"Right and true! Well, I am Ethan Allen." As he gave his name in a deep-toned voice of proud a.s.surance, it seemed in itself a strong host.

"Your father sent you with that twig to say there's trouble at Beeman's, didn't he?"

Nathan looked up in wonder, admiration, and gladness, and then, with the instinctive, unreasoned confidence that the famous chieftain of the Grants was wont to inspire, told unreservedly his father's troubles and directions. When Allen had heard it, he wheeled his horse beside the nearest stump and bade Nathan mount behind him.

"My horse's feet will help you make your rounds quicker than yours, my man. We've no time to lose, for there's no telling what those scoundrels may be at. Eight Yorkers! Well, we'll soon raise good men enough to make short work of them."

Nathan mounted nimbly to his a.s.signed place, and, clasping as far as he could the ample waist of his new friend, was borne along the road at a speed that soon brought them to the log house of the Newtons. A man of the herculean mould so common to the early Vermonters came out of the house to meet the comers, with an expression of pleased surprise on his good-humored face.

"Why, colonel, we wa'n't expectin' on you so soon, but we hain't no less glad to see you. 'Light and come in. Mother'll hev potluck ready to rights. Why, is that the Beeman boy stickin' on behind you? Anything the matter over to Beeman's?"

"No, we can't 'light," Allen replied; and then, looking down over his shoulder, "Do your errand, my boy, and we'll push on."

Nathan held out the carefully kept sprig of evergreen and repeated his message.

"Trouble to Beeman's, now."

"Yea, verily," said Allen to Newton, whose face flashed at the boy's words. "Rise up and gird on your swords, you and your sons. The Philistines are upon you even as it has been prophesied. Felton and his gang of land thieves. The son of Belial was warned to depart from the land of the elect, but he heeds not those who cry in the wilderness.

Confound the rascal! He must be 'viewed'! You and your two boys take your guns and jog down that way, and as you go cut a goodly scourge of blue beech, for verily there shall be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. We'll rally the Callenders, and Jones, and Harrington, and North, and my friend Beeman here will tell Job. We'll gather a good dozen. Enough to mete out the vengeance of the Lord to eight Yorkers, I'll warrant!"

Strange and abrupt as were the transitions from Allen's favorite Scriptural manner of speech to the ordinary vernacular, no one thought of laughing. As the boy dismounted, Allen said:

"You go straight to Job and do as he tells you;" and as he rode away called back, "everybody lay low and keep dark till you hear the owl hoot."

Soon Nathan turned from the road into an obscure footpath that led in the direction of Job Carpenter's cabin. The gloom and loneliness of the mysterious forest, through which the narrow footpath wound, so pervaded it that the song birds seemed awed to silence, and the woodp.e.c.k.e.rs tapped cautiously, as if afraid of being heard by some enemy. No boy, even of backwoods breeding, would care to loiter had his errand been less urgent, and he gave but a pa.s.sing notice to things ordinarily of absorbing interest.

A mother partridge fluttered along the ground in simulated crippledness while her callow brood vanished among the low-spread leaves. A shy wood bird disclosed the secret of her nest as he sped by. Against a dark pine gleamed the fiery flash of a tanager's plumage. A wood mouse stirred the dry leaves. His own foot touched a prostrate dead sapling, and the dry top rustled unseen in the wayside thicket. There was a sound of long, swift bounds, punctuating the silence with growing distinctness, and a hare, in his brown summer coat, wide-eyed with terror, flashed like a dun streak across the path just before him, and close behind the terrified creature a gray lynx shot past, eager with sight and scent of his prey, closing the distance with long leaps. Before the intermittent scurry of footfalls had faded out of hearing they ceased, and a wail of agony announced the tragical end of the race. The cry made him shiver, and he could but think that the lynx might have been a panther and the hare a boy.

His heart grew lighter when he saw the sunshine showing golden green through the leafy screen that bordered the hunter's little clearing. He found Job leaning on his hoe in his patch of corn, looking wistfully on the creek, where the fish were breaking the surface among the weeds that marked the expanse of marsh with tender green, and where the sinuous course of the channel was defined by purple lines of lily pads. The message was received with a show of vexation, and the old man exclaimed:

"Plague on 'em all with their pitches and surveyin' and squabblin'. Why can't folks let the woods alone? There's room enough in the settlements for sech quarrels without comin' here to disturb G.o.d's peace with bickerin's over these acres o' desart. I thought I'd got done wi' wars and fightin's, exceptin' with varmints, when the Frenchers and Injins was whipped. But I guess there won't never be no peace on airth and good will to men for all it's ben preached nigh onto eighteen hundred years.

Plague on your Hampshire Grants and your York Grants, the hul bilin'!

Wal, if it must come it must, and I'll be skelped if I'll see Yorkers a runnin' over my own Yankee kin. Yorkers is next to Reg'lars for toppin'

ways. I never could abear 'em."

While he spoke he twirled Nathan's hemlock sprig between his fingers and now set it carefully in the band of his hat and led the way to his cabin.

"And Ethan Allen's in these betterments? Well, them Yorkers'll wish they'd stayed to home. He's hard-handed, is Ethan."

The two were now in the cabin, and Job set forth a cold johnny-cake and some jerked venison that Nathan needed no urging to partake of. "'Tain't your mother's cookin', but it's better'n nothin'," Job said, as between mouthfuls he counted out a dozen bullets from a pouch and put them in his pocket. Then he held up his powder horn toward the light after giving it a shake, and, being satisfied of its contents, slung it over his shoulder. Their hunger being satisfied, he took the long smooth-bore from its hooks, examined the flint, and, nodding to Nathan to follow, went down to his canoe, that lay bottom up on the bank.

"It's quicker goin' by water'n by land," said Job, as he set the canoe afloat and stepped into it, while Nathan took his place forward.

Impelled by the two paddles, the light craft went swiftly gliding down the creek, and then northward, skirting the wooded sh.o.r.e of the lake.

CHAPTER VI-THE YORKERS

Though the presentation of claims, under the authority of the New York government, to the land which Seth Beeman occupied by virtue of a t.i.tle derived from the Governor of New Hampshire, had for some time been expected and resistance fully determined upon, Seth's heart was as hot with anger and heavy with anxiety as if invasion had come without warning. Tenacious of his rights, he yet hated strife and contention.

Nor could he foresee whether he must lose the home he had wrought with toil and privation out of the savage wilderness, or whether, after a sharp, brief contest, he would be left in peaceable possession of it, or whether he could then hold it only by continued resistance.

Nathan had not been long away when he shouldered his axe and hastened toward the house. When it came in view, between the tall pillars of tree trunks that paled the verge of the clearing, the rough-walled dwelling had never looked more homelike nor better worth keeping. It had overcome the strangeness of new occupancy and settled to its place. The logs had begun to gather again the moss that they lost when they ceased to be trees. Wild vines, trained to tamer ways, clambered about the doorway and deep-set windows, beneath which beds of native and alien posies, carefully tended, alike flourished in the virgin soil. The young garden stuff was promising, and the broader expanse of fall-sown wheat, grown tall enough to toss in the wind, made a rippling green sea of the clearing, with islands of blackened stumps jutting here and there above the surface. The place had outgrown its uncouth newness and transient camp-like appearance and become a home to cling to and defend.

"What is it, Seth?" asked Ruth, coming to greet him at the door, her smile fading as she saw his troubled face.

"The Yorkers have come." And then he explained Nathan's mission. "Our folks'll come to help as soon as they can, but the Yorkers'll get here first. Look a there," and, following his eyes, Ruth saw the surveyor's party approaching the border of the clearing, just as the Beemans pa.s.sed into the house.

"It won't come to that, will it?" she asked, in a low, awed voice, as Seth took down his gun.

"I hope not, but I want the gun out of their reach and where I can get it handy. There ain't a bullet or buckshot in the house," he declared, after examining the empty bullet pouch. "Give me some beans. They're good enough for Yorkers."

As he spoke he measured a charge of powder into the long barrel, rammed a tow wad upon it, poured in a half handful of the beans that Ruth brought him in a gourd, rammed down another wad, put priming in the pan, clapped down the hammer, then mounted half way up the ladder that served as a stair, laid the gun on the floor of the upper room, and was down at the door when the surveyor led his party to it. He saluted the party civilly, and, upon demand, gave his name.

"Well, Mr. Beeman," began the surveyor, in a pompous tone, "I sent your son to bring you to me, but it seems you did not please to come."

"No," said Seth quietly; "it does not please me to leave my affairs at the beck and call of every stranger that comes this way."

"Well, sir, I'd have you understand that I am Marmaduke Felton, duly appointed and licensed as a surveyor of His Majesty's lands within his province of New York. Furthermore, be it known, I have come here in the regular discharge of the duties of my office, to fix the bounds of land purchased by my client, Mr. Erastus Graves," bowing to the person, "of the original grantees, with patent from His Excellency the Governor, who alone has authority to grant these lands. I find you, sir, established on these same lands belonging to my client. What have you to say for yourself? By what pretended right have you made occupation of lands belonging to my client?"

"I have to say for myself," Seth answered, in a steady voice, "that I bought this pitch of the original proprietors, and I have their deed, duly signed and sealed. They got their charter of His Excellency Benning Wentworth, His Majesty's Governor of the Province of New Hampshire."

"Your t.i.tle is not worth the paper it's written on," scoffed Mr. Felton.

"Governor Wentworth has no more authority to grant lands than I have.

Not a whit. The east bounds of New York are fixed by royal decree at the west bank of Connecticut River, as everybody knows, and Wentworth's grants this side that limit are null and void. No doubt you have acted in good faith, but now there's nothing for you but to vacate these betterments forthwith; yes, forthwith, if you will take the advice of a friend," and the little man regaled himself with a pinch of snuff.

"I shall not go till I am forced to," Seth answered with determination.

"When it comes to force both parties may take a hand in the game."

"Very well, very well! I have given you friendly advice; if you do not choose to take it the consequences be on your own head. Come, Graves; come, men, let us go about our present affairs;" adding, after some talk with Graves, "We shall be back to spend the night with you, Mr. Beeman.

You cannot refuse Mr. Graves the shelter of his own house."

Seth flushed with anger, but answered steadily: "I can't help it, but you will not be welcome."

The men who had been idling about, taking little interest in the parley, now followed their employers back to the woods, trampling through the young wheat in their course.

"I wish you a pleasant night on't," said Seth under his breath, and turned to rea.s.sure his wife. "Don't be frightened, my girl. They won't get us out of here. Keep a stout heart and wait."

With a quieter heart she went about her household affairs, while her husband busied himself nearby, weeding the garden and giving to his wife's posy beds the awkward care of unaccustomed hands. He often stopped his employment to listen and intently scan the border of the woods. The shadows of the trees were stretching far across the clearing when an owl hooted solemnly in the nearest woods on the bank of the creek, and, presently, another answered farther away.

"Do hear the owls hootin', and it's clear as a bell," said Ruth at the door, looking up to the cloudless sky. "It can't be it's a-going to storm."

"I shouldn't wonder if it did," said Seth with a mirthless laugh. "Where was that nighest hoot?"

As he spoke the solemn hollow notes were repeated, and some crows began to wheel and caw above the spot, marking it plainly enough to the eye and ear, and he set forth in the direction at a quick pace.

"Why don't Nathan come home?" little Martha asked. "I hain't seen him all day. I wish he'd come. He'll get ketched in the storm."