As Nathalie was ably seconded by the rest of the Liberty Cheerers, Van—he claimed he was a chump at story-telling—began the story of Lovewell, the Ranger, by saying that it was like one of the old Norse Sagas, for it had been told and retold by the mountaineer’s fireside for many generations.
“When the white settlers were being harassed in the early times by marauding bands from the neighboring tribe of Sokoki Indians,” said the young soldier, “John Lovewell, a hardy ranger, set out from the Indian village of Pigswacket, now Fryeburg, near North Conway, and made his way, with forty-five of his followers, to Ossipee. Here they built a fort, and his scouts having found Indian tracks, they pushed farther on to a lake by whose shores they encamped for the night. The following morning, while trailing an Indian in the woods, Paugas, an Indian chieftain, whose name was a terror to every white settler on the frontier, stole up behind the rangers, to their encampment, which unfortunately they had left unguarded, and counted their packs. Finding that they were only thirty-four in number, the Indians placed themselves in ambush in the woods near, and when the rangers returned it was to be surrounded by the redmen, while the air was filled with their deadly fire and hideous warwhoops.
“Here, by this little lake, under the very shadow of Mount Kearsarge, fifty miles from any settlement, was fought one of the bloodiest battles in Indian warfare, as the loyal rangers fought for their lives. They finally compelled the Indians to flee, but not before Lovewell and many of his men had been killed. The survivors made their way back to the fort at Ossipee, only to find it empty, for the guard, on hearing that Lovewell and his band had been killed, had deserted it.
“After many incredible hardships,” continued Van, “twenty emaciated men finally reached the white settlement, many of them only to fall dead from wounds, or from hunger and exhaustion. But, practically, Lovewell’s band had won a great victory, for Paugas had been killed, and the remainder of the tribe forsook their strongholds among the foothills, and the white settlers were molested no more.”
Van also related how a ranger, the only remaining one of three brothers who had set forth with Lovewell, when one of his brothers fell dead at his feet from the wounds inflicted by the savages, had started for their village, only to find his other brother’s body riddled with bullets.
“Determined to be revenged, he pursued the Indians to the mountain fastnesses, where the defeated tribe, under the chief Chocorua, still lingered. He finally sighted the chieftain, who had ascended a high mountain to see if the white men had departed. As he started to descend he was confronted by the ranger, who, with his gun in hand, slowly forced the Indian back, step by step, until he stood on the verge of the precipice where he had been standing. As the chieftain saw that his end had come,—as he had no alternative between the precipitous cliff and the white man’s weapon,—with a cry of bitter defiance he leaped from the pinnacle, to be dashed to pieces on the rocks below. Hence the name, Chocorua Mountain.”
A mountain romance was now told by Janet, in the story of Nancy Stairs, a native of Jefferson, who had fallen in love, and become engaged to a farm-hand. On the eve of the wedding the girl’s lover disappeared, carrying with him a small sum of money, her dot. How Nancy set forth, to overtake him at a camp many miles away, walking at night through the dark woods, clambering over rocks and fording the Saco, finally to reach the place where he had encamped, to find it deserted, aroused the sympathies of all. “Finally,” continued Janet, “the girl sank exhausted on the banks of a brook, to be found some time later in the calm repose of a deathless sleep, almost buried under the snow, under a canopy of friendly evergreen that stretched above her.
“But Nancy had her revenge,” smiled the storyteller, “for when the farm-hand heard of her fate he lost his reason, and tradition tells us that, on the anniversary of her death, the mountain-passes through which she pushed, in her weary pursuit of her lover, resound to his cries of grief.”
Nita’s contribution to the Liberty Cheer was a little tale of an Indian maiden, who was so beautiful that no hunter was found worthy of her. Suddenly she disappeared, and was never seen again, until one day an Indian chief, on returning from the chase, told how he had seen her disporting in the limpid waters of the river Ellis, with a youth as peerless as she. When the bathers saw the chieftain they had immediately vanished from sight, thus showing the girl’s parents that her companion must have been a mountain-spirit. From now on they would go into the wilds and call upon him for a moose, a deer, or whatever animal they chose, and lo! it would immediately appear, running towards them.
Danny’s story was about some white settlers captured by the Indians on their way to Canada. When they came to the banks of a beautiful stream, one of the captives, a mother with several children, from a babe in arms to a girl of sixteen, gathered her little ones about her in dumb despair. She had toiled through trackless forests, forded swollen streams, climbed rocky heights, slept on the cold, bare earth, and then, when she had refused to obey the commands of an Indian chieftain, from lack of strength, she had been goaded with blows, or the gory scalps of two of her children, which still hung from his belt, had been flourished menacingly before her eyes.