3stalwarts (21 page)

“O Almighty and most merciful God, Lord Jehovah, who is also God of Battles, come to our aid, we beseech Thee, hear the prayers of Thy people, gathered here before Thee, bring them aid against the British. It surely looks like war was coming on us directly. There is activity, O God, at Crown Point, and they say General Burgoyne is bringing an army of 10,000 men, with Russians and Indians, against Ticonderoga. St. Clair is in charge there, so help him, God. And we thank Thee, O God, for sending up the Third New York to Fort Stanwix. We have faith in them, let it not be displaced. For Spencer sends us word that Butler and Guy Johnson and Daniel Claus are meeting at Oswego, and they are hard men, as we know. They aim to bring the savages. It certainly looks like war.

“O God Almighty, our own Colonel Peter Bellinger wants the fourth company to muster at Dayton tomorrow, June sixteenth. He is marching them to Canajoharie to meet up there with Herkimer, and they are going to try to see Joseph Brant, the chief of the Mohawk savages, who has been making trouble down to Unadilla. May all the militia be punctual to assemble and let them come back in time to defend this settlement if Butler comes quicker than we do expect him. O Lord, we ask only to be allowed to lead our lives here in peace and fruitful cultivation of our land.

“The muster will be at eight o’clock sharp on Monday morning.

“For Christ’s sake, Amen.”

Gilbert Martin, bowing behind the back of Mrs. McKlennar, who sat by herself in her own pew, looking stiffly elegant in her black silk dress and smelling violently of a rose scent, felt Lana’s hand come quickly into his. He did not move; he did not look at her; he felt the same surprise that the whole congregation, by their utter stillness, showed. It was the first time that the realization of the imminence of war had been brought home to them.

In the stillness, the cracking of the Reverend Mr. Rozencrantz’s knees could be distinctly heard as he got to his feet.

The militia had no uniform. Demooth’s company came nearest to it, with the red cockades they had adopted. They marched better because of them; nearly half the company were keeping step. The Massachusetts garrison of Fort Dayton, lined up in front of the palisade, gave them a cheer, the derisiveness of which was entirely lost on George Weaver. “Hup,” he said, “hup, hup, hup.”

Half the women of the valley were there to see them off, and while he watched the shrill adieus, Gil Martin felt glad that Lana had not come to say good-bye to him. He had persuaded her not to, saying that she would see him pass Mrs. McKlennar’s anyway. And Mrs. McKlennar had backed him up, with one of her snorts.

“Mush,” she had said. “I remember when Barney went off on Abercrombie’s expedition. He kissed me in bed and gave me a wallop behind and he said, ‘You stay here, Sally, old girl, and keep it warm against the time I get back.’ He couldn’t stand anything sentimental, you see.”

But when she heard the ragged tapping of the militia drums coming along the Kingsroad, she went stamping down to the fence behind Lana like an old warhorse, to wave at the officers and clap her hands like any girl.

The colonel’s mare went past, blasting air in her excitement at the drums behind her tail, while astride her Colonel Bellinger himself tried to look as if he were unconscious of her failing, as well as of Christian Reall’s bawling that it was too bad they didn’t have a trumpet for the mare to blow on.

The two women stayed by the fence, watching the familiar faces of the men, with the red flag of the regiment flapping at its head against the green river hills, and the slant of their rifles, until they saw Gil walking towards them between George Weaver and the angular Jeams MacNod. Gil looked so dark and tall between them, and his face was so set, that Lana’s throat grew tight. She was grateful for the squeeze of Mrs. McKlennar’s large hand on her arm.

“He’s a handsome man,” she said. “God save him.”

The German Flats company was five days marching down to Unadilla. At the evening of the first day they encamped at Palatine Church, above Fox’s Mills, where on the following morning a detachment of the Palatine company joined them under Colonel Jacob Klock. The two companies together, nearly two hundred men, continued east, and reached the rendezvous at Canajoharie at noon. There they pitched camp again, between the Canajoharie company and a company of regulars from the First New York Line sent up from Albany under Colonel Van Schaick. The presence of the regular troops in their uniform blue campaign coats was inspiriting, particularly on the following morning when the drums beat them to parade. The regular troops had three-foot deep drums with a resonance beyond compare, finer than the militia drums. All that day, the militia marched south from the Mohawk behind the drums. Again and again they found themselves keeping step as they went up through the hills.

But at Cherry Valley, Colonel Van Schaick halted his men and announced to General Herkimer that he could go no farther as he had to wait for his provisions. However, he would be ready to back up the general if the Indians got out of hand.

Herkimer, on his old white horse, sat moodily staring away from the colonel towards the palisade that enclosed the Campbell farm and made the only fort for the protection of the settlement. He listened without comment, his black eyes staring on the landscape, the green field set in a saucer of the hills. Since winter a foreboding sense of gloom had come over the little German, and now it seemed to him it was fulfilled.

He touched the cocked brim of his hat to the army colonel and swung the old horse to the road. Waiting for him, Colonel John Harper stood at the head of a small company of rangers, and the sight of him and his men seemed to brighten Herkimer. He asked him whether Brant were still at Oghkwaga, and when Harper nodded asked him if his company, knowing the land, would act as scouts. Harper agreed. Herkimer gave the word.

The militia started forward like the disjointed parts of a snake. Twenty minutes later, the head of the little army of three hundred men was past the settlement on the path to Otsego Lake. In half an hour they had all disappeared into the woods.

On the twentieth they pitched camp on the south shore of the Susquehanna, three miles below its junction with the Unadilla. A runner was sent out that afternoon to Oghkwaga to announce to Brant that Herkimer was waiting to see him and talk as neighbor to neighbor.

The militia had no tents, except the general’s. They peeled hemlocks and laid the bark on poles, facing the north, for the weather was hot. The next morning, under orders, they set up a bark shed, fifty feet long, on a knoll a quarter of a mile below, in an irregular growth of apple trees, some of which were still in bloom.

During the course of the morning the runner returned from Oghkwaga and went at once to Herkimer’s tent. The general was sitting alone in his shirt sleeves, a field desk on his knees and a quill pen in his fist. He never felt like writing, and writing this way made it pretty near impossible.

Joe Boleo sat down.

“I seen him.”

“Will he come talk with me?”

“Oh, sure, in a few days, he says.”

“Did you get a look around, hey?”

“Not much last night. But I looked around pretty good this morning. He ain’t got so many Injuns there.”

They looked at each other.

“Honnikol,” said Joe Boleo earnestly, “you want to tie up this twerp, don’t you?”

“Yes. But if I go after him now and don’t catch him it’s an act of war.”

“He ain’t got two hundred with him.”

“Yes, but Congress still thinks they’re going to get the Indians on their side. A bunch of them went down last year and called John Hancock a great tree, or something.”

“Is that all they called him?” asked Joe Boleo. “My God, they missed their chance.”

“Yes, I’m to get Brant to agree to keep neutral. But, by God, I’d like to shut him up somewhere.”

“Why don’t you grab him when he comes over?”

The militia lay around for seven steaming days and didn’t do a thing. Then, on the morning of the twenty-seventh, the scouts fell in towards camp with the news that Brant was coming up four miles below. At noon an Indian walked into camp and asked for General Herkimer.

He stood like a post under his blanket, his small dark eyes flickering here and there over the camp. General Herkimer emerged from his tent, pulling on his coat as he came.

The Indian asked, “What do you want to talk to Brant about?” in English as good as Herkimer’s.

“I want to talk with him as an old neighbor.”

“That’s fine,” said the Indian. “I tell him all these men be his old neighbors too?”

He did not look amused, but Herkimer grinned.

“Yes, tell him that.”

The Indian turned. In half an hour he was back suggesting that the already erected shed would do as a meeting place if Herkimer came with fifty unarmed men, which Brant also agreed to do on his part. The shed was out of shot from the surrounding woods, and the bare approach to it was a guarantee against any treachery.

A little after noon, Herkimer walked up the hill and sat down in the shade of the shed roof. He took with him Colonels Cox, Harper, Klock, and Bellinger, and each colonel brought a squad from his own company. Gil was in Bellinger’s squad.

They sat around on the benches for ten minutes before Brant appeared at the edge of the woods.

It was the first time Gil had ever seen the man whose name since winter had come to be on everybody’s tongue. He was under six feet, but he walked like a taller man. His clothes were made in the Indian fashion, but, except for the deerskin moccasins, they were made of English cloth, and instead of the traditional headdress he wore a cocked black hat bediz-ened with gold lace. His blanket was a vivid blue, turned back from the shoulders to show the scarlet lining.

Behind him his companions were dressed like shabby replicas. There were five of them, in front of the warriors. A white man in deerskins, whom Brant introduced as Captain Bull, and who smirked a little as he bowed; a half-breed Indian who turned out to be Sir William Johnson’s bastard son by Brant’s sister, a dark-skinned fellow with an Irish face; a Mohawk chief whose name Gil didn’t catch; and a half-breed, negro-Indian, whom Brant didn’t bother about.

Brant smiled a little as he looked down at Herkimer and shook him by the hand. His features were straight, well shaped, and full of animation. He kept looking round on the militia as if to see what their reactions were.

But their reactions to himself, not to the situation. It took but one look at him to see that he was vain.

Though he was pure-bred Mohawk, Joseph Brant could easily have been mistaken for a white man, and he talked more educated English than old Herkimer could have mastered had he been thrice reborn and three times sent to college. He had a great dignity of behavior, too, that made the militia look like simple men; but it was not the natural dignity of a plain Indian. It had the manners of a white man who has been to a royal court. It was filled with pride, which even so meaching-minded a man as Christian Reall could see was an unnatural thing.

Joe Boleo, watching his back, grunted to George Weaver, “Brant used to be a nice lad, too. But now he wants the world to know he’s a nice man.”

Joe Boleo had put his finger on Brant’s weakness. He wanted to be admired, by both Indians and whites, gentlemen and farmers. He wanted to be a great man, by both standards, with whatever person he was at the moment engaged. It was an attitude that later would account for his irrational kindnesses and friendships, as well as his cruelties and hates. The mistake he always made was his utter inability to understand that forthright people like Boleo or Herkimer or Gil could see straight through him. Vainer people, he enraged.

Brant’s complaints had been that the Mohawks who had stayed at the Indian town in friendliness to the colonies were held as virtual prisoners, together with their minister, Mr. Stuart; that Butler’s wife and children were kept as hostages, and that forts were being erected on Indian property.

Herkimer had asked if the Indians would remain neutral if these complaints were met, to which Brant replied that the Six Nations had always been allied with the King of England, that they still were. Beyond that he could not go. Herkimer then asked him whether he would talk again tomorrow, and Brant agreed. But as he turned to go, he said quietly, “I’ve got five hundred men. If you start trouble, they’ll be ready.”

That night Herkimer talked with Joe Boleo and another man named Wagner, and George and Abraham Herkimer. “It’s no use at all,” he said. “Brant’s made his mind up. And there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it. He’s got five hundred men, and if he wants he can wipe us out.”

“I could draw a bead on him,” Joe Boleo suggested.

Herkimer shook his head.

“Shucks,” said Joe. “We can lick them Indians. If we get Brant the rest of them will run like rabbits.”

“I can’t take the chance. I’ve got to get these men back to the Mohawk. We’re going to need them all.”

His nephew George said, “What if he starts trouble tomorrow?”

“That’s what I want to see you about. If he does you’re to shoot him. You can lay behind the top of the hill. They won’t see you if you go before sunrise. Lay in those ferns. But don’t you start anything.”

Nothing happened on the next day. Brant greeted Herkimer blandly with the announcement that the Indians under no circumstances would break their allegiance to the King. Herkimer shrugged.

“All right, Joseph,” he said. “There’s no sense in talking any more.”

That was all there was to it. Three hundred men had marched southward ninety miles; they would march ninety miles back.

“No sense,” Brant agreed. “It was nice to have the visit.” The sarcasm was barely veiled. “Seeing you’re old neighbors, all of you, we’ll let you go home. And we won’t bother this country now. As a matter of fact, I’ve got to go to Oswego to meet Colonel Butler.”

Herkimer nodded, stood up, shook hands, and watched Brant calmly walking down the knoll towards the woods with his fifty men behind him. As if he had half a mind to signal to Joe Boleo and Wagner, he kept his hands clenched in his trousers’ pockets. He did not move until the last In-dian had stepped into the underbrush.