Page 57 - A Hero of Ticonderoga

After this information, visits to the Fort were more frequent, since there
was no fear of meeting Toombs. The sentinel, who, with his musket

shouldered high above his left hip and his clubbed queue bobbing in unison
to his slow, measured steps, always paced before the gate, made but a show

of challenging him, and Nathan was almost as free as the inmates to every
part of the Fort, excepting the officers’ quarters and the vigilantly guarded
magazine. The drill and parade of the soldiers, in their spotless scarlet

uniforms and shining arms, though there were less than fifty, rank and file,
seemed a grand martial display, and he was always thrilled with the stirring

notes of drum and fife. Occasionally he met the commandant’s wife
walking on the parapet, so refined and different from the toil-worn women
he had been accustomed to see, that she seemed a being of another world.

Once that fall Job and his young companion went far back into the solitude

of the primeval forest to hunt moose. Even the thunder of Ticonderoga’s
guns was never echoed there, and from morning till night they heard the
sound of no human life but their own. At night the dismal chorus of the

wolves was heard far and near, and now and then, what was a pleasanter
sound, the call of a moose, soft and mellow, in the distance. With a birch

bark horn Job simulated this call, and lured a moose into an ambuscade,
where, within short range, the huge creature was killed. When with much
labor the meat was transported and safely stored in the cabin, they were in

no danger of a winter famine. Soon winter came, with days of snowbound
isolation, and its days of out-door work and pleasant, healthful pastime.

The gloom of a blustering, snowy February day was thickening into the
gloom of night, when a traveller and his jaded horse appeared at the door of

the little log house.

"I’ve somehow missed my way on the lake," said he to Job, when the door
was opened. "I’m bound for Bennington. Can you give me and my poor
beast shelter till morning and then set me on the right road?"

"Sartainly, come in, come in," was answered, heartily. "You’re welcome to

such as I’ve got of bed an’ board, an’ your hoss’ll be better off in the shed
wi’ corn fodder’n he’d be a browsin’ in the woods."