In the Days of Poor Richard | Page 2

ashes with his forefinger and twiddled it up to his pipe bowl. In
the army he was known as "old Solomon Binkus," not by reason of his
age, for he was only about thirty-eight, but as a mark of deference.
Those who followed him in the bush had a faith in his wisdom that was
childlike. "I had had my feet in a pair o' sieves walkin' the white sea a
fortnight," he went on. "The dry water were six foot on the level, er
mebbe more, an' some o' the waves up to the tree-tops, an' nobody with
me but this 'ere ol' Marier Jane [his rifle] the hull trip to the Swegache
country. Gol' ding my pictur'! It seemed as if the wind were a-tryin' fer
to rub it off the slate. It were a pesky wind that kep' a-cuffin' me an'
whistlin' in the briers on my face an' crackin' my coat-tails. I were
lonesome--lonesomer'n a he-bear--an' the cold grabbin' holt o' all ends
o' me so as I had to stop an' argue 'bout whar my bound'ry-lines was
located like I were York State. Cat's blood an' gun-powder! I had to
kick an' scratch to keep my nose an' toes from gittin'--brittle."
At this point, Solomon Binkus paused to give his words a chance "to
sink in." The silence which followed was broken only by the crack of
burning faggots and the sound of the night wind in the tall pines above
the gorge. Before Mr. Binkus resumes his narrative, which, one might
know by the tilt of his head and the look of his wide open, right eye,
would soon happen, the historian seizes the opportunity of finishing his
introduction. He had been the best scout in the army of Sir Jeffrey
Amherst. As a small boy he had been captured by the Senecas and held
in the tribe a year and two months. Early in the French and Indian War,
he had been caught by Algonquins and tied to a tree and tortured by
hatchet throwers until rescued by a French captain. After that his
opinion of Indians had been, probably, a bit colored by prejudice. Still
later he had been a harpooner in a whale boat, and in his young
manhood, one of those who had escaped the infamous massacre at Fort
William Henry when English forces, having been captured and

disarmed, were turned loose and set upon by the savages. He was a tall,
brawny, broad-shouldered, homely-faced man of thirty-eight with a
Roman nose and a prominent chin underscored by a short sandy throat
beard. Some of the adventures had put their mark upon his weathered
face, shaven generally once a week above the chin. The top of his left
ear was missing. There was a long scar upon his forehead. These were
like the notches on the stock of his rifle. They were a sign of the stories
of adventure to be found in that wary, watchful brain of his.
Johnson enjoyed his reports on account of their humor and color and he
describes him in a letter to Putnam as a man who "when he is much
interested, looks as if he were taking aim with his rifle." To some it
seemed that one eye of Mr. Binkus was often drawing conclusions
while the other was engaged with the no less important function of
discovery.
His companion was young Jack Irons--a big lad of seventeen, who
lived in a fertile valley some fifty miles northwest of Fort Stanwix, in
Tryon County, New York. Now, in September, 1768, they were
traveling ahead of a band of Indians bent on mischief. The latter, a few
days before, had come down Lake Ontario and were out in the bush
somewhere between the lake and the new settlement in Horse Valley.
Solomon thought that they were probably Hurons, since they, being
discontented with the treaty made by the French, had again taken the
war-path. This invasion, however, was a wholly unexpected bit of
audacity. They had two captives--the wife and daughter of Colonel
Hare, who had been spending a few weeks with Major Duncan and his
Fifty-Fifth Regiment, at Oswego. The colonel had taken these ladies of
his family on a hunting trip in the bush. They had had two guides with
them, one of whom was Solomon Binkus. The men had gone out in the
early evening after moose and imprudently left the ladies in camp,
where the latter had been captured. Having returned, the scout knew
that the only possible explanation for the absence of the ladies was
Indians, although no peril could have been more unexpected. He had
discovered by "the sign" that it was a large band traveling eastward. He
had set out by night to get ahead of them while