“Never mind your arm, now,” returned Valentine. “We must get to the marsh. It’s the only place. You get a switch, and if Sleet won’t follow Snow in, you drive her. I wish the critters wasn’t white; they show up so; but Washington sha’n’t have this calf and cow, anyhow.”
From Newark Bay to Old Blazing Star Ferry stretched the marsh, deep, dense, well-nigh impassable. Under the orders of General Washington, supported by the approval of the Provincial Congress in session at White Plains, the live stock was being driven from the island, and ferried across Staten Island Sound to New Jersey. At the same moment the grand fleet of armed ships from Halifax, England, and elsewhere, was sailing in with General Howe on board and Red Coats enough to eat, at a supper and a dinner, all the live stock on a five-by-seventeen mile island.
Now the Commander-in-chief of the Continental forces at New York did not wish to afford the aid and comfort to the enemy of furnishing horses to draw cannon, or fresh meat wherewith to satisfy the hunger of British soldier and sailor. Oh no! On Manhattan Island were braves—for freedom toiling day and night; building earthwork, redoubt and battery with never a luxury from morning to morning, except the luxury of fighting for Liberty. Soldiers from camp, light-horse and militia from New Jersey, had gathered on the island, and had been at work a day and a night when the news came to the Kull cottage that in a 138 few minutes its cow and calf would be called for. Hence the sudden watch from the roof, and the escapade from the barn-yard.
The Kull father, I regret to write, because it seems highly unpatriotic, had gone forth to catch fish that day, hugging up the thought close to his pocket of a heart, that the English fleet would pay well for fresh fish.
Now Sleet and Snow were treasures untold to Valentine and Anna Kull. Anna’s pocket-money, stored up to be spent once-a-year in New York, came to her hands by the sale of butter to oystermen; and the calf, Snow, was the exclusive property of her brother Valentine. No wonder they were striving to save their possessions—ignorant, children as they were, of every good which they could not see and feel.
Cow and calf, or rather calf and cow, never before were given such a race. Highways were ignored. There were not many beaten tracks at that time on Staten Island. Daisied and clovered fields the calf was dragged through; young corn and potato lots suffered alike by the pressure of hoof and foot. Anna nearly forgot her out-of-joint arm when the four reached the marsh. Its friendly-looking shelter was hailed with delight.
Said Valentine, tugging the tired calf, to Anna, switching forward the anxious cow: “I should like to see the riflemen from Pennsylvania and the Yankeys from Doodle or Dandy either, chase Sleet and Snow through this marsh.”
“It’s been awful work though to get ’em here,” said Anna, wiping her face with a pink handkerchief suddenly detached for use from her gown.