It was well along in August, the twenty-first to be exact, when Ashe’s

book was first shown to him, therefore it seemed impracticable to make

the journey that year, but the time would soon roll around, and be an

ideal outing for the ensuing summer. From the time of his return to

London, until almost the date set for the departure, The Viscount Adare

busied himself reading every book of American travel and adventure that

he could lay his hands on, besides accumulating a vast outfit to take

along, although the trip was to be on foot, and without even a guide.

Needless to say, with such an interesting objective, the year passed

very rapidly, not that The Viscount had no other interests, for he had

many, being a keen sportsman and scientist, as well as a lover of books,

paintings and the drama.

It was on the twenty-third of August, a little over a year after his

first acquaintance with the writings of Ashe, that The Viscount embarked

for Philadelphia, on the fast sailing ship “Ocean Queen.” Very few

Englishmen went to America for pleasure in those days as the sting of

the Revolution was still a thorn in their sides. Many Britishers did go,

but they were mostly of the commoner sort, immigrants, not tourists.

The Viscount Adare, even before sailing, had his itinerary pretty well

mapped out. He would tarry a week in Philadelphia to get rid of his “sea

legs,” then proceed by carriage to Louisbourg, then beginning to be

called Harrisburg, and go from there to Carlisle, Shippensburg, and

Upper Strasburg, at which last named place he would abandon his

conveyance, and with pack on back, in true Alpine fashion, start

overland, traversing the same general direction of Michaux and Ashe

towards Pittsburg. At Pittsburg he planned to board a flat boat and

descend the Ohio, thence into the Mississippi, proceeding to New

Orleans, at which city he could set sail for England.

It was an ambitious trip for a solitary traveler, but as he was known by

his Alpinist friends as “The Guideless Wonder,” some indication may be

divined of his resourcefulness.

The journey across the Atlantic was interesting. A school of whales

played about the ship, coming so close as to create the fear that they

would overturn it. The Captain, a shrewd Irishman, was not to be

daunted, so he ordered a number of huge barrels or casks thrown

overboard, which immediately diverted the attention of the saurians,

with the result that a smart breeze coming up, they were left far

astern.

A boat, said to be a pirate, was sighted against the horizon, but

fortunately made no attempt to come close, heading away towards the

Summer Islands, where, say the older generation of mountain folks, arise

all the warm south breezes that often temper wintry or early spring days

in the Pennsylvania Highlands, with blue sky and fleecy clouds.

The Viscount Adare was pleased with these trifling adventures, and more

so with ocean travel, as it was his first long sea voyage, though he had

crossed the Channel and the Irish Sea scores of times.

He debarked in Philadelphia after a voyage lasting nearly six weeks,

consequently the green foliage of England was replaced by the vivid

tints of Autumn on the trees which grew in front of the rows of brick

houses near the Front Street Landing Wharf. He had letters to the

British Consul, who was anxious to arrange a week or two of social

activity for the distinguished traveler, but The Viscount assured him

that he must be on his way.

The ride in public coaches to Lancaster and Harrisburg was accomplished

without incident. His fellow travelers were anxious to point out the

various places of interest, the fine corn crops, livestock and farm

buildings, but the Englishman was so anxious to get to the wilds that

this interlude only filled him with impatience.

[Illustration: BARK-PEELERS AT WORK. BLACK FOREST]

He was impressed not a little by the battlefields of Paoli and

Brandywine, but most of all by the grove where the harmless Conestoga

Indians were encamped when surprised and massacred by the brutal Paxtang

Boys. The word “Indians” thrilled him, and whetted his curiosity, which

was somewhat appeased on his arrival at Harrisburg by the sight of five

Indians in full regalia, lying on the grass under John Harris’ Mulberry

Tree, waiting to be ferried across the river.

He tarried only one night at Harrisburg, then hiring a private

conveyance, started down the Cumberland Valley, where he most admired

the many groves of tall hardwoods–resting at Carlisle and

Shippensburg–as originally planned. At Carlisle, he was waited on at his

inn by a German woman, who explained to him that she was none other than

“Molly Pitcher,” or Molly Ludwig, the intrepid heroine of the Battle of

Monmouth.

It was on a bright autumnal morning that, with pack on back, and staff

in hand, he started for the heights of Cove Mountain, towards the west

country. On the way he passed a small roadside tavern, in front of which

a few years before had played a little yellow-haired boy, with a turkey

bell suspended around his neck so that he could not get lost. The German

drovers who lolled in front of the hostelry were fond of teasing the

lad, calling him “Jimmy mit the bells on,” much to the youngster’s

displeasure. His mother was a woman of some intellectual attainments,

and occasionally would edify the society folk of Mercersburg by reciting

the whole of Milton’s “Paradise Lost.”

In time this boy became known as James Buchanan, the only Pennsylvanian

to occupy the Presidential chair.

There were many taverns along the road, considering the wildness of the

country, and The Viscount thought how much history and tradition was

being made about their inglenooks and home-garths. The forests of

chestnuts, yellow pine and rock oak, the grand scenery of distant

valleys and coves, interested him more, and the occasional meetings with

the mountain people along the way, whom he enjoyed conversing with,

about the local folk-lore, game and Indians. On many of the log barns

and sheds were nailed bear paws, deer horns and wolf hides, and the

hieroglyphics and signs, to ward off witches, were keenly interesting to

his inquiring gaze.

It was amazing how the road wound in serpentine fashion among the

mountains; the distance could have been much shortened, he thought.

One morning a backwoodsman with a black beard that hung almost to his

feet, explained to him the “short cuts,” or paths that went down the

steep slopes of the mountains, lessening the distance of the regular

roads followed by the packers around the elbows of the mountain ravines.

The Viscount Adare enjoyed these “short cuts” hugely. They reminded him

of his Alpining days, and they led him right through the forests, under

the giant oaks and pines where he saw many unusual looking birds, such

as Pileated Woodpeckers and Carolina Paraquets, while occasionally a

Deer or Gray Fox crossed his path. He had reached the bottom of a ravine

where a stream headed at a big spring, while taking one of these “short

cuts,” when he came in sight of a clearing which contained a corn field,

a pasture lot or commons, a log house, log barn, and a smaller log

cabin, that looked like a smoke-house. Smoke was issuing from an opening

in the roof of the tiny structure, which might have passed for a child’s

play house, modelled after the larger log dwelling. As he neared the

little hut, which reminded him of an Alpine _baracq_, and which stood

close to the path, the door opened and two most curious looking figures

emerged. In old England he had seen sweeps, but these were more

grotesque and grimier than any he could recall. As he drew nearer, he

perceived that while one appeared to be a man, the other was a young

woman. Both were entirely unclad, save that the woman’s locks were

covered by a homespun cap of the tam o’shanter pattern. Both were

literally black, from head to foot.

When they saw the traveler, the woman ran back into the cabin, pulling

the door shut, while the “Jim Crow” man waited in the path until joined

by the surprised Viscount.

“What is all this, my good man,” he queried, “been cleaning your chimney

and fallen through it into a barrel of tar?”

“Oh, no,” said the grimy mountaineer, smiling, his teeth looking very

white against his swarthy visage. “My business is to make lamp black,

and my friend and I have been sweeping down the walls, collecting the

output this morning, and boxing it, and had just finished when you

appeared in sight.”

The fellow made no attempt to apologize for his outlandish appearance,

but stood there in the sunlight like an imp of darkness, chatting with

the Englishman.

“I don’t want to keep your lady friend penned up in there any longer,”

said The Viscount, as he started to move away.

“Oh, don’t go,” said the maker of lamp black, “I don’t know why she acts

that way; stay and have dinner with us. We never let a stranger go by

without furnishing him with some food.”

Ordinarily, The Viscount Adare, unconventional as he was, would have

scurried away from such grimy surroundings, but there was something that

appealed to him about the lamp black maker’s lady, even in her coat of

ebony grime, that made him decide to tarry.

“Thanks, I will stay,” he replied, “but I’ll go to the barn so as to

give your ‘friend,’ as you call her, a chance to come out.”

“Don’t you bother to do that,” said the black man. “She is acting

foolish today; don’t give her the satisfaction to move a step. She never

minded showing herself to anybody before.”

These last words were secretly pleasing to the Viscount, as it showed

that the young woman recognized in him a person of superior

sensibilities, but he hurried to the barn until he knew that she had

been given time to escape to the house. But he could not help hearing

the lamp black maker loudly chiding her for modesty, a trait she had

never displayed previously. Pretty soon he saw the fellow making trips

to the spring, carrying water buckets into the house. The Viscount sat

on the doorstep of the barn, watching the juncos flying about among the

savin bushes in the clearing, or his eyes feasting on the cornelian red

foliage of the sassafras trees on the hill, inwardly speculating if with

her black disguise washed off, the young woman, whose higher nature he

had aroused, would be as good looking as he imagined her to be. He made

a mental picture of her loveliness, ranking her close beside that of

high bred beauties of his own land, of the types depicted by Romney,

Kneller and Lely.

It was not long before he saw her emerge from the house, all washed and

scrubbed, with her hair neatly combed, clad in a spick and span

“butternut” frock. As she came towards him, he noted that she was a

trifle above the average height, and her feet, despite the rough brogans

she wore, were very small. He saw, to his amazement, that she was the

counterpart of his mental picture, only more radiantly lovely. When she

drew near, she asked him, her face lighting up very prettily, as she

spoke, if he would like to come to the house to rest, that she would

soon prepare dinner, and hoped that he would not be too critical of her

humble efforts as a cook.

Her eyes seldom met his, but he could see that they were large and

grey-brown, with delicately penciled black brows, and black lashes. Her

face was rather long and sallow, or rather of a pinkish pallor. Her hair

was cameo brown, her nose long and straight, the lines of her mouth

delicate and refined, with lips unusually thin. He had noticed, as she

came towards him, that her slender form swayed a little forward as she

walked, reminding him of the mythical maiden Syrinx, daughter of the

River God, whom the jealous-hearted Pan changed into a reed.

The Viscount Adare was far more disconcerted than his hostess, as he

followed her to the log house. Just as they approached the door she

whispered, “I hope that you will forgive the awful exhibition I made of

myself.”

Indoors she sat down on one of the courting blocks by the great open

hearth, where pots of various sizes hung from the cranes. The man, who

was still trying to get the lamp black out of his curly hair and beard,

was only partially dressed, and looked all the world like pictures of

the lascivious Lupercalian Pan himself.

The Englishman felt strangely at ease in the cabin, watching the

slender, reed-like girl prepare the meal, and enjoyed the dinner with

his humble entertainers.

Shortly after the repast another bearded backwoodsman appeared at the

door. The lamp black maker had an appointment to go with him to some

distant parts of the Shade Mountains to examine bear pens, and asked to

be excused. He would not be back until the next day; it was nothing

unusual for him to leave his friend alone for a week at a time on

similar excursions.

The Viscount was in no hurry to go, as never had a woman appealed to him

as did the lamp black maker’s young assistant. Perhaps it was the

unconventional character of their first meeting that shocked his love

into being; at any rate he was severely smitten; probably John Rolfe was

no more so, on his first glimpse of the humane Pocohontas.

After the two hunters had gone, the young woman sat down on the other

courting block, on the opposite of the inglenook, and The Viscount

decided to ask her to tell him the story of her life. She colored a

trifle, saying that no one had ever been interested in her life’s

history before, therefore, she might not repeat it very well.

She had been born at sea, of parents coming from the northern part of

Ireland. They had settled first in the Cumberland Valley, then, when she

was about a dozen years old, decided to migrate to Kentucky. They had

not gotten much further than the covered bridge across the Little

Juniata, when they were ambushed by robbers, and all the adult members

of the party, her parents and an uncle, were slain. The children were

carried off, being apportioned among the highwaymen. She fell to the lot

of the leader of the band, Conrad Jacobs, who took more than a fatherly

interest in her.

He was a middle-aged married man, but he openly said that when the girl

was big enough, he would chase his wife away and install her in her

place. But she was kindly treated by the strange people, even more so

than at home, for her mother had been very severe and unreasonable.

When she was fifteen she saw signs that the outlaw was going to put his

plan into effect–to drive his wife out into the forest, like an old

horse–and probably would have done so, but for Simon Supersaxo, the lamp

black man, who came to the highwayman’s shanty frequently on his hunting

trips.

The robber became jealous of the young Nimrod and threatened to shoot

him if he came near the premises again. A threat was as good as a

promise with such people, so Supersaxo was ready to kill or be killed on

sight.

He met the highwayman one evening in front of McCormick’s Tavern, and

drawing the bead, shot him dead. He was not arrested, but feted by all

the innkeepers for ridding the mountains of a dangerous deterrent to

travel, while she, her name was Deborah Conner, went to help keep house

for him, along with the outlaw’s widow, but in reality to help make lamp

black.

That was four years before. Since old Mother Jacobs had died and

Deborah, now nineteen years of age, was being importuned by Supersaxo to

marry him.

Previous to the Englishman’s coming that morning, she had never felt any

shame at working in the lamp black hut with her employer, or appearing

before passers-by unclad, but now a great light had come to her; she was

free to confess that she was changed and humiliated.

The Viscount looked her over and over, and far into those wonderful

stone grey eyes that mirrored a refined soul lost in the wilderness.

Then he made bold to speak:

“Deborah”, he said, “since you have been so frank with me in telling the

story of your life, I will freely confess to you that I loved you the

minute my eyes rested on you, even in your unbecoming homespun cap, and

lamp black from head to foot. I realize that your being here is but an

accident, and my coming the instrument to take you away. I will marry

you, and strive always to make you happy, if you will come away with me,

and I will take you to England where, among people of refined tastes,

you will shine and always be at peace.”

Deborah opened her thin delicate mouth in surprise, and her eyes became

like grey stars. “Really, do you mean that”? she said.

“I mean every word,” replied The Viscount Adare.

“I know that I feel differently towards you than any man I have seen, so

I must love you, and I will always be happy with you,” resumed the girl.

“And while I owe Simon Supersaxo a deep debt of gratitude for saving me

from being forced into marrying that horrid old road-agent, I owe myself

more, and you more still. I will go with you whenever you are ready to

take me, no matter what my conscience will tell me later. Though I’ll

say to you honestly that I never thought there was any life for me

further than to make lamp black, until you came.”

She explained to him that at Christmastime the lamp black man always

went with a party of companions on a great elk hunt to the distant

Sinnemahoning Country, and if The Viscount would return then, she would

arrange to meet him at a certain place at a certain day and hour, and go

away with him. “There is a little clearing or old field on the top of

the ridge, beyond this house,” and pointing her slender white hand,

showed to him through the open door. “Meet me there on the day before

Christmas, and I will be free to go away with you rejoicing.”

The balance of the visit was passed in pleasant amity, until towards

nightfall, when The Viscount shouldered his pack and seized his staff,

and started away, not for Pittsburg, but eastward again. Deborah, her

slender reed-like figure swaying in the autumn breeze, walked with him

to the edge of the clearing. She kissed him goodbye among the savin

bushes, and he kissed her many times in return, until they parted at the

carnelian-leafed sassafras trees on the hill, and he commenced the

ascent of the steep face of Chestnut Ridge.

The trip back to Philadelphia was taken impatiently, but with a

different kind of impatience; he wanted the entire intervening time

obliterated, until he could get back to his strange exotic mountain

love. In Philadelphia he engaged passage for England the first week in

January, and wrote letters abroad to complete the arrangements for

taking his wife-to-be to his ancestral home. He could never forget the

last afternoon in the Quaker City. Christmas was coming, and the spirit

of this glad festival was in the air, even more so than in “Merrie

England.” He was walking through Chancellor Street when he came upon two

blind Negro Christmas-singers, former sailors, who had lost their sight

in the premature explosion of a cannon on the deck of a frigate on the

Delaware River during the Revolutionary War. He stopped, elegant

gentleman that he was, listened enraptured to their songs of simple

faith: “Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow.”

“If they had so much to be thankful for,” he mused, “how much more have

I, with lovely Deborah only a few days in the future.”

Then he gave them each five shillings and moved on. A little further

down the street, he met an old Negro Woman selling sprigs of holly with

bright red berries. He bought a sprig. “I’ll take it to Deborah,” he

said to himself.

He returned to Harrisburg by the stage coach, accompanied by a Negro

body-servant well recommended by the British Consul. At Harrisburg he

purchased four extra good horses. With these and the Negro he retraced

his previous journey. He left the Negro and the horses at McCormick’s

Tavern, continuing the balance of the journey on foot, his precious

sprig of holly, with the bright red berries, fastened on the top of his

staff, that had often been decked with the _edelweiss_ and the Alpine

rose. Deborah had said that she knew all the mountain paths back to

McCormick’s, so they could reach there quickly, and be mounted on fast

horses almost before her employer missed them.

His heart was beating fast as he neared his trysting place, the little

clearing on the ridge, the morning before Christmas. Peering through the

trees, he observed that Deborah was not there, but surely she would soon

come, the sun was scarcely over the Chestnut Ridge to the east! A grey

fog hung over the valley, obscuring the little cabin in the cove.

He waited and waited all day long, but no Deborah appeared. He walked

all over the top of the ridge to see if there were other clearings, lest

he had gotten to the wrong one. There were no others, just as she had

said. Cold beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead; he was

angry; he was jealous; the day was closing bitterly cold. “The woman

that I want, she will not come.”

Finally as the sun was going down behind the western summits of the

Alleghenies, he untied the sprig of holly from the end of his

mountain-staff, and bending over, stuck it in the fast freezing earth, a

symbol of his faithless adventure, and started down the mountain,

straight towards Deborah Supersaxo’s cabin.

At the foot of the hill he met her coming towards him–her face was

deadly pale, her thin lips white as death–instantly his hate changed to

tender love again.

“Kill me if you wish,” she cried out before he had time to speak, and

held out her arms to show her non-resistance, “for I have been unworthy.

I broke my faith with you, and was not going to come; I repented at

leaving Supersaxo, who had been so good to me when I was in distress. I

was going to leave you in the lurch. Then, then,” and here tears

trickled down her ghastly cheeks, “I was sitting on the courting log by

the fire, commending myself for my loyalty, when a few minutes ago one

of his friends came in to say that the day before yesterday, while

looking at somebody’s bear pen near the Karoondinha, it fell in on him

and broke his neck. I was just coming up the hill to tell you, if you

were still waiting, how wicked I had been to you, and how I had been

punished. Kill me if you wish, I can never be happy any more.”

The Viscount Adare did not hesitate a moment, but flinging down his

staff, he rushed to the girl and caught her in his arms. “Doubly blessed

are we this night, dear Deborah, for there is now no impediment to our

happiness; no misdirected sense of duty can cast a shadow on the joy

that lies before us. I want you now more than ever before, after this

final trial, and you must come with me!”

“Never say must again,” said Deborah, sweetly, looking up into his eyes,

“I am your willing slave; I will go with you to the ends of the earth: I

want to redeem this day by years of devotion, years of love.”

Picking up his staff, The Viscount Adare and the mountain girl resumed

their journey, past the now deserted log house and the lamp black shack

where they had first met, up the steep mountain, and off towards

McCormick’s Tavern, near where, in a deep pine grove, the Negro

body-servant would be waiting with the horses.

That is all that has been recorded in the mountains concerning the lamp

black girl and The Viscount Adare. In England there is an oil painting

of a certain Viscountess of the name that bears a striking resemblance

to the one time Deborah Conner.

Up on the ridge, in the little clearing, one or more of the seeds of the

sprig of holly took root, and grew a fine tree. In order that this story

may be localized, it is said that this is one of the points furthest

north of any specimen of the native holly in Pennsylvania. In time it

died off, but not before other scions sprang up, and there has always

been a thrifty holly tree on the hill, as if to commemorate a lover’s

tryst, whose heart when on the point of breaking from hideous despair,

found the fullness of his happiness suddenly, and whose story is an

inspiration to all aching hearts.

[Illustration]

VII

_The Second Run of the Sap_

The selective draft, according to Dr. Jacobs, a very intelligent Seneca

Indian, residing on the Cornplanter Reservation in Warren County, was

practiced by Pennsylvania Indians in some of their earlier conflicts,

notably in the bloody warfare in the Cherokee country.

In the war against the Cherokees, there was a popular apathy at home, as

it was not undertaken to repel an unjust invasion, but for the purpose

of aggression, after the murder of a number of Cherokees by the Lenape,

and as such did not appeal to the just and patient tribesmen in general.

In order to increase the invading armies beyond the limits of the

volunteer quotas of warriors and chiefs, who were of patrician

antecedents, the draft was resorted to, with the result that a

formidable host departed for the Southland, ravaging the enemy’s

country, and bringing in many prisoners.

The Cherokees were not completely vanquished, as they were victorious in

some of the conflicts, and also made numerous prisoners. Some of these

were tortured to death, others were adopted by families that had lost

their sons, while a few escaped and made their way Northward.

[Illustration: THE FALLEN MONARCH, PORTAGE CREEK]

The war was followed by the usual period of upheaval and reconstruction,

and the moral code of the redmen suffered as much as did modern

civilization as an aftermath of the world war. Many Cherokee prisoners

were brought to Pennsylvania and put at menial work, or bartered as

slaves while others intermarried with the northern tribes, so that

Cherokee blood become a component part of the make-up of the

Pennsylvania aboriginies. The Cherokee legends and history lingered

wherever a drop of their blood remained, so that the beginnings of some,

at least, of our Pennsylvania Indian folk-lore hark back to the golden

age of the Cherokees.

They certainly have been the martyr-race, the Belgians of the North

American Indians, even to the time of their brutal expulsion from their

Carolina homes during the Nineteenth Century by U. S. troops at the

behest of selfish land-grabbers, and sentenced to die of exhaustion and

broken hearts along the dreary trek to the distant Indian Territory.

Among the bravest and most enthusiastic of the Pennsylvania invaders was

the young warrior In-nan-ga-eh, chief of the draft, who led the drafted

portion of the army against the Cherokee foemen. He was of noble blood,

hence himself exempt from the draft, but he was a lover of war and

glory, and rejoiced to lead his less well-born, and less patriotic

compatriots into the thick of battle. Although noble rank automatically

exempted from the draft, the young scions of nobility enlisted

practically to a man, holding high commissions, it is true, yet at all

times bold and courageous.

In-nan-ga-eh was always peculiarly attractive to the female sex. Tall,

lithe and sinewy, he was a noted runner and hunter, as well as famed for

his warlike prowess. At twenty-two he was already the veteran of several

wars, notably against the Ottawas and the Catawbas, and thirsted for a

chance to humble his southern rivals, the Cherokees. He wished to make

it his boast that he had fought and conquered tribes on the four sides

of the territory where he lived, making what is now the Pennsylvania

country the ruling land, the others all vassal states.

He was indiscriminate in his love making, having no respect for birth or

caste, being different from his reserved and honorable fellow

aristocrats, consequently at his departure for the south, he was mourned

for by over a score of maidens of various types and degrees. If he cared

for any one of these admirers, it was Liddenah, a very beautiful, kindly

and talented maiden, the daughter of the noted wise man or sooth-sayer,

Wahlowah, and probably the most remarkable girl in the tribe.

That she cared for such an unstable and shallow-minded youth to the

exclusion of others of superior mental gifts and seriousness of purpose,

amply proved the saying that opposites attract, for there could have

been no congeniality of tastes between the pair. Temperamentally they

seemed utterly unsuited, as Liddenah was artistic and musically

inclined, and a chronicler of no mean ability, yet she would have given

her life for him at any stage of the romance. She possessed ample

self-control, but when he went away her inward sorrow gnawing at her

heart almost killed her. She may have had a presentiment of what was in

store!

During invasions of this kind, communication with home was maintained by

means of runners who carried tidings, good or bad, bringing back verbal

lists of the dead, wounded and missing, some of which they shamefully

garbled.

In-nan-ga-eh was decorated several times for conspicuous bravery, and

was reported in the vanguard of every attack, until at length came the

shocking news of his ambush and capture. Over a score of the most

beautiful maidens along the Ohe-yu and Youghiogheny were heartbroken to

distraction, but none more so than the lovely and intellectual Liddenah.

This was the crowning blow, her lover taken by his cruel foes, being

perhaps boiled alive, or drawn and quartered. Seated alone in her lodge

house by the banks of The Beautiful River, she pictured all sorts of

horrors befalling her beloved, and of his own deep grief at being held

prisoner so far from his homeland.

It was a humiliation to be captured, and by a band of Amazons, who

begged permission to entrap the fascinating enemy. Finding him bathing

in a deep pool, they surrounded it, flinging at him slightly poisoned

darts, which made him partially overcome by sleep, so that he was only

able to clamber out on the bank, there to be secured by his fair captors

and led in dazed triumph to their chief.

The Chieftain was elated at the capture, and treated the handsome

prisoner with all the deference due to his rank. Instead of boiling him

in oil, or flaying him, he was feted and feasted, and the warlike bands

became demoralized by catering to his pleasure.

It was not long before the chief’s daughter, Inewatah, fell in love with

him, and as her illustrious father, Tekineh, had lost a son in the war,

In-nan-ga-eh was given the choice of becoming the chief’s adopted son or

his son-in-law. He naturally chose the latter, as the wife-to-be was

both beautiful and winning.

The war resulted in defeat for the Cherokees, although the old chief

escaped to fastnesses further south with his beautiful daughter and

alien son-in-law. All went well for a year and a half after the peace

when In-nan-ga-eh, began to feel restless and listless for his northern

mountains, the playground of his youth. He wanted to go on a visit, and

asked the chief’s permission, giving as his word of honor, his love for

the chieftain’s daughter, that he would properly return.

The Cherokee bride was as heartbroken as Liddenah; she had first asked

that she might accompany him on the trip, which was refused, but she

accepted the inevitable stoically outwardly, but with secret aching

bosom.

In-nan-ga-eh was glad to get away; being loved too much was tiresome;

life was too enervating in the warm sunshine on Soco Creek; he liked the

camp and the hunting lodge; love making, too much of it, palled on him.

He wanted to be let alone.

Accompanied by a bodyguard of selected Cherokees, he hurriedly made his

way to the North. One morning to the surprise and delight of all, he

appeared at his tribal village by the Ohe-yu, as gay and debonair as

ever. As he entered the town almost the first person he saw was

Liddenah. She looked very beautiful, and he could see at one glance how

she loved him, yet perversely he barely nodded as he passed.

When he was re-united with his parents, who treated him as one risen

from the dead, his sisters began telling him about the news of the

settlement, of his many friends, of Liddenah. Her grief had been very

severe, it shocked her mother that she should behave so like a European

and show her feelings to such an extent. Then the report had come that

he had been put to death by slow torture. “Better that,” Liddenah had

said openly in the market place, “than to remain the captive of

barbarians.”

Once it was taken for granted that he was dead, Liddenah began to

receive the attentions of young braves, as they came back from the South

laden with scalps and other decorations of their victorious campaign

against the Cherokees. Liddenah gave all to understand that her heart

was dead; she was polite and tolerant, but, like the eagle, she could

love only once.

There was one young brave named Quinnemongh who pressed his suit more

assiduously than the rest, and aided by Liddenah’s mother, was

successful. The pair were quietly married about a year after

In-nan-ga-eh’s capture, or several months before he started for the

North, leaving his Cherokee bride at her father’s home on the Soco.

Quinnemongh was not such a showy individual as In-nan-ga-eh, but his

bravery was unquestioned, his reliability and honor above reproach. He

made Liddenah a very good husband. In turn she seemed to be happy with

him, and gradually overcoming her terrible sorrow.

When In-nan-ga-eh had passed Liddenah on entering the village, he had

barely noticed her because he supposed that he could have her any time

for the asking. When he learned that she was the wife of another, he

suddenly realized that he wanted her very badly, that she was the cause

of his journey Northward. The old passion surged through his veins; it

was what the bark-peelers call “the second run of the sap.”

Through his sisters, who were among Liddenah’s most intimate friends, he

sought a clandestine meeting with his former sweetheart. They met at the

“Stepping Stones,” a crossing near the headwaters of Cowanshannock, in a

mossy glade, which had formerly been his favorite trysting place with

over a score of doting maidens in the ante-bellum days.

Liddenah, inspired by her great love, never looked more beautiful. She

was probably a trifle above the average height, gracefully, but solidly

made. Her skin was very white, her eyes dark, her hair that of a raven,

while her aquiline nose, high cheek bones and small, fine mouth made her

resemble a high-bred Jewess more than an Indian squaw, a heritage

perhaps from a remote Semitic origin beyond the Pacific. She showed

openly how happy she was to meet In-nan-ga-eh, until he told her the

story of his tragic love, how she had broken his young heart by cruelly

marrying another while he languished in a Southern prison camp. In vain

she protested that, on all sides came seemingly authentic reports of his

death; he was obdurate in the destiny he had decreed. Quinnemongh must

die by his hand, and he would then flee with the widow to the country of

the Ottawas. The hot blood surging in his veins, like a second flow of

sap in a red maple, must be appeased by her submission.

Liddenah was horrified; she came of eminently respectable ancestry, she

admired Quinnemongh, her husband, almost to the point of loving him, but

where that affection ended, her all-pervading obsession for In-nan-ga-eh

began and knew no limitations in her being.

“Tonight”, said In-nan-ga-eh, scowling dreadfully, “I will surprise the

vile Quinnemongh in his lodge house, and with one blow of my stone

war-hammer crush in his skull, then I will scalp him and meet you at the

stepping stones, and by the moonlight we will decamp to the far free

country of the Ottawas, his scalp dangling at my belt as proof of my

hate and my bravery”.

Liddenah gave a reluctant assent to the fiendish program when they

parted. On her way home through the forest path her conscience smote her

with Mosaic insistence–the blood of her ancestors, of the Lost Tribe of

Israel, would not permit her to sanction the murder of a good and true

warrior. She would immolate herself for her family honor, and for her

respect for Quinnemongh.

Arriving at the lodge-house she went straight to Quinnemongh and

confessed the story of her meeting with the perfidious In-nan-ga-eh, all

but the homicidal part. Quinnemongh was not much surprised, as he knew

of her great love for the ex-Cherokee prisoner, and In-nan-ga-eh’s

capricious pride.

“Quinnemongh”, she said, between her sobs, for, like a white girl, she

was tearful, “I was to meet In-nan-ga-eh tonight, when the moon is over

the tops of the trees, by the stepping stones, and we were to fly

together to the country of the Ottawas. You present yourself there in my

stead, and tell the false In-nan-ga-eh that I have changed my mind, that

I am true to my noble husband”.

Needless to say, Quinnemongh was pleased at this recital, and promised

to be at the ford at the appointed time. Like most persons under similar

circumstances, he was eager to be on his errand, and departed early,

armed with his favorite scalping knife. Liddenah kissed and embraced

him, calling him her “hero”, and once he was out of sight, she darted

into his cabin and lay down among his blankets and buffalo robes,

covering herself, all but the top of her brow, and huddling, all curled

up, for the autumnal air was chill.

The moon slowly rose higher and higher until it reached the crowns of

the giant rock oaks along the edge of the “Indian fields”. The gaunt

form of In-nan-ga-eh could now be seen creeping steadily out of the

forest, bounding across the clearing and, stone axe in hand, entered the

cabin where he supposed that Quinnemongh was sleeping. A ray of shimmery

moonlight shone full on the upturned forehead of his victim. Animated by

a jealous hate, he struck a heavy blow with his axe of dark diorite,

crushing in the sleeper’s temples like an eggshell. Leaving the weapon

imbedded in his victim’s skull, he deftly cut off the long bushy scalp

with his sharp knife, and, springing out of the hut, started off on a

dog-trot towards the stepping stones, waving his bloody, gruesome

souvenir.

He approached the fording with the light of the full moon shining on the

waters of the brook; he was exultant and grinding his teeth in lustful

fury. Who should he see there–not the fair and yielding goddess

Liddenah, but the stalwart form of the recently butchered and scalped

Quinnemongh. Believer in ghosts that he was, this was almost too much of

a visitation for him. Pausing a minute to make sure, he rushed forward

brandishing the scalp in one hand, his knife, which caught the moon’s

beams on its blade in the other.

“Wretch”! he shrieked at Quinnemongh, “must I kill you a second time to

make you expiate your sin at marrying Liddenah”?

Quinnemongh, who stood rigid as a statue at the far side of the ford,

replied, “You have not killed me once; how dare you speak of a second

time”?

“Whose scalp have I then”? shouted In-nan-ga-eh, as he continued to rush

forward.

“Not mine surely”, said Quinnemongh, as he felt his comparatively sparse

locks.

Just as the men came face to face it dawned on both what had happened,

and with gleaming knives, they sprang at one another in a death

struggle. For half an hour they fought, grappling and stabbing, kicking

and biting, in the shallow waters of the ford. Neither would go down,

though Liddenah’s scalp was forced from In-nan-ga-eh’s hand, and got

between the breasts of the two combatants, who pushed it, greasy and

gory, up and down as they fought. They literally stabbed one another

full of holes, and bit and tore at their faces like wild beasts; they

carved the skin off their shoulders and backs, they kicked until their

shin bones cracked, until finally both, worn out from loss of blood,

sank into the brook and died.

In the morning the scalped and mutilated form of Liddenah was discovered

among the gaudy blankets and decorated buffalo robes; a bloody trail was

followed to the stepping stones, where the two gruesome corpses were

found, half submerged in the red, bloody water, in an embrace so

inextricable, their arms like locked battling stags’ antlers that they

could not in the rigidity of death be separated. Foes though they were,

the just and patient Indians who found them could do nothing else but

dig a common grave in the half-frozen earth, close to the stepping

stones, and there they buried them together, with Liddenah’s soggy scalp

and their bent and broken knives, their bodies to commingle with earth

until eternity.

[Illustration]

VIII

_Black Chief’s Daughter_

It was the occasion of the annual Strawberry Dance at the Seneca

Reservation, a lovely evening in June, when, after a warm rain, there

had been a clear sunset, and the air was sweet with the odor of the

grass, and the narrow roads were deep with soft, brown mud and many

puddles of water.

In the long, grey frame Council House all was animation and excitement.

The grim old Chief, Twenty Canoes, decked out in his headdress of

feathers, followed by the musicians with wolf-skin drums filled with

pebbles had arrived, and taken places on the long bench that ran almost

the entire length of the great hall. Other older and distinguished

Indians, Indian guests from the Cornplanter Reservation in Pennsylvania,

and from the New York Reservations at Tonawanda, and the Geneseo, and a

few white visitors, including the Rev. Holt, the Town Missionary and

Attorney Vreeland, the agent, with their families, completely filled the

lengthy bench.

The Indian dancers, male and female, gaily attired, had been gathering

outside, and now, with the first rattle of the drums, filed into the

room and began to dance. As the first loud tattoo was heard, the dancers

commenced shaking their shoulders, holding their arms rigid, and the

“Shimmy” of decadent New York and Philadelphia of nearly half a century

later, was rendered effectively by its originators, the rhythmic

aborigines. As they danced in single file around the visitors’ bench and

past the Chief, to the beat of the wolf skin drums, they melodiously

chanted, first the men, and then the women: “Wee-Wah, Wee-Wah, Wee-Wah,

Wanna; Wee-Wah, Wee-Wah, Wee-Wah, Wanna.” At times the women joined in

the general song, swelling the volume of the melody, until it drowned

out the drum-beats. The windows were open and the perfume of lilacs was

wafted in on the evening breeze, as the swaying files of Indian braves

and maidens shimmied around and around. Among the white visitors was one

young man who was particularly impressed, as he was there not out of

idle curiosity, but to study the manners and customs of the last of the

Senecas, in order to write his doctor’s thesis at the University, the

subject being “The Later History of the Seneca Indians in New York.”

Christian Trubee, for that was his name, had always been interested in

the redmen, a natural heritage from pioneer and frontiersman ancestors

who had fought the Indians all along the Allegheny Mountains and in the

Ohio River basin. He had lately come to Steamburg, putting up at Pat

Smith’s “long house,” where he had quickly become acquainted with Simon

Black Chief, a handsome Indian youth who picked up a living as a

mountebank among the frequenters of the ancient hostelry.

Simon was a wonderful runner, and if he could interest the lumber buyers

and the traveling men, would match himself against a little black mare

owned by Smith and usually ridden by the landlord’s stepson, for a half

mile or mile, and generally beat his equine rival. Other times he would

ride the horse at a gallop, without saddle or bridle, over the common

between the hotel and the Erie Railroad Station, picking up

handkerchiefs, cigars and quarter dollars off the greensward without

ever once losing his equilibrium.

On the evening in question, he invited the young student to accompany

him to the Strawberry Dance at the Council House, and passing by the

one-roomed board shack where he lived, his sister, known as Black

Chief’s Daughter, came out and joined them, so that the trio proceeded

single file to the scene of the festivities. Neither Simon nor his

sister danced that evening, but sat near their distinguished guest,

explaining as best they could the methods and art of the performers, for

they were very proud of the Indian dancing and music. As the evening

progressed, Christian Trubee found himself admiring the Indian maid at

his side more than he did the shimmying hordes on the floor, or the

quaint picturesqueness of the unique ceremonial.

Black Chief’s daughter was certainly the best looking girl present,

almost more like an American than an Indian in appearance, for her

profile was certainly on refined lines, and it was only when looking her

full in the face did the racial traits of breadth of the bridge of the

nose, flatness of lips and deep duskiness of complexion reveal

themselves. Her dark eyes were very clear and expressive, her teeth even

and white, her neck and throat graceful, and her form long, lithe and

elegant.

Christian Trubee liked her very much, and was entirely absorbed by her

at the time of the last beat of the drums when, with a loud yell, the

dance concluded, and the now limp and perspiring Indian dancers crowded

out of doors into the cool moonlight. On the way back Simon Black Chief

led the way, his long hair blowing in the breeze, his sister following.

Trubee did not follow single file, but walked beside the fair damsel.

She was as tall as he was, though she wore deerskin shoes without heels.

When they parted, in the long lush grass, before the humble cabin, she

promised to show him some of the interesting spots on the

reservation–the grave of Blacksnake, the famous chief and orator, the

various tribal burial places, and a visit to King Jimmerson, who

alternated with Twenty Canoes as President of the Seneca Nation, to see

the silver war crowns of Red Jacket, Blacksnake and The Cornplanter, and

to Red House to meet Jim Jacobs, the venerable “Seneca Bear Hunter.”

All of these excursions duly came to pass, about one a day, as the

weather turned steadily clear, day after day, when the Keewaydin blew,

and the distant mountains along The Beautiful River wore a purple green,

and fleecy white clouds tumbled about in the deep blue sky. On these

excursions Black Chief’s Daughter seemed to be the equal of her brother

and Trubee as a pedestrian, was never tired, always cheerful and anxious

to explain the various points of interest.

At one of the graveyards she pointed out the last resting place of an

eccentric redman known as “Indian Brown,” with two deep, round holes in

the mound, made according to his last wishes, because he had been such a

bad Indian in life, that when the Devil came down one hole to get him,

he would escape by the other!

The three young people got along famously on the trips and Trubee was

absorbing an unusual amount of aboriginal history and lore, and under

the most pleasant circumstances. While he never said a word of affection

or even compliment to Black Chief’s Daughter, he felt himself deeply

enamored, and often, in his quiet moments, pictured her as his wife.

Once or twice came the answering thought, how could he, a man of so much

education and refinement, take for life a mate who could not read, and

whose English was little better than a baby’s jargon? Where would he

take her to? Would she like his life, for surely he could not become a

squaw man on the reservation? On the other hand, she was gentle,

sympathetic and thoughtful, and the blood of regal Indian ancestors gave

her a refinement that sometimes education does not convey. But he was

happy in the moment, as are most persons of adaptability of character.

He was at home in any company, or in any circumstances, and had he been

old enough to enlist, would have made a brilliant record in the Civil

War; as it was he was but ten years of age when the conflict ended.

[Illustration: READY FOR THE LOG DRIVE, KETTLE CREEK]

As the days wore on, each one more delightful than its predecessor,

Simon Black Chief and his sister vied with one another to plan trips to

points of interest. One evening Simon asked his white friend if he had

ever seen a wolf-house, the local Indian method of trapping these

formidable animals.

“What was it like, and where was there one?” was Trubee’s instant reply.

“A wolf-house,” said Simon, "is a walled trap like a white man’s great,

big mouse-trap, with a falling door. There is still one preserved over

at the Ox Bow, at the tall, stone mansion called ‘Corydon,’ across the

Pennsylvania line."

Trubee’s interest was aroused, not only in the wolf-house, but the “tall

stone mansion” and its possible occupants. Simon explained to him that

an English gentleman lived there, a son-in-law of one of the heads of

the Holland Land Company. He had been a great hunter in his earlier

days, following exclusively the methods taught him by the Indians. It

was a longer trip than any yet attempted, but Trubee secured Pat Smith’s

little black mare and two other horses, so that the trio departed on

horseback for the distant manor house. Black Chief’s Daughter, who rode

astride, was a skillful and graceful horsewoman, even though her mount

was a poor excuse of horseflesh.

The trip along The Beautiful River was very enjoyable, and at length

they came in sight of “Corydon” on the hill, above the river, a great,

high, dark stone structure, ivy grown, standing in a group of original

white pines, some of these venerable monarchs being stag-topped, while

others had lost their crests in sundry tempests. There was a private

rope ferry across the river, but they rode the horses through the

stream, which was so deep in one place that the animals were forced to

swim. They rode into the grounds, past the huge stone gate posts, up the

hill, under the dark pines. As they neared the front door, the portico

designed by the famous Latrobe, several dogs which looked like Scottish

deerhounds rushed down from the porch and began to leap about the

horses’ throatlatches, barking loudly.

Trubee checked his horse, and asked Simon, who was acquainted with the

family, to dismount and inquire if he might inspect the wolf-house,

which stood on a heathy eminence behind the garden. Once wolves had been

so plentiful and so bold that five of the monsters had been caught in

the trap in the space of three months.

Before Simon Black Chief could dismount, two figures emerged from the

house, a young man and a young woman. Trubee’s quick glances made mental

pictures of both. The man was about thirty-five years of age, short and

thickset, with blond hair parted in the middle, a small mustache and

“Burnsides,” decidedly military in his bearing. The girl was of medium

height, possibly twenty years of age, decidedly pretty, with Sudan brown

hair, hazel eyes, clear cut features, a fair complexion and wearing a

flowing Mother Hubbard gown of prune-colored brocade.

Trubee rode up to them, bowing, reining his horse, which he turned over

to Simon and, dismounting, apologized for his intrusion. He explained

how the Indian had told him of the curious wolf-house back of the garden

and how it would help him in his researches to see it. The girl

graciously offered to show it to him, but first invited the Indian girl

to dismount and rest. The young man remained talking to the Indian, but

the Seneca maid continued to sit on her horse, rigid and silent as a

Tanagra. On the way to the wolf-house, Christian Trubee introduced

himself, and, being able to mention several mutual acquaintances, which

put him on an easy footing with the fair chatelaine of “Corydon”.

The charming girl told him that she was Phillis Paddingstowe, the

daughter of the lord of the manor, which made Trubee feel like saying

how natural it was to find _Phillis_ at _Corydon_! The young

military-looking man, “the little Colonel” she called him, was

Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Caslow, who had served with General

Huidekoper, “the hero of Gettysburg” in that immortal conflict, and was

at Corydon for a few days on a trout fishing trip. The old garden

through which they passed on the way to the wolf-house was full of

boxwood trees, which had been brought from Bartram’s gardens in

Philadelphia by wagon to Warren, and up the Ohe-yu in flat boats. They

gave a spicy, aromatic odor to the summer afternoon atmosphere. The

wolf-house was falling to decay, but Trubee took out his note book and

sketched it and recorded its dimensions. It was surprising that wolves

should come so close to a habitation, but Phillis stated that when she

was a baby they had actually killed and eaten three of her father’s

favorite Scotch deerhounds in one night, though they were chained to

kennels at the rear of the house.

By the time they had returned from their inspection, Clement

Paddingstowe, Phillis’ father, had appeared, and supplemented his

daughter’s cordial invitation that they stay to tea. Trubee might have

remained, but Black Chief’s Daughter, though she was again urged by

Phillis and her father, seemed disinclined to partake of the

hospitality. They rode down the drive all a changed party. The Indian

girl had heard Trubee accept an invitation to return to “Corydon” in the

near future, and noted his admiring glances at her fair person; she felt

for the first time that she stood no chance against a white girl of

gentle blood, though her own native antecedents were of as noble

quality, for was she not Black Chief’s Daughter, and the granddaughter

of the undefeated warrior, Destroy-Town?

She was silent and hung her head the whole way back to Steamburg.

Phillis, though delightfully courteous by nature, seemed a trifle

distant to the little Colonel that evening. Simon Black Chief was piqued

at himself for having brought unhappiness to his sister. Christian

Trubee was in love with Phillis Paddingstowe. Nevertheless, the young

collegian was too much a man of the world not to value the kindnesses

bestowed on him by Simon and his Sister, their parents and other Indians

of the reservation, to become suddenly cold and indifferent. Yet, alone,

he wondered why he had ever for a minute contemplated marrying an Indian

girl, and how slight would be their spiritual intercourse? Yet he was

here underrating Black Chief’s Daughter, who was not of the

earth-earthy, and had called herself to him “an imaginative person.”

He tried to be polite and attentive to the Indian girl, but she noted

that on several occasions where she planned trips for certain days, he

demurred on account of engagements at “Corydon.” His manner was

different; the Indian girl, uncannily intuitive, would not be deceived.

The summer wore along, and Trubee saw that he could not keep up pleasing

Black Chief’s Daughter, a break must come somehow. And the neglected

maiden, unknown to him, was reading his every thought, and prepared to

make that break first. She had brought some late huckleberries to Pat

Smith’s wife at the long house, where she was told that Trubee had been

absent for three days at “Corydon”; that it was rumored he would marry

Clement Paddingstowe’s daughter in the Fall.

As she walked along the path between the yellow, half-dead grasses,

swinging the little iron pot that had contained the berries, she began

planning for the dissolution of her unhappy romance. There were many May

apples or mandrakes ripening in the low places, and, stooping, she

uprooted several plants, half filling the pot with them. Then she left

the trail, and started across the meadow toward a group of ancient

hemlock trees, beneath which was the Cold Spring. Near the spring were

large, flat stones laid up like seats, and the remains of some stone

hearths where the Indians often roasted corn. She had her flints and

steel with her, and gathered enough dry twigs and punk to light a fire.

Then she sat down on one of the flat stones and, with her hands over her

face, she reviewed the story of her love for Trubee. He had cared for

her at first; that was consolation, but she was helpless beside the

white rival; red blood was as nothing beside blue. Then she nervously

tramped out the fire, as if to start on again. This life was a very

little thing, after all; if her dream had failed in this existence,

better end it, and come back again and fulfill it, even as a flower or

bird; it was impossible to prevent living again. She began to munch the

roots of the May apples which she had gathered, and then began to walk

across the fields toward the graveyard which contained the tomb of

“Indian Brown,” the bad man.

As she came near the road which led to “Corydon” she made an effort to

run across it, but in the middle of it a dizziness seized her, then a

sharp pain, and she staggered and dropped in a heap, the dust rising

from the dry highway as she fell. The sand got in her eyes, nose and

mouth as she lay on the path, her legs twisting in convulsive spasms.

The sun was beginning to sink close to the tops of the long, rolling

summits of the western mountains as the form of a horseman came in sight

away down the long stretch of level road. It was Christian Trubee

returning from “Corydon,” flushed with the progress of his love making

with the fair and dainty Phillis Paddingstowe. He saw a black object in

the road; a wool sack fallen from some wagon, was his first conjecture.

Coming closer, he perceived it to be a human being, a woman, Black

Chief’s Daughter.

He threw the bridle rein over the little mare’s head and sprang to the

ground. As he caught the limp form of the Indian girl in his arms, she

half opened her eyes and looked up at him.

"Oh, Mr. Trubee, let me be, I pray of you; let me stay here and die; I

haven’t anything more to live for since we visited at ‘Corydon’."

The young man did not know how to answer her, for he was honest always.

He lifted her on the saddle behind him, holding the long, lean arms

around his waist, while her head bobbed on his shoulder, and started the

little trappy black at a trot for the long house. It was supper time as

he neared the old hotel. In order to avoid attention, he rode up to the

kitchen door, at the back of the house. A small, ugly, very black

colored boy, with a banjo, from Jamestown, was strumming a Negro melody

to amuse the cooks.

“Get on this horse quick, boy,” Trubee called to him, as he dismounted

with his limp burden, “and bring over Doctor Forrester; Black Chief’s

Daughter is in a bad way from poison.”

Pat Smith’s wife and the other cooks ran out, and, taking in the

situation at a glance, carried the almost unconscious but uncomplaining

girl into the house where they laid her on a bench in the dance hall,

all unknown to the guests, munching their huckleberry pie in the nearby

dining room. The Doctor’s buggy was standing in front of his cottage,

and putting his horse to a gallop he raced the little Negro back to the

hotel. It did not take him long, as he was a noted herbalist, to

diagnose the case as poison from May apple root, very deadly, but a

drastic Indian emetic, administered just in time, preserved her life.

It was a grisly scene in the bare, cheerless ball room; Black Chief’s

daughter, all undressed, lay on a bench, while Old Black Chief, her

father, and Taleeka, her mother, Simon, Pat Smith, his wife, his

daughter, Sally Ann, Doctors Forrester and Colegrove, and Christian

Trubee stood near her, or coming and going, most of them holding lighted

candles, which cast fretful shadows against the walls and

close-shuttered windows of this scene of much former ribald merrymaking.

All present knew why the girl had sought to take her life, yet not a

single accusing word was uttered. All wanted to save her–for what? Later

she was carried into one of the adjoining guest rooms and put to bed.

Somewhat later Pat Smith’s wife, a motherly woman, met Trubee in the

hall, saying to him:

“Won’t you please let me whisper to her that you are happy her life is

saved, and that you will marry her as soon as she is able?”

The young man hesitated, then faltered: “I rather you’d not say it just

now.”

When she was almost to the door he ran after her, saying: “Tell her what

you suggested, in my presence.”

He followed her into the room. The landlady bent over the stricken girl

and gave her the message. Black Chief’s daughter looked up at Trubee,

and trying to smile, said:

“I can’t do it; all I ask is that everything be as it was before you

came to the Reservation.” “ said the young man, "that I return to the

University, having everything as it was before we went to the Strawberry

dance, or before you took me to ‘Corydon’".

“That is exactly my meaning”, the girl whispered faintly. “Then all will

be well”.

“I think I can gather my things together and make the three o’clock

train east this morning; it is only right that I should go; I have made

everybody unhappy since I came here.” “replied Black Chief’s daughter,

"only me, and then only since the trip to ‘Corydon’."

With a lingering hand clasp they parted, and Christian Trubee, like one

dazed by his unsuccessful tilt with Fate, moved off towards his room,

not knowing whether to be glad or sorry, but secretly eased in spirit

for accepting the only course that would extricate him from his

triangular dilemma.

After he was gone, Black Chief’s daughter fell into a peaceful slumber

and did not wake, even when the roaring express train, with its blazing

headlight slowed down at Steamburg for its solitary eastbound passenger.

IX

_The Gorilla_

If Sir Rider Haggard was a Pennsylvanian he would doubtless lay the

scenes of his wonderful mystery stories in Snyder County. It is in that

ruggedly picturesque mountainous county where romance has taken its last

stand, where the old touches the new, and hosts, goblins and witches and

memories of panthers, wolves and Indians linger in cycle after cycle of

imaginative reminiscences. Every now and then, even in this dull,

unsympathetic age, when the world, as Artist Shearer puts it, “is

aesthetically dead”, Snyder County is thrilled by some new ghost, witch,

panther or mystery story. The latest of these in the last days of 1920

and the first of 1921–the giant gorilla–has thrilled the entire

Commonwealth by its unique horror.

The papers have told us how a gigantic man-ape escaped from a carnival

train near Williamsport, and seeking the South, fled over the mountains

to Snyder County, where it attacked a small boy, breaking his arm, held

up automobiles, rifled smoke houses and the like, and then appeared in

Snyder Township, Blair County, still further South, his nocturnal

ramblings in that region proving an effective curfew for the young folks

of a half-dozen rural communities.

This story sounds thrillingly interesting, but as gorillas live on

fruit, and do not eat flesh, the animal in question would have starved

or frozen to death at the outset of his career in the Alleghenies, and

there the “X”, unknown quantity of the real story begins. The newspapers

have only printed the most popular versions of the gorilla mystery, only

a fraction of the romance and folk-lore that sprang up mushroom-like

around the presence of such an alien monster in our highlands. Already

enough has been whispered about to fill a good sized volume, most of it

absolutely untrue, yet some of the tales, if they have not hit the real

facts, have come dangerously close to it.

Let the readers judge for themselves. Probably one of the most widely

circulated versions among the Snyder County mountaineers, the hardy

dwellers in the fastnesses of the Shade, Jack’s and White Mountains, is

the one about to be related. It is too personal to warrant promiscuous

newspapers publication, and even now all names have been changed and

localities altered, but to a Snyder County Mountaineer “all things are

plain”. This is the “authoritative”, confidential Snyder County version,

unabridged:

To begin with, all the mountain people know Hornbostl Pfatteicher, whose

log cabin is situated near the heading of Lost Creek, on the borders of

Snyder and Juniata Counties. He has never been much of a worker, living

mostly by hunting and fishing, prospering greatly during the days when

the State raised the bounty on foxes and wild cats to an outrageously

extravagant figure–but no one cares; let the hunter’s license fund be

plundered and the taxpayers be jammed.

He was also very noticeable during the Spring and Fall forest fires,

which never failed to burn some art of his mountain bailiwick annually.

He was opposed to Forester Bartschat, regarding him as too alert and

intuitive, and made valiant efforts through his political bosses to have

him transferred or removed. He was regular in his politics, could always

have a hearing at Harrisburg, and though an ardent fisherman, saw no

harm in the dynamiting or liming of streams, and upheld the right of

“the interests” to pollute the waterways with vile filth from paper

mills and tanneries. In other words he was, and probably is, typical of

the professional mountaineer that the politicians, through the nefarious

bounty laws, have maintained in the forests, to the detriment of

reforestation and wild life.

Hornbostl, about 1915, was in love with a comely mountain girl, Beulah

Fuchspuhr, the belle of Lost Creek Valley, but he was away from home so

much, and so indifferent, and so much in his cups when in the

neighborhood that she found time to become enamored of a tie-jobber

named Heinie Beery, and ran away with him to Pittsburg.

During the flu epidemic, about the time of the Armistice, she was seized

with the dreaded malady, and passed away, aged twenty-eight years.

Hornbostl was in the last draft, but the Armistice was signed before he

was called to the colors, much to the regret of the better element, for

he was the sole pro-German in the mountains–a snake in a brood of

eaglets–and all allowed he should have been given a chance to fight his

beloved Kaiser. Though his name had a Teutonic flavor, he was only

remotely of German ancestry, and should have known better than to root

for a despotism–he, above all others, whose sole creed was personal

liberty when it came to interfering with his “vested rights” of hunting

and fishing out of season, and all other privileges of a lawless

backwoodsman.

After attending the funeral of his wife in Pittsburg, he took the train

to Philadelphia, and while there the news of the Armistice was received,

consequently his grief was assuaged by this very satisfying information.

He boarded on one of the back streets in the southern part of the Quaker

City, in a rear room, which looked out on an alley where there were

still a number of private stables or mews, occupied for the most part by

the horses and carriages of the aristocracy.

Hornbostl liked to sit at the window after his day’s work at Hog Island,

smoking his stogie and watching the handsome equipages coming and going,

the liveried colored coachmen, the long-tailed horses, with their showy

brass mounted harness, with jingling trappings, the animated groups of

grooms, stable boys and hangers-on. Some of the darkies kept game

roosters, and these occasionally strutted out into the alley and crowed

when there was bright sunshine and the wind came from the “Summer

Islands”.

One afternoon he saw a strange spectacle enacted at the stable opposite

his window. A large collection of moth-eaten and dusty stuffed animals

and birds were unloaded from a dray–stuffed elks, horns and all, several

buffalo heads, four timber wolves, with a red bear like they used to

have in Snyder County, a golden eagle, with tattered flopping wings and

a great black beast that stood upright like a man were the most

conspicuous objects. A crowd of mostly Negro children congregated as the

half a hundred mangy specimens of this “silent zoo” became too much for

Hornbostl, and putting his stogie between his teeth, sallied out the

back door, hatless and in his shirt sleeves, a brawny rural giant who

towered above the puny citified crowd.

He was greatly interested in that huge black beast which stood upright,

and could not quite classify it, though its hair was like that of a

black bear in its summer pelage. He sought out the tall Negro coachman

who was in charge of the stable, and asked why a museum was being

unloaded at that particular moment.

“Yer see its jest dis way”, said the darkey, confidentially, “old Major

Ourry have died an’ ’is heirs dey didn’t want de stuff about, so dey

sent ’em down to de stable fer me to put in de empty box stalls”.

As the conversation progressed the Negro intimated that the

aforementioned heirs would be glad to sell any or all of the specimens

at a reasonable figure.

“I’ll give you ten dollars for that big animal that looks like a cross

between a Snyder County black bear and a prize fighter”, said Hornbostl.

“The _gorilla_, you mean”, interposed the darkey.

“Yes, I mean the gorilla”, answered the backwoodsman.

“It’s yours”, said the Negro with a grin, for he was to get half of the

proceeds of all sales. He wondered why the uncouth stranger wanted a

stuffed gorilla, but of all the animals in the collection, he was most

pleased to get rid of that hideous effigy, the man-ape that might come

to life some dark cold night and raise ructions with the horses.

Hornbostl offered five dollars more if the Negro would box the monster,

and they finally arranged to box it together, and keep it in the stable

until he would be let out at Hog Island. Eventually they got it to the

freight station, billed to Meiserville.

At the time of the purchase it is doubtful if Hornbostl had any definite

idea of what he was going to do with his “find”, all that came later.

Hornbostl was glad to return to his mountain home, and sank complacently

back in his seat on the 11.30 A. M. train for Selim Grove Junction. It

was an uneventful trip, for he was an unimaginative person, taking

everything as a matter of course, though he did notice an unusually

pretty high school girl with a wonderfully refined face and carriage,

who got off the train at Dauphin, and followed her with his eyes as she

walked along the street back of the station and across the bridge that

spans Stony Creek, until the moving train shut her from view behind

Fasig’s Tavern. He thought that he had never seen anything quite so

lovely before; if his late sweetheart who had run away had been one

quarter as beautiful and elegant she would be worth worrying about.

He reached Meiserville well after dark, for it was almost the shortest

day of the year, and put up there for the night. In the morning he

inquired at the freight office for his consignment, but hardly expected

it that soon. He had to wait three days before it arrived, but when it

did, he secured a team which hauled it to his mountain retreat,

depositing the crate in front of his door. After the teamster with his

pair of heavy horses, decked out with jingling bells, departed,

Hornbostl unpacked his treasure, and the huge, grinning man-ape stood

before him, seven feet tall. It was set up on a platform with castors,

so he ran it into the house, leaving it beside the old-fashioned open

fireplace, where he used to sit opposite his mother while they both

smoked their pipes in the old days.

[Illustration: LAST RAFT IN THE WEST BRANCH OF SUSQUEHANNA]

That night after supper, when the raftered room was dark, save for one

small glass kerosene lamp, and the fitful light of the embers, the

mountaineer sat and smoked, trying to conjure up the history of the

hideous monster facing him across the inglenook. Instead of evolving

anything interesting or definite, the evil genius of the man-ape, as the

evening progressed, seemed to take complete possession of him. He became

filled with vicious, revengeful thoughts; all the hate in his nature was

drawn to the surface as the firelight flashed on the glass eyes and

grinning teeth of the monstrous jungle king. All at once the maelstrom

of nasty thoughts assumed coherent form, and he realized why he had

brought the gorilla to Snyder County.

He had heard since going to Philadelphia that the hated Heinie Beery had

taken a tie contract on the Blue Knob, the second highest mountain in

Pennsylvania, somewhere on the line between Blair and Bedford Counties.

He wanted to kill his rival, and now would be a chance to do it and

escape detection. He would dress himself up in the hide, and proceed

overland to Snyder Township, reconnoitre there, find his victim and

choke him to death, which the Negro coachman had told him was the chief

pastime of live gorillas in the African wilds.

Suiting the action to the word, he drew his long knife and began cutting

the heavy threads which sewed the hide over the manikin. He soon had the

hide lying on the deal floor, and a huge white statue of lath and

plaster of Paris stood before him, like an archaic ghost. He did not

like the looks of the manikin, so pounded it to a pulp with an axe to

lime his kitchen garden. The hide was as stiff as a board, but between

the heat of the fire and bear’s grease he had it fairly pliable by

morning. By the next night it was in still better shape so he donned it

and sewed himself in. Physically he was not unlike the man-ape, gross

about the abdomen, sloping shouldered and long-armed, while his

prognathous jaw and retreating forehead were perfect counterparts of the

gorilla’s physiognomy.

Arming himself with a long ironwood staff, he started on his journey

towards the Blue Knob country. He had to cross the Christunn Valley in

order to get into Jack’s Mountain, which he would follow along the

summits to Mount Union. It was a dark, starless night, and all went well

until he suddenly came upon the scene of a nocturnal wood chopping

operation. The wood-cutter, a railroader, had no other chance to lay in

his winter’s fuel supply than after dark, and by the light of a lantern

placed on a large stump had already stacked up a goodly lot of cordwood.

His son, a boy of fourteen, was ranking the wood. At the moment of the

gorilla-man’s appearance in the clearing the man had gone to the house

for a cup of hot coffee, leaving the lad alone at his work. The boy

heard the heavy footfalls on the chips, and thinking his father was

returning, looked up and beheld the most hideous thing that his eyes had

ever looked upon. He uttered a shriek of terror, but before he could

open his lips a second time the “gorilla” was upon him, slapping his

mouth until the blood flowed, with one brawny paw, while he wrenched his

arm so severely with the other that he left it limp and broken, hanging

by his side. Then the monster, looking back over his shoulder, loped off

into the deep forest at the foot of Jack’s Mountain.

The boy, more dead than alive from fright, was found a few minutes later

by his father, to whom he described his terrible assailant.

After that the man-ape was more careful when he traveled, although he

was seen by half a dozen persons until he got safely to the vicinity of

“the Monarch of Mountains”.

Blue Knob is a weird and impressive eminence around which many legends

cluster, some of them dating back to Indian days. Its altitude at the

new steel forest fire tower is 3,165 feet above tide.“is a beautiful

word picture of the disappearance of two little tots on the slopes of

Blue Knob, from the gifted pen of Rev. James A. Sell, of Hollidaysburg.

Heinie Beery was living alone in a small shack on Poplar Run, a stream

which has its heading on the slopes of Blue Knob, not far from the home

of the mighty hunter, Peter Leighty. Since the loss of his wife he was

gloomy and taciturn, and refused to live with his choppers and teamsters

in their big camp further down in the hollow.

While searching for Beery, the man-gorilla was seen by several of the

woodsmen, and the lonely camp was almost in a panic by this savage

visitation. The man-ape was glad that his outlandish appearance struck

terror to all who saw him, else he might have been captured long before.

He watched his chance to get Beery where he wanted him, and in the

course of several days was rewarded. Meanwhile he had to live somehow,

and at dead of night broke into smoke-houses and cellars, eating raw

eggs and butter when hunger pressed him hard. In some ways it was no fun

playing gorilla on an empty stomach.

One Sunday afternoon Beery, after eating dinner with his crew at their

camp near the mouth of the hollow, started on a solitary ramble up the

ravine which led past the small shanty where in the local vernacular, he

“bached it” towards the top of the vast and mysterious Blue Knob. Little

did he know that the man-ape was waiting behind his cabin, and followed

him to the summit, which he reached about dusk, and sat on a flat rock

on the brink of a dizzy precipice watching the lights flashing up at

Altoona and Johnstown, the long trains winding their way around Horse

Shoe Curve. He heard the brush crack behind him, and looking around

beheld the hideous monster that he had supposed his workmen had conjured

up out of brains addled by too much home-brew.

Heinie Beery was a fighting Dutchman, but on this occasion his curly

black hair stood straight on end, and his dark florid face became as

ashen as death. He lost his self-control for an instant, and in this

fatal moment the giant “gorilla” gripped him behind the shoulders and

sent him careening over the precipice “to take a short cut to Altoona”.

With a shout of glee the monster turned on his heel, his mission

accomplished, to return along the mountains and through the forests to

his cabin near the sources of Lost Creek. He was seen by a number of

children at Hollidaysburg and Frankstown, late at night, frightening

them almost out of their wits; he terrified several parties of

automobilists near Yellow Springs; he had all of Snyder Township in an

uproar before he had passed through it, but he eventually got to Shade

Mountain safe and sound.

Once on his home mountains, overlooking Lewistown Narrows, a strange

remorse overcame him; he began to regret his folly, his odd caprice. He

sat on a high rock near the top of the mountain, much in the attitude of

Rodin’s famous “Penseur”, and began to sob and moan. It was a still

night, and the trackwalkers down in the valley heard him and called to

him through their megaphones. But the more they called the worse he

groaned and shrieked, as if he liked to mystify the lonely railroad men.

At length he got up and started along the mountain top, wailing and

screaming like a “Token”, until out of hearing of the trackwalkers and

the crews of waiting freight trains. He had played a silly game, made a

_monkey_ of himself and was probably now a murderer in the bargain. He

could hardly wait until he got to his cabin to rip off the hideous,

ill-smelling gorilla’s hide, and make a bonfire of it. He hoped that, if

no evil consequence befell him as a result of his mad prank, he would be

a better man in the future.

However, as he neared his cabin, all his good resolves began to ooze out

of his finger tips. By the time he reached the miserable cabin he

decided to stick to his disguise, and continue the adventure to the end,

come what may. If he would be shot down like a vile beast, it would only

be retribution for Heinie Beery hurled off the crag of Blue Knob,

without a chance to defend himself. The night was long; he would travel

until morning and hide among the rocks until night, picking up what food

he could along the way.

In his northward journey he had many thrilling experiences, such as

crossing the covered bridge at Northumberland at midnight, riding on the

trucks of a freight train to Jersey Shore and frightening fishermen at

Hagerman’s Run. When last seen he was near the flourishing town of

Woolrich, frightening old and young, so much so that a young local

sportsman offered a reward of “five hundred dollars dead, one thousand

dollars alive”, putting the Snyder County gorilla in the same category

with the Passenger Pigeon as a natural history curiosity.

And in this terrible disguise Hornbostl Pfatteicher is expiating his

sins, black as the satanic form he has assumed, and when his penance is

over to be shed for the newer and better life.

X

_The Indian’s Twilight_

According to Daniel Mark, born in 1835, (died 1922), when the aged

Seneca Indian, Isaac Steel, stood beside the moss-grown stump of the

giant “Grandfather Pine” in Sugar Valley, in the early Autumn of 1892,

he was silent for a long while, then placing his hands over his eyes,

uttered these words: “This is the Indians’ Twilight; it explains many

things; I had heard from Billy Dowdy, when he returned to the

reservation in 1879, that the tree had been cut by Pardee, but as he had

not seen the stump, and was apt to be credulous, I had hoped that the

report was untrue; the worst has happened.”

Then the venerable Redman turned away, and that same day left the

secluded valley, never to return.

The story of the Grandfather Pine, of Sugar Valley, deserves more than

the merely passing mention already accorded it in forestry statistics

and the like. Apart from being probably the largest white or cork pine

recorded in the annals of Pennsylvania sylviculture–breast high it had

to be deeply notched on both sides, so that a seven foot cross-cut saw

could be used on it–it was the sacred tree of the Seneca Indians, and

doubtless of the earlier tribes inhabiting the country adjacent to the

Allegheny Mountains and the West Branch Valley.

It was a familiar landmark for years, standing as it did near the mouth

of Chadwick’s Gap, and could be seen towering above its fellows, from

every point in Sugar Valley, from Schracktown, Loganton, Eastville and

Carroll.

Professor Ziegler tells us that the maximum or heavy growth of white

pine was always on the winter side of the inland valleys; the biggest

pines of Sugar Valley, Brush Valley and Penn’s Valley were all along the

southern ridges.

Luther Guiswhite, now a restauranteur in Harrisburg, moving like a

voracious caterpillar easterly along the Winter side of Brush Valley,

gradually destroyed grove after grove of superb original white pines,

the Gramley pines, near the mouth of Gramley’s Gap, which Professor

Henry Meyer helped to “cruise”, being the last to fall before his

relentless juggernaut.

Ario Pardee’s principal pineries were mostly across the southern ridge

of Nittany Mountain, of Sugar Valley, on White Deer Creek, but the tract

on which the Grandfather Pine stood ran like a tongue out of Chadwick’s

Gap into Sugar Valley, almost to the bank of Fishing Creek. It is a well

known story that after the mammoth pine had been cut, Mike Courtney, the

lumberman-philanthropist’s woods boss, offered $100 to anyone who could

transport it to White Deer Creek, to be floated to the big mill at

Watsontown, where Pardee sawed 111,000,000 feet of the finest kind of

white pine between 1868 and 1878.

The logs of this great tree proved too huge to handle, even after being

split asunder by blasting powder, crushing down a number of trucks, and

were left to rot where they lay. Measured when prone, the stem was 270

feet in length, and considering that the stump was cut breast high, the

tree was probably close to 276 feet from root to tip. The stump is still

visible and well worthy of a visit.

In addition to boasting of the biggest pine in the Commonwealth, one of

the biggest red hemlocks also grew in Sugar Valley, in the centre of

Kleckner’s woods, until it was destroyed by bark peelers in 1898. It

dwarfed the other original trees in the grove, mostly superb white

hemlocks, and an idea of its size can be gained when it is stated that

“breast high” it had a circumference of 30 feet.

When Billy Dowdy, an eccentric Seneca Indian, was in Sugar Valley he

told ’Squire Mark the story of the Grandfather Pine, then recently

felled, and while the Indian did not visit the “fallen monarch” on that

occasion, he refrained from so doing because he said he could not bear

the sight. The greatest disaster that had yet befallen the Indians had

occurred, one that they might never recover from, and meant their final

elimination as factors in American history.

Dowdy seemed unnerved when he heard the story of the demolition of the

colossal pine, and it took several visits to the famous Achenbach

distillery to steady his nerves so that he could relate its history to

his old and tried friend the ’Squire. In the evening, by the fireside,

showing emotion that rarely an Indian betrays, he dramatically recited

the story of the fallen giant.

Long years ago, in the very earliest days of the world’s history, the

great earth spirit loved the evening star, but it was such an unusual

and unnatural attachment, and so impossible of consummation that the

despairing spirit wished to end the cycle of existence and pass into

oblivion so as to forget his hopeless love. Accordingly, with a blast of

lightning he opened his side and let his anguish flow away. The great

gaping wound is what we of today call Penn’s Cave, and the never ending

stream of anguish is the wonderful shadowy Karoondinha, now renamed John

Penn’s Creek.

As time went on fresh hopes entered the subterranean breast of the great

earth spirit, and new aspirations towards the evening star kindled in

his heart of hearts. His thoughts and yearnings were constantly onward

and upward towards the evening star. He sought to bridge the gulf of

space and distance that separated him from the clear pure light of his

inspiration. He yearned to be near, even if he could not possess the

calm and cold constellation so much beyond him. He cried for an answer,

but none came, and thought that it was distance that caused the

coldness, and certainly such had caused the great disappointment in the

past.

His heart was set on reaching the evening star, to have propinquity with

the heavens. Out of his strong hopes and deep desires came a tall and

noble tree, growing in eastern Sugar Valley, a king among its kindred,

off there facing the shining, beaming star. This tree would be the

symbol of earth’s loftiest and highest aspirations, the bridge between

the terrestrial and the celestial bodies. It was earth’s manliest,

noblest and cleanest aspiration, standing there erect and immobile, the

heavy plates of the bark like gilt-bronze armor, the sparse foliage dark

and like a warrior’s crest.

The Indians, knowing full well the story of the hopeless romance of the

earth spirit and the evening star, or _Venus_, as the white men called

it, venerated the noble tree as the connecting link between two

manifestations of sublimity. They only visited its proximity on sacred

occasions because they knew that the grove over which it dominated was

the abode of spirits, like all groves of trees of exceptional size and

venerable age.

The cutting away of most of the bodies of original pines has

circumscribed the abode of the spiritual agencies until they are now

almost without a lodgement, and must go wailing about cold and homeless

until the end of time, unless spiritual insight can touch our

materialistic age and save the few remaining patches of virgin trees

standing in the valley of the Karoondinha, the “Stream of the Never

Ending Love”, now known by the prosaic cognomen of “Penn’s Valley”.

The Tom Motz tract is no more, the Wilkenblech, the Bowers and the Meyer

groves are all but annihilated. Where will the spirits rest when the

last original white pine has been ripped into boards at The Forks, now

called Coburn? No wonder that Artist Shearer exclaimed, “The world is

aesthetically deal!”

The Indians were greatly dismayed at the incursion of white men into

their mountain fastnesses, so contrary to prophecy and solemn treaties,

and no power seemed to stem them as they swept like a plague from valley

to valley, mountain to mountain. The combined military strategy and

bravery of Lenni-Lenape, Seneca, Cayuga, Tuscarora and Shawnee failed

before their all-conquering advance. How to turn back this white peril

occupied the mind and heart of every Indian brave and soothsayer.

One evening just as Venus in the east was shedding her tranquil glory

over the black outline of the pine covered ranges of the Nittanies, a

mighty council of warriors and wise men, grave and reverent, assembled

under the Grandfather Pine. Hitherto victory, while it had rested with

the white invaders, had not been conclusive; there was still hope, and

the Indians meant to battle to the end.

It was during this epochal conclave that a message was breathed out of

the dark shaggy pigeon-haunted tops of the mighty tree. Interpreted it

meant that the Indian braves and wise men were reminded that this great

pine reached from heaven to earth, and by its means their ancestors used

to climb up and down between the two regions. In a time of doubt and

anxiety like this, the multitudes, conferring beneath the tree, were

invited to ascend to hold a council with the stars, to exchange views

and receive advice as to how the insidious white invader could be kept

in proper bounds, and to preserve the glory and historic dignity of the

Indian races. The stars, which were the spirits of undefeated warriors

and hunters and huntresses of exceptional prowess–their light was the

shimmer of their silvery targets–had always been the allies of the red

men.

In solemn procession the pick of the assemblage of Indian warriors and

wise men ascended the mighty tree, up, up, up, until their forms became

as tiny specks, and disappeared in the dark lace-like branches which

merged with the swart hues of the evening heavens. They set no time for

their return, for they were going from the finite to the infinite, but

they would be back to their beloved hills and valleys in plenty of time,

and with added courage and skill, to end the regime of the pale faced

foes.

Every wife and mother and sweetheart of a warrior who took this journey

was overjoyed at the privilege accorded her loved one, and none

begrudged being left behind to face the enemy under impaired leadership,

or the risk of massacre, as in due course of time the elite would return

from above and rescue them from their cruel tormentors.

Evidently out of space, out of time, was almost the equivalent of “out

of sight, out of mind” for all who had witnessed the chosen band of

warriors and warlocks ascend the pine, even the tiny babes, reached

maturity and passed away, and yet they had not returned or sent a

message. The year that the stars fell, in 1833, brought hopes to the

anxious ones, but never a falling star was found to bring tidings from

that bourne above the clouds.

Generation after generation came and went, and the ablest leaders still

were absent counseling with the stars. Evidently there was much to

learn, much to overcome, before they were fully fledged to return and

battle successfully.

The succeeding generations of Indian braves fought the white foes as

best they could, yet were ever being pushed back, and they were long

since banished from Sugar Valley where grew the Grandfather Pine.

Occasionally those gifted with historic lore and prophecy journeyed to

the remote valley to view the pine, but there were no signs of a return

of the absent Chieftains.

It was a long and weary wait. Were they really forsaken, or were there

affairs of great emergency in the realm of the evening star that made

them tarry so long? They might be surprised on their return to find

their hunting territories the farms of the white men, their descendants

banished to arid reservations on La Belle Riviere and beyond. They had

left in the twilight; they would find the Indians’ Twilight everywhere

over the face of the earth. It was a sad prospect, but they never gave

up their secret hope that the visitors to strange lands would return,

and lead a forlorn hope to victory.

Then came upon the scene the great lumberman, Ario Pardee. The bed of

White Deer Creek was “brushed out” from Schreader Spring to Hightown, to

float the millions of logs that would pile up wealth and fame for this

modern Croesus. What was one tree, more or less–none were sacred, and

instead of being the abode of spirits, each held the almighty dollar in

its heart.

Pardee himself was a man of dreams and an idealist, _vide_ Lafayette

College, and the portrait of his refined and spiritual face by Eastman

Johnson, in the rotunda of “Old Pardee”. Yet it was too early a day to

care for trees, or to select those to be cut, those to be spared; the

biggest tree, or the tree where the buffaloes rubbed themselves, were

alike before the axe and cross-cut; all must fall, and the

piratical-looking Blackbeard Courtney was the agent to do it.

Perhaps trees take their revenge, like in the case of the Vicar’s Oak in

Surrey, as related by the diarest Evelyn–shortly after it was felled one

of the choppers lost an eye and the other broke a leg. Mike Courtney, it

is reported, ended his days, not in opulent ease lolling in a barouche

in Fairmount Park with Hon. Levi Mackey, as had been his wont, but by

driving an ox-team in the wilds of West Virginia!

The Grandfather Pine was brought to earth after two days of chopping by

an experienced crew of woodsmen; when it fell they say the window lights

rattled clear across the valley in Logansville (now Loganton). It lay

there prone, abject, yet “terrible still in death”, majestic as it

sprawled in the bed that had been prepared for it, with an open swath of

forest about that it had maimed and pulled down in its fall.

Crowds flocked from all over the adjacent valleys to see the fallen

monarch, like Arabs viewing the lifeless carcass of a mighty lion whose

roar had filled them with terror but a little while before.

Then came the misfortune that the tree was found to be commercially

unprofitable to handle, and it was left for the mould and the moss and

the shelf-fungi to devour, for little hemlocks to sprout upon.

Billy Dowdy was in the West Branch Valley trying to rediscover the Bald

Eagle Silver Mine–old Uriah Fisher, of the Seventh Cavalry, can tell you

all about it–when the story was told at “Uncle Dave” Cochran’s hotel at

Pine Station that Mike Courtney had conquered the Grandfather Pine. It

is said that a glass of the best Reish whiskey fell from his nerveless

fingers when he heard the news. He suddenly lost all interest in the

silver mine on the Bald Eagle Mountain, which caused him to be roundly

berated by his employers, and dropping everything, he made for Sugar

Valley to verify the terrible story. ’Squire Mark assured him that it

was only too true; he had strolled over to Chadwick’s Gap the previous

Sunday and saw the prostrate Titan with his own eyes.

The Indians’ twilight had come, for now the picked band of warriors and

warlocks must forever linger in the star-belt, unless the earth spirit,

out of his great love, again heaved such a tree from his inmost creative

consciousness.

[Illustration: A FENCE OF WHITE PINE STUMPS, ALLEGHENIES]

Sometimes the Indians notice an untoward bright twinkling of the stars,

the evening star in particular, and they fancy it to be reassuring

messages from their marooned leaders not to give up the faith, that

sometimes they can return rich in wisdom, fortified in courage, ready to

drive the white men into the sea, and over it to the far Summer Islands.

When the stars fell on the thirteenth of November, 1833, it was thought

that the starry hosts were coming down en masse to fight their battles,

but not a single steller ally ever reported for duty.

Old John Engle, mighty Nimrod of Brungard’s Church (Sugar Valley), on

the nights of the Northern Lights, or as the Indians called them, “The

Dancing Ghosts”, used to hear a strange, weird, unaccountable ringing

echo, like exultant shouting, over in the region of the horizon, beyond

the northernmost Allegheny ridges. He would climb the “summer” mountain

all alone, and sit on the highest summits, thinking that the wolves had

come back, for he wanted to hear them plainer. In the Winter of 1859 the

distant acclamation continued for four successive nights, and the Aurora

covered the entire vault of heaven with a preternatural brilliance.

Great bars of intensely bright light shot out from the northern horizon

and broke in mid-sky, and filled the southern skies with their

incandescence. The sky was so intensely red that it flared as one great

sheet of fire, and engulfed the night with an awful and dismal red

light. Reflected on the snow, it gave the earth the appearance of being

clothed in scarlet.

The superstitious Indians, huddled, cold and half-clad, and half-starved

in the desert reservations, when they saw the fearful glow over beyond

Lake Erie, and heard the distant cadences, declared that they were the

signal fires and the cries for vengeance of the Indian braves imprisoned

up there in star-land, calling defiance to the white hosts, and

inspiration to their own depleted legions, the echo of the day of

reckoning, when the red men would come to their own again, and finding

their lost people, lead them to a new light, out of the Indians’

twilight.

[Illustration]

XI

_Hugh Gibson’s Captivity_

After the brutal massacre, by the Indians, of the Woolcomber family,

came fresh rumors of fresh atrocities in contemplation, consequently it

was considered advisable to gather the women and children of the

surrounding country within the stockade of Fort Robinson, under a strong

guard, while the bulk of the able-bodied men went out in companies to

reap the harvest. Some of the harvesters were on guard part of the time,

consequently all the men of the frontier community performed a share of

the guard duty.

Among the most energetic of the guardsmen was young Hugh Gibson, son of

the Widow Gibson, a name that has later figured prominently in the

public eye in the person of the Secretary of the American Legion at

Brussels, who endured a trying experience during the period of the

over-running of the Belgian Paris by the hordes of blood-thirsty Huns,

as rapacious and merciless as the red men of Colonial Pennsylvania.

Hugh Gibson, of Colonial Pennsylvania, was under twenty, slim and dark,

and very anxious to make a good record as guardian of so many precious

lives. As days wore on, and no Indian attacks were made, and no fresh

atrocities committed by the blood-loving monster, Cooties, the terror of

the lower Juniata Valley, even the punctilious Gibson relaxed a trifle

in the rigidity of his guardianship.

It was near the end of the harvest when the majority of the men

announced that they would remain away over night at a large clearing on

Buffalo Creek, as it would be difficult to reach the fort by nightfall

and be back at work by daybreak the next morning. Hugh Gibson was made

captain of the guard and placed in charge of the safety of the stockade

full of refugees.

All went well with Gibson and his fellow pickets until about midnight,

when the Indians launched a gas attack. The wind being propitious, they

built a fire, into which they stirred a large number of oak balls, and

the fumes suddenly engulfing the garrison, all became very drowsy, with

the result that the nimble redskins rushed in on the defenders, who were

gaping about, thinking that there must be a forest fire somewhere, but

too dazed and semi-conscious to think very succinctly about anything.

When the guards saw that it was red men, and not red fire, they roused

themselves as best they could, and fought bravely to save the fort and

its inmates. By throwing firebrands into the stockade, the women and

children, and cattle, were stampeded, and by a common impulse burst open

the gates, and dashed past the defenders, headed for the creek, to

escape the threatened conflagrations. Then the Indians closed in, and in

the darkness, amid the crackling of the fire–for a forest fire was now

in progress, and part of the stockade wall was blazing, amid war whoops

and shrieks of hatred and agony, the barking of dogs, the bellowing of

cattle running amuck, rifle shots, the crack of tomahawks on defenseless

skulls, the midnight air resounded with uncouth and horrible medley.