3stalwarts by Unknown

his hands. “I bought the barrel from Wolff. He ordered it from Albany.” He turned the gun over and looked at the scroll behind the trigger guard. “It was made in Peekskill. G. Merritt, Peekskill. Come and look at it, Lana.”
    She felt suddenly jealous of the gun, which she had seen ever since she came to Deerfield, hanging in place over the cabin door. It had been just a thing till now; but when Gil put his hands on it, it seemed to have acquired the power of life. However, a queer little sense of wisdom compelled her to obey, and she looked down over his shoulder at the nicely etched name. She wondered if the man who put it there could have any idea that the barrel would come so far westward and have the power there to make a woman jealous.
    But though she looked at the name, she would not praise it. “That’s nice wood,” she said, tapping the stock.
    Gil blushed all over.
    “I carved that out myself last winter. It’s a piece of black walnut Mark Demooth gave me. I spent pretty near every night all winter working on that stock.”
    He put the gun back on its pegs, replaced the ramrod in the slot, and again looked round the cabin.
    “Do you remember where I kept my hatchet?”
    “What do you want with it?”
    “I’ve got to have it tomorrow. You have to have an Indian axe or a bayonet.”
    “Oh,” she said. “Well now, you listen to me, Mr. Martin. You just sit here till you’ve had your supper. After that I’ll hunt up everything you want.”
    However, he found the axe for himself. Then he greased his boots; and after supper, all there was for Lana to do was to get down his hunting shirt.
    “It’s filthy dirty,” she said.
    “That don’t matter. So long as your gun’s clean and you’ve got your four flints and your pound of powder, nobody cares.”
    “I care. As long as you’ve got to go, you’ll go looking decent. What would they say about me if they saw you had the same shirt on and it hadn’t been washed since last muster?”
    She held it up under her nose, as he had held up the scourer under his, and made a face at him. Then she stuffed it into the iron kettle and put some more sticks on the fire and set about boiling the shirt. It came out finally, looking rather pale.
    It was made of heavy linen, dyed butternut brown, with long fringes or thrums round the shoulders and down the sleeves. Ironing it out was a hard job. By the time she had finished, Lana was flushed and heated and the whole cabin smelled steamily of soft soap.
    She felt out of sorts until her eye fell on Gil laboriously turning up the brim of his hat, by tacking the edge to the crown in three places.
    “What you doing?” she demanded.
    “Well,” he said, “you’re fixing the rest of me so fine I thought I’d ought to make my hat look smart.”
    “You ought to have a cockade on it then, Gil.”
    “That would look fine. But aren’t you tired?”
    “No, I’ll make you a cockade. What do you want?”
    “Something red,” he said. “Red’s the color of our party. George Herkimer’s company’s got a solid red flag. It’s handsome.”
    Lana went upstairs to her trunk with a candle and found a piece of French red calimanco. They sat quite peacefully together while she gathered pleats in it and sewed it on. The light of the candle flashed on her white teeth biting the thread.
    “Put it on,” she ordered.
    He sheepishly did so.
    She thought he looked even handsomer the next morning, starting off down the track. She had promised to visit with Mrs. Weaver as soon as she had got the dishes cleared, but halfway down the clearing he wheeled to remind her of it.
    “I will,” she called.
    He waved his hand and went off with long strides. She leaned against the door. The early morning sun was just beginning to reach down under the level of the treetops, making islands of light in the clearing, and showing the glitter of the night’s dew. Gil’s feet had left a dark track through it.
    “But I’ll bet he won’t