you pretty far off, living here?”

“There’s always two men, here,” Gil said. “There won’t be any big parties down now, I guess, with the snow coming.”

“I guess not,” said the driver jovially. “I guess you’ve got a pretty comfortable place there. Didn’t the destructives burn it?”

They tried to. They burned the barn and the log house.”

“I thought it looked different somehow.” His red face shifted and admiration came into his eyes. Behind his wagon the other teamsters had begun to yell. He motioned with his arm for them to haul past. “I’m having a talk with my friend,” he bawled. “You go ahead.”

Lana had come out beside Gil. She looked small and bright-cheeked in the cold, but there was a queer kind of speculation in her eyes as she stared at the wheat wagon. Now she raised them to look at the driver and smiled.

“Good morning,” she said. “Did you come up the valley?”

He said with a sort of gallantry, “From Ellis’s Mills, ma’am.”

“Oh,” she said. “I thought you might have come from Schenectady.”

“No. Why?”

“I was wondering how things looked like in Fox’s Mills.”

“I was through there last month. Hauled down to Johnstown with wheat for Van Schaick’s regiment.”

“How was it in Fox’s Mills?”

“It looked just the same as any place. Why? Do you know folks down there?”

“My family lives there,” said Lana. “I haven’t heard from them in two years now.”

“Well, they ain’t been much troubled with destructives. Only at the outside farms, some.”

Lana’s sigh made a little cloud before her face.

“I ought to be starting, I guess,” said the driver. His voice was vaguely suggestive. He looked down at the lines in his mittens.

“Say, mister.”

“Yes.”

“Ellis will sell you wheat all right, or flour. He’s asking nine shilling English money, or old York, if it’s silver.”

“Nine shilling?” It was incredible.

“It’s a good bargain.”

“He knows we can’t get flour. Our mills are burned.”

“I guess so.”

Gil said bitterly, “The damned Scotchman.”

“I don’t like the Scotch so good myself,” said the driver. “Look here. I’m a neighborly man. Would you like a sack out of this wagon? I’ll sell it for five shillings hard cash.”

“No!” said Gil, suddenly.

“It’s the best price you’ll get this winter. But it’s got to be hard money. I don’t deal with Continental money, generally,” he went on as Gil turned, “but I’ll let you have the sack for $6.25 in notes if you like. Seeing it’s you, mister.”

Gil turned back and stared.

“That’s five to one,” he said incredulously. “Money’d dropped to four to one the last I heard.”

“Oh, no,” said the driver. “I was in Schenectady last month. It’s down to eight to one now. You’ll get a real good bargain, see.”

“Go to hell!” said Gil.

“You needn’t act like that to a favor.”

“Get out of here.”

“It’s a highway.”

“Get out of here before I drag you off your wagon, by God.”

The driver stared a moment and then spoke to his horses. “My Jesus,” he said. “I never seen such a crazy fool.”

Adam Helmer came round the house with his rifle. He had been listening, apparently, for he said to Gil, “Shall I shoot the bug-tit? We could drag his wagon down the road and make it look like destructives. We’d burn the wagon.” He lifted his rifle suggestively. “I could scalp him. I ain’t very good at it, but I could get it off all right. Then we could give an alarm.”

The driver took one look at Adam’s great bulk and started to flog his horses.

Going back to the house, Gil said bitterly over his shoulder:—

“Save your powder for something we can eat.”

But Adam could not resist putting a ball through the canvas top. The rifle made a roar in the snowy sunshine and as the powder smoke drifted gently away from Adam’s big red face he gave a whole-souled grin. The wagon was careening round the bend of the road; the four horses bucking up their rear ends like unanimous rabbits while the driver screeched and flogged them with all his might.

Gil had turned back at the shot.

“You damn fool. Now he’ll probably report on you and come back with a squad.”

“No!” said Adam. “I hadn’t thought of that.” And he beamed all over.

Gil had worked hard. He and Adam had rigged up a small log shelter for the horse and the sole remaining cow. It was a great streak of luck that had let the Indians find the other three and leave the freshened cow; but she was already feeling the pinch of light rations and was falling off in her bag. She gave only about a quart at each milking, and Gil figured gloomily that by January she would be giving less than a quart a day. The quality of the milk, too, had changed. It had turned whiter and thinner and it had a peculiar pungent, barky taste that the baby still gagged over.

That did not trouble Lana, who said that she could take care of the baby, whatever happened. She was sure of it, too. It was a kind of inward confidence that made her seem to bloom, even on the day they came back to the farm and saw the familiar sights obliterated— the barn, the log house, even the fence rails leading from the barn, had been burned up. But Gil was not sure in his own mind of Lana’s ability to nurse the baby. He felt that they would have meat enough with Adam around most of the time. Joe Boleo was expected to come back also. But Gil doubted whether Lana’s milk would hold up on a meat diet.

He cursed himself now for persuading Mrs. McKlennar to let him put practically all the ploughed land into wheat. They had been banking on the rising market of course. But he wished to God he had put more in corn.

The corn was all gathered, the husks braided, and the ears hung by them along the red and black rafters of the kitchen in long rows of gold and maroon. But considered in terms of six adult people, it looked like a small supply.

Occasionally he found Mrs. McKlennar watching him when she thought he wasn’t noticing her. She herself was quite happy now that she had got back to her own house. She continually breathed defiance and war at the thought of ever leaving it again, vowing she would rather lose her scalp a dozen times than go away. But she was worried about Gil and spoke to Lana about him.

“He lies around too much,” she said. “You ought to get him out. Working. Doing something.”

Lana lifted her dark eyes.

“What can I get him to do?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Mrs. McKlennar. “Anything.”

“But he’s done all he can. Now the little stable’s finished and he’s got the wood cut. Adam doesn’t do anything, and he’s all right. I guess Gil is.”

The widow snorted.

“Adam’s not the same. He’s just a bear, a big brainless yellow-haired bear. Bears naturally lie up in winter. They lie around and scratch their bellies.” She smiled to herself. “I like Adam.”

“Gil will be all right,” Lana said confidently.

“Well, you’re his wife. You think I’m a stuff-budget. All young people think old people are, girls worse than boys. Nobody pays any attention to an old woman like me.”

Lana smiled and held up the baby to Mrs. McKlennar.

“Here’s two do, anyway. After all you’ve done for us.”

“Go on!” But Mrs. McKlennar smiled and took the baby in her arms, and the baby confidently began to bounce. “The warrior,” she muttered. “Lord!” Then she looked across him at Lana. “You’re so pretty. And you’ve got your baby. And Gil loves you. And you aren’t afraid. I hope you never will be.”

Later she said to Gil, “Why wouldn’t it be a good idea to start work on the new barn? We’ll need it next year.”

“I can’t build a barn till the frost’s out of the ground.”

Mrs. McKlennar controlled her impatience.

“You could cut the logs, couldn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Gil, doubtfully. “But what’s the use? It’ll soon be too deep in snow to skid them out.” He turned away from her and added, “It would probably get burned next year, anyway.”

Mrs. McKlennar allowed herself to be tart.

“Nothing will ever get built again if you think that way.”

As he lay before the fire, watching Daisy’s broad shape bending down to place a pone on the coals, he wondered where Adam was. Adam had returned to McKlennar’s for a purpose. With the Bowers girls at Fort Dayton, he couldn’t carry on his commerce if he lived in the community of cabins. It was not private enough. He knew that if he were so handy to Polly he would soon give himself away. Besides that, he had a new distraction in Jake Small’s wife over at Eldridge. He hadn’t made much progress, he admitted to Gil, but give him a little time. He knew her well enough by now to know that she was crazy for another baby, and that she was beginning to lose faith in poor old Jake.

“I don’t say nothing against Jake’s powers,” Adam maintained honor-ably, “but I just hang around so she can look at us both at once. She’s quite a girl.” He combed his hair. “No doubt she’ll get the idea.”

Gil thought of that and thought of Betsey Small, red-haired, quick-tongued, and thin and tight-looking. For a moment he didn’t catch on to what Daisy was saying about Mrs. McKlennar. Then he cursed and told her to keep a civil tongue. He wrenched himself off the floor, got his axe, and presently all the people in the house could hear its clear hard cracks as it bit into a spruce.

At supper time he felt better than he had in weeks. He was tired; but he had felled and cut to lengths twenty logs. He said to Mrs. McKlennar, “I think I’ll make the new barn sixteen wide.”

Immediately she got up an argument for a narrow barn, delighted to see him get his teeth into conversation. But finally she succumbed. “You probably know better, Gil.”

He replied good-naturedly, “Well, you see I’ve done farming all my life.”

He left her in the kitchen and went to find Lana. It was cold in the bedroom, so cold that they saw their breaths between them and the baby. Lana tucked it in, while Gil got undressed, and covered the whole cradle with a thick quilt, making an airless tent.

He watched her slight start when she discovered that he was already in bed. She glanced at the cradle sidewise, looked at him from under her lashes, and, smiling slightly, took her comb from the top of the chest.

He lay still and straight in the deep trough of the feather bed, watching her. He loved to watch her comb her hair when she was in this quiet and contented mood: the way she undid the braids; the way she flung the hair forward over her shoulder and combed it in front of her, head down, looking out at him over it, quiet, refreshed, as if the touch of the comb on a single strand of her hair might soothe them both; the way she lifted it be-hind her head and combed it from beneath, in long arm-length strokes that were slow, almost languid, with sensation. Her strokes were so deliberate that it seemed as if the thick mantle of black hair to her waist must keep her warm. The comb crackled very faintly as it passed through her hair; and the sound of it made Gil conscious of his own tired ease and the increasing warmth beneath the covers.

“Hurry up, Lana.”

She smiled at him in the bed, deliberately going on with the combing. Her voice was soft, and she watched him through the motions of her hands with sleepy, humorous eyes.

“Mrs. McKlennar was worrying about you,” she said. “But I wasn’t worried about you.”

“What about?” His voice was sharp at her irrelevance.

“About you lying around and not doing anything.”

“I’ve started getting logs for the new barn.” He stopped himself and said sternly, “What’s that got to do with things?”

“Nothing, only I said I wasn’t worried.”

He grinned.

“You weren’t worried a bit?”

“Not a bit,” she said… .

Captain Demooth walked with Dr. Petry to the latter’s store. The doctor had been over to the cabin to see Mrs. Demooth. But the men had not been able to talk; there was no place in the cabin where one might talk without everyone hearing you.

“Come inside, Mark,” said the doctor. “I’ll get you a drink.”

“I don’t want a drink.”