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But everybody officers, troops, batt-men looked curiously at our Siwanois Indian, who returned the compliment not at all, but with stately stride and expressionless visage moved straight ahead of him, as though he noticed nothing.
I ran back along the trail, meeting the boat-guard, batt-men, and the sick horses all along the way to Tioga, where they took me over on a raft of logs.... I paid them three hard shillings. Then Colonel Shreve heard of what I had been about, and sent a soldier after me, but I avoided the fort, Euan, and went boldly up through the deserted camps until I came to where the army had crossed.
Riflemen, drovers, batt-men, frontier farmers, and some of the dirty flotsam trappers, forest-runners, and the like were continually moving about the parade, going and coming on petty, sordid business of their own; and there were women there, too pallid refugees from distant farms, and now domiciled within the stockade; gaunt wives of neighbouring settlers, bringing baskets of eggs or pails of milk to sell; and here and there some painted camp-wanton lingering by the gateway on mischief bent, or gossiping with some sister trull, their bold eyes ever roving.
My pack, and those of my Indians, had been prepared for days, and there was little for me to do to make ready. Some batt-men carried my military chest to the fort, where it was bestowed with the officers' baggage until we returned. Then I hastened away to the fort and discovered our twenty riflemen paraded there, and Boyd inspecting them and their packs.
On paths and new-made highways we began to encounter people and cattle now a long line of oxen laden with military stores or with canoes and flatboats, and conducted by batt-men in smock and frock, now a sweating company of military surveyors from headquarters, burdened with compass, chain, and Jacob-staff, already running their lines into the wilderness.
Shreve's batt-men will carry it down the river." I was silent. "Rumour runs the woods like lightning," he said. "She will surely hear of this disgraceful scene.
For our regiments were at last completely surrounded, facing outward in an irregular circle, the front held by the Palatines, the rear by the Caughnawagas, the west by part of the Canajoharie regiment, and the east by a fraction of unbrigaded militia, teamsters, batt-men, bateaux-men, and half a dozen volunteer rangers reinforced by my three riflemen. The scene was real enough to me now.
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