With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga

by W. Bert Foster

Enoch had approached near enough to hear this last and he flushed deeply. “I was told you wanted to see me, Colonel Allen,” he said, saluting awkwardly.

“I do indeed,” said Allen. “You’re ready for campaigning, I see. Leave your traps–even to your blanket and gun–with Master Fay here. You’ll want to travel light where I send you,” and he proceeded to explain the mission he wished the youth to perform.

“I am ready, Colonel,” declared Enoch, throwing off his knapsack.

“Good! Away with you at once. Use yonder horse till you get to Manchester. Beyond that there will scarcely be bridle paths, so a horse will be in your way. Take the word around that the time has come to strike. And have them rendezvous at Castleton. Be off, my boy, and may success go with you!”

The horse in question was a fine steed that Allen had ridden into town that very morning. The youth sprang into the saddle and, understanding that haste and cautiousness were the two things most desired of him, trotted the animal easily out of the town and then put the spurs to him along the road to Manchester. He spared neither the horse nor himself until he reached the latter place and had left the steed in the keeping of a loyal man to be returned at the first opportunity to Colonel Allen. Of course, all the men in this section of the Grants had been warned of the proposed expedition against the fortresses on Champlain; it was those who dwelt deeper in the wilderness to whom young Enoch Harding had been sent.

He knew what was expected of him. And he knew, too, how most of the Grants people would receive the news. Colonel Allen was beloved by them as were few leaders. This Connecticut giant who had given up his desire for a college education and a life among books because duty called him to the work of supporting his family, who had been by turn a farmer, an iron forger, had tried mining and other toilsome industries, but who nearly always worked with a book in his hand or beside him where he could read and study–this man with his free, jovial air and utterly reckless courage, was become as one of the heroes of old to the people of Vermont. The men on his side of the controversy in which Allen had taken such a deep interest, loved him devotedly; those who espoused the New York cause hated him quite as dearly, for they feared him.

So when Enoch set out from Manchester to go from farmstead to farmstead and from clearing to clearing, he was not in much doubt as to whom he should send to Castleton and whom he should pass by without speaking to regarding the proposed expedition. There would be no doubtful settlers. The line between Tories and Whigs was drawn too sharply; and every Whig stood by Ethan Allen.

Enoch had learned something of the paths and runways of this part of the Grants. It had been near here that Lot Breckenridge and himself, with Crow Wing, had spent a winter trapping. Lot had now gone, so he had heard, to Boston as he said he should if fighting began. He had gone to help Israel Putnam and the other New England leaders pen the British into the city and aid in that series of maneuvres which finally drove the red-coats into their ships. As for himself, Enoch was only eager to be one of those who should storm the walls of Ticonderoga, and glad as he was to have been singled out for this present duty, he was determined to husband his strength so as to get back to Castleton before the army gathering there should move against the British fortifications.

He walked rapidly; more often he ran. In the pouch at his belt he carried parched corn, like an Indian on the warpath. Occasionally at a clearing, where some hardy borderer was scratching a living from the half-cleared soil, he would stop long enough to eat. But usually he halted only to give the good man of the house the message from Ethan Allen and, as he passed on and entered the forest on the further side he looked back to see the settler, his gun on his shoulder, bidding his family good-bye preparatory to setting out for the rendezvous appointed for the American troops.

But nature revolts when a certain point of exhaustion is reached. Refusing to remain the night at one kindly settler’s home, Enoch finally found himself in the forest a goodly distance from any other house. The path could be followed quite easily, the woods being open; but he was footsore and thoroughly wearied. He shrank from lying down beside the trail, however, for more reasons than one. On several occasions that afternoon he had heard of the presence of another traveler in the vicinity, and the identity of this man he could not learn. The settlers who had mentioned him, however, declared they believed him to be a New York agent, or a spy from the British across the lake, who was going through the region to discover just how the people felt regarding the rising trouble between the Colonials and the mother country. Such, at least, had been the trend of his conversation with the loyal Americans to whom he had been unwise enough to speak.