Such an exhilaration of savage happiness seized me that I lost my head, and begged the Oneida to stop and let me set a flint and give the Royal Greens a shot or two; but the wily chief refused; and he was wise, for I should have known that the Sacandaga must already be a swarming nest of Johnson's foresters and painted savages.
The heat was terrific in the willows; sweat poured from the half-naked Oneida as he ran, and my hunting-shirt hung soaked, flapping across my thighs.
We had doubled on them now, going almost due west. Far across the Vlaie I could see dark spots moving along the Dead Water, and here and there a distant rifle glimmering as the sun struck it. Now and then a faint shout was borne to our ears as we halted, dripping and panting in the birches to reconnoiter some open swale ahead, or some cranberry-bog crimsoning under the October sun.
We swam the marshy creek miles to the west, coming out presently into a rutty wagon-trail, which I knew ran south to Mayfield; but we dared not use it, so steered the dripping horse southeast, chancing rather to cross Frenchman's Creek, four miles above Varicks, and so, by a circle bearing east and south, reaching the Broadalbin trail, or some safe road between Galway and Perth, or, if driven to it, making for Saratoga as a last resort.
My face was burned deep red, and I was soaked from neck to heels, so that my moccasins rubbed and chafed at every step. The girl had sat her saddle while the horse swam, so that her legs only were wet. As for the Oneida, his oiled and painted skin shed water like the plumage of a duck. Lord knows, we left a trail broad and wet enough for even a Hessian to follow; and for that reason dared not halt north of Frenchman's Creek or short of Vanderveer's grist-mill.
As I plodded on, rifle atrail, I began to comprehend the full import of what had occurred since the day before, when I, with soul full of bitterness, had left Burke's Inn. Was it only a day ago? By Heaven, it seemed a year since I had looked upon Elsin Grey! And what a change in fortune had come upon us in these two score hours! Free to wed now—if we dared accept the heart-broken testimony of this poor girl—if we dared deny the perjured testimony of a dishonored magistrate, leagued with his fellow libertine, who, thank God, had at length learned something of the fury he used on others. Strange that in all this war I had never laid a rifle level save at him; strange that I had never seen blood shed in anger, through all these battle years, except the blood that now dried, clotting on my cheek-bone, where his shoulder-buckle had cut me in the struggle. His spurs, too, had caught in the skirt of my hunting-shirt, tearing it to the fringed hem, and digging a furrow across my instep; and the moccasin on that foot was stiff with blood.
Ah, if I might only have brought him off; if I might only have carried this guilty man to Johnstown! Yet I should have known that Sir John's men were likely to be within hail, fool that I was to take the desperate chance when a little parley, a little edging toward him, a sudden blow might have served. Yet I was glad in my heart that I had not used craft; cat traits are not instinctive with me; craft, stealth, a purring ambush—faugh! I was no coward to beat him down unawares. I had openly declared him prisoner, and I was glad I had done so. Why, I might have shot him as we talked, had I been of a breed to do murder—had I been inhuman enough to slay him, unwarned, before the very eyes of the woman he had wronged, and who still hoped for mercy from him lest she pass her life a loathed and wretched outcast among the people who had accepted her as an Iroquois.
Thinking of these things which so deeply concerned me, I plodded forward with the others, hour after hour, halting once to drink and to eat a little of our parched corn, then to the unspotted trail once more, imperceptibly gaining the slope of that watershed, the streams of which feed the Mayfield Creek, and ultimately the Hudson.
Varicks we skirted, not knowing but Sir John's scouts might be in possession, the peppery, fat patroon having closed his house and taken his flock to Albany; and so traveling the forest east by south, made for the head waters of that limpid trout-stream I had so often fished, spite of the posted warnings and the indignation of the fat patroon, who hated me.
I think it was about four o'clock in the afternoon when, pressing through brush and windfall, we came suddenly out into a sunny road. Beside the road ran a stream clattering down-hill over its stony bed—a clear, noisy stream, with swirling brown trout-pools and rapids, rushing between ledges, foaming around boulders, a joyous, rolicking, dashing, headlong stream, that seemed to cheer us with its gay clamor; and I saw the Oneida's stern eyes soften as he bent his gaze upon it. Poor little Lyn Montour slipped, with a sigh, from her saddle, while my horse buried his dusty nose in the sparkling water, drawing deep, cold draughts through his hot throat. And here by the familiar head waters of Frenchman's Creek we rested in full sight of the grist-mill above us, where the road curved west. The mill-wheel was turning; a man came to the window overlooking the stream and stood gazing at us, and I waved my hand at him reassuringly, recognizing old Vanderveer.