3stalwarts (19 page)

3

ORISKANY (1777)

To the west of Deerfield, where the Mohawk River made the great bend from north to east, the wooden ramparts of Fort Stanwix, striped with new palisades to patch the old, rose on their embankment above the swampy, snow-filled clearing. Beyond the cleared land the woods looked contracted in the frosty air. Sentries on the walks looked out at them through clouds of their own breathing, lethargically, for there was nothing, as there had been nothing since November, for them to see. Not even the river, which ran under ice; no movement about the two small deserted farms lying under the protection of the fort. Nothing at all but the snowshoe tracks of the five Oneida Indians who that morning had approached the glacis from the west and been admitted through the sally port.

Now they were in the commandant’s quarters, a low frame building, of the shape of a cattle shed, set against the north wall. The smoke from the end chimney rose in a blue, thin, transparent tape against the gray sky.

The commandant’s office was also the officers’ messroom, walled with hand-hewn boards, furnished with tables of milled plank, and heavy chairs, the product of the garrison. There was not one in which a man could be comfortable. At the end of the big table, Colonel Elmore, of the New York line, sat in his shirt sleeves, his back to the roaring fire, with his coat hung ever his chair. Down the table before him four of the Indians huddled in their blankets, sweating, putting their odor in the room, staring with eyes that missed nothing while they seemed to be unseeing. The fifth Indian stood at the end of the table opposite the commandant.

This Indian was an old man, but his bearing was like a young brave’s. His thin, tan, hawk-featured face was turned steadily toward Colonel El-more. He spoke in a slow deep voice that rose and fell rhythmically, while one of the officers of the garrison, at another table, scratched down his own translation with a squeaky goose quill.

“We are sent here by the Oneidas in conjunction with the Onondagas. They arrived at our village yesterday. They gave us the melancholy news that the grand council fire at Onondaga has been extinguished. …” His voice was raised for a moment. “However, we are determined to use our feeble endeavors to support peace through the confederate nations. But let this be kept in mind, that the council fire is extinguished. Brother, attend: It is of importance to our well-being that this be immediately told to General Schuyler. In order to effect this, we deposit this belt with Tekey-anedonhotte, Colonel Elmore, commander at Fort Stanwix, who is sent here by General Schuyler to transact all matters relative to peace. We therefore request him to forward this intelligence in the first place to General Herkimer… . Brother, attend: let the belt be forwarded to General Schuyler, that he may know that our council fire is extinguished, and can no longer burn. …”

Joe Boleo, the news runner, was a thin man whose joints seemed always on the point of coming loose. He used snowshoes of the Algonquin shape, with spurs at the back, that left prints in the snow like the hind finger of a heron’s foot. He went out from the fort while the Indians were still working their jaws on the salt pork Colonel Elmore had served them. He did not take the road along the south bank. He followed the river, where the snow was packed hard on the ice by the wind.

At noon the old Indian, Blue Back, sticking his nose outside the door of his bark shanty at the mouth of the Oriskany, saw the runner and looked long at the bent lank figure, shuffling past beneath the big coonskin cap, at a steady four miles an hour.

“By damn it,” he said to his wife. “Joe Boleo’s in a hurry.”

“Why don’t you holler for him to come in?” she said, gathering spit to work into the doeskin.

“It’s too cold to holler,” Blue Back said, shutting the door. “Besides, he always knows if there’s any rum.”

“We haven’t got any,” she said.

Blue Back sat down and put his hand on his stomach.

“No,” he admitted, “but when I smelled Joe Boleo I’d want some myself.”

He lay back on the bed and looked from the peacock’s feather over his head to his young wife. She was growing a belly. The sight of it filled Blue Back with conflicting emotions. It was gratifying at his age to be able to show the tribe a legitimate offspring; but at his age, too, it was going to be hard work hunting for three people.

Joe Boleo had seen the group of Indian shanties and his squirrel-like, round, small black eyes had noticed the closing chink in Blue Back’s door.

“God damn,” he thought, “that old timber beast has got some likker and he’s afraid I might turn round and visit with it.”

He glanced up two hours later to see what was left of Martin’s cabin at Deerfield. A corner of the log wall, charred away in sloping angles, thrust broken black teeth through the snow. The sight meant nothing to Joe. If anything it made him feel pleased to think that the settlers for a few years would be held back from the trapping country.

Joe Boleo hadn’t many convictions in life, beyond the fact that he was the best shot in the Mohawk Valley; that women couldn’t get along without him— not in their right minds, they couldn’t; and that if rum wasn’t a very good substitute for whiskey, whiskey was a first-rate substitute for rum. He was also annoyed at the British efforts for regulating the Indian trade and price of peltry. If it hadn’t been for that he might as well have tailed along to Canada with the Johnsons. But if you couldn’t cheat an Indian, who in the name of God could you cheat in this Godforsaken country?

Men were coming in from barns and cattle sheds when he passed Schuyler Settlement, and the setting sun drew Joe’s shadow long before him on the crust. It put a spark of red on the lip of the alarm bell in Little Stone Arabia Stockade. The farmers were hurrying so that the milk would not freeze in the pails. Farming, Joe considered, was a hell of a life. You milked and milked at a cow for half a year, and just about as soon as you got her dry, the animal would get herself a fresh supply. But when he saw the warm vapor left in the evening air by the closing doors, it seemed to him there were advantages. A farmer in winter could sit at home and order his womenfolks around, while a scout might have to be running thirty miles to tell General Herkimer that a fire in an Indian lodge had gone out.

Joe wondered whether that had been an accident, or whether the old women watching it had gone to sleep, or whether the God-damn thing had been put out a-purpose. The Indians said the fire had been lit in the early life of mankind, and the Iroquois had kept it alive ever since. Even when they moved they had carried it around with them in a stone pot.

An hour after black dark he slogged his way up to Fort Dayton, handed in the news, and asked for a sleigh to take him down to the falls. The commandant got him the sleigh and a driver and packed him off with a pan of rum in his inside and called in the members of the Committee, Demooth, and Petry, and Peter Tygert, and gave them the news in front of the fire in his own quarters.

Their faces animated, even at the bad news, for having a new thing to talk about. The commandant said, “I’m from Massachusetts, but maybe I’m wooden-headed. What difference does it make?”

Demooth answered him soberly.

“It means that the Six Nations can’t act together any more without the fire to confer around. That means that the Senecas and the Mohawks and the Cayugas and anyone else are free agents. While the fire was lit, no single tribe could go to war unless the other five were in agreement.”

Herkimer, who had been appointed Brigadier General of the Tryon County militia in September, wrote a letter in his crabbed English to Schuyler and then had Eisenlord the clerk translate it and transcribe it while he and Joe Boleo did a little sober drinking.

Herkimer wanted Joe’s opinions.

The scout, sprawling at the table in the white-paneled room whose windows looked out on the river and towards the falls, rinsed the liquor slowly round what teeth he still had claim to.

“If you want to know what I think,” he said, “it just ain’t safe hanging onto Stanwix. The wall’s rotten. They’ve spiked in enough pickets to keep the others from falling down. If a man’s got a cold he dassn’t do sentry work there, for fear he’ll sneeze and level the whole shebang. Poor old Dayton done a lot of complaining, but that ain’t never stopped a leaky roof so far’s I know.”

Herkimer said he hadn’t seen the fort.

“You needn’t,” said Joe. “Because I’m telling you about it. It would take a regiment four months to fix that place. And it don’t do nobody any good way up there. It might have been a pertection for John Roof while he was living there, but he’s come down here to your farm, since Deerfield got burnt. If the British was to come that way they could march right round with their pants off.”

Herkimer said, “Maybe they won’t think of that. Not if they send an army officer. An army officer has got to keep his line of communications open.”

“My God!” exclaimed Joe. “What’s that?”

“Well, he don’t want anybody cutting in on his back trail.”

Joe scratched his head.

“Oh, you mean he wants to know which way he’s going when he has to run home. I thought it was a bowel complaint. But you could cut off his communications if you had a decent garrison at Dayton and Herkimer. They’re a whole lot better forts, and they’re handy for us to get to if we have to help them out. Take Stanwix, now: it’s way the hell off from no-body’s business. It stands to reason that it ain’t sense making two armies in a war walk a long ways just to kill each other. Somebody ought to have some comfort.”

Herkimer was looking older than his fifty years. It wasn’t the liquor. His face was grim; the firelight showed it cut all in angles, the big nose, the heated black eyes, the long lips closed.

“I guess our militia ought to have one good fight in them, anyways. Verdammt! If they get in deep enough.” He looked at Joe. “Have you heard from Joseph Brant? Any news anywhere?”

“We ain’t had any word of him,” Joe Boleo said. “What’s on your mind, Honnikol?” He gave Herkimer his old name, the one he had had when they went hunting together as boys, before Herkimer got to be a successful man, a landholder, second only in wealth to Johnson. It was queer how the young lads diverged as they grew up, he thought— look at Honnikol, a brigadier general; and look at Joe Boleo, a plain scout. Just the same, Joe bet he could outshoot Honnikol nine times out of ten at a hundred yards.

2. Mrs. McKlennar

“Listen, Gil,” said Captain Demooth, “you’re a fool even to think of going back to Deerfield. You’ve seen George Weaver, haven’t you? And Reall?”

“Yes.”

“They aren’t going, are they?”

“No.”

“Well, I’m not. I’m going to stay down here until it’s over. Even if we all went up we wouldn’t have a chance when they turn the Indians loose.”

“Do you think they will?”

“Everything goes to show so. Schuyler believes it. Herkimer believes it. You’d be as good as murdering your wife to take her up there. If you’ve got to go, leave her down here.”

“I can’t afford that, Mr. Demooth.” Gil stood beside the table, touching it with his hands. He wanted to lean on something, but he didn’t know whether it would look polite. His face had thinned during the winter. The lines beside his mouth had deepened, and under his eyes. His eyes had a misery in them. “When I think about my land,” he said. “All the work I put in it. Burning off the new piece. And letting it just go back to woods.”

“I know,” said the captain. “I feel like that. But look here, Gil, the militia’s bound to be turned out. You’ll have to come. You’ll have to bring Lana down with you then.”

“Oh, damn the militia!”

“That don’t do you any good.”

“I’ve got to live. I’d made a good start. We were real happy up there. There’s no land for me to work around here, and there’s no real work for me on your place, you know that.”

“Well, now look here, Gil.” The captain crossed his legs and tapped the table with his fingers. “I don’t suppose it’s any good if that’s how you feel, but I’d been thinking about you. I just heard that Mrs. McKlennar’s man has left her. No doubt he’s run off to Canada. Ever since they started rounding up the disaffected people down the valley, others have been leaving here.” Gil knew about that. The Albany Committee had taken charge of four hundred wives and children of departed Tories. The idea was to hold them as a kind of hostage. “Mrs. McKlennar asked me about a man to work her place. I said I’d speak to you.”

Gil frowned. “I don’t want to work for a woman.”

“Think it over. She’s a decent woman, and she’s able to do well in the world, Gil. She’s got a temper, but that’s because she’s Irish. And listen, things have changed. There’s going to be real war. Now Carleton has driven Arnold off the Champlain Lake, the British are bound to make a try for this country. There’s already action starting at Oswego. Spencer writes that Butler’s moving out of Niagara in May. They’ll surely bring an army down this way, and if they do, Deerfield’s right in the track of it. Now if you take a job with Mrs. McKlennar for a year or two, you’ll know your wife’s handy to a decent fort. Eldridge Blockhouse is close by, and she could also get to Herkimer or Dayton, if you were off on militia duty. It’s a small farm, but it’s good.”

“I don’t want to work for a woman,” Gil repeated.

The captain was exasperated.

“It won’t hurt you to go and talk to her, will it?”

He spoke so sharply that Gil looked at him.

“No,” he said slowly.

That was what Lana said to him after he had told her about the captain’s suggestion. Her face was sweet and comforting. Even though it was subdued, though her mouth had a downward bend, he could rely on her eyes, the honesty in them. The winter had been like a nightmare to Gil; it must have been to her; he thought it was time they moved out of this shack, and there was nowhere else to go, if they did not go back to her family. He didn’t want to use that argument even to himself, but she helped him by reminding him.

“We won’t have to go back to Fox’s Mills,” she said. “If we like the place we can stay, and maybe we can save up for what we’ll need when we go back to Deerfield.”