University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.
THE HUNTERS' AMBUSCADE.

Street.

The plans of the hunter Balt, when he was permitted
to arrange the movements of his party for
the night, were well laid in every respect save
one; the omission, on the part of De Roos and his
forest counsellor, to keep up a communication with
Greyslaer, either by messengers or signals, to be
available in case they met with any obstacle to the
consummation of their design. The unfortunate issue
of the ambuscade was mainly attributable to
this oversight. “The attempt,” they argued, “must
either be fully successful, when we shall rejoin our
comrades without molestation, or, if we are interrupted
by a sally from the fort or other untoward
occurrence, the report of our firearms will soon
show Greyslaer how things are going.” In guerilla
warfare, however, so much often depends upon an
instantaneous change of the mode in which you
would effect your design when carrying any given
piece of stratagie into execution, that the most perfect
concert of action should be observed if you
would avail yourself of their flexile councils without
endangering your brother partisans.

The two parties, led severally by Balt and De
Roos, gaining the bottom of the hill upon which

they had left the ill-starred Greyslaer, separated
near the base of the promontory before described,
and betook themselves to their appointed stations.
De Roos posted himself, with his men, in a swamp
that friuged a little bay a few hundred yards below
the Indian stockade, from which it was divided by
the river, which was here about a rifle-shot in
breadth. The promontory extended out into the
stream upon his right, and the canoe, which was
the object of attack, was just turning this headland
as he reached his position, and might be said to be
thus already cut off from the fort had he dared to fire
upon her. But Balt, who gained the shore, amid
tangled vines and thickets of elder, upon the lower
side of the promontory, awaited there his opportunity
to seize the fishermen in a more peaceable manner.

Placing his followers in a copse near the mouth
of the brook already mentioned, he proceeded cautiously
to a clump of chestnuts near, and selecting
one fit for his purpose, he cut off a stick about two
feet in length from a green sapling, and, after rolling
it between his palms for a few moments, succeeded
in drawing out the woody part from its bark casing,
forming thus from the latter a hollow tube, which
might answer the purpose of a speaking-trumpet.
Placing one end of this to his mouth, and bending
his body so as to bring the other within an inch of
the ground, and partly to smother the sound he intended
to produce from the instrument, he drew
from it a deep discordant noise, not unlike the distant
roaring of a bull. The call almost immediately
brought a reply, both from the hill-side and from the
water. From the hills it came back in a wild bellowing,
that was evidently that of a real animal answering
a beast of its own kind. Upon the water it
was replied to by the Indians, who, equally deceived
by sounds that seemed to indicate their vicinity to a

moose-deer buck, or bull moose as our hunters call
it, attempted, by putting their closed fists to their
mouths, to mimic the cry and lure the animal to the
water-side, where the torches in the bow of the
shallop would enable them to fix the buck at gaze,
and to approach sufficiently near to destroy him
with their fishing-spears.

Guiding their birchen vessel now into an eddy
of the stream by a scarcely perceptible motion of
the paddle, they approached with care the spot
where Balt and his comrades lay. But the next
moment, exchanging some words with each other
in a low tone, which made them inaudible to those
on shore, the steersman gave a flirt of his paddle,
and the light bark swung round again to the centre
of the stream. Here the Indians paused, as if listening
intently; and the wary Balt, fearing, now that
their attention was fully awakened, to repeat the
same lure, which might fail to deceive them when
so near, resorted to another less easy of detection.

He took a cup from his hunting-pouch, and, stooping
down to the brook, dipped up the water and let
it fall again into the current, to imitate the plashing
footsteps of an animal stalking along the bed of the
stream. The Indians had drawn out toward the
channel of the river, in order to give the supposed
moose a wide berth between themselves and the
shore, where, as he waded out to lave his flanks, according
to the custom of the animal at this season,
they would hold him to advantage in the deep water.
But as the plashing sounds which they had
just heard grew fainter, as if the moose were retiring
from the river side, they abandoned this expectation,
and, mimicking his bellowing cry once more,
they gave the canoe a direction toward the cove,
and glided silently into the mouth of the brook.
Their glaring torches shone double upon its shallow

and pebbly bottom, and lighted up the overhanging
thicket with a ruddy glare.

“Captur, but slay not!” cried Balt, leaping into
the frail shallop with a force that drove his feet
through the flimsy bottom and anchored it to the
spot, at the same moment that an Indian in the bow
was vainly attempting, with his long spear, to push
back into the parent stream. A blow from the hatchet
of the woodsman snapped the shaft, leaving the
barbed end quivering in the bank, and the other a
harmless weapon in the hands of the Indian, who
was instantly secured by his opponent. Not so,
however, with his two comrades; one of those, who
held the steering-paddle, threw himself backward
over the stern, floundered with mad desperation
through the shallow water, and, diving like a duck
the moment he attained that deep enough for swimming,
struck out for the opposite side of the river,
which he gained in safety. The remaining Indian
was not less successful in his attempt to escape.
This man, a warrior of powerful frame and great
prowess, deeming himself surrounded, leaped from
the canoe at the first alarm, and charged into the
midst of his enemies; grasping his fishing-spear by
the middle, so as, at the same time, to protect his
person and prevent the long shaft from becoming
entangled in the underwood, he levelled a yeoman
with a blow from either end at the first onset, and,
seizing a rifle from one of the men as they fell,
bounded off, unharmed, into the forest.

“Old Josey himself, by the Etarnal! there's no
Injun breathing but he could have done that,” cried
Balt; “we have let the head-devil of them all, boys,
slip through our fingers, and we shall have the hull
kennel of hell-hounds let loose upon us in an instant.
We must lose no time in crossing from these parts,
or our scalps will fly off like thistle-down; we must

make a divarsion, too, or we'll lose our prisoner.”
And, binding the hands of his only captive with a
tendril of grapevine, the hunter hastily consigned him
to the care of his comrades, and told them to move
down along the banks of the river as rapidly as possible,
without attempting to regain the place first
designated as a rendezvous. With these hurried
directions, Balt sprang forward to give in person the
necessary warning to De Roos, whom he met midway,
hurrying with his men to join him.

“Turn, Balt, turn, or the dogs will be on our trail
in a moment; I've seen a dripping savage emerge
like a musquash from the water on the opposite
side, where a dozen canoes are drawn up before the
station, and we must put the rapids between them
and our party as quickly as possible.”

“What, risk our only prisoner, squire? when I've
sent my men that way with him, hoping that we
could lead off the pursuit toward the cliff, where
the capting awaits us.”

“It will never do,” said De Roos, still keeping
his party in motion; “Greyslaer will get sufficient
warning to retire in time, seeing the movements
around the fort; and as for our joining him, it is too
late. My men have already seen one armed Indian
skulking between them and the hill, and we may
be at this moment surrounded by a hundred.”

As these words passed hurriedly between the
commander of the expedition and his unlucky adviser,
Balt, who had for the moment allowed his course
to be turned, and himself borne along with the rapid
march of his comrades, stopped short, exclaiming,
“On, then; on, Squire Dirk; you may have changed
our plans for the better, and the capting, mayhap,
would consider your retreat sodger-like, seeing
so many lives are at stake; but I cannot leave him

to take his chance of first hearing of it from the Injuns
themselves.”

With these words, only the first of which were
heard by De Roos, Balt broke away from his comrades,
and ran back until he reached the brook which
the retreating party had crossed a few moments before;
turning then, and following up its current as
the readiest highway that offered, amid the heavy
forests through whose glooms its course occasionally
made an opening toward the moonlit sky.

“Tarnal crittur! she's hid her vixen face,” he exclaimed,
as, looking upward through one of these
openings, he saw that the planet was obscured.
“Shine out, old lily-white, shine out, for shame,
upon the Redskins, or they'll cross the river and be
upon the capting afore I can stir his kiver.”

The prayer of the woodsman was quickly answered.
The moon, indeed, shone out but too soon, for
the sharp crack of a rifle, followed by the war-whoop,
and answered by a brief and irregular discharge
of firearms, showed that her reappearance,
instead of being the harbinger of safety, had been
but the signal for onslaught. Rushing forward, the
hunter gained the top of the hilly ridge whereon he
had left Greyslaer, and was moving with hasty but
cautious steps toward the shelf of rocks where that
luckless officer had taken post with his party.

“The capting, the capting, what have ye done
with the capting?” cried Balt, as he met Greyslaer's
men in full flight from the spot.

“Run, Balt; for your life, run; it is all up with
Captain Max! a rifle from the woods, below the cliff,
picked him off the very moment the moon got high
enough to bring his body out of shadow. The woods
are alive with Redskins, and our legs must save us
now if we would live to avenge him.”

An incessant whooping, that each moment came

nearer and nearer, seemed to prove the truth of what
the man said; and with a light heel but a heavy
heart, the sorrowing woodsman turned and fled with
the rest; muttering imprecations on himself the
while for having left for a moment, amid such
scenes, his commander, friend, and protegé.

De Roos, in the mean time, hurrying along with
his prisoner, followed the course of the Sacondaga,
which here runs in a northeast direction for a few
miles, and then, leaving it abruptly, struck due south,
making for the nearest settlements upon the Mohawk.
The approach of morning found his party
in the neighbourhood of Galway; and crossing the
highway, or trail as it might rather be called at that
day, between Saratoga and Johnstown, he made a
sweep to the south of the latter place, and, striking
due west, passed Stone Arabia, famous afterward
for the gallant fight and subsequent slaughter of the
brave Colonel Brown and his regiment, reached the
Mohawk at Keeder's Rifts, equally noted in the
border-story of after years. The retreat, considering
that De Roos had not only to escape from his
Indian foes in the first instance, but that he carried
his prisoner through a district, the great portion of
whose scattered inhabitants were as yet either luke-warm
patriots or zealous adherents of the Johnson
party, was creditable to his address as a partisan.

Worn down with fatigue and long watching,
Derrick and his companions were rejoiced to find
shelter and refreshment in the hospitable mansion
of Major Jelles Fonda, a faithful officer and confidential
friend of the father of Sir John Johnson, but
who, having now sided with the patriot party, was
exposed to the vengeance of the royalists, which
was afterward so terribly wreaked upon his household
by the devastating hand of the stern and inexorable
son of his friend.

The Mohawk captive, during the route, had borne
himself with dogged indifference to his fate, obstinately
refusing to answer any of the questions with
which De Roos, who spoke his language, plied him,
whenever occasion offered, during a brief halt of his
party. Refreshments were now placed before him,
but he refused to partake of them, replying only to
the repeated invitations of his captors by glancing,
with a look of mute indignation, from their faces to
the bonds by which his right arm was still pinioned,
the left having been temporarily released to enable
him to feed himself. This silent appeal, however,
produced no effect upon his wary captors.

“If the scoundrel is too proud to help himself
with one hand, let us see if fasting wo'n't bring humility
with it,” said one.

“The cunning cat! he only wants to get his claws
free to use them,” cried another; “but he can't come
the mouser over us with his mock dignity.”

De Roos, who had been looking at the accommodations
of his party for the night, at this moment
entered the room, and ordered a guard of three men
to repair with the prisoner to the kitchen, which was
assigned them as their quarters. He at the same
time handed the Indian a blanket, wherewith one
of the females of the family had provided him, and,
for the first time since his capture, a gleam of pleasure
shot athwart the dusky features of the Mohawk
as he stretched out his left hand to receive the boon.
Indeed, he folded it about his person with as much
care as if he took pride as well as comfort in his
new acquisition; nor had he completely adjusted its
folds to his satisfaction, before a corner of his new
mantle had more than once swept the edge of the
table, as he brushed along its sides, while making
his way out of the apartment.

The kitchen was not entirely vacant when the

prisoner and his guard reached their quarters. For,
besides several negro slaves, which at that time formed
an essential part of the household of every opulent
farmer in the country, there sat in the chimney-corner
a shabby-looking wayfarer, who, in those
days of infrequent inns and open hospitality, had
been allowed a stall for his horse and a shelter for
himself during the night.

The dress of this man, which was a sort of greasy
doublet, or fustian shooting-jacket, of dingy olive,
with breeches of the same; shoes without buckles,
and a broad-leaved chip hat, having a broken pipe
stuck beneath the band, marked him sufficiently as
belonging to the lower order of society. For, while
among our wise fathers a man's apparel was always
thought more or less to indicate his social position,
a traveller's especially, who presumed to take the
saddle without being either booted or spurred, would
be set down as near akin to a beggar, who had his
horse only for some chance hour. Some, however,
beneath the neglected beard and generally sordid
appearance of this wayfaring horseman, might have
detected features which, if not those of a true cavalier,
belonged at least to the class which was then
generally supposed exclusively to furnish such a
character. The man's look was sinister, if not decidedly
bad; but there was a degree of haughtiness
mingled with his duplicity of expression, and the intelligent
and assured air of his countenance was far
above the rank which his coarse habiliments would
indicate. He started as the Indian entered the
apartment; and as the name “Au-neh-yesh!” escaped
his lips, the emotion seemed for the instant
to be sympathetic with the prisoner. It was so
slight, however, upon the part of the Mohawk as
not to attract observation. He moved at once toward
the kitchen fire, and, though it was a summer's

night, threw himself on the floor with his feet
toward the ashes, and, covering up his head in his
blanket, seemed soon to be forgetting the cares of
captivity in soothing slumber.

Two of the men to whose custody the prisoner
had been consigned soon afterward imitated his example,
and stretched themselves upon a flock-bed
in a corner of the apartment, while the third paced
up and down the room, to keep himself awake while
acting as sentinel over the prisoner. The slaves,
with the exception of a single old negro, had all
slunk away, one could hardly tell how; and this
worthy, with the sinister-looking traveller, were left
as the only waking companions of the sentinel. The
traveller, too, at last, after ruminating in a drowsy
fashion for some time, expressed his intention of
seeking a bed in the haymow, and, procuring a stable-lantern
from the negro to look after his horse in
the first instance, withdrew from the apartment. In
passing through the door, he fixed his eyes earnestly
upon the sleeping Indian, and his face being thus
averted from the passage-way, he stumbled awkwardly,
so as to make his tin lantern clang against
the lintel so sharply as to startle both the sentry
and his prisoner, though the slight movement which
the latter made beneath his blanket was not observed
by the soldier, who turned to close the door behind
the retreating traveller.

“What tink you of dat trabeller-man, massa?”
said the old negro, with a knowing look, as soon as
he heard the outer door closed after the other.

“Think of him? why I don't think of him at all,
Cuff; that sleeping hound by the fire is enough for
me to trouble myself about, after trampoosing for
twenty-four hours on a stretch, with not even a
loon's nap at the eend of it.”

“Trabeller-man hab mighty fine hoss, massa!

Him look as like as two peas to de hoss dat Wolf
Valtmeyer bought last week for Massa Bradshawe,
and drew to here, mighty like dat same hoss,
massa.”

“Well, what of that? you don't take the chap for
a horse-thief, do you? He's more like some travelling
cobbler, that's going his circuit through the
settlements.”

“He be bery like a cobbler, certing,” said the
complaisant negro; and then, after musing a few
moments, added, “He be bery like lawyer Wat
Bradshawe too, massa.”

“I never saw that rip, Cuff, though, if the traveller
has heard as much of him as I have, he wouldn't
be beholden to you for discovering the likeness.”

“Lawyer Wat has shaked hands wid de debbil,
certing!” said the negro, shaking his head mysteriously.

“Why do you say that, Cuff?”

“'Cause he no fear de debbil.”

“Why, what the devil do you know about him,
you old curmudgeon?”

“Hab not old black Violet told me of his doings
long ago, when he was but a boy? Let Cuff alone
to find out de secret; he know all about Massa
Bradshawe, and he know how to keep de secret too.”

“Now, Cuff,” said the soldier, stopping short in
the middle of the room, “you see that Injun there!
Well, he's a raal Injun juggler, and, unless you tell
me instantly your secret, as you call it, I'll stir up
that fellow with the butt end of my rifle, and he
shall fill this room with fiery sarpents in a moment.”

The poor superstitious negro recoiled with horror
at this alarming threat. He had all the awe of
his race for the red man, who, having never been
reduced to subservience by the white, is regarded
by the docile African partly as a wayward,

wicked, and disobedient child, who refuses to be
guided by those who have a natural right to authority,
and partly as a hybrid, heathenish mortal, in
whose paternity the devil has so large a share that
the Indian is unfitted to take a part in the ordinary
lot of mankind.

“Why you see, massa,” said he, beginning at
once, with trembling lips, to tell his story, “it was
when old Dinah, the black witch, that perhaps you
have heerd tell on, was living. She used sometimes,
of a winter's night, to be let in at de house of
Massa Walter's papa, where she slept by de kitchen
fire, but always went up de chimbley on a broom-stick
before de morning. Violet herself say—and
Violet live at de house for many years—Violet say
she often let Dinah in, but she nebber in her life
see her go out, 'cept one morning, and den she went
out a corpse; and she die wid pains and aches, oh
horrible! so Violet say—”

“The devil take Violet; out with your story;
what had Wat Bradshawe to do with the business?”
cried the impatient soldier, thinking matter might
be forthcoming from this kitchen gossip that would
reward him by adding something worth repeating
to the many strange stories that were told of Bradshawe
throughout the country.

“What Massa Walter do?” exclaimed the negro,
lowering his voice; “why, who but he dat
kill de old woman! Massa Wat, he watch Dinah
go up de chimbley, he see dat de black witch always
slip off her skin, and hang it up behind de
pantry-door before she go up. So he watch him
chance, like a mad boy he was; he go to de dresser,
take de casters, put pepper, mustard, and plenty
salt on de skin; him chuckle, laugh, say `he make
de debbil ob de old woman.' Well, de witch come
back, slip into her skin, she kick, she holler, she

fall down in fit, and so she die, and dat de end ob
Missy Dinah.”

“Why—you—tar—nal—old—black—fool!” said
the soldier, with a ludicrously indignant expression
of baffled curiosity. “You—you—you jackass—
you. I've more than a mind to stir up this Injun
juggler, to show what raal deviltry is, Cuff, for making
me listen to such heathen stuff as that.”

As the soldier spoke, he advanced so near to the
sleeping Mohawk as to strike him with his foot
while heedlessly throwing it out to annoy the apprehensive
negro. He had better have alarmed a
coiled rattlesnake. For a knife, as deadly as the
fangs of a serpent, was the next moment plunged
in his bosom as the captive leaped upon him. A
window was thrown wide open by some unseen
hand in the same moment. The negro stood speechless
with horror; and, before the slumbering comrades
of the unfortunate sentinel could rouse to
avenge him, his scalp was filched from his head
by the carving-knife which the Indian had secured
beneath his blanket while brushing past the supper-table.
He shook his gory trophy in the affrighted
eyes of his half-awakened foemen, and bounded
like a deer through the window.

In the morning there were no traces to be found
either of the young savage or the suspicious-looking
itinerant.