"The Blood Be on Your Heads."
A bright, hot sun shone upon us the next morning--the
never-to-be-forgotten 6th. There would have been small need for any waking
rattle of the drums; the sultry heat made all willing to rise from the
hard, dry ground, where sleep had been difficult enough even in the cooler
darkness. At six o'clock the camp, such as it was, was all astir.
Breakfast was eaten in little groups squatted about in the clearing, or in
the shade of the trees at its edges, members of families or close
neighbors clustering together in parties once more, to share victuals
prepared by the same housewives--it may be from the same oven or spit. It
might well happen that for many of us this was the last meal on earth, for
we were within hearing of the heavy guns of the fort, and when three of
these should be fired in succession we were to take up our final
six-miles' march. But this reflection made no one sad, apparently.
Everywhere you could hear merry converse and sounds of laughter.
Listening, no one would have dreamed that this body of men stood upon the
threshold of so grave an adventure.
I had been up earlier than most of the others, and had gone over to the
spot where the horses were tethered. Of these animals there were some
dozen, all told, and their appearance showed that they had had a bad night
of it with the flies. After I had seen them led to water and safely
brought back, and had watched that in the distribution of the scanty store
of oats my steed had his proper share, I came back to breakfast with the
Stone Arabia men, among whom I had many acquaintances. I contributed some
sausages and slices of bread and meat, I remember, to the general stock of
food, which was spread out upon one of Isaac Paris's blankets. We ate with
a light heart, half-lying on the parched grass around the extemporized
cloth. Some of the young farmers, their meal already finished, were up on
their feet, scuffling and wrestling in jest and high spirits. They laughed
so heartily from time to time that Mr. Paris would call out: "Less noise
there, you, or we shall not hear the cannon from the fort!"
No one would have thought that this was the morning before a battle.
Eight o'clock arrived, and still there had been no signal. All
preparations had long since been made. The saddle-horses of the officers
were ready under the shade, their girths properly tightened. Blankets had
been rolled up and strapped, haversacks and bags properly repacked, a last
look taken to flints and priming. The supply-wagon stood behind where the
General's tent had been, all laden for the start, and with the horses
harnessed to the pole. Still no signal came!
The men began to grow uneasy with the waiting. It had been against the
prevalent feeling of impatience that we halted here the preceding day,
instead of hastening forward to strike the blow. Now every minute's
inaction increased this spirit of restlessness. The militiamen's
faces--already saturnine enough, what with broken rest and three days'
stubble of beard--were clouding over with dislike for the delay.
The sauntering to and fro began to assume a general trend toward the
headquarters of the Brigadier. I had visited this spot once or twice
before during the early morning to offer suggestions or receive commands.
I went again now, having it in mind to report to the General the evident
impatience of the men. A doubt was growing with me, too, whether we were
not too far away to be sure of hearing the guns from the fort--quite six
miles distant.
The privacy of the commander was indifferently secured by the posting of
sentries, who guarded a square perhaps forty feet each way. In the centre
of this enclosure was a clump of high bushes, with one or two young trees,
bunched upon the bank of a tiny rivulet now almost dried up. Here, during
the night, the General's small army-tent had been pitched, and here now,
after the tent had been packed on the wagon, he sat, on the only chair in
camp, under the shadow of the bushes, within full view of his soldiers.
These were by this time gathered three or four deep around the three front
sides of the square, and were gradually pushing the sentries in. Five or
six officers stood about the General, talking earnestly with him and with
one another, and the growing crowd outside the square were visibly anxious
to hear what was going on.
I have said before, I think, that I was the only officer of the
Continental line in the whole party. This fact, and some trifling
differences between my uniform and that of the militia colonels and
majors, had attracted notice, not wholly of an admiring sort. I had had
the misfortune, moreover, to learn in camp before Quebec to shave every
day, as regularly as if at home, with the result that I was probably the
only man in the clearing that morning who wore a clean face. This served
further to make me a marked man among such of the farmer boys as knew me
only by sight. As I pushed my way through the throng to get inside the
square, I heard various comments by strangers from Canajoharie or Cherry
Valley way.
"There goes Schuyler's Dutchman," said one. "He has brought his _friseur_
with him."
"It would have been more to the point if he had brought some soldiers.
Albany would see us hang before she would help us," growled another.
"Make way for Mynheer," said a rough joker in the crowd, half-laughing,
half-scowling. "What they need inside yonder is some more Dutch prudence.
When they have heard him they will vote to go into winter quarters and
fight next spring!"
All this was disagreeable enough, but it was wisest to pretend not to
hear, and I went forward to the groups around the Brigadier.
The question under debate was, of course, whether we should wait longer
for the signal; or, rather, whether it had not been already fired, and the
sound failed to reach us on the sultry, heavy air. There were two opinions
upon this, and for a time the difference was discussed in amiability, if
with some heat. The General felt positive that if the shots had been fired
we must have heard them.
I seem to see him now, the brave old man, as he sat there on the rough
stool, imperturbably smoking, and maintaining his own against the
dissenting officers. Even after some of them grew vexed, and declared that
either the signal had been fired or the express had been captured, and
that in either case it would be worse than folly to longer remain here, he
held his temper. Perhaps his keen black eyes sparkled the brighter, but he
kept his tongue calm, and quietly reiterated his arguments. The
beleaguering force outside the fort, he said, must outnumber ours two to
one. They had artillery, and they had regular German troops, the best in
Europe, not to mention many hundreds of Indians, all well armed and
munitioned. It would be next to impossible to surprise an army thus
supplied with scouts; it would be practically hopeless to attack them,
unless we were backed up by a simultaneous sortie in force from the fort.
In that, the Brigadier insisted, lay our only chance of success.
"But I say the sortie _will_ be made! They are waiting for us--only we are
too far off to hear their signal!" cried one of the impatient colonels.
"If the wind was in the east," said the Brigadier, "that might be the
case. But in breathless air like this I have heard the guns from that
fort two miles farther back."
"Our messengers may not have got through the lines last night," put in
Thomas Spencer, the half-breed. "The swamp back of the fort is difficult
travelling, even to one who knows it better than Helmer does, and Butler's
Indians are not children, to see only straight ahead of their noses."
"Would it not be wise for Spencer here, and some of our young trappers, or
some of Skenandoah's Indians, to go forward and spy out the land for us?"
I asked.
"These would do little good now," answered Herkimer; "the chief thing is
to know when Gansevoort is ready to come out and help us."
"The chief thing to know, by God," broke forth one of the colonels, with a
great oath, "is whether we have a patriot or a Tory at our head!"
Herkimer's tanned and swarthy face changed color at this taunt. He stole a
swift glance at me, as if to say, "This is what I warned you was to be
looked for," and smoked his pipe for a minute in silence.
His brother-in-law, Colonel Peter Bellinger, took the insult less tamely.
"The man who says Honikol Herkimer is a Tory lies," he said, bluntly, with
his hand on his sword-hilt, and honest wrath in his gray eyes.
"Peace, Peter," said the Brigadier. "Let them think what they like. It is
not my affair. My business is to guard the lives of these young men here,
as if I were their father. I am a childless man, yet here I am as the
parent of all of them. I could not go back again and look their mothers
in the eye if I had led them into trouble which could be avoided."
"We are not here to avoid trouble, but rather to seek it," shouted Colonel
Cox, angrily.
He spoke loud enough to be heard by the throng beyond, which now numbered
four-fifths of our whole force, and there rolled back to us from them a
loud answering murmur of approval. At the sound of this, others came
running up to learn what was going on; and the line, hitherto with
difficulty kept back by the sentries, was broken in in more than one
place. Matters looked bad for discipline, or wise action of any sort.
"A man does not show his bravery by running his head at a stone wall,"
said the Brigadier, still striving to keep his temper, but rising to his
feet as he spoke.
"_Will_ you give the order to go on?" demanded Cox, in a fierce tone,
pitched even higher.
"Lead us on!" came loud shouts from many places in the crowd. There was a
general pushing in of the line now, and some men at the back,
misinterpreting this, began waving their hats and cheering.
"Give us the word, Honikol!" they yelled.
Still Herkimer stood his ground, though with rising color.
"What for a soldier are you," he called out, sharply, "to make mutiny like
this? Know you not your duty better?"
"Our duty is to fight, not to sit around here in idleness. At least _we_
are not cowards," broke in another, who had supported Cox from the outset.
"_You_!" cried Herkimer, all roused at last. "_You_ will be the first to
run when you see the British!"
There was no longer any pretence of keeping the square. The excited
farmers pressed closely about us now, and the clamor was rising
momentarily. All thought of order or military grade was gone. Men who had
no rank whatever thrust their loud voices into the council, so that we
could hear nothing clearly.
There was a brief interchange of further hot words between the Brigadier,
Colonel Bellinger, and John Frey on the one side, and the mutinous
colonels and men on the other. I heard the bitter epithets of "Tory" and
"coward" hurled at the old man, who stood with chin defiant in air, and
dark eyes ablaze, facing his antagonists. The scene was so shameful that I
could scarce bear to look upon it.
There came a hurly-burly of confusion and tumult as the shouts of the
crowd grew more vehement, and one of the refractory colonels impetuously
drew his sword and half turned as if to give the command himself.
Then I heard Herkimer, too incensed to longer control himself, cry: "If
you will have it so, the blood be on your heads." He sprang upon the stool
at this, waved his sword, and shouted so that all the eight hundred
could hear:
"VORWAeRTS!"
The tall pines themselves shook with the cheer which the yeomen raised.
There was a scramble on the instant for muskets, bags, and belongings. To
rush was the order. We under-officers caught the infection, and with no
dignity at all hurried across the clearing to our horses. We cantered back
in a troop, Barent Coppernol leading the Brigadier's white mare at a
hand-gallop by our side. Still trembling with excitement, yet perhaps
somewhat reconciled to the adventure by the exultant spirit of the scene
before him, General Herkimer got into the saddle, and watched closely the
efforts of the colonels, now once more all gratified enthusiasm, to bring
their eager men into form. It had been arranged that Cox with his
Canajoharie regiment should have the right of the line, and this body was
ready and under way in less time, it seemed, than I have taken to write of
it. The General saw the other three regiments trooped, told Visscher to
bring the supply-wagon with the rear, and then, with Isaac Paris, Jelles
Fonda, and myself, galloped to the head of the column, where Spencer and
Skenandoah with the Oneida Indians were.
So marching swiftly, and without scouts, we started forth at about nine in
the morning.
The road over which we hurried was as bad, even in those hot, dry days of
August, as any still to be found in the Adirondacks. The bottom-lands of
the Mohawk Valley, as is well known, are of the best farming soil in the
world, but for that very reason they make bad roads. The highway leading
to the fort lay for the most part over low and springy land, and was cut
through the thick beech and hemlock forest almost in a straight line,
regardless of swales and marshy places. These had been in some instances
bridged indifferently by corduroys of logs, laid the previous spring when
Gansevoort dragged up his cannon for the defence of the fort, and by this
time too often loose and out of place. We on horseback found these rough
spots even more trying than did the footmen; but for all of us progress
was slow enough, after the first excitement of the start had passed away.
There was no outlook at any point. We were hedged in everywhere by walls
of foliage, of mossy tree-trunks covered with vines, of tangled
undergrowth and brush. When we had gained a hill-top, nothing more was to
be seen than the dark-brown band of logs on the gully bottom before us,
and the dim line of road losing itself in a mass of green beyond.
Neither Herkimer nor Paris had much to say, as we rode on in the van.
Major Fonda made sundry efforts to engage them in talk, as if there had
been no recent dispute, no harsh words, no angry recriminations, but
without special success. For my part, I said nothing whatever. Surely
there was enough to think of, both as to the miserable insubordination of
an hour back, and as to what the next hour might bring.
We had passed over about the worst of these patches of corduroy road, in
the bottom of a ravine between two hills, where a little brook, dammed in
part by the logs, spread itself out over the swampy soil on both sides. We
in the van had nearly gained the summit of the farther eminence, and were
resting for the moment to see how Visscher should manage with his wagon
in the rear. Colonel Cox had also turned in his saddle, some ten yards
farther down the hill, and was calling back angrily to his men to keep in
the centre of the logs and not tip them up by walking on the ends.
While I looked Barent Coppernol called out to me: "Do you remember? This
is where we camped five years ago."
Before I could answer I heard a rifle report, and saw Colonel Cox fall
headlong upon the neck of his horse.
There was a momentary glimpse of dark forms running back, a strange yell,
a shot or two--and then the gates of hell opened upon us.