he murmured. He looked up at Shad. “War drums?”
Shad shook his head, his fat face twisted with concern.
“No,” he said softly, “not quite. But it’s the closest thing. It’s kind a hard to explain, it’s a feeling more than a message. It’s a warning drum, a trouble drum. It says: look out—men are going to die.”
3
THE WARRIORS
The long, cold, monotonous weeks of January and February passed fitfully for Matt. Always there were rumors of war and threats of war and talk of punitive Indian raids along the fringe settlements and tales of the French army that was manning itself in Canada. Yet there was never anything definite, and nothing was decided. The entire country seemed to be suspended in buzzing indecision.
The snow left the ground grudgingly, and Matt spent more of his time than his father approved of standing at the stockade gate watching the turnpike that ran to Northumberland, waiting for the latest postrider.
Shad had been gone for weeks, off on one of his many mysterious errands, and he had returned only once in the beginning of February—on a horse that he said he had “found somewhere up the road.”
He had remained one night with the Burnetts and was off again the following morning, saying, vaguely, that he had to “see a man about a horse” down at Wrights Ferry, “or somewhere near there.” He had, he said, news of Chief, and also of the young major they had met in December near Murthering Town. Taking first things first he told Matt that Chief had been reinstated in his tribe.
“That old bug-eater!” he bellowed. “Know what he done? He was rootin’ around one day near a settler’s cabin and just accidental-like stumbled over an oil lantern. The lantern, you see, wasn’t in the cabin when Chief bumped into it, but sort a sittin’ on a stump near the chicken pen, and Chief, fearin’ it might get busted out there by its lone, took it along with him. Well sir, he took it clear back to Laurel Ridge and presented it to the ne Shadodiowe’go’wa—medicine man, to you. Didn’t them Laurel Ridgers go crazy when they seen it all lit up? Hi-yi! They almost made Chief a sachem. ’Course, ain’t no way of tellin’ what them Laurel Ridgers will think when that lantern runs out a oil and Chief ain’t got no more to refill it with; but till it does, he’s set!”
Things, he said, were happening down in Williamsburg, but just what he wasn’t sure. No one was sure. St. Pierre’s letter to Governor Dinwiddie had been a refusal to withdraw, and Dinwiddie had written King George, asking for orders. The King had notified Dinwiddie that he must at all costs push the French back, but had been lax in sending funds to outfit an expedition.
Dinwiddie, in desperation, had ventured to order a draft of two hundred men from the Virginia militia, and Washington was to have the command. He had also sent messengers to the Catawbas, Cherokees, Chickasaws and Iroquois, inviting them to take up the hatchet against the French. As usual, no word regarding their decision had been heard.
Next, Dinwiddie had written urgent letters to the governors of Pennsylvania, the Carolinas, Maryland and New Jersey, begging for contingents of men to be at Wills Creek by March at the latest. But again no action had been taken because of the lack of funds.
“But, Shad,” Matt cried, “when will they take definite action?”
Shad tossed his hands into the air helplessly, letting them fall where they would.
“Dunno, Matty. But I can tell you this, if them governors and that fat King don’t shake a leg soon, you’re gonna look out the gate some morning and discover them Frenchies building a fort across the road from you!” And then he was gone, leaving Matt in a grim mood of nervous anticipation.
Matt’s father owned a truck house in a hamlet situated near the Harrisburg turnpike. Grouped about the trading post were a blacksmith shop, barn, and a low squat garrison house, the whole stockaded against hostile Indian tribes.
It was a rare night when the truck house was not filled to capacity with noisy travelers, settlers, militiamen, backwoodsmen and an occasional pseudocivilized Indian. And now in the last days of March, with the threat of a French and Indian war hanging ominously over the land, the house was nightly packed with rabble-rousers, pacifiers, and all kinds of table-pounders.
Everyone talked war, but few wanted to go help fight it. The travelers from other states seemed content to let Virginia and Pennsylvania handle the trouble, seeing that the trouble was in their backyards, and the Pennsylvanians seemed satisfied with letting Virginia solve the dispute; though it was said that Hamilton, their governor, had expressed his sympathy for Dinwiddie, but could do nothing with the placid Quaker noncombatants and the obstinate Dutch farmers who made up his Assembly.
Night after night Matt would listen to the shouts, arguments and table-pounding as he tended the serving counter, and he would shake his head in dismay. It was beyond his comprehension how people who were actually in the same boat could sit back and be willing to let others row for them.
One night young Harry Curry, an acquaintance of Matt’s, entered the truck house. Harry was a newcomer to the hamlet, having come to the Colonies only six years before. His father was a retired British officer who had left a leg behind at Culloden Moor in the famous battle of ’Forty-six, and much of Harry’s mannerism came from the old school of English superiority.
Most of the youths of the hamlet would have little to do with Harry, having been snubbed too often by his haughty attitude, and Shad Holly would have nothing to do with him at all. Shad called him “a dandified nose-tilted perfume bottle with legs.” But because Harry’s mother, who had been a French woman, had died during the siege of Louisburg, and because Matt had also lost his own mother at an early age, Matt had always felt a sort of strange kinship for this lonely proud youth, and he went out of his way to be kind to him.
Harry picked his way carefully through the throng of noisy table-pounders, somehow giving the impression that he didn’t want them to touch his clothes. His nose, Matt noticed, was pinched slightly as though he smelled something not quite to his liking.
“Evening, Harry,” Matt offered with a smile.
The youth nodded his handsome head without a hint of expression, saying, “Are they still shouting war—for lack of anything better to shout about?”
“I’m afraid it’s coming, Harry. The French will see to that.”
“The French,” Harry said confidently, “don’t want war any more than we do. They merely want a share of the land.”
Matt was annoyed and showed it in his quick reply. “They have all of Canada; why must they act like pigs? And besides, how can you, the son of an English officer who has fought the French all his life, stand up for them?”
Harry’s smooth thin face was reflective for a moment, then he spoke thoughtfully. “If this were to be a war between gentlemen—Englishmen and Frenchmen, I mean—I would say go to it. But it will not be. It will be fought with boors and bumpkins such as this.” He waved a slim hand over the house’s company.
“Backwoodsmen,” he continued, “settlers, Indians, and the usual rabble. It will be disgraceful to the name of war.” Matt’s temper as a rule was held in strong leash and, because he had always tried to understand the English youth, he had made a point of not taking offense at the unkind things Harry was wont to say. But he had put in a hard day and had heard enough dissension for one night, and he spoke with sudden heat.
