Understanding the importance of his errand and guessing its purpose,
Nathan skulked stealthily along the heavily-wooded border of the highway
till past all chance of discovery, when he took the easier course of the
road. The ecstatic melody of the thrushes' song and the pensive strain
of the pewee had not changed, yet now they were instinct with cheer and
acceleration, as was the merry drumbeat of the flicker on a dry branch
overhead.
Presently, as he held his steady pace, splashing through puddles and
pattering along firmer stretches, he heard sharp and loud footfalls in
rapid approach. Before his first impulse to strike into the ready cover
of the woods was carried into effect, a horseman galloped around the
turn, and he was face to face with a handsome stranger, whose tall,
well-knit figure, heightened by his seat on horseback, towered above the
boy like a giant.
"Hello," said the man, reining up his horse, "and where are you bound in
such a hurry, and who might you be?" His clear gray eyes were fixed on
Nathan, who noticed pistols in the holsters, a long gun across the
saddle bow, and, in the cocked hat, a sprig of evergreen.
"I'm Seth Beeman's boy," Nathan answered, pointing in the direction of
his home, "and I'm goin' to neighbor Newton's of an arrant."
"Ah,--Beeman,--a good man, I'm told. And what might take you to neighbor
Newton's in such a hurry? Has that hemlock twig in your hand anything to
do with your errand?" demanded the stranger, in an imperative but kindly
voice. "Speak up. You need not be afraid of me."
Nathan looked up inquiringly at the bold, handsome face smiling down on
him.
"Did you ever hear of Ethan Allen?" asked the stranger.
"Oh, yes; only yesterday father told about Ethan Allen's throwing the
Yorker's millstones over the Great Falls at New Haven."
"Right and true! Well, I am Ethan Allen." As he gave his name in a
deep-toned voice of proud assurance, it seemed in itself a strong host.
"Your father sent you with that twig to say there's trouble at Beeman's,
didn't he?"
Nathan looked up in wonder, admiration, and gladness, and then, with the
instinctive, unreasoned confidence that the famous chieftain of the
Grants was wont to inspire, told unreservedly his father's troubles and
directions. When Allen had heard it, he wheeled his horse beside the
nearest stump and bade Nathan mount behind him.
"My horse's feet will help you make your rounds quicker than yours, my
man. We've no time to lose, for there's no telling what those scoundrels
may be at. Eight Yorkers! Well, we'll soon raise good men enough to make
short work of them."
Nathan mounted nimbly to his assigned place, and, clasping as far as he
could the ample waist of his new friend, was borne along the road at a
speed that soon brought them to the log house of the Newtons. A man of
the herculean mould so common to the early Vermonters came out of the
house to meet the comers, with an expression of pleased surprise on his
good-humored face.
"Why, colonel, we wa'n't expectin' on you so soon, but we hain't no less
glad to see you. 'Light and come in. Mother'll hev potluck ready to
rights. Why, is that the Beeman boy stickin' on behind you? Anything the
matter over to Beeman's?"
"No, we can't 'light," Allen replied; and then, looking down over his
shoulder, "Do your errand, my boy, and we'll push on."
Nathan held out the carefully kept sprig of evergreen and repeated his
message.
"Trouble to Beeman's, now."
"Yea, verily," said Allen to Newton, whose face flashed at the boy's
words. "Rise up and gird on your swords, you and your sons. The
Philistines are upon you even as it has been prophesied. Felton and his
gang of land thieves. The son of Belial was warned to depart from the
land of the elect, but he heeds not those who cry in the wilderness.
Confound the rascal! He must be 'viewed'! You and your two boys take
your guns and jog down that way, and as you go cut a goodly scourge of
blue beech, for verily there shall be weeping and wailing and gnashing
of teeth. We'll rally the Callenders, and Jones, and Harrington, and
North, and my friend Beeman here will tell Job. We'll gather a good
dozen. Enough to mete out the vengeance of the Lord to eight Yorkers,
I'll warrant!"
Strange and abrupt as were the transitions from Allen's favorite
Scriptural manner of speech to the ordinary vernacular, no one thought
of laughing. As the boy dismounted, Allen said:
"You go straight to Job and do as he tells you;" and as he rode away
called back, "everybody lay low and keep dark till you hear the owl
hoot."
Soon Nathan turned from the road into an obscure footpath that led in
the direction of Job Carpenter's cabin. The gloom and loneliness of the
mysterious forest, through which the narrow footpath wound, so pervaded
it that the song birds seemed awed to silence, and the woodpeckers
tapped cautiously, as if afraid of being heard by some enemy. No boy,
even of backwoods breeding, would care to loiter had his errand been
less urgent, and he gave but a passing notice to things ordinarily of
absorbing interest.
A mother partridge fluttered along the ground in simulated crippledness
while her callow brood vanished among the low-spread leaves. A shy wood
bird disclosed the secret of her nest as he sped by. Against a dark pine
gleamed the fiery flash of a tanager's plumage. A wood mouse stirred the
dry leaves. His own foot touched a prostrate dead sapling, and the dry
top rustled unseen in the wayside thicket. There was a sound of long,
swift bounds, punctuating the silence with growing distinctness, and a
hare, in his brown summer coat, wide-eyed with terror, flashed like a
dun streak across the path just before him, and close behind the
terrified creature a gray lynx shot past, eager with sight and scent of
his prey, closing the distance with long leaps. Before the intermittent
scurry of footfalls had faded out of hearing they ceased, and a wail of
agony announced the tragical end of the race. The cry made him shiver,
and he could but think that the lynx might have been a panther and the
hare a boy.
His heart grew lighter when he saw the sunshine showing golden green
through the leafy screen that bordered the hunter's little clearing. He
found Job leaning on his hoe in his patch of corn, looking wistfully on
the creek, where the fish were breaking the surface among the weeds that
marked the expanse of marsh with tender green, and where the sinuous
course of the channel was defined by purple lines of lily pads. The
message was received with a show of vexation, and the old man exclaimed:
"Plague on 'em all with their pitches and surveyin' and squabblin'. Why
can't folks let the woods alone? There's room enough in the settlements
for sech quarrels without comin' here to disturb God's peace with
bickerin's over these acres o' desart. I thought I'd got done wi' wars
and fightin's, exceptin' with varmints, when the Frenchers and Injins
was whipped. But I guess there won't never be no peace on airth and good
will to men for all it's ben preached nigh onto eighteen hundred years.
Plague on your Hampshire Grants and your York Grants, the hul bilin'!
Wal, if it must come it must, and I'll be skelped if I'll see Yorkers a
runnin' over my own Yankee kin. Yorkers is next to Reg'lars for toppin'
ways. I never could abear 'em."
While he spoke he twirled Nathan's hemlock sprig between his fingers and
now set it carefully in the band of his hat and led the way to his
cabin.
"And Ethan Allen's in these betterments? Well, them Yorkers'll wish
they'd stayed to home. He's hard-handed, is Ethan."
The two were now in the cabin, and Job set forth a cold johnny-cake and
some jerked venison that Nathan needed no urging to partake of. "'Tain't
your mother's cookin', but it's better'n nothin'," Job said, as between
mouthfuls he counted out a dozen bullets from a pouch and put them in
his pocket. Then he held up his powder horn toward the light after
giving it a shake, and, being satisfied of its contents, slung it over
his shoulder. Their hunger being satisfied, he took the long smooth-bore
from its hooks, examined the flint, and, nodding to Nathan to follow,
went down to his canoe, that lay bottom up on the bank.
"It's quicker goin' by water'n by land," said Job, as he set the canoe
afloat and stepped into it, while Nathan took his place forward.
Impelled by the two paddles, the light craft went swiftly gliding down
the creek, and then northward, skirting the wooded shore of the lake.