"Your labour for your pains, John Drogue!" cried she. "The Bowmans are King's people and need fear neither Tory nor Indian!"
"It is unjust to say so, Deborah," I retorted warmly. "Dries Bowman is already on his way to answer the militia call!"
"Watch him!" she said, slamming the shutters; and fell to scolding her children, who, poor things, were striving at the well with dripping bucket too heavy for their strength.
So I drew the water they might need if, indeed, it should prove true that Little Abe's Mohawks at the Lower Castle had painted themselves and were broken loose; and then I ran back along the spring path to the Salisbury's, and found them already well bolted in, and their man gone to Stoner's with rifle and pack.
And now comes Johnny Silver, who had ridden my mare from Varick's, but had no news, all being tranquil along Frenchman's Creek, and nobody able to say what the Block House bell was telling us.
"Did you stable Kaya?" I asked.
"Oui, mon garce! I have bolt her in tight!"
"Good heavens," said I, "she can not remain bolted in to starve if I am sent on to Canada! Get you forward to Stoner's house and say that I delay only to fetch my horse!"
The stout little French trapper flung his piece to his shoulder and broke into a dog-trot toward the west.
"Follow quickly, Sieur Jean!" he called gaily. "By gar, I have smell Iroquois war paint since ver' long time already, and now I smell him strong as old dog fox!"