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Updated: May 5, 2025
"I note with pleasure your mention of the gallantry of your riflemen, Mount, Murphy, and Elerson, and have reported it to their company captain, Mr. Long, who will, in turn, bring it to the attention of Colonel Morgan. "I also note that you have not availed yourself of the war-services of the Oneidas, for which I beg to thank you personally.
As always on the march, the division of light troops led; the advance was piloted by my guides, reinforced by Boyd with four riflemen of Morgan's Tim Murphy, David Elerson, and Garrett Putnam, privates, and Michael Parker, sergeant. Close behind us, and pretty well ahead of the rifle battalion, under Major Parr, and the pioneers, followed Mr.
"Shoot the dhirrty son of a shlut!" yelled Murphy; and Elerson shot him and knocked him down, but the man staggered to his feet again, clutching at his wounded throat, and reeled towards us. He fell again, got on his knees, crawled across the dead leaves until he was scarce fifteen yards away, then fell over and lay there, coughing. "A dead wan," said Murphy, calmly; "lave him."
I looked ahead into the darkening woods; the Caughnawaga men were falling back, taking station behind trees; Mount stepped to the shelter of a big oak; Elerson leaped to cover under a pine; a Caughnawaga bateaux-man darted past me, stationing himself on my right behind the trunk of a dapple beech.
I slept little that night, partly from the excitement of my first serious combat, partly because of the terrible heat. Our outposts, now painfully overzealous and alert, fired off their muskets at every fancied sound or movement, and these continual alarms kept me awake, though Mount and Murphy slept peacefully, and Elerson yawned on guard.
"Bah!" sneered Elerson; "officers can't teach militia only a thrashing does 'em any good. After all, our people are like the British, full o' contempt for untried enemies. Do you recall how the red-coats went swaggering about that matter o' Bunker Hill? They make no more frontal attacks now, but lay ambuscades, and thank their stars for the opportunity."
Elerson, who no doubt had scraped the outlines of this legend with his knife-point before Murphy carved it, had produced another message on his own tree, not a whit more complimentary: "Dam Butler, Brant, Hiakotoo, and McDonald for bloody rogues and murtherin' rascals all!" They were ever like this, these two great overgrown boys, already celebrated so terribly in song and legend.
"How are you going to find the False-Faces' meeting-place?" "If Magdalen Brant goes, I go," said I. "And while I'm watching her, Jack Mount is to range, and track any savage who passes the Iroquois trail.... What do you mean to do with Murphy and Elerson?" "Elerson rides back to the manor with our horses; we've no further use for them here.
When he recognized me he rose and came to my side. "Well, Ormond," he said, quietly, "it's a comfort to see you. Leave your horses with Elerson. Who is that with you oh, Jack Mount? These are the riflemen, Elerson and Murphy Morgan's men, you know." The two riflemen saluted me with easy ceremony and sauntered over to where Mount was standing at our horses' heads.
And not one hand would have been raised to prevent the sacrificial test which must follow and end inevitably in a dreadful death. Mount and Elerson, moved by a rare delicacy, turned and walked noiselessly away towards the hill-top. "Wake her," I said to Sir George. He knelt beside her, looking long into her face; then touched her lightly on the hand.
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