Two weeks of maddening inactivity followed the arrival at the Yellow Tavern of an express from Colonel Willett, carrying orders for me to remain at Oswaya until further command, bury all apples, pit the corn, and mill what buckwheat the settlers could spare as a deposit for the army.
Not a word since that time had I heard from Johnstown, although it was rumored in the settlement that the Rangers had taken the field in scouts of five, covering the frontier to get into touch with the long-expected forces that might come from Niagara under Ross and Walter Butler, or from the east under St. Leger and Sir John, or even perhaps under Haldimand.
Never had I known such hot impatience, such increasing anxiety; never had I felt so bitterly that the last chance was vanishing for me to strike an honest blow in a struggle wherein I, hitherto inert, had figured so meanly, so ingloriously.
To turn farmer clodhopper now was heart-breaking. Yet all I could do was to organize a sort of home guard there, detail a different yokel every day to watch the road to Varicks, five miles below, by which the enemy must arrive if they marched with artillery and wagons, as it was rumored they would. At night I placed a sentinel by the mill to guard against scalping parties, and another on the hill to watch the West and South. Meager defenses, one might say, and even the tavern was unstockaded, and protected only by loops and oaken shutters; but every man and woman was demanded for the harvest; even the children staggered off to the threshing-barns, laden with sheaves of red-stemmed buckwheat, or rolled pumpkins and squashes to the wagons, or shook down crimson apples for the men to cart away and bury.
The little Norris boy labored with the others--a thin, sallow child, heavy-eyed and silent. He had recovered somewhat from the shock of the tragedy he had witnessed, and strove to do what was asked of him, but when spoken to, seemed confused and slow of comprehension; and the tears were ever starting or smeared over his freckled face from cheek to chin.
Being an officer, the poor, heavy-witted folk looked to me for the counsel and wisdom my inexperience lacked. All I could do for them was to arrange their retreat to the tavern at the first signal of danger, and to urge that the women and children sleep there at night. My advice was only partly followed. As the golden October days passed, with no fresh alarm from the Sacandaga, their apathetic fatalism turned to a timid confidence that their homes and lands might yet be spared.