Роберт Чамберс - The Hidden Children

And I hoped to heaven that Lois might not hear of this mischievous business and discover in it an excuse for coming as the guest of any lady at Otsego, or, in fact, make any further attempt to stir until the Right Wing marched and the batteaux took the ladies of Captain Bleecker, Ensign Lansing, and Lana, and herself to Albany.

After sundown an officer came to me and said that the entire army was ordered to march at eight that evening, excepting troops sufficient to guard our camp; that there would be no alarm sounded, and that we were to observe secrecy and silence.

Also, it appeared that a gill of rum per man had been authorized, but I refused for myself and my Indians, thinking to myself that the General might have made it less difficult for me if he had confined his indulgence to the troops.

About eight o'clock a Stockbridge Indian—the one who had been with the scout to Chemung—came to me with a note from Dominie Kirkland.

I gave him my hand, and he told me that his name was Yellow Moth, and that he was a Christian. Also, he inquired about the Mole, and I was obliged to relate the circumstances of that poor convert's murder.

"God's will," said the Yellow Moth very quietly. "You, my brother, and I may see a thousand fall, and ten thousand on our right hand, and it shall not come nigh us."

"Amen," said I, much moved by this simple fellow's tranquil faith.

I made him known to the Sagamore and to the two Oneidas, who received him with a grave sincerity which expressed very plainly their respect for a people of which the Mole had been for them a respectable example.

Like the Mole, the Yellow Moth wore no paint except a white cross limned on his breast over a clan sign indecipherable. And if, in truth, there had ever really been a totem under the white paint I do not know, for like the Algonquins, these peoples had but a loose political, social, religious, and tribal organization, which never approached the perfection of the Iroquois system in any manner or detail.

About eight o'clock came Captain Carbury, of the 11th Pennsylvania, to us, and we immediately set out, marching swiftly up the Chemung River, the Sagamore and the Yellow Moth leading, then Captain Carbury and myself, then the Oneidas.

Behind us in the dusk we saw the Light Troops falling in, who always lead the army. All marched without packs, blankets, horses, or any impedimenta. And, though the distance was not very great, so hilly, rocky, and rough was the path through the hot, dark night, and so narrow and difficult were the mountain passes, that we were often obliged to rest the men. Also there were many swamps to pass, and as the men carried the cohorn by hand, our progress was slow. Besides these difficulties and trials, a fog came up, thickening toward dawn, which added to the hazards of our march.

So the dawn came and found us still marching through the mist, and it was not until six o'clock that we of the guides heard a Seneca dog barking far ahead, and so knew that Chemung was near.

Back sped Tahoontowhee to hasten the troops; I ran forward with Captain Carbury and the Sagamore, passing several outlying huts, then some barns and houses which loomed huge as medieval castles in the fog, but were really very small.

"Look out!" cried Carbury. "There is their town right ahead!"

It lay straight ahead of us, a fine town of over a hundred houses built on both sides of the pretty river. The casements of some of these houses were glazed and the roofs shingled; smoke drifted lazily from the chimneys; and all around were great open fields of grain, maize, and hay, orchards and gardens, in which were ripening peas, beans, squashes, pumpkins, watermelons, muskmelons.

"Good God!" said I. "This is a fine place, Carbury!"

"It's like a dozen others we have laid in ashes," said he, "and like scores more that we shall treat in a like manner. Look sharp! Here some our light troops."

The light infantry of Hand arrived on a smart run—a torrent of red–faced, sweating, excited fellows, pouring headlong into the town, cheering as they ran.

General Hand, catching sight of me, signalled with his sword and shouted to know what had become of the enemy.

"They're gone off!" I shouted back. "My Indians are on their heels and we'll soon have news of their whereabouts."

Then the soldiery began smashing in doors and windows right and left, laughing and swearing, and dragging out of the houses everything they contained.

So precipitate had been the enemy's flight that they had left everything—food still cooking, all their household and personal utensils; and I saw in the road great piles of kettles, plates, knives, deerskins, beaver–pelts, bearhides, packs of furs, and bolts of striped linen, to which heaps our soldiers were adding every minute.

Others came to fire the town; and it was sad to see these humble homes puff up in a cloud of smoke and sparks, then burst into vivid flame. In the orchards our men were plying their axes or girdling the heavily–fruited trees; field after field of grain was fired, and the flames swept like tides across them.

The corn was in the milk, and what our men could not burn, using the houses for kilns, they trampled and cut with their hangers—whole regiments marching through these fields, destroying the most noble corn I ever saw, for it was so high that it topped the head of a man on horseback.

So high, also, stood the hay, and it was sad to see it burn.

And now, all around in this forest paradise, our army was gathered, destroying, raging, devastating the fairest land that I had seen in many a day. All the country was aflame; smoke rolled up, fouling the blue sky, burying woodlands, blotting out the fields and streams.

From the knoll to which I had moved to watch the progress of my scouts, I could see an entire New Jersey regiment chasing horses and cattle; another regiment piling up canoes, fish–weirs, and the hewn logs of bridges, to make a mighty fire; still other regiments trampling out the last vestige of green stuff in the pretty gardens.

Not a shot had yet been fired; there was no sound save the excited and terrifying roar of a vast armed mob obliterating in its fury the very well–springs that enabled its enemies to exist.

Cattle, sheep, horses were being driven off down the trail by which we had come; men everywhere were stuffing their empty sacks with green vegetables and household plunder; the town fairly whistled with flame, and the smoke rose in a great cloud–shape very high, and hung above us, tenting us from the sun.

In the midst of this uproar the Grey–Feather came speeding to me with news that the enemy was a little way upstream and seemed inclined to make a stand. I immediately informed the General; and soon the bugle–horns of the light infantry sounded, and away we raced ahead of them.

I remember seeing an entire company marching with muskmelons pinned on their bayonets, all laughing and excited; and I heard General Sullivan bawl at them:

"You damned unmilitary rascals, do you mean to open fire on 'em with vegetables?"

Everybody was laughing, and the General grinned as Hand's bugle–horns played us in.

But it was another matter when the Seneca rifles cracked, and a sergeant and a drummer lad of the 11th Pennsylvania fell. The smooth–bores cracked again, and four more soldiers tumbled forward sprawling, the melons on their bayonets rolling off into the bushes.

Carbury, marching forward beside me, dropped across my path; and as I stooped over him gave me a ghastly look.

"Don't let them scalp me," he said—but his own men came running and picked him up, and I ran forward with the others toward a wooded hill where puffs of smoke spotted the bushes.

Then the long, rippling volleys of Hand's men crashed out, one after another, and after a little of this their bugle–horns sounded the charge.