CHAPTER XIX
THE VOICE OF A WOMAN SOBBING
Over the ridge and more than a mile away was a wet, wild meadow. They found the cow and horses feeding on its edge near the trail. The moon, clouded since dark, had come out in the clear mid-heavens and thrown its light into the high windows of the forest above the ancient thoroughfare of the Indian. The red guide of the two scouts gave a call which was quickly answered. A few rods farther on, they saw a pair of old Indians sitting in blankets near a thicket of black timber. They could hear the voice of a woman sobbing near where they stood.
"Womern, don't be skeered o' us--we're friends--we're goin' to take ye hum," said Solomon.
The woman came out of the thicket with a little lad of four asleep in her arms.
"Where do ye live?" Solomon asked.
"Far south on the shore o' the Mohawk," she answered in a voice trembling with emotion.
"What's yer name?"
"I'm Bill Scott's wife," she answered.
"Cat's blood and gunpowder!" Solomon exclaimed. "I'm Sol Binkus."
She knelt before the old scout and kissed his knees and could not speak for the fulness of her heart. Solomon bent over and took the sleeping lad from her arms and held him against his breast.
"Don't feel bad. We're a-goin' to take keer o' you," said Solomon. "Ayes, sir, we be! They ain't nobody goin' to harm ye--nobody at all."
There was a note of tenderness in the voice of the man as he felt the chin of the little lad with his big thumb and finger.
"Do ye know what they done with Bill?" the woman asked soon in a pleading voice.
The scout swallowed as his brain began to work on the problem in hand.
"Bill broke loose an' got erway. He's gone," Solomon answered in a sad voice.
"Did they torture him?"
"What they done I couldn't jes' tell ye. But they kin't do no more to him. He's gone." She seemed to sense his meaning and lay crouched upon the ground with her sorrow until Solomon lifted her to her feet and said:
"Look here, little womern, this don't do no good. I'm goin' to spread my blanket under the pines an' I want ye to lay down with yer boy an' git some sleep. We got a long trip to-morrer.
"'Tain't so bad as it might be--ye're kind o' lucky a'ter all is said an' done," he remarked as he covered the woman and the child.
The wounded warrior and the old men were not to be found. They had sneaked away into the bush. Jack and Solomon looked about and the latter called but got no answer.
"They're skeered cl'ar down to the toe nails," said Solomon. "They couldn't stan' it here. A lightnin' thrower is a few too many. They'd ruther be nigh a rattlesnake."
The scouts had no sleep that night. They sat down by the trail side leaning against a log and lighted their pipes.
"You 'member Bill Scott?" Solomon whispered.
"Yes. We spent a night in his house."
"He were a mean cuss. Sold rum to the Injuns. I allus tol' him it were wrong but--my God A'mighty!--I never 'spected that the fire in the water were a goin' to burn him up sometime. No, sir--I never dreamed he were a-goin' to be punished so--never."
They lay back against the log with their one blanket spread and spent the night in a kind of half sleep. Every little sound was "like a kick in the ribs," as Solomon put it, and drove them "into the look and listen business." The woman was often crying out or the cow and horses getting up to feed.
"My son, go to sleep," said Solomon. "I tell ye there ain't no danger now--not a bit. I don't know much but I know Injuns---plenty."
In spite of his knowledge even Solomon himself could not sleep. A little before daylight they arose and began to stir about.
"I was badly burnt by that fire," Jack whispered.
"Inside!" Solomon answered. "So was I. My soul were a-sweatin' all night."
The morning was chilly. They gathered birch bark and dry pine and soon had a fire going. Solomon stole over to the thicket where the woman and child were lying and returned in a moment.
"They're sound asleep," he said in a low tone. "We'll let 'em alone."
He began to make tea and got out the last of their bread and dried meat and bacon. He was frying the latter when he said:
"That 'ere is a mighty likely womern."
He turned the bacon with his fork and added:
"Turrible purty when she were young. Allus hated the rum business."
Jack went out on the wild meadow and brought in the cow and milked her, filling a basin and a quart bottle.
Solomon went to the thicket and called:
"Mis' Scott!"
The woman answered.
"Here's a tow'l an' a leetle jug o' soap, Mis' Scott. Ye kin take the boy to the crick an' git washed an' then come to the fire an' eat yer breakfust."
The boy was a handsome, blond lad with blue eyes and a serious manner. His confidence in the protection of his mother was sublime.
"What's yer name?" Solomon asked, looking up at the lad whom he had lifted high in the air.
"Whig Scott," the boy answered timidly with tears in his eyes.
"What! Be ye skeered o' me?"
These words came from the little lad as he began to cry. "No, sir. I ain't skeered. I'm a brave man."
"Courage is the first virtue in which the young are schooled on the frontier," Jack wrote in a letter to his friends at home in which he told of the history of that day. "The words and manner of the boy reminded me of my own childhood.
"Solomon held Whig in his lap and fed him and soon won his confidence. The backs of the horses and the cow were so badly galled they could not be ridden, but we were able to lash the packs over a blanket on one of the horses. We drove the beasts ahead of us. The Indians had timbered the swales here and there so that we were able to pass them with little trouble. Over the worst places I had the boy on my back while Solomon carried 'Mis' Scott' in his arms as if she were a baby. He was very gentle with her. To him, as you know, a woman has been a sacred creature since his wife died. He seemed to regard the boy as a wonderful kind of plaything. At the camping-places he spent every moment of his leisure tossing him in the air or rolling on the ground with him."
[Illustration: Solomon Binkus with Whig Scott on his shoulder.]
"One day when the woman sat by the fire crying, the little lad touched her brow with his hand and said:
"'Don't be skeered, mother. I'm brave. I'll take care o' you.'
"Solomon came to where I was breaking some dry sticks for the fire and said laughingly, as he wiped a tear from his cheek with the back of his great right hand:
"'Did ye ever see sech a gol' durn cunnin' leetle cricket in yer born days--ever?'
"Always thereafter he referred to the boy as the Little Cricket.
"That would have been a sad journey but for my interest in these reactions on this great son of Pan, with whom I traveled. I think that he has found a thing he has long needed, and I wonder what will come of it.
"When he had discovered, by tracks in the trail, that the Indians who had run away from us were gone South, he had no further fear of being molested.
"'They've gone on to tell what happened on the first o' the high slants an' to warn their folks that the Son o' the Thunder is comin' with lightnin' in his hands. Injuns is like rabbits when the Great Spirit begins to rip 'em up. They kin't stan' it."
That afternoon Solomon, with a hook and line and grubs, gathered from rotted stumps, caught many trout in a brook crossing the trail and fried them with slices of salt pork. In the evening they had the best supper of their journey in what he called "The Catamount Tavern." It was an old bark lean-to facing an immense boulder on the shore of a pond. There, one night some years before, he had killed a catamount. It was in the foot-hills remote from the trail. In a side of the rock was a small bear den or cavern with an overhanging roof which protected it from the weather. On a shelf in the cavern was a round block of pine about two feet in diameter and a foot and a half long. This block was his preserve jar. A number of two-inch augur holes had been bored in its top and filled with jerked venison and dried berries. They had been packed with a cotton wick fastened to a small bar of wood at the bottom of each hole. Then hot deer's fat had been poured in with the meat and berries until the holes were filled within an inch or so of the top. When the fat had hardened a thin layer of melted beeswax sealed up the contents of each hole. Over all wooden plugs had been driven fast.
"They's good vittles in that 'ere block," said Solomon. "'Nough, I guess, to keep a man a week. All he has to do is knock out the plug an' pull the wick an' be happy."
"Going to do any pulling for supper?" Jack queried.
"Nary bit," said Solomon. "Too much food in the woods now. We got to be savin'. Mebbe you er I er both on us 'll be comin' through here in the winter time skeered o' Injuns an' short o' fodder. Then we'll open the pine jar."
They had fish and tea and milk and that evening as he sat on his blanket before the fire with the little lad in his lap he sang an old rig-a-dig tune and told stories and answered many a query.
Jack wrote in one of his letters that as they fared along, down toward the sown lands of the upper Mohawk, Solomon began to develop talents of which none of his friends had entertained the least suspicion.
"He has had a hard life full of fight and peril like most of us who were born in this New World," the young man wrote. "He reminds me of some of the Old Testament heroes, and is not this land we have traversed like the plains of Mamre? What a gentle creature he might have been if he had had a chance! How long, I wonder, must we be slayers of men? As long, I take it, as there are savages against whom we must defend ourselves."
The next morning they met a company of one of the regiments of General Herkimer who had gone in pursuit of Red Snout and his followers. Learning what had happened to that evil band and its leader the soldiers faced about and escorted Solomon and his party to Oriskany.