Drums Along the Mohawk (22 page)

“It’s a nice house,” she said softly.

“I’m glad you’ve sense enough to see it. Well, as for me, you can consider the job yours. It’s up to you, now, Martin.” She paused. “Maybe you’d like to ask some questions.”

Gil said, “Yes. I’m in Mr. Demooth’s company. If the militia gets called, and I go out with it, will I get paid my wages?”

“Fortunes of war.” Mrs. McKlennar nodded. “I’ll expect Mrs. Martin to do the milking.”

“I will,” Lana said eagerly.

“There’s another thing.” Gil spoke hesitantly.

“Yes?” Mrs. McKlennar was gruff.

“I’d have to know if you were in the right party.”

“A woman hasn’t got political opinions. I run my farm. And I’ll shoot the daylights out of anybody, British or American, that thinks he can come here monkeying with my business. Does that satisfy you?”

Gil said, “Yes,” quite seriously.

“Then maybe you’d like to talk it over.”

“That ain’t necessary, Mrs. McKlennar. We’ll do the best we can for you. I like the farm. And you’ll find my wife useful, I guess.”

Mrs. McKlennar grinned.

“That’s fine.” She held her hand out like a man. “When can you move in?”

“To-morrow. I’ve got a mare.”

“You can keep her here.”

Lana said, “Would it be all right for me to mind the chickens, ma’am?”

“Chickens?”

“Yes. I used to mind them at home. I missed them up in the woods.”

The widow snorted.

The people had sat down. Now they bowed themselves forward. The pews stopped creaking. Inside Herkimer Church, there was no sound at all but the sudden cracking of the Reverend Mr. Rozencrantz’s knees as he got down from his chair, buttoned his coat, and folded his hands in front of him; and through the open windows the tread of military boots upon the sentry walk of the surrounding fort sounded like the impersonal slow laborious ticking of a clock.

Mr. Rozencrantz was a well-advised man, who knew as well as anyone did that to hold his congregation a preacher must give them something to talk about on their way home. Hell and damnation didn’t get far when followed by a Sunday dinner.

In the forefront of the church, high up, in the shadow of the sounding board, he knelt—his white hair hanging to the collar of his shirt, his thin face, his high arched nose, his eyelids stretching tight over his eyeballs as he closed his eyes, the easy mobility of his colorless lips forming themselves for the first word:—

The domine’s stertorous breathing punctuated the pause. He gathered himself visibly, raised up his voice again, and then let it get to business.

The domine halted once more, let go a strong breath, and resumed:—

Gilbert Martin, bowing behind the back of Mrs. McKlennar, who sat by herself in her own pew, looking stiffly elegant in her black silk dress and smelling violently of a rose scent, felt Lana’s hand come quickly into his. He did not move; he did not look at her; he felt the same surprise that the whole congregation, by their utter stillness, showed. It was the first time that the realization of the imminence of war had been brought home to them.

In the stillness, the cracking of the Reverend Mr. Rozencrantz’s knees could be distinctly heard as he got to his feet.

The militia had no uniform. Demooth’s company came nearest to it, with the red cockades they had adopted. They marched better because of them; nearly half the company were keeping step. The Massachusetts garrison of Fort Dayton, lined up in front of the palisade, gave them a cheer, the derisiveness of which was entirely lost on George Weaver. “
Hup
,” he said, “
hup, hup, hup
.”

Half the women of the valley were there to see them off, and while he watched the shrill adieus, Gil Martin felt glad that Lana had not come to say good-bye to him. He had persuaded her not to, saying that she would see him pass Mrs. McKlennar’s anyway. And Mrs. McKlennar had backed him up, with one of her snorts.

“Mush,” she had said. “I remember when Barney went off
on Abercrombie’s expedition. He kissed me in bed and gave me a wallop behind and he said, ‘You stay here, Sally, old girl, and keep it warm against the time I get back.’ He couldn’t stand anything sentimental, you see.”

But when she heard the ragged tapping of the militia drums coming along the Kingsroad, she went stamping down to the fence behind Lana like an old warhorse, to wave at the officers and clap her hands like any girl.

The colonel’s mare went past, blasting air in her excitement at the drums behind her tail, while astride her Colonel Bellinger himself tried to look as if he were unconscious of her failing, as well as of Christian Reall’s bawling that it was too bad they didn’t have a trumpet for the mare to blow on.

The two women stayed by the fence, watching the familiar faces of the men, with the red flag of the regiment flapping at its head against the green river hills, and the slant of their rifles, until they saw Gil walking towards them between George Weaver and the angular Jeams MacNod. Gil looked so dark and tall between them, and his face was so set, that Lana’s throat grew tight. She was grateful for the squeeze of Mrs. McKlennar’s large hand on her arm.

“He’s a handsome man,” she said. “God save him.”

The German Flats company was five days marching down to Unadilla. At the evening of the first day they encamped at Palatine Church, above Fox’s Mills, where on the following morning a detachment of the Palatine company joined them under Colonel Jacob Klock. The two companies together, nearly two hundred men, continued east, and reached the rendezvous at Canajoharie at noon. There they pitched camp again, between the Canajoharie company and a company of regulars from the First New York Line sent up from Albany under Colonel Van
Schaick. The presence of the regular troops in their uniform blue campaign coats was inspiriting, particularly on the following morning when the drums beat them to parade. The regular troops had three-foot-deep drums with a resonance beyond compare, finer than the militia drums. All that day, the militia marched south from the Mohawk behind the drums. Again and again they found themselves keeping step as they went up through the hills.

But at Cherry Valley, Colonel Van Schaick halted his men and announced to General Herkimer that he could go no farther as he had to wait for his provisions. However, he would be ready to back up the general if the Indians got out of hand.

Herkimer, on his old white horse, sat moodily staring away from the colonel towards the palisade that enclosed the Campbell farm and made the only fort for the protection of the settlement. He listened without comment, his black eyes staring on the landscape, the green field set in a saucer of the hills. Since winter a foreboding sense of gloom had come over the little German, and now it seemed to him it was fulfilled.

He touched the cocked brim of his hat to the army colonel and swung the old horse to the road. Waiting for him, Colonel John Harper stood at the head of a small company of rangers, and the sight of him and his men seemed to brighten Herkimer. He asked him whether Brant were still at Oghkwaga, and when Harper nodded asked him if his company, knowing the land, would act as scouts. Harper agreed. Herkimer gave the word.

The militia started forward like the disjointed parts of a snake. Twenty minutes later, the head of the little army of three hundred men was past the settlement on the path to Otsego Lake. In half an hour they had all disappeared into the woods.

On the twentieth they pitched camp on the south shore of the Susquehanna, three miles below its junction with the Unadilla.
A runner was sent out that afternoon to Oghkwaga to announce to Brant that Herkimer was waiting to see him and talk as neighbor to neighbor.

The militia had no tents, except the general’s. They peeled hemlocks and laid the bark on poles, facing the north, for the weather was hot. The next morning, under orders, they set up a bark shed, fifty feet long, on a knoll a quarter of a mile below, in an irregular growth of apple trees, some of which were still in bloom.

During the course of the morning the runner returned from Oghkwaga and went at once to Herkimer’s tent. The general was sitting alone in his shirt sleeves, a field desk on his knees and a quill pen in his fist. He never felt like writing, and writing this way made it pretty near impossible.

Joe Boleo sat down.

“I seen him.”

“Will he come talk with me?”

“Oh, sure, in a few days, he says.”

“Did you get a look around, hey?”

“Not much last night. But I looked around pretty good this morning. He ain’t got so many Injuns there.”

They looked at each other.

“Honnikol,” said Joe Boleo earnestly, “you want to tie up this twerp, don’t you?”

“Yes. But if I go after him now and don’t catch him it’s an act of war.”

“He ain’t got two hundred with him.”

“Yes, but Congress still thinks they’re going to get the Indians on their side. A bunch of them went down last year and called John Hancock a great tree, or something.”

“Is that all they called him?” asked Joe Boleo. “My God, they missed their chance.”

“Yes, I’m to get Brant to agree to keep neutral. But, by God, I’d like to shut him up somewhere.”

“Why don’t you grab him when he comes over?”

The militia lay around for seven steaming days and didn’t do a thing. Then, on the morning of the twenty-seventh, the scouts fell in towards camp with the news that Brant was coming up four miles below. At noon an Indian walked into camp and asked for General Herkimer.

He stood like a post under his blanket, his small dark eyes flickering here and there over the camp. General Herkimer emerged from his tent, pulling on his coat as he came.

The Indian asked, “What do you want to talk to Brant about?” in English as good as Herkimer’s.

“I want to talk with him as an old neighbor.”

“That’s fine,” said the Indian. “I tell him all these men be his old neighbors too?”

He did not look amused, but Herkimer grinned.

“Yes, tell him that.”

The Indian turned. In half an hour he was back suggesting that the already erected shed would do as a meeting place if Herkimer came with fifty unarmed men, which Brant also agreed to do on his part. The shed was out of shot from the surrounding woods, and the bare approach to it was a guarantee against any treachery.

A little after noon, Herkimer walked up the hill and sat down in the shade of the shed roof. He took with him Colonels Cox, Harper, Klock, and Bellinger, and each colonel brought a squad from his own company. Gil was in Bellinger’s squad.

They sat around on the benches for ten minutes before Brant appeared at the edge of the woods.