The Reckoning

"To wait for him—to plight your troth and wait for him until he and Sir John Johnson have come into their own again?"

"Yes, Carus."

"And then you mean to wed him?"

She was silent. The color ebbed in her cheeks.

I stood looking at her through the evening light. Behind her, gilded by the level rays of the sinking sun, a new headstone stood, and on it I read:

IN MEMORY OF

Michael Cresap, First Cap't

Of the Rifle Battalions,

And Son to Col. Thomas

Cresap, Who Departed this

Life, Oct. 18, a.d. 1775

Cresap, the generous young captain, whose dusty column of Maryland riflemen I myself had seen when but a lad, pouring through Broadalbin Bush on the way to Boston siege! This was his grave; and a Tory maid in flowered petticoat and chip hat was seated on the mound a-prattling of rebels!

"When do you leave us?" I asked grimly.

"Captain Butler has gone to see Sir Henry to ask for a packet. We sail as soon as may be."

"Does he go with you?" I demanded, startled.

"Why, yes—I and my two maids, and Captain Butler. Sir Frederick Haldimand knows."

"Yes, but he does not know that Captain Butler has presumed—has dared to press a clandestine suit with you!" I retorted angrily. "It does not please me that you go under such doubtful escort, Elsin."

"And pray, who are you to please, sir?" she asked in quick displeasure. "You speak of presumption in others, Mr. Renault, and, unsolicited, you offer an affront to me and to a gentleman who is not here to answer."

"I wish he were," I said between my teeth.

Her fair face hardened.

"Wishes are very safe, sir," she said in a low voice.

At that, suddenly, such a blind anger flooded me that the setting sun swam in my eyes and the blood dinned in ears and brain as though to burst them. At such moments, which are rare with me, I fall silent; and so I stood, while the strange rage shook me, and passed, leaving me cold and very quiet.

"I think we had best go," I said.

She held out her hand. I aided her to rise; and she kept my hand in hers, laying the other over it, and looked up into my eyes.

"Forgive me, Carus," she whispered. "No man can be more gallant and more sweet than you."

"Forgive me, Elsin. No maid so generous and just as you."

And that was all, for we crossed the street, and I mounted the stoop of our house with her, and bowed her in when the great door opened.

"Are you not coming in?" she asked, lingering in the doorway.

"No. I shall take the air."

"But we sup in a few moments."

"I may sup at the Coq d'Or," I said. Still she stood there, the wind blowing through the doorway fluttering the pink bows tied under her chin—a sweet, wistful face turned up to mine, and the early candle-light from the hall sconces painting one rounded cheek with golden lusters.

"Have you freely forgiven me, Carus?"

"Yes, freely. You know it."

"And you will be at the Fort? I shall give you that dance you ask to-night, shall I not?"

"If you will."

There was a silence; she stretched out one hand. Then the door was closed and I descended the steps once more, setting my hat on my head and tucking my walking-stick under one arm, prepared to meet my drover friend, who, Ennis said, desired to speak with me.

But I had no need to walk out along Great George Street to find my bird; for, as I left Wall Street and swung the corner into Broadway, the husky, impatient whisper of a whippoorwill broke out from the dusk among the ruins of Trinity, and I started and turned, crossing the street. Wild birds there were a-plenty in the city, yet the whippoorwill so seldom came into the streets that the note alone would have attracted me had Ennis not warned me of the signal.

And so I strolled once more into the churchyard and among the felled trees which the soldiers had cut down for fire-wood, as they were scorched past hope of future growth; and presently, prowling through the dusk among the graves by Lambert Street, I came upon my drover, seated upon a mound, smoking his clay as innocent as any tavern slug in the sun.

"Good even, friend," he said, looking up. "I thought I heard a whippoorwill but now, and being country bred, stole in to listen. Did you hear it, sir?"

"I thought I did," said I, amused. "I thought it sang, Pro Gloria in Excelsis–"

"Hush!" whispered the drover, smiling; "sit here beside me and we'll listen. Perhaps the bird may sing that anthem once again."

I seated myself on the green mound, and the next moment sprang to my feet as a shape before me seemed to rise out of the very ground; then, hearing my drover laugh, I resumed my place as the short figure came toward us.

"Another drover," said my companion, "and a famous one, Mr. Renault, for he drove certain wild cattle at a headlong gallop from the pastures at Saratoga—he and I and another drover they call Dan'l Morgan. We have been strolling here among these graves, a-prying for old friends—brother drovers. We found one drover's grave—a lad called Cresap—hard by the arch there to the north."

"Did you know him?" I asked.

"Yes, lad. I was a herder of his at Dunmore's slaughter-house. I saw him jailed at Fortress Pitt; I saw him freed, too. And one fine day in '76, a-lolling at my ease in the north, what should I hear but a jolly conch-horn blowing in the forest, and out of it rolled a torrent of men in buckskin, Cresap leading, bound for that famous cattle-drive at Boston town. So I, being by chance in buckskin, and by merest chance bearing a rifle, fell in and joined the merry ranks—I and my young friend Cardigan, who is now with certain mounted drovers called, I think, Colonel Washington's Dragoons, harrying those Carolina cattle owned by Tarleton."

He glanced up at his comrade, who stood silently beside him in the darkness.

"He, too, was there, Mr. Renault—my fellow drover here, at your service. Weasel, remove thy hat and make a bow to Mr. Renault—our brother drover."

The little withered man uncovered with a grace astonishing. So perfect was his bearing and his bow that I rose instinctively to meet it, and match his courtesy with the best I could.

"When like meets like 'tis a duel of good manners," said the big drover quietly. "Mr. Renault, you salute a man as gently bred as any man who wears a gilt edge to his hat in County Tryon. I call him the Weasel with all the reverence with which I say 'your lordship.'"

The Weasel and I exchanged another bow, and I vow he outmatched me, too, in composure, dignity, and grace, and I wondered who he might be.