THE CAVE ROBBERS
On the same morning that Moses Ayer shot the “gobbler,” Marion Royce and
his men came down from Big Bone Lick with their four sled loads of
mammoth bones. The ark, however, was blockaded for a week by the dense
pack or raft of driftwood, which had set back from the Ohio into the
creek mouth.
As long as the river continued to rise, the drift pack was forced back
into the slack water with an increasing pressure which defied the
efforts of the crew to open a passage through it. On the eighth night,
however, the “fresh,” as rivermen term rising water, slackened and fell
a few inches, when immediately, as from a magic touch, the densely
jammed pack loosened and began floating out into the river.
By dint of poling hard the men got out of the Big Bone early on the
morning of the ninth day, and resumed their voyage. That afternoon they
passed Vevay, where newly arrived Swiss settlers were beginning to erect
log houses and clear land for vineyards.
A bright moon enabled them to go on that evening, and early in the night
they passed the mouth of the Kentucky. By the next noon Sand Island was
sighted, and here Captain Royce tied up to take a look at the rapid
water ahead; for the ark had reached the “Falls of the Ohio,” now made
easy for ascending steamers by the canal.
La Salle, the famous early explorer of Western rivers, is said to have
been here in 1669, and tradition tells of various efforts to maintain
forts and found a settlement here during the tumultuous eighteenth
century warfare. In May of 1778, George Rogers Clark was here and built
a log blockhouse on Corn Island, in the midst of the rapids. But even as
late as 1803 only a few scattered houses could be discerned alongshore
from the river.
The falls here are the only real obstruction to navigation on the Ohio,
and like most of the so-called “falls” of Western rivers, are more
formidable in name than in reality. At low water the rapids are
dangerous to inexperienced boatmen, but when the Ohio is in flood,
hardly a ripple breaks the swift current.
After a cautious look ahead, Captain Royce double-manned the sweeps and
ran the quick water without other incident than an acceleration of the
ark’s progress.
The life of an arksman floating down the Ohio and Mississippi was an
easy one when all went well, yet subject hourly to most perilous
contingencies. Beyond manning the sweeps, the crew had little to do,
save to prepare their food and care for their live stock.
During the first six days after passing the falls the ark made unusually
good progress, the moonlight enabling Captain Royce to continue during
at least a part of four of the nights. They passed the then uncleared
site of Evansville and of Henderson, not yet the home of the naturalist,
Audubon, and threading the great “oxbows” of the river, came where the
mighty Wabash, flowing down past old Vincennes, poured its grand stream
of clear, green water out across the roily Ohio.
On the last of these nights, Moses was standing at the great steering
oar, his gaze fixed curiously on the high bluffs beside which the ark
was passing. Somewhere at the bow he supposed that Lewis was swinging
his feet and thinking pretty much the same thoughts as Moses himself.
The great boat with all its freight was wrapped in utter silence. Hours
ago, it seemed to Mose, the cocks had awakened the echoes of the shore
with their drowsy “oo—oo——oo——OO,” and tucked their heads under their
wings again.
“These must be the palisades Marion talked about,” Mose reflected.
Marion had told him to call him if they were reached before daybreak,
for it would mean that they were passing along the Illinois shore,
through the region of the cave robbers.
The high limestone cliffs were gray in the moonlight, but here and there
Moses saw deep black fissures, the entrances of caves. Remembering his
orders, he called to Lewis.
“Lew! Oh Lew! Ahoy the bow!”
There was no answer.
“Must have dropped asleep,” Moses said to himself. He put his fingers
into his mouth and whistled shrilly.
In a moment half a dozen men had come running to the deck.
“What’s happened? What’s the matter? Where’s Lewis?” they asked.
“Asleep, I guess,” said Mose. “Here’s the cliffs, Cap’n.”
Marion Royce looked uneasily at the peaceful face of the moonlit
palisades. As the ark floated past, close in shore, the crew stood at
the starboard rail, speculating as to the extent of the caverns.
Suddenly a voice called from the water behind them, and they saw an arm
upraised.
“It’s Lewis!” exclaimed Marion. “Throw a line out, Kenton!”
Lewis caught the line without trouble and the men soon had him aboard,
dripping and excited.
“Bad stretch of water to bathe in, Lewis,” said the captain, gravely.
“I didn’t mean to fall in,” said Lewis. “A canoe stole past to port of
us, and before I could cry out an Indian had slipped up behind me and
shoved me into the water, but I took him with me. When we came up to the
surface someone in the canoe reached out to us, but instead of pulling
us in I saw a knife flash and the Indian who had pulled me overboard
went down without a gurgle, cut through the throat. I dived under, for I
didn’t want to make any closer acquaintance with the Indian in the
canoe. Then I came up, and here I am. Where’s the canoe?”
“It must have put into one of the caves,” said the captain. “What I
can’t understand is how it could have happened without Moses hearing.”
“I was looking at the palisades,” said Mose. “It all happened at the
bow, ninety feet away. By the time the ark had floated its own length it
was all over.”
“Go down and get dry clothes, Lewis,” ordered the captain. “Keep a sharp
watch, the rest of you. There is something extraordinary about this—two
Indians in a canoe try to murder the watch aboard an ark, and the second
Indian, instead of doing his part and killing the steersman as the ark
drifts by, knifes the first Indian. I never heard of such a thing. Are
you sure you weren’t dreaming when you fell overboard?”
“Dreaming?” chattered Lewis, stopping on his way to the cabin. “Look at
that!”
They wheeled and stared behind them. Around a small jutting ledge an
empty canoe was drifting towards them, dancing giddily in the ark’s
shining wake. Almost as they looked a shot rang out from a cave that
they were passing and John Cutler, one of the oldest men of the crew,
lurched into Kenton’s arms.
“Veer off shore,” ordered the captain, quietly. “Steady—the sweeps.
MacAfee, stand by ready to catch that canoe. Careful with the oar. Don’t
upset the canoe with it. Steady—steady with the sweeps—back water all
you can. Shad Lincoln, stand by to help MacAfee.”
“Aren’t we going back to kill the Indian that shot Cutler?” indignantly
asked Kenton, as he saw the ark swing away from the shore.
“Not here,”, said the captain. “Too rocky—can’t land. Is John badly
wounded? Take him into the cabin. I’ll be in and dress it as soon as
we’re by these caves.”
“I’m all right,” said Cutler, raising himself by Kenton’s help. “Better
hold right on, Marion. There may be a party—may have fired just to draw
us into a trap.” He swayed, and tottered into the cabin.
“We _shall_ go back!” cried Charlie Hoyt, savagely. “Cutler, too, of all
of us!”
“We’ll scalp every one we can lay hold of!” added Moses, hotly.
Their blood was boiling. It was all that the young captain could do to
preserve order. But his voice was quiet and his tone so commanding that
it cowed them. They were crouched under the rail, all excepting those
who were obliged to stand exposed at the sweeps, and MacAfee, who was
coolly trolling for the dancing canoe. Another shot followed them, but
fell short.
“They’re all back there in that cave,” said Lincoln, in his slow,
deliberate way. “It must irk them to see you fishin’ for their war canoe
and not be able to pot you. Let me take a turn, MacAfee; maybe I can
catch it.”
“Let the canoe go,” called Marion. “It’s not worth getting shot for.”
But MacAfee had deftly secured his prize, and the weighted spear which
he had thrown stuck quivering in the bottom of the light craft. He drew
in his line cautiously, and then Lincoln helped him take the canoe
aboard.
“Here’s news,” drawled Lincoln. He held up an unfolded sheet of paper.
MacAfee snatched it from him.
“It was in the bottom of the canoe, weighted with a stone,” Lincoln
explained. “That Indian that knifed Lewis’s Indian seems to be friendly
to all of us, sending us messages on a letter stolen from a murdered
courier, apparently.”
“Hush up, Linc. Someone get a light.”
In the lee of the rail they pored over the paper, which might not, after
all, be meant for them.
“It’s written in blood!” cried Moses.
It held only one word, traced with the writer’s forefinger, and that
word was—DANGER.
“Wait!” said Mose. “Isn’t that an initial, straggled there?”
“I was wonderin’ if you’d any of you see that,” said Lincoln. “I saw it
the first thing.”
“There are two of them,” said Marion, controlling his excitement with a
great effort. “Look, Lincoln, do you make out what I do?”
“I expect so. I make out a ‘J. C.’”
“J. C.!” repeated Moses. He stared from Marion to Lincoln, and back to
Lewis, who stood trembling as if he had taken a chill. “Why——do you
suppose that’s meant for Jimmy Claiborne?”
The light of the cabin lantern which they had brought out showed their
awed, startled faces. “I think it is,” began Marion, slowly.
“Hey——you,” he cried, looking up; “man the sweeps! We’re getting too far
out.”
“But the man in the canoe was an Indian,” objected Lewis, “and he must
have sent the message. He barely had time to write it with the blood
that spurted over him from cutting the Indian’s throat. Ough! I just saw
it spout up as I went down.” He gave a great shiver at the memory that
would haunt him while he lived.
“The man in that canoe was Jimmy Claiborne,” said the captain. “I’m
sorry, men. We can’t land, now. Not with this warning.”
“Not _land_!”
“Not to-night. Get your rifles, Kenton and MacAfee. Lincoln, you and
Lewis at the sweeps. Lew needs to get warm. Don’t shoot unless we’re
attacked in canoes. We may have passed the danger Jimmy speaks of, or we
may be floating into it. I must go and look after poor Cutler. Moses,
mind your oar!”
Kenton and MacAfee confronted the captain as he started to go to the
cabin. “We’re goin’ back for Jimmy,” they said, threateningly. “He saved
Lewis, here. He’s saved the ark. Do you think we’ll slink off into
safety and leave him to the savages?”
The captain wheeled on them. “Did Jimmy ask for help?”
“No, but——”
“Then mind his warning. He’s playing his game. He could have come aboard
when he was in the canoe.”
“Dressed as an Indian?” asked Kenton, contemptuously. “How long would we
have let him live?”
“While he told us his name,” returned the captain.
“You know better,” said MacAfee, hotly. “He daren’t risk it. You’re a
coward, Marion Royce, that’s what.”
“And not avenge Cutler?” said Kenton. “Give us a boat. Give us the canoe
if you won’t give us a boat, and we’ll go back.”
Marion Royce stood before them fearlessly. These were the men he had
feared. Tried rivermen, both; utterly fearless, utterly insubordinate. A
man named Merrick, and a younger one named Corson, both from Marietta,
came forward and ranged themselves alongside Kenton and MacAfee. “We’re
goin’ with ’em,” they said, sullenly. “We don’t turn our backs on no
friend.”
Marion faced them. As they stood on the deck they were a fair mark in
the moonlight for any chance robber who might pot them from the mouth of
one of the caves. Lewis and Lincoln were at the sweeps. Moses, at the
oar, was watching with his heart in his throat.
“You want to help Jimmy?” asked Marion.
“We’re goin’ to.”
“You want to avenge Cutler?”
“Aye; we’re goin’ to do that, too.”
“Then wait till daylight, and I’ll go back with you, with horses. Now,
let me see to Cutler.”
He passed them without waiting for their objections. As he stepped into
the cabin he met Charlie Hoyt. “Take your gun, and watch those Marietta
fellows,” he said. “If one of them attempts to steal a boat, or leave
the ark in any way, cover him, but don’t shoot. He’ll come down.”
He went to Cutler’s bunk, and found him raised almost to a sitting
posture, gasping for breath. Examining his wound, he found him shot
through the heart.
“Ain’t sufferin’ a mite,” panted Cutler, cheerily. “Just make me a
dressing of slippery elm and stramonium leaves, with a leetle warm
water, son. That’s what Jane allus doctored gunshot wounds with. A grand
dressing it made.”
He began to cough, and Marion raised him in his arm. A bright stream of
arterial blood gushed from between his lips. Hastily laying him flat,
Marion tried to stop the hemorrhage with the means at his command, but
it was a hopeless effort. The old pioneer, who had recovered from wounds
and fevers in the wilderness, had succumbed to a stray bullet where he
stood in comparative safety in the midst of his friends.
It was a pioneer’s death, merciful in comparison with Indian capture,
but Marion clenched his hands as he looked down at him. Kenton and
MacAfee would not have thought him wanting in loyalty. No one who had
heard him coolly give the unwelcome order to man the sweeps and postpone
vengeance knew what it had cost him to give it.
The shot that killed Cutler had come from some lurking Indian or white
renegade; or, as Cutler himself had pointed out, might have been fired
for the purpose of provoking the ark’s crew to land; a war party might
have been lying in ambush. Jimmy’s warning pointed to that. Even if the
miscreant had been alone and remained hidden in the recesses of the
cave, it would have been impossible to capture him without losing one or
more men. The current, also, was unusually rapid and the shore rocky and
dangerous. It had been impossible to explain all this to the mutinous,
excited men, but none of these facts were ignored by the quick-witted
young captain, who held all their lives in trust for those at home, as
well as the responsibility for their goods, and the ark, and now, as he
looked down at John Cutler, he seemed to be saying:
“If I _could_ avenge you—if I only could!”
It was only a moment that he stood so. Then a shot rang overhead,
quickly followed by a volley. Feet ran along the deck, and shouted
orders were repeated from bow to stern. Marion ran out, looking to the
priming of his gun as he caught it up from a rack.
Howls and shouts were mingling in a pandemonium as he gained the deck.
He stumbled over Moses, who was rolling over and over in the clutches of
one of the assailants.
“Take this one, Marion,” said Lincoln, speaking almost hurriedly; “he’s
got my knife. I’ll be back for him when I take in my sweep. Don’t you
let him get away without getting back my knife. Molly Royce gave it to
me.”
“Did you give her a penny for it?” asked Charlie Hoyt, as he staggered
by, half carrying a struggling form that he lifted bodily when he
reached the rail, and threw into the river.
Marion stooped to extricate Moses from his difficulties, and received a
blow from Moses’ heavy boot heel that sent him reeling. Lewis caught
him.
Marion staggered to his feet. “Cut loose their boat,” he said, stumbling
towards the stern where the attackers’ boat rode in tow.
“Hold on—nothing in that but dead,” said Lewis. “We shot into ’em, just
as they came out of a cave after us. They shot, but we dropped on the
deck after we fired and they didn’t hit us. Mose is through with his
Indian.—No! He’s under again!”
“Take my musket and beat him off!” shouted Kenton, who lay helpless in
the scuppers.
“_Don’t shoot!_” cried the Indian, suddenly springing up and lifting his
hand, “_I’m a white man!_”
“It’s Jimmy,” drawled Lincoln, coming back from his careful attention to
the starboard sweep. “Why don’t you say who you are, you blockhead,
letting Lewis get a bead on you before you introduce yourself? Have you
got my knife, Marion?”
Jimmy, for it was he, stood panting over the prostrate Mose. “I wanted
to get through lickin’ him,” he explained. “I was afraid if I said who I
was he’d leave me for one of the real robbers.”
“And so I would have,” said Mose, sitting up and mopping a bleeding nose
with his sleeve. “I don’t think you’ve any right to settle private
quarrels when there’s something that wants doing like this.” He was
incensed that he had expended his valor on a friend and neighbor, when
the others had repelled real enemies. He got to his feet and felt of
himself in high discontent. “You’ve broken one of my ribs, Jim
Claiborne, and you’ll have to pay for it,” he said, fumbling with both
hands to minister to his bleeding nose and his internal injuries at one
and the same time.
It was such an absurd finish to a very grave danger, that those who
witnessed it leaned against the cabin and the rail, laughing until they
held their sides. Even Kenton was laughing, although a torn ligament
twisted his face with pain the next minute.
The deck showed littered with scraps of clothing and two dead bodies, in
the moonlight. The members of the crew who were unhurt fell to
straightening up, and Jimmy, in his feathered head-dress and uncouth
paint, took command of the obsequies of his recent companions. The two
on deck he helped to drop overboard, where the river received them as it
had often received their victims.
“There’s one in the boat you want to keep,” he said to Marion. “Whoever
shot him gets a reward at Natchez from the government. He’s got a price
on his head. I’ll show you which he is in the morning—one of Mason’s
gang.”
Mason, the leader of a band of outlaws who had infested the river for
years, had been killed and his head brought into the fort for ransom the
year previous.
“The chap we’ve got back there,” Jimmy explained, condescendingly to
Moses, “is Big Harp.”
At the name, familiar to all rivermen, the ark’s crew gazed upon Jimmy
with something akin to reverence. He accepted the tribute for a full
minute, growing tall in the pride of it. Then, as if he thought of
something that touched him more closely than pride, his uncouth, painted
face changed. He went over to Marion.
“I couldn’t get to you any other way,” he explained. “If I’d come aboard
when that fellow dragged Lewis into the river, I ran a good chance of
getting killed even before I could warn you. And if I hadn’t joined in
the attack, they’d have killed me. I had to lead the party. You see,
don’t you, Marion? There wasn’t no other way.”
He looked anxiously into Marion’s face. “You can trust me,” he added.
“I’ve seen all I want of——of revenge, and outlawry.”
“Have you?” asked Moses, elbowing forward.
“Oh,” said Jimmy, contemptuously—_“you!_ Yes, I’m satisfied with you,
too. All I want is to stay along on the ark—along with the horses and
the chickens, after I’ve licked Louis Gist. I don’t see him anywhere. I
thought he was goin’ along with you?”
“He went overboard, up the river,” explained Lewis Hoyt.
The thought of Louis Gist made them silent a moment, and Marion
remembered poor Cutler, the only other victim of their perilous voyage
so far.
“Oh,” said Jimmy; “well, I guess I’m not going to hold that grudge any
longer. Marion, will you take me along?”
Marion had stood silent, thinking of Uncle Amasa hiding his breaking
heart under a brave front as the ark sailed away. He wanted to say, “Oh,
Jimmy, why did you!” but instead of that he held out his hand, and the
tall young Indian grasped it and shook it up and down in a way inherited
from an Anglo-Saxon ancestry.
“_Will_ we?” said Marion; “well, you just try us! Some of these fellows
wanted to mutiny to go back for you, on account of your letter—didn’t
you, Kenton?”
“I think you might look at my leg,” grumbled Kenton, shamefacedly.
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