THE BINKUSSING OF COLONEL BURLEY

Solomon had been hit in the thigh by a rifle bullet on his way to the fort.  He and Jack and other wounded men were conveyed in boats and litters to the hospital at Albany where Jack remained until the leaves were gone.  Solomon recovered more quickly and was with Lincoln’s militia under Colonel Brown when they joined Johnson’s Rangers at Ticonderoga and cut off the supplies of the British army.  Later having got around the lines of the enemy with this intelligence he had a part in the fighting on Bemus Heights and the Stillwater and saw the defeated British army under Burgoyne marching eastward in disgrace to be conveyed back to England.

Jack had recovered and was at home when Solomon arrived in Albany with the news.

“Wal, my son, I cocalate they’s goin’ to be a weddin’ in our fam’ly afore long,” said the latter.

“What makes you think so?” Jack inquired.

“‘Cause John Burgoyne, High Cockylorum and Cockydoodledo, an’ all his army has been licked an’ kicked an’ started fer hum an’ made to promise that they won’t be sassy no more.  I tell ye the war is goin’ to end.  They’ll see that it won’t pay to keep it up.”

“But you do not know that Howe has taken Philadelphia,” said Jack.  “His army entered it on the twenty-sixth of September.  Washington is in a bad fix.  You and I have been ordered to report to him at White Marsh as soon as possible.”

“That ol’ King ‘ud keep us fightin’ fer years if he had his way,” said Solomon.  “He don’t have to bleed an’ groan an’ die in the swamps like them English boys have been doin’.  It’s too bad but we got to keep killin’ ’em, an’ when the bad news reaches the good folks over thar mebbe the King’ll git spoke to proper.  We got to keep a-goin’.  Fer the fust time in my life I’m glad to git erway from the big bush.  The Injuns have found us a purty tough bit o’ fodder but they’s no tellin’, out thar in the wilderness, when a man is goin’ to be roasted and chawed up.”

Solomon spent a part of the evening at play with the Little Cricket and the other children and when the young ones had gone to bed, went out for a walk with “Mis’ Scott” on the river-front.

Mrs. Irons had said of the latter that she was a most amiable and useful person.

“The Little Cricket has won our hearts,” she added.  “We love him as we love our own.”

When Jack and Solomon were setting out in a hired sloop for the Highlands next morning there were tears in the dark eyes of “Mis’ Scott.”

“Ain’t she a likely womern?” Solomon asked again when with sails spread they had begun to cut the water.

Near King’s Ferry in the Highlands on the Hudson they spent a night in the camp of the army under Putnam.  There they heard the first note of discontent with the work of their beloved Washington.  It came from the lips of one Colonel Burley of a Connecticut regiment.  The Commander-in-Chief had lost Newport, New York and Philadelphia and been defeated on Long Island and in two pitched battles on ground of his own choosing at Brandywine and Germantown.

The two scouts were angry.

It had been a cold, wet afternoon and they, with others, were drying themselves around a big, open fire of logs in front of the camp post-office.

Solomon was quick to answer the complaint of Burley.

“He’s allus been fightin’ a bigger force o’ well trained, well paid men that had plenty to eat an’ drink an’ wear.  An’ he’s fit ’em with jest a shoe string o’ an army.  When it come to him, it didn’t know nothin’ but how to shoot an’ dig a hole in the ground.  The men wouldn’t enlist fer more’n six months an’ as soon as they’d learnt suthin’, they put fer hum.  An’ with that kind o’ an army, he druv the British out o’ Boston.  With a leetle bunch o’ five thousand unpaid, barefoot, ragged backed devils, he druv the British out o’ Jersey an’ they had twelve thousan’ men in that neighborhood.  He’s had to dodge eround an’ has kep’ his army from bein’ et up, hide, horns an’ taller, by the power o’ his brain.  He’s managed to take keer o’ himself down thar in Jersey an’ Pennsylvaney with the British on all sides o’ him, while the best fighters he had come up here to help Gates.  I don’t see how he could ‘a’ done it-damned if I do-without the help o’ God.”

“Gates is a real general,” Burley answered.  “Washington don’t amount to a hill o’ beans.”

Solomon turned quickly and advanced upon Burley.  “I didn’t ’spect to find an enemy o’ my kentry in this ’ere camp,” he said in a quiet tone.  “Ye got to take that back, mister, an’ do it prompt, er ye’re goin’ to be all mussed up.”

“Ye could see the ha’r begin to brustle under his coat,” Solomon was wont to say of Burley, in speaking of that moment.  “He stepped up clus an’ growled an’ showed his teeth an’ then he begun to git rooined.”

Burley had kept a public house for sailors at New Haven and had had the reputation of being a bad man in a quarrel.  Of just what happened there is a full account in a little army journal of that time called The Camp Gazette.  Burley aimed a blow at Solomon with his fist.  Then as Solomon used to put it, “the water bu’st through the dam.”  It was his way of describing the swift and decisive action which was crowded into the next minute.  He seized Burley and hurled him to the ground.  With one hand on the nape of his neck and the other on the seat of his trousers, Solomon lifted his enemy above his head and quoited him over the tent top.

Burley picked himself up and having lost his head drew his hanger, and, like a mad bull, rushed at Solomon.  Suddenly he found his way barred by Jack.

“Would you try to run a man through before he can draw?” the latter asked.

Solomon’s old sword flashed out of its scabbard.

“Let him come on,” he shouted.  “I’m more to hum with a hanger than I be with good vittles.”

Of all the words on record from the lips of this man, these are the most immodest, but it should be remembered that when he spoke them his blood was hot.

Jack gave way and the two came together with a clash of steel.  A crowd had gathered about them and was increasing rapidly.  They had been fighting for half a moment around the fire when Solomon broke the blade of his adversary.  The latter drew his pistol!  Before he could raise it Solomon had fired his own weapon.  Burley’s pistol dropped on the ground.  Instantly its owner reeled and fell beside it.  The battle which had lasted no more than a minute had come to its end.  There had been three kinds of fighting in that lively duel.

Solomon’s voice trembled when he cried out: 

“Ary man who says a word ag’in’ the Great Father is goin’ to git mussed up.”

He pushed his way through the crowd which had gathered around the wounded man.

“Let me bind his arm,” he said.

But a surgeon had stood in the crowd.  He was then doing what he could for the shattered member of the hot-headed Colonel Burley.  Jack was helping him.  Some men arrived with a litter and the unfortunate officer was quickly on his way to the hospital.

Jack and Solomon set out for headquarters.  They met Putnam and two officers hurrying toward the scene of the encounter.  Solomon had fought in the bush with him.  Twenty years before they had been friends and comrades.  Solomon saluted and stopped the grizzled hero of many a great adventure.

“Binkus, what’s the trouble here?” the latter asked, as the crowd who had followed the two scouts gathered about them.

Solomon gave his account of what had happened.  It was quickly verified by many eye-witnesses.

“Ye done right,” said the General.  “Burley has got to take it back an’ apologize.  He ain’t fit to be an officer.  He behaved himself like a bully.  Any man who talks as he done orto be cussed an’ Binkussed an’ sent to the guard house.”

Within three days Burley had made an ample apology for his conduct and this bulletin was posted at headquarters: 

“Liberty of speech has its limits.  It must be controlled by the law of decency and the general purposes of our army and government.  The man who respects no authority above his own intellect is a conceited ass and would be a tyrant if he had the chance.  No word of disrespect for a superior officer will be tolerated in this army.”

“The Binkussing of Burley”-a phrase which traveled far beyond the limits of Putnam’s camp-and the notice of warning which followed was not without its effect on the propaganda of Gates and his friends.

2

Next day Jack and Solomon set out with a force of twelve hundred men for Washington’s camp at White Marsh near Philadelphia.  There Jack found a letter from Margaret.  It had been sent first to Benjamin Franklin in Paris through the latter’s friend Mr. David Hartley, a distinguished Englishman who was now and then sounding the Doctor on the subject of peace.

“I am sure that you will be glad to know that my love for you is not growing feeble on account of its age,” she wrote.  “The thought has come to me that I am England and that you are America.  It will be a wonderful and beautiful thing if through all this bitterness and bloodshed we can keep our love for each other.  My dear, I would have you know that in spite of this alien King and his followers, I hold to my love for you and am waiting with that patience which God has put in the soul of your race and mine, for the end of our troubles.  If you could come to France I would try to meet you in Doctor Franklin’s home at Passy.  So I have the hope in me that you may be sent to France.”

This is as much of the letter as can claim admission to our history.  It gave the young man a supply of happiness sufficient to fill the many days of hardship and peril in the winter at Valley Forge.  It was read to Solomon.

“Say, this ‘ere letter kind o’ teches my feelin’s-does sart’in,” said Solomon.  “I’m goin’ to see what kin be done.”

Unknown to Jack, within three days Solomon had a private talk with the Commander-in-Chief at his headquarters.  The latter had a high regard for the old scout.  He maintained a dignified silence while Solomon made his little speech and then arose and offered his hand saying in a kindly tone: 

“Colonel Binkus, I must bid you good night.”