"Oh, Jesus!" he bawls, "Sir John's red devils are murdering everybody from Johnstown to the River!"
"Where are they?" I cried. "Answer me and compose yourself!"
"Where are they?" he shrieked. "Why, they're everywhere! Lodowick Putman's house is afire and they've murdered him and Aaron. Amasa Stevens' house is burning, and he hangs naked and scalped on his garden fence!
"They killed Billy Gault and that other man from the old country, and they murdered Captain Hansen in his bed, and his house is all afire! Everything in the Valley is afire!" he screamed, wringing his scorched hands, "Tribes Hill is burning, Fisher's is on fire, and the Colonel and John and Harmon all murdered—all scalped and lying dead in the barn!—--"
"Listen to me!" I cried, shaking the wretched fellow, "when did this happen? Are Sir John's people still here? Where are they?"
"It happened last night and lasted after sunrise this morning," he blubbered. "Everything is burning from Schoharie to the Nose, and they'll come back and kill the rest of us——"
I flung him aside, struck spurs, and galloped for Cayadutta Lodge.
Everywhere I looked I saw smoke; barns were but heaps of live coals, houses marked only by charred cellars out of which flames leaped.
Yet, I saw the church still standing, and Dr. Romeyn's parsonage still intact, though all doors and windows stood wide open and bedding and broken furniture lay scattered over the grass.
But Adam Fonda's house was burning and the dwelling of Major Jelles was on fire; and now I caught sight of Douw Fonda's great stone house, with its two wings and tall chimneys of hewn stone.