Kitobni o'qish: «With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga»

CHAPTER I
A BOY OF THE WILDERNESS

The forest was still. A calm lay upon its vast extent, from the green-capped hills in the east to the noble river which, fed by the streams so quietly meandering through the pleasantly wooded country, found its way to the sea where the greatest city of the New World was destined to stand. The clear, bell-like note of a waking bird startled the morning hush. A doe and her fawn that had couched in a thicket seemed roused to activity by this early matin and suddenly showered the short turf with a dewy rain from the bushes which they disturbed as they leaped away toward the “lick.” The gentle creatures first slaked their thirst at the margin of the creek hard by and then stood a moment with outstretched nostrils, snuffing the wind before tasting the salt impregnated earth trampled as hard as adamant by a thousand hoofs. The fawn dropped its muzzle quickly; but the mother, not so well assured, snuffed again and yet again.

In the wilderness, before the white man came, there were to be found paths made by the wild folk going to and from their watering places and feeding grounds, and paths made by the red hunter and warrior. Although hundreds of deer traveled to this lick yearly, they had not originally made the trail. It was an ancient Indian runaway, for the creek was fordable near this point. The tribesmen had used it for generations until it was worn almost knee-deep in the forest mould, but wide enough only to be traveled in single file. Along this ancient trail, and approaching the lick with infinite caution, came a boy of thirteen, bearing a heavy rifle.

Although so young, Enoch Harding was well built, and the play of his hardened muscles was easily observed under his tight-fitting, homespun garments. The circumstances of border life in the eighteenth century molded hardy men and sturdy boys. His face was as brown as a berry and his eyes clear and frankly open. The brown hair curled tightly above his perspiring brow, from which his old otter-skin cap was thrust back. His coming to the bank of the wide stream was attended with all the care and silent observation of an Indian on the trail. He set his feet so firmly and with such precision that not even the rustle of a leaf or the crackling of a twig would have warned the sharpest ear of his approach. The wind was in his favor, too, blowing from the creek toward him. The doe, which he could not yet see but the patter of whose light hoofs he had heard as she trotted with her fawn to the drinking place, could not possibly have discovered his presence; yet she continued to raise her muzzle at intervals and snuff the wind suspiciously.

The dark aisles of the forest, as yet unillumined by the sun whose crimson banners would soon be flung above the mountain-tops, seemed deserted. In the distance the birds were beginning their morning song; but here the shadow of the mountains lay heavy upon wood and stream and the feathered choristers awoke more slowly. The two deer at the lick and the boy who now, from behind the massive bole of a tree, surveyed them, seemed the only living objects within view.

Enoch raised his heavy rifle, resting the barrel against the tree trunk, and drew bead at the doe’s side. He was chancing a long shot, rather than taking the risk of approaching any nearer to the animals. He had seen that the doe was suspicious and she might be off in a flash into the thicker forest beyond unless he fired at once. Had he been more experienced he would have wondered what had made the creature suspicious, his own approach to the lick being quite evidently undiscovered. But he thought only of getting a perfect sight and that the larder at home was empty. And this last fact was sufficient to make the boy’s aim certain, his principal care being to waste no powder and to bring down his game with as little loss of time as might be.

The next moment the heavy muzzle-loading gun roared and the buckshot sped on its mission. The mother deer gave a convulsive spring forward, thus warning the poor fawn, which disappeared in the brush like a flash of brown light. The doe dropped in a heap upon the sward and Enoch, flushed with success, ran forward to view his prize. In so doing, however, the boy forgot the first rule of the border ranger and hunter. He did not reload his weapon.

Stumbling over the widely spread roots of the great tree behind which he had hidden, he reached the opening in the forest where the tragedy had been enacted, and would have been on his knees beside the dead deer in another instant had not an appalling sound stayed him. A scream, the like of which once heard is never to be forgotten, thrilled him to the marrow. He started back, casting his glance upward. There was a rustling in the thick branches of the tree beneath which the doe had fallen. Again the maddened scream rang out and a tawny body flashed from concealment in the foliage.

“A catamount!” Enoch shouted, and seeing the creature fairly over his head in its flight through the air, he leaped away toward the creek, his feet winged with fear. Of all the wild creatures of the Northern wilderness this huge cat was most to be avoided. It would not hesitate to attack man when hungry, and maddened and disappointed as this one was, its charge could not be stayed. At the instant when the beast was prepared to leap upon either the doe or her fawn, Enoch’s shot had laid the one low and frightened the other away. His appearance upon the scene attracted the attention of the cat and had given it a new object of attack. Possibly the creature did not even notice the fall of the deer, being now bent upon vengeance for the loss of its prey, for which it had doubtless searched unsuccessfully all the night through.

The young hunter was in a desperate situation. His gun was empty and the prospect of an encounter with the catamount would have quenched the courage of the bravest. And to run from it was still more foolish, yet this was the first thought which inspired him. The creek was beyond and although the ford was some rods above the deer-lick, he thought to cast himself into the stream and thus escape his enemy. The beast, possessing that well-known trait of the feline tribe which causes it to shrink from water, might not follow him into the creek.

A long log, the end of which had caught upon the bank, swung its length into the stream, forming a boom against which light drift-stuff had gathered; the swift current foamed about the timber as though vexed at this delay to its progress. Upon the tree Enoch leaped and ran to the further extremity. His feet, shod in home-made moccasins of deer-hide, did not slip on this insecure footing; but his weight on the stranded log set it in motion. The timber began to swing off from the shore and one terrified glance about him assured the boy that he was at a most deep and dangerous part of the stream.

Although so shallow above at the ford, the bed of the creek directly below was of rock instead of gravel, and ragged boulders thrust themselves up from the depths, causing many whirlpools which dimpled the surface of the water. About the boulders the current tore, the brown froth from the angry jaws of rock dancing lightly away upon the waves. Although even with his clothing on he might have swum in a quiet pool, to do so here would be almost impossible. The boy was between two perils!

He turned about in horror to escape the flood, and was in time to see the huge cat gain the end of the log in a single bound as it was torn from the shore by the current. There the beast crouched, less than twenty feet away, lashing its tail and snarling menace at the victim of its wrath. The situation was paralyzing. As for loading his rifle now, the boy had not the strength to do it. The fascination of the beast’s blazing eyes held him motionless, like a bird charmed by the unwinking gaze of a black snake.

And Enoch Harding knew, if he knew anything, that the beast would not give him time to reload the clumsy gun. At his first movement it would spring. And if he leaped into the water, it might follow him, considering its present savage mood. He beheld its muscles, which slipped so easily under the tawny skin, knotting themselves for a spring. The forelegs were drawn up under the breast the curved, sabre-sharp claws scratching the bark on the floating timber. In another instant the fatal leap would be made.

Never had the boy been in such danger. He did not utterly lose his presence of mind; but he was helpless. What chance had he with an empty gun before the savage brute? He seized the barrel in both hands and raised the weapon above his head. It was too heavy for him to swing with any ease, and being so would fall but lightly on the creature, did he succeed in reaching it at all. He could not hope to stun the cat at a single blow. And beside, the tree, rocking now like a water-logged canoe, made his footing more and more insecure. In a moment it would be among the boulders and at the first collision be overturned.

But he could not drag his eyes from those of the catamount. With a fierce snarl which ended in a thrilling scream, the brute cast itself into the air! At the moment it rose, exposing its lighter colored breast to view, a gun-shot shattered the silence of river and forest. The spring of the cat was not stayed, but its yell again changed–this time to a note of agony.

“Jump, lad, jump!” shouted a voice and Enoch, as though awaking from a dream, obeyed the command. He leaped sideways, and landed upon a slippery rock, falling to his knees, yet securing a hand-hold upon a protuberance. Nor did he lose hold of his gun with the other hand.

The body of the catamount landed just where he had stood; but then rolled off the log and disappeared in the rushing stream, while the timber itself crashed instantly into one of the larger boulders. Enoch staggered to his feet, his hand bleeding and also his knee, where the stocking had been torn away by the rock. The log swung broadside to the current again, and seeing his chance, the boy ran along its length and leaped from its end into comparatively shallow water under the bank.

His rescuer was at hand and dragged him, panting and exhausted, to the shore, where he fell weakly on the turf, unable for a moment to utter a word. The man who leaned over him was lean, as dark as an Indian, and in a day when smoothly shaven features were the rule, his face was marked by a tangled growth of iron-gray beard. His hair hung to the fringed collar of his deerskin shirt, and straggled over his low brow in careless locks, instead of being tightly drawn back and fastened in a queue; and out of this wilderness of hair and beard looked two eyes as sharp as the hawk’s.

He was so tall that there was a slight stoop to his shoulders as though, when he walked, he feared to collide with the branches of the trees under which he passed. Erect, he must have lacked but a few inches of seven feet and, possessing not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his big bones, his appearance was not impressive. The deerskin hunting shirt, worked in a curious pattern on the breast with red and blue porcupine quills, fitted him tightly, as did his linsey-woolsey breeches; and his thin shanks were covered with gray hose darned clumsily in more than one place. He would have been selected at first sight as a wood-ranger and hunter, and carried his long rifle with more grace than he ever held plough or wielded reaping-hook.

Indeed, Josiah Bolderwood was one of that strange class of white men so frequently found during the pioneer era of our Eastern country. He seemed to have been born, as he often said himself, with a gun in his hands. His mother, lying on her couch behind the double wall of a blockhouse in the Maine wilderness, loaded spare guns for her husband and his comrades while they beat off the yelling redskins, when Josiah was but a few days old. He was a ranger and trapper from the beginning. He had slept under the canopy of the forest more often than in a bed and beneath a roof made by men’s hands. From early youth he had hunted all through the northern wilderness, and had been no more able to tie himself to a farm, and earn his bread by tilling the soil, than an Indian. Indeed, he was more of an Indian than a white man in habits, tastes, and feelings; he lacked only that marvelous appreciation of signs and sounds in the forest, in which the white can never hope to equal the red man.

“Lad, that was a near chance for you!” he said, when he saw that Enoch was practically unhurt. “The Almighty surely brought me to this lick jest right. I knowed you was here when I heard the shot; but as your marm said you’d gone for a deer, I didn’t s’pose you’d be huntin’ for catamounts, too! Howsomever, somethin’ tol’ me ter run when I heard your gun, an’ run I did.”

“I didn’t shoot at the wild-cat, ’Siah,” said the boy, getting upon his feet. “See yonder; there’s the doe I knocked over. But the critter was after her, too, and it madded him when I fired, I s’pose.”

“And ye didn’t git your gun loaded again!” exclaimed Bolderwood.

His young friend blushed with shame. “I–I didn’t think. I ran over to look at the doe, and the critter jumped at me outer the tree. Then I got on the log and he follered me – ”

“Jonas Harding’s boy’d oughter known better than that,” declared the old ranger, with some vexation.

“I know it, ’Siah. Poor father told me ’nough times never to move outer my tracks till I had loaded again. An’ I reckon this’ll be a lesson for me. I–I ain’t got over it yet.”

“Wal,” said Bolderwood, “while you git yer breath, Nuck, I’ll flay that critter and hang her up. I’m in somethin’ of a hurry this mornin’; but as the widder’s needin’ the meat, we won’t leave the carcass to the varmints.”

“You’ve been to my house, ’Siah?” cried Enoch, following him across the little glade.

“Yes. Jest stopped there on my way down from Manchester. That’s how I knew you was over here hunting.”

“But if you’re in a hurry, leave me to do that,” said the boy. “I’m all right now.”

“You’re in as big a hurry as I be, Nuck,” returned the ranger, with a grim smile. “I’m going to take you with me over to Mr. James Breckenridge’s. Ev’ry gun we kin git may count to-day, lad.”

“Did mother say I could go, ’Siah?” cried the youngster, with undoubted satisfaction in his voice. “You’re the best man that I know to get her to say ‘yes’!”

Bolderwood looked up from his work with much gravity. “This ain’t no funnin’ we’re goin’ on, Nuck. It’s serious business. You kin shoot straight, an’ that’s why I begged for ye. This may be the most turrible day you ever seen, my lad, for the day on which a man or boy sees bloodshed for the fust time, is a mem’ry that he takes with him to the grave.”

CHAPTER II
ENOCH HARDING FEELS HIMSELF A MAN

Although Enoch Harding had not grasped the serious nature of the matter which the ranger’s words suggested, there was something he had realized, however, and this thought sent the blood coursing through his veins with more than wonted vigor and his eyes sparkled. He was a man. He was to play a man’s part on this day and the neighbors–even the old ranger who had stood his friend on so many occasions already–recognized him as the head of the family.

Bolderwood saw this thought expressed in his face and without desiring to “take him down” and humble his pride, wished to show him the serious side of the situation. To this end he spoke upon another subject, beginning: “D’ye remember where we be, Nuck? ’Member this place? Seems strange that you sh’d have such a caper here with that catamount after what happened only last spring, doesn’t it?” He glanced keenly at young Harding and saw that his words had at once the desired effect. Enoch stood up, the skinning-knife in his hand, and looked over the little glade. In a moment his brown eyes filled with tears, which rolled unchastened down his smooth cheeks.

“Aye, Nuck, a sorry day for you an’ yourn when Jonas Harding met his death here. And a sorry day was it for me, too, lad. I loved him like a brother. He an’ I, Nuck, trapped this neck of woods together before the settlement was started. We knew how rich the land was and naught but the wars with the redskins an’ them French kept us from comin’ here long before the Robinsons. Jonas wouldn’t come ’less it was safe to bring your mother an’ you–an’ he was right. There’s little good in a man’s roamin’ the world without a wife an’ fireside ter tie to. I was sayin’ the same to neighbor Allen last week, an’ he agreed–though he’s wuss off than me, for he has a family back in Litchfield an’ is under anxiety all the time to bring them here, if the Yorkers but leave us in peace. As for me–well, a tough old knot like me ain’t fit to marry an’ settle down. I’m wuss nor an Injin.”

It is doubtful if the boy heard half this monologue. He stood with thoughtful mien and his eyes were still wet when Bolderwood’s words finally aroused him. “Do you know, Nuck, there’s many a time I stop at this ford and think of your father’s death? There’s things about it I’ll never understand, I reckon.”

Enoch Harding started and flashed a quick glance at his friend. “What things?” he asked.

“Well, lad, mainly that Jonas Harding, who was as quick on the trail and as good a woodsman as myself, should be worsted by a mad buck; it seems downright impossible, Nuck.”

“I know. But there could be no mistake about it, ’Siah. There were the hoof-marks–and there was no bullet wound on the body, only those gashes made by the critter’s horns. Simon Halpen – ”

Bolderwood raised his hand quickly. “Nay, lad! don’t utter evil even about that Yorker. We all know he was anigh here when your father died. He was seen at Bennington the night before, and later crossed James Breckenridge’s farm on his way to Albany. Black enemy as he is to you and yourn, there’s naught to be gained by accusing him of Jonas’ death. It would be impossible. There was not, as you say, a bullet wound upon your father’s body. There was not a mark of man’s footstep near the lick here but your father’s own. How else, then, could he have been killed but by the charge of the buck?”

“You say yourself that father was far too sharp to so be taken by surprise,” muttered the boy.

“Aye–that is so. But the facts are there, lad. I s’arched the ground over–I headed the band of scouts who found him–remember that! Nobody had been near the lick but Jonas. There wasn’t a footmark for rods around. Even an Injin couldn’t have got near enough to strike Jonas down with his gun-butt – ”

“You believe that wound on his head, then, was made by no deer’s antler?” exclaimed Enoch, eagerly.

“Tut, tut! You jump too quick,” said Bolderwood, turning his face away. “That’s never well. Allus look b’fore ye leap, Nuck. My ’pinion be that your father struck his head on a stone in falling – ”

“Where is there a stone here?” demanded the boy, with a speaking gesture of his disengaged hand. “I saw that deep wound in father’s skull. I never believed a buck did that.”

“And yet there was naught but the prints of the buck’s hoofs in the soil here–be sure of that. The ground was trampled all about as though the fight had been desp’rate–as indeed it must have been.”

“But that blow on the head?” reiterated Enoch.

“Ah, lad, I can’t understand that. The wound certainly was mainly like a blow from a gun-stock,” admitted Bolderwood.

“Then Simon Halpen compassed his death–I am sure of it!” cried the boy. “You well know how he hated father. Halpen would never forget the beech-sealing he got last fall. He threatened to be terribly revenged on us; and Bryce and I heard him threaten father, too, when he fought him upon the crick bank and father tossed the Yorker into the middle of the stream.”

Bolderwood chuckled. “Simon as well might tackle Ethan Allen himself as to have wrastled with Jonas,” he said… “But we must hurry, lad. We have work–and perhaps serious work–before us this day. It may be the battle of our lives; we may l’arn to-day whether we are to be free people here in Bennington, or are to be driven out like sheep at the command of a flunkey under a royal person who lives so far across the sea that he knows naught of, nor cares naught for us.”

“You talk desp’rately against the King, Mr. Bolderwood!” exclaimed Enoch, looking askance at his companion.

“Nay–what is the King to me?” demanded the ranger, in disgust. “He would be lost in these woods, I warrant. We’re free people over here; why should we bother our heads about kings and parliament? They are no good to us.”

“You talk more boldly than Mr. Ethan Allen,” said the boy. “He was at our house once to talk with father. Father said he was a master bold man and feared neither the King nor the people.”

“And no man need fear either if he fear God,” declared the ranger, simply. “We are only seeing the beginnings of great trouble, Nuck. We may do battle to Yorkers now; perhaps we shall one day have to fight the King’s men for our farms and housel-stuff. The Governor of New York is a powerful man and is friendly to men high in the King’s councils, they say. This Sheriff Ten Eyck may bring real soldiers against us some day.”

“You don’t believe that, ’Siah?” cried the boy.

“Indeed and I do, lad,” returned the ranger, rising now with the carcass of the doe flayed and ready for hanging up.

“But we’ll fight for our lands!” cried Enoch. “My father fought Simon Halpen for our farm. I’ll fight him, too, if he comes here and tries to take it, now father is dead.”

“Mayhap this day’s work will settle it for all time, Nuck,” said the ranger, hopefully. “But do you shin up that sapling yonder, and bend it down. We wanter hang this carcass where no varmit–not even a catamount–can git it.”

The boy did as he was bade and soon the fruit of Enoch Harding’s early morning adventure was hanging from the top of a young tree, too small to be climbed by any wild-cat and far enough from the ground to be out of reach of the wolves and foxes. “Now we’ll git right out o’ here, lad,” Bolderwood said, picking up his rifle and starting for the ford. “We’ve got to hurry,” and Enoch, nothing loath, followed him across the creek and into the forest on the other bank.

“Do you r’ally think there’ll be fightin’, Master Bolderwood?” he asked.

“I hope God’ll forbid that,” responded the ranger, with due reverence. “But if the Yorkers expect ter walk in an’ take our farms the way this sheriff wants ter take Master Breckenridge’s, we’ll show ’em diff’rent!” He increased his stride and Enoch had such difficulty in keeping up with his long-legged companion that he had no breath for rejoinder and they went on in silence.

The controversy between the New York colony and the settlers of the Hampshire Grants who had bought their farms of Governor Benning Wentworth, of New Hampshire, was a very important incident of the pre-Revolutionary period. The not always bloodless battles over the Disputed Ground arose from the claim of New York that the old patent of King Charles to the Duke of York, giving to him all the territory lying between the Connecticut River on the east and Delaware Bay on the west, was still valid north of the Massachusetts line.

In 1740 King George II had declared “that the northern boundary of Massachusetts be a similar curved line, pursuing the course of the Merrimac River at three miles distant on the north side thereof, beginning at the Atlantic Ocean and ending at a point due north of a place called Pawtucket Falls, and by a straight line from thence due west till it meets with his Majesty’s other governments.” Nine years later Governor Wentworth made the claim that, because of this established boundary between Massachusetts and New Hampshire, the latter’s western boundary was the same as Massachusetts’–a line parallel with and twenty miles from the Hudson River–and he informed Governor Clinton, of New York, that he should grant lands to settlers as far west as this twenty-mile line. Therewith he granted to William Williams and sixty-one others the township of Bennington (named in his honor) and it was surveyed in October of that same year. But the outbreak of the French and Indian troubles made the occupation of this exposed territory impossible until 1761, when there came into the rich and fertile country lying about what is now the town of Bennington, several families of settlers from Hardwick, Mass., in all numbering about twenty souls.

But there had been an earlier survey of the territory along Walloomscoik Creek under the old Dutch patent and in 1765 Captain Campbell, under instructions from the New York colony, attempted to resurvey this old grant. He came to the land of Samuel Robinson who, with his neighbors, drove the Yorkers off. For this Robinson and two others were carried to Albany where they were confined in the jail for some weeks and afterward fined for “rioting.” At once the settlers, who had increased greatly since ’61, saw that they must present their case before the King if they would have justice rendered them; so Captain Robinson went to England to represent their side of the matter. Unfortunately he died there before completing his work.

On the part of the governors of New Hampshire and New York it was merely a land speculation, and both officials were after the fees accruing from granting the lands; whereas the settlers who had gone upon the farms, and established their families and risked their little all in the undertaking, bore the brunt of the fight. The speculators and the men they desired to place on the farms of the New Hampshire grantees, hovered along the Twenty-Mile Line, and occasionally made sorties upon the more unprotected farmers, despite the fact that the King had instructed the Governor of New York to make no further grants until the rights of the controversy should be plainly established. This settled determination of the New York authorities to drive them out convinced the men of the Grants that they must combine to defend their homes and when, early in July, 1771, news came from Albany that Sheriff Ten Eyck with a large party of armed men was intending to march to James Breckenridge’s farm and seize it in the name of the New York government, the people of Bennington in town-meeting assembled determined to defend their townsman’s rights.

Sheriff Ten Eyck started from Albany on the 18th of July with more than 300 men and at once the settlers began to gather near the threatened farmstead. ’Siah Bolderwood having no farm of his own, was sent through the country raising men and guns for the defense of the Breckenridge place. On his way back he had stopped for Enoch Harding and learning that the boy had gone hunting before daybreak, the ranger followed him, arriving at the deer-lick in time to render important assistance in the dramatic scene just pictured. After crossing the creek at the spot where the boy’s father had met his frightful and mysterious death a few months before, the two volunteers, while still the day was new, reached the place of the settlers’ gathering.