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Updated: June 4, 2025
Bolderwood had already gone, and Lot Breckenridge detained Enoch until after the dinner hour. Lot would have kept him all night, but the latter knew his mother would be anxious to see him safe home, and he started an hour or two before sunset, on the trail which Bolderwood and he had followed early in the morning.
Therefore he was still with the Hardings that day late in April when Ethan Allen, riding out of Bennington into the north to carry a torch which should fire every farm and hamlet with patriotic fervor, reined in his steed at the door of the farmhouse. The children saw the great man coming and ran from the fields with Bolderwood, while the widow appeared at her door and welcomed Colonel Allen.
However, Crow Wing and Bolderwood were in time to help do the heaviest of the work and soon the last stump was out of the soil and piled upon a flaming pyre. The several bonfires could not spread to the underbrush, so the boys were able to leave them for the time and rush away to the creek for a swim before dinner.
'Siah Bolderwood came down from his "farm" near Old Ti to join in the festivities; but several of the young people who had attended the stump-burning three years before were not present.
"That red rascal ain't goin' to beat everybody here," thought Enoch, and he got up and ceased sulking. The wrestling match was the last of the day's sports. Bolderwood paired the boys off to the best of his judgment for the first bout; but the winners drew lots to see who they should wrestle with the second time.
But Enoch had gone on ahead, remembering that the captive had been left alone for nearly half an hour. Suddenly his voice rose in a shout of anger and surprise. "He has escaped!" cried Bolderwood, the instant he heard his young friend, and plunged at once into the wood toward the spot where Halpen had been tied. Truly, the spy was gone. "The rascal was sharper than I thought," gasped the ranger.
"There was Mistress Kate on top of a tall stump, her black hair flying in the wind, and Nuck's old musket in her hands. She said she was on guard, and she hailed me before I got out of the wood. Her eyes are sharp." "She should have been a boy," sighed the widow. "Indeed, this wilderness is no place for girls at all." "Bless their dear little souls!" exclaimed Bolderwood, with feeling.
Would he escape he must accomplish the matter soon, or likely Bolderwood or young Harding would come to examine him again, and then the chance would be past. At last, his flesh cut so deeply that blood ran from arms and body, he stretched the hide rope until he was able to wriggle out of it. There were then his ankles to untie. This he did in a very few moments. He was free!
Dark as it was Enoch could even distinguish the very tree out of which the catamount had sprung at him, and the murmur of the hurrying waters down the rocky bed reached his ear. Here 'Siah Bolderwood and the other neighbors had found the dead body of the elder Harding, apparently trampled and gored to death by the huge buck whose hoofprints marked the ground all about.
"It was indeed the demon!" gasped the fellow, dragged unceremoniously to his feet by the borderer. "If he ever comes into this colony again I doubt but he'll be hung as high as Haman," Bolderwood declared. "And you were the surveyor, eh? One of Duane & Kempe's men? Well, sir, your back will be well tickled, or my name's not 'Siah Bolderwood! But bear up, man 'tis no killing punishment."
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