Part 7 (1/2)
”Do you know her?”
”By sight, yes, sir.”
”She is one of the camp followers, I take it,” said I carelessly.
”I don't know. The boys are ever plaguing her. She came from the North they say. All I know is that in April she was first seen here, loitering about the camp where the White Plains Indians were embodied.
But she did not go off with the Continentals.”
”She was loitering this afternoon by the camp of Colonel Thomas's men,”
I said.
”Very like, sir. Did the men plague her?”
”Yes.”
He bit into his apple, unconcerned:
”They are all after her. But I never saw her kind to any man--whatever she may be.”
Why, I did not know, but what he said gave me satisfaction.
”You do not know which way she went?” I asked.
”No, sir. I have been here but the half hour. She knows the Bouton boys yonder. I have seen her coming and going on this road, sometimes with an Indian----”
”With a Sagamore?”
He continued his munching. Having swallowed what he chewed, he said:
”I know nothing of savages or Sagamores. The Indian may have been a Sagamore.”
”Do you know where he is to be found?”
”No, sir, I do not.”
”Perhaps this young girl knows?”
”Doubtless she does, seeing she journeys about with him on the ridge yonder, which we call the Rock Hills.”
”Do you know her name, soldier?”
”They call her Lois, I believe.”
And that was all the news I could get of her; and I thanked the boy and slowly started to retrace my steps toward the village.
Already in the air there was something of that stillness which heralds storms; no leaves on bush and tree were now stirring; land and sky had grown sombre all around me; and the gra.s.s glimmered intensely green.
Where the road skirted the Stone Hills were no houses, nothing, in fact, of human habitation to be seen save low on the flank of the rocky rampart a ruined sugar house on the edge of a maple ridge, I do not know what made me raise my head to give it a second glance, but I did; and saw among the rocks near it a woman moving.
Nor do I know, even now, how at that distance and in the dusk of a coming storm I could perceive that it was she whom I was now seeking.