A GIRL'S WAY
Lucy left her father's house one of these dry mornings, and stood for a
few moments in the grounds, inclosed by the palisade, gazing at the dark
forest, outlined so sharply against the blue of the sky. She could see
the green of the forest beyond the fort, and she knew that in the open
spaces, where the sun reached them, tiny wild flowers of pink and
purple, nestled low in the grass, were already in bloom. From the west a
wind sweet and soft was blowing, and, as she inhaled it, she wanted to
live, and she wanted all those about her to live. She wondered, if there
was not some way in which she could help.
The stout, double log cabins, rude, but full of comfort, stood in rows,
with well-trodden streets, between, then a fringe of grass around all,
and beyond that rose the palisade of stout stakes, driven deep into the
ground, and against each other. All was of the West and so was Lucy, a
tall, lithe young girl, her face tanned a healthy and becoming brown by
the sun, her clothing of home-woven red cloth, adorned at the wrists and
around the bottom of the skirt with many tiny beads of red and yellow
and blue and green, which, when she moved, flashed in the brilliant
light, like the quivering colors of a prism. She had thrust in her hair
a tiny plume of the scarlet tanager, and it lay there, like a flash of
flame, against the dark brown of her soft curls.
Where she stood she could see the water of the spring near the edge of
the forest sparkling in the sunlight, as if it wished to tantalize her,
but as she looked a thought came to her, and she acted upon it at once.
She went to the little square, where her father, John Ware, Ross and
others were in conference.
"Father," she exclaimed, "I will show you how to get the water!"
Mr. Upton and the other men looked at her in so much astonishment that
none of them replied, and Lucy used the opportunity.
"I know the way," she continued eagerly. "Open the gate, let the women
take the buckets--I will lead--and we can go to the spring and fill them
with water. Maybe the Indians won't fire on us!"
"Lucy, child!" exclaimed her father. "I cannot think of such a thing."
Then up spoke Tom Ross, wise in the ways of the wilderness.
"Mr. Upton," he said, "the girl is right. If the women are willing to go
out it must be done. It looks like an awful thing, but--if they die we
are here to avenge them and die with them, if they don't die we are all
saved because we can hold this fort, if we have water; without it every
soul here from the oldest man down to the littlest baby will be lost."
Mr. Upton covered his face with his hands.
"I do not like to think of it, Tom," he said.
The other men waited in silence.
Lucy looked appealingly at her father, but he turned his eyes away.
"See what the women say about it, Tom," he said at last.
The women thought well of it. There was not one border heroine, but
many; disregarding danger they prepared eagerly for the task, and soon
they were in line more than fifty, every one with a bucket or pail in
each hand. Henry Ware, looking on, said nothing. The intended act
appealed to the nature within him that was growing wilder every day.
A sentinel, peeping over the palisade, reported that all was quiet in
the forest, though, as he knew, the warriors were none the less
watchful.
"Open the gate," commanded Mr. Ware.
The heavy bars were quickly taken down, and the gate was swung wide.
Then a slim, scarlet-clad figure took her place at the head of the line,
and they passed out.
Lucy was borne on now by a great impulse, the desire to save the fort
and all these people whom she knew and loved. It was she who had
suggested the plan and she believed that it should be she who should
lead the way, when it came to the doing of it.
She felt a tremor when she was outside the gate, but it came from
excitement and not from fear--the exaltation of spirit would not permit
her to be afraid. She glanced at the forest, but it was only a blur
before her.
The slim, scarlet-clad figure led on. Lucy glanced over her shoulder,
and she saw the women following her in a double file, grave and
resolute. She did not look back again, but marched on straight toward
the spring. She began to feel now what she was doing, that she was
marching into the cannon's mouth, as truly as any soldier that ever led
a forlorn hope against a battery. She knew that hundreds of keen eyes
there in the forest before her were watching her every step, and that
behind her fathers and brothers and husbands were waiting, with an
anxiety that none of them had ever known before.
She expected every moment to hear the sharp whiplike crack of the rifle,
but there was no sound. The fort and all about it seemed to be inclosed
in a deathly stillness. She looked again at the forest, trying to see
the ambushed figures, but again it was only a blur before her, seeming
now and then to float in a kind of mist. Her pulses were beating fast,
she could hear the thump, thump in her temples, but the slim scarlet
figure never wavered and behind, the double file of women followed,
grave and silent.
"They will not fire until we reach the spring," thought Lucy, and now
she could hear the bubble of the cool, clear water, as it gushed from
the hillside. But still nothing stirred in the forest, no rifle cracked,
there was no sound of moving men.
She reached the spring, bent down, filled both buckets at the pool, and
passing in a circle around it, turned her face toward the fort, and,
after her, came the silent procession, each filling her buckets at the
pool, passing around it and turning her face toward the fort as she had
done.
Lucy now felt her greatest fear when she began the return journey and
her back was toward the forest. There was in her something of the
warrior; if the bullet was to find her she preferred to meet it, face to
face. But she would not let her hands tremble, nor would she bend
beneath the weight of the water. She held herself proudly erect and
glanced at the wooden wall before her. It was lined with faces, brown,
usually, but now with the pallor showing through the tan. She saw her
father's among them and she smiled at him, because she was upheld by a
great pride and exultation. It was she who had told them what to do, and
it was she who led the way.
She reached the open gate again, but she did not hasten her footsteps.
She walked sedately in, and behind her she heard only the regular tread
of the long double file of women. The forest was as silent as ever.
The last woman passed in, the gate was slammed shut, the heavy bars were
dropped into place, and Mr. Upton throwing his arms about Lucy
exclaimed:
"Oh, my brave daughter!"
She sank against him trembling, her nerves weak after the long tension,
but she felt a great pride nevertheless. She wished to show that a woman
too could be physically brave in the face of the most terrible of all
dangers, and she had triumphantly done so.
The bringing of the water, or rather the courage that inspired the act,
heartened the garrison anew, and color came back to men's faces. The
schoolmaster discussed the incident with Tom Ross, and wondered why the
Indians who were not in the habit of sparing women had not fired.
"Sometimes a man or a crowd of men won't do a thing that they would do
at any other time," said Ross, "maybe they thought they could get us all
in a bunch by waitin' an' maybe way down at the bottom of their savage
souls, was a spark of generosity that lighted up for just this once.
We'll never know."
Henry Ware went out that night, and returning before dawn with the same
facility that marked all his movements in the wilderness, reported that
the savage army was troubled. All such forces are loose and irregular,
with little cohesive power, and they will not bear disappointment and
waiting. Moreover the warriors having lost many men, with nothing in
repayment were grumbling and saying that the face of Manitou was set
against them. They were confirmed too in this belief by the presence of
the mysterious foe who had slain the warriors in the tree, and who had
since given other unmistakable signs of his presence.
"They will have more discouragement soon," he said, "because it is going
to rain to-day."
He had read the signs aright, as the sun came up amid the mists and
vapors, and the gentle wind was damp to the face; then dark clouds
spread across the western heavens, like a vast carpet unrolled by a
giant hand, and the wilderness began to moan. Low thunder muttered on
the horizon, and the somber sky was cut by vivid strokes of lightning.
Nature took on an ominous and threatening hue but within the village
there was only joy; the coming storm would remove their greatest danger,
the well would fill up again, and behind the wooden walls they could
defy the savage foe.
The sky was cut across by a flash of lightning so bright that it dazzled
them, the thunder burst with a terrible crash directly overhead, and
then the rain came in a perfect wall of water. It poured for hours out
of a sky that was made of unbroken clouds, deluging the earth, swelling
the river to a roaring flood, and rising higher in the well than ever
before. The forest about them was almost hidden by the torrents of rain
and they did not forget to be thankful.
Toward afternoon the fall abated somewhat in violence, but became a
steady downpour out of sodden skies, and the air turned raw and chill.
Those who were not sheltered shivered, as if it were winter. The night
came on as dark as a well, and Henry Ware went out again. When he came
back he said tersely to his father:
"They are gone."
"Gone?" exclaimed Mr. Ware scarcely able to believe in the reality of
such good news.
"Yes; the storm broke their backs. Even Indians can't stand an all-day
wetting especially when they are already tired. They think they can
never have any luck here, and they are going toward the Ohio at this
minute. The storm has saved us now just as it saved our band in the
flight from the salt works."
They had such faith in his forest skill that no one doubted his word and
the village burst into joy. Women, for they were the worst sufferers
gave thanks, both silently and aloud. Henry took Ross, Sol and others to
the valley in the forest, where the savages had kept their war camp.
Here they had soaked in the mire during the storm, and all about were
signs of their hasty flight, the ground being littered with bones of
deer, elk and buffalo.
"They won't come again soon," said Henry, "because they believe that the
Manitou will not give them any luck here, but it is well to be always on
the watch."
After the first outburst of gratitude the people talked little of the
attack and repulse; they felt too deeply, they realized too much the
greatness of the danger they had escaped to put it into idle words. But
nearly all attributed their final rescue to Henry Ware though some saw
the hand of God in the storm which had intervened a second time for the
protection of the whites. Braxton Wyatt and his friends dared say
nothing now, at least openly against Henry, although those who loved him
most were bound to confess that there was something alien about him,
something in which he differed from the rest of them.
But Henry thought little of the opinion, good or bad in which he was
held, because his heart was turning again to the wilderness, and he and
Ross went forth again to scout on the rear of the Indian force.