3stalwarts (12 page)

“I don’t know him.”

“He’s honestly patriotic. To me patriotism doesn’t mean a great deal. So are the Butlers, you see. I wish they weren’t.”

Slapping his boot, he walked over to the window. He saw a hundred yards of worked ground, a split rail fence, then the rising waves of treetops, all the way up the Hazenclever hill to the sky line. No break, but the running water, all the way to Canada. The split rail fence was a frail dam against the wilderness.

He turned so that his face was in shadow against the clean panes. “I tried to get John Wolff off. The best I could do was to get a stay of one week. Dr. Petry went down to see Colonel Herkimer. He was willing to back the petition in confidence, but he could not put his name to it. It’s essential that we get him appointed general of our militia because he’s the only man that could pull the valley together in war. Otherwise it would be easy to get Wolff off.”

Lana said “Yes,” but her righteous anger was aroused. Now Wolff would die because a man wished to become a general. She raised hot eyes to the captain, and she was surprised to see him smile.

“Mrs. Martin,” he said, “believe me, Herkimer doesn’t like this. We advised him to keep out of it. We had to. But Petry will have to get other names and he’s blistering mad about it. I was trying to keep him calm enough to write to Schuyler. We’ll get John Wolff off, though. I promise.” He paused. “And I understand your feeling, and I think you’re dead right.”

Lana could not think of anything to say.

He turned to Mrs. Demooth.

“Sara, don’t you thing we might have a glass of sack?”

“Yes, of course. Mrs. Martin ought to have something against the walk home.” Mrs. Demooth’s voice was smoothly acid. But she left the room. The captain said quietly, “You’ll understand, Mrs. Martin, that I think John Wolff has been working against us. That he was a dangerous man to have around?”

“I know,” she said. “I guess so. But what’s going to happen to him, sir?”

“Well, if he does get off, he’ll have to go to jail anyway. A lot of people have already been sent for less offense than his.”

“Where will they send him?”

“Simsbury, I suppose. The mines.” He let the matter drop. Lana understood that she was supposed to do the same. She took the slender stemmed glass and drank the sack without tasting it.

Dr. William Petry was boiling with rage. He marched through the front door and out on the verandah that faced the river. He stopped there, thinking of some of the things he might have said to Nicholas Herkimer. It would be beneath his dignity to go back and stick his head inside the door like a fishwife; but if he waited a moment or two Nicholas Herkimer might come out to see why. Then he would tell him.

The Herkimer place was the finest farm west of Johnstown. A lot of people thought that the high brick house, painted a bright red, was as impressive to look at as Sir William Johnson’s fancy hall. Certainly the wheat and corn were as good as any you could see in the valley; and the herd of mares in the willow pasture along the river bank were the kind that most men only dreamed of.

The mere sight of them served to enrage the doctor more. When Herkimer obliged him by coming out and saying, “Well, Bill,” Dr. Petry started swearing, without even turning his head.

“Now, Bill,” said Herkimer.

But the doctor had remembered something.

“I forgot you don’t speak English decent,” he said, and repeated his remarks in German. His translation was free, fluent, and forceful. German was a good language to curse in.

They stood in the sunlight— the doctor at the edge of the steps, red-faced, twitching his black eyebrows, standing very erect in his rusty black coat, and fixing with his eye the astonished little black negro who was holding the old gray saddle horse. Behind him Nicholas Herkimer came barely to his shoulder blades. He had round shoulders and a big head with an unkempt mop of grizzled hair. His eyes were coal black, passionate, and very sharp. But just now, like the long upper lip of his loose mouth, they showed amusement. He looked more like a farmhand than the owner of this opulent farm.

As the doctor caught breath, he said quietly in his heavy accent, “All right, Bill. If you say so. But it don’t make any difference. I won’t do it. You can get Wolff off all right; but I can’t. If I make a move for Wolff there is a lot of people who will say I’m interested in the other side— with my brother in Canada.”

“You don’t have to give a damn,” exploded the doctor.

“No I don’t,” Herkimer said. He flushed slowly. “But I’ve got to listen. There’s nobody else could get our own militia out. You know that.”

But the doctor, whose passion was still up, refused to see sense.

“All right, general,” he said. “Go your own way. Be a general if you like. If you want to hang a man to be one. But if you get hurt with your damn war, don’t come to me to get your arm fixed.” He snorted. “By God, though, I’d like to do one operation on you.”

He stamped down the steps, snatched the old horse’s reins from the hand of the negro, and humped himself goutily up into the saddle.

“Bill,” called Herkimer, “you write to General Schuyler.”

“I’ll do what I like,” roared the doctor. He kicked the old horse’s side and headed him for the river. Herkimer sat down on the steps. He grinned a little. Bill Petry had forgotten that you had to ferry over the river there. He waited until the doctor had turned back from the bank.

“Hello, Bill,” he said. “What is it?”

The doctor cursed.

Herkimer turned to the negro.

“Trip,” he said, “take the doctor over.”

“Yassah, Cunnel,” said the negro, and rushed to the scow.

Herkimer got up and went into his house.

“Frailty,” he shouted. “Bring some beer in the blue mug.”

He went into his office and sat down at his desk. A slim negress, with high shoulder bones showing through her print dress, brought in the beer. Then his wife entered.

“Hon,” she said quietly, using his old name, “there’s another Indian out there.”

“Bring him in.”

His wife ushered in a young Indian buck. He was without blanket or shirt. Sweat made beads on his greased, yellowish-brown hide. His kilt twitched over his knees to his deep breathing. He handed Herkimer a letter tied to a stick.

Herkimer opened it.

The Reverend Mr. Kirkland was writing from the Oneida town. He had had word from Spencer that a party had set out from Oswego towards the east. They had not touched Oneida Lake, therefore they must be going through the woods to the north.

The little man’s big head nodded. Hazenclever’s and the upper part of the West Canada Kill should be watched. Up above Schell’s blockhouse. He forgot about Bill and John Wolff.

“Frailty,” he shouted. She came in on her broad feet.

“The men are busy,” Herkimer said, over his shoulder, as he wrote in his crabbed laborious way: “Tell George to send oud ten men nord of Schell’s to find a party of eight peeble. Pass the word to Demuth to look out at Deerfield also.”

He said to the negress, “You can run pretty fast?”

“Yassah, pretty good, Cunnel.”

“You run like the devil to Mr. Dygert’s and give him this.”

“Yassah, Cunnel.”

He looked at her sharply.

“Frailty, you feeling all right?”

“Yassah, Cunnel. Good enough.”

“Has Mrs. Herkimer spoke to you?”

“Yassah. She say I can have de baby in de house again dis time ef’n I pass my promise not to have no more on her.”

“Whose is it this time?”

“I guess hit’s from dat Hans of Mr. Grebb’s, Cunnel. He de pesteringest nigger. I jus’ couldn’ think of no other way to get rid of him. Dat’s de truth, Cunnel.”

“You run,” he said.

As she went out, his eyes came back to the Indian, who had been standing immovably through this conversation, with his brown eyes seeing everything, but showing nothing.

“Come on,” said Herkimer, “I’ll get you one drink.”

The Indian nodded intelligently.

Dr. Petry had been framing in his mind the letter he was going to write to General Schuyler. But at the turn-off he recollected that Mrs. Small was expecting and that he had promised to attend her. He thought he would look in and see how she was coming on with it.

He stopped off at the blockhouse the settlement was erecting, and found that the stockade had been completed. Jacob Small was not there, but one of the Helmer boys was putting the spy loft roof on. He called down, “Yes, Doc, Cap’n got word from his house to go down there. He ain’t come out since. I know. I can see pretty near everything in the country from up here.”

The doctor grunted. He could foretell what he would find. The woman, after going through ten years of married life as barren as a bedpost, had now started labor two weeks ahead of time. She was thirty-one years old and Jake was sixty-five, and he had told the red-haired hussy at the time that she had no business marrying a man that old. He didn’t like this way of men of fifty taking girls to bed. Better look around for a widow their own age. It irritated him; and the girl had laughed in his face.

She was a sharp-spoken girl, officious, pushing, pert, and he had a feeling she must have known he might drop in and have planned the labor just to catch him when he had other things to do. It would take a long time. She was built like a trout, with no pelvic bone worth the name, and she was old enough anyway to have a bad time. The business was going to be hell for everybody, and especially for her. Well, it might be a good experience for her to go through. A good lesson.

That thought eased him as he swung himself grumpily off the horse and took the saddlebags off his withers. He knocked on the door and found himself effusively welcomed by Captain Small.

“By God, Doc, the Lord must have brought you. I sent Joe Casler after you two hours ago. How’d you get here so soon?”

Doc explained. “How long’s Betsey been at it?”

“Commenced just after breakfast. She let herself go at some griddle cakes and they seemed to settle right down in her.”

“Five hours,” grunted the doctor. “Where’d you bed her?”

“She’s back in the bedroom. We didn’t have time to carry the bed in here. Jake, she says, Jake, just let me get right down on a bed. And don’t you touch me, Jake. My God, Doc, it’s a hell of a thing for a man my age to come up against.”

“Pains bad?”

“Terrible. You ought to hear the way she takes on.”

“She always made a lot of noise,” said the doctor. “She’s a fresh girl. You needn’t act like a run sheep, Jake. I bet you hurt your Ma just as bad. That’s the only sensible way to look at it.”

“You think so, Doc? Crimus, once or twice I felt like laying down dead myself.”

“Have a drink. Got anything in the house?”

“I got some distilled apple juice.”

“Get some, but bring it to me first. Who’s with her?”

“She wouldn’t let me send for anybody. Said she didn’t want them muss-ing up her house.”

The doctor glanced round the immaculate kitchen, with its shining brass pans and the copper kettle and the dishes in the dresser. Somehow it made him think of Betsey herself, pert, and spicy. She’d told him off before. Now she’d have to eat pie. People never thought of that when they spoke their piece to the doctor.

“You go and get in a woman.”

“There ain’t nobody handy but Mrs. Helmer. Betsey can’t stand her.”

“Good,” said the doctor. “She’s just the person. Fetch her right off. But bring me that apple juice first.”

He walked into the bedroom with a heavy tread. It was a nice bedroom, with a good, solid, four-post bed. The white curtains drawn over the window moved gently with a stir of air and took the curse off the smell of pigs from the yard out back. The floor had a crocheted round rug on it and there was a good chest under the window.

“Well,” said the doctor, “you’re damn well married at last, ain’t you, Betsey?”

He carried along a stool with his foot and sat down beside the bed. The woman lying on the bleached sheet seemed younger than her age. Her wav-ing red hair was a tangled wet mop on the pillow. The pins had fallen out and lay all over the bed. Her face was thin, quite white, especially about the mouth. The eyes staring at him were blue and looked feverish. Her body under the rumpled coverlet was shaped like a sixteen-year-old’s.

She didn’t answer. She was holding onto the coverlet with clenched, thin, and slightly freckled fists, and the doctor said nothing as he watched the progress of a pain. But he pulled out his watch and laid it on the bed and then put his hands in hers and let her have something to clinch on.

When the pain was over, she raised her eyes to his and drew a tremendous long breath.

“Hello, Doc,” she said. “You’ve been a long time getting here.”

“So have you, Betsey.”

Her lips drew back over her teeth. They were uneven, but strong and white. They and her natural smile were, for him, her saving grace.

“Where you been?” she asked.

He told her. “And now you’ve got to start this when I’m trying to get John Wolff out of trouble. You always were a contrary devil of a girl.”

She closed her eyes and said, “God damn,” under her breath, and the doctor glanced at his watch. The husband came in carrying a jug and two glasses. He poured one sloppily for the doctor and set it down. “I just can’t drink, Doc,” he said. “I got to run.”

He bolted out of the house after Mrs. Helmer.

“Where’s Jake gone?”

“After Mrs. Helmer.”

“I don’t want her.”

“I’ve got to have a woman. Jake’s no good. And you’re down now, and you can’t do anything. Nobody can help you but the Lord, unless it’s me. You’ll just have to lay down and take what’s coming. See?”

“Damn you, Doc,” she said. She grinned. “It’s a hell of a business.”

“Swearing won’t help,” the doctor said with gravity.

She laughed in his face, and he felt better.

“I’m going to take your clothes off,” he said.

“Why can’t you wait for Mrs. Helmer?”

“You’ll feel better. And I’ll have to take a look at you anyway.”

“All right,” she said.

She sighed, after he had undressed her and tightened the sheet. He went out into the kitchen, built up the fire, and put on a couple of kettles. When he came back, he sat down beside her.