The Hidden Children by Robert W. Chambers (books to improve english .TXT) 📗

behind a tree, laughing and laying her finger across her lips, but extending her other hand to me.

And there was Lana, too, paler it seemed to me than ever, yet sweet and simple in her greeting.

"The ladies desire to see our cattle," said Boyd, "The herd-guard is doubled, our pickets trebled, and the rounds pass every half hour. So it is safe enough, I think."

"Yet, scarce the country for a picnic," I said, looking uneasily at Lois.

"Oh, Broad-brim, Broad-brim!" quoth she. "Is there any spice in life to compare to a little dash o' danger?"

Whereat I smiled at her heartily, and said to Boyd:

"We pass not outside our lines, of course."

"Oh, no!" he answered carelessly. Which left me still reluctant and unconvinced. But he walked forward with Lana through the open forest, and I followed beside Lois; and, without any signal from me my Indians quietly glided out ahead, silently extending as flankers on either side.

"Do you notice what they are about?" said I sourly. "Even here within whisper of the fort?"

"Are you not happy to see me, Euan?" she cooed close to my ear.

"Not here; inside that log curtain yonder."

"But there is a dragon yonder," she whispered, with mischief adorable in her sparkling eyes; then slipped hastily beyond my reach, saying: "Oh, Euan! Forget not our vows, but let our conduct remain seemly still, else I return."

I had no choice, for we were now passing our inner pickets, where a line of bush-huts, widely set, circled the main camp. There were some few people wandering along this line—officers, servants, boatmen, soldiers off duty, one or two women.

Just within the lines there was a group of people from which a fiddle sounded; and I saw Boyd and Lana turn thither; and we followed them.

Coming up to see who was making such scare-crow music, Lana said in a low voice to us:

"It's an old, old man—more than a hundred years old, he tells us—who has lived on the Ouleout undisturbed among the Indians until yesterday, when we burnt the village. And now he has come to us for food and protection. Is it not pitiful?"

I had a hard dollar in my pouch, and went to him and offered it. Boyd had Continental money, and gave him a handful.

He was not very feeble, this ancient creature, yet, except among Indians who live sometimes for more than a hundred years, I think I never before saw such an aged visage, all cracked into a thousand wrinkles, and his little, bluish eyes peering out at us through a sort of film.

To smile, he displayed his shrivelled gums, then picked up his fiddle with an agility somewhat surprising, and drew the bow harshly, saying in his cracked voice that he would, to oblige us, sing for us a ballad made in 1690; and that he himself had ridden in the company of horse therein described, being at that time thirteen years of age.

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:

"God prosper long our King and Queen,
     Our lives and safeties all;
A sad misfortune once there did
     Schenectady befall.

"From forth the woods of Canady
     The Frenchmen tooke their way,
The people of Schenectady
     To captivate and slay.

"They march for two and twenty daies,
     All thro' ye deepest snow;
And on a dismal winter night
     They strucke ye cruel blow.

"The lightsome sunne that rules the day
     Had gone down in the West;
And eke the drowsie villagers
     Had sought and found their reste.

"They thought they were in safetie all,
     Nor dreamt not of the foe;
But att midnight they all swoke
     In wonderment and woe.

"For they were in their pleasant beddes,
     And soundlie sleeping, when
Each door was sudden open broke
     By six or seven menne!

"The menne and women, younge and olde,
     And eke the girls and boys,
All started up in great affright
     Att the alarming noise.

"They then were murthered in their beddes
     Without shame or remorse;
And soon the floors and streets were strew'd
     With many a bleeding corse.

"The village soon began to blaze,
     Which shew'd the horrid sight;
But, O, I scarce can beare to tell
     The mis'ries of that night.

"They threw the infants in the fire,
     The menne they did not spare;
But killed all which they could find,
     Tho' aged or tho' fair.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

"But some run off to Albany
     And told the doleful tale;
Yett, tho' we gave our chearful aid,
     It did not much avail.

"And we were horribly afraid,
     And shook with terror, when
They gave account the Frenchmen were
     More than a thousand menne.

"The news came on a Sabbath morn,
     Just att ye break o' day;
And with my companie of horse
     I galloped away.

"Our soldiers fell upon their reare,
     And killed twenty-five;
Our young menne were so much enrag'd
     They took scarce one alive.

"D'Aillebout them did command,
     Which were but thievish rogues,
Else why did they consent to goe
     With bloodye Indian dogges?

"And here I end my long ballad,
     The which you just heard said;
And wish that it may stay on earth
     Long after I be dead."

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.

"Lanette," said he, disconcerted but laughing, "do you mean in hell or at the Iroquois stake?"

Whereupon Lana flushed and said somewhat violently that he should not make a jest of either hell or stake; and that she for one marvelled at his ill-timed pleasantries and unbecoming jests.

So here was a pretty quarrel already sur le tapis; but neither I nor Lois interposed, and Lana, pink and angry, seated herself on the moss and gazed steadily at our watchful Indians. But in her fixed gaze I saw the faint glimmer of tears.

After a moment Boyd got up, went down to her, and asked her pardon. She made no answer; they remained looking at each other