With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga

CHAPTER IX

THE OTTER CREEK RAID

The late visitor at the Otter Creek settlement shrank away from the door and, dumbfounded by the sword-thrust which was evidently meant for his heart instead of his coat, waited to see what the next move of those in the blockhouse would be. He heard low voices and words which sounded like military commands. Suppose the occupants of the wooden fort should fire upon him?

At this idea he dropped upon all fours and it is perhaps well that he did so, for one bullet did come from a loophole, singing viciously above his head. Then an angry voice of command rose on the night air: “Haud yir hand, mon! Let’s see an’ it be fri’nd or foe.” The tone and accent were broadly Scotch, and this, too, added to Enoch’s amazement. He had not heard of Scotch people coming to Otter Creek since those placed there by Colonel Reid had been driven forth. At once his suspicions were aroused, but he cried aloud:

“I am a friend and am alone. I only came for a night’s lodging.”

“’Tis a laddie, mon! There’s naught t’ fear,” declared the voice within, as though answering some objection which Enoch could not hear. The candles were lighted and in another moment the door was opened again, revealing a tall, raw-boned Scot with a shock of red hair and beard. He grasped a bared sword, almost as big as a two-handed claymore, and he looked sternly upon the boy as the latter approached.

“Ha! ’tis wrang for a laddie t’ be oot this time o’ night,” he declared. “Air ye sure alone?”

“Quite alone,” Enoch replied. “I have been hunting west of here and we camped at the mouth of the creek. My comrades have gone northward and I was returning home by way of the creek. I did not know that the settlers here were in fear of Indians – ”

“Ha! ’tis little we think o’ them rid chiels. There’s war nor they in yon forest-land, an’ well we ken that.”

“Who do you mean?” demanded Enoch, now stepping within the open door.

“Why, the robber Allen, an’ his followers. We do oor wark wi’ guns in oor han’s for fear of them same outlaws. Eh, mon! but they’re a bold mob.”

Enoch made no reply, but advanced to the gun rack and stood up his rifle and dropped his pack. He knew now what had occurred at the settlement. The land-grabber Reid had come back to the Grants, ousted the Hampshire settlers, and again established minions of his own in their places. The boy glanced about and saw at least a dozen hardy looking Scots. Every one of them had doubtless served in Colonel Reid’s regiment of Highlanders. They were descended from men almost as wild and bloodthirsty as the red Indians themselves, and although ordinarily they might be harmless enough, that thrust of the sword had shown Enoch that they were likely to fight first and inquire the reason for it afterward. They had come to Otter Creek in force this time, and evidently determined to battle for their master’s holdings under the New York law.

But the man who had let him in, and who was a Cameron, was evidently bent upon treating hospitably the guest which he had so nearly run through with his sword. “Jamie Henderson,” he said to one of the solemn faced Scots, “speir ane o’ the wimmen t’ gie us a bite for the lad,” and the repast which was prepared and put before him was generous and kindly given. While he was eating and John Cameron sat by to watch him enjoy the food, Enoch gathered courage to ask a few questions.

“We heard down Bennington way that Colonel Reid’s people had left this land and the settlers who formerly owned it had come back,” he said, suggestively. The Scot’s eyes contracted as he looked at the visitor. “Aye, aye?” he said, questioningly. “How long have you been here?” queried the boy.

“Sin’ June. The men ye call settlers were nae proper holders o’ their titles. Lieutenant-Colonel Reid bought this land and put fairmers here first.”

“But he did not get his title from New Hampshire,” Enoch said.

“Nae–w’y should he? New York owns the land to yon big river–th’ Connecticut call ye it? Our fri’nds settled here in ’69. The titles these auld settlers held wes no guide–na, na! But Colonel Reid is a guide mon–’deed yes.”

“How do you make that out?” demanded Enoch. He wanted to tell the Scot what he thought of this business, but he dared not. He knew Ethan Allen and the other leaders of the Green Mountain Boys should know of it, and as he, perhaps, was the first to learn of the return of the Scotch, he must get away early in the morning and reach Bennington in the quickest possible time. While the Grants men were resting in supposed safety and peace because of Governor Tryon’s letter promising inactivity on the part of the land speculators, the latter were hurrying their minions over the line, evicting the rightful owners of the Grants, and stealing their farms. The boy’s heart swelled with anger; but he was wise enough to hold his tongue and say nothing to rouse the suspicions of the Scots.

In reply to his question regarding Colonel Reid’s “guideness” Cameron told how he, with other Scots, had landed in New York early in June and had been engaged by the Colonel at once to go and occupy his land in the Disputed Territory. Reid came with them to the settlement, being at considerable expense to transport them, their wives, children and baggage. The day after their arrival while viewing the land covered by Reid’s title, they observed a crop of Indian corn, wheat, and garden stuff, and a stack of hay belonging to two New England men who, according to Cameron, had squatted on the land without right or title. Reid paid these two men $15 for their standing crops and the hay and made over the same to his new tenants. This was a novel way of telling how the owners of the titles to the farms received from the New Hampshire governor years before, were evicted. But Enoch held his peace. He had considerable doubt in his own mind regarding Colonel Reid’s “guideness,” nevertheless, and rose early in the morning and left the settlement in Bolderwood’s canoe. Instead of keeping on up the Otter he turned back to the lake. The route by which he and the ranger had come from Bennington would be far shorter than the one he had started upon; so he went back that way. News of the return of Reid’s people must be conveyed to Ethan Allen and the other leaders of the Green Mountain Boys as quickly as possible.

He scarcely stopped for food, so anxious was he to get home. He met nobody on his trip until he reached Manchester and there his story was hardly believed, for the letter of the New York governor in May, inviting the Grants representatives to a council, had made a strong and favorable impression upon public sentiment. This council had advised that all legal processes against the Grants settlers cease and even now the echoes had not died away of the jubilation of the deluded people over what was considered the end of the bitter controversy.

But when he arrived at home and told his mother of his discovery she, like the truly patriotic woman she was, became vastly disturbed. “You may not rest idly here, Enoch, while such wrong is being done. Colonel Allen should know of it at once. He rode past here but yesterday on his way to Bennington, and gave us a cry. He asked for you, too,” she said, with pride, “and told me how well you carried yourself at training. There is a council being held in town to-day, I believe, for I suspect that Colonel Allen and Captain Warner have not been deceived by the false promises of Governor Tryon. And this business at the Otter Creek will wake up many of those who would cry ‘Peace!’ when there is no peace. Bryce will saddle the horse for you, Enoch,” she added, “and while you eat I will prepare your best breeches and coat. You cannot appear at the inn before the gentlemen in your old clothing.”

The careful woman bustled away and laid out her son’s Sabbath suit and his boughten shoes and, tired as Enoch was, he rode away toward Bennington an hour after reaching the ox-bow farm.

As his mother had declared, Colonel Allen and several other leaders were in conference in Stephen Fay’s private parlor, and when he had whispered his story to the innkeeper, the latter brought him at once before the gentlemen, rightly considering the matter of such importance as to brook no delay in the telling. Never before had Enoch seen Ethan Allen in any capacity but that of a leader in action. In the boy’s mind he had ever been connected with scenes of riot, or in the capacity of a commander on training day. But it was a very serious looking group which surrounded the table now, and the man at the head of the board lacked nothing in dignity and stern bearing in comparison with the other members of the committee.

It was Allen, however, who turned from the subject under discussion and beckoned Master Fay and Enoch nearer. “What have we here?” he asked. “Something of moment, I warrant, from the look on Stephen’s face. And there is young Nuck Harding. Is aught amiss in your district, lad?”

“Nay, Colonel,” Enoch replied; “but I have been in the north and bring back news that my mother was sure you would wish to hear at once. So I rode over without delay to tell you, sir.”

“God bless the woman!” Allen exclaimed, heartily. “She’s fighting away there in the wilderness with her pack of babies in a way to make grown men blush. I was by there but yesterday… And what’s the news you bring, Nuck?”

“The Yorkers have come back to the mill on Otter Creek.”

“What, sir?” cried Allen, leaping from his chair.

“That’s not to be believed,” cried one of the others. “How know ye this, boy?”

Enoch told them, using few words; but the tremor in his voice showed the depth of his feeling. The injury done the settlers–the treachery of the Yorkers–had affected him as it had his mother. Allen listened with marked attention, having dropped back into his wide-armed chair, but he watched the boy’s countenance the while. “Egad!” cried he when the story was done, “there’s a boy after my own heart. He knows when he sees a snake in the brush!” Then he turned instantly to his companions. “We will postpone this other matter, gentlemen. What we may do in the event of his Majesty’s placing other and more onerous burdens upon these colonies, affects us not so nearly as what these New York Tories do to us now. We have no standing either with the colonies or with the King; we are outlaws, forsooth; our hand is against every man’s and every man’s hand against us. Yet, belike in time the trouble between the King and the colonies may be the salvation of the Hampshire Grants.

“We have other business now. I am away at once, friends,” he said, rising again. “Do so to me and more also, if I allow more time than is necessary to pass before I fall upon those Scotch scoundrels and smite them hip and thigh! Send the word around, Stephen Fay. Let them that will gather here. Be sure Warner knows of this; I will send for ’Member myself. His company will be first ready, I have no doubt. ’Member’s wound is scarce yet healed, and the sting of it needs dressing,” and he laughed, knowing Captain Baker’s fiery temper and his hatred of the Yorkers who had served him so evilly that very spring. “Let it be known that we start from Bennington by sunrise.”

Enoch returned home, more than a little puffed with pride because of Colonel Allen’s commendation and although he was too young to join the party which, under Allen and Captain Baker, marched to punish the Scots at Vergennes, he knew that his fortunate discovery would make him something of a hero in the eyes of his mates. The Green Mountain Boys fell upon the Scots unexpectedly, burned the cabins, pastured their horses in the standing corn, broke the millstones to pieces, and drove the New York settlers to Crown Point where they took shelter until the land-speculator, Reid, could gain them transportation to other and more honestly acquired lands. As for Reid himself, had he been overtaken by the Grants men he certainly would have been “viewed”–a phrase used by the Green Mountain Boys, meaning to be whipped. The settlement was, however, for the time being abandoned by both parties, for it was so deep in the wilderness that neither could properly defend it from attack.

CHAPTER X

THE WARNING

After his return from this hunting trip, Enoch Harding was forced to neglect the training days on several occasions because of the increased work at home. The harvest was soon upon them and nobly had the fields of the ox-bow farm borne for the widow and her children. While they were hard at work getting under cover, or in stack, the last of their crops, the Manchester Convention was held, from which James Breckenridge and Captain Jehiel Hawley were sent to London to represent the struggling settlers, their former minister to the king, Samuel Robinson, having died before accomplishing the work which he had so well begun.

With the discovery that Governor Tryon’s declaration of an armistice had been an act of treachery, and that the Yorkers were likely to continue their raids and seize the honestly purchased lands of the New Hampshire settlers, as Colonel Reid had at Vergennes, the Hardings began to fear the return of Simon Halpen again. But the summer and fall passed without the little family being alarmed. With the snow came hog-killing, and among pioneer people this season was usually one of rejoicing. In the old times it had been a sort of festival, for with the first fall of snow all danger from marauding bands of red men ceased. The Indians would not send out war parties when every footstep would be plainly visible to the white settlers. The pioneers longed for the snow as soon as their scanty crops were out of the field, for they were safe then until the spring. So instead of celebrating “harvest home” they rejoiced at “hog killing time.”

The Hardings had quite a drove of hogs which ran wild in the forest during the summer and fed on the mast in the fall. But every few days the widow fed them near the hovel, so as to keep them in the habit of coming home, and particularly to teach the youngsters where to come if the old swine should be killed by bears or wild-cats. Now the whole drove was brought up and “folded” and for two weeks every member of the family was busy. During that time the bulk of their winter’s meat was salted down, the toothsome sausage made, and all the other delicacies which old-fashioned folks knew so well how to prepare from the pig. Somebody has said that at our present day abatoirs they can put to some use every part of the animal but the pig’s squeal; pioneer housewives were almost as economical.

When the hard work was over Mistress Harding allowed the children to invite some of the neighborhood youngsters for an evening frolic and such a gathering had not been enjoyed since the famous stump burning. Enoch was nearly sixteen now and although Bryce was almost as tall as his elder brother, the first named was broadening out wonderfully. Few young men of Bennington under nineteen could have thrown Enoch in a match of strength, and he had really become the head of the household. But he was still enough of a boy to enjoy the party to the full.

There was an old hovel near the house, but nearer the river bank, which their father had first erected–even before building the house itself–when he came to the ox-bow, and for years this hovel had sheltered the cattle. But the fall before he died the pioneer had erected a new and better stable and shed, quite handy to the house. The children, therefore, had long considered this hovel their own especial playhouse. At spare moments Enoch and Bryce built a stone and clay chimney and laid a good hearth in the old structure, and now they planned to have the party here, where they could do quite as they pleased.

The girls had scoured the woods for beech, hazel, and hickory nuts, and Robbie Baker came over on his horse with nigh a bushel of peeled chestnuts which his father brought him from Manchester way after the first frost. Then, there were potatoes to roast and a wild turkey which Nuck had shot two days before and hung in the smoke-house. The bird was not plucked, but after being entrailed was stuffed with chestnuts to give it a flavor and then rolled in the tub of sticky clay brought up from the creek bottom. This great ball was put in the fire early so that by supper-time it would be done to a turn. The pigs’ tails had all been saved and cleaned, too, and being likewise rolled in clay were baked in the ashes.

The girls had brought flour bread and made Johnny-cake, and although there was no tablecloth, the long board table was roomy and fairly groaned under the good things heaped upon it. The ball of mud, all hard and red now and cracked like a badly burned brick, was rolled out upon the hearth and Enoch broke it with one blow of the axe. The hard shell fell apart and to the burned clay adhered every feather and pin-quill of the great gobbler which would not have weighed an ounce less than twenty-five pounds. And the flesh was done to a turn.

In the midst of the good time, while the fun waxed furious, the door of the hovel opened and there stood in the opening the tall, slim figure of Crow Wing. As he had come unbidden to the stump burning, so he came now unexpectedly to this frolic. The white children welcomed him boisterously, for his people had moved away from the Walloomscoik and for months he had not been seen near Bennington. But Crow Wing had evidently not come to join in the merrymaking. His face was impassive and much older in expression than it had been the year before. And in his hair was a bunch of eagle feathers which showed that, to his own people even, he was now a brave and no longer a boy.

“Umph!” he grunted, drawing the blanket draped from his shoulders more closely around him. “Harding–me talk to you!” He looked boldly at Enoch, and the latter waving the others back, followed the Indian out of the hovel. Without speaking or looking behind him Crow Wing led the white boy to the riverside, and some distance from the hovel. There he halted and pointed suddenly across the stream in the direction of that place in the forest where Enoch had once seen the mysterious white man sitting beside the campfire.

“’Member?” asked Crow Wing, flashing a keen glance at the white boy.

“The man in the woods!” exclaimed Enoch. “You wish to tell me something about him?”

“Umph! He come again. Look out. Crow Wing tell you, because white boy strong–know how to fight. Watch ’em sharp!” and with this brief declaration the Indian youth strode away and the astonished Enoch watched him disappear in the tall brush along the creek bank. He went back to the merry party at the hovel with a heavy heart and not until after the last of the visitors had gone home–the boys swinging pine torches and giving the warwhoop to scare off any lurking wolves or catamounts–did Enoch find opportunity to tell his mother of Crow Wing’s warning.

“Simon Halpen is surely coming to evict us,” he declared. “I am sure it was he I saw in the forest last year. And now, taking advantage of our being lulled by hopes of peace, he will try to strike an unexpected blow as Colonel Reid did.”

“The neighbors will help us,” the widow said.

“But suppose he comes with a big force? And we cannot expect the neighbors to neglect their own homes,” said Enoch. “I will try and see Captain Baker, if you think it best, mother.”

“Captain Baker will help us. He knows how hard it would be if the Yorkers stripped us of our all. He is a kind-hearted man, though often rude and fretful.”

“Well, marm, he has cause to be fretful,” said Enoch. “Perhaps we can get a few of the boys to stay with us nights for awhile.”

And this they did, for Captain Baker sent three or four sturdy Green Mountain Boys around to the widow’s farm every night for a week. But the Yorker and his crew did not appear. At this time, when he might have been of such assistance to them, ’Siah Bolderwood was away. He had recently bought a track of land on the lake shore not far from Old Ti and had gone to look it over and build some sort of a camp there, thus utilizing his time to good advantage before the trapping season began.

Even after their fears were lulled, either Enoch or Bryce remained always in sight of the house. But about a fortnight after the hog-killing frolic an incident occurred which served to take both Bryce and Enoch away from the cabin. There had been a second fall of snow and the nights were becoming very cold. But all the wild animals had not yet sought their winter sleeping quarters, for there descended upon the Hardings’ hog-pen an old bear who evidently desired one more meal of succulent pork before retiring to his burrow. The remaining swine were shut up now in a close yard of logs; but the bear got over that fence with ease.

The trouble occurred in the early morning and aroused by the clamor Enoch, despite the inch or two of snow on the ground, grabbed the rifle and ran out just as he got out of bed and without shoes or stockings. But when he saw the huge bear seeking to climb out of the enclosure, hugging a lively shote to his furry breast, the boy was not likely to notice the cold and snow. He climbed the end logs of the hog-pen himself so as to get a shot at the marauder, and rested the rifle on the top rail; but the logs were slippery and just as he pulled the trigger he went down himself and the charge flew high over the bear’s head, while Enoch sprawled most ungracefully on the ground.

The old bear uttered a wild “oof-oof!” and without trying to climb the barrier again, flung his huge body against it and a length of the fence went down with a crash. By this time Bryce, who had kept the old musket by his side since Crow Wing’s warning, and slept in the loft, was aroused by the disturbance, and he pushed up the corner of the bark roof and blazed away at the beast just as it scrambled through the wreck of the hog fence. The bear had continued to cling to the squealing and kicking shote, for bruin is a strangely perverse and obstinate creature, unwilling to give up what he has once set his mind upon. There was a wild shriek of agony from the poor pig and when the bear moved clumsily away still clinging to the porker there was a broad trail of blood on the snow.

“I shot him! I shot him!” yelled Bryce, dodging down into the loft and beginning to hastily pull on his breeches. But when he came down-stairs Enoch had returned to the house and was calmly dressing. “Why didn’t ye foller him?” demanded the younger boy. “He’s bad wounded. He’d dropped that shote in a minute.”