Drums Along the Mohawk (28 page)

A little way along a face struck him as familiar. He looked at it again. The possessor of the face had fallen with his chin over a log so that the face was tilted up. Gil looked at it curiously before he recognized it for Christian Reall’s face. He had been scalped. The top of his head looked flat and red; and the circumcision of the crown had allowed the muscles to give way so that his
cheeks hung down in jowls, tugging his eyes open and showing enormous bloody underlids.

The two armies merely sniped at each other for an hour. Then the second attack by the enemy developed from the southwest along the level ground. At first the militia mistook them for reënforcements from the fort. The direction they came from and the fact that they had pinned up their hat brims to look like the tricorn hats of Continental soldiers were deceptive.

The militia broke cover, cheering, and rushed forward to shake hands, and the enemy let them come. There was no firing. It was only at the last moment that the sun came through the wet trees, dazzling all the ground and showing the bright green of the approaching company.

Gil was not in the direct contact of the two companies. From where he stood he seemed divorced from the whole proceeding.

But another company of green coats was coming round the first in his direction, with the same quiet march, and the same bright glitter on their advanced bayonets.

He became aware of the instinct to run away. It suddenly occurred to him that he was hungry. Not merely hungry as one is at supper or breakfast; but a persisting, all-consuming gnawing in his intestines that moved and hurt. He felt that it was not worth staying for. He was too tired. And the oncoming men looked tired. And it seemed to take forever for them to make a contact. But they came like people who couldn’t stop themselves, while he himself could not make his feet move to carry him away.

They made less noise. The rainstorm which had broken the drought had not had power to take the dryness from their throats. They seemed to strike each other with preposterous slow weary blows, which they were too slow to dodge, and they fell down under them preposterously.

It couldn’t last.

Gil found himself standing alone in the militia. There were a few men near him, but there was no one whose face he recognized. They kept looking at each other as if they would have liked to speak.

On the flank, the firing continued where the Indians still skirmished. But that, too, broke off except for stray shots, the last survivors of all the holocaust of firing.

The Indians were calling in the woods. A high barbaric word, over and over. “Oonah, Oonah, Oonah.” Suddenly a man shouted, “They’ve pulled foot!”

At first they thought another thunderstorm had started. Then they realized that what they had heard, with such surprising force, had been three successive cannon shots.

The messengers had reached the fort, and the garrison was making a diversion.

A deliberate understanding gradually dawned on all their faces. They leaned on their rifles and looked round. The woods were empty, but for themselves, for their dead, and for the enemy dead. The living enemy had run away.

Those that could walk began a retrograde movement to the knoll on which Herkimer was sitting under his tree. The old man was looking at them; his black eyes, yet ardent, passing feverishly from face to face, and then turning slowly to the lines of dead.

One of the officers spoke fatuously, “Do we go on to the fort now, Honnikol?” He paused, swallowed, and said, as if to excuse himself, “We know they know we’re here.”

The little German swung his eyes to the speaker. The eyes filled and he put his hand over them.

Peter Bellinger and Peter Tygert came up to him and touched his shoulder. They said to the officer, “We can’t move forward.”

They picked Herkimer up by the arms.

“I can’t walk, boys.” He swallowed his tears noisily. “There’s still Sillinger up there. With the British regulars there ain’t enough of us. I think we’d better go home.”

He asked first that the live men be assembled and counted. It was a slow business, getting them to their feet and lining them up under the trees. The earth was still steaming from the rain. There was a sick smell of blood from the ravine.

The naming of men took too long. The officers went along the wavering lines, cutting notches in sticks for every ten men. They figured that after Fisscher pulled foot with the Mohawk company there had been about six hundred and fifty concerned in the ambush and battle. Out of them about two hundred were judged able to walk. There were forty more who were not dead. How many had been killed and how many taken prisoner no one could say.

Stretchers were made of coats and poles, and the worst wounded were piled onto them. Those who were not acting as bearers dully reprimed or loaded their guns. They started east.

It seemed a long way to the ravine where the battle had started. It seemed a long time, longer than they could remember, since they had seen it last. It was sunset by the time they reached Oriskany Creek.

From there men were sent ahead to order boats rowed up the Mohawk, to meet the wounded at the ford. The whole army lay down when they reached the ford. They lay in the darkness, along the edge of the sluggish river, until the boats came up. They were apathetic.

Only when the boats arrived did they get onto their feet and help put the wounded men in. Several of them afterwards remembered Herkimer’s face in the light of the fire. He had stopped smoking, though the pipe was still fast in his teeth. He wasn’t saying anything. He sat still, holding on to his knee.

At the time they had just stood around watching him being loaded aboard the boat and laid out in the bottom. Then they had been told to march through the ford, and along the road. They went wearily, too exhausted to talk, even to think. And tired as they were, they were forced to do the same march they had taken three days to make on the way up.

They did not look at the terrified white faces of the people when they came to the settlement. They were too exhausted to see. The word had already gone down the river. People were expecting the appearance of the enemy.

It was a calamity. The army had looked so big going west that nobody had thought they would not get through to the fort. Now they were back; they looked licked, and they acted licked, and they had not even met the regulars. It was pointless to think that the enemy had left the scene of battle before they had.

An officer, some said afterwards that it was Major Clyde, yelled from the foot of the fort stockade that they were dismissed. They were to go home and try to rest while they could. They should expect another summons very soon.

But the men did not stop to listen to him. Ever since they had come out of the woods at Schuyler they had been dropping from the ranks. The instinct to get home was irresistible. They weren’t an army any more, and they knew it better than anyone could have told them.

Mrs. McKlennar simply would not hear of removing to a fort. “What’s the use of women being left behind in a war, if they can’t stay home and do the man’s work?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Captain Jacob Small, who had been placed in command of Eldridge Blockhouse, shifted his feet on the kitchen floor, turned his hat over twice in his hands, and looked anxiously towards the fireplace. “It’s orders, though. ‘Where women and children shall be gathered together,’ it says. And me and other men over sixty and under sixteen is to collect with them and protect them.”

“Pshaw, Captain Small, don’t you think I can look after myself?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Captain Small was uneasy. “But them’s the orders. You’re rightly in my district. But if you don’t want to come to Eldridge, you can go over the river to Herkimer, I guess. Only we’ve been keeping the corner space in the shed for you.”

“Shed!” snorted Mrs. McKlennar. “Do I look like the kind of
woman at my time of life who’d go live in a shed? Herded up like a freshened heifer. With everybody else, eh?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Captain Jacob looked appalled. “I mean, no, ma’am.”

“Well, look at me, damn it, man. Can’t I take care of myself?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Captain Small raised his eyes and turned them abruptly away again towards the fireplace.

“If you want to spit,” said Mrs. McKlennar, “for God’s sake, spit, and get it over with.” There was an almost piercing look about her long nose as he availed himself of the ashes. “I suppose it’s nice of you to come down here to make a damn-fool woman see some sense. The trouble is my idea of sense just doesn’t coincide with yours.”

The captain said, “Well, I only tried to be neighborly. But if you change your mind we’ll have the corner space ready for you. Phil Helmer has got his cows in it now, but we’ll move them right out any time.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

Captain Small hawked a little, as he reached the door. He looked over his spit at Fort Herkimer beyond the river.

“See there,” he said significantly. “Ma’am, there’s some women coming to the fort now.”

A line of teetering carts, overloaded with goods and women and children, dragged across the flats from the southern hills.

Mrs. McKlennar blew out her breath.

“I’ve been seeing them for two days. I’m sick of the sight. Scared as rabbits.”

Mrs. McKlennar watched him trudge away down the road. Then she stamped over the porch and down the steps and went towards the barn. “Indians!” she said to herself.

She saw Lana coming down from the springhouse with a crock of butter in her arms. “How much did it make?” called Mrs. McKlennar.

“About three pounds,” Lana replied. She looked cool and pink, but her eyes seemed to darken. “Was that Captain Small, Mrs. McKlennar?”

“Yes, it was.”

“Did he have any news?”

“He was down to try to persuade us to move into his blockhouse. He’s got a stall ready for us. There’s some cows in it now, but he was cordial enough to suggest he would prefer us.”

Lana smiled slightly. She was getting used to the widow’s way of talking.

Mrs. McKlennar said, “And then he pointed out some women going in to Fort Herkimer. And he said a lot more about the way Indians handled women.” She paused and looked keenly at Lana. “What do you think about it, Magdelana? Getting scared?”

Lana said, “No,” quietly. She wasn’t looking at Mrs. McKlennar; with the crock still hugged up in her arms, she was staring westward. “Gil expected I’d stay here, unless we got news things had gone wrong out west. When he comes back, he’ll probably expect to find me here.”

“Good for you,” said Mrs. McKlennar. She tramped away to the barn to curry the horses. It was a job she fancied just then. She didn’t have the faintest idea of what might happen, but in any case she had no intention of living like a pig in a sty and having all the farm women constantly peering at her to see what kind of underclothes she wore.…

On her way from the stone house to her own kitchen, Lana heard the widow hissing like a whole stableful of grooms. She stopped again in the doorway to look out over the valley.

Two days—and they had had no news. The valley was still and hot; the earth was dry; the river, shallow and slow. Whenever she looked across it, Lana had a feeling of the hills drawing together. She felt the presence of the woods behind her back, as
if, on the north bluff, the wilderness crept close and watched her movements through the day with an invisible intelligence.

At the departure of Gil, life as it was known on the farm seemed to have departed too. The three women, in spite of Mrs. McKlennar’s noisiness, were imprisoned in a green silence. There was nothing to hear but the crows at evening, or the sounds of their own voices. There were not even any wagons on the Kingsroad, now. No boats on the river. It was as if the valley held its breath; as if the going of the militia drained it of all the things that made for life. One stopped one’s talk suddenly for no reason except an unexpected instinct to listen. Listen for what? Lana did not know. But her breast ached.

A thought lived in her with the beating of her heart. He would surely die.

Sometimes it occurred to her that since last fall both of them had been dead. Even in the little Schuyler hut she had had that feeling, though they had felt crowded there, so near that they withdrew from each other, as though to avoid physical encounter. Later, in the early summer, life had seemed easier. Work had been good for Gil. He was the kind of man who needed to be tired. But on Lana’s part, living had been merely a slow regulation of the breath. What they did, what they said, had lost all personal significance.

Then had come the first muster and Gil’s departure for the Unadilla. And then he had come home, and her first quickening had come and gone like a moth’s temptation. She was healthier. But she had not been able to regain her vanished impulse towards happiness.

Gil seemed unaware, detached, and baffled. Often Lana had heard women say of other women that they “got along” with their husbands. She wondered whether that was how she was living with Gil. She submitted to him as she had submitted to the fact of the destruction of their farm, wordlessly, blindly. Blindly
until she had seen him making the turn in the road to Fort Dayton, with the erratic flamadiddles of the Palatine drums passing after him. When it was too late she had had the choking thought that he would surely die.