Part 8 (1/2)
”G.o.d bless the woman!” Allen exclaimed, heartily. ”She's fighting away there in the wilderness with her pack of babies in a way to make grown men blush. I was by there but yesterday.... And what's the news you bring, Nuck?”
”The Yorkers have come back to the mill on Otter Creek.”
”What, sir?” cried Allen, leaping from his chair.
”That's not to be believed,” cried one of the others. ”How know ye this, boy?”
Enoch told them, using few words; but the tremor in his voice showed the depth of his feeling. The injury done the settlers--the treachery of the Yorkers--had affected him as it had his mother. Allen listened with marked attention, having dropped back into his wide-armed chair, but he watched the boy's countenance the while. ”Egad!” cried he when the story was done, ”there's a boy after my own heart. He knows when he sees a snake in the brus.h.!.+” Then he turned instantly to his companions. ”We will postpone this other matter, gentlemen. What we may do in the event of his Majesty's placing other and more onerous burdens upon these colonies, affects us not so nearly as what these New York Tories do to us now. We have no standing either with the colonies or with the King; we are outlaws, forsooth; our hand is against every man's and every man's hand against us. Yet, belike in time the trouble between the King and the colonies may be the salvation of the Hamps.h.i.+re Grants.
”We have other business now. I am away at once, friends,” he said, rising again. ”Do so to me and more also, if I allow more time than is necessary to pa.s.s before I fall upon those Scotch scoundrels and smite them hip and thigh! Send the word around, Stephen Fay. Let them that will gather here. Be sure Warner knows of this; I will send for 'Member myself. His company will be first ready, I have no doubt. 'Member's wound is scarce yet healed, and the sting of it needs dressing,” and he laughed, knowing Captain Baker's fiery temper and his hatred of the Yorkers who had served him so evilly that very spring. ”Let it be known that we start from Bennington by sunrise.”
Enoch returned home, more than a little puffed with pride because of Colonel Allen's commendation and although he was too young to join the party which, under Allen and Captain Baker, marched to punish the Scots at Vergennes, he knew that his fortunate discovery would make him something of a hero in the eyes of his mates. The Green Mountain Boys fell upon the Scots unexpectedly, burned the cabins, pastured their horses in the standing corn, broke the millstones to pieces, and drove the New York settlers to Crown Point where they took shelter until the land-speculator, Reid, could gain them transportation to other and more honestly acquired lands. As for Reid himself, had he been overtaken by the Grants men he certainly would have been ”viewed”--a phrase used by the Green Mountain Boys, meaning to be whipped. The settlement was, however, for the time being abandoned by both parties, for it was so deep in the wilderness that neither could properly defend it from attack.
CHAPTER X
THE WARNING
After his return from this hunting trip, Enoch Harding was forced to neglect the training days on several occasions because of the increased work at home. The harvest was soon upon them and n.o.bly had the fields of the ox-bow farm borne for the widow and her children. While they were hard at work getting under cover, or in stack, the last of their crops, the Manchester Convention was held, from which James Breckenridge and Captain Jehiel Hawley were sent to London to represent the struggling settlers, their former minister to the king, Samuel Robinson, having died before accomplis.h.i.+ng the work which he had so well begun.
With the discovery that Governor Tryon's declaration of an armistice had been an act of treachery, and that the Yorkers were likely to continue their raids and seize the honestly purchased lands of the New Hamps.h.i.+re settlers, as Colonel Reid had at Vergennes, the Hardings began to fear the return of Simon Halpen again. But the summer and fall pa.s.sed without the little family being alarmed. With the snow came hog-killing, and among pioneer people this season was usually one of rejoicing. In the old times it had been a sort of festival, for with the first fall of snow all danger from marauding bands of red men ceased. The Indians would not send out war parties when every footstep would be plainly visible to the white settlers. The pioneers longed for the snow as soon as their scanty crops were out of the field, for they were safe then until the spring. So instead of celebrating ”harvest home” they rejoiced at ”hog killing time.”
The Hardings had quite a drove of hogs which ran wild in the forest during the summer and fed on the mast in the fall. But every few days the widow fed them near the hovel, so as to keep them in the habit of coming home, and particularly to teach the youngsters where to come if the old swine should be killed by bears or wild-cats. Now the whole drove was brought up and ”folded” and for two weeks every member of the family was busy. During that time the bulk of their winter's meat was salted down, the toothsome sausage made, and all the other delicacies which old-fas.h.i.+oned folks knew so well how to prepare from the pig.
Somebody has said that at our present day abatoirs they can put to some use every part of the animal but the pig's squeal; pioneer housewives were almost as economical.
When the hard work was over Mistress Harding allowed the children to invite some of the neighborhood youngsters for an evening frolic and such a gathering had not been enjoyed since the famous stump burning.
Enoch was nearly sixteen now and although Bryce was almost as tall as his elder brother, the first named was broadening out wonderfully. Few young men of Bennington under nineteen could have thrown Enoch in a match of strength, and he had really become the head of the household.
But he was still enough of a boy to enjoy the party to the full.
There was an old hovel near the house, but nearer the river bank, which their father had first erected--even before building the house itself--when he came to the ox-bow, and for years this hovel had sheltered the cattle. But the fall before he died the pioneer had erected a new and better stable and shed, quite handy to the house. The children, therefore, had long considered this hovel their own especial playhouse. At spare moments Enoch and Bryce built a stone and clay chimney and laid a good hearth in the old structure, and now they planned to have the party here, where they could do quite as they pleased.
The girls had scoured the woods for beech, hazel, and hickory nuts, and Robbie Baker came over on his horse with nigh a bushel of peeled chestnuts which his father brought him from Manchester way after the first frost. Then, there were potatoes to roast and a wild turkey which Nuck had shot two days before and hung in the smoke-house. The bird was not plucked, but after being entrailed was stuffed with chestnuts to give it a flavor and then rolled in the tub of sticky clay brought up from the creek bottom. This great ball was put in the fire early so that by supper-time it would be done to a turn. The pigs' tails had all been saved and cleaned, too, and being likewise rolled in clay were baked in the ashes.
The girls had brought flour bread and made Johnny-cake, and although there was no tablecloth, the long board table was roomy and fairly groaned under the good things heaped upon it. The ball of mud, all hard and red now and cracked like a badly burned brick, was rolled out upon the hearth and Enoch broke it with one blow of the axe. The hard sh.e.l.l fell apart and to the burned clay adhered every feather and pin-quill of the great gobbler which would not have weighed an ounce less than twenty-five pounds. And the flesh was done to a turn.
In the midst of the good time, while the fun waxed furious, the door of the hovel opened and there stood in the opening the tall, slim figure of Crow Wing. As he had come unbidden to the stump burning, so he came now unexpectedly to this frolic. The white children welcomed him boisterously, for his people had moved away from the Walloomscoik and for months he had not been seen near Bennington. But Crow Wing had evidently not come to join in the merrymaking. His face was impa.s.sive and much older in expression than it had been the year before. And in his hair was a bunch of eagle feathers which showed that, to his own people even, he was now a brave and no longer a boy.
”Umph!” he grunted, drawing the blanket draped from his shoulders more closely around him. ”Harding--me talk to you!” He looked boldly at Enoch, and the latter waving the others back, followed the Indian out of the hovel. Without speaking or looking behind him Crow Wing led the white boy to the riverside, and some distance from the hovel. There he halted and pointed suddenly across the stream in the direction of that place in the forest where Enoch had once seen the mysterious white man sitting beside the campfire.
”'Member?” asked Crow Wing, flas.h.i.+ng a keen glance at the white boy.
”The man in the woods!” exclaimed Enoch. ”You wish to tell me something about him?”
”Umph! He come again. Look out. Crow Wing tell you, because white boy strong--know how to fight. Watch 'em sharp!” and with this brief declaration the Indian youth strode away and the astonished Enoch watched him disappear in the tall brush along the creek bank. He went back to the merry party at the hovel with a heavy heart and not until after the last of the visitors had gone home--the boys swinging pine torches and giving the warwhoop to scare off any lurking wolves or catamounts--did Enoch find opportunity to tell his mother of Crow Wing's warning.
”Simon Halpen is surely coming to evict us,” he declared. ”I am sure it was he I saw in the forest last year. And now, taking advantage of our being lulled by hopes of peace, he will try to strike an unexpected blow as Colonel Reid did.”
”The neighbors will help us,” the widow said.
”But suppose he comes with a big force? And we cannot expect the neighbors to neglect their own homes,” said Enoch. ”I will try and see Captain Baker, if you think it best, mother.”