is no wisdom in me, pretty boy in buckskin. And I love thrums better than red-coats and lace."
"Love spinning better than either!"
"Oh, la! He preaches of wheels and spindles when my mouth aches for a kiss!"
"And mine," said I, " – but my legs ache more for my saddle; and I must go."
At that moment when I said adieu with my lips, and she did not mean to unlink her arms, came Nick on noiseless tread to twitch my arm. And, "Look," said he, pointing toward the long, low rampart of Maxon Ridge.
I turned, my hand still retaining Jessica's: and saw the Iroquois signal-flame mount thin and high, tremble, burn red against the stars, then die there in the darkness.
Northward another flame reddened on the hills, then another, fire answering fire.
"What the devil is this?" growled Nick. "These are no times for Indians to talk to one another with fire."
"Get into your saddle," said I, "and we shall ride by Varick's, for I've a mind to see what will-o'-the-wisps may be a-dancing over the great Vlaie!"
So the tall lad took his leave of his little pigeon of Pigeon-Wood, who seemed far from willing to let him loose; and I made my adieux to Jessica, who stood a-pouting; and we mounted and set off at a gallop for Varick's, by way of Summer House Point.
I could not be certain, but it seemed to me that there was a light at the Point, which came through the crescents from behind closed shutters; but that was within reason, Sir John being at liberty to keep open the hunting lodge if he chose.
As for the Drowned Lands, as far as we could see through the night there was not a spark over that desolate wilderness.
The Mohawk fires on the hills, too, had died out. Fish House, if still burning candles, was too far away to see; we galloped through Varick's, past the mill where, from its rocky walls, Frenchman's Creek roared under the stars; then turned west along the Brent-Meester's trail toward Fonda's Bush and home.
"Those Iroquois fires trouble me mightily," quoth Nick, pushing his lank horse forward beside my mare.
"And me," said I.
"Why should they talk with fire on the night Hiakatoo comes to the Hall?"
"I do not know," said I. "But when I am home I shall write it in a letter to Albany that this night the Mohawks have talked among themselves with fire, and that a Seneca was present."
"And that mealy-mouthed Ensign, Moucher; and Hare and Steve Watts!"
"I shall so write it," said I, very seriously.
"Good!" cried he with a jolly slap on his horse's neck. "But the sweeter part of this night's frolic you and I shall carry locked in our breasts. Eh, John? By heaven, is she not fresh and pink as a dewy strawberry in June – my pretty little wench? Is she not apt as a school-learned lass with any new lesson a man chooses to teach?"
"Yes, too apt, perhaps," said I, shaking my head but laughing. "But I think they have had already a lesson or two in such frolics, less innocent, perhaps, than the lesson we gave."
"I'll break the back of any red-coat who stops at Pigeon-Wood!" cried Nick Stoner with an oath. "Yes, red-coat or any other colour, either!"
"You would not take our frolic seriously, would you, Nick?"
"I take all frolics seriously," said he with a gay laugh, smiting both thighs, and his bridle loose. "Where I place my mark with my proper lips, let roving gallants read and all roysterers beware! – even though I so mark a dozen pretty does!"
"A very Turk," said I.
"An antlered stag in the blue-coat that brooks no other near his herd!" cried he with a burst of laughter. And fell to smiting his thighs and tossing up both arms, riding like a very centaur there, with his hair flowing and his thrums streaming in the starlight.
And, "Lord God of Battles!" he cried out to the stars, stretching up his powerful young arms. "Thou knowest how I could love tonight; but dost Thou know, also, how I could fight if I had only a foe to destroy with these two empty hands!"
"Thou murderous Turk!" I cried in his ear. "Pray, rather, that there shall be no war, and no foe more deadly than the pretty wench of Pigeon-Wood!"
"Love or war, I care not!" he shouted in his spring-tide frenzy, galloping there unbridled, his lean young face in the wind. "But God send the one or the other to me very quickly – or love or war – for I need more than a plow or axe to content my soul afire!"
"Idiot!" said I, "have done a-yelling! You wake every owl in the bush!"
And above his youth-maddened laughter I heard the weird yelping of the forest owls as though the Six Nations already were in their paint, and blood fouled every trail.
So we galloped into Fonda's Bush, pulling up before my door; but Nick would not stay the night and must needs gallop on to his own log house, where he could blanket and stall his tired and sweating horse – I owning only the one warm stall.
"Well," says he, still slapping his thighs where he sat his saddle as I dismounted, and his young face still aglow in the dim, silvery light, " – well, John, I shall ride again, one day, to Pigeon-Wood. Will you ride with me?"
"I think not."
"And why?"
But, standing by my door, bridle in hand, I slowly shook my head.
"There is no prettier bit o' baggage in County Tryon than Jessica Browse," he insisted – "unless, perhaps, it be that Scotch girl at Caughnawaga, whom all the red-coats buzz about like sap flies around a pan."
"And who may this Scotch lassie be?" I asked with a smile, and busy, now, unsaddling.
"I mean the new servant to old Douw Fonda."
"I have not noticed her."
"You have not seen the Caughnawaga girl?"
"No. I remain incurious concerning servants," said I, drily.
"Is it so!" he laughed. "Well, then, – for all that they have a right to gold binding on their hats, – the gay youth of Johnstown, yes, and of Schenectady, too, have not remained indifferent to the Scotch girl of Douw Fonda, Penelope Grant!"
I shrugged and lifted my saddle.
"Every man to his taste," said I. "Some eat woodchucks, some porcupines, and others the tail of a beaver. Venison smacks sweeter to me."
Nick laughed again. "When she reads the old man to sleep and takes her knitting to the porch, you should see the ring of gallants every afternoon a-courting her! – and their horses tied to every tree around the house as at a quilting!
"But there's no quilting frolic; no supper; no dance; – nothing more than a yellow-haired slip of a wench busy knitting there in the sun, and looking at none o' them but intent on her needles and with that faint smile she wears – "
"Go court her," said I, laughing; and led my mare into her warm stall.
"You'll court her yourself, one day!" he shouted after me, as he gathered bridle. "And if you do, God help you, John Drogue, for they say she's a born disturber of quiet men's minds, and mistress of a very mischievous and deadly art!"
"What art?" I laughed.
"The art o' love!" he bawled as he rode off, slapping his thighs and setting the moonlit woods all a-ringing with his laughter.
CHAPTER VII
BEFORE THE STORM
Johnny Silver had ridden my mare to Varick's to be shod, the evening previous, and was to remain the night and return by noon to Fonda's Bush.
It was the first sunny May day of the year, murmurous with bees, and a sweet, warm smell from woods and cleared lands.
Already bluebirds were drifting from stump to stump, and robins, which had arrived in April before the snow melted, chirped in the furrows of last autumn's plowing.
Also were flying those frail little grass-green moths, earliest harbingers of vernal weather, so that observing folk, versed