THE RAPE OF THE DEMIJOHN
The row down at the river house was more noise than fight, so far as
results seemed to indicate. It was all about a small dame jeanne of
fine brandy, which an Indian by the name of Long-Hair had seized and
run off with at the height of the carousal. He must have been soberer
than his pursuers, or naturally fleeter; for not one of them could
catch him, or even keep long in sight of him. Some pistols were emptied
while the race was on, and two or three of the men swore roundly to
having seen Long-Hair jump sidewise and stagger, as if one of the shots
had taken effect. But, although the moon was shining, he someway
disappeared, they could not understand just how, far down beside the
river below the fort and the church.
It was not a very uncommon thing for an Indian to steal what he wanted,
and in most cases light punishment followed conviction; but it was felt
to be a capital offense for an Indian or anybody else to rape a
demijohn of fine brandy, especially one sent as a present, by a friend
in New Orleans, to Lieutenant Governor Abbott, who had until recently
been the commandant of the post. Every man at the river house
recognized and resented the enormity of Long-Hair's crime and each was,
for the moment, ready to be his judge and his executioner. He had
broken at once every rule of frontier etiquette and every bond of
sympathy. Nor was Long-Hair ignorant of the danger involved in his
daring enterprise. He had beforehand carefully and stolidly weighed all
the conditions, and true to his Indian nature, had concluded that a
little wicker covered bottle of brandy was well worth the risk of his
life. So he had put himself in condition for a great race by slipping
out and getting rid of his weapons and all surplus weight of clothes.
This incident brought the drinking bout at the river house to a sudden
end; but nothing further came of it that night, and no record of it
would be found in these pages, but for the fact that Long-Hair
afterwards became an important character in the stirring historical
drama which had old Vincennes for its center of energy.
Rene de Ronville probably felt himself in bad luck when he arrived at
the river house just too late to share in the liquor or to join in
chasing the bold thief. He listened with interest, however, to the
story of Long-Hair's capture of the commandant's demijohn and could not
refrain from saying that if he had been present there would have been a
quite different result.
"I would have shot him before he got to that door," he said, drawing
his heavy flint-lock pistol and going through the motions of one aiming
quickly and firing. Indeed, so vigorously in earnest was he with the
pantomime, that he actually did fire, unintentionally of course,--the
ball burying itself in the door-jamb.
He was laughed at by those present for being more excited than they who
witnessed the whole thing. One of them, a leathery-faced and grizzled
old sinner, leered at him contemptuously and said in queer French, with
a curious accent caught from long use of backwoods English:
"Listen how the boy brags! Ye might think, to hear Rene talk, that he
actually amounted to a big pile."
This personage was known to every soul in Vincennes as Oncle Jazon, and
when Oncle Jazon spoke the whole town felt bound to listen.
"An' how well he shoots, too," he added with an intolerable wink;
"aimed at the door and hit the post. Certainly Long-Hair would have
been in great danger! O yes, he'd 'ave killed Long-Hair at the first
shot, wouldn't he though!"
Oncle Jazon had the air of a large man, but the stature of a small one;
in fact he was shriveled bodily to a degree which suggested comparison
with a sun-dried wisp of hickory bark; and when he chuckled, as he was
now doing, his mouth puckered itself until it looked like a scar on his
face. From cap to moccasins he had every mark significant of a
desperate character; and yet there was about him something that
instantly commanded the confidence of rough men,--the look of
self-sufficiency and superior capability always to be found in
connection with immense will power. His sixty years of exposure,
hardship, and danger seemed to have but toughened his physique and
strengthened his vitality. Out of his small hazel eyes gleamed a light
as keen as ice.
"All right, Oncle Jazon," said Rene laughing and blowing the smoke out
of his pistol; "'twas you all the same who let Long-Hair trot off with
the Governor's brandy, not I. If you could have hit even a door-post it
might have been better."
Oncle Jazon took off his cap and looked down into it in a way he had
when about to say something final.
"Ventrebleu! I did not shoot at Long-Hair at all," he said, speaking
slowly, "because the scoundrel was unarmed. He didn't have on even a
knife, and he was havin' enough to do dodgin' the bullets that the rest
of 'em were plumpin' at 'im without any compliments from me to bother
'im more."
"Well," Rene replied, turning away with a laugh, "if I'd been scalped
by the Indians, as you have, I don't think there would be any
particular reason why I should wait for an Indian thief to go and arm
himself before I accepted him as a target."
Oncle Jazon lifted a hand involuntarily and rubbed his scalpless crown;
then he chuckled with a grotesque grimace as if the recollection of
having his head skinned were the funniest thing imaginable.
"When you've killed as many of 'em as Oncle Jazon has," remarked a
bystander to Rene, "you'll not be so hungry for blood, maybe."
"Especially after ye've took fifty-nine scalps to pay for yer one,"
added Oncle Jazon, replacing his cap over the hairless area of his
crown.
The men who had been chasing Long-Hair, presently came straggling back
with their stories--each had a distinct one--of how the fugitive
escaped. They were wild looking fellows, most of them somewhat
intoxicated, all profusely liberal with their stock of picturesque
profanity. They represented the roughest element of the well-nigh
lawless post.
"I'm positive that he's wounded," said one. "Jacques and I shot at him
together, so that our pistols sounded just as if only one had been
fired--bang! that way--and he leaped sideways for all the world like a
bird with a broken leg. I thought he'd fall; but ve! he ran faster'n
ever, and all at once he was gone; just disappeared."
"Well, to-morrow we'll get him," said another. "You and I and Jacques,
we'll take up his trail, the thief, and follow him till we find him. He
can't get off so easy."
"I don't know so well about that," said another; "it's Long-Hair, you
must remember, and Long-Hair is no common buck that just anybody can
find asleep. You know what Long-Hair is. Nobody's ever got even with
'im yet. That's so, ain't it? Just ask Oncle Jazon, if you don't
believe it!"
The next morning Long-Hair was tracked to the edge. He had been
wounded, but whether seriously or not could only be conjectured. A
sprinkle of blood, here and there quite a dash of it, reddened the
grass and clumps of weeds he had run through, and ended close to the
water into which it looked as if he had plunged with a view to baffling
pursuit. Indeed pursuit was baffled. No further trace could be found,
by which to follow the cunning fugitive. Some of the men consoled
themselves by saying, without believing, that Long-Hair was probably
lying drowned at the bottom of the river.
"Pas du tout," observed Oncle Jazon, his short pipe askew far over in
the corner of his mouth, "not a bit of it is that Indian drowned. He's
jes' as live as a fat cat this minute, and as drunk as the devil. He'll
get some o' yer scalps yet after he's guzzled all that brandy and slep'
a week."
It finally transpired that Oncle Jazon was partly right and partly
wrong. Long-Hair was alive, even as a fat cat, perhaps; but not drunk,
for in trying to swim with the rotund little dame jeanne under his arm
he lost hold of it and it went to the bottom of the Wabash, where it
may be lying at this moment patiently waiting for some one to fish it
out of its bed deep in the sand and mud, and break the ancient wax from
its neck!
Rene de Ronville, after the chase of Long-Hair had been given over,
went to tell Father Beret what had happened, and finding the priest's
hut empty turned into the path leading to the Roussillon place, which
was at the head of a narrow street laid out in a direction at right
angles to the river's course. He passed two or three diminutive cabins,
all as much alike as bee-hives. Each had its squat veranda and thatched
or clapboarded roof held in place by weight-poles ranged in roughly
parallel rows, and each had the face of the wall under its veranda
neatly daubed with a grayish stucco made of mud and lime. You may see
such houses today in some remote parts of the creole country of
Louisiana.
As Rene passed along he spoke with a gay French freedom to the dames
and lasses who chanced to be visible. His air would be regarded as
violently brigandish in our day; we might even go so far as to think
his whole appearance comical. His jaunty cap with a tail that wagged as
he walked, his short trousers and leggins of buckskin, and his loose
shirt-like tunic, drawn in at the waist with a broad belt, gave his
strong figure just the dash of wildness suited to the armament with
which it was weighted. A heavy gun lay in the hollow of his shoulder
under which hung an otter-skin bullet-pouch with its clear powder-horn
and white bone charger. In his belt were two huge flint-lock pistols
and a long case-knife.
"Bon jour, Ma'm'selle Adrienne," he cheerily called, waving his free
hand in greeting to a small, dark lass standing on the step of a
veranda and indolently swinging a broom. "Comment allez-vous auj
ourd'hui?"
"J'm'porte tres bien, merci, Mo'sieu Rene," was the quick response; "et
vous?"
"Oh, I'm as lively as a cricket."
"Going a hunting?"
"No, just up here a little way--just on business--up to Mo'sieu
Roussillon's for a moment."
"Yes," the girl responded in a tone indicative of something very like
spleen, "yes, undoubtedly, Mo'sieu de Ronville; your business there
seems quite pressing of late. I have noticed your industrious
application to that business."
"Ta-ta, little one," he wheedled, lowering his voice; "you mustn't go
to making bug-bears out of nothing."
"Bug-bears!" she retorted, "you go on about your business and I'll
attend to mine," and she flirted into the house.
Rene laughed under his breath, standing a moment as if expecting her to
come out again; but she did not, and he resumed his walk singing
softly--
"Elle a les joues vermeilles, vermeilles, Ma belle, ma belle petite."
But ten to one he was not thinking of Madamoiselle Adrienne Bourcier.
His mind, however, must have been absorbingly occupied; for in the
straight, open way he met Father Beret and did not see him until he
came near bumping against the old man, who stepped aside with
astonishing agility and said--
"Dieu vous benisse, mon fils; but what is your great hurry--where can
you be going in such happy haste?" Rene did not stop to parley with the
priest. He flung some phrase of pleasant greeting back over his
shoulder as he trudged on, his heart beginning a tattoo against his
ribs when the Roussillon place came in sight, and he took hold of his
mustache to pull it, as some men must do in moments of nervousness and
bashfulness. If sounds ever have color, the humming in his ears was of
a rosy hue; if thoughts ever exhale fragrance, his brain overflowed
with the sweets of violet and heliotrope.
He had in mind what he was going to say when Alice and he should be
alone together. It was a pretty speech, he thought; indeed a very
thrilling little speech, by the way it stirred his own nerve-centers as
he conned it over.
Madame Roussillon met him at the door in not a very good humor.
"Is Mademoiselle Alice here?" he ventured to demand.
"Alice? no, she's not here; she's never here just when I want her most.
V'la le picbois et la grive--see the woodpecker and the robin--eating
the cherries, eating every one of them, and that girl running off
somewhere instead of staying here and picking them," she railed in
answer to the young man's polite inquiry. "I haven't seen her these
four hours, neither her nor that rascally hunchback, Jean. They're up
to some mischief, I'll be bound!"
Madame Roussillon puffed audibly between phrases; but she suddenly
became very mild when relieved of her tirade.
"Mais entrez," she added in a pleasant tone, "come in and tell me the
news."
Rene's disappointment rushed into his face, but he managed to laugh it
aside.
"Father Beret has just been telling me," said Madame Roussillon, "that
our friend Long-Hair made some trouble last night. How about it?"
Rene told her what he knew and added that Long-Hair would probably
never be seen again.
"He was shot, no doubt of it," he went on, "and is now being nibbled by
fish and turtles. We tracked him by his blood to where he jumped into
the Wabash. He never came out."
Strangely enough it happened that, at the very time of this chat
between Madame Roussillon and Rene Alice was bandaging Long-Hair's
wounded leg with strips of her apron. It was under some willows which
overhung the bank of a narrow and shallow lagoon or slough, which in
those days extended a mile or two back into the country on the farther
side of the river. Alice and Jean went over in a pirogue to see if the
water lilies, haunting a pond there, were yet beginning to bloom. They
landed at a convenient spot some distance up the little lagoon, made
the boat fast by dragging its prow high ashore, and were on the point
of setting out across a neck of wet, grassy land to the pond, when a
deep grunt, not unlike that of a self-satisfied pig, attracted them to
the willows, where they discovered Long-Hair, badly wounded, weltering
in some black mud.
His hiding-place was cunningly chosen, save that the mire troubled him,
letting him down by slow degrees, and threatening to engulf him bodily;
and he was now too weak to extricate himself. He lifted his head and
glared. His face was grimy, his hair matted with mud. Alice, although
brave enough and quite accustomed to startling experiences, uttered a
cry when she saw those snaky eyes glistening so savagely amid the
shadows. But Jean was quick to recognize Long-Hair; he had often seen
him about town, a figure not to be forgotten.
"They've been hunting him everywhere," he said in a half whisper to
Alice, clutching the skirt of her dress. "It's Long-Hair, the Indian
who stole the brandy; I know him."
Alice recoiled a pace or two.
"Let's go back and tell 'em," Jean added, still whispering, "they want
to kill him; Oncle Jazon said so. Come on!"
He gave her dress a jerk; but she did not move any farther back; she
was looking at the blood oozing from a wound in the Indian's leg.
"He is shot, he is hurt, Jean, we must help him," she presently said,
recovering her self-control, yet still pale. "We must get him out of
that bad place."
Jean caught Alice's merciful spirit with sympathetic readiness, and
showed immediate willingness to aid her.
It was a difficult thing to do; but there was a will and of course a
way. They had knives with which they cut willows to make a standing
place on the mud. While they were doing this they spoke friendly words
to Long-Hair, who understood French a little, and at last they got hold
of his arms, tugged, rested, tugged again, and finally managed to help
him to a dry place, still under the willows, where he could lie more at
ease. Jean carried water in his cap with which they washed the wound
and the stolid savage face. Then Alice tore up her cotton apron, in
which she had hoped to bear home a load of lilies, and with the strips
bound the wound very neatly. It took a long time, during which the
Indian remained silent and apparently quite indifferent.
Long-Hair was a man of superior physique, tall, straight, with the
muscles of a Vulcan; and while he lay stretched on the ground half clad
and motionless, he would have been a grand model for an heroic figure
in bronze. Yet from every lineament there came a strange repelling
influence, like that from a snake. Alice felt almost unbearable disgust
while doing her merciful task; but she bravely persevered until it was
finished.
It was now late in the afternoon, and the sun would be setting before
they could reach home.
"We must hurry back, Jean," Alice said, turning to depart. "It will be
all we can do to reach the other side in daylight. I'm thinking that
they'll be out hunting for us too, if we don't move right lively. Come."
She gave the Indian another glance when she had taken but a step. He
grunted and held up something in his hand--something that shone with a
dull yellow light. It was a small, oval, gold locket which she had
always worn in her bosom. She sprang and snatched it from his palm.
"Thank you," she exclaimed, smiling gratefully. "I am so glad you found
it."
The chain by which the locket had hung was broken, doubtless by some
movement while dragging Long-Hair out of the mud, and the lid had
sprung open, exposing a miniature portrait of Alice, painted when she
was a little child, probably not two years old. It was a sweet baby
face, archly bright, almost surrounded with a fluff of golden hair. The
neck and the upper line of the plump shoulders, with a trace of richly
delicate lace and a string of pearls, gave somehow a suggestion of
patrician daintiness.
Long-Hair looked keenly into Alice's eyes, when she stooped to take the
locket from his hand, but said nothing.
She and Jean now hurried away, and, so vigorously did they paddle the
pirogue, that the sky was yet red in the west when they reached home
and duly received their expected scolding from Madame Roussillon.
Alice sealed Jean's lips as to their adventure; for she had made up her
mind to save Long-Hair if possible, and she felt sure that the only way
to do it would be to trust no one but Father Beret.
It turned out that Long-Hair's wound was neither a broken bone nor a
cut artery. The flesh of his leg, midway between the hip and the knee,
was pierced; the bullet had bored a neat hole clean through. Father
Beret took the case in hand, and with no little surgical skill
proceeded to set the big Indian upon his feet again. The affair had to
be cleverly managed. Food, medicines and clothing were surreptitiously
borne across the river; a bed of grass was kept fresh under Long-Hair's
back; his wound was regularly dressed; and finally his weapons--a
tomahawk, a knife, a strong bow and a quiver of arrows--which he had
hidden on the night of his bold theft, were brought to him.
"Now go and sin no more," said good Father Beret; but he well knew that
his words were mere puffs of articulate wind in the ear of the grim and
silent savage, who limped away with an air of stately dignity into the
wilderness.
A load fell from Alice's mind when Father Beret informed her of
Long-Hair's recovery and departure. Day and night the dread lest some
of the men should find out his hiding-place and kill him had depressed
and worried her. And now, when it was all over, there still hovered
like an elusive shadow in her consciousness a vague haunting impression
of the incident's immense significance as an influence in her life. To
feel that she had saved a man from death was a new sensation of itself;
but the man and the circumstances were picturesque; they invited
imagination; they furnished an atmosphere of romance dear to all young
and healthy natures, and somehow stirred her soul with a strange appeal.
Long-Hair's imperturbable calmness, his stolid, immobile countenance,
the mysterious reptilian gleam of his shifty black eyes, and the
soulless expression always lurking in them, kept a fascinating hold on
the girl's memory. They blended curiously with the impressions left by
the romances she had read in M. Roussillon's mildewed books.
Long-Hair was not a young man; but it would have been impossible to
guess near his age. His form and face simply showed long experience and
immeasurable vigor. Alice remembered with a shuddering sensation the
look he gave her when she took the locket from his hand. It was of but
a second's duration, yet it seemed to search every nook of her being
with its subtle power.
Romancers have made much of their Indian heroes, picturing them as
models of manly beauty and nobility; but all fiction must be taken with
liberal pinches of salt. The plain truth is that dark savages of the
pure blood often do possess the magnetism of perfect physical
development and unfathomable mental strangeness; but real beauty they
never have. Their innate repulsiveness is so great that, like the
snake's charm, it may fascinate; yet an indescribable, haunting disgust
goes with it. And, after all, if Alice had been asked to tell just how
she felt toward the Indian she had labored so hard to save, she would
promptly have said:
"I loathe him as I do a toad!"
Nor would Father Beret, put to the same test, have made a substantially
different confession. His work, to do which his life went as fuel to
fire, was training the souls of Indians for the reception of divine
grace; but experience had not changed his first impression of savage
character. When he traveled in the wilderness he carried the Word and
the Cross; but he was also armed with a gun and two good pistols, not
to mention a dangerous knife. The rumor prevailed that Father Beret
could drive a nail at sixty yards with his rifle, and at twenty snuff a
candle with either one of his pistols.