Colonel Zane, a rugged, stalwart pioneer, with a strong, dark face,
sat listening to his old friend's dramatic story. At its close a
genial smile twinkled in his fine dark eyes.
"Well, well, Sheppard, no doubt it was a thrilling adventure to you,"
he said. "It might have been a little more interesting, and doubtless
would, had I not sent Wetzel and Jonathan to look you up."
"You did? How on earth did you know I was on the border? I counted
much on the surprise I should give you."
"My Indian runners leave Fort Pitt ahead of any travelers, and
acquaint me with particulars."
"I remembered a fleet-looking Indian who seemed to be asking for
information about us, when we arrived at Fort Pitt. I am sorry I did
not take the fur-trader's advice in regard to the guide. But I was in
such a hurry to come, and didn't feel able to bear the expense of a
raft or boat that we might come by river. My nephew brought
considerable gold, and I all my earthly possessions."
"All's well that ends well," replied Colonel Zane cheerily. "But we
must thank Providence that Wetzel and Jonathan came up in the nick
of time."
"Indeed, yes. I'm not likely to forget those fierce savages. How they
slipped off into the darkness! I wonder if Wetzel pursued them? He
disappeared last night, and we did not see him again. In fact we
hardly had a fair look at him. I question if I should recognize him
now, unless by his great stature."
"He was ahead of Jonathan on the trail. That is Wetzel's way. In times
of danger he is seldom seen, yet is always near. But come, let us go
out and look around. I am running up a log cabin which will come in
handy for you."
They passed out into the shade of pine and maples. A winding path led
down a gentle slope. On the hillside under a spreading tree a throng
of bearded pioneers, clad in faded buckskins and wearing white-ringed
coonskin caps, were erecting a log cabin.
"Life here on the border is keen, hard, invigorating," said Colonel
Zane. "I tell you, George Sheppard, in spite of your gray hair and
your pretty daughter, you have come out West because you want to live
among men who do things."
"Colonel, I won't gainsay I've still got hot blood," replied Sheppard;
"but I came to Fort Henry for land. My old home in Williamsburg has
fallen into ruin together with the fortunes of my family. I brought my
daughter and my nephew because I wanted them to take root in
new soil."
"Well, George, right glad we are to have you. Where are your sons? I
remember them, though 'tis sixteen long years since I left old
Williamsburg."
"Gone. The Revolution took my sons. Helen is the last of the family."
"Well, well, indeed that's hard. Independence has cost you colonists
as big a price as border-freedom has us pioneers. Come, old friend,
forget the past. A new life begins for you here, and it will be one
which gives you much. See, up goes a cabin; that will soon be
your home."
Sheppard's eye marked the sturdy pioneers and a fast diminishing pile
of white-oak logs.
"Ho-heave!" cried a brawny foreman.
A dozen stout shoulders sagged beneath a well-trimmed log.
"Ho-heave!" yelled the foreman.
"See, up she goes," cried the colonel, "and to-morrow night she'll
shed rain."
They walked down a sandy lane bounded on the right by a wide, green
clearing, and on the left by a line of chestnuts and maples, outposts
of the thick forests beyond.
"Yours is a fine site for a house," observed Sheppard, taking in the
clean-trimmed field that extended up the hillside, a brook that
splashed clear and noisy over the stones to tarry in a little
grass-bound lake which forced water through half-hollowed logs into a
spring house.
"I think so; this is the fourth time I've put up a' cabin on this
land," replied the colonel.
"How's that?"
"The redskins are keen to burn things."
Sheppard laughed at the pioneer's reply. "It's not difficult, Colonel
Zane, to understand why Fort Henry has stood all these years, with you
as its leader. Certainly the location for your cabin is the finest in
the settlement. What a view!"
High upon a bluff overhanging the majestic, slow-winding Ohio, the
colonel's cabin afforded a commanding position from which to view the
picturesque valley. Sheppard's eye first caught the outline of the
huge, bold, time-blackened fort which frowned protectingly over
surrounding log-cabins; then he saw the wide-sweeping river with its
verdant islands, golden, sandy bars, and willow-bordered shores, while
beyond, rolling pastures of wavy grass merging into green forests that
swept upward with slow swell until lost in the dim purple of distant
mountains.
"Sixteen years ago I came out of the thicket upon yonder bluff, and
saw this valley. I was deeply impressed by its beauty, but more by its
wonderful promise."
"Were you alone?"
"I and my dog. There had been a few white men before me on the river;
but I was the first to see this glorious valley from the bluff. Now,
George, I'll let you have a hundred acres of well-cleared land. The
soil is so rich you can raise two crops in one season. With some
stock, and a few good hands, you'll soon be a busy man."
"I didn't expect so much land; I can't well afford to pay for it."
"Talk to me of payment when the farm yields an income. Is this young
nephew of yours strong and willing?"
"He is, and has gold enough to buy a big farm."
"Let him keep his money, and make a comfortable home for some good
lass. We marry our young people early out here. And your daughter,
George, is she fitted for this hard border life?"
"Never fear for Helen."
"The brunt of this pioneer work falls on our women. God bless them,
how heroic they've been! The life here is rough for a man, let alone a
woman. But it is a man's game. We need girls, girls who will bear
strong men. Yet I am always saddened when I see one come out on
the border."
"I think I knew what I was bringing Helen to, and she didn't flinch,"
said Sheppard, somewhat surprised at the tone in which the
colonel spoke.
"No one knows until he has lived on the border. Well, well, all this
is discouraging to you. Ah! here is Miss Helen with my sister."
The colonel's fine, dark face lost its sternness, and brightened with
a smile.
"I hope you rested well after your long ride."
"I am seldom tired, and I have been made most comfortable. I thank you
and your sister," replied the girl, giving Colonel Zane her hand, and
including both him and his sister in her grateful glance.
The colonel's sister was a slender, handsome young woman, whose dark
beauty showed to most effective advantage by the contrast with her
companion's fair skin, golden hair, and blue eyes.
Beautiful as was Helen Sheppard, it was her eyes that held Colonel
Zane irresistibly. They were unusually large, of a dark purple-blue
that changed, shaded, shadowed with her every thought.
"Come, let us walk," Colonel Zane said abruptly, and, with Mr.
Sheppard, followed the girls down the path. He escorted them to the
fort, showed a long room with little squares cut in the rough-hewn
logs, many bullet holes, fire-charred timbers, and dark stains,
terribly suggestive of the pain and heroism which the defense of that
rude structure had cost.
Under Helen's eager questioning Colonel Zane yielded to his weakness
for story-telling, and recited the history of the last siege of Fort
Henry; how the renegade Girty swooped down upon the settlement with
hundreds of Indians and British soldiers; how for three days of
whistling bullets, flaming arrows, screeching demons, fire, smoke, and
attack following attack, the brave defenders stood at their posts,
there to die before yielding.
"Grand!" breathed Helen, and her eyes glowed. "It was then Betty Zane
ran with the powder? Oh! I've heard the story."
"Let my sister tell you of that," said the colonel, smiling.
"You! Was it you?" And Helen's eyes glowed brighter with the light of
youth's glory in great deeds.
"My sister has been wedded and widowed since then," said Colonel Zane,
reading in Helen's earnest scrutiny of his sister's calm, sad face a
wonder if this quiet woman could be the fearless and famed
Elizabeth Zane.
Impulsively Helen's hand closed softly over her companion's. Out of
the girlish sympathetic action a warm friendship was born.
"I imagine things do happen here," said Mr. Sheppard, hoping to hear
more from Colonel Zane.
The colonel smiled grimly.
"Every summer during fifteen years has been a bloody one on the
border. The sieges of Fort Henry, and Crawford's defeat, the biggest
things we ever knew out here, are matters of history; of course you
are familiar with them. But the numberless Indian forays and attacks,
the women who have been carried into captivity by renegades, the
murdered farmers, in fact, ceaseless war never long directed at any
point, but carried on the entire length of the river, are matters
known only to the pioneers. Within five miles of Fort Henry I can show
you where the laurel bushes grow three feet high over the ashes of two
settlements, and many a clearing where some unfortunate pioneer had
staked his claim and thrown up a log cabin, only to die fighting for
his wife and children. Between here and Fort Pitt there is only one
settlement, Yellow Creek, and most of its inhabitants are survivors of
abandoned villages farther up the river. Last summer we had the
Moravian Massacre, the blackest, most inhuman deed ever committed.
Since then Simon Girty and his bloody redskins have lain low."
"You must always have had a big force," said Sheppard.
"We've managed always to be strong enough, though there never were a
large number of men here. During the last siege I had only forty in
the fort, counting men, women and boys. But I had pioneers and women
who could handle a rifle, and the best bordermen on the frontier."
"Do you make a distinction between pioneers and bordermen?" asked
Sheppard.
"Indeed, yes. I am a pioneer; a borderman is an Indian hunter, or
scout. For years my cabins housed Andrew Zane, Sam and John McCollock,
Bill Metzar, and John and Martin Wetzel, all of whom are dead. Not one
saved his scalp. Fort Henry is growing; it has pioneers, rivermen,
soldiers, but only two bordermen. Wetzel and Jonathan are the only
ones we have left of those great men."
"They must be old," mused Helen, with a dreamy glow still in her eyes.
"Well, Miss Helen, not in years, as you mean. Life here is old in
experience; few pioneers, and no bordermen, live to a great age.
Wetzel is about forty, and my brother Jonathan still a young man; but
both are old in border lore."
Earnestly, as a man who loves his subject, Colonel Zane told his
listeners of these two most prominent characters of the border.
Sixteen years previously, when but boys in years, they had cast in
their lot with his, and journeyed over the Virginian Mountains, Wetzel
to devote his life to the vengeful calling he had chosen, and Jonathan
to give rein to an adventurous spirit and love of the wilds. By some
wonderful chance, by cunning, woodcraft, or daring, both men had lived
through the years of border warfare which had brought to a close the
careers of all their contemporaries.
For many years Wetzel preferred solitude to companionship; he roamed
the wilderness in pursuit of Indians, his life-long foes, and seldom
appeared at the settlement except to bring news of an intended raid of
the savages. Jonathan also spent much time alone in the woods, or
scouting along the river. But of late years a friendship had ripened
between the two bordermen. Mutual interest had brought them together
on the trail of a noted renegade, and when, after many long days of
patient watching and persistent tracking, the outlaw paid an awful
penalty for his bloody deeds, these lone and silent men were friends.
Powerful in build, fleet as deer, fearless and tireless, Wetzel's
peculiar bloodhound sagacity, ferocity, and implacability, balanced by
Jonathan's keen intelligence and judgment caused these bordermen to
become the bane of redmen and renegades. Their fame increased with
each succeeding summer, until now the people of the settlement looked
upon wonderful deeds of strength and of woodcraft as a matter of
course, rejoicing in the power and skill with which these men
were endowed.
By common consent the pioneers attributed any mysterious deed, from
the finding of a fat turkey on a cabin doorstep, to the discovery of a
savage scalped and pulled from his ambush near a settler's spring, to
Wetzel and Jonathan. All the more did they feel sure of this
conclusion because the bordermen never spoke of their deeds. Sometimes
a pioneer living on the outskirts of the settlement would be awakened
in the morning by a single rifle shot, and on peering out would see a
dead Indian lying almost across his doorstep, while beyond, in the
dim, gray mist, a tall figure stealing away. Often in the twilight on
a summer evening, while fondling his children and enjoying his smoke
after a hard day's labor in the fields, this same settler would see
the tall, dark figure of Jonathan Zane step noiselessly out of a
thicket, and learn that he must take his family and flee at once to
the fort for safety. When a settler was murdered, his children carried
into captivity by Indians, and the wife given over to the power of
some brutal renegade, tragedies woefully frequent on the border, Wetzel
and Jonathan took the trail alone. Many a white woman was returned
alive and, sometimes, unharmed to her relatives; more than one maiden
lived to be captured, rescued, and returned to her lover, while almost
numberless were the bones of brutal redmen lying in the deep and
gloomy woods, or bleaching on the plains, silent, ghastly reminders of
the stern justice meted out by these two heroes.
"Such are my two bordermen, Miss Sheppard. The fort there, and all
these cabins, would be only black ashes, save for them, and as for us,
our wives and children--God only knows."
"Haven't they wives and children, too?" asked Helen.
"No," answered Colonel Zane, with his genial smile. "Such joys are not
for bordermen."
"Why not? Fine men like them deserve happiness," declared Helen.
"It is necessary we have such," said the colonel simply, "and they
cannot be bordermen unless free as the air blows. Wetzel and Jonathan
have never had sweethearts. I believe Wetzel loved a lass once; but he
was an Indian-killer whose hands were red with blood. He silenced his
heart, and kept to his chosen, lonely life. Jonathan does not seem to
realize that women exist to charm, to please, to be loved and married.
Once we twitted him about his brothers doing their duty by the border,
whereupon he flashed out: 'My life is the border's: my sweetheart is
the North Star!'"
Helen dreamily watched the dancing, dimpling waves that broke on the
stones of the river shore. All unconscious of the powerful impression
the colonel's recital had made upon her, she was feeling the greatness
of the lives of these bordermen, and the glory it would now be for her
to share with others the pride in their protection.
"Say, Sheppard, look here," said Colonel Zane, on the return to his
cabin, "that girl of yours has a pair of eyes. I can't forget the way
they flashed! They'll cause more trouble here among my garrison than
would a swarm of redskins."
"No! You don't mean it! Out here in this wilderness?" queried Sheppard
doubtfully.
"Well, I do."
"O Lord! What a time I've had with that girl! There was one man
especially, back home, who made our lives miserable. He was rich and
well born; but Helen would have none of him. He got around me, old
fool that I am! Practically stole what was left of my estate, and
gambled it away when Helen said she'd die before giving herself to
him. It was partly on his account that I brought her away. Then there
were a lot of moon-eyed beggars after her all the time, and she's
young and full of fire. I hoped I'd marry her to some farmer out here,
and end my days in peace."
"Peace? With eyes like those? Never on this green earth," and Colonel
Zane laughed as he slapped his friend on the shoulder. "Don't worry,
old fellow. You can't help her having those changing dark-blue eyes
any more than you can help being proud of them. They have won me,
already, susceptible old backwoodsman! I'll help you with this
spirited young lady. I've had experience, Sheppard, and don't you
forget it. First, my sister, a Zane all through, which is saying
enough. Then as sweet and fiery a little Indian princess as ever
stepped in a beaded moccasin, and since, more than one beautiful,
impulsive creature. Being in authority, I suppose it's natural that
all the work, from keeping the garrison ready against an attack, to
straightening out love affairs, should fall upon me. I'll take the
care off your shoulders; I'll keep these young dare-devils from
killing each other over Miss Helen's favors. I certainly--Hello! There
are strangers at the gate. Something's up."
Half a dozen rough-looking men had appeared from round the corner of
the cabin, and halted at the gate.
"Bill Elsing, and some of his men from Yellow Creek," said Colonel
Zane, as he went toward the group.
"Hullo, Kurnel," was the greeting of the foremost, evidently the
leader. "We've lost six head of hosses over our way, an' are out
lookin' 'em up."
"The deuce you have! Say, this horse-stealing business is getting
interesting. What did you come in for?"
"Wal, we meets Jonathan on the ridge about sunup, an' he sent us back
lickety-cut. Said he had two of the hosses corralled, an' mebbe Wetzel
could git the others."
"That's strange," replied Colonel Zane thoughtfully.
"'Pears to me Jack and Wetzel hev some redskins treed, an' didn't want
us to spile the fun. Mebbe there wasn't scalps enough to go round.
Anyway, we come in, an' we'll hang up here to-day."
"Bill, who's doing this horse-stealing?"
"Damn if I know. It's a mighty pert piece of work. I've a mind it's
some slick white fellar, with Injuns backin' him."
Helen noted, when she was once more indoors, that Colonel Zane's wife
appeared worried. Her usual placid expression was gone. She put off
the playful overtures of her two bright boys with unusual
indifference, and turned to her husband with anxious questioning as to
whether the strangers brought news of Indians. Upon being assured that
such was not the case, she looked relieved, and explained to Helen
that she had seen armed men come so often to consult the colonel
regarding dangerous missions and expeditions, that the sight of a
stranger caused her unspeakable dread.
"I am accustomed to danger, yet I can never control my fears for my
husband and children," said Mrs. Zane. "The older I grow the more of a
coward I am. Oh! this border life is sad for women. Only a little
while ago my brother Samuel McColloch was shot and scalped right here
on the river bank. He was going to the spring for a bucket of water. I
lost another brother in almost the same way. Every day during the
summer a husband and a father fall victim to some murderous Indian. My
husband will go in the same way some day. The border claims them all."
"Bessie, you must not show your fears to our new friend. And, Miss
Helen, don't believe she's the coward she would make out," said the
colonel's sister smilingly.
"Betty is right, Bess, don't frighten her," said Colonel Zane. "I'm
afraid I talked too much to-day. But, Miss Helen, you were so
interested, and are such a good listener, that I couldn't refrain.
Once for all let me say that you will no doubt see stirring life here;
but there is little danger of its affecting you. To be sure I think
you'll have troubles; but not with Indians or outlaws."
He winked at his wife and sister. At first Helen did not understand
his sally, but then she blushed red all over her fair face.
Some time after that, while unpacking her belongings, she heard the
clatter of horses' hoofs on the rocky road, accompanied by loud
voices. Running to the window, she saw a group of men at the gate.
"Miss Sheppard, will you come out?" called Colonel Zane's sister from
the door. "My brother Jonathan has returned."
Helen joined Betty at the door, and looked over her shoulder.
"Wal, Jack, ye got two on 'em, anyways," drawled a voice which she
recognized as that of Elsing's.
A man, lithe and supple, slipped from the back of one of the horses,
and, giving the halter to Elsing with a single word, turned and
entered the gate. Colonel Zane met him there.
"Well, Jonathan, what's up?"
"There's hell to pay," was the reply, and the speaker's voice rang
clear and sharp.
Colonel Zane laid his hand on his brother's shoulder, and thus they
stood for a moment, singularly alike, and yet the sturdy pioneer was,
somehow, far different from the dark-haired borderman.
"I thought we'd trouble in store from the look on your face," said the
colonel calmly. "I hope you haven't very bad news on the first day,
for our old friends from Virginia."
"Jonathan," cried Betty when he did not answer the colonel. At her
call he half turned, and his dark eyes, steady, strained like those of
a watching deer, sought his sister's face.
"Betty, old Jake Lane was murdered by horse thieves yesterday, and
Mabel Lane is gone."
"Oh!" gasped Betty; but she said nothing more.
Colonel Zane cursed inaudibly.
"You know, Eb, I tried to keep Lane in the settlement for Mabel's
sake. But he wanted to work that farm. I believe horse-stealing wasn't
as much of an object as the girl. Pretty women are bad for the border,
or any other place, I guess. Wetzel has taken the trail, and I came in
because I've serious suspicions--I'll explain to you alone."
The borderman bowed gravely to Helen, with a natural grace, and yet a
manner that sat awkwardly upon him. The girl, slightly flushed, and
somewhat confused by this meeting with the man around whom her
romantic imagination had already woven a story, stood in the doorway
after giving him a fleeting glance, the fairest, sweetest picture of
girlish beauty ever seen.
The men went into the house; but their voices came distinctly through
the door.
"Eb, if Bing Legget or Girty ever see that big-eyed lass, they'll have
her even if Fort Henry has to be burned, an' in case they do get her,
Wetzel an' I'll have taken our last trail."