3stalwarts (25 page)

“By Jesus Christ,” he shouted in his roaring voice, “it’s plain enough. Either he’s scared, or else he’s got interest with the British. I didn’t bring my regiment this far to set and knit like girls.” He looked round with his staring eyes. “Who’s coming along?”

Fisscher cried, “I am.”

Suddenly all the officers were shouting; and the men, following their voices, filled the woods with shouts.

It seemed to Gil that nobody was looking at Herkimer but himself. He saw the old man sitting there, his face pained, his eyes worried. He saw him knock the pipe out on his hand, blow out his breath, and lift his head.

“Listen to me, you damned fools.” He used German. He was getting on his feet and yanking his coat over his arms. But his voice was enough to stop them. “Listen,” he went on in English. “You don’t know what you’re doing, you Fisscher, Cox, the bunch of you. But if you want to fight so bad, by God Almighty, I’ll take you to it.”

He climbed aboard the old white horse and sat there, looking down on them for a change.

“God knows what’s going to happen. But I’ll tell .you one thing,” he said bitterly. “The ones that have been yelling so much here will be the first to pull foot if we get jumped.”

For a moment they gaped up at him.

“Vorwaerts!” he shouted, and put the horse toward the creek. Some of them were still standing there when he splashed through and waited on the other side. Then the officers were running to their companies, yelling, “Fall in. Fall in.”

The men went scrambling through the brush to find their guns and blankets.

“March! March!” The word was in all the woods where the abandoned breakfast fires still sent up their stems of smoke among the tree trunks. Up ahead at the ford, a drummer gave the double tap of the flam. It was like the first nervous beating of a drummer partridge. It was too early for such a sound, but there it was.

Then the whips began their rapid fire along the wagon train. The cart-wheels screeched in starting. The still heat in the woods was overflowed with shouts, stamping hoofs, the rattle and slam of carts along the corduroy, the treading feet. The dust rose over the column. All at once it was jerking, getting started, moving.

At the head of the army, Cox moved his big horse beside Herkimer’s. His face was triumphant, almost good-humored once more, because he had planted his will on the column. He felt half sorry for the little German farmer. But he would help the little bugger out.

The rough road went nearly straight along the level ground of the Mo-hawk Valley’s edge, following the course of the low hill. Now and then it dipped down sharply to get over a brook. But the bottom was solidly corduroyed. The wagons didn’t get stuck. They had even moved up a little on the marching men.

Blue jays squawked and fluttered off, cool spots of angry blue against the leaves. Squirrels, chattering, raced from limb to limb. A porcupine took hold of a tree and climbed it halfway, and turned his head to see the thronging, jumbled mass that heaved and started, checked, and went again along the narrow road.

The men marched in two lines, one for either rut, their rifles on their shoulders, their hats in their hands. When they came to a brook, the thirsty fell out and drank. Nobody stopped them. When they were through they wiped their mouths and looked up, startled, to see their company replaced by another. They got out of the way of other thirsty men and floundered in the bushes to catch up. There was no room left on the road to pass.

Even George Herkimer’s company of rangers, who were supposed to act as scouts, would stop at a spring. And when they went ahead they crashed in the undergrowth like wild cattle. There was nobody to stop them. There were no tracks. The woods were dusty. Branches, whipping on hot faces, stung like salt. The heat grew. Not a breath of air in the branches anywhere, not a cloud in the bits of sky high overhead, nothing but leaves, nothing in all the woods but their own uproarious, bursting, unstemmable progress on the narrow road.

Gil, pushed on from behind, pushing on George Weaver just ahead of him, heard the birds singing in the dark swamp ahead. The ground fell steeply to a quiet flowing brook with a cool moss bottom. He felt his own step quicken with the instinct to drink and cool himself. Looking over George Weaver’s thick round shoulders, he had a glimpse of the road turning into a causeway of logs across the stream; of George Herkimer’s rangers crowding down on the crossing to make it dry-shod; of the Canajoharie regiment floundering in the swamp and drinking face down by the brook; of Cox turning his red sweaty face to Herkimer and bawling, “Where did you say Butler was?”; of the two banks, precipitous and thickly clothed with a young stand of hemlocks, so soft and cool and damp and dark that it made one wish to lie down there and rest. Now he felt the ground falling under his feet, and the resistless push at his back thrusting him out on the causeway. They had passed half of Cox’s regiment and were plug-ging up the other side. The stamp of Klock’s regiment came down the bank at their backs. Behind in the woods the jangle and rattle of the carts, steady cracking of whips, and little futile rattle-tats of Fisscher’s drummers. All in the moment: “I meant to get a drink of water,” Reall’s voice was saying at his shoulder. “So did I,” said Gil. “My God,” said Weaver, “what was that?”

At the top of the hemlocks a little stab of orange was mushroomed out by a black coil of smoke. They heard the crack. Cox’s voice, caught short in another remark, lifted beyond reason. His big body swayed suddenly against his horse’s neck. The horse reared, screamed, and, as Cox slid sack-like off his back, crashed completely over.

A shrill silver whistle sounded. Three short blasts. The young hemlocks disgorged a solid mass of fire that made a single impact on the ear. Gil felt George Weaver slam against his chest, knocking him sidewise on top of Reall. A horse screamed again and went leaping into the scrub. As he got up, Gil saw the beast fall over on his head. It was Herkimer’s old white horse, galvanized into senseless vigor. He felt his arm caught and Bellinger was shouting, “Give me a hand with the old man.” The old man was sitting on the causeway, holding onto his knee with both hands. His face was gray and shining and his lips moved in it.

But the voice was lost.

Gil stood before him with his back to the slope and stared down into the ravine. The militia were milling along the brook, flung down along the bank, like sticks thrown up by a freshet, kneeling, lying on their bellies, resting their rifles on the bellies of dead men. They were oddly silent. But the air around them was swept by the dull endless crash of muskets and a weird high swell of yelling from the woods.

Then beyond them he saw the Indians in the trees, adder-like, streaked with vermilion, and black, and white. From the head of the rise the first orderly discharge went over his head with a compelling, even shearing of the air, as if a hand had swung an enormous scythe. He saw the green coats on men firing at him; but he bent down and grasped the general by the knees and heaved him on up the bank while Bellinger lugged him by the armpits.

The colonel was swearing in a strange way. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and said, “By God, Fisscher has pulled foot!”

East of the causeway, where the rear guard had been, a dwindling tide of yells and firing fled backward into the woods. They dumped the general down behind a log and fell beside him. Gil put his rifle over the log and pulled the trigger on the first green coat that filled the sights. The butt bucked against his cheek. He yanked the rifle back and tilted his powder flask to the muzzle. He saw the man he had fired at lean forward slowly in the bushes, buckle at the hips, and thump face down. He felt his insides retract, and suddenly had a queer realization that they had just returned to their proper places; and he thought with wonder at himself, “that’s the first shot I’ve fired.”

“Peter.”

“Yes, Honnikol.”

“It looks as if the Indians was mostly chasing after Fisscher. You’d better try and fetch the boys up here.”

The little German’s voice was calm.

There was no sense at first in any of it. The opening volley had been fired at ten o’clock. For the next half hour the militia lay where they had dropped, shooting up against the bank whenever they saw a flash. Their line extended roughly along the road, beginning with the disrupted welter of the wagon train, and ending at the west, just over the rise of ground, where a mixed group of Canajoharie men, and Demooth’s company of the Ger-man Flats regiment, and what was left of Herkimer’s rangers, made a spearhead by hugging the dirt with their bellies and doing nothing to draw attention to themselves. If the Indians had stayed put or if Fisscher had not run away, the entire army would have been destroyed.

But the Indians could not resist the temptation of chasing the terrified Fisscher. More than half of them had followed his men as far as Oriskany Creek before they gave over the attempt. And a large proportion of the rest, seeing easy scalps ready for the taking, started sneaking down out of the timber. When, at last, Bellinger began to rally the men and get them up the slope, the Indians made no attempt to follow them, for they had discovered that killing horses was an intoxicating business.

The ascent of the slope was the first orderly movement of the battle. It also revealed the initial mistake of the British side. Their flanks made no connection with the Indians, and they had to retire from the edge of the ravine to the bigger timber. It gave the Americans a foothold. They pushed to right and left along the ravine and forward with their centre, until their line made a semicircle backed on the ravine.

No single company remained intact. It was impossible to give intelligent orders, or, if that had been possible, to get them carried out. The men took to trees and fired at the flashes in front of them. And this new disposition of the battle, which remained in force till nearly eleven, was the salvation of the militia. They began to see that they could hold their own. Also it was borne in on them that to go backward across the valley would be sheer destruction.

The general, by his own orders, had been carried still farther up the slope until he could sit on the level ground under a beech tree, and see out through the tall timber. His saddle had been brought up for him to sit on, and Dr. Petry sent for. While the doctor was binding up his shattered knee, Herkimer worked with his tinder box to get a light for his pipe. Then, finally established, he looked the battle over and gave his second order of the day.

“Have the boys get two behind each tree. One hold his fire and get the Indian when he comes in.”

It was an axiomatic precaution that none of the militia would have thought of for themselves. Gil, moved up behind a fallen tree, heard a crash of feet behind him, turned his head to see a blackbearded, heavy-shouldered man plunge up to him carrying an Indian spear in one hand and a musket in the other.

“You got a good place here,” said the man.

He drove the butt of the spear into the ground.

“It may come handy.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“Off an Indian.” He turned his head. “Back there. They’re scalping the dead ones. There’s one of the bastards now.”

He pushed his gun across the log and fired.

“Christ! I missed him. You’d better do the long shots, Bub. You’ve got a rifle there. I ain’t a hand at this stuff.”

Gil had found a loophole in the roots. He poked his gun through and waited for a sign. While he waited he said, “My name’s Martin.”

“Gardinier,” said the bearded man. “Captain in Fisscher’s regiment. Don’t ask me why. We didn’t have the sense to run when he did. There’s fifty of us left, but I don’t know where they are. Old Herkimer told me to get up in front. He said he wanted to see us run away next time.”

Gardinier cursed. Gil saw a shoulder, naked, and glistening with sweat, stick out on the side of a tree. He pressed the trigger, easily. The Indian yelped. They didn’t see him, but they saw the underbrush thresh madly.

“Pretty, pretty,” said Gardinier. “We ought to make a partnership. You take my musket and I’ll load for you. Jesus, you ain’t a Mason, are you?”

“No,” said Gil.

“You ought to be.” He touched Gil’s shoulder with the rifle barrel. “Here’s your rifle, Bub.”

Gil caught a spot of red over a lowlying bough. A headdress. It was a pot shot, but he let it go. The Indian whooped and the next moment he was coming in long buck jumps straight for the log. He was a thin fellow, dark-skinned like a Seneca, and stark naked except for the paint on face and chest.

Gil felt his inside tighten and rolled over to see what had become of Gardinier. But the heavy Frenchman was grinning, showing white teeth through his beard.

He had set down his musket and taken the spear. The Indian bounded high to clear the log and Gardinier braced the spear under him as he came down. The hatchet spun out of the Indian’s hand. A human surprise re-formed his painted face. The spear went in through his lower abdomen and just broke the skin between his shoulders. He screamed once. But the Frenchman lifted him, spear and all, and shoved him back over the log.

“Hell,” he said. “No sense in wasting powder.”

Gil turned back to face the woods. The Indian, with the spear still sticking out of him, was trying to crawl under some cover. The odd thing was that he wasn’t bleeding. But he kept falling down against the spear, as if his wrists had lost their strength.

“For God’s sake shoot him.”

The Frenchman stuck his head over the log.

“Jesus!” he remarked. He made no motion.

The Indian heaved himself up. He half turned toward the log. Then his mouth opened, and, as if a well had been tapped by the spear, and all the time had been necessary for the blood to find its level, it poured through the open mouth, down the painted chest, turning the front of his body wet and red.

Gil yelled, jumped up, and fired straight down into the pouring face.

The Indian jerked back and flopped, raising the needles with his hands.

Gardinier said, “You hadn’t ought to have done that. Wasting ball that way/’