An odd expression came into his handsome face, and he said in a low and dreamy voice: 

“I think that almost every man will live to tell that story—­ yet, I can never hear myself telling the tale in years to come.”

On paths and new-made highways we began to encounter people and cattle—­ now a long line of oxen laden with military stores or with canoes and flatboats, and conducted by batt-men in smock and frock, now a sweating company of military surveyors from headquarters, burdened with compass, chain, and Jacob-staff, already running their lines into the wilderness.  Here trudged the frightened family of some settler, making toward the forts; there a company of troops came gaily marching out on some detail, or perhaps, with fixed bayonets, herded sheep and cattle down some rutted road.

It seemed scarce possible that we were already within scouting range of that never-to-be-forgotten region of Wyoming, where just one year ago old John Butler with his Rangers, his hell-born Senecas, and Johnson’s Greens, had done their bloody business; where, in “The Shades of Death,” a hundred frightened women and little children had perished in that ghastly darkness.  Also, we were but a few miles from that scene of terror where, through the wintry dawn at Cherry Valley, young Walter Butler damned his soul for all eternity while men, women, and children, old and young, died horribly amid the dripping knives and bayonets of his painted fiends, or fell under the butchering hatchets of his Senecas.

I could see that Boyd also was thinking of this ghastly business, as I caught his sombre eye.  He seemed to shudder, then: 

“Patience,” he muttered grimly, with a significant nod toward the Siwanois, who strode silently between our horses.  “We have our guide at last.  A Siwanois hates the Iroquois no more fiercely than do we white-skins.  Wait till he leads our van within rifle-range of Catharines-town!  And if Walter Butler be there, or that bloodless beast Sir John, or Brant, or any of that hell-brood, and if we let them get away, may God punish us with the prisoner’s fire!  Amen.”

Never before had I heard him speak that way, or with such savage feeling; and his manner of expression, and the uncanny words he used concerning fire caused me to shudder, too—­ knowing that if he had ever dreaded anything it was the stake, and the lingering death that lasted till the very soul lay burnt to cinders before the tortured body died.  We exchanged no further conversation; many people passed and repassed us; the woods opened somewhat; the jolly noise of axes resounded near at hand among the trees.

Just ahead of us the road from Mattisses’ Grist Mill and Stoney Kill joined ours, where stood the Low Dutch Church.  Above us lay the Middle Fort, and the roads to Cherry Valley and Schenectady forked beyond it by the Lutheran Church and the Lower Fort.  We took the Cherry Valley Road.