Drums Along the Mohawk (21 page)

Herkimer was looking older than his fifty years. It wasn’t the liquor. His face was grim; the firelight showed it cut all in angles, the big nose, the heated black eyes, the long lips closed.

“I guess our militia ought to have one good fight in them, anyways.
Verdammt!
If they get in deep enough.” He looked at Joe. “Have you heard from Joseph Brant? Any news anywhere?”

“We ain’t had any word of him,” Joe Boleo said. “What’s on your mind, Honnikol?” He gave Herkimer his old name, the one he had had when they went hunting together as boys, before Herkimer got to be a successful man, a landholder, second only in wealth to Johnson. It was queer how the young lads diverged as they grew up, he thought—look at Honnikol, a brigadier general; and look at Joe Boleo, a plain scout. Just the same, Joe bet he could outshoot Honnikol nine times out of ten at a hundred yards.

“Listen, Gil,” said Captain Demooth, “you’re a fool even to think of going back to Deerfield. You’ve seen George Weaver, haven’t you? And Reall?”

“Yes.”

“They aren’t going, are they?”

“No.”

“Well, I’m not. I’m going to stay down here until it’s over. Even if we all went up we wouldn’t have a chance when they turn the Indians loose.”

“Do you think they will?”

“Everything goes to show so. Schuyler believes it. Herkimer believes it. You’d be as good as murdering your wife to take her up there. If you’ve got to go, leave her down here.”

“I can’t afford that, Mr. Demooth.” Gil stood beside the table, touching it with his hands. He wanted to lean on something, but he didn’t know whether it would look polite. His face had thinned during the winter. The lines beside his mouth had
deepened, and under his eyes. His eyes had a misery in them. “When I think about my land,” he said. “All the work I put in it. Burning off the new piece. And letting it just go back to woods.”

“I know,” said the captain. “I feel like that. But look here, Gil, the militia’s bound to be turned out. You’ll have to come. You’ll have to bring Lana down with you then.”

“Oh, damn the militia!”

“That don’t do you any good.”

“I’ve got to live. I’d made a good start. We were real happy up there. There’s no land for me to work around here, and there’s no real work for me on your place, you know that.”

“Well, now look here, Gil.” The captain crossed his legs and tapped the table with his fingers. “I don’t suppose it’s any good if that’s how you feel, but I’d been thinking about you. I just heard that Mrs. McKlennar’s man has left her. No doubt he’s run off to Canada. Ever since they started rounding up the disaffected people down the valley, others have been leaving here.” Gil knew about that. The Albany Committee had taken charge of four hundred wives and children of departed Tories. The idea was to hold them as a kind of hostage. “Mrs. McKlennar asked me about a man to work her place. I said I’d speak to you.”

Gil frowned. “I don’t want to work for a woman.”

“Think it over. She’s a decent woman, and she’s able to do well in the world, Gil. She’s got a temper, but that’s because she’s Irish. And listen, things have changed. There’s going to be real war. Now Carleton has driven Arnold off the Champlain Lake, the British are bound to make a try for this country. There’s already action starting at Oswego. Spencer writes that Butler’s moving out of Niagara in May. They’ll surely bring an army down this way, and if they do, Deerfield’s right in the track of it. Now if you take a job with Mrs. McKlennar for a year or two, you’ll know your wife’s handy to a decent fort. Eldridge Blockhouse is
close by, and she could also get to Herkimer or Dayton, if you were off on militia duty. It’s a small farm, but it’s good.”

“I don’t want to work for a woman,” Gil repeated.

The captain was exasperated.

“It won’t hurt you to go and talk to her, will it?”

He spoke so sharply that Gil looked at him.

“No,” he said slowly.

That was what Lana said to him after he had told her about the captain’s suggestion. Her face was sweet and comforting. Even though it was subdued, though her mouth had a downward bend, he could rely on her eyes, the honesty in them. The winter had been like a nightmare to Gil; it must have been to her; he thought it was time they moved out of this shack, and there was nowhere else to go, if they did not go back to her family. He didn’t want to use that argument even to himself, but she helped him by reminding him.

“We won’t have to go back to Fox’s Mills,” she said. “If we like the place we can stay, and maybe we can save up for what we’ll need when we go back to Deerfield.”

They walked down to Mrs. McKlennar’s farm on a Sunday. The river had opened, spring was in the air. That spring of 1777 had come with a rush. One night when Gil and Lana were going to bed they had seen mist over the river ice. And before moonset in the early morning, they had been awakened by the breaking of the ice. It had cracked first in one long traveling report that carried eastward nearly to the falls.

In the morning the whole valley had changed. The air had been soft and moist; and the rising sun, a red ball on the misty hills, already warm. But the wonder, after the long silence of the snow, had been the sound of water. Water was everywhere. It was flowing in its accustomed channel of the river, dark and soiled
against the white banks, but catching a red glitter on the rift below the ford. It came across the low land with a steady seeping sound, overflowing the frozen marshes and putting long lakes in the sleigh ruts. And everywhere on the dark slopes of the hills arched yellow falls burst downward.

Gil and Lana dressed themselves carefully, he in his good black jersey coat, and she in her striped blue and white short gown and striped petticoat. She wore her shawl over her head, but she had a white cap on her black hair, and to Gil she seemed unexpectedly dainty as she walked beside him, for all her muddy feet, and carried her chintz pocket before her, almost with demureness. He kept looking down at her, as if in the soft air he had rediscovered the girl in her body, and she looked to him too fine and gentle for a hired help.

In Lana must have run some inheritance from the old Palatine persecutions. The history of her race was one of oppression and of the struggle to survive against it. It was that which made the Palatines strong—through suffering they had preserved their personal independence.

So now, instead of arguing with Gil, she let him take his own way, contenting herself with the presence of spring, the steady drip of trees, the shimmer of the water, the scent of earth unfettered of the snow, and the clear infinity of the April sky. It was good to be walking so, beside Gil. It was the first time all winter, except when they had gone to church. Through her own contentedness she softened his resentment, and they were walking almost peaceably when they first saw the McKlennar farm.

The land lay prettily for a small farm, bordering both sides of the Kingsroad, its back against the sudden rise of river hills, its front upon the river. At a single glance the eye could comprehend the system of the land. The pasture went along the river on a long low round that carried above flood water. Enough willows grew there to give shade. The great trees spread wider, and their
branches to-day lifted their upthrusting twigs like brassy arrows against the violet shadows on the southern hills.

Behind the pasture the fields lay level to the plough, rich black bottom land. In spite of himself, Gil felt his heart swelling when he saw them, with an ache for Deerfield. This land had been worked for many years. And there was a good hay bottom, with bluejoint in the wet and a sod that looked like English grass in the higher portions. He could see that the fences had been well set up.

Gil found himself eagerly searching out the farm buildings. What he saw was even better than he had supposed. The house he let pass; it was a stone-walled house, with a piazza facing the road. Behind it in a slope of ground was a farm barn of hewn logs, laid up with plaster joints and a pine shingle roof. The very look of it was warm.

But Lana was looking past the barn to the small house that stood to the right of the springhouse. It also was built of hewn logs, but she could tell by the way it sat above the ground that it had a board floor laid on actual sills. And in front of the door, in the sunny place, were reddish-orange fowls busily prospecting in the dirt.

“Gil!” she cried. “They keep poultry.”

Now she began to be afraid that Gil would shy off from the place, that he wouldn’t like the woman of the place, or that the woman of the place would not like them. She closed her lips tight, and she said a small prayer in her heart, and she dared not look ahead.

When she did look up again, it was because a woman’s voice had roused her.

“Good morning. Is your name Martin?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Gil was saying.

“I’m glad you’ve come,” said Mrs. McKlennar.

From her appearance there, Lana would never have supposed that she was gentry. Her boots were muddy, the tops of them showing plainly underneath her petticoat, which Mrs. McKlennar had pinned up all around, nearly to her knees. Her hair she wore clubbed up at the back of her head in a string net that looked as if some birds had put it together in a hurry. She looked hot and she smelled of her stable.

“Yes,” she said, suddenly meeting Lana’s gaze. “I’m hot and I smell and I look like the devil and I’m mad as well. Every time I lift a fork of cow manure I am reminded of that damn man of mine. He sneaked out of here without so much as a word. The first I knew of it was the freshened heifer bellowing in the barn. I thought he was drunk and I went down to haul him out of bed. I don’t mind a man having his likker, Martin, but if he doesn’t do his work he can go somewhere else. The quicker the better, for him.”

She snorted like a bell mare and stamped her feet as she went up the steps.

“Come inside.”

She led them into the kitchen of her house, a lovely place, to Lana’s eyes. The stone walls had been sheathed in wide pine paneling and painted a snuff brown. Overhead the beams were painted black with bright red undersides. Mrs. McKlennar sat on one settle. She pointed to the other, and Gil and Lana sat down side by side.

“Now,” said Mrs. McKlennar, “you’re here on business. Let’s get down to it. I want a man. Demooth says you need a job. Is that so?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You’re a passable farmer?”

“I had my own place.”

“I heard about it being burned. Too bad. Well, it’s an ill wind. And it’s neither here nor there. Mark wouldn’t have sent you
here if you hadn’t known something about it. I don’t do much farming. Just keep up the meadows and feed my stock. I’m a widow woman. My husband was Captain Barnabas McKlennar. He was with Abercrombie. I may as well say I’ve had army life all my life, and I expect to get an order obeyed when I give it. Whether you like it or not. Is that understood?”

Gil flushed. “If I take your pay, I’ll do the best I can.”

“Well, I don’t want you coming around afterwards and complaining. How much do you want?”

“I’ve never worked for anyone else,” Gil said. “What did you expect to pay?”

“Well, I asked Mr. Demooth and he suggested forty-five pounds a year, with the house, with the wood, and with the food. It’s not a big wage, but if you work well you’ll have a good home here. Besides, if your wife can sew, I’ll pay her for sewing for me. Can you sew, what’s your name?”

“Lana.”

“That’s a nickname. Magdelana, I suppose.”

Lana nodded, blushing.

“Well,” said Mrs. McKlennar tartly, “can you sew, Magdelana?”

“Yes,” said Lana.

“Would you do sewing for me?”

“I’d like to,” Lana said shyly.

“That’s understood. I hate to sew. I hate housework, so I do the barn myself and let Daisy, my nigger, do the cooking. I took care of my husband, but now he’s gone I’ll do as I like. I’ve got a long nose, Martin, and I poke it where I like. You may think I’m a nuisance.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Gil, at a loss for what to say.

“A nuisance?” she said sharply.

Gil flushed.

“I hadn’t meant it.” Then, meeting the glitter in her eye, he couldn’t help but grin. “But I guess I’ll think so if you do.”

Lana’s heart contracted. She looked quickly towards Mrs. McKlennar and was surprised to find the woman’s bold stare fixed upon herself. For a moment the face seemed more horselike than ever. Then the weathered cheeks twitched a little, Mrs. McKlennar put a large hand to Lana’s hair and gave it a pat, as she would have patted a dog’s head.

However, her voice was uncompromising.

“Your thoughts are your own property, Martin. But keep them to yourself when they arise. And don’t presume on your good looks.”

“No, ma’am,” said Gil.

Lana sighed. She could tell that Gil was amused, that he had made up his mind.

“Perhaps,” said Mrs. McKlennar, “you’d like to see your house?” She glanced at Lana and lifted her voice. “Would you, Magdelana?”

Lana bestirred her senses. “Yes,” she said timidly.

Mrs. McKlennar snorted, rose, and led them out the back door. As she did so, she said, “I’ll expect you to use the back door when you want to ask me for anything. I don’t want muck tracked through my kitchen. I track enough myself.”

A stout negress in a bright bandana watched them from the woodshed. But Mrs. McKlennar ignored her, and walked with hard-heeled strides towards the little house.

“It’s a mess. McLonis never cleared out. A single man. You’ll have a sight of work here, Magdelana. But there’s water running through a puncheon, a good spring. Have you got bedding?”

“Most of our things were burned,” said Gil.

“Well, I’ll help you out with a bed.” She opened the door. “It’s a good chimney, and it’s a dry house.”

The inside surfaces of the logs were mellowed. Mrs. McKlennar stalked to the middle of the floor and stood there. “You’ve got a good-sized bedroom upstairs. It’s light and airy. It’s the original
house. Barney was possessed to build the stone one, but I always fancied this house. I lived here a good many years.”

Lana looked round her. It was a good chimney, the kind that would be easy to cook at. It had an oven. It made her think of her mother’s oven. She turned to look at Gil.