A Hero of Ticonderoga

by Rowland Evans Robinson

Here and there could be seen red-coated soldiers, bright dots of color in the colorless winter landscape, and, above them, lazily flaunting in the light breeze, shone the red cross of England. The old ranger gave the flag the tribute of a military salute, while his heart swelled with pride at sight of the banner for which he had fought, and which he had followed almost to where it now waved, in the humiliation of Abercrombie’s defeat, and here had seen it planted in Amherst’s triumphant advance.

In Seth Beeman’s breast it stirred no such thrill. It had no such associations with deeds in which he had borne a part, and to him, as to many another of his people, it was becoming a symbol of oppression rather than an object of pride. To Nathan’s boyish eyes it was a most beautiful thing, without meaning, but of beauty. His heart beat quick as the rattling drums and the shrill notes of the fife summoned the garrison to parade.

The oxen went at a brisker pace on the unobstructed surface of the lake, and the travellers soon came to a little creek not far up which was the clearing that Seth Beeman had made during the previous summer. In the midst of it stood the little log house that was henceforth to be their home, the shed for the cattle, and a stack of wild hay, inconspicuous among log heaps almost as large as they, looking anything but homelike with the smokeless chimney and pathless approach. Nor, when entered, was the bare interior much more cheerful.

A fire, presently blazing on the hearth, soon enlivened it. The floor was neatly swept with a broom fashioned of hemlock twigs by Job’s ready hands. The little stock of furniture was brought in. The pewter tableware was ranged on the rough corner shelves. Ruth added here and there such housewifely touches as only a woman can give. The change, wrought in so brief a space, seemed a magical transformation. What two hours ago was but a barren crib of rough, clay-chinked logs, was now a furnished living-room, cozy with rude, homelike comfort.

Then the place was hanselled with its first regularly prepared dinner, the first meal beneath its roof at which a woman had presided. Job, loath to leave the most humanized habitation that he had seen for months, set forth for his own lonely cabin. Except the unneighborly inmates of the Fort, these were his nearest neighbors, and to them, for his old comrade’s sake, he felt a closer friendship than had warmed his heart for many a year.

Though it was March, winter lacked many days of being spent in this latitude, and, during their continuance, Seth was busy with his axe, widening the clearing with slow, persistent inroads upon the surrounding forest, and piling the huge log heaps for next spring’s burning. Nathan gave a willing and helpful hand to the piling of the brush, and took practical lessons in that accomplishment so necessary to the pioneer—the woodsman’s craft. Within doors his mother, with little Martha for her companion, plied cards and spinning-wheel, with the frugal store of wool and flax brought from the old home. So their busy hands kept loneliness at bay, even amid the dreariness of the wintry wilderness.

At last the south wind blew with a tempered breath. Hitherto unseen stumps appeared above the settling snow, the gray haze of woods purpled with a tinge of spring, and the caw of returning crows pleased their ears, tired of the winter’s silence.

Seth tapped the huge old maples with a gouge, and the sap, dripping from spouts of sumac wood, was caught in rough-hewn troughs. From these it was carried in buckets on a neck-yoke to the boiling place, an open-fronted shanty. Before it the big potash kettle was hung on a tree trunk, so balanced on a stump that it could be swung over or off the fire at will. Sugaring brought pleasure as well as hard labor to Nathan. There were quiet hours spent in the shanty with his father, with little to do but mend the fire and watch the boiling sap walloping and frothing, half hidden beneath the clouds of steam that filled the woods with sweet odor.

Sometimes Job joined them and told of his lonely scouts in the Ranger service, and of bush fights with Indians and their French allies, and of encounters with wild beasts, tales made more impressive in their relation by the loneliness of the campfire, with the circle of wild lights and shadows leaping around it in the edge of the surrounding darkness, out of which came, perhaps from far away, the howl of a wolf or the nearer hoot of the great horned owl.

Sometimes Martha spent part of a day in camp with her brother, helping in womanly ways that girls so early acquired in the training of those times, when every one of the household must learn helpfulness and self-reliance. But the little sister enjoyed most the evenings when the syrup was taken to the house and sugared off. The children surfeited themselves with sugar “waxed” on snow, and their parents, and Job, if he chanced to be there, shared of this most delicious of the few backwoods luxuries, and the five made a jolly family party.