By noon we were well on our way towards Boston, I riding beside Mrs. Hamilton's carriage wheels, Jack Mount perched up on the box, and very gay in a new suit of buckskins which he bought from a squaw in the village, the woman being an Oneida half-breed and a tailoress by trade.
So gorgeous was this newly tailored suit that, though my own buckskins were also new and deeply fringed on sleeve and leg, even to the quill and wampum embroidery on the thigh, I did cut but a dingy figure beside Jack Mount. His shoulders were triple-caped with red-fox fur edges; he wore a belted hunting-shirt, with scarlet thrums; breeches cut to show his long legs' contour to the clout, also gay with scarlet thrums; and Huron moccasins, baldric, holster, and sporran, all of mole-skin, painted and beaded with those mystic scenes of the False-Face's secret rites, common to the Six Nations and to other Northern and Western clans.
Proud as a painted game-cock with silver steels was Jack. Poor gossip, how different his condition now, with a rasher o' bacon and a cup of ale under his waist-band, a belt full of money outside of it, and his scarlet thrums blowing like ribbons in the wind! A new fox-skin cap, too, with the plumy white-tipped tail bobbing to his neck, added the finish to this forest dandy. Truly it did warm me to behold him ruffling it with the best o' them; and it was a wink and a kiss for the pretty maid in the pantry, and a pinch o' snuff with mine host, and "Your servant, ma'am," to Mrs. Hamilton, with cap sweeping the dust in a salute that a Virginian might envy and mark for imitation.
The post-boys slunk past him with rueful, sidelong glances; the footman gave him wide berth, obeying the order to mount with an alacrity designed to curry favour as soon as possible, and let the painful past go bury itself.
"You had best," muttered Mount, with pretence of a fierceness he loved to assume. "Gad! I'm minded to tan your buttocks to line my saddle—ho!—come back! I'm not going to do it, simpleton! I only said I was so minded. Into your saddles, in Heaven's name. Salute!—you mannerless scullions! Do you not see your mistress coming?"
I handed Mrs. Hamilton to her chaise, and stood in attendance while she tied on her velvet sun-mask, watching me steadily through the eye-holes the while, but not speaking. Yet ever on her lips hovered that smile I knew so well; and from her hair came that fresh scent which is of itself like the perfume of Indian swale-herb, and which powder and pomatum can neither add to nor dissimulate.
Over her gown of shimmering stuff, garlanded with lilac-tints, she wore a foot-mantle, for the road was muddy from the all-night rain, and this I disposed around her ankles when she had seated herself in the chaise, and wrapped her restless little feet in a thick, well-tanned pelt.
"Merci," she said, in a whisper, with her bright eyes sparkling under her velvet mask; and I closed the carriage and mounted Warlock nimbly, impatient to be gone.
"Michael," she said from the chaise window, nose in the air to watch me ride up.
"Madam," I replied, politely.