With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga

CHAPTER III

THE AMBUSH

The house of James Breckenridge was built at the foot of a slight ridge of land running east and west, which ridge was heavily wooded. It was only a mile from the Twenty-Mile Line and therefore particularly open to attack by the New York authorities. Once before had an attempt been made by the grasping land speculators of the sister colony to oust its rightful owner, but at that time naught but a wordy controversy had ensued, whereas the present attack bade fair to be more serious. Breckenridge had sent his family to the settlement in expectation of this trouble, while he and his neighbors made ready to meet the sheriff and his army. Some of the Bennington men had arrived at the farm the evening before when news went forth that the invaders were only seven miles away, at Sancock. But the greater number of the defenders came, as did ’Siah Bolderwood and young Enoch Harding, soon after sun-up.

This gathering of Grants men was a memorable one. Heretofore, the clashes with the Yorkers had been little more than skirmishes in which half a dozen or a dozen men on both sides had taken part. Ethan Allen, Seth Warner, Remember Baker, and others of the more venturesome spirits, had seized some of the land-grabbers and their tools, and delivered upon their bared backs more strokes of “the twigs of the wilderness,” as Allen called the blue beech rods, than the unhappy Yorkers thus treated would forget in many a day.

Ethan Allen was not as long in the settlement as many of the other men about him; but he was a born leader, and entering heart and soul into the cause of the Grants was soon acknowledged the most fiery spirit among the settlers. He was born in Litchfield, Conn., January 10, 1737, and probably came to the Hampshire Grants some time in ’69. Although but thirty-four years old at this time he carried his point in most arguments regarding the well-being of the settlers, and the Green Mountain boys, as his followers came to be called, fairly worshipped him. He was singularly handsome, with ruddy face, a ready wit, bold, unpolished, brave and almost a giant in size, for though not so tall as Seth Warner he was a much heavier and broader man.

With this company of armed men, too, was Remember Baker and his flint-lock musket, which seldom left his side waking or sleeping. Baker was the best shot on the northern border and performed feats of marksmanship with this musket that could scarce be equaled by any of our famous marksmen to-day with their improved weapons. Like the stories told of Robin Hood and his cloth-yard shafts, Baker could split a wand with a bullet and always filed the flint on his musket to a sharp point.

Other men there were in this early morning assembly destined to be heard from later in the affairs of the struggling community, but none so filled young Enoch Harding’s eye as did these two. Remember Baker lived not far from the Harding farm and Enoch often went there to visit young Robert Baker, or had Robert to stay all night with him at his home. But Enoch’s closest boy friend was James Breckenridge’s nephew, Lot, who was two years young Harding’s senior and bore arms on this morning with the older youths and men. At once when the two spied each other they found opportunity to step aside and hold such confidences as boys are wont. Yet they were so excited by the prospect of the forthcoming battle with the Yorkers that even Nuck’s adventure with the catamount was lightly passed over.

Meanwhile the settlers were divided into several bands, each captained by an efficient officer who, as ’Siah Bolderwood expressed it, “had snuffed powder.” Bolderwood himself was given command of the larger number and arranged his men along the top of the ridge behind the house, where they would be concealed by the brush but could draw bead upon any person passing along the road or approaching the farmhouse. One hundred and twenty under a second leader were hidden beside the road while eighteen and an officer were stationed inside the house itself.

These arrangements had scarce been made when a figure was descried approaching at top speed. It was a messenger to warn the settlers of the coming of the enemy. “Run down to the house, Nuck,” commanded ’Siah, “and get the news for me. Keep your heads down, lads! Let them Yorkers when they come, think there ain’t nobody to home!”

Enoch crept through the brush and descended the slope, appearing before the house just as the runner reached it. Coming so suddenly from behind the dwelling Enoch startled the newcomer, who sprang back and placed his hand on the hunting knife at his belt. Then, with a contemptuous grunt, the messenger passed Enoch by and lifted the latch-string which had been left hanging out. Enoch followed him into the Breckenridge house.

The runner was a tall Indian lad with a keen face and coal-black eyes and hair. Enoch knew him, for his people had camped for several years near the Harding place. But Jonas Harding had had that contempt for the red race which characterized many of the pioneer people and was the foundation for more than half the trouble between the whites and reds; and he had often expressed this contempt before young Crow Wing, who was a chief’s son although his tribe was scattered and decimated by disease. Crow Wing had hated Enoch’s father for his taunts and unkind words, and now that the elder Harding was dead the young Indian considered his son cast in the same mould and worthy of the same hatred which he had borne Jonas. Naturally Enoch would have shared his parent’s contempt for the Indians; but ’Siah Bolderwood, although he had camped, hunted and fought with Enoch’s father for so many years, did not share the latter’s opinion of the Indian character, and from him Enoch had imbibed many ideas of late which changed his opinion of the red men. There was a time, however, when the white boy had ridiculed Crow Wing and the latter had not forgotten.

Enoch watched him now with admiration. The young brave had run for several miles, having been sent out toward Sancock by one of the settlers for whom he sometimes worked, but he breathed as easily as though he had walked instead of run. When one of the men in the Breckenridge kitchen spoke to him he answered in a perfectly even voice which showed no tremor of fatigue.

“Him sheriff march now,” he said. “Mebbe t’ink um t’ree mile off.”

“Where did you leave them?” asked the man in command of the house. The Indian youth told him. “And how many are there, Crow Wing?” asked another.

“Many–many!” cried the Indian, his eyes flashing. He held up both hands and spread all his ten fingers rapidly seven times. “Seventy!” cried one of the white men. “He means seven hundred,” declared the leader. “That so, Crow Wing, eh?”

The Indian nodded. “Many white men–many guns,” he said.

“It’s not true,” growled one man. “You can’t believe anything an Injin says. Where would the New York sheriff get seven hundred men?”

Crow Wing’s eyes flashed and he drew himself up proudly. “Me no lie–me speak true. Injin not two-tongue like white man!” he declared, with scorn, and turning his back on his traducer, stalked out of the house.

The settlers, however, paid little attention to his departure. Enoch scuttled back to the ridge where ’Siah was waiting to hear the news. There he lay down beside Lot Breckenridge and the two boys talked earnestly as the men about them smoked or chatted while waiting for the coming of the Yorkers. Seven hundred seemed a great number to oppose. The odds would be more than two to one. Despite the ambush which had been so carefully laid for them, the sheriff and his men might fight as desperately as the settlers themselves.

“Tell ye what!” whispered Lot to Enoch, “I ain’t fixin’ to git shot. Marm didn’t want Uncle Jim to let me come, but he said ev’ry gun’d count this mornin’, so she ’lowed I’d hafter. But she says if I git shot she’ll larrup me well.”

Enoch chuckled. Although Lot was his senior he was more of a child than young Harding. The experiences of the last few months had aged Enoch a good deal. “My mother won’t whip me if I git shot; but I mustn’t run into danger, for she wouldn’t know what to do without me,” he said, proudly. “Bryce ain’t much use yet, you know.”

“Zuckers!” exclaimed Lot, “I wisht my marm was like yourn. I ain’t got no father neither; but Uncle Jim don’t let me do nothin’, an’ marm’s allus wearin’ out a beech twig on me.”

“Guess you do somethin’ for it,” said Enoch, wisely.

“She’d do it jest th’ same if I didn’t,” declared Lot, yet with perfect good-nature, as though the Widow Breckenridge’s vigorous applications of the beech wand was a part of existence not to be escaped. “Gran’pap says I might’s well be hung for an ole sheep as a lamb, so in course I do somethin’ for it–mostly.”

“If the Yorkers fight we’ll hafter stay right here and shoot like the men,” said Nuck, reflectively. “It’ll be like the Injin fights my father and ’Siah were in. I s’pose we’ll take trees, an’ scatter out so’t the Yorkers can’t git up around us here – ”

“An’ we’ll raise the warwhoop an’ shoot jest as fast as we kin!” exclaimed Lot, excitedly. “Crow Wing taught me the warwhoop last year. An’ I know how to scalp, too.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that!” exclaimed Enoch, in horror.

“Umph! Yorkers ain’t no better’n Injins, an’ I’d scalp an Injin,” declared Lot, blood-thirstily.

“I wouldn’t. My father never did that, an’ he was in the war. He said that was why the Injins warn’t no better’n brute-beasts, an’ didn’t have no souls–’cause they scalped their enemies.”

“Be still there, you youngsters!” growled ’Siah, coming down the line. “If you want to be men, l’arn to keep yer tongues quiet. Voices carry far on a day like this. What’d they say down ter the house, Nuck, ’bout the signal?”

“When they want help, or want us to sail into ’em, they’re goin’ to raise a red flag through the chimbley,” replied the boy.

“Wal, I’m hopin’ they won’t fight,” said the ranger, squinting along the road below the ridge.

“Oh, I wanter see a fight–zuckers, I do!” exclaimed Lot.

“Be still, you bloodthirsty young savage!” commanded ’Siah. “You wanter shoot down men of your own color, do ye? Beech-sealin’ an’ duckin’ is all right; but it’s an awful thing to draw bead on another white man, as ye’ll l’arn some day.”

“But you fought the Frenchmen with the Injins,” declared Lot.

“Huh! Them’s only half-bred. Frenchmen ain’t no more’n savages,” said ’Siah, gloomily.

An hour passed–a long, long time to the excited boys. Then, far down the winding road quite a piece of which they could observe from the summit of the wooded ridge, was seen the sudden glint of sunlight on metal. “They’re coming!” the message went round and the settlers in ambush crouched more closely behind their screens and even the hearts of old Indian fighters beat faster at the nearing prospect of an engagement. James Breckenridge, Ethan Allen, and several others advanced slowly from the direction of the house to the bridge across which the Yorkers must pass. Sheriff Ten Eyck spurred forward with his personal staff to meet them. With him came the infamous John Munro who, as a justice of the peace under commission from New York, was such a thorn in the flesh of the settlers. The sheriff was a very pompous Dutchman who believed without question in the validity of New York’s jurisdiction over the Grants, and who, despite his bombastic manner, was personally no coward.

“Master Breckenridge,” he said to the man whom he had come to evict from his home, “we have heard that you and your neighbors are armed to oppose the authority vested in me by His Most Gracious Majesty’s colony of New York. If there be blood shed this day, it will be upon your head, for I here command you to leave this neighborhood and give over the possession of this land to its rightful owners.”

“I cannot do that, Master Sheriff,” said Breckenridge, quietly. “As for blood being upon my head for this day’s work, you can see that I am unarmed,” and he spread his hands widely. “Besides, I have nothing to do with this grant at the present time. The township of Bennington has taken the farm upon its own hands, and it will oppose your entrance with armed resistance. I have nothing to do with it.”

“What is the township of Bennington?” demanded Ten Eyck. “This land belongs to the colony of New York under the crown. There is no town of Bennington. What legal rights have a parcel of squatters to this territory?”

Then Allen spoke. “The gods of the valleys are not the gods of the hills, Sir Sheriff. You on the other side of the Twenty-Mile Line may acknowledge the Governor of New York as your master; we on this side are a free people. We have bought our lands from the government to which they were granted by the King, and you shall not drive us from them!”

The colloquy ended and the settlers went back toward the house. After the main body of his army came up, and their numbers seemed quite as formidable as Crow Wing had reported, the sheriff pressed forward across the bridge and approached the Breckenridge dwelling. Every settler had disappeared by now and even those inside the house were still. Neither the sheriff nor his men suspected that quite three hundred guns were turned upon them and that, at the first fire, the carnage would be terrible.

“Open in the name of the law!” exclaimed Ten Eyck, thundering at the stout oak door of the house. “I demand admittance and that all within come peaceably forth. Open, or I shall break down the door!”

There was silence for a moment, and then a voice said clearly from within: “Attempt it and you are a dead man!”

The reply angered the doughty sheriff. He was being flouted and the majesty of the law scorned. That was more than he could quietly bear. “Come out and deliver up your arms in the name o’ the King!” he cried. “Ye rebels! I’ll take the last of ye to Albany jail if ye do not surrender!”

At this a chorus of derisive groans issued from behind the barred door and shutters, and these sounds were echoed by other groans from the men in ambush, until the very forest itself seemed deriding the Yorkers. The knowledge that he and his men had fallen into a trap did not balk the sheriff; his rage rose to white heat and calling for an axe he advanced to the attack. The moment was freighted with peril. If the Yorkers attacked the house a withering fire would spring from the guns in the bushes and on the ridge and blood would flow in plenty in that heretofore peaceful vale of the northern forest.

CHAPTER IV

’SIAH BOLDERWOOD’S STRATAGEM

Sheriff Ten Eyck was a man of determination and although he had before tested the mettle of the Grants men, he felt a burden of confidence now with this army behind him. The ridicule of the party in ambush stung his pride, and although warned that a considerable number of settlers were hidden in the wood, he was not disposed to temporize. But the men who had accompanied him on his nefarious mission were far differently impressed by the situation. They had followed the doughty sheriff in the hope of plunder, it is true; if the settlers of the Hampshire Grants were to be driven incontinently from their homes as Ten Eyck and the Governor declared, somebody must benefit by the circumstance, and the sheriff’s men hoped to be of the benefited party. But this armed opposition was disheartening. When the chorus of groans rose from the surrounding forest, his men as well as himself, knew that they had fallen into ambush, and this thought troubled the Yorkers greatly.

From the top of the ridge ’Siah Bolderwood had heard much of the controversy at the door of the Breckenridge house and as the really serious moment approached the old ranger was blessed with a sudden inspiration. He sprang forward and seizing Enoch Harding by the collar dragged him to his knees and whispered a command in his ear. “Quick, you young snipe you!” he exclaimed, as Enoch prepared to obey. “Run like the wind–and don’t let ’em see you or you may get potted!”

Enoch was off in an instant, trailing his gun behind him and stooping low that the passage of his body through the brush might not be noted. He got the house between him and the sheriff’s column and soon reached the side of the road where the other settlers in ambush were stationed. He found their leader and whispered Bolderwood’s message to him. Instantly the man caught the idea and the word was passed down the straggling line. Enoch did not return but waited with these men, who were nearer the enemy, to see the matter out.

The sheriff was on the verge of giving the command to break down the door of the besieged house when suddenly a wild yell broke out upon the ridge above and was taken up by the settlers in the brush by the roadside. It was the warwhoop–the yell which originally incited the red warriors to action and was supposed to strike terror to the hearts of their enemies. The shrill cry echoed through the wood with startling significance. At the same instant every man’s cap was raised upon his gun barrel and thrust forward into view of the startled Yorkers, while the settlers themselves showed their heads, but nearer the ground. Only for a moment were they thus visible; then they dropped back into hiding again.

But the effect upon the sheriff’s unwilling army was paralyzing. The Yorkers thought that twice as many men were hidden in the forest as were really there, for the hats on the gun barrels had seemed like heads, too. They thought every man in Bennington–and indeed, as far east as Brattleboro and Westminster–must have come to defend James Breckenridge’s farm, and they clamored loudly to return to the Twenty-Mile Line and safety.

In vain the sheriff fumed and stormed, threatening all manner of punishment for his mutinous troops; the army was determined to a man to have no conflict with the settlers of the Disputed Ground. Like “the noble Duke of York” in the old catch-song familiar at that day, Sheriff Ten Eyck had marched his seven hundred or more men up to James Breckenridge’s door only “to march them down again!” ’Siah Bolderwood’s idea had taken all the desire for fight out of the Yorkers, and after some wrangling between the personal attendants of the sheriff and the volunteer army, the whole crew marched away, leaving the farm to the undisputed possession of its rightful owner.

When the Yorkers departed the little garrison of the house appeared and cheered lustily; but the men in the woods did not come out of hiding until the last of the enemy had disappeared, for they did not wish the invaders to know how badly they had been deceived regarding their numbers. By and by Bolderwood and his men marched down from the ridge and ’Siah was congratulated upon his happy thought in bringing about the confusion of the Yorkers.

“You’ve a long head on those narrow shoulders of yours, neighbor,” declared Ethan Allen, striking the old ranger heartily on the back. “That little wile finished them. And this is the boy I saw trailing through the bushes, is it?” and he seized Enoch and turned his face upward that he might the better view his features. “Why, holloa, my little man! I’ve seen you before surely?”

“It is poor Jonas Harding’s eldest lad, neighbor Allen,” Bolderwood said. “He’s the head of the family now, and bein’ sech, had to come along to fight the Yorkers.”

“I remember your father,” declared Allen, kindly. “A noble specimen of the Almighty’s workmanship. I stopped a night with him once at his cabin–do you remember me?”

As though Nuck could have forgotten it! His youthful mind had made Ethan Allen a veritable hero ever since, placing him upon a pedestal before which he worshipped. But he only nodded for bashfulness.

“You’ll make a big man, too,” said the giant. “And if you can shoot straight there’ll be plenty of chance for you later on. This is only the beginning, ’Siah,” he pursued, turning to Bolderwood and letting his huge hand drop from Enoch’s head. “There will be court-doings, now–writs, and ejectments, and enough red seals to run the King’s court itself. But while the Yorkers are red-sealing us, we’ll blue-seal them–if they come over here, eh?” and he went off with a great shout of laughter at his own punning.

The men were minded to scatter but slowly. All were rejoiced that the battle had been a bloodless one; yet none believed the matter ended. The fiasco of the New York sheriff might act as a wet blanket for the time upon the movements of the authorities across the line; but the land speculators were too numerous and active to allow the people of the Grants to remain in peace. Parties of marauders might swoop down at any time upon the more unprotected settlers, drive them out of their homes, destroy their property, and possibly do bodily injury to the helpless people. Methods must be devised to keep these Yorkers on their own side of the disputed line. Those settlers, such as the widow Harding, who were least able to protect themselves, must have the help of their neighbors. The present victory proved the benefit to be derived from concerted action. Now, in the flush of this triumph, the leaders went among the yeomanry who had gathered here and outlined a plan for permanent military organization. In all the colonies at that day, “training bands,” or militia, had become popular, made so in part by the interest aroused by the wars with the French and Indians. Many of the men who joined these military companies did not look deeply into the affairs of the colonies, nor were they much interested in politics; but their leaders looked ahead–just as did Ethan Allen and his conferees in the Grants–and realized that an armed yeomanry might some time be called upon to face hirelings of the King.

“Even a lad like you can bear a rifle, and your mother will spare you from the farm for drill,” Allen said, with his hand again on Enoch’s shoulder, before riding away. “I shall expect to see Jonas Harding’s boy at Bennington when word is sent round for the first drill.” And Enoch, his heart beating high with pride at this notice, promised to gain his mother’s permission if possible.