While Walter carried his basket of fish to the kitchen, and Mr. Prevost's guest was gazing at the stranger, in whom Edith seemed to recognize an acquaintance, the master of the house himself appeared from behind the latter, saying, as he came,--
"Let me make you acquainted with Mr. Brooks; Major Kielmansegge--Captain Jack Brooks."
"Pooh, pooh, Prevost," exclaimed the other. "Call me by my right name. I war Captain Brooks long agone. I'm new christened, and called Woodchuck now--that's because I burrow, major. Them Ingians are wonderful circumdiferous; but they have found that, when they try tricks with me, I can burrow under them; and so they call me Woodchuck, 'cause it's a burrowing sort of a beast."
"I do not exactly understand you," replied the gentleman who had been called Major Kielmansegge; "what is the exact meaning of circumdiferous?"
"It means just circumventing like," answered the Woodchuck. "First and foremost, there's many of the Ingians--the Aloquin, for a sample--that never tell a word of truth. No, no, not they. One of them told me so plainly, one day: 'Woodchuck,' says he, 'Ingian seldom tell truth; he know better than that. Truth too good a thing to be used every day: keep that for time of need.' I believe, at that precious moment, he spoke the truth, the first time for forty years."
The announcement that breakfast was ready interrupted the explanation of Captain Brooks, but appeared to afford him great satisfaction; and, at the meal, he certainly ate more than all the rest of the party put together, consuming everything set before him with a voracity truly marvellous. He seemed, indeed, to think some apology necessary for his furious appetite.
"You see, major," he said, as soon as he could bring himself to a pause sufficiently long to utter a whole sentence, "I eat well when I do eat; for sometimes I get nothing for three or four days together. When I get to a lodge like this, I take in stores for my next voyage, as I can't tell what port I shall touch at again."
"Pray do you anticipate a long cruise just now?" asked the stranger.
"No, no," answered the other, laughing; "but I always prepare against the worst. I am just going up the Mohawk, for a step or two, to make a trade with some of my friends of the Five Nations--the Iroquois, as the French folks call them. But I shall trot up afterwards to Sandy Hill and Fort Lyman, to see what is to be done there in the way of business. Fort Lyman I call it still, though it should be Fort Edward now; for, after the brush with Dieskau, it has changed its name. Ay, that was a sharp affair, major. You'd ha' like to bin there, I guess."
"Were you there, captain?" asked Mr. Prevost. "I did not know you had seen so much service."
"Sure I was," answered Woodchuck, with a laugh; "though, as to service, I did more than I was paid for, seeing I had no commission. I'll tell you how it war, Prevost: just in the beginning of September--it was the seventh or eighth, I think, in the year afore last, that is seventeen fifty-five--I was going up to the head of the lake to see if I could not get some peltry, for I had been unlucky down westward, and had made a bargain in Albany I did not like to break. Just on the top o' the hill, near where the King's road comes down to the ford, who should I stumble upon amongst the trees, but old Hendrik, as they called him--why, I can't tell--the Sachem of the Tortoise totem of the Mohawks. He was there with three young men at his feet; but we were always good friends, he and I, and, over and above, I carried the calumet, so there was no danger. Well, we sat down and had a talk, and he told me that the general--that is, Sir William, as he is now--had dug up the tomahawk, and was encamped near Fort Lyman to give battle to You-non-de-yoh--that is to say, in their jargon, the French governor. He told me, too, that he was on his way to join the general, but that he did not intend to fight, but only to witness the brave deeds of the Corlear's men--that is to say, the English. He was a cunning old fox, old Hendrik, and I fancied from that, he thought we should be defeated. But when I asked him, he said no, that it was all on account of a dream he had had, forbidding him to fight, on the penalty of his scalp. So I told him I was minded to go with him and see the fun. Well, we mustered, before the sun was quite down, well nigh upon three hundred Mohawks, all beautiful painted and feathered; but they told me that they had not sung their war song, nor danced their war dance, before they left their lodges, so I could see well enough they had no intention to fight, and the tarnation devil wouldn't make 'em. How could we get to the camp where they were all busy throwing breastworks, and we heard that Dieskau was coming down from Hunter's in force? The next morning early, we were told that he had turned back again from Fort Lyman, and Johnson sent out Williams with seven or eight hundred men to get hold of his haunches. I tried hard to get old Hendrik to go along, for I stuck fast by my Ingians, knowing the brutes can be serviceable when you trust them. But the Sachem only grunted and did not stir. In an hour and a half we heard a mighty large rattle of muskets, and the Ingians could not stand the sound quietly, but began looking at their rifle-flints and fingering their tomahawks. Howsever, they did not stir, and old Hendrik sat as grave and as brown as an old hemlock stump. Then we saw another party go out of camp to help the first; but in a very few minutes they came running back with Dieskau at their heels. In they tumbled, over the breastworks, head over heels any how; and a pretty little considerable quantity of fright they brought with them. If Dieskau had charged straight on that minute, we should have all been smashed to everlasting flinders; and I don't doubt, no more than that a beear's a crittar, that Hendrik and his painted devils would have had as many English scalps as French ones.
"But Dieskau, like a stupid coon, pulled up short two hundred yards off, and Johnson did not give him much time to look about him, for he poured all the cannon-shot that he had got into him as hard as he could pelt. Well, the French Ingians--and there was a mighty sight of them--did not like that game of ball, and they squattered off to the right and left--some into the trees, some into the swamps; and I couldn't stand it no longer, but up with my rifle, and give them all I had to give, and old Hendrik, seeing how things was like to go, took to the right end too, but a little too fast; for the old devil came into him, and he must needs have scalps. So out he went with the rest; and just as he had got his forefinger in the hair of a young Frenchman, whiz came a bullet into his dirty red skin, and down he went like an old moose. Some twenty of his Ingians got shot too; but, in the end, Dieskau had to run.
"Johnson was wounded too; and then folks have since said that he had no right to the honour of the battle, but that it was Lyman's, who took the command when he could fight no longer. But that's all trash. Dieskau had missed his chance, and all his irregulars were sent skimming by the first fire long afore Johnson was hit. Lyman had nothing to do but hold what Johnson left him, and pursue the enemy. The first he did well enough; but the second he forgot to do--though he was a brave man and a good soldier, for all that."
This little narrative seemed to give matter for thought both to Mr. Prevost and his English guest; and, after a moment or two of somewhat gloomy consideration, the latter asked the narrator whether the friendly Indians had, on that occasion, received any special offence to account for their unwillingness to give active assistance to their allies, or whether their indifference proceeded merely from a fickle or treacherous disposition.
"A little of both," replied Captain Brooks. And after leaning his great broad forehead on his hand for a moment or two, in deep thought, he proceeded to give his view of the relations of the colonies with the Iroquois, in a manner and tone totally different from any he had used before. They were grave and almost stern; and his language had few, if any, of the coarse provincialisms with which he ordinarily seasoned his conversation.
"They are a queer people, the Indians," he said, "and not so much