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There came a hurly-burly of confusion and tumult as the shouts of the crowd grew more vehement, and one of the refractory colonels impetuously drew his sword and half turned as if to give the command himself. Then I heard Herkimer, too incensed to longer control himself, cry: "If you will have it so, the blood be on your heads."
But, to tell you the truth, I have no faith in this idea of the snake's being an heirloom. He is my own snake, and no man's else." "But what was his origin?" demanded Herkimer. "Oh, there is poisonous stuff in any man's heart sufficient to generate a brood of serpents," said Elliston with a hollow laugh. "You should have heard my homilies to the good town's-people.
"You've given up painting?" said Herkimer all at once. "Yes, though that doesn't count," said Rantoul, abruptly; but there was in his voice a different note, something of the restlessness of the old Don Furioso. "Talk to me of the Quarter. Who's at the Café des Lilacs now? They tell me that little Ragin we used to torment so has made some great decorations.
But even this report was vague, and as he could not understand what could have happened, it remained for a long time to him a mystery. Then he forgot it. Ten years after Rantoul's marriage to little Tina Glover, Herkimer returned to America. The last years had placed him in the foreground of the sculptors of the world.
When we went into action with General Herkimer it was done quickly; we suspected something of the kind might happen, but were not certain of it. Now there could be no question but that, in a short time at the most, we would be striving to kill human beings, and unable, except at the cost of being branded as cowards, to do anything toward saving our own lives. The Assault
I shall always hold that General Herkimer was a brave man, because, after a severe effort which was evident to us all, he so far mastered his righteous anger as to say, quietly: "I am placed over you as a father and guardian, and shall not lead you into difficulties from which I may not be able to extricate you."
He had been a farmer and sawmill man, and still had a farm between Herkimer and Little Falls on the Mohawk River. He owned his boat, and seemed to be doing very well with her. The other driver was a boy named Asa I forget his other name. We called him Ace.
At Herkimer, eighteen and one-half miles from Utica and thirty-eight from Oneida, we had luncheon, then inquired for gasoline. Most astonishing! in the entire village no gasoline to be had. A town of most respectable size, hotel quite up to date, large brick blocks of stores, enterprise apparent but no gasoline.
Once, indeed, a band of Roman Catholic Indians appeared at Fort Herkimer and did bloody work before they were driven off, but this time there was no panic in the lower settlements. Large troops of soldiers continually passed up and down on the river in the open seasons, some of them in very handsome clothes.
All this I should not mention were it not the key to the horrible tragedy which followed. It is this alone which explains how a trained Indian fighter, a veteran frontiersman like Herkimer, was spurred and stung into rushing headlong upon the death-trap, as if he had been any ignorant and wooden-headed Braddock.
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