Curiosity was rife in Chillicothe and its vicinity in regard to the
ceremony about to take place at Old Town, and as the set time drew
near very many whites of both sexes might have been seen approaching
the spot, singly or in parties.
Clendenin, hindered by the demands of his profession, was one of the
last to arrive on the ground.
He found the Indians drawn up in a hollow square, outside of which
was the concourse of white spectators, inside Wolf with his promised
bribe,--a horse, a new saddle and bridle, and a new rifle for each of
the sons of his victim.
Kenneth had come alone. He knew that Dale had preceded him, and whom
he was to escort thither, and there they were on the opposite side
of the square; Nell in a becoming riding hat and habit, sitting her
horse with accustomed ease and grace; Dale by her side, the picture
of content and good humor.
Kenneth sighed involuntarily; what would he not have given to be in
Dale's place, yet he was glad to see his friend so favored rather
than the Englishman.
The next moment he perceived that Lyttleton also was one of the
assembled throng; at some little distance from those two, but in a
position to get a good view of their faces, and that he was watching
them closely, with a look of jealous rage.
Kenneth's eyes turned to Nell again to see hers fixed for an instant
upon the burly form and ruffianly face of Wolf, with an expression of
disgust and horror.
But the ceremony was beginning, and for a little claimed the
attention of all present.
The two young men came forward into the hollow square, Wolf presented
his horses and trappings, they lifted their hands toward heaven
invoking the Great Spirit, and declaring that to Him alone they
transferred the blood and life of Wolf forfeited by the death of
their father.
They then shook hands with Wolf in token of their forgiveness,
saluted him as a brother, and lighting the calumet of peace, smoked
with him in the presence of the Great Spirit.
The scene was one of deep solemnity and many eyes filled with tears
as they gazed upon it.
But it was over and the crowd began to disperse, tongues were loosed,
and Kenneth, silently threading his way among the talkers, casually
overheard the remark, "There is a white woman here, they say, who has
been a great many years with the Indians."
He almost caught his breath for an instant as he suddenly reined in
his horse, his heart beating like a hammer, a wild hope springing up
within his breast, a rush of mingled emotions surging through his
brain.
Strange that he had not thought of such a possibility.
He turned back, dismounted and secured his horse to a sapling; doing
it all mechanically. Then he strolled about among the Indians,
shaking hands with them and kindly inquiring after their health and
that of their families, patting the heads of the papooses, nodding
smilingly to the older children, and scanning with furtive, but keen
scrutiny, the face of each elderly squaw.
At length he came upon the object of his search, a woman past middle
age, whose features were unmistakably those of the white race.
She sat on the grass in the shade of a tree, near the door of a
wigwam, her fingers busily employed in embroidering a moccasin.
She seemed scarcely aware of his presence as he stood before her
vainly striving to still the tumultuous beating of his heart.
Controlling his voice by a great effort, he addressed her in English,
in a quiet tone.
"How do you do, mother?"
She looked up for an instant, shook her head slowly, and dropped her
eyes upon her work again.
"You understand me?" he said inquiringly, "you have not forgotten
your native tongue?"
"Me squaw," was the laconic answer, unaccompanied by so much as a
glance.
He sat down on a stump near at hand, the very same on which Lyttleton
had seated himself the previous night, and watched her silently for
a moment, while he considered the best manner of approaching her so
as to win her confidence and learn whether she could indeed tell him
aught of that which all these years he had been trying to discover.
"You are a white woman, why should you wish to conceal the fact?" he
said at length in a soft, persuasive tone. "I have no design against
you, but on the contrary would gladly do you any service in my power."
Again she raised her head, this time giving him a steady look, and
was it fancy that for a single instant there was something like a
gleam of recognition in her eye.
If so it was gone again before he could be sure it had been there;
while she answered indifferently in the Shawnee tongue, that she did
not understand what he had just said, and that she was not a pale
face but an Indian woman, the wife of a Shawnee brave.
Kenneth sat for a moment in perplexed silence; her assertion that she
did not belong to the white race was evidently false, yet what could
be her motive for making it? If she preferred to remain with the
tribe no one could force her away, or would be likely to care to do
so.
As he watched her again busied with her work, apparently wholly
careless of his presence, and studied her face, recalling the
description that had been given him, calculating what her age might
be, and the changes produced by the hardships and exposure of her
wild life, the conviction grew upon him that it was possible, even
probable, she was the very woman for whom he had so long and vainly
searched.
He determined upon a bold course.
Leaning toward her and gazing full into her face, "Reumah Clark," he
said, "have you quite forgotten the old life in the little valley
among the mountains of Eastern Tennessee, the husband and children
you then loved so dearly, the kind neighbors at whose house you were
when the Indians swooped down so suddenly upon you all?"
She had not been able to repress a slight start at the unexpected
sound of that name, or to entirely preserve the stolidity of
countenance with which she had begun the interview.
She rose hastily and disappeared from view within the wigwam.
The action left in Kenneth's mind little room for doubt of her
identity, but alas, of what avail that he had found her, if she could
not be induced to speak of those long past occurrences and to reveal
the secret which, if known to any mortal, was possessed by her alone?
His heart beat almost to suffocation while he forced himself to sit
waiting quietly there at the door of her wigwam in the forlorn hope
that she might return in a truthful and communicative mood.
He was alone, no one near, though at the distance of a few hundred
yards, the young Indians were engaged in active sports and their
shouts and laughter occasionally broke the stillness of the woodland
scene.
He waited what seemed an age to his tortured nerves, perceiving
neither sound nor motion within the tent, then rose and moved slowly
toward the spot where he had left his faithful steed.
He had not quite reached it when a hand was laid lightly upon his
arm, and turning he found a tall young brave standing by his side.
"Does the pale face forget?" he asked in good English, holding out
his hand.
"Have we ever met before?" asked Kenneth, earnestly scanning the
lad's face, while he took the hand in a cordial grasp and shook it
heartily.
"Indians never forget good white men," continued the lad, "white man
find Little Horn in the snow, take him in his arms, carry him to his
fire, wrap him in his blanket, feed him. White man very good. Indian
boy love good white man."
"Oh I remember you now!" cried Kenneth, joyfully, shaking hands
with increased cordiality, while his face lighted up with his rare,
beautiful smile. "I am glad to meet you again. Tell me, can I do
anything more for you?"
"Little Horn's turn now. What would my friend with White Swan, the
warrior Black Eagle's squaw?"
"I wish to talk with her about my mother and father, whom she once
knew," said Kenneth. "But she refuses to listen or to speak."
"Has my friend heap money?"
"I have some. Will money open her lips?"
The Indian gave an expressive grunt, then went on to tell of
Lyttleton's visit to their camp and interview with the woman, of
which he had been an unnoticed witness.
He had not heard or understood all the talk between them, but
enough to enable him to gather by the assistance of their tones
and gestures, the holding up of the purse, and the eager hand
outstretched to receive it, that a bribe had been offered and
accepted, and her conduct of to-day, which also he had closely
watched, had convinced him that her promise had been to maintain
silence toward Kenneth, of whose intended visit Lyttleton must have
known.
Clendenin listened in great surprise. Who could it have been? He did
not know that he had an enemy in the whole world, and this visit was
entirely unexpected even to himself.
But Little Horn's communication gave him fresh hope. "Would he be his
messenger to the white squaw," he asked earnestly; "would he go to
her and say that if she would talk with the pale face, and answer his
questions as well as she could he would give her as much money as the
pale face visitor of the previous night had promised her if she kept
silence?"
The Indian accepted the commission, went at once to the wigwam,
Kenneth slowly following, passed in, and a few moments after
reappeared in company with the woman.
A change had come over her face; it no longer wore the stolid look
Kenneth had seen upon it during their earlier interview, the features
were agitated and there were traces of tears on the cheeks. His words
had recalled half forgotten scenes of bitter sorrow, terror and
despair.
"Speak! I listen," she said in the English tongue, seating herself
and motioning to him to do the same, then burying her face in her
hands.
He dropped upon the grass by her side and began at once in low,
quiet, almost mournful tones.
"Many years ago, before I was born, there stood two log cabins, some
half mile apart, in a little valley among the mountains of Tennessee.
A young couple named Clark, with a family of several small children,
lived in one; the other was occupied by two couples bearing the same
family name, Clendenin; the men were distantly related; one older by
twenty years or more than the other; he had married a widow with one
child, a daughter, and she had shortly after become the wife of his
younger kinsman."
Kenneth paused.
"Go on," said his hearer, in smothered tones.
Little Horn, with native delicacy, had withdrawn and thrown himself
upon the grass just out of earshot.
Kenneth went on.
"These two families were the sole residents of the little valley;
the nearest white neighbor lived miles away on the other side of
the mountains, and between lay forests filled with wild beasts and
hostile Indians.
"One lovely summer day Mr. Clark was helping his neighbors in the
field, his wife visiting theirs. She had taken her children with her
and they were at play in the door-yard.
"In the course of the day both mother and daughter were taken sick,
and two babes were born within half an hour of each other.
"Mrs. Clark had her hands more than full in attending upon the women,
and the children, both boys, hastily wrapped in a blanket and laid
in the same cradle, had received no further attention, when a scream
from her own little ones, 'Mother, mother! the Injuns! the Injuns!'
sent her flying to their rescue."
"Yes, yes," sobbed his listener. "Oh, my darlings, tomahawked and
scalped before my very eyes! I see their bleeding corpses now! Their
father's too, shot down as he came running from the field to try to
save us. And then I was dragged away never to see home or relations
again!"
"Then you are indeed Reumah Clark?"
Kenneth's voice trembled with agitation as he asked the question.
She bowed assent, her face still hidden in her hands. But suddenly
dropping them she gazed eagerly, searchingly, into his face.
"And you, you who look so like the dead, who are you?"
"One of those babes born on that terrible day," he answered with
emotion; "which, I do not know; and that is what I have hoped even
against hope, that you could tell me. You laid us down together, you
remember, and to this day the question remains unsolved which was
the uncle and which the nephew. Did you observe any mark upon either,
anything at all to distinguish him from the other?"
Clendenin was greatly agitated as he put this question, and his
breathing was almost suspended as he waited for the reply.
"Yes," she said; "one had a very peculiar mark on his breast. I was
sort o' expecting it, and looked for it right away."
"What was it, and on which child?" he asked with the tone and manner
of one to whom the answer must bring life or death.
"Wait," she said, "let me tell it in my own way. Clark he'd been a
cabin boy aboard a ship, and an old sailor had tattooed an anchor on
his arm. 'Twas fur up above his elbow, and didn't show except he took
pains to roll his sleeve up a-purpose."
She spoke hesitatingly, as one who had half forgotten the use of her
mother tongue, and to Clendenin the suspense was agony well nigh
unendurable; but by a strong effort he kept himself quiet.
"Well," she continued, "the oldest Mrs. Clendenin was over to our
house not a week afore that awful day, and Clark he showed her that
mark on to his arm, and I saw that she turned kind o' sick and faint
at the sight, and then quick as thought she slipped her hand into the
bosom of her dress.
"Clark, he'd turned away with a laugh, and gone out o' the door; and
I asked her what she did that for, and she said she was afraid her
child would be marked, and if 'twas to be she wanted it where it
wouldn't show.
"Then she got up to go home, and says she, 'We'll not speak of
this, Reumah, and I'll try not to think of it, so there'll be less
likelihood of mischief coming of it.'"
"And it was her child, the older woman's?" cried Kenneth,
breathlessly; "and is this what you speak of?" tearing open his shirt
bosom as he spoke.
"Yes, that's it, as sure as I'm a living woman!" she answered, gazing
curiously at the deep red mark in the form of an anchor on the left
breast. "And now you know which o' the two you are."
He drew a long, sighing breath of relief, as one who feels a heavy
weight fall from his shoulders, clasped his hands, and lifted
his eyes to heaven, his face radiant with unutterable joy and
thankfulness, his lips moving, though no sound came from them.
She watched him in wonder and amazement.
"What's the difference," she asked, as he resumed his former
attitude, "and how comes it that your mother didn't know by that very
mark that you were hers?"
"She died within the hour," he said with emotion; "raising herself
in the bed, and looking through the open door, she saw her husband
slain, his reeking scalp held aloft by a savage, and with a wild
scream she fell back and expired."
"And the rest?"
"The younger Clendenin gained the house barely in time to secure
the door before the Indians reached it, and keeping up a vigorous
fire through a chink in the wall, his wife, ill as she was, loading
for him, there happening to be two guns in the house, he at length
succeeded in driving off the enemy.
"A few weeks later they left forever the scene of the terrible
tragedy, taking the two babes with them."
The interview lasted some time longer, Kenneth expressing his
gratitude to the woman with much warmth and earnestness, and urging
her to return to civilized life.
This she steadily declined to do, saying that she did not know of a
living relative among the whites, had an Indian husband, children and
grandchildren, and had learned to like her wild life.
Hearing that, he ceased his importunity, gave her all the money he
had with him and a written promise of more, tearing a leaf from his
note book for the purpose; then with a cordial shake of the hand, and
an invitation to visit him the next day in Chillicothe, that he might
redeem his promise, bade her good-bye.
As he turned to go Little Horn rose from the grass and came toward
him, asking of his success.
In reply Kenneth told him he had learned all he wished to know from
the white squaw, and was greatly indebted to him for his timely
assistance.
He would have added a reward, but the lad utterly refused to accept
it, saying it was very little he had done in return for what he owed
to the saviour of his life. And then he added that his influence with
the white squaw was due to the fact that he was her son, and that he
had informed her of the great service Kenneth had done him years ago.