ENOCH HARDING FEELS HIMSELF A MAN
Although Enoch Harding had not grasped the serious nature of the matter
which the ranger's words suggested, there was something he had realized,
however, and this thought sent the blood coursing through his veins with
more than wonted vigor and his eyes sparkled. He was a man. He was to
play a man's part on this day and the neighbors--even the old ranger who
had stood his friend on so many occasions already--recognized him as the
head of the family.
Bolderwood saw this thought expressed in his face and without desiring
to "take him down" and humble his pride, wished to show him the serious
side of the situation. To this end he spoke upon another subject,
beginning: "D'ye remember where we be, Nuck? 'Member this place? Seems
strange that you sh'd have such a caper here with that catamount after
what happened only last spring, doesn't it?" He glanced keenly at young
Harding and saw that his words had at once the desired effect. Enoch
stood up, the skinning-knife in his hand, and looked over the little
glade. In a moment his brown eyes filled with tears, which rolled
unchastened down his smooth cheeks.
"Aye, Nuck, a sorry day for you an' yourn when Jonas Harding met his
death here. And a sorry day was it for me, too, lad. I loved him like a
brother. He an' I, Nuck, trapped this neck of woods together before the
settlement was started. We knew how rich the land was and naught but the
wars with the redskins an' them French kept us from comin' here long
before the Robinsons. Jonas wouldn't come 'less it was safe to bring
your mother an' you--an' he was right. There's little good in a man's
roamin' the world without a wife an' fireside ter tie to. I was sayin'
the same to neighbor Allen last week, an' he agreed--though he's wuss
off than me, for he has a family back in Litchfield an' is under anxiety
all the time to bring them here, if the Yorkers but leave us in peace.
As for me--well, a tough old knot like me ain't fit to marry an' settle
down. I'm wuss nor an Injin."
It is doubtful if the boy heard half this monologue. He stood with
thoughtful mien and his eyes were still wet when Bolderwood's words
finally aroused him. "Do you know, Nuck, there's many a time I stop at
this ford and think of your father's death? There's things about it I'll
never understand, I reckon."
Enoch Harding started and flashed a quick glance at his friend. "What
things?" he asked.
"Well, lad, mainly that Jonas Harding, who was as quick on the trail and
as good a woodsman as myself, should be worsted by a mad buck; it seems
downright impossible, Nuck."
"I know. But there could be no mistake about it, 'Siah. There were the
hoof-marks--and there was no bullet wound on the body, only those gashes
made by the critter's horns. Simon Halpen----"
Bolderwood raised his hand quickly. "Nay, lad! don't utter evil even
about that Yorker. We all know he was anigh here when your father died.
He was seen at Bennington the night before, and later crossed James
Breckenridge's farm on his way to Albany. Black enemy as he is to you
and yourn, there's naught to be gained by accusing him of Jonas' death.
It would be impossible. There was not, as you say, a bullet wound upon
your father's body. There was not a mark of man's footstep near the lick
here but your father's own. How else, then, could he have been killed
but by the charge of the buck?"
"You say yourself that father was far too sharp to so be taken by
surprise," muttered the boy.
"Aye--that is so. But the facts are there, lad. I s'arched the ground
over--I headed the band of scouts who found him--remember that! Nobody
had been near the lick but Jonas. There wasn't a footmark for rods
around. Even an Injin couldn't have got near enough to strike Jonas down
with his gun-butt----"
"You believe that wound on his head, then, was made by no deer's
antler?" exclaimed Enoch, eagerly.
"Tut, tut! You jump too quick," said Bolderwood, turning his face away.
"That's never well. Allus look b'fore ye leap, Nuck. My 'pinion be that
your father struck his head on a stone in falling----"
"Where is there a stone here?" demanded the boy, with a speaking gesture
of his disengaged hand. "I saw that deep wound in father's skull. I
never believed a buck did that."
"And yet there was naught but the prints of the buck's hoofs in the soil
here--be sure of that. The ground was trampled all about as though the
fight had been desp'rate--as indeed it must have been."
"But that blow on the head?" reiterated Enoch.
"Ah, lad, I can't understand that. The wound certainly was mainly like a
blow from a gun-stock," admitted Bolderwood.
"Then Simon Halpen compassed his death--I am sure of it!" cried the boy.
"You well know how he hated father. Halpen would never forget the
beech-sealing he got last fall. He threatened to be terribly revenged on
us; and Bryce and I heard him threaten father, too, when he fought him
upon the crick bank and father tossed the Yorker into the middle of the
stream."
Bolderwood chuckled. "Simon as well might tackle Ethan Allen himself as
to have wrastled with Jonas," he said.... "But we must hurry, lad. We
have work--and perhaps serious work--before us this day. It may be the
battle of our lives; we may l'arn to-day whether we are to be free
people here in Bennington, or are to be driven out like sheep at the
command of a flunkey under a royal person who lives so far across the
sea that he knows naught of, nor cares naught for us."
"You talk desp'rately against the King, Mr. Bolderwood!" exclaimed
Enoch, looking askance at his companion.
"Nay--what is the King to me?" demanded the ranger, in disgust. "He
would be lost in these woods, I warrant. We're free people over here;
why should we bother our heads about kings and parliament? They are no
good to us."
"You talk more boldly than Mr. Ethan Allen," said the boy. "He was at
our house once to talk with father. Father said he was a master bold man
and feared neither the King nor the people."
"And no man need fear either if he fear God," declared the ranger,
simply. "We are only seeing the beginnings of great trouble, Nuck. We
may do battle to Yorkers now; perhaps we shall one day have to fight the
King's men for our farms and housel-stuff. The Governor of New York is a
powerful man and is friendly to men high in the King's councils, they
say. This Sheriff Ten Eyck may bring real soldiers against us some day."
"You don't believe that, 'Siah?" cried the boy.
"Indeed and I do, lad," returned the ranger, rising now with the carcass
of the doe flayed and ready for hanging up.
"But we'll fight for our lands!" cried Enoch. "My father fought Simon
Halpen for our farm. I'll fight him, too, if he comes here and tries to
take it, now father is dead."
"Mayhap this day's work will settle it for all time, Nuck," said the
ranger, hopefully. "But do you shin up that sapling yonder, and bend it
down. We wanter hang this carcass where no varmit--not even a
catamount--can git it."
The boy did as he was bade and soon the fruit of Enoch Harding's early
morning adventure was hanging from the top of a young tree, too small to
be climbed by any wild-cat and far enough from the ground to be out of
reach of the wolves and foxes. "Now we'll git right out o' here, lad,"
Bolderwood said, picking up his rifle and starting for the ford. "We've
got to hurry," and Enoch, nothing loath, followed him across the creek
and into the forest on the other bank.
"Do you r'ally think there'll be fightin', Master Bolderwood?" he asked.
"I hope God'll forbid that," responded the ranger, with due reverence.
"But if the Yorkers expect ter walk in an' take our farms the way this
sheriff wants ter take Master Breckenridge's, we'll show 'em diff'rent!"
He increased his stride and Enoch had such difficulty in keeping up with
his long-legged companion that he had no breath for rejoinder and they
went on in silence.
The controversy between the New York colony and the settlers of the
Hampshire Grants who had bought their farms of Governor Benning
Wentworth, of New Hampshire, was a very important incident of the
pre-Revolutionary period. The not always bloodless battles over the
Disputed Ground arose from the claim of New York that the old patent of
King Charles to the Duke of York, giving to him all the territory lying
between the Connecticut River on the east and Delaware Bay on the west,
was still valid north of the Massachusetts line.
In 1740 King George II had declared "that the northern boundary of
Massachusetts be a similar curved line, pursuing the course of the
Merrimac River at three miles distant on the north side thereof,
beginning at the Atlantic Ocean and ending at a point due north of a
place called Pawtucket Falls, and by a straight line from thence due
west till it meets with his Majesty's other governments." Nine years
later Governor Wentworth made the claim that, because of this
established boundary between Massachusetts and New Hampshire, the
latter's western boundary was the same as Massachusetts'--a line
parallel with and twenty miles from the Hudson River--and he informed
Governor Clinton, of New York, that he should grant lands to settlers as
far west as this twenty-mile line. Therewith he granted to William
Williams and sixty-one others the township of Bennington (named in his
honor) and it was surveyed in October of that same year. But the
outbreak of the French and Indian troubles made the occupation of this
exposed territory impossible until 1761, when there came into the rich
and fertile country lying about what is now the town of Bennington,
several families of settlers from Hardwick, Mass., in all numbering
about twenty souls.
But there had been an earlier survey of the territory along Walloomscoik
Creek under the old Dutch patent and in 1765 Captain Campbell, under
instructions from the New York colony, attempted to resurvey this old
grant. He came to the land of Samuel Robinson who, with his neighbors,
drove the Yorkers off. For this Robinson and two others were carried to
Albany where they were confined in the jail for some weeks and afterward
fined for "rioting." At once the settlers, who had increased greatly
since '61, saw that they must present their case before the King if they
would have justice rendered them; so Captain Robinson went to England to
represent their side of the matter. Unfortunately he died there before
completing his work.
On the part of the governors of New Hampshire and New York it was merely
a land speculation, and both officials were after the fees accruing from
granting the lands; whereas the settlers who had gone upon the farms,
and established their families and risked their little all in the
undertaking, bore the brunt of the fight. The speculators and the men
they desired to place on the farms of the New Hampshire grantees,
hovered along the Twenty-Mile Line, and occasionally made sorties upon
the more unprotected farmers, despite the fact that the King had
instructed the Governor of New York to make no further grants until the
rights of the controversy should be plainly established. This settled
determination of the New York authorities to drive them out convinced
the men of the Grants that they must combine to defend their homes and
when, early in July, 1771, news came from Albany that Sheriff Ten Eyck
with a large party of armed men was intending to march to James
Breckenridge's farm and seize it in the name of the New York government,
the people of Bennington in town-meeting assembled determined to defend
their townsman's rights.
Sheriff Ten Eyck started from Albany on the 18th of July with more than
300 men and at once the settlers began to gather near the threatened
farmstead. 'Siah Bolderwood having no farm of his own, was sent through
the country raising men and guns for the defense of the Breckenridge
place. On his way back he had stopped for Enoch Harding and learning
that the boy had gone hunting before daybreak, the ranger followed him,
arriving at the deer-lick in time to render important assistance in the
dramatic scene just pictured. After crossing the creek at the spot where
the boy's father had met his frightful and mysterious death a few months
before, the two volunteers, while still the day was new, reached the
place of the settlers' gathering.