Роберт Чамберс - The Hidden Children

And Lord! But it was a doleful ballad, yet our soldiers listened, fascinated, to his squeaking voice and fiddle; and I saw the tears standing in Lois's eyes, and Lana's lips a–quiver. As for Boyd, he yawned, and I most devoutly wished us all elsewhere, yet lost no word of his distressing tale:

The old man bowed his palsied head over his fiddle, struck with his wrinkled thumb a string or two; and I saw tears falling from his almost sightless eyes.

Around him, under the giant trees, his homely audience stood silent and spellbound. Many of his hearers had seen with their own eyes horrors that compared with the infamous butchery at Schenectady almost a hundred years ago. Doubtless that was what fascinated us all.

But Boyd, on whom nothing doleful made anything except an irritable impression, drew us away, saying that it was tiresome enough to fight battles without being forced to listen to the account of 'em afterward; at which, it being true enough, I laughed. And Lois looked up winking away her tears with a quick smile. As for Lana, her face was tragic and colourless as death itself. Seeing which, Boyd said cheerfully:

"What is there in all the world to sigh about, Lanette? Death is far away and the woods are green."

"The woods are green," repeated Lana under her breath, "yet, there are many within call who shall not live to see one leaf fall."

"Why, what a very dirge you sing this sunny morning!" he protested, still laughing; and I, too, was surprised and disturbed, for never had I heard Lana Helmer speak in such a manner.

"'Twas that dreary old fiddler," he added with a shrug. "Now, God save us all, from croaking birds of every plumage, and give us to live for the golden moment."

"And for the future," said Lois.

"The devil take the future," said Boyd, his quick, careless laugh ringing out again. "Today I am lieutenant, and Loskiel, here, is ensign. Tomorrow we may be captains or corpses. But is that a reason for pulling a long face and confessing every sin?"

"Have you, then, aught to confess?" asked Lois, in pretense of surprise.

"I? Not a peccadillo, my pretty maid—not a single one. What I do, I do; and ask no leniency for the doing. Therefore, I have nothing to confess."

Lana stopped, bent low over a forest blossom, and touched her face to it. Her cheeks were burning. All about us these frail, snowy blossoms grew, and Lois gathered one here and yonder while Boyd and I threw ourselves down on a vast, deep bed of moss, under which a thread of icy water trickled.

Ahead of us, in plain view, stood one of our outer picket guards, and below in a wide and bowl–shaped hollow, running south to the river, we could see cattle moving amid the trees, and the rifle–barrel of a herd guard shining here and there.

My Indians on either flank advanced to the picket line, and squatted there, paying no heed to the challenge of the sentinels, until Boyd was obliged to go forward and satisfy the sullen Pennsylvania soldiery on duty there.

He came back in his graceful, swinging stride, chewing a twig of black–birch, his thumbs hooked in his belt, damning all Pennsylvanians for surly dogs.

I pointed out that many of them were as loyal as any man among us; and he said he meant the Quakers only, and cursed them for rascals, every one. Again I reminded him that Alsop Hunt was a Quaker; and he said that he meant not the Westchester folk, but John Penn's people, Tories, every one, who would have hired ruffians to do to the Connecticut people in Forty Fort what later was done to them by Indians and Tory rangers.

Lana protested in behalf of the Shippens in Philadelphia, but Boyd said they were all tarred with the same brush, and all were selfish and murderous, lacking only the courage to bite—yes, every Quaker in Penn's Proprietary—the Shippens, Griscoms, Pembertons, Norrises, Whartons, Baileys, Barkers, Storys—"'Every damned one o' them!" he said, "devised that scheme for the wanton and cruel massacre of the Wyoming settlers, and meant to turn it to their own pecuniary profit!"

He was more than partly right; yet, knowing many of these to be friends and kinsmen to Lana Helmer, he might have more gracefully remained silent. But Boyd had not that instinctive dread of hurting others with ill–considered facts; he blurted out all truths, whether timely or untimely, wherever and whenever it suited him.

For the Tory Quakers he mentioned I had no more respect than had he, they being neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, but a smooth, sanctimonious and treacherous lot, more calculated to work us mischief because of their superior education and financial means. Indeed, they generally remained undisturbed by the ferocious Iroquois allies of our late and gentle King; secure in their property and lives while all around them men, women, and little children fell under the dripping hatchets.

"Had I my say," remarked Boyd loudly, "I'd take a regiment and scour me out these rattlesnakes from the Proprietary, and pack 'em off to prison, bag and baggage!"

Lana had knelt, making a cup of her hand, and was drinking from the silvery thread of water at our feet. Now, as Boyd spoke, she straightened up and cast a shower of sparkling drops in his face, saying calmly that she prayed God he might have the like done for him when next he needed a cooling off.