I folded my letter, sealed it with a bit of blue balsam gum, and bade Mount deliver it to the Oneida runner, while I stepped up the road.
Of all unseemly sights that I have ever had the misfortune to witness, what I now saw was the most shameful. I pushed and shouldered my way through a riotous mob of soldiers and teamsters which choked the highway; loud, angry voices raised in reproach or dispute assailed my ears. A group of militia officers were shouting, shoving, and gesticulating in front of the tent where, rigid in his arm-chair, the General sat, grim, narrow-eyed, silent, smoking a short clay pipe. Bolt upright, behind him, stood his chief scout and interpreter, a superb Oneida, in all the splendor of full war-paint, blazing with scarlet.
Colonel Cox, a swaggering, intrusive, loud-voiced, and smartly uniformed officer, made a sign for silence and began haranguing the old man, evidently as spokesman for the party of impudent malcontents grouped about him. I heard him demand that his men be led against the British without further delay. I heard him condemn delay as unreasonable and unwarrantable, and the terms of speech he used were unbecoming to an officer.
"We call on you, sir, in the name of Tryon County, to order us forward!" he said, loudly. "We are ready. For God's sake give the order, sir! There is no time to waste, I tell you!"
The old General removed the pipe from his teeth and leaned a little forward in his chair.
"Colonel Cox," he said, "I haff Adam Helmer to Stanvix sent, mit der opject of inviting Colonel Gansevoort to addack py de rear ven ve addack py dot left flank.
"So soon as Helmer comes dot fort py, Gansevoort he fire cannon; und so soon I hear cannon, I march! Not pefore, sir; not pefore!"
"How do we know that Helmer and his men will ever reach Stanwix?" shouted Colonel Paris, impatiently.
"Ve vait, und py un' py ve know," replied Herkimer, undisturbed.
"He may be dead and scalped by now," sneered Colonel Visscher.