Chapter 10

Black now were the nights, gloomy the days, for Andrew Kerr, the blacker and the more gloomy for the false dawn that for brief space had cheered him; unbearable was his burden, more hopeless and wretched than ever before, a thousandfold, his captivity. It was as it might be with a man dying of thirst if a cup of cold water were dashed from his lips and spilt on the sandy desert at his feet. Who can blame the boy if only the knowledge of what treatment he would avowedly receive from the young Indians if he should play the squaw and weep, kept him from shedding tears of misery and vexation.

A new master was now his, a chief of the Chippeways; a new squaw set him hateful, degrading tasks, and ordered him about; the young men and the squaws laughed him to scorn; life became more bitter than ever before.

Gradually, however, Kerr's new owners relaxed their severity of treatment, and his lines grew less unpleasant. Time, indeed, made him almost popular--embarrassingly popular--for there came a day when the tribe more than hinted its desire that the Pale-face should wed one of its most beauteous daughters. Happily, the question of who should be bride was left in abeyance. He became, too, almost reconciled to his dress, or want of dress--though, to be sure, a coat of paint and a blanket cannot, at the best, be regarded as more than a passably efficient hot-weather costume. With the easy adaptability of boyhood, Andrew Kerr had become almost a veritable Indian.

Now, Peewash all this time had looked with covetous eye on his former slave, and desired to repossess him. A big price would have to be paid, no doubt; but Peewash was prepared to bid high, and the owner could not withstand a temptation, backed, as it was, by that bait irresistible to a Red Indian, "firewater." The boy again changed hands, and now for some time served his original captor.

About this period the Tribes again "dug up the hatchet," and set out on a big war-trail. Cruel and bloody was the fighting, many the prisoners taken and brought into camp from time to time. On one occasion young Kerr was compelled to stand, a horrified spectator, among the exulting Redskins as with yells of gratified triumph, warriors and squaws, young men and children, gloated fiercely over the brutal torture and lingering death of eight English prisoners. It was a grim and grisly spectacle, for no form of torment--from the nerve-wracking test of knife and tomahawk, arrow or bullet, aimed with intent to graze the flesh and not immediately to kill, to the ghastly ordeal of red-hot ramrods and blazing pine-root splinters thrust into the flesh or under the nails --was omitted by those bloodthirsty red devils. Many a sleepless hour, many a night broken by awful dreams, must the sight have cost the boy. But it determined him to attempt escape at all hazards whenever kind fortune should put the chance in his way.

And fortune did help him ere long. There was a French trader named Boileau who came much about the camp. To him Andrew very cautiously made advances, and succeeded at last in enlisting the man's sympathies. Kerr confided to the trader his desire to attempt escape, and, none too willingly at the beginning, Boileau agreed to take the risk of helping. It was no easy task to lull the suspicions and to evade the watchful eye of the crafty Indians; but the boy had never, so far, shown any desire to escape, and he was not now so everlastingly under supervision. In very bad English on Boileau's part, and in worse French on that of Kerr, a plan of escape was devised. Early in the day, Boileau, after his usual habit, was to leave camp in his canoe, ostensibly setting out on an ordinary trapping expedition. After nightfall, he would return to a certain rock on the lake shore, and then Kerr was to steal out and attempt to join him; thereafter, a night's paddling ought to take the fugitive out of the immediate danger-zone.

The night was cloudy and black, and not too still; everything, in fact, was in the boy's favour as, with beating heart, he wormed his way out of the wigwam and crawled stealthily on his belly from the camp towards the dense gloom of the forest. Then, almost as he had succeeded in gaining the comparative safety of the trees, beneath his moccasined foot a stick snapped, and a cursed Indian dog gave tongue, rousing the entire pack, and the sleeping camp, like an angry swarm of bees, woke at once to venomous life.

But Kerr by this time was at least clear of the wigwams; if he could but reach that rock by the lake-side, and if the Frenchman had kept faith, he might get safely away. Boileau would surely never fail him. Hampered and constantly tripped up by roots and tangled undergrowth, confused by the blackness of the night, the boy toiled on with thumping heart and shortening breath; and at last, looming above him, was the welcome outlines of the great rock. But on neither side of it could he find sign of the trader or of his canoe. And already by the rustlings in the woods and the occasional snapping of dry sticks, he could tell that the pursuing Indians were drawing perilously near him.

"Boileau!" he whispered. "Boileau!" And then, in an agony of mind he risked all, and shouted:

"Boileau, Boileau! _A moi!_"

An angry whisper from almost at his side replied viciously:

"_Pas de chahut, malheureux! A bord vite, mille dieux!_"

And as the canoe silently glided from the shore with the boy safely on board, the form of an Indian could be dimly seen where Kerr had stood the previous moment, and a bullet sang past his ear.

There for the time his more acute troubles ended. A few days later, at Detroit, a throng of persons, half helpless with laughter, noisily escorted to the Fort a forlorn, bald-headed, painted scare-crow, clad in a tattered Indian blanket, which scare-crow presently introduced itself to the commandant as Andrew Kerr, lately a prisoner of the Indians.

Once recovered from his fatigues and hardships, Andrew, as one of a small force, was sent to Niagara to obtain supplies for the Detroit garrison. The outward voyage down Lake Erie was safely and pleasantly accomplished. But these vast American lakes are subject to sudden and violent storms, and on the return trip, during an exceptionally fierce squall, the little 40-ton sloop, heavily laden as she was with military stores, sprang a leak, and to save themselves the crew were forced to run her aground on a gravelly beach under the lee of a projecting headland. The situation at best was most critical, for if the wind should shift but a few points the sloop must inevitably break up; and not only was the one boat available a mere skiff incapable of living in a heavy sea, but even should they all succeed in safely getting ashore with muskets intact and ammunition dry, their position would still be in the last degree precarious. For well they knew in what manner of country they were about to set unwilling foot--forest land occupied by the fiercest and most treacherous of the hostile Indian tribes. Capture meant death, probably with torture to precede it.

With great difficulty and some danger the ship-wrecked crew did at length succeed in getting ashore, with their rifles and a fair supply of powder and lead, and without an instant's delay they set about building a rude breastwork for protection if matters should come to a fight. The stranded vessel must certainly have been already seen by the Indians; at any moment they might appear. But the breastwork was completed without interruption, and still no sign of the Redskins had been seen. It was at least breathing space, though all knew what must assuredly follow, and to some the actual immediate combat would have been less unwelcome than was now the suspense.

After consultation, a few of the party, including Kerr, whose knowledge of Indian ways it was thought might be useful, left the breastwork to spy on the enemy--or at least to try to pick up some knowledge of their whereabouts. Had it been into that enchanted land that they now entered, where lay the Sleeping Beauty, the forest shades could not have been more still, more apparently devoid of life. No breath of wind stirred leaf or bough, all nature breathed peace, and, lulled to a sense of security, the little party ventured farther among the trees than was prudent. In Indian warfare, appearances were ever deceitful; the greater the apparent security, the greater the need for caution. So it was now here.

"I guess it ain't all right," one man was saying; "I don't like it. Get back, boys."

And even as he spoke, "crack" went a rifle on their left--"crack," "crack," "crack," came the sound of fire-arms on three sides; and as they turned and ran for the breastwork, a man hiccoughed and fell on his face, clutching at the grass, coughing up his life-blood. No time to turn and help; the yelling Redskins were at their heels, tomahawk and scalping knife in hand; delay meant certain death for all, and the fugitives tumbled into the breastwork just in time. Then, save for one awful scream of agony, again for a time all was quiet; for any sign that might be seen of them by the white men, the forest might have swallowed up the enemy. But let one of these white men for but an instant show his head over the breastwork, or in any way expose an arm or even a hand, then from the concealed foe came at once a hail of bullets, and the forest rang with the crack of rifles. Several of the little garrison, careless, or too impatient to fire only through the roughly made loopholes, lost their lives in this way; and some others were picked off by Indians who had managed to get into the high branches of neighbouring trees, and thence, concealed behind thick foliage, fired on the garrison, for a time with impunity, till by chance it was discovered from where the fatal shots were coming.

Meantime, for the white men it was almost like letting off their rifles into the night; seldom could a Redskin be seen, and men fired only at the spots where the smoke of Indian muskets hung about the undergrowth, or where they saw a spirt of flame.

And so the fight went on, hour after hour, till many of the defenders had fallen, and the necessity of husbanding ammunition slackened the fire of Kerr and his comrades. Then the Indians, knowing that the white men were few, abandoning caution tried to rush the breastwork. But now necessarily they exposed themselves, and as the white men had reloaded the empty rifles of their dead and wounded comrades, and thus had at least two apiece ready, heavy toll was taken of the stormers, and the Redskins were beaten back. Time and again was this repeated, once even during the night--just before dawn. But each attempt failed, and the baffled Indians finally drew off.

With thankful hearts, if with sore labour, the surviving white men, by lightening their vessel, got her off the ground, and succeeded in finding and stopping the leak. A few days saw them again safely at Detroit.

No more, as a civilian, did Andrew Kerr face the Indians. On getting back to New York in 1764 he was given a commission as ensign in the 1st battalion of the 42nd Regiment, and in various parts of the world he saw much service, finally retiring about 1780 with the rank of captain. He did not wholly, however, sever his connection with the service, for later, after he had purchased an estate in the Border, and had married, he became a major in the Dumfries Militia.

It is given to few to pass a youth so stormy as Kerr's, and to end, as he did, by becoming a peaceful, prosperous Border laird.

BORDER SNOWSTORMS

"St. Agnes' Eve--ah, bitter chill it was! The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold; The hare limped trembling through the frozen grass, And silent was the flock in woolly fold."

The great round-backed, solemn Border hills, in summer time kindly sleeping giants, smiling in their sleep, take on another guise when winter smites with pitiless blast, when

"The sounds that drive wild deer and fox To shelter in the brake and rocks,"

bellow fearsomely among the crags, and down glen and burn rushes the White Death, bewildering, blinding, choking, and at the last, perhaps, with Judas kiss folding in its icy arms some luckless shepherd whom duty has sent from his warm fireside to the rescue of his master's sheep. You would not know for the same those hills that so little time gone past nursed you in their soft embrace. Then, in the warm, sunny days, shadows of great fleecy clouds chased each other leisurely up the braes through the bracken and the purpling heather; the burn sang to itself a merry tune as it tumbled from boulder to boulder, rippling through pools where the yellow trout lay basking; on the clear air came the call of grouse, and afar off a solitary raven croaked in the stillness of a sun-steeped glen. Now the bracken is dead, the bent sodden and chill with November's sleet; against a background of heavy, leaden-grey sky the heather lies black as if washed in ink. Across from the wild North Sea comes a wind thin and nipping, waxing in strength, and with the gathering storm piping ever more shrilly down the glen, driving before it now a fine, powdery white dust that chokes nostril and mouth, and blinds the eyes of those whom necessity compels to be out-doors. It is "an oncome," a "feeding storm." Thus have begun many of the great snowstorms that from time to time have devastated the Border and taken heavy toll of man and beast.

In March 1615 snow fell to such a depth, and drifted so terribly, that not only did many men perish, but likewise "most part of all the horse, nolt, and sheep of the kingdom." In the years 1633 and 1665 there were great storms, when vast numbers of sheep perished, and "the frost was severe enough to kill broom and whins." But greater than these, both in devastating effect and in duration, was the memorable storm of 1674. The early part of that year was marked by extraordinarily tempestuous weather. In January came a violent gale from east and by north that strewed the coasts with wreckage. Down by Berwick and Eyemouth, by St. Abb's, and along all that rugged shore, the cruel sea sported daily with bodies of drowned sailors, flinging them from wave to wave, tossing them headlong on to a stony beach, only with greedy far-stretched grasp to snatch them back again to its hungry maw. In every rocky fissure, where angry waves spout cliff-high and burst in clouds of spray; in every rugged inlet, where the far-flung roaring seas boil furiously, timbers and deck-hamper of vessels driven on a lee-shore churned ceaselessly, pounding themselves to matchwood.

Throughout January, and till February was far advanced, this bitter easterly gale blew fiercely. In mid-February the wind died down, leaving a sky black with piled-up cloud gravid with coming evil. Inland, hill and river lay frost-bound, white with snow, and already the pinch of winter had begun to make itself seriously felt amongst the sheep. In those days, beyond driving the flocks, when necessary, from the hill to more sheltered, low-lying country, but little provision was ever made for severe weather, and even the precaution of shifting the sheep to lower ground was frequently too long delayed. Turnips, of course, had not yet come into cultivation in Scotland, and feed-stuffs were generally unknown.

This time farmers were caught napping. On 20th February a rising wind drove before it snow, fine powdered and dry as March dust, and with the waxing gale, and cold "intense to a degree never before remembered," the drift quickly became a swirling blizzard which no living thing could face. Day and night for thirteen days this maelstrom of snow continued, and till the 29th of March no decided improvement took place in the weather; the snow lay deep, and the frost held, so that there was "much loss of sheep by the snow, and of whole families in the moor and high lands; much loss of cows everywhere, also of wild beasts, as of doe and roe."

"The Thirteen Drifty Days," folk called this storm, and by that name it has gone down to history. "About the fifth and sixth days of the storm," says the Ettrick Shepherd, writing in _Blackwood's Magazine_ of July 1819, "the young sheep began to fall into a sleepy and torpid state, and all that were affected in the evening died over-night. The intensity of the frost wind often cut them off when in that state quite instantaneously. About the ninth and tenth days, the shepherds began to build up huge semicircular walls of their dead, in order to afford some shelter for the remainder of the living; but they availed but little, for about the same time they were frequently seen tearing at one another's wool with their teeth. When the storm abated on the fourteenth day from its commencement, there was, on many a high-lying farm, not a living sheep to be seen. Large misshapen walls of dead, surrounding a small prostrate flock, likewise all dead, and frozen stiff in their lairs, was all that remained to cheer the forlorn shepherd and his master."

As a matter of fact, something like nine-tenths of all the sheep in the south of Scotland perished in this one storm, or if they did not then actually perish, their vitality was so lowered, their constitutions so wrecked, by the intense cold and the long deprivation of food, that they never again picked up condition, but died like flies when the spring was further advanced. Hogg says that in Eskdalemuir, out of 20,000 sheep "none were left alive but forty young wedders on one farm, and five old ewes on another. The farm of Phaup remained without a stock and without a tenant for twenty years subsequent to the storm." On another farm all the sheep perished save one black-faced ewe; and she was not long left to perpetuate her breed, for dogs hunted her into a loch, and she too went the way of her fellows.

Amongst other great storms, Hogg also mentions one in this same century, long remembered as the "Blast o' March." It occurred on a Monday, the twenty-fourth day of March, and was of singularly short duration, considering the havoc it wrought. The previous Sunday was so warm that lassies returning from Yarrow Kirk in the evening took off shoes and stockings and walked barefoot; the young men cast plaids and coats. To their unconcealed astonishment, as they sauntered homeward these young people found that an old shepherd, named Walter Blake, had driven his entire flock of sheep into a sheltered position by the side of a wood, near the road. Now, Blake was a deeply religious man, one to whom the Sabbath was in the strictest sense a holy day, a day too sacred to be broken in any fashion whatever, except for some extraordinarily powerful reason. On being asked how it came to pass that he was found thus following his worldly vocation, to the neglect of church-going, he said that in the morning he had seen to the northward so ill-looking a "weather-gaw" that he was convinced a heavy storm was coming, and that probably before morning there would be a dangerous drift. The young men laughed the old one to scorn. A snowstorm! The auld man was daft! Why, the air was like June; no sensible body would even so much as dream of snow.

"Belike we'll be up to oor oxters in snaw, the morn, Wattie," chirrupped one damsel, in the bicker of rustic wit and empty laughter that flew around.

"Weel, weel, lads! Time will show. Let them laugh that win," said old Wattie.

That night there came a sudden shift of wind, and ere morning the country-side was smothered in snow. Twenty thousand sheep perished, and none but old Walter Blake came out of that storm free from loss.

The years 1709, 1740, and 1772 were all notable for unusually heavy falls of snow. In the latter year the country was snow-clad from mid-December till well on in April, and the loss of sheep was very great, chiefly because partial thaws, occurring at intervals, encouraged hill farmers to believe each time that the back of the winter was broken. Hence, they delayed too long in shifting their sheep to lower lands, and when the imperative necessity of removal at length became obvious, if life were to be saved, it was too late; from sheer weakness the poor animals were unable to travel.

Then came that terrible storm of 1794, a calamity that old men of our own day may yet remember to have heard talked about by eye-witnesses of the scenes they described. Nothing in nature ever wrought such havoc in the Border. Seventeen shepherds perished in the endeavour to rescue their flocks; no less than thirty others, overwhelmed by the intense cold, the fury of the gale, and the blinding, choking whirlwind of snow, dropped and lay unconscious, to all intents dead, sleeping the dreamless sleep of those whom King Frost slays with his icy darts. And dead would those thirty assuredly have been, but for the timely aid of brave men, themselves toil-worn to the verge of collapse, who, through the deep drifts and the swirling snow, bore home the heavy, unconscious bodies, to revive them with difficulty.

The storm began on the 24th of January, and though the snow lay but a week, whole flocks were overwhelmed, in some instances buried fifty feet deep. Countless numbers of sheep, driven into burns and lochs by the pitiless strength of the wind, were never again seen, swept away into the sea by the tremendous floods that followed the melting of the snow. There is on Solway Sands a place called the Beds of Esk, where with terrible persistency the tides cast up whatever may have been carried to sea by the rivers which in this neighbourhood empty themselves into the Firth. Ghastly was the burden here strewn when the floods now went down. In those Beds lay the lifeless bodies of two men and of one woman; the swollen carcasses of five-and-forty dogs, eighteen hundred and forty sheep, nine black cattle, three horses, one hundred and eighty hares; and of rabbits and small animals a multitude innumerable. Death held high carnival in Eskdalemuir that January of 1794.

Hogg gives a vivid picture of his own adventures in this storm. He had gone from home the previous day, tramping over the Ettrick hills many a long mile to attend some friendly meeting of fellow-shepherds, leaving his sheep in charge of his master. Arrived at his destination, and rendered uneasy by the unwonted appearance of the sky, without waiting for rest or for anything but a little food and drink, he turned and set out straightway on his homeward journey. A tramp of thirty or forty miles over the hills is ordinarily no great matter for a young and active shepherd. But now snow was falling; already it lay to some depth, making the footing toilsome and insecure. Moreover, a curious yellow mist had spread over the hills, shrouding the hollows from sight; darkness must be on him hours before he could hope to reach home, and the night promised to be wild. But what would daunt an ordinary pedestrian has no terrors for the Border shepherd, and Hogg safely reached his home before bedtime, to learn, greatly to his dismay, that his master, good easy man, had left the sheep that evening on an exposed part of the hill. Not even the master's "Never mind them the nicht, Jamie; they're safe eneuch, and I'll gie ye a hand in the morning," could calm his anxiety. However, on looking out before going to bed, he was comforted to find the wind coming from the south, and apparently a thaw beginning. He might sleep in peace after all; things were going to turn out less bad than he had feared.