The Little Red Foot. Chambers Robert William
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signals which nature displays to acquaint us of her designs, might safely prophesy soft skies.
I was standing in my glebe just after sunrise, gazing across my great cleared field – I had but one then, all else being woods – and I was thinking about my crops, how that here should be sown buckwheat to break and mellow last year's sod; and here I should plant corn and Indian squashes, and yonder, God willing, potatoes and beans.
And I remember, now, that I presently fell to whistling the air of "The Little Red Foot," while I considered my future harvest; and was even planning to hire of Andrew Bowman his fine span of white oxen for my spring plowing; when, of a sudden, through the May woods there grew upon the air a trembling sound, distant and sad. Now it sounded louder as the breeze stirred; now fainter when it shifted, so that a mournful echo only throbbed in my ears.
It was the sound of the iron bell ringing on the new Block House at Mayfield.
The carelessly whistled tune died upon my lips; my heart almost ceased for a moment, then violently beat the alarm.
I ran to a hemlock stump in the field, where my loaded rifle rested, and took it up and looked at the priming powder, finding it dry and bright.
A strange stillness had fallen upon the forest; there was no sound save that creeping and melancholy quaver of the bell. The birds had become quiet; the breeze, too, died away; and it was as though each huge tree stood listening, and that no leaf dared stir.
As a dark cloud gliding between earth and sun quenches the sky's calm brightness, so the bell's tolling seemed to transform the scene about me to a sunless waste, through which the dread sound surged in waves, like the complaint of trees before a storm.
Standing where my potatoes had been hoed the year before, I listened a moment longer to the dreary mourning of the bell, my eyes roving along the edges of the forest which, like a high, green rampart, enclosed my cleared land on every side.
Then I turned and went swiftly to my house, snatched blanket from bed, spread it on the puncheon floor, laid upon it a sack of new bullets, a new canister of powder, a heap of buckskin scraps for wadding, a bag of salt, another of parched corn, a dozen strips of smoked venison.
Separately on the blanket beside these I placed two pair of woollen hose, two pair of new ankle moccasins, an extra pair of deer-skin leggins, two cotton shirts, a hunting shirt of doe-skin, and a fishing line and hooks. These things I rolled within my blanket, making of everything a strapped pack.
Then I pulled on my District Militia regimentals, which same was a hunting shirt of tow-cloth, spatter-dashes of the same, and a felt hat, cocked.
Across the breast of my tow-cloth hunting-shirt I slung a bullet-pouch, a powder-horn and a leather haversack; seized my light hatchet and hung it to my belt, hoisted the blanket pack to my shoulders and strapped it there; and, picking up rifle and hunting knife, I passed swiftly out of the house, fastening the heavy oaken door behind me and wondering whether I should ever return to open it again.
The trodden forest trail, wide enough for a team to pass, lay straight before me due west, through heavy woods, to Andrew Bowman's farm.
When I came into the cleared land, I perceived Mrs. Bowman washing clothing in a spring near the door of her log house, and the wash a-bleaching in the early sun. When she saw me she called to me across the clearing:
"Have you news for me, John Drogue?"
"None," said I. "Where is your man, Martha?"
"Gone away to Stoner's with pack and rifle. He is but just departed. Is it only a drill call, or are the Indians out at the Lower Castle?"
"I know nothing," said I. "Are you alone in the house?"
"A young kinswoman, Penelope Grant, servant to old Douw Fonda, arrived late last night with my man from Caughnawaga, and is still asleep in the loft."
As she spoke a girl, clothed only in her shift, came to the open door of the log house. Her naked feet were snow-white; her hair, yellow as October-corn, seemed very thick and tangled.
She stood blinking as though dazzled, the glory of the rising sun in her face; then the tolling of the tocsin swam to her sleepy ears, and she started like a wild thing when a shot is fired very far away.
And, "What is that sound?" she exclaimed, staring about her; and I had never seen a woman's eyes so brown under such yellow hair.
She stepped out into the fresh grass and stood in the dew listening, now gazing at the woods, now at Martha Bowman, and now upon me.
Speech came to me with an odd sort of anger. I said to Mrs. Bowman, who stood gaping in the sunshine:
"Where are your wits? Take that child into the house and bar your shutters and draw water for your tubs. And keep your door bolted until some of the militia can return from Stoner's."
"Oh, my God," said she, and fell to snatching her wash from the bushes and grass.
At that, the girl Penelope turned and looked at me. And I thought she was badly frightened until she spoke.
"Young soldier," said she, "do you know if Sir John has fled?"
"I know nothing," said I, "and am like to learn less if you women do not instantly go in and bar your house."
"Are the Mohawks out?" she asked.
"Have I not said I do not know?"
"Yes, sir… But I should have escort by the shortest route to Cayadutta – "
"You talk like a child," said I, sharply. "And you seem scarcely more," I added, turning away. But I lingered still to see them safely bolted in before I departed.
"Soldier," she began timidly; but I interrupted:
"Go fill your tubs against fire-arrows," said I. "Why do you loiter?"
"Because I have great need to return to Caughnawaga. Will you guide me the shortest way by the woods?"
"Do you not hear that bell?" I demanded angrily.
"Yes, sir, I hear it. But I should go to Cayadutta – "
"And I should answer that militia call," said I impatiently. "Go in and lock the house, I tell you!"
Mrs. Bowman, her arms full of wet linen, ran into the house. The girl, Penelope, gazed at the woods.
"I am servant to a very old man," she said, twisting her linked fingers. "I can not abandon him! I can not let him remain all alone at Cayadutta Lodge. Will you take me to him?"
"And if I were free of duty," said I, "I would not take you or any other woman into those accursed woods!"
"Why not, sir?"
"Because I do not yet comprehend what that bell is telling me. And if it means that there is a painted war-party out between the Sacandaga and the Mohawk, I shall not take you to Caughnawaga when I return from Stoner's, and that's flat!"
"I am not afraid to go," said she. But I think I saw her shudder; and her face seemed very still and white. Then Mrs. Bowman ran out of the house and caught the girl by her homespun shift.
"Come indoors!" she cried shrilly, "or will you have us all pulling war arrows out of our bodies while you stand blinking at the woods and gossiping with Jack Drogue?"
The girl shook herself free, and asked me again to take her to Cayadutta Lodge.
But I had no more time to argue, and I flung my rifle to my shoulder and started out across the cleared land.
Once I looked back. And I saw her still standing there, the rising sun bright on her tangled hair, and her naked feet shining like silver in the dew-wet grass.
By a spring path I hastened to the house of John Putman, and found him already gone and his family drawing water and fastening shutters.
His wife, Deborah, called to me saying that the Salisburys should be warned, and I told her that I had already spoken to the Bowmans.
"Your labour for your pains, John Drogue!" cried she. "The Bowmans are King's people and need fear neither Tory nor Indian!"
"It is unjust to say so, Deborah," I