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WITH ETHAN ALLEN AT TICONDEROGA
by
W. BERT FOSTER
Author of
"With Washington at Valley Forge" etc
Illustrated by F. A. Carter
THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY
PHILADELPHIA
MCMIV
Copyright 1903 by The Penn Publishing Company
With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga
[Illustration: "FORWARD!" HE SHOUTED]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I A Boy of the Wilderness 5
II Enoch Harding Feels Himself a Man 19
III The Ambush 31
IV 'Siah Bolderwood's Stratagem 45
V The Pioneer Home 60
VI The Stump Burning 76
VII A Night Attack 94
VIII The Traitor's Way 107
IX The Otter Creek Raid 127
X The Warning 139
XI An Unequal Battle 160
XII Backwoods Justice 174
XIII The Wolf Pack 191
XIV The Testimony of Crow Wing 208
XV The Storm Cloud Gathers 220
XVI The Westminster Massacre 236
XVII The Cloven Hoof 251
XVIII "The Cross of Fire" 270
XIX The Rising of the Clans 284
XX The Rival Commanders 298
XXI The Escape of the Spy 313
XXII The End of Simon Halpen 330
XXIII The Dawn of the Tenth of May 343
XXIV The Guns of Old Ti Speak 355
WITH ETHAN ALLEN AT TICONDEROGA
CHAPTER I
A BOY OF THE WILDERNESS
The forest was still. A calm lay upon its vast extent, from the
green-capped hills in the east to the noble river which, fed by the
streams so quietly meandering through the pleasantly wooded country,
found its way to the sea where the greatest city of the New World was
destined to stand. The clear, bell-like note of a waking bird startled
the morning hush. A doe and her fawn that had couched in a thicket
seemed roused to activity by this early matin and suddenly showered the
short turf with a dewy rain from the bushes which they disturbed as they
leaped away toward the "lick." The gentle creatures first slaked their
thirst at the margin of the creek hard by and then stood a moment with
outstretched nostrils, snuffing the wind before tasting the salt
impregnated earth trampled as hard as adamant by a thousand hoofs. The
fawn dropped its muzzle quickly; but the mother, not so well assured,
snuffed again and yet again.
In the wilderness, before the white man came, there were to be found
paths made by the wild folk going to and from their watering places and
feeding grounds, and paths made by the red hunter and warrior. Although
hundreds of deer traveled to this lick yearly, they had not originally
made the trail. It was an ancient Indian runaway, for the creek was
fordable near this point. The tribesmen had used it for generations
until it was worn almost knee-deep in the forest mould, but wide enough
only to be traveled in single file. Along this ancient trail, and
approaching the lick with infinite caution, came a boy of thirteen,
bearing a heavy rifle.
Although so young, Enoch Harding was well built, and the play of his
hardened muscles was easily observed under his tight-fitting, homespun
garments. The circumstances of border life in the eighteenth century
molded hardy men and sturdy boys. His face was as brown as a berry and
his eyes clear and frankly open. The brown hair curled tightly above his
perspiring brow, from which his old otter-skin cap was thrust back. His
coming to the bank of the wide stream was attended with all the care and
silent observation of an Indian on the trail. He set his feet so firmly
and with such precision that not even the rustle of a leaf or the
crackling of a twig would have warned the sharpest ear of his approach.
The wind was in his favor, too, blowing from the creek toward him. The
doe, which he could not yet see but the patter of whose light hoofs he
had heard as she trotted with her fawn to the drinking place, could not
possibly have discovered his presence; yet she continued to raise her
muzzle at intervals and snuff the wind suspiciously.
The dark aisles of the forest, as yet unillumined by the sun whose
crimson banners would soon be flung above the mountain-tops, seemed
deserted. In the distance the birds were beginning their morning song;
but here the shadow of the mountains lay heavy upon wood and stream and
the feathered choristers awoke more slowly. The two deer at the lick and
the boy who now, from behind the massive bole of a tree, surveyed them,
seemed the only living objects within view.
Enoch raised his heavy rifle, resting the barrel against the tree trunk,
and drew bead at the doe's side. He was chancing a long shot, rather
than taking the risk of approaching any nearer to the animals. He had
seen that the doe was suspicious and she might be off in a flash into
the thicker forest beyond unless he fired at once. Had he been more
experienced he would have wondered what had made the creature
suspicious, his own approach to the lick being quite evidently
undiscovered. But he thought only of getting a perfect sight and that
the larder at home was empty. And this last fact was sufficient to make
the boy's aim certain, his principal care being to waste no powder and
to bring down his game with as little loss of time as might be.
The next moment the heavy muzzle-loading gun roared and the buckshot
sped on its mission. The mother deer gave a convulsive spring forward,
thus warning the poor fawn, which disappeared in the brush like a flash
of brown light. The doe dropped in a heap upon the sward and Enoch,
flushed with success, ran forward to view his prize. In so doing,
however, the boy forgot the first rule of the border ranger and hunter.
He did not reload his weapon.
Stumbling over the widely spread roots of the great tree behind which he
had hidden, he reached the opening in the forest where the tragedy had
been enacted, and would have been on his knees beside the dead deer in
another instant had not an appalling sound stayed him. A scream, the
like of which once heard is never to be forgotten, thrilled him to the
marrow. He started back, casting his glance upward. There was a rustling
in the thick branches of the tree beneath which the doe had fallen.
Again the maddened scream rang out and a tawny body flashed from
concealment in the foliage.
"A catamount!" Enoch shouted, and seeing the creature fairly over his
head in its flight through the air, he leaped away toward the creek, his
feet winged with fear. Of all the wild creatures of the Northern
wilderness this huge cat was most to be avoided. It would not hesitate
to attack man when hungry, and maddened and disappointed as this one
was, its charge could not be stayed. At the instant when the beast was
prepared to leap upon either the doe or her fawn, Enoch's shot had laid
the one low and frightened the other away. His appearance upon the scene
attracted the attention of the cat and had given it a new object of
attack. Possibly the creature did not even notice the fall of the deer,
being now bent upon vengeance for the loss of its prey, for which it had
doubtless searched unsuccessfully all the night through.
The young hunter was in a desperate situation. His gun was empty and the
prospect of an encounter with the catamount would have quenched the
courage of the bravest. And to run from it was still more foolish, yet
this was the first thought which inspired him. The creek was beyond and
although the ford was some rods above the deer-lick, he thought to cast
himself into the stream and thus escape his enemy. The beast, possessing
that well-known trait of the feline tribe which causes it to shrink from
water, might not follow him into the creek.
A long log, the end of which had caught upon the bank, swung its length
into the stream, forming a boom against which light drift-stuff had
gathered; the swift current foamed about the timber as though vexed at
this delay to its progress. Upon the tree Enoch leaped and ran to the
further extremity. His feet, shod in home-made moccasins of deer-hide,
did not slip on this insecure footing; but his weight on the stranded
log set it in motion. The timber began to swing off from the shore and
one terrified glance about him assured the boy that he was at a most
deep and dangerous part of the stream.
Although so shallow above at the ford, the bed of the creek directly
below was of rock instead of gravel, and ragged boulders thrust
themselves up from the depths, causing many whirlpools which dimpled the
surface of the water. About the boulders the current tore, the brown
froth from the angry jaws of rock dancing lightly away upon the waves.
Although even with his clothing on he might have swum in a quiet pool,
to do so here would be almost impossible. The boy was between two
perils!
He turned about in horror to escape the flood, and was in time to see
the huge cat gain the end of the log in a single bound as it was torn
from the shore by the current. There the beast crouched, less than
twenty feet away, lashing its tail and snarling menace at the victim of
its wrath. The situation was paralyzing. As for loading his rifle now,
the boy had not the strength to do it. The fascination of the beast's
blazing eyes held him motionless, like a bird charmed by the unwinking
gaze of a black snake.
And Enoch Harding knew, if he knew anything, that the beast would not
give him time to reload the clumsy gun. At his first movement it would
spring. And if he leaped into the water, it might follow him,
considering its present savage mood. He beheld its muscles, which
slipped so easily under the tawny skin, knotting themselves for a
spring. The forelegs were drawn up under the breast the curved,
sabre-sharp claws scratching the bark on the floating timber. In another
instant the fatal leap would be made.
Never had the boy been in such danger. He did not utterly lose his
presence of mind; but he was helpless. What chance had he with an empty
gun before the savage brute? He seized the barrel in both hands and
raised the weapon above his head. It was too heavy for him to swing with
any ease, and being so would fall but lightly on the creature, did he
succeed in reaching it at all. He could not hope to stun the cat at a
single blow. And beside, the tree, rocking now like a water-logged
canoe, made his footing more and more insecure. In a moment it would be
among the boulders and at the first collision be overturned.
But he could not drag his eyes from those of the catamount. With a
fierce snarl which ended in a thrilling scream, the brute cast itself
into the air! At the moment it rose, exposing its lighter colored breast
to view, a gun-shot shattered the silence of river and forest. The
spring of the cat was not stayed, but its yell again changed--this time
to a note of agony.
"Jump, lad, jump!" shouted a voice and Enoch, as though awaking from a
dream, obeyed the command. He leaped sideways, and landed upon a
slippery rock, falling to his knees, yet securing a hand-hold upon a
protuberance. Nor did he lose hold of his gun with the other hand.
The body of the catamount landed just where he had stood; but then
rolled off the log and disappeared in the rushing stream, while the
timber itself crashed instantly into one of the larger boulders. Enoch
staggered to his feet, his hand bleeding and also his knee, where the
stocking had been torn away by the rock. The log swung broadside to the
current again, and seeing his chance, the boy ran along its length and
leaped from its end into comparatively shallow water under the bank.
His rescuer was at hand and dragged him, panting and exhausted, to the
shore, where he fell weakly on the turf, unable for a moment to utter a
word. The man who leaned over him was lean, as dark as an Indian, and in
a day when smoothly shaven features were the rule, his face was marked
by a tangled growth of iron-gray beard. His hair hung to the fringed
collar of his deerskin shirt, and straggled over his low brow in
careless locks, instead of being tightly drawn back and fastened in a
queue; and out of this wilderness of hair and beard looked two eyes as
sharp as the hawk's.
He was so tall that there was a slight stoop to his shoulders as though,
when he walked, he feared to collide with the branches of the trees
under which he passed. Erect, he must have lacked but a few inches of
seven feet and, possessing not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his big
bones, his appearance was not impressive. The deerskin hunting shirt,
worked in a curious pattern on the breast with red and blue porcupine
quills, fitted him tightly, as did his linsey-woolsey breeches; and his
thin shanks were covered with gray hose darned clumsily in more than one
place. He would have been selected at first sight as a wood-ranger and
hunter, and carried his long rifle with more grace than he ever held
plough or wielded reaping-hook.
Indeed, Josiah Bolderwood was one of that strange class of white men so
frequently found during the pioneer era of our Eastern country. He
seemed to have been born, as he often said himself, with a gun in his
hands. His mother, lying on her couch behind the double wall of a
blockhouse in the Maine wilderness, loaded spare guns for her husband
and his comrades while they beat off the yelling redskins, when Josiah
was but a few days old. He was a ranger and trapper from the beginning.
He had slept under the canopy of the forest more often than in a bed and
beneath a roof made by men's hands. From early youth he had hunted all
through the northern wilderness, and had been no more able to tie
himself to a farm, and earn his bread by tilling the soil, than an
Indian. Indeed, he was more of an Indian than a white man in habits,
tastes, and feelings; he lacked only that marvelous appreciation of
signs and sounds in the forest, in which the white can never hope to
equal the red man.
"Lad, that was a near chance for you!" he said, when he saw that Enoch
was practically unhurt. "The Almighty surely brought me to this lick
jest right. I knowed you was here when I heard the shot; but as your
marm said you'd gone for a deer, I didn't s'pose you'd be huntin' for
catamounts, too! Howsomever, somethin' tol' me ter run when I heard your
gun, an' run I did."
"I didn't shoot at the wild-cat, 'Siah," said the boy, getting upon his
feet. "See yonder; there's the doe I knocked over. But the critter was
after her, too, and it madded him when I fired, I s'pose."
"And ye didn't git your gun loaded again!" exclaimed Bolderwood.
His young friend blushed with shame. "I--I didn't think. I ran over to
look at the doe, and the critter jumped at me outer the tree. Then I got
on the log and he follered me----"
"Jonas Harding's boy'd oughter known better than that," declared the old
ranger, with some vexation.
"I know it, 'Siah. Poor father told me 'nough times never to move outer
my tracks till I had loaded again. An' I reckon this'll be a lesson for
me. I--I ain't got over it yet."
"Wal," said Bolderwood, "while you git yer breath, Nuck, I'll flay that
critter and hang her up. I'm in somethin' of a hurry this mornin'; but
as the widder's needin' the meat, we won't leave the carcass to the
varmints."
"You've been to my house, 'Siah?" cried Enoch, following him across the
little glade.
"Yes. Jest stopped there on my way down from Manchester. That's how I
knew you was over here hunting."
"But if you're in a hurry, leave me to do that," said the boy. "I'm all
right now."
"You're in as big a hurry as I be, Nuck," returned the ranger, with a
grim smile. "I'm going to take you with me over to Mr. James
Breckenridge's. Ev'ry gun we kin git may count to-day, lad."
"Did mother say I could go, 'Siah?" cried the youngster, with undoubted
satisfaction in his voice. "You're the best man that I know to get her
to say 'yes'!"
Bolderwood looked up from his work with much gravity. "This ain't no
funnin' we're goin' on, Nuck. It's serious business. You kin shoot
straight, an' that's why I begged for ye. This may be the most turrible
day you ever seen, my lad, for the day on which a man or boy sees
bloodshed for the fust time, is a mem'ry that he takes with him to the
grave."