Читать книгу Ticonderoga - G. P. R. James - Страница 5

The hour of breakfast had arrived when Walter Prevost returned with his river spoil; but the party at the house had not yet sat down to table. The guest who had arrived on the preceding night was standing at the door talking with Edith, while Mr. Prevost himself was within in conference with some of the slaves. Shaded by the little rustic porch, Edith was leaning against the door post in an attitude of exquisite grace, and the stranger, with his arms crossed upon his broad, manly chest, now raising his eyes to her face, now dropping them to the ground, seemed to watch with interest the effect his words produced as it was written on that beautiful countenance.

"I know not," said the stranger, speaking as the young man approached, "I know not how I should endure it myself for any length of time. The mere abstract beauty of nature would, soon pall upon my taste, I fear, without occupation."

"But you would make occupation," answered Edith, earnestly; "you would find it. Occupation for the body is never wanting when you have to improve and cultivate and ornament; and occupation flows in from a thousand gushing sources in God's universe--even were one deprived of books and music."

"Aye, but companionships and social converse, and the interchange of thought with thought," said the stranger; "where could one find those?" and he raised his eyes to her face.

"Have I not my brother and my father?" she asked.

"True, you have," said the other; "but I should have no such resource."

He had seen a slight hesitation in her last reply. He thought that he had touched the point where the yoke of solitude galled the spirit. He was not the one to plant or to nourish discontent in anyone, and he turned at once to her brother, saying: "What, at the stream so early, my young friend? Have you had sport?"

"Not very great," answered Walter. "My fish are few, but they are large. Look here!"

"I call such sport excellent," said the stranger, looking into the basket. "I must have you take me with you some fair morning, for I am a great lover of the angle."

The lad hesitated, and turned somewhat redder in the cheek than he had been the moment before; but his sister saved him from reply, saying, in a musing tone: "I cannot imagine what delight men feel in what they call the sports of the field. To inflict death may be a necessity, but surely should not be an amusement."

"Man is a born hunter, Miss Prevost," replied the stranger, with a smile. "He must chase something. Oh, my dear young lady! few can tell the enjoyment, in the midst of busy, active, troublous life, of one calm day's angling by the side of a fair stream, with quiet beauty all around us, and no adversary but the speckled trout."

"And why should they be your foes?" asked Edith. "Why should you drag them from their cool, clear element to pant and die in the dry upper air?"

"'Cause we want to eat? em," said a voice from the door behind her; "they eats everything. Why shou'dn't we eat them? Darn this world; it is but a place for eating and being eaten. The bivers that I trap eat fish, and many a cunning trick the crafty critters use to catch 'em; the minks eat birds and birds' eggs. Men talk about beasts of prey. Why, everything is a beast of prey, eating the oxen and the sheep, and such like; and sometimes I have thought it hard to kill them, who never do harm to no one, and a great deal of good sometimes. But come, Master Walter, don't ye keep them fish in the sun. Give 'em to black Rosie, the cook, and let us have some on 'em for breakfast afore they're all wilted up."

The man who spoke might have been five feet five or six in height, and was anything but corpulent. Yet he was in chest and shoulders as broad as a bull; and though the lower limbs were more lightly formed than the upper, yet the legs, as well as the arms, displayed strong, rounded muscles, swelling forth at every movement. His hair was as black as jet, without the slightest mixture of gray, though he could not be less than fifty-four or fifty-five years of age; and his face, which was handsome, with features somewhat eagle-like, was browned by exposure to a color nearly resembling that of mahogany. With his shaggy bearskin cap, well worn, and a frock of deerskin, with the hair on, descending to the knees, he looked more like a bison than anything human; and, half expecting to hear him roar, the stranger was surprised to trace tones soft and gentle, though somewhat nasal, to such a rude and rugged form.

While Walter carried his basket of fish to the kitchen, and Mr. Prevost's guest was gazing at the newcomer, in whom Edith seemed to recognize an acquaintance, the master of the house himself approached from behind the latter, saying as he came. "Let me make you acquainted with Mr. Brooks, Major Kielmansegge--Captain Jack Brooks."

"Pooh, pooh, Prevost!" exclaimed the other. "Call me by my right name. I was Captain Brooks long agone. I'm new christened, and called Woodchuck now. That's because I burrow, Major. Them Ingians are wonderful circumdiferous; but they have found that when they try tricks with me, I can burrow under them; and so they call me Woodchuck, 'cause it's a burrowing sort of a beast."

"I do not exactly understand you," said the gentleman who had been called Major Kielmansegge. "What is the exact meaning of circumdiferous?"

"It means just circumventing like," answered the Woodchuck. "First and foremost, there's many of the Ingians--the Algonquin, for a sample--never tell a word of truth. No, no, not they. One of them told me so plainly one day. 'Woodchuck,' says he, 'Ingian seldom tell truth. He know better than that. Truth too good a thing to be used every day; keep that for time of need.' I believe at that precious moment he spoke the truth the first time for forty years."

The announcement that breakfast was ready interrupted the explanation of Captain Brooks, but seemed to afford him great satisfaction, and at the meal, certainly, he ate more than all the rest of the party put together, consuming everything set before him with a voracity truly marvelous. He seemed to think some apology necessary, indeed, for his furious appetite. "You see, Major," he said, as soon as he could bring himself to a pause sufficiently long to utter a sentence, "I eat well when I do eat; for sometimes I eat nothing for four or five days together. When I get to a lodge like this, I take in stores for my next voyage, as I can't tell what port I shall touch at again."

"Pray, do you anticipate a long cruise just now?" asked the stranger.

"No! no!" said the other, laughing; "but I always prepare against the worst. I am just going up the Mohawk for a step or two to make a trade with some of my friends of the Five Nations--the Iroquois, as the French folks call them. But I shall trot up afterward to Sandy Hill and Fort Lyman to see what is to be done there in the way of business. Fort Lyman I call it still, though it should be Fort Edward, for after the brush with Dieskau it has changed its name. Aye, that was a sharp affair, Major. You'd ha' liked to bin there, I guess."

"Were you there, Captain?" asked Mr. Prevost. "I did not know you had seen so much service."

"There I was," answered Woodchuck, with a laugh; "though, as to service, I did more than I was paid for, seeing I had no commission. I'll tell you how it was, Prevost. Just in the beginning of September--the seventh or eighth, I think--of the year afore last, that is, seventeen fifty-five, I was going up to the head of the lake to see if I could not get some paltry, for I had been unlucky down westward, and had made a bargain in Albany that I did not like to break. Just at the top of the hill, near where the King's road comes down to the ford, who should I stumble upon amongst the trees but old Hendrick, as they call him--why, I can't tell--the sachem of the Tortoise totem of the Mohawks. He was there with three young men at his feet; but we were always good friends, he and I, and over and above, I carried the calumet, so there was no danger. Well, we sat down, and he told me that the General, that is, Sir William as is now, had dug up the tomahawk, and was encamped near Fort Lyman, to give battle to You-non-de-yok; that is to say, in their jargon, the French governor. He told me, too, that he was on his way to join the General, but that he did not intend to fight, but only to witness the brave deeds of the Corlear men; that is to say, the English. He was a cunning old fox, old Hendrick, and I fancied from that he thought we should be defeated. But when I asked him, he said, no; that it was all on account of a dream he had had, forbidding him to fight on the penalty of his scalp. So I told him I was minded to go with him and see the fun. Well, we mustered before the sun was quite down well nigh upon three hundred Mohawks, all beautifully painted and feathered; but they all told me they had not sung their war song, nor danced their war dance before they left their lodges, so I could see well enough that they had no intention to fight, and the tarnation devil wouldn't make 'em. However, we got to the camp, where they were all busy throwing up breastworks, and we heard that Dieskau was coming down from Hunter's in force. The next morning we heard that he had turned back again from Fort Lyman, and Johnson sent out Williams with seven or eight hundred men to get hold of his haunches. I tried hard to get old Hendrick to go along, for I stuck fast by my Ingians, knowing the brutes can be serviceable when you trust them. But the sachem only grunted, and did not stir. In an hour and a half we heard a mighty large rattle of muskets, and the Ingians could not stand the sound quietly, but began looking at their rifle flints and fingering their tomahawks. However, they did not stir, and old Hendrick sat as grave and as brown as an old hemlock stump. Then we saw another party go out of camp to help the first; but in a very few minutes they came running back with Dieskau at their heels. In they tumbled over the breastworks head over heels--anyhow; and a pretty little considerable quantity of fright brought they with them. If Dieskau had charged straight on that minute, we should have all been smashed to everlasting flinders, and I don't doubt no more than that a bear's a critter that Hendrick and his painted devils would have had as many English scalps as French ones. But the old coon of a Garman halted up short some two hundred yards off, and Johnson did not give him much time to look about him, for he poured all the cannon shot he had got into him as hard as he could pelt. Well, the French Ingians, and there was a mighty sight of them, did not like that game of ball, and they squattered off to the right and left, some into the trees and some into the swamps; and I could stand it no longer, but up with my rifle and give them all I had to give; and old Hendrick, seeing how things were likely to go, took to the right end, too, but a little too fast, for the old devil came into him, and he must needs have scalps. So out he went with the rest, and just as he had got his forefinger in the hair of a young Frenchman, whiz came a bullet into his dirty red skin, and down he went like an old moose. Some twenty of his Ingians got shot, too; but, in the end, Dieskau had to run. Johnson was wounded, too; and them folks have since said that he had no right to the honor of the battle, but that it was Lyman, who took the command when he could fight no longer. But that's all trash! Dieskau had missed his chance, and all his irregulars were sent skimming by the first fire long before Johnson was hit. Lyman had nothing to do but hold what Johnson left him, and pursue the enemy. The first he did well enough, but the second he forgot to do, though he was a brave man and a good soldier, for all that."

This little narrative seemed to give matter for thought both to Mr. Prevost and his English guest, who, after a moment or two of somewhat gloomy consideration, asked the narrator whether the friendly Indians had on that occasion received any special offence to account for their unwillingness to give active assistance to their allies, or whether their indifference proceeded merely from a fickle or treacherous disposition.

"Somewhat of both," replied Captain Brooks; and after leaning his great, broad forehead on his hand for a moment or two in deep thought, he proceeded to give his views of the relations of the colonies with the Iroquois, in a manner and tone totally different from any he had used before. They were grave and almost stern; and his language had few, if any, of the coarse illustrations with which he ordinarily seasoned his conversation.

"They are a queer people, the Indians," he said, "and not so much savages as we are inclined to believe them. Sometimes I am ready to think that in one or two points they are more civilized than ourselves. They have not got our arts and sciences; and as they have got no books, one set of them cannot store up the knowledge they gain in their own time to be added to by every generation of them that comes after; and we all know that things which are sent down from mouth to mouth are soon lost or corrupted. But yet they are always thinking, and they have a calmness and a coolness in their thoughts that we white men very often want. They are quick enough in action when once they have determined upon a thing, and for perverseness they beat all the world; but they take a long time to consider before they do act, and it is really wonderful how quietly they do consider, and how steadily they stick in consideration to all their own old notions. We have not treated them well, sir, and we never did. They have borne a great deal, and they will bear more still; but yet they feel and know it, and some day they may make us feel it, too. They have not the wit to take advantage at present of our divisions, and by joining together themselves make us feel all their power; for they hate each other worse than they hate us; but if the same spirit were to take the whole redmen which got hold of the Five Nations many a long year ago, and they were to band together against the whites as those Five Nations did against the other tribes, they'd give us a great deal of trouble, and though we might thrash them at first, we might teach them to thrash us in the end. As it is, however, you see there are two sets of Indians and two sets of white men in this country, each as different from the other as anything can be. The Indians don't say, as they ought: The country is ours, and we will fight against all the whites till we drive them out; but they say: The whites are wiser and stronger than we are, and we will help those of them who are wisest and strongest. I don't mean to say they have not got their likings and dislikings, and that they are not moved by kindness or by being talked to; for they are great haters and great likers. But still what I have said is at the bottom of all their friendships with the white men. The Dutchmen helped the Five Nations, and taught them to believe they were a strong people. So the Five Nations liked the Dutch, and made alliance with them. Then came the English, and proved stronger than the Dutch, and the Five Nations attached themselves to the English. They have stuck fast to us for a long time, and would not go from us without cause. If they could help to keep us great and powerful they would, and I don't think a little adversity would make them turn. But still to see us whipped and scalped would make them think a good deal; and they won't stay by a people long they don't respect. They have got their own notions, too, about faith and want of faith. If you are quite friendly with them--altogether--out and out, they'll hold fast enough to their word with you; but a very little turning, or shaking, or doubting, will make them think themselves free from all engagements, and then take care of your scalp-lock. If I am quite sure when I meet an Indian, that, as the good book says, 'My heart is right with his heart,' that I have never cheated him, or thought of cheating him; that I have not doubted him, nor do I doubt him, I can lie down and sleep in his lodge as safe as if I were in the heart of Albany. But I should not sleep a wink if I knew there was the least little bit of insincerity in my own heart; for they are as cute as serpents, and they are not a people to wait for explanations. Put your wit against theirs at the back of the forest, and you'll get the worst of it."

"But have we cheated or attempted to cheat these poor people?" asked the stranger.

"Why, the less we say about that the better, Major," replied Woodchuck, shaking his head. "They have had to bear a great deal; and now, when the time comes that we look as if we were going to the wall, perhaps they may remember it."

"But I hope and trust we are not exactly going to the wall," said the other, with his color somewhat heightened. "There has been a great deal said in England about mismanagement of our affairs on this continent; but I have always thought, being no very violent politician myself, that party spirit dictated criticisms which were probably unjust."

"There has been mismanagement enough, Major," replied Captain Brooks; "hasn't there, Prevost?"

"I fear so, indeed," replied his host, with a sigh; "but quite as much on the part of the colonial authorities as on that of the government at home."

"And whose fault is that?" asked the other, somewhat warmly. "Why, that of the government at home, too. Why do they appoint incompetent men? Why do they appoint ignorant men? Why do they exclude from every office of honor, profit, trust, or emolument, the good men of the Provinces who know the situation and the wants and the habits of the Provinces, and put over us men who, if they were the best men in the world, would be inferior, from want of experience, to our own people, but who are nothing more than a set of presuming, ignorant, grasping blood-suckers, who are chosen because they are related to a minister or a minister's mistress, or perhaps his valet, and whose only object is to make as much out of us as they can, and then get back again. I do not say they are all so; but a great many of them are, and that is an insult and an injury to us."

He spoke evidently with a good deal of heat; but his feelings were those of a vast multitude of the American colonists, and those feelings were preparing the way for a great revolution.

"Come, come, Woodchuck!" exclaimed Walter Prevost, with a laugh, "you are growing warm; and when you are angry you bite. The Major wants to hear your notions of the state of the English power here, and not your censure of the King's government."

"God bless King George!" cried the other, warmly, "and send him all prosperity. There's not a more loyal man in the land than I am; but it vexes me all the more to see his ministers throwing away his people's hearts and losing his possessions into the bargain. But I'll tell you how it is, Major--at least how I think it is--and then you'll see. But I must go back a bit. Here are we, the English, in the middle of this North America; and we have got the French on both sides of us. Well, we have a right to the country all across the continent--and we must have it, for it is our only safety. But the French don't want us to be safe, and so they are trying to get behind us and push us into the sea. They have been trying it a long time, and we have taken no notice. They have pushed their posts from Canada right along by the Wabash and the Ohio from Lake Erie to the Mississippi, and they have built forts, and won over Ingians, drawing a string round us, which they will tighten every day unless we act. And what have the ministers been doing all the time? Why, for a long time they did nothing at all. First, the French were suffered boldly to call the country their own, and to carry our traders and trappers and send them into Canada; and never a word said by our people. Then they built fort after fort, till troops can march, and goods can go, with little or no trouble, from Quebec to New Orleans; and all that this produced was a speech from Governor Hamilton and a message from Governor Dinwiddie. The last indeed sent to England and made representation; but all he got was an order to repel force by force if he could, but to be quite sure that he did so on the undoubted territories of King George. Undoubted! Why, the French made the doubt, and then took advantage of it. Dinwiddie, however, had some spirit, and with what help he could get, he began to build a fort himself in the best chosen spot of the whole country, just by the meeting of the Ohio and the Monongahela. But he had only one man to the French ten, and not a regular company amongst them. So the French marched with a thousand soldiers and plenty of cannon and stores, turned his people out, took possession of his half finished fort and completed it themselves. That was not likely to make the Ingians respect us. Well, then Colonel Washington, the Virginian, and the best man in the land, built Fort Necessity; but they left him without forces to defend it, and he was obliged to surrender to Villiers and a force big enough to eat him up. That did not raise us with our redskins, and a French force never moved without a whole herd of Ingians, supposed to be in friendship with us, but ready to scalp us when we were defeated. Then came Braddock's mad march upon Fort Du Quesne, where he and almost all who were with him were killed by a handful of Ingians amongst the bushes--fifteen hundred men dispersed, killed and scalped by not four hundred savages--all the artillery taken and baggage beyond count--think of that! Then Shirley made a great parade of marching against Fort Niagara, but he turned back almost as soon as he set out; and had it not been for some good luck on the north side of Massachusetts Bay, and the victory of Johnson over Dieskau, you would not have had a tribe to hold fast to us. They were all wavering as fast as they could. I could see it as plain as possible from old Hendrick's talk; and the French Jesuits were in amongst them day and night to bring the Five Nations over. This was the year afore last. Well, what did they do last year? Nothing at all but lose Oswego. Lord Loudon and Abercrombie and Webb marched and countermarched and consulted and played the fool, while Montcalm was besieging Mercer, taking Oswego, breaking the terms he had expressly granted, and suffering his Ingians to scalp and torture his prisoners of war before his eyes. Well, this was just about the middle of August, but it was judged too late to do anything that year, and nothing was done. There was merry work in Albany, and people danced and sang; but the Ingians got a strange notion that the English lion was better at roaring than he was at biting. And now, Major, what have we done this year to make up for the blunders of the last five or six? Why, Lord Loudon stripped the whole of this province of its men and guns to go to Halifax and attack Louisburg. When he got to Halifax he exercised his men for a month, heard a false report that Louisburg was too strong and too well prepared to be taken, and sailed back to New York. In the meantime, Montcalm took Fort William Henry, on Lake George, and, as usual, let the garrison be butchered by the Ingians. So now the redskins see the English arms contemptible on every part of this continent, and the French complete masters of the lakes and the whole western country. The Five Nations see their Long House open to our enemies on three sides, and not a step taken to give them assistance or protection. We have abandoned them; can you expect them not to abandon us?"

The young officer, long before this painful question was asked, had leaned his elbow on the table and covered his eyes and part of his face with his hand. Walter and Edith both gazed at him earnestly, while their father bent his eyes gloomily down on the table--all three sympathizing with the feelings of a British officer while listening to such a detail. The expression they could not see, but the fine-cut ear appearing from beneath the curls of his hair glowed like fire before the speaker finished.

He did not answer, however, for more than a moment; but then raising his head, with a look of stern gravity he replied: "I cannot expect it. I cannot even understand how they have remained attached to us so long and so much."

"The influence of one man has done a great deal," replied Mr. Prevost. "Sir William Johnson is what is called the Indian agent, and whatever may be thought of his military ability, there can be no doubt that the Iroquois trust him, and love him more than they have ever trusted or loved a white man before. He is invariably just toward them; he always keeps his word with them; he never yields to importunity, or refuses to listen to reason; and he places that implicit confidence in them which enlists everything that is noble in the Indian character in his favor. Thus in his presence and in their dealings with him, they are quite a different people from what they are with others--all their fine qualities are brought into action, and all their wild passions are stilled."

"I should like to see them as they really are," said the young officer, eagerly; and then, turning to Woodchuck, he said: "You tell me you are going amongst them, my friend. Can you not take me with you?"

"Wait three days, and I will," replied the other. "I am first going up the Mohawk, as I told you, close by Sir William's castle and hall, as he calls the places. You'd see little there; but if you will promise to do just as I tell you, and take advice, I'll take you up to Sandy Hill and the creek, where you'll see enough of them. That will be arter I come back on Friday about noon."

Mr. Prevost looked at the young officer, and he at his entertainer, and then the former asked: "When will you bring him back, Captain? He must be here again by next Tuesday night."

"That he shall be, with or without his scalp," answered Woodchuck, with a laugh. "You get him ready to go; for you know, Prevost, the forest is not the parade ground."

"I will lend him my Gakaah and Giseha and Gostoweh," cried Walter. "We will make him quite an Indian."

"No! no!" answered Woodchuck. "That won't do, Walter. The man who tries to please an Ingian by acting like an Ingian, makes nought of it. They know it's a cheat, and they don't like it. We have our ways, they have theirs; and let each keep his own, like honest men. So I think, and so the Ingians think. Putting on a lion's skin will never make a man a lion. Get him some good, tough leggings, and a coat that won't tear, a rifle, and an axe, and a wood-knife--a bottle of brandy is no bad thing. But don't forget a calumet and a bunch of tobacco, for both may be needful. So now good-bye t'ye all. I must trot."

Thus saying, he rose from the table, and without more ceremonious adieu, left the room.