Drums Along the Mohawk (43 page)

“What’s queer about that?” Gil asked.

“Why, those girls could have children easy as letting go a crock of lard. John O’Beal now. He come out there and traded; he bought my furs. He married a girl too, and had a mess of children. One of them’s got to be a chief. His name’s Cornplanter.”

“You said John O’Beal?” Adam asked.

“Sure, he was quite a lad, too. But he soured on it. He came back here and lives down the valley somewhere.”

“Near Fort Plain?” suggested Adam.

“Sure, that’s the man. I ain’t seen him in some time.”

Joe Boleo lay full length on his back, draining his glass.

Gil asked, “What did you say her name was, Joe?”

“Well, her Indian name was Gahano. Means something like Hanging Flower. But I told you I called her Lou. You ought to have been out there in those days, Adam. You’d have got along good. But now they ain’t so friendly about white men. You can marry all right. But they don’t trot the girls out for you any more. I quit myself when Lou died.…

“But that was the way for a trapper to live. All you had to do was run your lines, and you had a nice cabin to come back to, and your dinner cooked, and a woman to mend your clothes. You just lay around, and got up warm in the morning. It didn’t cost you a cent.” He looked at them again. “Most trappers came home in summer. They cleared out with the furs and spent their money, and the woman took care of herself while they was gone. Some kept two families going. But those buffaloes never spent the summer the way I did. We’d take trips, her and me, and lay around fishing. We’d go off where there wasn’t anybody, not even the tracks of anybody but ourselves, for three months. We’d build a summer shanty and she’d plant corn. Yes, sir. You’d just lay around listening to a big fish jump and wondering if it was worth the bother putting the worm in the water. Lou worked all the time we was on our vacation, readying hides and putting up quitcheraw against the winter. I whittled her a little press for making the cakes in, which tickled her a lot. And then she’d go berrying to make pemmican. That was when the bear got at her. An old she-one with a couple of cubs. I spent a while tracking them and I killed the lot—” Joe paused and spat. “But, hell,” he went on, “that’s not what I set out to tell you. Indians ain’t no good. This country would be a whole lot better off without any Indians. We’d be better off right now, I tell you. And I wouldn’t be setting here listening to that drip off the roof.”

Adam Helmer stirred himself. Adam had been wishing he had been born in a good time of civilization so he could have gone out to the Indian country. His full lips were compressed and wet just thinking of it. A little lithe hard girl like Joe’s Lou, right now, would suit him fine. “Drip?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Joe with scorn. “Drip. The thaw’s commencing.”

Gil got to his feet. He went to the door of the cabin, opened it, and stood there, leaning out.

The wind had turned to the south. He felt it damp against his face; he could feel it even with the outrush of overheated air from the kitchen.

“You’re right, Joe,” he said over his shoulder. “It’s the thaw beginning. Sugaring ought to start early this year.”

“Shut that door!” yelled Joe. “Do you want to freeze us?”

Towards the end of the month, when the sugaring was in full progress and the smoke from the sugar bushes made pale blue wavering ribbons against the hillsides, a horseman left the Snydersbush stockade and rode full gallop the eight miles south to the falls, turned west along the Kingsroad, and flogged his way through the slushy ruts as fast as his blowing horse could lay foot to the ground.

The spattery thudding of his hoofs was audible in Mrs. McKlennar’s sugar bush, high though it was above the road. They were boiling for the fourth day and some of the Eldridge people, the Smalls and the Caslers and the Helmers,—Adam’s cousins, Phil, his wife Catherine, and son George,—were attending. The
women were knitting by the fire, minding the kettle. Adam, on his own initiative, was bringing the wood for the fire and hanging round the women as much as possible. He was wearing a new hunting shirt, colored after the pattern Morgan’s Riflemen were supposed to wear. It was of heavy white linen with long green thumbs along the sleeves, the double capes, and the bottom hem. He looked inordinately handsome in it; his yellow hair was carefully combed, and he had shaved.

Gil and Captain Jacob Small and George Helmer were hauling in the sap on hand sledges from the trees where the boys gathered it from the small pails. It was a sunny, windless day, warm enough to make sitting in the open pleasant. The steady drip in the pails was like the ticking of a clock, as if the trees together combined to mark the passage of the time. The distance one could hear a drop fall in a bucket was surprising; it was audible even above the women’s voices.

Of all the men, only Captain Small, and Adam and Joe Boleo, had brought their guns. Adam and Small had left theirs in the little bark shanty before the kettle. But Joe was prowling the woods. They did not know that he was making a cast three or four miles to the north and west. They would have laughed if they had known. The snow still lay more than five feet deep in the woods. Even with snowshoes it made heavy going.

When they heard the horseman coming up the road, Gil and Captain Small left their sledges and walked to the edge of the bluff. From there they could look down on him. The horse was floundering, but the man’s arm rose and fell with pitiless fatigue. Jacob Small took one look.

“That’s Cobus Mabee. He looks scared.” He took his hat off and rubbed his grizzled head and stared incredulously at Gil.

Adam, seeing them move to the edge of the bush, left the women and joined them.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

Small said, “Cobus Mabee just went up to Dayton.”

Adam laughed.

“Maybe he’s after Doc.”

“He didn’t look to me like that. Did he to you, Gil?”

“He was spoiling his horse,” said Gil.

Adam’s face sobered.

“That’s serious.”

They looked at each other.

“Do you think we ought to move down out of the woods?”

Adam said, “No. Joe’s back there in the woods.”

Small said, “One of us ought to find out what’s happened. Gil, there’s George Helmer on the edge. You send him down and let him ride your mare up. No sense scaring the womenfolks. It’s the first party of the year.”

Adam went back to the shanty. He got his gun. “I’m going to see if I can get a partridge,” he explained. “You ladies have got wood enough?”

“Oh yes, Adam.” They smiled at him. They went on with their talk. All except Lana. Suddenly Gil found her staring at him. He forced himself to smile. But she wasn’t deceived. And he shook his head and put his finger to his lips.

His heart was like something shrunk inside himself as he watched her face. He thought, “What’s it going to do to her?” Her face went deathly white. Then suddenly her chin went up and she said something in a quick high voice to Mrs. Small that made the latter laugh and pat her red hair. Mrs. McKlennar nodded, looked at Gil and smiled. Mrs. McKlennar had the instinct for such things. He guessed that she had caught on even before Lana.

He made himself go back to his sledge and haul it to the kettle. Nobody had missed George Helmer. The sugaring continued. But he and Captain Small managed to bring the children to trees closer to the fire without anyone’s noticing, and themselves kept a watch on the woods. They would hear Adam shoot
if anything went wrong, and he would hear Joe. Now the drip of the sap seemed startlingly loud.

Two hours passed before George Helmer returned. He came quietly without fuss, and without fuss Small and Gil joined him at his trees. He told them at once.

“The destructives have been in Fairfield. Indians and Tories. The whites was all the Fairfield people who went off before last August. Suffrenes Casselman, and Countryman, and the Empies. They killed little John Mabee and they took everybody else prisoner but Polly. She got away from the Indians. But she seen the rest. They’ve burnt every house and barn in the town. There ain’t a thing left.”

George Helmer was an earnest young man, and he was scared.

Captain Small said, “Did anybody see which way they went?”

“They went out on the Jerseyfield road,” said George. “Cobus Mabee had it all planned to move down to his uncle’s place in Indian Castle. He’s moved his wife and the baby down and he was going back to get Polly and John and the cow. He stopped for dinner in Snyder’s. When he got up to Fairfield the houses was still burning. Hadn’t nobody known a thing about it, anywheres else.” He caught his breath sharply and looked over at the shanty. “Do you plan to stay here, Jake?”

Jacob Small said, “Yes. Ain’t no sense in moving till Joe or Adam comes in. Don’t you go acting scared, George. We got to make sugar. We got to make enough for next winter, same as we’ll have to do our planting.”

“My God, Jake!” The young man’s face was pale. “How can a man go out and plough and plant with
them
in the woods?”

“I don’t know,” Small replied. “But either you got to die hungry or you got to raise food.”

George said unsteadily, “That’s right.” But his eyes kept rolling towards the woods. It was he who spied Joe and Adam coming in abreast. Joe was wringing wet with sweat and snow. He
came over to Gil and Small and rested the rifle butt on the toe of one of his snowshoes.

“Where’s George been to?” he asked, and pointed to the horse lather on the inside of George’s pant legs.

They told him.

“That’s good,” said Joe.

“Good?” cried George Helmer.

“That’s what I said. If they hadn’t gone there, they’d’ve come right down here. They had an open camp six miles back. I guess they wanted to make sure of Fairfield before they hit so near a fort.” His eyes were owlish. “There was about twenty of them, nine Indians. They struck out some time yesterday for the northeast.”

The five men stood together a moment.

Joe asked, “How much more boiling have you got to do?”

“We could finish in a couple of hours.”

“I guess you might as well finish,” said Joe.

“You don’t think they’ll come back?”

Joe pursed his thin lips.

“Not that particular bunch, maybe. Maybe nobody right off, either. I’ve took quite a circle and there weren’t no signs. This time of year, jays holler easy.”

Nancy was inside the house when the news of Fairfield was brought to the captain by a soldier from the fort. She had just finished clearing up after dinner, and in the silence she heard the
captain go out into the warm sunshine and she heard every word the man told him. When the captain came in she saw that he was worried. He looked almost frightened to her.

“Where are you going?” he asked sharply.

“I’m going to give this to the pigs, sir.”

She held a plate of food scraps, and she stared at him with wondering blue eyes.

“Pretty good food for pigs,” he said irritably, but Nancy forgave him that. With the doctor, the captain had stood up for her against Mrs. Demooth. She couldn’t have borne it otherwise. All day long Mrs. Demooth was after her with stinging, small remarks. Mostly low, unladylike things about her shape, how big her belly was, and how bastard children always showed more—things Nancy would never have believed Mrs. Demooth capable of saying.

“Men are fools,” Mrs. Demooth said. “If I had my way you’d be turned out. Girls like you ought to be whipped before the town. But your own mother wouldn’t have you round—I don’t blame her—and the men say you couldn’t starve. Men all take a sneaking pleasure in it. They always do if the girl’s young. Get out of here. Get out of my room, anyway, if you won’t get out of my house.”

Nancy knew she was big, but it had seemed natural at first. The soldier had been a big man, and she was a big girl, and sometimes she thought the child would be big even if he was lawful. But as time went on and the captain seemed to notice her more, the sight seemed to make him irritable with her, and she began to think that what Missis said must be true.

Hon Yost laughed about it. Hon Yost would pat her belly as if he were patting the child itself.

“I’ll bet it’s going to be a dinger of a boy. Just like you and me, Nancy. But we get fun out of life.”

Hon Yost had had a wonderful time the first half of the winter.
He had never done less work in his life. For a long time everybody seemed glad to talk to Hon. Men slapped him on the back wherever he went and stood him drinks. He had been a regular public hero and generally drunk. But he was a harmless drunkard and came home every night to the barn, where he shared the stall with Mr. Demooth’s horse. Nancy took him out what scraps of food she could steal. That was the plate’s destination now.

But lately nobody paid much attention to Hon. At first he had been unhappy about it; disbelievingly, he would stick his face into Shoemaker’s tavern, or the place across the river, and say hello. Once he even started the story of how he licked Sillinger with his wonderful account of Arnold’s army. He got to where he said to the Indians, “Can you count the leaves on the trees?” Meaning, of course, that Arnold’s army was as big as creation. But they kicked him out of the tap. He hardly ever got a drink. He once thought that if he enrolled in the militia he would get popular again, and saw Captain Demooth about it. But the militia were disorganized. Captain Demooth said Colonel Bellinger was trying to have new companies organized. New officers were needed. Over half the old ones had been killed.

Captain Demooth was sorry. He said that he appreciated Hon’s patriotic sense and that as soon as the new organization was complete he would be proud to have Hon on his own company’s roster.

At first Nancy was happy about it. While Hon had been a public figure she hardly ever saw him, but now that nobody else would talk to him, he hung around the Herter place. He seemed to like to talk to her. He was pleased when she asked shy questions about McLonis. McLonis was quite a man. The Butlers thought high of McLonis. Some people thought it likely McLonis would get to be a commissioned officer some day.