The sky was starless when he reined in his mount at the Horsford Tavern in Canton, where he planned to spend his first night on the road. He stayed for awhile in the tap room, chatting with the 'barnacles' who always hung out there, yarning and gossiping. Then,saddlebags under his arms, he climbed the stairs to the sleeping quarters. That was the last anyone would ever see of the paymaster or the payroll.
As soon as it was apparent that the courier would not arrive in Saratoga, the French authorities launched an investigation into his wherabouts. Tracing his journey as far as Canton was easy enough, but there the trail unaccountably ended. Although the tavern owner insisted that the Frenchman had departed 'safe and sound' early the next morning, it was,as one Canton historian put it, 'probably heavenward, for no evidence of lateral travel was ever found'. However, there was no more proof that he was dead than he was still alive. The Frenchman and is payroll had simply vanished !!
Naturally there was a strong suspicion that a murder and robbery had taken place, and that the tavern-keeper was the one who had killed the paymaster for his gold. Yet,despite the rather unsavory reputation of the suspected man, nothing whatsoever was turned up to link him-or anyone else-with a crime. So, as time passed, interest in the paymaster's fate waned, the Americans took Saratoga, the unpaid French officers went on to other campaigns and Canton gradually settled back to normal, after all the excitement.
Not until many years later, following a fire which burned the Horsford Tavern to the foundation, was new interest in the old mystery sparked --by a grisly and disturbing discovery. There in the smoldering ashes of the hostlery, searchers found the bleached bones of a human skeleton, complete, except for the skull !!!
Although no one would ever make a positive identification of the body, most of the folks living around Canton were pretty well convinced that the grim find had finally closed the books on the case of the missing French paymaster.
It wasn't long,however,before their convictions turned into certainty. A reliable Yankee farmer excitedly reported seeing the ghastly phantom of a headless horseman ride out of the mists of the Farmington River valley and head west along the old Hartford-Albany Road, his cape flowing out behind him and his horse's eyes ablaze with a strange light. This was only the first of a number of sightings of the headless rider over the years, with each witness breathlessly recounting the same details: the horseman always galloping west at a furious pace, along the same dark stretch of road; the flowing cape; the horses bright, wild eyes; the observers horses shying or bolting at the sight of the spectral figures.
