XI

A PIONEER PUPPY

_A Wagon-train Besieged by Fire and Wolves_

"SMOKE!" cried Obadiah Holman. "Smoke!" The men of the wagon-train drew

together anxiously. They, too, had smelled smoke. But no one of them

had wanted to say so.

Now they all agreed, "Yes, Doby," and nodded. Their eyes were on the

horizon.

It was near the end of a hot day in July and quite time to go into camp

for the night.

The marsh-grass bottoms of a network of creeks had so withered in a

long "dry spell," that their green plants had become like tinder.

The emigrants were afraid to stop or to make supper fires in such a

dangerous spot.

One spark might set the whole wide bottom ablaze.

No wonder then that they moved along as rapidly as they could and gazed

at one another in quick alarm at the coming of an acrid current of air.

While they debated what to do the breeze increased. Smoke-clouds

tumbled in the northwest. A droning like the hum of distant bees came

to their ears.

"Doby, help the men to start fires to the south of us in the path of

the wind," cried his father, as part of the folks of the train ran

forward to light the grass. The only defense they could muster was

their plan to fight fire with fire.

It flamed up. The wicked little tongues noisily licked the ground brown

and bare as the now strong wind blew the flames away from the wagons.

Other men were violently busy trying to hurry on to this barren ground

the oxen who pulled the wagons, and the horses and cows which followed

them.

The ashes were hot to their feet, stifling to their nostrils. The

utmost urging was necessary to force them over the burned acres.

Women and children ran along, screaming with fear and constantly

stopping to beat one another's garments where the embers had ignited

them.

The wagons and their utensils rattled and banged. Cattle lowed. Horses

neighed. Men struggled to keep up a semblance of order and to control

the animals.

"Whenever there is a panic I must try to keep sensible," thought Doby

as he helped steadily at the teams where he was most needed.

From the north they could now see the awful wall of red and black

rushing after them as they fled.

In the bedlam of the burned district, between the two great blazing

waves, they hung to their animals, covering them and their own bodies

with woolen blankets and skirts and coats. They endured with fortitude

what they could not remedy.

Doby sat on the yoke between his oxen, for his moccasined feet could

not bear the smoldering ground. He tried to quiet the beasts as he

listened to the cries of birds above him and the plaints of small,

scurrying creatures of the thickets. Deer and wild pigs galloped past

without noticing the wagon-train, so wildly were they driven by fear of

the coming fire.

The emigrants had managed to get many rods into their charred oasis.

In the midst of their suspense the fire which was coming toward them

met the district that had already burned, and died down suddenly for

lack of fuel. The blaze running from them had leaped into a triangle

between two flowing creeks and quenched itself.

The woods on the bluffs had not caught. The danger had passed as

quickly as it had come. In the sooty, half-strangled train no serious

harm was done.

After a scrambled supper where they stood, most of the emigrants sank

to exhausted sleep under doubled sentries. But wakeful Doby sat on a

tail-gate and viewed the smoking, blackened landscape with misery in

his heart.

He shut his eyes and tried to dream of his future home in Vincennes,

to cheer himself with pictures of his favorite heroes. There was the

gallant Spaniard, Francis Vigo, in doublet and high boots, in plumed

hat and sword, with his following of half-wild "voyageurs" and traders

at his heels. There was Father Gibault, the French Jesuit, in black

cassock and cap, rallying his willing parishioners to their country's

defense. Best of all, there was George Rogers Clark, the frontiersman,

in buckskin, whose trained army of fighting patriots inspired both of

the other leaders to the conquest of Vincennes and the saving of the

Northwest Territory to the Union of States.

These pictures of his imagination would not stay with him. There was

too much smoke in his eyes and too many blisters on his feet, so he

gave himself up to woe and sighed aloud. He did not know that the sons

of the early settlers must always be a bold and fearless lot. Such

facts about himself had never reached him.

His conscience--that little candle of his soul--was burning low. He

tried to resolve to forget his troubles and to show a cheerful face to

the wagon-train, but his better thoughts ended in another groan.

The dismal sound was echoed from the wagon-wheels beneath him. He

could not believe his ears, for this was not an echoing place. He was

silenced by surprise, but the echo continued. It crept toward the

tail-gate--a sobbing breath--and a clumsy little animal fell at his

feet.

"Oh!" cried Doby. "Oh, you poor puppy! Where did you come from?"

He picked up the mangled and bony brute. At first it fought him off as

though whatever perils had brought it to this wretched plight had made

it afraid of both foes and friends.

On the instant Doby forgot his own grievances. He snuggled the wanderer

against his wampus and crawled into the wagon with him, eager to apply

first aid to the case.

He rubbed the cinders out of its hair. He washed the sores and greased

the cuts. With his handy knife he shaped bandages and tied up the

wounds. He gave it milk. It moaned with pain and feebly snapped at the

fingers which tended it. But, after a while, warm and dry and fed, it

cowered in a shawl on his lap and whimpered itself to sleep.

"May I have it for mine?" was the world-old demand of the boy to his

parents.

"I think you will be obliged to keep it for a time," answered his

father, full of pity for the tiny stray. His mother smiled and set out

another cup of milk.

"I would like to know where it came from," mused the boy. "It must have

been lost in the fire."

His father and mother looked at each other, but did not speak. Why

should they suggest to him that some other wagon-train might have been

overtaken by the fire and this little creature be one of the victims of

a terrible disaster?

It kept him busy. Although it could not have been more than six weeks

old, its unlucky adventures had already rather spoiled its disposition.

In return for kindness it often gave bites and snarls.

"It doesn't love back the way I thought a pup would do," said Doby

next day, sucking some ugly nips on his thumb as they trailed along.

"When it gets old enough to stand solid on its legs, I guess it will be

about the fiercest dog of its size in the State."

With this pet to care for and to teach, in addition to his chores for

the wagon, Doby could bustle about with some appearance of forgetting

their precarious life.

For until the drought should be broken and the sky drop rain to renew

the springs and cool the bottoms, each hour became more fraught with

danger from the wild.

From the black edges of the moonless nights green eyes glared at the

fires of the emigrants. Panthers wailed from the bluff in long shrieks,

like frightened children--a sound that chilled the blood of every one

in the train.

Wolves howled in the daytime--there is no sound more menacing--and

dread hung over the travelers.

So the queer little puppy, who took itself so seriously in spite of the

ridiculous look of its wabbly legs and mangled ears, was a source of

interest and diversion to the whole company.

When it heard a wolf howl it quickly got to its feet, raised what

bristles it had, and answered shrilly, pacing back and forth under the

canvas top of the wagon where the boy kept it fastened.

"It wants to get out and fight 'em," cried Doby, proudly. "It wants to

eat 'em up. See how eager it looks!"

On the second night of its stay in their wagon-bed it won their

gratitude. By its yelping and its scratching at the canvas it sounded

the alarm, "Wolf at the door!"

Even after Mr. Holman had caught up his rifle to drive at the wolf,

which was by that time quite out of range, the adopted puppy rushed

about the wagon-floor in an ecstasy of usefulness and slept no more

that night.

Through the depressing, unfriendly land which the flames had desolated,

women and children huddled timidly in the wagons, men doubly armed

walked close to their domestic animals for fear of a stampede, scouts

forged ahead and sentries brought up the rear. Dust, heat, distant

puffs of smoke, dried-out or muddy watercourses, all told of a region

suffering in an untoward season and of beasts uncomfortable and

dangerous.

Their train was followed, not by a pack as they sometimes feared it

might be, but by one of those lone gray timber wolves, whose age or

ferocity--or something--finds satisfaction in nothing but the silent

stalk and the solitary kill.

At last things came to such a pass, at last the lone wolf--it was a

gaunt she-wolf--lurked so near, that panic seized the hearts of the

emigrants. For no rifle could hit her. Like the horrid werewolf, in

whom some of the superstitious travelers still believed, no bullet

touched her, so uncanny was her cleverness in getting beyond range

after every depredation.

"I'm glad that pa put ma in another wagon, for the wolf picks our stuff

every time, probably because we are the last in the train," worried

Doby, who was frankly afraid of the gleaming eyes which had twice

slipped past the sentries in the darkness and appeared below him during

his turn at watching at the tiny round window in the middle of the back

of the wagon-top. He was not ashamed to swing his lighted pine-knot

torch vigorously most of the time. "Those teeth looked as sharp as

knives."

To the excited puppy he promised, "When you are a little bigger I'll

let you out to do battle." But the frantic puppy did not want to wait

to grow bigger. It was ready at once. Its new master was full of

applause for its vigilance.

On the third night an awful moment came. The ready sentries patrolling

near, and his father at the oxen's head, seemed far, far away when Doby

turned from a moment's soothing of his growling pet to find himself

face to face with the blazing eyes in a great, slavering head thrust

through the little round window.

He shrieked and called as he beat at the hideous, threatening thing

with his burning pine knot.

Men came running to help him. But in the half-light of flickering

torches no one dared to fire into the group who had been surprised into

a hand-to-hand fight with the wolf. From that medley of human screams

and bestial growls, the flash of knives, the thump of clubbing guns,

she escaped as strangely as she had done before.

The puppy, licking at Doby's bitten hand, begged ferociously to be

allowed to get out and get at her.

His father gave his animals to the care of another and took the boy's

watch at the wagon's end in the last of the train. Doby, who could

not sleep on account of his pet's restlessness, sat beside his father

through the long hours of that fearsome night.

In the darkest time, just before the dawn, when deep sleep had finally

settled upon the train, the puppy leaped up and slipped its leash and

called in sharp glad barks. Without, under the doubly guarded wagon,

the she-wolf crooned. The puppy capered with joy. Softly the coaxing

whine was repeated. The puppy answered in baby staccato.

And then they knew! Even Doby knew! Knew whence the puppy came, why it

was so fierce, and why the lone wolf stalked the train!

A dozen rifles cracked, but the "unerring" pioneer marksmen could not

hit that sly wolf in the darkness. She was out of range again.

The father and son looked at each other in consternation.

There was only one thing to do. Poor Doby did it.

He spoke a word to the guards. Then with his heart-strings quite torn

apart he took the beloved and unloving wolf whelp from the wagon, set

it upon the ground, and watched it lope away into the waiting dark.

Because a wolf never returns to an uncovered trap, the siege was raised.

When affairs are at their worst a brave spirit struggles hardest.

So daylight found Doby cheerfully holding a court of speculating

emigrants, who were bent on discussing their late guest, the wolf whelp.

His bandaged hand held his busy knife and he carved on a wide, thick

strap of leather as he said: "Oh, never mind about the puppy! I don't

care--much. There are other dogs. As soon as a friend of mine, who

always keeps his word, gets back to his farm at Urbana, he is going

to send me a foxhound by the next wagon-train to our new home at

Vincennes." And he showed them the leather collar. Near the fastening

he had cut OHIO * KENTUCKY * INDIANA. On one side were the words SIMON

KENTON. On the opposite side it said, OBEDIAH HOLMAN. Between the two

was the comforting legend, THEIR DOG.

XII

ONE PERCUSSION CAP

_The "Pennsylvania Dutch" Colony on the Wabash_

SLEEPY Obadiah Holman shivered and pulled the covers over his head, for

gusts of wind were fanning his cheek.

"Sniff, snuff," said the wind. "Grunt--g-r-o-w-l!"

The boy jumped from his bed to the middle of the cabin's puncheon

floor. Wide awake now, he listened. What was that sound?

A bear was smelling at his pillow through a crack between the logs of

the wall.

Slowly his feet grew cold. Slowly his scalp began to itch.

Only that morning, Father George Rapp, the chief man of the town of

Harmony, had said to his boy guest, "Better mix up wet clay with grass,

Doby, and chink the hole by your bed, or some wild creature will come

along and nip your nose while you are asleep."

At the moment of Father Rapp's command, Doby had been busy. Everybody

in Harmony always was busy. The industry of the settlement was

epidemic. Even growing boys caught it.

The Harmonists worked early and late. Their clean, blue,

homespun-covered figures moved sedately through their gardens, fields

and dairies, through their cocoonery and silk-factory, through their

brickyard and woolen and oil mills. They toiled without hurry and

without useless motions to the time of their own singing or to the

music of their little German band.

Even the dogs climbed into the treadmills to do a daily task of turning

the smaller machines.

Nothing was bought which they could possibly make themselves. All their

surplus goods were sold to outside settlers. Thus, by never taking

anything out of their treasury and by always putting something into it,

they became so very rich that in 1825, ten years from the time they

founded their settlement, Robert Dale Owen, a social experimenter,

was glad to buy the town because it seemed to offer such a promise

of prosperity to the communistic colony which he himself wanted to

establish there.

After a few hours with the strong-willed Father Rapp, who kept the

colony going so successfully, Doby had found himself as busy as the

other Harmonists. As soon as it was suggested to him, he went to work

driving half a dozen pegs into the wall between the logs, and on them

laying a board which he had helped split from an oak-tree. He had been

obliged to pick up his shavings and his scraps. No carpenter's litter

was allowed to mar the perfect neatness and order of the spotless town.

In trying to live up to this high standard of tidiness, Doby had

forgotten to daub the fresh clay over the place where his pounding had

jarred the chinking out.

He had been proud of his work, for that board on its pegs formed his

bed. It was such a comfortable bed with its homespun tick filled with

leaves and its patchwork quilt on top.

Now on this very first night he was driven from it by a bear.

"But I'm not scared," said Doby to himself. "I just know I can't be

scared. It's nothing but a she bear taking a walk."

While the bear strolled round the cabin and came back to try another

sniff, strolled round the other way and came back for yet more sniffs,

Doby stood in his linsey-woolsey bed-gown, wondering why he felt so

chilly on an August night, and saying over and over in his mind: "I'm

trusted to take care of myself. I'm trusted to look after this place.

What ought I to do now?"

Doby and his father had been given the cabin to use while they were

staying in this Posey County Eden, fifty miles up from the mouth of the

Wabash.

As change was the only unchanging thing in Doby's moving life, he was

not surprised to find himself alone at night in an outlying cabin

of this quaint "Pennsylvania Dutch" colony, while his father, who

had brought an important message from Vincennes to George Rapp and

Frederick Rapp, his son, was still closeted in the house of those great

men.

It had seemed easier in the bright sunset to say to his father, "I'll

take care of this place while you are with the Rapps," than it did now

all by himself in the dim cabin with that big brute pacing near.

He tried to think, "She can't get me."

Indeed she couldn't. The cabin was as stout as stout could be. The

door was four inches thick. Its inside bar was of double strength. The

windows were tiny. The wide chimney-top was withed across; nothing

could drop down it.

"She can't get the stock."

Cows and oxen were secured in a log barn as snug as the cabin. Pigs

were in a lean-to quite as strong. Chickens roosted in tall saplings no

bear could climb.

Oh, the men who usually stayed in this cabin knew how to look after

stock in the safest way! No one person owned the stock. Each man and

woman in the community owned an equal share in every house and in every

beast and every tool in the whole property. But no person owned any one

thing, not even the clothes he wore. It was all a partnership affair.

"As long as I stay here I must act like one of the community family and

do my share. I wonder if they have any partnership rules about bears?

What harm can she do?

"She might trample the garden. She might steal the corn."

Another chill shook the small visitor.

"She has sneaked round the bear-traps. She has chosen the farthest-away

field." He began to hope, "P'r'aps she won't go in the corn."

There were sounds outside which told him that she was doing the very

thing he feared.

Doby silently crept up the ladder to the loft. He peered from its gable

window.

The bear was walking along in the moonlight, standing up straight on

her hind legs like a person in a fur overcoat.

Over the rail fence, which almost touched the corner of the cabin, she

climbed exactly as his mother might have done.

She went down one corn row and up the next, pulling open the husks

with her forepaws and examining each ear of the green corn. If it were

well filled out and milky, she picked it and piled it, one ear after

another, on her arm as his mother might have held firewood. When she

had a dozen she walked to the fence and started to climb out of the

field. She was not forty feet from Doby.

"Good," he thought. "Now she is going home."

In getting over the fence, she dropped an ear of corn. This provoked

her and she threw the whole armload on to the ground. Then she turned

back for more.

She could not have noticed Doby nor have suspected any harm, for she

selected as much more corn. In the ear it is not easy to carry and

she had the same luck with the second batch. As an ear slid out, she

spitefully threw the rest away and turned into the field again.

"Oh, the wicked, wasteful thing!" raged Doby. "If she does that many

times there won't be half a crop left in this garden."

He slipped down the ladder and stared at a gun hanging on forked

sticks over the door. It was a queer gun; the latest-style rifle with

cap and ball, which was destined to replace the ordinary flintlock then

used by most frontiersmen.

Traders on the river had explained the mechanism of this kind of gun to

every passing emigrant. Doby thought: "I can remember every thing I've

heard about that newfangled cap gun. Now is my chance to try it."

It was loaded. Every pioneer kept firearms ready for instant use.

Without a sound, Doby moved the table, put a stool on top of it and

mounted to the rack.

He could not lift the gun from its place. It was a huge weapon. Even

his fifteen-year-old shoulders and his stocky legs were not equal to

the task of getting it down. He began to sweat as he glanced round the

room. "What shall I do?"

His eyes caught a dark blotch of clothes hanging on the wall. "There

are my best breeches. I know I look big in them. I reckon if I had them

on I could handle the gun."

In desperate haste he tore off his bed-gown. He girded himself in

the manlier garments. He made a final trial--a supreme test of his

muscle--and--b-o-o-s-t-e-d the rifle over the hooks!

Remembering to keep the barrel pointed from him and to guard the

trigger, he toiled at white heat and dragged the thing up the ladder,

"'Cause there may be trouble, and if there _is_ trouble a high spot is

the place for me."

He took a peep. The thief had already thrown away another armload, at

the same place in the fence, almost under the window. She was in the

field.

When she came back again she would be very close to him. He knew he

could hit her. He meant to swing the rifle to his shoulder and to

take careful aim. He braced his feet. He made the start. But he could

not--he could _not_--positively _could not_ raise that gun to his

shoulder. It was more than five feet long and weighed a dozen pounds.

But nothing could stop him now. "I'll have to set it on a rest."

He pulled an old spinning-wheel close to the window. The bar held the

gun at an angle, sloping downward. The distaff kept the butt from

slipping. He sighted along the barrel's shining steel, training it on

the length of fence where the bear was sure to come.

There was a queer thumping under his galluses. "I can't point it at

her. But--if--she--gets--in--range--"

He held his eye on the sight and waited. He waited and waited and

waited and waited. He grew numb with crouching and goose-fleshed with

suspense.

"Suppose she went out the other way! Suppose she climbed some other

part of the fence. Suppose--

"Ha! Here she is."

Doby pulled the trigger. The gun roared. The bear roared.

Flames sparkled round him. The gun's recoil kicked him end over end.

Banged and battered, and rubbing his shoulder, he lay and blinked. If

the safe end of the gun had done this to him, what might not its full

cannon force have done to the bear?

He was quite prepared for the scene which was before him as he crawled

shakily to the window and ventured a look below. The bear lay stretched

out on a huddle of rails and corn.

"Of course she's dead." Doby breathed deep. "I know she must be. But--I

guess I'll stay up here 'til pa comes. It won't be long before the

folks who heard that gun will get here in a flock." He took another

peep and another breath. "That is a big bear. Her pelt is almost prime

now in the last of August." He got out his knife and examined its

edge. A knife must be in perfect trim to skin a bear.

Then an entirely new suspicion dismayed the boy.

"The pelt of a community bear can't belong to any one person. Nearly a

thousand people will each have a small share in it. Father George Rapp,

the church and state, will direct Frederick Rapp, the business manager,

to sell the pelt. Then we will all have an equal interest in the money

after it is in the bank."

In the midst of its successes, the Rapp colony finally failed, as did

Owen's socialistic colony after it. Both dwindled away after the strong

leaders were gone. Both were forsaken, as all others like them have

been, and always for much the same reason as Doby gave, when all by

himself in the darkness the honest human nature in his soul said to

the listening walls in a burst of indignation: "_I_ am the person who

killed the bear. _I_ am the one who ought to have the pelt to do with

as I please. _I want my own things!_ Be sensible and sell the fur for

money? Put the money in the bank? Own one and nine one hundred and

seventy-eighth part of the proceeds? No! I'd like to have the pelt to

sit on and to look at and to tell hunters about!"

Still another disagreeable thought came to him. It was so appalling

that it turned him pale. "If we came here to live, my stone knife would

be everybody's knife. I would have to bring my new dog here to be

everybody's dog."

He took another peep at the bear. Then he gazed at the ideal town,

perfect in its beauty of flower-hung artistic houses, perfect in its

thrifty business arrangement, perfect in the justice of its laws.

He thought of happy-go-lucky old Vincennes, struggling to maintain

herself under all sorts of faults and difficulties, of that promised

foxhound who was already waiting for him, of the house that his father

and mother had planned, and he tightened his galluses, jerked on his

shoes, donned his cap, like a knight buckling on his armor, as he

proclaimed aloud: "I shall let the town keep the pelt, because it is

the polite thing to do. But I am glad that pa chose the other town to

live in. I'm going to take my knife and get back home to old Vincennes!"

And so it happened, on account of this decision of the boy's and the

more practical investigations of his father, that the stone knife found

itself established on the farm which the Holmans bought near the old

capital of the Northwest Territory.

There the flint entered upon an age of wood.

Out of the forest on the banks of the Wabash came the farm--by clearing.

Out of the forest rose a house and barn of logs.

Out of the forest were made the tools for the farm and the furniture

for the house.

From the trees about them all the pioneers who settled in the Ohio

Valley took most of their necessities and many of their luxuries.

The ax, the cross-cut saw, and the draw-knife cut the material for

the heavy building. The father's Barlow knife and the son's stone one

fashioned all the finer work upon it.

When the big fireplace was finished, Doby could sit in the glow of the

back log with his foxhound at his knee in the long autumn evenings,

and set his knife to the interesting task of making the utensils

which the household needed. After that came the joy of whittling

animal-traps, fiddles, darts, drums, bows and arrows, snow-shoes,

sleds--anything--everything--the happiest boy in the world could want!

XIII

THE VOYAGEUR

_The French Who Followed the Explorers_

THERE was a glint of sun on metal. It came through the branches of

the willows at the edge of the homestead clearing. A bit of red cloth

wavered beside it.

Again the metal shone with a twinkling flash, again the scarlet patch

nodded in the light. Beneath the willows the prow of a canoe pushed

silently from the Wabash River into the mouth of a little creek that

wandered through the farm.

Obadiah Holman crouched motionless like a rabbit when he caught that

flash. At the canoe's movement forward he bounded toward home, as a

frightened rabbit leaps from danger.

"Indians!" he signaled to his father. "Indians!"

The father, who was unhitching his horses, hastily got them into the

log barn. With the flintlock on his arm as it had been all through the

fall plowing in this natural open glade of his section of land, he,

too, leaped for the cabin, which was already being barricaded by the

boy and his mother.

Through peepholes the family watched.

Soon a solitary figure appeared.

"That can't be an Indian," breathed the mother; "but it may be some

kind of an Indian decoy."

"We will hold our aim on him and keep under cover," the father decided.

They could see that the new-comer had a mobile, laughing face. His

clothes were of fur, picked out with bright cloth, somewhat ragged.

A bandana tied back his grizzled curls to show the gold hoops in his

ears. A strap across his forehead bore the weight of a pack which hung

down his back.

He was playing a lively tune upon an elder flute, stepping to its

measures with his moccasined feet.

While eying the man to be sure that he was not a treacherous disguised

Indian, and to decide what sort of a chance comer he might be, the

father's brow wrinkled with thoughts of this big Northwest and the men

it had known and the origin of this wayfarer.

"Whom have we here, Doby?" he asked.

But Doby could not answer. Neither could his mother. Both were on the

verge of panic. For it is a nerve-racking thing to stand still and wait

for the next movement of a doubtful visitor, who may be going to send

a burning arrow into the barn loft or to call a band of warriors to

attack the house.

To give his wife and son a chance to collect their wits, the father

queried: "Who were the first white folks to come to this part of the

country? Perhaps we can guess who this man is."

"The French came earliest," answered the mother.

"When?"

"About a hundred years ago," she said.

"What did they do?"

"They built a fort and trading post at Miamis where Fort Wayne now is.

Then they set up another at Ouiatanon and still another one here." As

she stared at the motley figure coming nearer, the mother smiled, for

she began to understand that she was now to meet quite a different sort

of habitant from any of the varied peoples she had seen in the long

journey to this old French settlement of Vincennes.

"Ha!" cried Doby, trying to keep one eye on the loophole and the other

on his father's face. "When the Spanish discovered America, they

claimed the whole continent. If they had known about this place, they

would have set up a flag here. But the French explorers really did find

it and their flag is the one that covered it." Here he caught a hint

from his father's questions and his mother's recovered calm. "'Twas a

race of traders who followed the explorers." He now became eager to

examine the stranger. "A half-breed trader! That's what he is!"

"He is so queer-looking," was the mother's objection to him.

Doby was quick with his surmises. "If these French traders made friends

with the Indians and sometimes lived with them in their wigwams, and

copied all the clever things the Indians knew about living in the

open, they would become half Indians themselves. This odd old man is a

voyageur. I know he is!"

"But," faltered the mother, "if he is friendly to the Indians, he may

not be safe for us to know."

Mr. Holman was sure of his harmless character. "The French never

incited the Indians to cruelty. Their influence was all for peaceful

barter. He wants to buy any pelts we have for sale and to trade with

us."

The mother's New England habits made her long for any kind of a trader

to dicker with. No matter how outlandish his garb nor how strange his

manner, a peddler was a peddler, and as such she was glad to see him.

So they opened wide the door and called a welcome.

As Doby examined the voyageur at close range, he thought, "I never did

see such a wild-looking man," yet the stranger's joyous face, his quick

gestures, and his lilting music drew the boy to him irresistibly.

For Doby's pleasure, after the greetings were over, the guest sang the

words of his song and then he piped it, as a plover might have done.

He whistled the tune and then he trotted it. He changed to calls of

feathered songsters and to other measures and to different steps.

Whatever the melody or whatever the dance; whether he sang or whistled

or piped, he was a constant swirl of music and laughter and motion.

Into Doby's sober life he came as a figure of purest joy, never to be

forgotten--a faun of the forest--a creature of fantasy.

To live out of doors and to follow the seasons, to be away from all

care, and free to take up the next trading path that beckoned him in

the strange new country--that was a voyageur's happy life.

No wonder that these bold spirits of the Old World crowded into the

white-winged caravals that could bear them to the great valley of

romance and adventure!

No other country has ever seen the like of these voyageurs. No other

country ever will. Even in the far north, they are vanishing with the

forests and the fur-bearing animals. They can never come again.

There were no bounds to Doby's delight in the grotesque appearance, the

bird music, and the elfin dancing of this one.

The contents of his pack were small assortments of hardware. He spread

them upon the stump by the log-cabin door.

In a mixture of French and English, as musical as any verse, he told

them that ammunition was lying in his canoe. He went and fetched it,

and also brought with it his own rifle. These things, even the gun, he

would trade for skins.

"All these of the best, the finest, n'est ce pas?" he asked, throwing

out his hands and showing his beautiful teeth. "Voilà, m'sieu!"

Doby's father was in need of powder and shot. They fell to business

whilst the mother busied herself with supper. She wanted pins, needles,

and a candle-snuffer. She hoped after he had eaten home-made dainties,

the trader might offer her bargains.

Doby stood enthralled beside the collection of nails, hooks, gimlets,

and plow-points. Here were the convenient odds and ends needed to make

the work on their new home complete.

First of all--above and beyond everything else in a boy's sight--was

the voyageur's percussion-cap rifle. It was the most improved and best

firearm of that day. It was not as heavy as most of them. It had seen

service. And what was a curious, but entirely sensible thing, someone

had cut off a couple of feet from the end of the barrel!

"I believe I could handle that gun," said the boy. "Everybody thinks I

am growing fast."

The trader took the hint and nodded for him to try it.

Doby's greedy fingers closed over the trigger. It was rather heavy, of

course, but he could lift and he could carry it.

"Fifteen going on sixteen is an age when every boy should have his own

rifle," said his father. "But I'm sure our whole fall collection of

skins would not pay for it."

The trader gave one appraising glance at the really fine stock they

had spread for his examination and shook his head until his ear-rings

danced.

Doby's heart sank like lead. Why was he always so foolish as to set

his hopes on the one thing that was beyond reach? Why were guns so

expensive?

The crafty voyageur was not anxious to part with it. "I think to sell

it at much gain to one very rich youth--a hunter great and successful.

He is newly a citizen of Vincennes. To him I bear a letter and a

present of elegance supreme."

"We back out from the trade," laughed Mr. Holman. "We cannot overbid

the rich and great."

Doby's mind shrank into a sordid little ball of envy. It was not fair

for a rich boy to have a "present of elegance supreme" and the rifle

both! As he opened his mouth to utter his selfish disappointment, a

glance at his mother's sympathetic face, and at his father's resigned

one, moved him to shut it again. If he could not own a gun, he could at

least be decently quiet about his fate. But to be forever borrowing a

gun was so humiliating to a big boy!

"Who is this wonderful hunter?" asked the mother, in neighborly

curiosity.

"Of the family there are two; it is m'sieu the father, and m'sieu the

son. For that son is the letter. I go to the town yonder. I inquire. I

present myself to him."

"But what is his name?" insisted Doby's mother.

The voyageur smiled at her vaguely. Then she knew that he could not

read the message which he carried. His instructions were to find a

hunter and show the letter. Now he pawed around in his nondescript

garment and brought out a soiled paper.

The letter had been written on a large sheet of white paper. Then the

paper had been folded in such a way that the writing was concealed

and the corners turned over to look like a modern envelope. Envelopes

themselves had not then been invented. It was sealed with a big red

daub of wax.

"Two bits" had been paid to the messenger, who now pointed to the plain

script of the address, which he held carefully wrong side up.

Mrs. Holman twisted her head. Then she gasped, and hastily reversing

the letter in his polite and willing hand, she looked at her family

with startled eyes.

Letters were so much of a rarity in those good old days of long

distances and slow transportation that it was perfectly correct to show

interest in any man's correspondence.

Indeed, every inhabitant of Vincennes had been known to handle at

least twice any letter which came to town, and to register several

guesses as to its probable contents, before the person to whom it was

addressed felt that he had a social right to claim and open it.

So Doby and his father would not have been considered in the least rude

as they sprang to look over the voyageur's shoulder as the mother was

already doing.

They read in concert:

"Obadiah Holman, Esquire

Vincennes

Indiana"

The voyageur, who could not spell out an address, was quick enough

at reading faces. He said to Mr. Holman, "I make my respects to that

hunter so rich and great." And he presented the letter with formality.

"No, no!" cried the father. He handed the legal-looking document to

"m'sieu, the son." Now Doby had never before had a letter in his

own name. His fingers were shaking and clumsy as he broke the seal,

unfolded the sheet, and read in a strained and unnatural voice:

"HARMONY, INDIANA, August 31, 1816

"OBADIAH HOLMAN, ESQ.

"Honored Sir:

"For value received in the matter of garden truck, field corn, hived

honey, et cetera, saved in the shooting of a she bear by your

respected self, the community of Harmony voted to pay the pelt of the

bear aforesaid; likewise the pelt of the he bear belonging to the

same. Said pelts herewith attached and forwarded.

"Your very obedient servant,

FREDERICK RAPP."

The voyageur, plainly interested, hastened to get the pelts, to spread

them out, and to indicate, now that his best moment had come, that

these two bearskins plus two big beaverskins--the finest of their

collection--were the price of the rifle.

Privately, Mr. Holman thought this rather a hard bargain, even more

than the "much gain" which the trader was entitled to have. Beaver had

been scarce and high in value for two years. A good beaver, taken in

October, outpriced an August bear whose winter coat was coming well but

was not yet in its prime.

One glance at Doby's face brought to the father's mind the day when he

had acquired his own flintlock; so he nodded indulgently to close the

deal.

The voyageur's words, "It is that you become owner, m'sieu," were the

sweetest of sounds in Doby's ears.

Then followed a blissful hour of target-shooting, to learn the

ways of the new gun, and then followed, as a matter of course, the

over-confident moment when the excited boy let the trigger down upon a

clumsy thumb.

As his father patiently dressed his wound, Doby's conscience--that New

England torch always flickering before his mind--threw its light on a

point of conduct he had not noticed until this moment. He saw that he

ought to do something that he did not want to do.

The voyageur, chuckling cozily by the hearth, with his picturesque

head abob, never knew that the half-grown Doby, who sat staring at his

bandaged thumb, was struggling with spiritual forces that nearly tore

his heart asunder.

No stranger could guess how great a victory over his own selfish

desires the boy had won when he raised his face to his father's and

said, "I think, pa, that you should take this new rifle for your own

gun and give me the old flintlock."

Doby's father was of upright stuff himself; and he now saw that his

son, also, had the making of a just man in him. So he looked at Doby

kindly, and the two understood each other perfectly. But all the father

said was: "I've had my old flintlock ever since I was your age. I use

it every day. I couldn't learn the tricks of one of these newfangled

rifles. No, Doby, you can't swap firearms with your pa!"

XIV

THE BEAVERS' DAM

_A Patriot's Sacrifice_

He stood upon a bluff overlooking the Wabash. Outlined against an

autumn sunset, his noble figure dominated the landscape.

A velvet cap with a jaunty plume rested lightly upon his short,

snow-white, curling hair.

Velvet also were his coat and breeches and the sweeping cavalier cape

that clasped on his shoulder. Silken hose and fine linen added to the

magnificence of his costume.

It was of a style long gone by, even then, but its sumptuous fashion

became him and set off his sturdy old age to its best advantage.

His dress was a habit. He wore it unconsciously. But the sword on his

hip--that was another matter!

His lean and practised hand, a bit shaky with his seventy-six years,

grew steady and as firm as youth when it swung to position and clasped

that hilt. His faithful blade was his best companion.

The deep red of oak, the scarlet of sumac, the yellow of maple, the

brown of beech, every color of frost-kissed October mingled in the

background and was reflected on the borders of the opal river whose

shining length formed the waterway to the outside world.

The little town was all astir. It was a gala day. Banners fluttered at

the door of each cozy cabin, and from the tall pole of the old wooden

fort of St. Vincent swung the American flag, almost ready for the

sunset gun.

On the river, rafts and flatboats, rowboats and small sail moved about

and fell into position to make way for a procession of canoes coming

down the stream.

The folk of the town, big and little, hurried to the water's edge,

waving their arms in welcome and shouting until they were hoarse.

But the man on the bluff kept his high position and his attitude of

martial waiting. Under his heavy white brows, his sharp black eyes grew

large and tender, for in the distant canoes were his children--his

careless, happy children--coming home to him, as they had done twice

every year since the old days when he had begun to buy their furs of

them. Younger business men now held the fur trade in their own hands,

but the voyageurs continued their practice of holiday regatta to greet

this white-haired man.

Obadiah Holman, hastening into town, far ahead of his father and

mother, was decked in his buckskin. With rifle on shoulder and knife in

belt and hound at heel, he walked on air. For he looked like a man, he

felt like a man, and he was a man--almost!

More than satisfied with himself, he whistled as he strode, until he

came to the person in velvet. Then his vanity dropped to his feet and

was whisked away.

Here was one more elegantly attired than he had ever beheld a mortal.

"Doby, make your manners," he commanded himself. Off came his cap and

he accomplished a bow.

The gentleman turned square upon him. The bold, dark eyes read him

through and through.

The boy's face lit up with admiration at the sight of the noble

countenance and at the sound of the kind voice saying, "I give you

greeting, stranger."

Impulsive Doby had small knowledge of etiquette. Quite carried away by

his good luck in meeting this man, he burst out, impetuously, "I do

hope that you are Francis Vigo!"

The dark face--haughty and stern--flashed into a quick foreign smile,

but the bare right hand gave Doby a good American grip. "From what my

first arriving voyageur tells me, I suspect that you are M'sieu Holman,

the son," he said.

They gazed at each other as men will who are destined to become

friends. Further words were stopped by the sound of a distant chantey,

clear and merry.

Forgetting all else, Francis Vigo answered the call of his children by

turning his eyes toward the canoes.

Doby slipped unnoticed to a great rock halfway down the bluff. From

this vantage he could watch the fleet of voyageurs. Furbished for their

entrance to the town, each wore a turban of scarlet bandana and sash of

parti-colors. Ear-rings, thumb-rings, metal compasses, were all adangle.

The paddles feathered as they dipped and the jeweled drops sparkled in

the light. Purple martins awheel flipped into the eddies of their wake,

great bass leaped athwart their bows, and tiny rainbows sprang anew

from every disturbance of the water.

Voices rippled from chantey to roundelay and back to chantey again. The

river carried the tune afar and the hills echoed and re-echoed it.

From the forward canoe an excited arm pointed to Francis Vigo on the

height. A full-throated, "Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!" rose to him.

He gave them a military salute.

They answered with cheers and burst into their best melody as they

raced into port.

In the confusion of the shadowed landing torches began to glimmer. On

the darker places of the river's brink lanterns bobbed. But a nimbus of

golden light still shone around the gallant Vigo. And one by one, as

they stepped ashore, the voyageurs ran up the slope to greet him--the

hero of their hearts!

Doby gazed in amazement at the volatile Frenchmen surrounding him.

"Judging by their enthusiasm, every one of these men might have

followed him in battle. But they are most of them too young to have

fought in 1779, as he did at the capture of Vincennes. They are

honoring him for other things which he has done for them."

Truly they loved him for himself and the many brave deeds through which

he had carried their kind.

Francis Vigo was a soldier of fortune--a man out of Spain. With one

of his mother country's regiments he had come to the West Indies and

to New Orleans; afterward on his own account he had traveled up the

Mississippi to Fort St. Louis, where he joined a company of traders and

was known as the "Merchant of St. Louis."

In his warehouse among his bundles of valuable skins he was the

merchant prince who gave thirty thousand dollars--thirty thousand

dollars in big Spanish doubloons--round golden doubloons--which he

had bartered for and scared out of many a wicked Portuguese pirate

who sneaked up the Mississippi to cheat him or to rob him--gave them

to feed and equip the army of George Rogers Clark at a time when the

Government had no money to finance anything.

Without the help which Vigo gave to Clark, the little American army

could not have lived. Without the army the great Northwest could not

have been won.

In pursuit of his business and in his joy of the wild, Vigo had often

gone up and down the forest paths. He knew the country, was friendly

with each trader, and could call every pirogue by its owner's name.

Doby's rather cool blood began to run faster and his heart to pound

with sympathetic interest as, scrambling for turns, the voyageurs fell

upon Francis Vigo's neck, kissed his hands, and laughed aloud or wept

outright in their delight at the meeting.

One old fellow, in an abandonment of affection, threw himself upon the

ground and laid his forehead against the Spaniard's shoe, bathing it

with his tears.

"O-o-h," cried Doby. "O-o-h! That is my voyageur! The one who brought

my rifle! He was servant to Francis Vigo when they were both taken as

spies at Vincennes, by the British Governor Hamilton. He told me so

himself." Here the contagion of the old voyageur's devotion caught

Doby and he had to swallow a sob or two. "It's perfectly right for him

to be upset by memories. For when the Jesuit Father Gibault persuaded

Hamilton to release Francis Vigo, this voyageur and that other old one

went back with the Merchant of St. Louis to Colonel Clark at Kaskaskia

and helped plan the attack which captured Vincennes." And Doby took off

his cap and waved it and shouted with the best of them:

"Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!"

By the next morning's light, at call of reveille, these voyageurs, who

had gathered from all points of the compass, made ready to set off for

their various stations to begin their winter's work of trapping or of

gathering skins from Indians and settlers.

In one of the canoes, in plain attire, sat Francis Vigo and the oldest

voyageur--his one-time servant. In another canoe sat the second

voyageur of Vigo's historic spying expedition and--looking very

conscious of himself and of his newly acquired servant--Doby! bound on

a secret errand in the service of his country!

"We need young blood for our nation's future growth," Francis Vigo had

said overnight to Mr. Holman. "Give me your son for my assistant on

this voyage for the Government. I will train him--make a patriot of

him."

Now Mr. Holman knew that Francis Vigo was the one man in the great

valley whom Gen. William Henry Harrison had trusted to influence the

Indians and the voyageurs in the troubled times before the War of 1812;

the one who could go back and forth with negotiations to the Indians'

Prophetstown on the Tippecanoe. Both races put their faith and their

national confidence in this man. He was their ideal of justice.

So Mr. Holman, whose entire stock of cash in hand was three Spanish

dollars--those storied "pieces of eight"--did not hesitate, during his

conversation with Francis Vigo, to lay these silver coins on the town

blacksmith's anvil as an answer to the request for the boy's services.

The blacksmith had cut each one up into eight sections, like a pie. Two

of these "bits" made a "quarter," and six of them equaled seventy-five

cents.

This was the currency of the time. So unsettled had the War of 1812

made the nation's credit, so doubtful was the value of federal money,

and so unsafe all banks, that a "bit" in the hand was worth, in actual

purchasing power, many times its value of paper in the pocket.

One of his dollars Mr. Holman had presented to Francis Vigo with the

formal request, "I beg you will accept my contribution to my country's

cause in the matter of this voyage."

The second dollar he had given to Doby. "This is a stake for your

future fortune," he said.

The third he had put in his own pocket.

Afterward, Doby had asked of his father: "Why did you give Francis

Vigo money in such a way that he had to take it? He is the richest man

in town. Everybody says so, because the Government owes him thirty

thousand dollars. Nobody else in town has that much money."

Doby felt of the "bits" in his pocket and imagined them thirty thousand

times as heavy. Rich indeed!

Mr. Holman had a gloomy expression. "I know we will continue to owe

him." Then he quoted something about the "law's delay--the insolence of

justice," but added, practically, "I don't suppose we ever have that

much in our treasury that we want to pay debts with. Our money affairs

are in disorder."

Scandalized Doby almost whispered, "Do you mean that he probably hasn't

any money except what you gave him?"

Mr. Holman nodded, and glowered at fate. Doby knew that the mission to

Fort Wayne on which they were this morning starting was a financial one.

As he sat in his canoe and gripped his paddle for the start, it gave

him a curious sensation to reflect that the vigorous old man who was

in the next one, ready to steer through the silver water out into the

sunrise, was the Spaniard who had used his inherited fortune for the

cause of exploration in the New World; was the colonist who had given

the fortune he had earned to the cause of the Northwest conquest; was

the true American now ready to risk his sole capital of eight bits

toward securing financial liberty for an embarrassed government.

Silver and rose, the sky hung over the river. Silver and rose, the

water reflected it. The forest, mysterious and vague, surrounded the

town. The embarked voyageurs, now in working clothes, looked toward

Francis Vigo. They rested on their paddles.

He rose in his prow. Baring his head, he threw out his arms in the form

of a cross.

With the simplicity of little children, the voyageurs folded their

hands and said their prayers; they crossed themselves; then lifted up

their voices in such a hymn that the valley resounded with their praise.

"It is that we separate for the half-year," explained Doby's voyageur,

as with every few miles of going up-stream some canoe turned in at a

tributary and disappeared for its trading-grounds.

After that morning burst of song they all moved silently. The paddles

made no sound. The dull colors of the boats themselves--some birch-bark

canoes, some hollowed-out log pirogues--mingled like foliage with the

shore line. The men in butternut brown or fur were mere shadows on the

river. The woodland and its streams were swallowing up its wild men.

By and by the two canoes with Francis Vigo and Doby in them were alone

upon the river.

"Look!" signaled Francis Vigo's eyes to Doby.

A red deer was drinking on the brink.

"Look!"

A bear was at his bath.

"Look!"

A blue heron was fishing in the shallows.

And a saucy kingfisher helped himself to a bite of the red haws stuck

in Doby's cap, so much a part of the primeval vastness had they already

become.

Once, as they stopped for dinner on the shore, the odor of frying

bacon was so delicious to some of the forest creatures that they had a

glimpse of a mother wolf bringing her whole whelp family to take a peep

at those men creatures who sometimes left such savory scraps behind,

and who were, upon a pinch, not such bad eating themselves.

"They like bacon cooked, but they would take me raw," and Doby was glad

that he had a rifle of his very own.

In the silence of their forest night camp, whilst the two voyageurs

slept with their feet to the fire and the harvest moon looked down upon

them through the Indian-summer haze, Francis Vigo explained to the boy

the nature of his errand.

"I am getting old," he said. "Time is too precious to waste in making

money for myself. I must teach the Northwest the value of an honest

currency, else all business will be ruined and our country fall into

poverty."

He showed Doby a package wrapped in oilskin. "This priceless paper did

not go to Corydon with the documents of Indiana State. It is Government

property and must be secretly delivered to the proper agent at Fort

Wayne, to go on to Washington. We should have safe banks and vaults for

such moneys and papers. They should not be exposed to the mercy of fire

and water and chance journeys as this one is. I must use this as an

argument to those in authority for the need of national banks. I shall

also prove to them the demand for a tariff to protect our industries.

These are our present necessities."

"The tariff is to make us money and the banks are to guard it," said

Doby, who knew that these two vital measures were expected to influence

the fate of the great valley as much as any war had ever done. "So you

want to get there before election. And you want them to vote for James

Monroe for President, don't you?"

"Yes; because as Secretary of State and as Secretary of War he carried

us through the war, we now need him to take us over the financial

crisis which always follows a war."

All Saints' Day came in glorious October sunshine. On that day they

entered Fort Wayne.

Again in velvet, with gleaming sword, Francis Vigo made ready for an

audience.

An enthusiastic bugler of the fort was so impressed by the appearance

of the dignitaries in the approaching canoes that he went through his

entire repertoire of calls without waiting for official permission, and

brought all the people of the town to give welcome to the visitors.

So Doby had the feeling of walking up-stage as he entered the village.

That sensation stayed with him during the few days that they spent at

the fort; and it rose high in the hour of their departure when the

entire populace showered blessings after them as the velvet cap of the

smiling leader waved, "Farewell."

Their going was a spectacle. Yet when they made a landing down the

river for the night's camp, all the glory faded. The beautiful country

turned cruel and sordid.

"That is a threatening sky," commented Francis Vigo, as he put away his

velvet and began to prepare for rough weather.

"Bad wind," from one dejected voyageur.

"More cold," from the other.

"Here comes the rain!" cried Doby.

Dark November filled their camp with melancholy discomfort.

In place of the gallant soldier there hovered over the damp and sickly

fire an old, old man, blue with chill, and tired and dispirited.

Doby said to himself: "In the matter of delivering the precious papers

and of teaching the district the value of tariff and sound banks,

the errand for the Northwest was successful. But in the business of

collecting some interest to live on he has failed. That means that he

has no way to feed himself this winter. Red tape makes poor clothes and

worse meals."

Dismayed and pitiful, the boy longed to comfort that good man who had

fallen into the habit of sacrificing himself for his country.

"S-w-i-s-h! S-w-i-s-h!" poured the rain; "W-h-e-w! W-h-e-w!" howled the

wind, as the swollen current of the Wabash bore them homeward next day.

"H-o-n-k! H-o-n-k!" cried the wild geese overhead.

"Q-u-a-c-k! Q-u-a-c-k!" complained the migrating ducks as, wearied

by the buffeting, they dropped to the water for a little respite and

surrounded the canoes with the querulous wails.

A heartless loon laughed long and discordantly over their wretched

plight.

The river which had beckoned them with sunlight and with song, now with

fickle change of face grabbed them by the prows and hurtled them along

at terrific flood speed.

To a voyageur his canoe was as a second skin. He would never think of

abandoning it. He took whatever the weather sent.

But as they came to a bend in the river, "Yi! Yi!" shrieked one

voyageur in panic. "Yi! Yi!" for danger seemed about to overwhelm them.

A giant sycamore, undermined by the flood, swayed toward them and came

over into the river with a crash and spatter that deafened and almost

swamped them.

In one moment its mighty top had divided a portion of the river, as

a child's hand might turn a rill from a spring, and the new current,

seeking an outlet, leaped into a bayou and went sweeping down it, to

make a new channel. With instant turn of paddles to escape the tree the

voyageurs spun the canoes into the midst of this new current and were

borne by its irresistible force through the bayou, over a bar, and into

a stream that ran parallel with the river and finally emptied into it.

Like the débris on its surface, the canoes bobbed and tossed with

the runaway stream, in constant danger of being crushed by rocks and

snagged by thickets. They were part of chaos. With all their might

they backed water. The clever voyageurs steered between trees and

around stones as the truant flood bore them headlong to almost certain

destruction.

But louder than the storm in the trees, stronger than the rush of wind

in their ears as they tore along, came the ominous roar of water over a

tremendous dam.

To shoot such rapids as he knew was one thing to a voyageur, as part

of his day's work. To go over an unknown dam at freshet pace, as the

result of an accident, was quite another. Huge, muddy boulders rose

suddenly on all sides of them.

"Fend!" yelled the voyageurs as they gripped the paddles to steady the

last rush. Dozens of smaller black stones looked like streaks as they

miraculously flashed through this strange, rocky gully without hitting

a stone.

"The dam is broken!" howled Doby, although he knew he could not be

heard. They all saw the broken center and they whirled through it

at the speed of an express train, one close behind the other. Below

the dam were dozens more of the small black stones, which to their

straining eyes seemed to shift and move as fast as they were going

themselves.

The almost unendurable strain on their arms and backs suddenly gave

way. The new stream emptied itself into a wide bottom and spread out

harmlessly in a tame and shallow lake which looked toward the Wabash.

They edged out of the current into quiet backwater. All was as tame as

a mill-pond.

Doby, thoroughly shaken, exhausted, and amazed, cried out: "That was

about the luckiest escape any one could have! Big stones and little

stones! I never saw such a rocky gully! How _did_ we miss them!"

Francis Vigo crossed himself and looked at the boy in grave reproof. He

did not believe in luck.

The voyageurs clapped their hands and laughed aloud. To Doby's

astonishment, all three of his wet, tired, and discouraged companions

glowed with warmth and some new interest.

Their escape--their danger--was already forgotten. They were keen for

some plan which had formed in their minds as they came to safe water.

Doby could not follow their thoughts. He turned round eyes from one to

the other.

"Big stones were beaver houses," smiled one trader.

"Little black stones were beaver heads," explained the other.

And Francis Vigo added: "The dangerous way of our duty has brought us

to the beavers in a year when their fur is of double value. Since towns

and people and money have failed us, the wood and stream will give us

our living for the year."

Doby's economical Anglo-Saxon mind suddenly flowered into Latin

courtesy. He took off his cap to the Spaniard and said so fervently

that he knew his gift would be accepted, "Because of the education

this voyage has been to me and as a thank-offering that my life is

preserved, I present my share in this beaver find to my creditor,

Francis Vigo!"

Francis Vigo's face beamed kindly on the ardent boy.

Doby was proud of his dramatic success in this elaborate speech of

politeness. He thrilled pleasantly and made a little flourish with his

cap.

Alas and alack!

Erratic movement above the point of balance is not the thing for a

canoe's safety. Doby's gesture was an unsportsman-like thing and he

might have paid for his vanity by a fatal capsize had not the alert

voyageur, always suspicious of his impulsive passenger, bent his own

body quickly and restored the balance.

The canoe was still upright, but the action of the paddle, the surging

of the craft and the other canoe's violent action to avoid being caught

in disaster brought them so close to the main stream, that the current

had seized them again. Before Doby could realize his fault they were

whirling down the Wabash as before.

Whether they would or no, they were on their way home. Some other day

in quiet water they would come back to the town of beavers.

Later and later grew the hour. Slowly and more slowly flowed the river.

The channel had widened. The pent waters were finding space. The

harassed travelers looked about for a landing-spot to spend the night.

At last, the top of a fallen tree at the bottom of a gradual hill

seemed to promise a practical buffer.

"Merci!" cried Doby's voyageur. "Fend!" He backed water, and as the

other canoe came alongside he raised a shaggy eyebrow in question to

Vigo, who assented with a nod.

Together they eased their frail craft from the sweep of the river into

the resilient branches of the tree.

They edged inshore, found the ground solid, and pulled up the

boats. Other people had picked the tree as a safe harbor. When Doby

straightened himself to ease his tired back his eyes met the baleful

gleam of an Indian's glance.

Before he could gasp a warning to the others strong fingers closed upon

his windpipe. He was lifted by his hair and borne to the top of the

hill. All thought and feeling left him.

There was no sound but the r-r-i-i-p-p-p of leaves as heavy bodies were

dragged through them; no light but the uncertain moon through ragged

clouds.

He had no sense of up or down, of earth or sky. He hurtled along

through space with his feet dangling.

He struck a tree, freed himself from the strangler, and collapsed in a

heap.

Dimly some sort of light reddened around him. People were feeding a

fire. The hollow glade in which he lay swam like a mirage before him.

About the fire circled a dozen or so of very old Indians. They were so

absorbed in the ritual of their dance that they ignored the presence

of the other group of younger Indians who had brought in the prisoners.

Prisoners were a minor thing and of no importance compared with this

ceremony, which must not be interrupted.

The old Indians went round and round and round and round, without

words, without music, without sound of any kind. Their hands were

weaponless, their gestures were as one.

Dizzied and dumfounded by this circular marching, Doby closed his eyes

and waited for death by violence.

Vigo and the two voyageurs were in the same plight. Yet none of them

was gagged or bound or weaponless. Their captors did not rush forward

in triumph with their prey, nor give the conqueror's war-whoop.

They stayed half hidden in the background. Their one desire seemed to

be to keep the silence unbroken.

The voyageurs, rough adventurers, soon recovered from the surprise of

their capture, and stood lightly poised either to fight or to run.

Escape was the first thought in their minds. Their expression

soon changed from shock to curiosity; from curiosity to wide-eyed

incredulity.

Even Doby's shattered wits found an uncanny aspect of things. Abject

fear was swallowed up by a thrill at the weirdness which breathed from

the glade.

The whites looked from the young savages, unarmed, guarding them, to

the old ones, unarmed, gyrating monotonously, and using their hands

rhythmically.

One of the hardy voyageurs turned green and ghastly under his tan and

his knees doubled under him.

Francis Vigo, following his glance, went white to the lips. But the

poniard up his sleeve shot out and he pricked the fainting voyageur

cruelly. The pain revived the man. His companion received the same

treatment.

Even then they were plainly weak with horror. And Francis Vigo, the

intrepid soldier, closed his eyes, as though the dancing men were the

most dreadful sight of his life--a vision sickening beyond endurance.

While his captors stood rigid in shadow, while the voyageurs shook with

nervous chill, while Vigo glanced wildly here and there, Doby stared at

this curious feast which could so undo strong men.

For despite its dull and lugubrious setting, feast of some kind it

certainly must be.

This place was not a village. There were no wigwams, no women, no

children, no ponies, no dogs. All the interest centered on a great

flat stone in the center of the glade. It held a bed of glowing coals.

Savory meat was roasting there.

The old men, swooping slowly back and forth, were gorging

themselves in a strange and barbarous ceremony of united forms of

handling--biting--chewing. Solemnly, in an ancient, long-forbidden and

almost-forgotten rite, they were invoking some spirit of evil.

From one detail of the medicine-men's costumes to another, from one

mesmeric swing of arm and body to the next went Doby's glance in vague

alarm. Last of all, he viewed the sizzling rock.

A sacrificial cannibal rock!

Not all the poniards of the realm could have helped Doby to

self-control. He swooned upon the turf.

Bending to raise the boy, Francis Vigo brought his own face into a

patch of moonlight. His captor recognized him. For what Indian did not

know Francis Vigo? Vigo caught the expression of friendliness, and with

an imperious gesture signified that they must be taken from this spot.

It was daytime when Doby again opened his eyes. He was between the

voyageurs under the fallen tree near the canoes. On the river bank sat

the old Indians. Francis Vigo, jaunty in velvet, cap, plume, and sword,

was smoking the calumet.

One voyageur whispered to Doby, "Indians want to burn Vincennes."

The other murmured, "Père François tries to prevent that."

The first again: "They mean to join with renegades and capture the

fort. Renegades get Government money. Indians get fire-water."

Doby whispered back, "Has he told them that he took the money and the

papers worth money to Fort Wayne?"

Both nodded.

"Do they know he has had the fire-water moved away?"

They nodded again.

"Will they believe what he tells them?"

Emphatic bobs of both heads.

With the point of his sword Francis Vigo was drawing a map on the

alluvial mud of the inlet. The Indians bent over it. The voyageurs

exchanged dismayed glances.

Even before he saw the map it was not hard to guess, that the "merchant

of Saint Louis," knowing how to turn greed into profit, had bought the

lives of his three followers and had purchased the safety of his home

town with the one thing he had to sell--the newly found fur tract.

"They agree to take the beaver dam," was the meaning of one voyageur's

sigh.

"They go to it instead of to Vincennes," was the translation of the

other's shrug.

Doby thought, "To their old bones, the certainty of furs to bring

fire-water is better than the risk of a clash with the whites, who

always defeat them."

So the hunched, misshapen, and degraded old savages, each with his

attendant youth, embarked upon the now quiet river and paddled out of

sight of the alien race who loathed them.

The dominant Vigo, who had lazily watched them depart, now dropped his

assumed calm as suddenly as he did the velvet coat.

"Home!" he commanded. "To warn the fort!"

As they hurried along, he declared: "The renegades must be captured and

defeated. They are wicked men."

"The Indians are dreadfully wicked," shuddered Doby.

"They know nothing better than their own customs; I pity them," said

the great friend of Indians. "Some day over that sacrificial stone

shall be hung a bell--I vow it now. I put it in my will. I promise

it to my country. A deep-toned bell! It shall call all children to a

school to learn the laws of civilization, and all men to a court of

justice to keep those laws in force. Old Vigo's tongue can live in a

bell and go on preaching something better than greed, something higher

than money!"

(For many, many years gone by, and for to-day and for to-morrow, the

deep-toned bell above the forgotten stone is calling melodiously.

Hundreds of boys have listened to "Old Vigo," the bell, talking to

them.)

Although he planned for the better defense of the fort, Vigo was no

longer the commandant of militia, as he had been some seasons before

this. But he knew that both citizens and soldiers would respond to his

warning as to nothing else, so he outlined his strategy as he paddled

toward Vincennes.

"The renegades will come across the river by my private ferry--they

think I will be far from home--and they expect to meet the savages by

appointment at midnight." His face glowed with the spirit which could

not be subdued. "They will meet soldiers instead. I can fight bad men

of my own race with good appetite," he declared.

It was long past dark when they came to their own town. The dock was

deserted. So Doby set off at a run to rouse the early-to-bed militiamen

and to summon them to the post.

He had a vast sense of his own importance when he stuck his head in the

unlatched doors of the unsuspicious sleeping citizens and yelled: "Arm!

Arm! Come to the fort!"

For such clamor followed as few boys may ever be able to stir up.

Nightcaps and flintlocks were poked from the windows. But he was beyond

the reach of questions or shot ere they got their eyes open. A stream

of men, first awakened, were running toward the fort before the last

ones could find their boots.

Light-headed from hunger, lack of sleep, and excitement, Doby could not

follow all the plans for defense. Friendly Indians and boys disguised

as Indians were to take the place of the ones whom Colonel Vigo had

bought off up-river. These decoys were to follow the renegades, and in

the attack upon the fort were to fight them from the rear.

Doby, with his loaded rifle in his hands for the first attack, and

his knife on hip for hand-to-hand work, was given a man's place at a

loop-hole of the stockade. He waited in the dark for the signal to the

impromptu garrison to surprise the surprisers.

There was a muffled stirring of many feet. First a scuffle--then a run.

Shadowy forms advanced upon the seemingly unguarded fort. Thieving

hands fumbled at the gates.

In the breathless silence, Colonel Vigo's voice sounded like a

pistol-shot. "Fire!" he snapped.

Two dozen rifles spat. The cracking took the invaders completely off

their guard. They fell back in astonishment. But they rallied quickly

and returned the fusillade.

Boys within the fort lighted torches and waved them to show the

defenders how the battle lay.

The attacking renegades were made up of numbers of outlaws, of

deserters from the army, and of unlucky or incompetent settlers. Every

post in the Northwest had more or less of this human riffraff and many

towns had the same unlucky experiences with them.

These robbers did not trust their Indian allies. Treacherous

themselves, they suspected the old Indians' motives in joining them. So

they had purposely given their own number as much smaller than it was,

lest the Indians should turn upon them.

Doby's heart was not the only one which thumped with dismay as the

flare of the torches lit up the goodly number of the besiegers. Even

Francis Vigo's strategy of replacing their allied Indians with friends

of the town could not assure Vincennes of victory. She would have to

fight for her life. How curious if the far-away beaver dam should be

the thing that bought her safety! It had lessened her foes and given

her a fighting chance.

Madly the renegades charged the stockade. Staunchly the citizens helped

the handful of soldiers to hold it.

Again the rabble advanced. Fell back! Advanced! Fell back!

Mercy and justice had no place in Doby's mind. His duty was to hold his

section of the fort. He banged away with the best of the volunteers

and howled like an Indian as the renegades ran from his fire into the

volleys of the disguised men behind them.

During a lull in the battle he was proud to be obliged to tie up his

head where a bullet had grazed it, and to swagger like an old war-dog

as he moved across a barrier to help Colonel Vigo tie up a flesh wound

in his sword arm.

Then--on came the renegades! "Hi! Hi! Hi!" was their rallying call.

"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!" answered the flintlocks.

Over the walls piled the enemy. Through the gates came the disguised

Indians, fighting for the fort, and against their supposed allies.

Hand to hand--without command--without system--without mercy. One

of those free-for-all defenses in which frontiersmen had to become

victorious if they hoped to survive.

The renegades were beaten down, overcome, captured, and imprisoned. The

town was saved, as many a settlement in the Great Valley was held for

the white race--by the determined spirit of its founders.

Little blood was shed; less talk was heard; least record was made.

One item in a dusty old book is all that is printed about that lively

night. To wit:

This da. novem. 12. 1816. by Col. F. Vigo licens^d ferry freebooters

attack^d stockade. 9 wound^d. loss 1 pk. horse. Attack repuls^d.

This document marked the final touch to Doby's education for

that important year. He was on his way toward becoming a man and

a citizen--for he was at last a soldier--a volunteer soldier--a

victorious soldier--in defense of the Great Valley.

AFTERWORD

THE glory of the Great Valley is in the deeds of her heroes whose

conquests are blazoned on the tablets of the nation's memory.

Her prosperity is in the genius of her inventors and the hands of her

artisans--those renowned creators of her colossal fortunes.

But her safety lies deep in the hearts of her common people whose names

are seldom heard.

On their integrity depends the fate of this land. They are the very

life of the United States.

How can we better understand the stuff whereof our people are made, the

labor they have done, the ideals they have created, the institutions

they have reared in the two centuries since they first set foot in this

valley, than by studying their present by the light of their past?

How can we thank them more appropriately for the treasures they give

us, than by imitating the sincerity of their lives?

One of them, a boy pioneer, who lived in the times half-way between the

lads of to-day and the young men who built the fort at Ouiatanon, has

told us his story. It is the plain tale of his hardships and successes

in the struggle for a home, where his small daily tasks might help to

keep alive, upon the altar of its hearth, the sacred flame of love.

Through his adventures runs the plea for honest citizenship.

His acts declare: Not in war, but in work uplifted by service for

others, in peace fraught with neighborly good-will, in self-sacrifice

for our country's sake, is the spirit of patriotism that will keep

afloat forever over the Great Valley the flag of the Stars and Stripes!

THE END

BOOKS BY KATE DICKINSON SWEETSER

_TEN BOYS FROM DICKENS_

_TEN GIRLS FROM DICKENS_

_TEN BOYS FROM HISTORY_

_TEN GIRLS FROM HISTORY_

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_BOYS AND GIRLS FROM THACKERAY_

_BOOK OF INDIAN BRAVES_

_TEN GREAT ADVENTURERS_

"Particularly spirited is Miss Sweetser's biographical work. Accuracy

of historic fact has been the author's commendable aim in all her

books. Luckily she has likewise treated her characters as human beings,

something which cannot be said of most writers of biography for

children."--_The Nation._

Octavo, Pictorial Covers, numerous full-page illustrations, many in

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FAMOUS BOOKS ILLUSTRATED BY LOUIS RHEAD

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HARPER'S CAMP LIFE SERIES

_CAMPING ON THE GREAT RIVER_

BY RAYMOND S. SPEARS

_A farmer's son ventures out into the great world to make a man of

himself and succeeds. He embarks in a shanty-boat and sails down the

Ohio and Mississippi, where he has all kinds of adventures which will

make the boy-reader long to imitate him._

_CAMPING ON THE GREAT LAKES_

BY RAYMOND S. SPEARS

_A story of self-reliance and independence as well as adventure. Will

Sayne and Miles Breton take a voyage of discovery from Ontario and

Erie, through Huron to the vast stretch of Lake Superior. They become

involved innocently in smugglers' plots._

_CAMPING IN THE WINTER WOODS_

BY ELMER RUSSELL GREGOR

_The story of two boys who are granted the privilege of a winter of

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_CAMPING ON WESTERN TRAILS_

BY ELMER RUSSELL GREGOR

_The same two boys spend a summer in the Rocky Mountains, shoot

mountain-lions and wolves, secure photographs of mountain-sheep and

bears, pan gold in cañon streams, and are nearly suffocated in a forest

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_Illustrated. Post 8vo_

HARPER & BROTHERS

NEW YORK ESTABLISHED 1817 LONDON

* * * * * *

Transcriber's note:

page 51, removed comma between tying and it (rolling and tying

it, he fastened it)

page 62, space inserted between legs and clung (His legs clung to

the saddle)

page 184, some one changed to someone (someone had cut off a

couple of feet)

page 200, pirouges changed to pirogues (some hollowed-out log

pirogues)

page 219, capitalized staunchly (Staunchly the citizens helped the

handful of soldiers to hold it.)

page 220, Vigos changed to Vigo (Col. F. Vigo)