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Updated: June 25, 2025
Enoch was nearing the boundaries of his father's farm now and ever since Simon Halpen had endeavored to evict them and especially since Jonas Harding's death, the possibility of the Yorkers' return had been a nightmare to Enoch. Lying a moment almost breathless behind the tree, he began to recover his presence of mind and fortitude.
He'd be an eel or a sarpint to wriggle out of them thongs." "A sarpint he is," declared Bolderwood, and strode away to look at the prisoner. Enoch followed him. There, sitting with his back against a tree, his ankles fastened together and a strong deer thong wrapped about his body and about the tree itself, was Simon Halpen. When he saw the ranger he scowled.
"Be still! be still!" cried Enoch, well-nigh overcome himself by the mad actions of the man. "Lie quiet or I cannot save you. Be still!" Halpen did not hear him; or, if he heard, he would not believe. He tore himself from Enoch's grasp, and as the youth tried to seize him again he struck out wildly and his fist found lodgment against Enoch's jaw. The blow stunned the latter and he sank.
The way led directly to that little glade where, nearly four years before, he had spied upon Simon Halpen, the Yorker, and Crow Wing had driven him so ignominiously home. There was a fire here now, but the Indian was alone. An appetizing odor of broiling flesh greeted the white youth, for it was already growing dark in the forest and Crow Wing was preparing supper.
Whether or not it was the person he had seen in the wood the day of Sheriff Ten Eyck's fiasco at the Breckenridge farm, he was certain of the man's identity. It was Simon Halpen who, under a New York patent, claimed territory on the Walloomscoik, a part of which the Harding farm was.
"Then Simon Halpen compassed his death I am sure of it!" cried the boy. "You well know how he hated father. Halpen would never forget the beech-sealing he got last fall. He threatened to be terribly revenged on us; and Bryce and I heard him threaten father, too, when he fought him upon the crick bank and father tossed the Yorker into the middle of the stream." Bolderwood chuckled.
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.
'Siah was confident that he and his men had obtained every craft on this eastern shore for miles up and down the lake, so he did not believe Halpen could really get across to the fort in time to warn the garrison.
The widow saw that the windows of the cabin were shuttered and that Bryce had both powder and bullets beside him in the loft. Then she went into her own chamber and falling upon her knees prayed as only a mother can whose children are in bodily and imminent danger. How far the Yorkers would dare go to what lengths Halpen might force the fight for the ox-bow farm it was impossible even to imagine.
He went back to the merry party at the hovel with a heavy heart and not until after the last of the visitors had gone home the boys swinging pine torches and giving the warwhoop to scare off any lurking wolves or catamounts did Enoch find opportunity to tell his mother of Crow Wing's warning. "Simon Halpen is surely coming to evict us," he declared.
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