standing at the mouth of the Mississippi in 1682, felt sure that in
time Louis XIV would reward him for adding this valley to the Empire,
as indeed he did, not with honors and titles, for which the explorer
cared nothing, but with more men and ships to develop the resources of
the Great River.
But even in the midst of the glory of claiming such a kingdom, the
little group of adventurers complained of the heat and the miasma.
Anthony growled softly: "I do wish that explorers might go north in
summer and south in winter like the birds and buffalo. Last winter we
were frost-bitten in the ice. Now we are sweltering at the outlet in
the time of year when the sources of the river are pleasant."
"This hot, swampy land is breeding fever among us. We cannot find
fruits to allay it nor any wholesome meat to counteract it as we did
further up the stream," said Tonty. "We must pay for our discoveries in
physical discomfort."
"In a word," declared the Sieur La Salle, "we are, as you all know,
on the verge of starvation. I have resolved of necessity to eat the
only game this region affords. Anthony, is your pistol ready?" and he
motioned to the Indian who longed for a necklace. "Then follow this
man."
Poor Anthony, rebellion in his long-drawn face and repugnance in every
line of his figure, moved behind his guide along a half-submerged
path. Soon they came to a pile of rotted tree-trunks. Among them the
Indian pointed out the quarry, which would have been quite invisible to
unaccustomed eyes.
Swallowing a shudder and adjusting his pistol, Anthony determined to
blot out his former cowardice. So intent was he that he forgot the
command about innocent-looking logs. He stepped upon one to get a
better aim at the reptile. His foot-rest slipped, a flail hit him with
so much force that he might have been driven straight into the opening
jaws of the living log had not the wary Indian grabbed his jerkin even
as he touched the snare and yanked him away at right angles, one hand
clutching the air, the other tight on the pistol.
The sweep of the beast's tail was quicker than the eye could follow,
but its body was so clumsily built that it needed several seconds to
turn. In that flash of time Anthony's pride rose above fear and horror,
and as the brute, after missing its kill, was sinking itself into the
ooze he aimed at one of the wicked little eyes and banged away.
The first seen reptile had vanished as completely as though it had
never existed. Anthony's shot was fatal to the second one.
The Indian guide's whoop of triumph brought others to help haul out the
game and prepare it for roasting. The ravenous crowd shouted for glee.
This stuff could be chewed and swallowed, and therefore it was food.
Then Anthony, having found himself, went back to his superior officer
whistling with restored self-confidence. He knew that many more such
distasteful meals would have to be provided ere they worked their way
up from the swamp lands and out of starvation into the productive
regions and into touch with the world.
"Sieur La Salle," he said, "if in the pursuit of your duty to France
you have come to such a pass that you must eat diabolical game, I can
shoot it. Behold in me, at your service, chief high executioner to his
Satanic Majesty the El-lagarto!"
VI
ON THE ROCK
Holding the Only Fortress of the Valley against the Iroquois for Henry
Tonty--An Owl Saves a Nation
ANTHONY frowned at the capable back of Henry Tonty as it mounted the
steep trail in front of him. He wished that he dared to sigh aloud to
call this energetic man's attention to the fact that helpers sometimes
wearied and that this was one of the times.
For Anthony hated work. Common useful labor tired him. "Let the Indians
do it," he thought. The Indians passed the idea on, "Let the squaws do
it."
But the squaws were already over-busy curing furs and getting ready
to put in the spring crops. So Tonty had decreed that Frenchmen and
Indians alike should lend a hand at strengthening the fort on top of
the Rock of the Illinois. It had been hastily built in the autumn and
now needed the finishing touches.
Every Frenchman wanted to be a military officer or a wandering
_coureur de bois_. Each Indian preferred the life of a hunter or a
warrior. Yet here they were all working busily under a commander who
said that they must dig ditches or fell trees for the mammoth stockade.
Now Tonty had an artificial iron hand to take the place of one he
had lost in battle. He was clever, almost uncanny, in the use of it.
The bad Indians whom he slapped with it and the good Indians whom he
directed by its metal point regarded it equally with fearsome rolling
eyes as very big medicine.
Tonty had also an iron will. Every Frenchman felt it. Few could go
against it. His mandates were obeyed; the fort improved.
The Rock was a fine spot for such a defense. It rose out of a plain
high above all other landmarks. Over a hundred feet up in the air its
almost flat top spread out in an acre of ground with a running spring
hidden in its shrubbery. On the north the Illinois River flowed past
its base. Three sides dropped sheer to the plain. The fourth had a
difficult almost perpendicular path.
A few men could hold it against many.
Ever since the destruction of Crevecoeur the Sieur La Salle had
wanted to set a fort upon the Mississippi midway between north and
south to be the center of the fur trade. He had found here on the
tributary Illinois a natural fortress easily defended and already
surrounded by loyal Indian towns. Upon his return from the mouth of the
Mississippi he had built the stockade. For the present he would make it
answer for his central headquarters. It was christened Fort Saint Louis.
The crisp spring air was ideal for industry and Tonty was determined
to get the buildings in perfect order. To do this it was necessary
to bring various materials from the plain. The end in view was good.
Anthony knew that; but he decided as his gang of workmen reached the
heights, threw down their loads and panted for breath, that they had
done enough for the present.
He winked at a really handsome young Indian standing near him and
knew by a single exchange of glances that this fellow was of the same
opinion. He had loved the savage and had coaxed him into fagging for
his white brother ever since the day of their first meeting in the
fall. For Anthony was apt to give his light-hearted affections to any
chum who promised to be full of fun.
As Tonty stood ready with his next order he faced Anthony's way. That
naughty Frenchman with his team-mate beside him paused abruptly in the
act of mopping his brow and fixed his eyes, popping with amazement, on
a tree near him where hopped two robins. All the Indians round about
followed his stare and watched the robins. Even busy Tonty looked. One
bird chirped at the workers; the other bird turned his head on one side
and said to the first bird in perfectly good Illinois dialect, with a
thin little trilling robin voice, "Squaws work."
The Indians stood petrified. Tonty, ill-pleased at the interruption,
waved his hand impatiently and the robin said again, "Squaws work."
That magic hand! Every Indian saw it make the bird talk. What would it
do next? With an impulse for safety they turned as one man and went
scrambling, sliding and falling to the bottom of the hill.
Tonty was provoked. "Oh, Tony, that was such an untimely thing for
you to do when I need the workers. Such an old, old trick, too--so
childish!"
"It is all the better for being ancient and simple if it succeeds,"
grinned the unrepentant Anthony; "and besides, _I_ did not do it. I
couldn't. It is much harder than singing a tune."
"Didn't the sounds come through those crooked teeth of yours?"
Anthony shook his head and crossed his heart. His chum stood innocently
aloof. "Give us an hour, dear Tonty, to rest our muscles in a ball
game. At your signal I will bring them all here again to work at double
speed," and away he ran to play.
Tonty, heavy with care, went to the Sieur La Salle with the list of his
needs. The fort was nearly repaired. Quantities of stores, enough for
a siege, were arriving on the backs of squaws every hour in the day.
Bales and bales of furs by the same pack beasts were also coming up.
As the two leaders stood side by side and gazed down on the lovely
fertile plain, the happy towns and the rollicking ball game, they
talked of how best to hold the Great River valley from this vantage
point. A town of some six thousand Illinois lay just across the river.
In another direction, also within reach of the refuge of the fort, was
a village of Miamis almost as large. Of Shawnees, Weas, and half a
dozen others in much smaller tribes there were enough to make perhaps
some twenty thousand souls.
These were allies. Also they were dependents. They expected the
Sieur La Salle to give them French goods in exchange for furs and to
help provide them with food if their crops failed. First of all, his
soldiers and his steel weapons must protect them from their ferocious
enemies, the Iroquois.
He had claimed all this land with their consent. In return he must save
their constantly threatened lives. Until he could get a line of ships
coming through the Gulf to his new-found port, Fort Saint Louis must be
supplied from Canada by that route through the Great Lakes which he
had struggled over back and forth in so many heartbreaking journeys of
winter hardships.
On the Atlantic seaboard English towns were rooting themselves through
settlers who owned and cultivated their homesteads and meant to keep
them forever. Along the Pacific coast Spanish priests drilling the
heathen into civilized farmers owned the gardens where the adobe
missions were building, and stood ready to defend them. In the
Mississippi Valley between the two the little Rock of the Illinois,
a pinpoint on the map, a speck on the horizon, by the right of its
twenty armed Frenchmen held the whole vast region of the Great River
for France.
And the twenty Frenchmen, every one as careless, gay, and irresponsible
as Anthony, were playing ball while Fort Saint Louis stood empty and
neglected.
Tonty was justified in his anxiety as he listened to the Sieur La Salle
say: "The present governor of Canada is not like our former friend,
Frontenac. This commandant is an old man and a greedy politician
from Paris. He knows nothing of Indian warfare and does not see the
importance of this post. He will not send the men we need to defend
these towns nor will he give us the munitions and goods that we have
paid for in the furs already forwarded to him."
"There are less than a hundred pounds of powder--" interrupted Tonty,
"and the Iroquois are threatening even now--"
"Look!" cried La Salle, "look! Something has happened among the ball
players."
The dots of Indians, far below, had massed in a crowd at the center of
their field and as suddenly separated again with shrill wails, each
player going at swiftest pace in a different direction.
"Bad news! Prepare yourself for a deluge. As fast as the warning
spreads they will come here by villages. Put a good face on it," and
the nobleman made ready to receive his tenants. He was their overlord;
and he was at his best when dangers assailed him. His whole life was
spent in defying one tragedy after another. "There are stores enough to
feed them for several days--"
"When the powder gives out we can use bows and arrows, stones and
logs--"
The bearer of evil tidings had fallen exhausted at the base of the
Rock. Anthony was the first to come over the rim with the one word
message, "Iroquois."
Within the memory of these Illinois their valley had been conquered by
the unspeakable Iroquois, the Huns of this continent. Towns had been
destroyed, men killed, women tortured, children scalped, prisoners
burned. Then they had had no refuge. Now they flew to Sieur La Salle
and the Fort Saint Louis.
To the Rock they came pouring in such a horde as only fear can drive,
red bodies striving--contorted--palpitating--feathers awry--clothes
discarded--paint running in sweating streams. Hundreds of galloping
moccasined feet pounded out such a series of steps up that steep trail
as shovels could not have done in a whole season.
Sieur La Salle met them. His proud, domineering face showed that he had
no fear of anything. Tonty's sensitive Italian lips, quivering with
responsive excitement, answered their wild demands for the protective
medicine of his magic hand with all sorts of impossible promises.
As one means of restoring quiet, the missionary Father prayed as loud
as his big outdoor voice could shout. And Anthony attended by his
faithful shadow went about among them with that quirk of a smile they
all liked. His words were happily calm. He was a much better worker
in a panic than he was in a ditching gang. Together they reminded the
quaking ones that any man who could make a bird speak could surely save
them from the Iroquois. And who had not already heard of that talking
bird of a few hours ago?
A red sunset, a yellow rising moon has seldom looked upon a spot more
filled with human stress. The very air above the plateau quivered
with hurried breath as though a furnace stirred it. Every hour of that
awful night added to the number climbing the stair. At dawn they were
still coming. Peeping over the stockade and from perilous overhanging
lookouts they watched the plain. Without rest, without sleep, they
surged back and forth, quelled to a semblance of sanity by the white
men.
Peep o' dawn, a rising sun, a day of light showed a deserted vale. No
Iroquois! Their enemies had passed on some other trail. This was the
power of the iron hand. Let all evildoers beware!
The Illinois pledged fealty afresh to the commander who had for his
servant such a captain as Tonty. They scurried back to their homes.
This event had made the Illinois as stable as an Indian settlement can
ever be. It was not a town such as La Salle wanted, but it answered his
purpose. In his enthusiasm for the extension of France he saw so far
into the future that some of the things he planned could not be carried
out for a long, long time.
It was not until the year 1764 that his central city for the
Mississippi was founded and given the name of his choice, Saint Louis.
_Coureurs de bois_ began it. Indians were treated justly there. Noble
Pontiac, pathetic in his defeated old age, was given a home within its
stockade gates. A tablet to his memory hangs now in one of its finest
buildings.
La Fayette was one of the city's guests. Thomas Benton, a statesman,
lived there. From its trade depots the canvas-topped argosies were
fitted out for the gold-fields of the forties. It fought buccaneers,
land-grabbers, cholera, cyclones, floods, and renegades, and in each
trial came out victorious.
Spain at one time, England at another, tried to hold it without
success. But when it became American, it remained American. The French
choice of location gave it commercial success. Father Membre's shaven
crown would go high in pride could he see the churches, schools, and
hospitals it has to-day. Its parks, boulevards, and buildings would
delight Tonty's Parisian taste.
It was this vision of their Saint Louis to come that held these men to
the dangerous Rock.
Sieur La Salle knew that the peace of the valley might be broken at
any time. Men and munitions he must have. He left Tonty in command and
started again over the trail to Montreal to get by personal demands the
supplies that otherwise would not be given him.
In the false security which so often deceives the unprepared, the
villages went through the summer and into the fall under the fort in
which they had such superstitious faith.
Then again came the cry of, "Wolf, wolf!" Again the panic; again the
crowded Rock; again the night of horror. No magic availed. The day
revealed the Iroquois pack surrounding the hill. They sat on their
haunches and yelped as though they had come to stay. All day, all
night, the next day, the next night, three, four, five days and nights
they besieged the Illinois.
They did not attack. The one narrow cannon-swept path would rake off
their warriors as they climbed in single file. They meant to let the
Illinois make the next move in this dreadful game.
"If they find out how low our powder is--" began Tonty. He would not
mention even to himself the possibility of such a thing as actually
happened many years afterward on this very Rock when a warrior tribe of
Illinois was besieged by Pottawottomies and perished so miserably that
the place has ever since been called Starvation Rock.
The Father confessor of the flock was thinking of another danger. "If
the smallpox should break out here--"
Anthony laid a friendly hand on Tonty's arm. "Once you saved the
Illinois because you were brave enough to go into their camp alone."
Tonty shook his head. "No, it was because I did _not_ wear ear-rings!"
"It is my turn now to do what I can," and Anthony took his chum by the
hand. "Open the gates for us," he demanded.
When the guarded gates swung apart the two crept through and
disappeared down the incline toward the twinkling Iroquois camp.
Little owls--the forest was always full of them--hooted now here and
now there, calling back and forth in wavering minor notes. Tonty's ear
could not tell the difference between an owl's voice and a white man's
imitation of it, but any Indian could easily do so. The Illinois whom
Tonty asked to listen to the sounds was sure that part were made by
Anthony, but neither he nor any one else could say whether birds or
Anthony's companion made the rest.
These two mimics, half in joy over the adventure and half in fear of
its outcome, slipped nearer and nearer to the hostile camp. They peeped
at one place and then another to find the best spot in which to let the
Iroquois capture them.
At last they saw a tiny fire where sentinels were putting their
weapons in order. And in the shadow, quite like a page of a child's
picture-book, sat four little owls all a-row on a limb. It was the
stage setting that they wanted for their vaudeville act. Whether it
should turn out a comedy or a tragedy the endangered Illinois nation
would soon be able to tell.
A delicate, indefinite "oo-oo-oo-" did not attract special notice
from the sentinels. But when Anthony's heavier voice and very human
"hoo-oot" sounded close to them they jumped to attention, pounced upon
the pair and jerked them into the firelight for inspection as though
they had been a couple of rag dolls. In any surprising event there is
always a half-minute when even the most active will pause to decide
upon the next movement. A few seconds' inspection of their captives
were necessary before the sentinels would raise the alarm, "White man!"
On some such brief interval Anthony had built his plans. He pointed at
the owls and gazed open-mouthed and intent. It is a trick that never
fails. All the sentinels followed his glance. Not one of them looked
at the lips of the Illinois Indian standing beside Anthony. One of the
little owls blinking in the firelight shifted his feet, opened his beak
and whined in Iroquois, "Answer me--answer me."
Anthony reproachfully declared in the same language, "I _did_ answer
you; I _did_." Indeed every Iroquois had heard the boyish hoot.
One of the sentinels threw himself on the ground and rolled out of
sight into the dark. His personal safety was his one instinct. Another
ran to the chief speechless with alarm. But a third, who was not
possessed of an excitable temperament, clutched his prisoners with
fingers like steel and bade a paralyzed Iroquois bind their wrists.
Thus they were escorted toward a whooping band who were already running
to meet them. They were roughly handled, their clothes torn, their
faces scratched.
Yet the story of the owl as it traveled had its effect in putting
the two prisoners in a different class from the handful of Illinois
captives who were already bound both hands and feet. Anthony in
particular they examined with a dreadfully intimate curiosity, sticking
their fingers in his mouth to try the edges of his four unusual teeth
and picking at his ears. If he had had a beard--but no, his chin and
lips were smooth! Had there been rings in his ears--not even holes were
drilled in them! That is, had he been a whiskered, ear-ringed Spaniard
they would have killed him then and there. But since he was so plainly
French they hesitated as they had once done with Tonty, of whose magic
fingers they were much afraid.
They had various treaties with the French which they sometimes kept and
oftener broke. They never quite dared to murder a Frenchman offhand.
They generally tortured him and let him go.
So Anthony as he was dumped into a brush heap by the chief's fire
tried to tell his Illinois chum that they were safe enough and their
business in the enemies' camp successfully begun. If, as the night grew
cold and his bonds cut painfully and his captors looked more and more
like the red demons they were, his courage thinned and he shed a few
tears of weariness and self-pity, no one knew it.
It was easy enough to be brave at midnight when all the warriors were
still awake and baiting him, but his spirits were at low ebb in the
hour before dawn.
"Perhaps the chief, after a week's unsuccessful siege, may also feel
discouraged. This is the time to try him," thought Anthony as he gazed
in every direction, but saw no owl to help him. The brighter eyes of
his Illinois at his side showed him where to look and indicated that he
was ready to help.
The long, shivering cry of the owl woke the jaded chieftain, and
Anthony's echoing answer brought half a dozen chilled warriors to their
feet.
Anthony was sitting up and shaking his head at the owl. The Illinois
seemed to be asleep.
The owl said, "Answer me, answer me."
"Wait until the iron hand comes," replied Anthony with apparent secrecy
in a very audible whisper, "then _he_ will give bad medicine."
The owl laughed--yes--_laughed_!
Anthony hastily set his finger on his lips as a signal to the owl to be
silent. The owl obeyed. Anthony _pretended_ to _pretend_ to go to sleep!
The dismayed chiefs laid their ruffled feathers together. They did not
like the prospect of a visit from Tonty, who had more than once puzzled
and defeated them. His bad medicine was bitter to their taste.
Without stopping to call a powwow they summoned all hands to arms. They
released the Illinois prisoners and drove them out of camp. They roused
Anthony and his chum and bade them leave.
"But we don't want to go," protested Anthony. "We like to wait with
you."
The listening chiefs were overwrought. They dared not kill him, nor
keep him, nor send him back. They set some sentries over him, not to
prevent his escape, but to hold him so that he could not follow them!
For they were now bent on running away before Tonty's hand should
strike at them. Of armed force they were not afraid, but before black
magic they fled in panic.
Break o' day saw them going over the horizon.
Night in a far-away camp found the Iroquois breathing more easily. The
chief was still so nervous that a little owl above him disturbed him.
To his horror Anthony's voice in a poor imitation of the bird's call
came through the woods.
"Hoo-oo-oot!"
He clutched at his braves. They huddled round him. What an unwelcome
sight was Anthony as he came toward their hiding-place!
"How has the magician escaped his guards? Why does he follow me?" The
great dignitary gave way to his real feelings and with a howl of fear
ran still farther through the forest. All his braves trailed hot-foot
after him. Anthony trotted along in not too close pursuit.
On the morning of the seventh day Tonty looked down upon the deserted
plain. The enemy had left in the night. He wrote in his journal, "The
Iroquois retired discomfited."
Toward night the Illinois prisoners who had been released began to
straggle into the fort. Some were badly singed; others full of nasty
cuts; all were scared. They could not tell why the Iroquois had freed
them.
It was not until evening of the tenth day that Anthony and the Illinois
came back. They were ragged and tired. The Illinois was as solemn as
any screech-owl could be, but Anthony was full of laughter.
When all the tribes crowded round the two to thank them for driving the
besiegers away and rejoicing in their escape, he said in great glee:
"We did not _escape_. They ran from _us_!"
VII
JOLLY ROGER