Eighteen hundred and twelve had passed away. President Madison, driven
by wrongs to his countrymen and indignities that no nation should meekly
accept, had in the midsummer declared war on Great Britain. Unfitted to
cope with the situation and surrounded by unfit counsellors, his little
army of heroic men led by unfit commanders had suffered one reverse
after another.
The loss of Fort Mackinaw, Chicago, Detroit, Brownstown, and the total
destruction of the American army that attacked Queenstown were but
poorly offset by the victory at Niagara and the successful defence of
Ogdensburg.
Rolf and Quonab had repaired to Albany as arranged, but they left it
as United States scouts, not as guides to the four young sportsmen who
wished to hark back to the primitive.
Their first commission had been the bearing of despatches to Plattsburg.
With a selected light canoe and a minimum of baggage they reached
Ticonderoga in two days, and there renewed their acquaintance
with General Hampton, who was fussing about, and digging useless
entrenchments as though he expected a mighty siege. Rolf was called
before him to receive other despatches for Colonel Pike at Plattsburg.
He got the papers and learned their destination, then immediately made a
sad mistake. “Excuse me, sir,” he began, “if I meet with--”
“Young man,” said the general, severely, “I don't want any of your 'ifs'
or 'buts'; your orders are 'go.' 'How' and 'if' are matters for you to
find out; that's what you are paid for.”
Rolf bowed; his cheeks were tingling. He was very angry at what he
thought a most uncalled for rebuke, but he got over it, and he never
forgot the lesson. It was Si Sylvanne that put it into rememberable
form.
“A fool horse kin follow a turnpike, but it takes a man with wits to
climb, swim, boat, skate, run, hide, go it blind, pick a lock, take the
long way, round, when it's the short way across, run away at the right
time, or fight when it's wise--all in one afternoon.” Rolf set out for
the north carrying a bombastic (meant to be reassuring) message from
Hampton that he would annihilate any enemy who dared to desecrate the
waters of the lake.
It was on this trip that Rolf learned from Quonab the details of the
latter's visit to his people on the St. Regis. Apparently the joy of
meeting a few of his own kin, with whom he could talk his own language,
was offset by meeting with a large number of his ancient enemies the
Mohawks. There had been much discussion of the possible war between the
British and the Yankees. The Mohawks announced their intention to fight
for the British, which was a sufficient reason for Quonab as a Sinawa
remaining with the Americans; and when he left the St. Regis reserve the
Indian was without any desire to reenter it.
At Plattsburg Rolf and Quonab met with another Albany acquaintance in
General Wilkinson, and from him received despatches which they brought
back to Albany, having covered the whole distance in eight days.
When 1812 was gone Rolf had done little but carry despatches up and down
Lake Champlain. Next season found the Americans still under command of
Generals Wilkinson and Hampton, whose utter incompetence was becoming
daily more evident.
The year 1813 saw Rolf, eighteen years old and six feet one in his
socks, a trained scout and despatch bearer.
By a flying trip on snowshoes in January he took letters, from General
Hampton at Ticonderoga to Sackett's Harbour and back in eight days,
nearly three hundred miles. It made him famous as a runner, but the
tidings that he brought were sad. Through him they learned in detail of
the total defeat and capture of the American army at Frenchtown. After a
brief rest he was sent across country on snowshoes to bear a reassuring
message to Ogdensburg. The weather was much colder now, and the single
blanket bed was dangerously slight; so “Flying Kittering,” as they named
him, took a toboggan and secured Quonab as his running mate. Skookum
was given into safe keeping. Blankets, pots, cups, food, guns, and
despatches were strapped on the toboggan, and they sped away at dawn
from Ticonderoga on the 18th of February 1813, headed northwestward,
guided by little but the compass. Thirty miles that day they made in
spite of piercing blasts and driving snow. But with the night there
began a terrible storm with winds of zero chill. The air was filled
with stinging, cutting snow. When they rose at daylight they were nearly
buried in drifts, although their camp was in a dense, sheltered thicket.
Guided wholly by the compass they travelled again, but blinded by the
whirling white they stumbled and blundered into endless difficulties
and made but poor headway. After dragging the toboggan for three hours,
taking turns at breaking the way, they were changing places when Rolf
noticed a large gray patch on Quonab's cheek and nose.
“Quonab, your face is frozen,” he said.
“So is yours,” was the reply.
Now they turned aside, followed a hollow until they reached a spruce
grove, where they camped and took an observation, to learn that the
compass and they held widely different views about the direction of
travel. It was obviously useless to face the storm. They rubbed out
their frozen features with dry snow and rested by the fire.
No good scout seeks for hardship; he avoids the unnecessary trial of
strength and saves himself for the unavoidable. With zero weather about
them and twenty-four hours to wait in the storm, the scouts set about
making themselves thoroughly comfortable.
With their snowshoes they dug away the snow in a circle a dozen feet
across, piling it up on the outside so as to make that as high as
possible. When they were down to the ground, the wall of snow around
them was five feet high. Now they went forth with the hatchets, cut many
small spruces, and piled them against the living spruces about the camp
till there was a dense mass of evergreen foliage ten feet high around
them, open only at the top, where was a space five feet across. With
abundance of dry spruce wood, a thick bed of balsam boughs, and plenty
of blankets they were in what most woodmen consider comfort complete.
They had nothing to do now but wait. Quonab sat placidly smoking, Rolf
was sewing a rent in his coat, the storm hissed, and the wind-driven ice
needles rattled through the trees to vary the crackle of the fire with a
“siss” as they fell on the embers. The low monotony of sound was lulling
in its evenness, when a faint crunch of a foot on the snow was heard.
Rolf reached for his gun, the fir tree screen was shaken a little, and a
minute later there bounded in upon them the snow covered form of little
dog Skookum, expressing his good-will by excessive sign talk in which
every limb and member had a part. They had left him behind, indeed, but
not with his consent, so the bargain was incomplete.
There was no need to ask now, What shall we do with him? Skookum had
settled that, and why or how he never attempted to explain.
He was wise who made it law that “as was his share who went forth to
battle, so shall his be that abode with the stuff,” for the hardest of
all is the waiting. In the morning there was less doing in the elemental
strife. There were even occasional periods of calm and at length it grew
so light that surely the veil was breaking.
Quonab returned from a brief reconnoitre to say, “Ugh!--good going.”
The clouds were broken and flying, the sun came out at times, but the
wind was high, the cold intense, and the snow still drifting. Poor
Skookum had it harder than the men, for they wore snowshoes; but he kept
his troubles to himself and bravely trudged along behind. Had he been
capable of such reflection he might have said, “What delightful weather,
it keeps the fleas so quiet.”
That day there was little to note but the intense cold, and again both
men had their cheeks frost-bitten on the north side. A nook under an
overhanging rock gave a good camp that night. Next day the bad weather
resumed, but, anxious to push on they faced it, guided chiefly by the
wind. It was northwest, and as long as they felt this fierce, burning
cold mercilessly gnawing on their hapless tender right cheek bones, they
knew they were keeping their proper main course.
They were glad indeed to rest at dusk and thaw their frozen faces. Next
day at dawn they were off; at first it was calm, but the surging of the
snow waves soon began again, and the air was filled with the spray of
their lashing till it was hard to see fifty yards in any direction. They
were making very bad time. The fourth day should have brought them to
Ogdensburg, but they were still far off; how far they could only guess,
for they had not come across a house or a settler.