The Duke of Stockbridge | Page 3

Konkapot's hut on the
Barrington road, without meeting a soul, though the windows will have
a scandalized face framed in each seven by nine pane of glass. And the
distorted, uncouth and variously colored face and figure, which the

imperfections of the glass give the passer-by, will doubtless appear to
the horrified spectators, but the fit typical representation of his inward
depravity. We shall, I say, meet no one, unless, as we pass his hut by
Konkapot's brook, Jehoiachim Naunumpetox, the Indian tithing man,
spy us, and that will be to our exceeding discomfiture, for straightway
laying implacable hands upon us, he will deliver us to John Schebuck,
the constable, who will grievously correct our flesh with stripes, for
Sabbath-breaking, and cause us to sit in the stocks, for an ensample.
But if so mild an excursion involve so dire a risk, what must be the
desperation of this horseman who is coming at a thundering gallop
along the county road from Pittsfield? His horse is in a foaming sweat,
the strained nostrils are filled with blood and the congested eyes
protrude as if they would leap from their sockets to be at their goal.
It is Squire Woodbridge's two story red house before which the
horseman pulls rein, and leaving his steed with hanging head and
trembling knees and laboring sides, drags his own stiffened limbs up
the walk and enters the house. Almost instantly Squire Woodbridge
himself, issues from the door, dressed for church in a fine black coat,
waistcoat, and knee-breeches, white silk stockings, a three-cornered
black hat and silver buckles on his shoes, but in his hand instead of a
Bible, a musket. As he steps out, the door of a house further east opens
also, and another man similarly dressed, with brown woolen stockings,
steps forth with a gun in his hand also. He seems to have interpreted the
meaning of the horseman's message. This is Deacon Nash. Beckoning
him to follow, Squire Woodbridge steps out to the edge of the green,
raises his musket to his shoulder and discharges it into the air. Deacon
Nash coming up a moment later also raises and fires his gun, and e'er
the last echoes have reverberated from the mountains, Squire Edwards,
musket in hand, throws open his store door and stepping out on the
porch, fires the third gun.
A moment ago hundreds of faces were smiling, hundreds of eyes were
bright, hundreds of cheeks were flushed. Now there is not a single
smile or a trace of brightness, or a bit of color on a face in the valley.
Such is the woful change wrought in every household, as the successive

reports of the heavily-charged pieces sound through the village, and
penetrate to the farthest outlying farmhouse. The first shot may well be
an accident, the second may possibly be, but as the third inexorably
follows, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, parents and sons,
look at each other with blanched faces, and instantly a hundred scenes
of quiet preparation for meeting, are transformed into the confusion of
a very different kind of preparation. Catechisms are dropped for
muskets, and Bibles fall unnoticed under foot, as men spring for their
haversacks and powder-horns. For those three guns summon the minute
men to be on the march for Bennington. All the afternoon before, the
roar of cannon has faintly sounded from the northward, and the people
knew that Stark was meeting Baum and his Hessians, on the Hoosac.
One detachment of Stockbridge men is already with him. Does this new
summons mean disaster? Has the dreaded foe made good his boasted
invincibility? No one knows, not even the exhausted messenger, for he
was sent off by Stark, while yet the issue of yesterday's battle trembled
in the balance.
"It's kinder suddin. I wuz in hopes the boys wouldn' hev to go, bein as
they wuz a fightin yisdy," quavered old Elnathan Hamlin, as he trotted
about, helplessly trying to help, and only hindering Mrs. Hamlin, as
with white face, but deft hands, and quick eyes, she was getting her two
boys ready, filling their haversacks, sewing a button here, tightening a
buckle there, and looking to everything.
"Ye must tak keer o' Reub, Perez. He ain't so rugged 'zye be. By rights,
he orter ha stayed to hum."
"Oh, I'm as stout as Perez. I can wrastle him. Don't fret about me," said
Reuben, with attempted gayety, though his boyish lip quivered as he
looked at his mother's face, noting how she did not meet his eye, lest
she should lose her self-control, and not be able to do anything more.
"I'll look after the boy, never fear," said Perez, slapping his brother on
the back. "I'll fetch him back a General, as big a man as Squire
Woodbridge."