LONG before sunrise the “Maison Bondie” was awake and stirring. Early
hours were the rule for travellers in those days on the frontier. While
yet the earth was shrouded in shadow and the mists were drifting along
the broad ribbon of the river, the sleepers on the bar-room floor
were rolling up their blankets and making their hasty toilets before
scattering to feed the mules and hitch them to the wagons preparatory
for a start to Vincennes and the south. Half an hour later they
returned to the bar room to devour the hasty yet heavy meal spread for
them.
Jack and his party were astir as early as the rest--Jack and Cato
because it was impossible to sleep later on the crowded floor, and
Alagwa because of her keen anticipation of the coming day. Cato hurried
out to see to the horses and to the mule that Jack had bought for
him the night before, and Jack and Alagwa foregathered at the wash
basins beneath the shed. Even earlier than the wagoners, they seated
themselves at the rough table and hastily devoured the breakfast placed
before them, impatient to be gone down the long trail that led to Fort
Miami and to Detroit.
Tom Rogers was not to accompany them. In spite of Colonel Johnson’s
assurances, Jack was by no means certain that either Alagwa or Captain
Brito had left the vicinity of Wapakoneta. He was going to Detroit
because that seemed the most promising thing to do, but he decided to
send Rogers back to Wapakoneta to keep a sharp look-out for both the
girl and the man.
“You’ll know what to do if you find the man,” he said, grimly, as he
told Rogers good-by. “War has begun, and Captain Brito has no right to
be in this country. If you find the girl, take her to Colonel Johnson
and then get word to me as quick as you can.”
Amid many calls of adieu and bon voyage from the kindly French people
the travellers set off. The sun was not yet up, but as the three
cantered to the ford close beside the blockhouse, that frowned from
the southwest corner of the fort, the morning gun boomed and the Stars
and Stripes flung out to the breeze. An instant later, as the horses
splashed through the shallow water, the sun thrust out through a gash
in the clouds above the eastern forest, lighting up the snapping banner
with its seventeen emblematic stars. A moment more, and the dew-studded
fields began to glisten like diamonds, coruscating with many-colored
fire, and the mists that lay along the river shredded and swirled in
rainbow tints. The wind sprang up and the vast arch of the heavens
thummed with reverberant murmurs, inarticulate voices of a world new
born, thrilling with the ever-fresh hopes with which it had thrilled
since the morning of time.
For a few miles the road ran through open fields that stretched along
the north bank of the Maumee, a sunlit water strung with necklaces of
bubbles that streamed away from the long grasses that lay upon its
surface. A faint freshness rose like perfume from the stream, diffusing
itself through the amber air. Here and there limbs of sunken trees
protruded from the water, token of the great trunks submerged beneath
its flood; round them castles of foam swelled and sank, chuckling away
into nothingness.
Then came the forest, a mounting line stretching across the path.
Fragrant at first and warm with the morning sun it swiftly closed in,
dim and moist and cool, arching above the road and the heads of the
travellers.
Side by side rode Jack and Alagwa. The girl’s heart was beating high,
leaping in unison with the stride of the horse that bore her. Gone were
the fancies and questionings of the night. For good or for ill she had
sent the message to Tecumseh. She had kept faith with those who had
cared for her for so many years. She had insured Jack’s safety so long
as she should remain with him. It was all done and could not be undone.
Some day, she knew, she must pay for it all, pay to the uttermost, but
that day was not yet. Till it came she would forget. Resolutely she put
all fear of the future behind her, living only in and for the moment.
Jack, too, was happy; the dawn worked its magic on him as it did the
girl by his side. Youth, strength, and health jumped together in his
veins. He did not know why he was happy. He was not prone to analyze
his sensations. If he had thought of the fact at all he would probably
have imagined that he was happy because he was going to the seat of
war and because he hoped to find there the girl in search of whom he
had come so many miles. It would not have occurred to him that he was
rejoicing less in the coming end of his journey than he was in the
journey itself. Nor would it have crossed his mind that he would have
contemplated the journey itself with far less pleasure if he had been
alone or had been accompanied only by Cato. He rejoiced in the company
of his new boy chum without knowing that he did so.
And he had not thought of Sally Habersham for more than twenty-four
hours!
For a time neither spoke. The road was broader and better than that
up the St. Marys. For years it had been a thoroughfare along which
Indians, traders, and armies had moved in long procession; and it was
well trampled, though it still required careful riding to prevent the
horses stumbling.
Alagwa, in particular, was silent because she was puzzling over a
question that the events of the last evening had made pressing.
If she was ever to find out beyond a doubt the reason why Jack came to
Ohio to search for her she must find it out at once. She did not know,
could not know, how long her opportunity to question would continue.
Fantine had detected her secret and had kept it. At any moment another
might detect it and might be less kindly.
Besides, Fantine had spoken as if she was doing wrong in travelling
with Jack, even though he thought her a boy. Alagwa wondered at this,
for no such conventions held among the Indians, among whom in early
days unchastity was so rare that a woman had better be dead than guilty
of it.
Jack noticed the girl’s abstraction and rode silently, waiting on
her mood. At last he grew impatient. “A penny for your thoughts,
youngster,” he offered, smiling.
Alagwa started. Then she met his eyes gravely. “I wonder much,” she
said. “The thoughts of the Indian are simple, but those of the white
men are forked, and I can not read them. You have come by dim trails
over miles of hill and forest to find this girl whom you know never.
And the Captain Brito, the chief in the red coat, he also come far, by
land and by sea, to seek her. Why do you come? I do not understand.”
“Why do I come?” Jack echoed the words, smilingly. “Well! Let’s see! I
come for several reasons--partly because Tecumseh sent me a belt asking
me to come and partly because I was in the mood for adventure, but
mostly because the girl is my cousin and because she needs help. I told
you all this before, didn’t I?”
“Yes! But is not the Count Brito ready to help? Why do you not let him?”
Jack laughed. “I reckon he is,” he confessed. “And, so far as I know,
he might have been able to make her quite as happy as my people can.
I don’t really know anything against Brito. His reputation isn’t very
good, but, Lord! whose is?”
“If he found her, what would he do with her?” Alagwa knew she was on
perilous ground, but she went on, nevertheless.
“He’d marry her out of hand, of course. That would give him the Telfair
estates, you see. He’s said to be heavily in debt, and the money would
be a godsend to him. After that a lot would depend on the girl. If
she happened to take his fancy he might be very decent to her. And
there’s no denying that she might like the life he would give her. But
the chances are against it, and it’s my duty to see that she isn’t
tricked into it blindfolded. Here in this forest she couldn’t possibly
understand, any more than you can, what a wonderful thing it is to be
mistress of the Telfair estates. If she marries Brito she gives up
everything without having known that she had it.”
Alagwa was listening earnestly, trying hard to comprehend the new
unthought-of phase of life that Jack was discussing. One thing,
however, she fastened on.
“But if _she_ refuse to marry _him_?” she questioned. “If she say she
will not make his moccasins nor pound his corn?”
“She wouldn’t refuse. What! An Indian-bred girl, ignorant of everything
outside these Ohio forests, refuse to marry a British officer, who came
to her with his hands full of gifts? Refusal isn’t worth considering.
And if she really should be stubborn he could easily ruin her
reputation----”
“Reputation? What is that?”
“It’s--it’s--I’ll be hanged if I know exactly how to explain it so that
you can understand. I reckon the Indians don’t bother about it. But
in civilization, among white people, a girl can’t travel alone with a
man without getting talked about. Brito wouldn’t be likely to stop at
trifles. He’d contrive it so that the girl would be compromised and
then she’d have to marry him.” Jack stopped; he was a clean-mouthed,
clean-hearted young fellow, but he was no prude and he could not
understand why he should find it so hard to explain matters to the boy
at his side. Nevertheless, when he met Alagwa’s wide, innocent eyes,
he stopped in despair, tongue-tied and flushing.
Alagwa was clearly startled. “You mean that if a white girl take the
long trail with a man she is comprom--compromised--and that she must
marry him or that the sachems and the braves will drive her from the
council fires?” she questioned.
“Well--something like that. This girl, in her ignorance, would lose her
reputation before she knew she had one. And she’d have to marry him to
get it back!”
“But--But if he refuse to marry her. If a man travel with a girl and
then not marry her?” A deep red had rushed to Alagwa’s cheeks; she bent
down her head to hide it.
Jack shrugged his shoulders. “Brito wouldn’t refuse!” he declared.
“I mean not Brito only. I mean any man who had--had compromise a girl.
Suppose he refuse to take her to his lodge in honor?”
“Any man who did that would be a scoundrel. The girl’s father or
brother or friend would call him out and kill him. But, as I say, Brito
would marry Estelle, of course. And he wouldn’t need to do anything to
compel her. She’d marry him willingly enough. You know it.”
Alagwa did not deny it. Jack’s assertion was correct; no Indian girl
would refuse to marry a redcoat chief. But his earlier assertion
concerning the loss of reputation gave her food for thought.
“And you?” she asked. “If you find her what will you do?”
“I? I’d take her home.”
“And would it not compromise her to travel so long and dim a trail with
you?”
Jack flushed. “It isn’t exactly the same thing,” he answered at last,
hesitatingly. “This is America and we are not so censorious. Europe
is very different. Over here we think people are all right till we
are forced to think otherwise. In Europe they think them bad from the
start. And, of course, I’d protect her all I could. Brito wouldn’t.
He’d be trying to make her marry him, you see, and I shouldn’t.”
The girl straightened suddenly in her saddle. “You--you do not want to
marry her?” she faltered.
A cloud came over Jack’s face. “No!” he said, slowly. “No! I don’t want
to marry her. I shall never marry anybody.”
Startled, the girl looked at him. Then her eyes dropped and for a
little she rode silent. When the talk was resumed it was on other
subjects.
All that day and all the next the three rode beneath great trees that
rose fifty feet from the ground without branch or leaf, and that stood
so close together that no ray of sun came through their arching
branches. It was nearly sunset on the second day when they came to the
fort built by General Anthony Wayne nearly twenty years before at the
junction of the Maumee and the Auglaize--the fort which he had named
Defiance, because he declared that he defied “all English, all Indians,
and all the devils in hell to take it.” From it he and his army had
sallied out to meet and crush the Miamis at the battle of the Fallen
Timbers.
The ruins of the fort stood ten feet above the water, on the high
point between the Maumee and the Auglaize. Mounting the gentle slope
that led upward from the west the travellers descended into a wide
half-filled ditch and then climbed a steep glacis of sloping earth that
had encircled the ancient palisades. The logs and fascines that had
held the ramparts in place had long since rotted away and most of the
inner lines of palisades had disappeared. Within their former bounds
a few scorched and blackened logs marked where the four blockhouses
had stood. The narrow ditch that cut the eastern wall and ran down to
the edge of the river--the ditch dug to enable Wayne’s soldiers to
get water unseen by lurking foes--was half filled by sliding earth.
Mounting the crumbling ramparts Jack and Alagwa stood and stared,
striving to picture the scene as it was in the days already ancient
when the United States flag had flown for the first time in the valley
of the Maumee.
For two or three hundred yards on all sides the forest trees had
been cut away and their places had been taken by a light growth of
maple and scrub oak. On the south, on the west bank of the Auglaize,
a single mighty oak towered heavenward--the council tree of all the
northern tribes, the tree beneath which fifty years before Pontiac
had mustered the greatest Indian council known in all America and had
welded the tribes together for his desperate but vain assault upon the
growing power of the white men--an assault which Tecumseh was even then
striving to emulate.
Beyond the council oak, southward along the Auglaize, stretched an
apple orchard planted years before by the indefatigable “Appleseed
Johnny.” To the north, beyond the Maumee, stood a single apple tree, a
mammoth of its kind, ancient already and destined to live and bear for
eighty years to come. To the west, along the road down which the three
had come, black spots showed where George Ironside’s store had stood,
where Perault, the baker, had baked and traded, where McKenzie, the
Scot, had made silver ornaments at a stiff price for the aborigines,
where Henry Ball and his wife, taken prisoners at St. Claire’s defeat,
had won their captors’ good will and saved their lives by working, he
as a boatman and she by washing and sewing. Near at hand, but out of
sight from the fort, was the house of James Girty, brother of Simon,
where British agents from Canada had continually come to fan the
discontent of the Indians against the Americans. Up and down the rivers
stretches of weeds and underbrush choked the ground where Wayne had
found vast fields of enormous corn. Alagwa’s heart burned hotly as
she remembered that her people and those of kindred tribes had tilled
those fields for centuries before the white man had come into the Ohio
country. The fortunes of war had laid them waste. Silently she prayed
that the fortunes of war might yet restore them!
Camp was rapidly pitched, the horses fed and picketed for the night,
and supper prepared and eaten. By the time it was finished darkness had
closed in. The moon was not yet up, though promise of it was silvering
the unquiet tops of the eastern forest. But on the exposed point the
glimmer of the blazing stars gave light enough to see.
Jack stood up. “The first watch is yours, Cato,” he said. “Call me
about midnight.” “Bob,” he turned to the girl, “as you want to watch so
badly, I’ll call you about two o’clock. I needn’t caution you both to
be careful.”
Alagwa was tired and she slept deeply and dreamlessly. She did not
share Jack’s fears. Even though she knew her message could not yet have
reached Tecumseh, she felt secure under the aegis of his protection.
Nevertheless, when Jack waked her and she saw the low moon staring at
her along the western water, she went to her post at the edge of the
rampart determined to keep good watch and make sure that no wanderer of
the night should creep upon the camp unawares.
From where she sat she could see along both rivers--down the Maumee
to the east and up the Auglaize to the south. Up the latter, lay her
home at Wapakoneta, a scant twenty miles away. All her travels for the
past few days had been west and east again, westward out one leg of a
triangle, and then eastward down the other leg, and the net gain of one
hundred and fifty miles march, west and east, had been only a score of
miles north.
Toward Wapakoneta she strained her eyes, not solely because it was
her home, but because if danger came at all it would come from its
direction. Tecumseh and his braves had come down the Auglaize less than
a week before and laggards might follow him at any time. Or, perhaps,
Captain Brito might come north; Alagwa knew that Jack doubted his
having left the country.
The dawn was beginning to break. The boles of the trees began to stand
separately out; the leaves took on a tinge of green. Over all reigned
silence. No faintest sound gave warning of approaching enemies. But
the girl well knew that silence did not mean safety. Too often had she
heard the Shawnee braves boast of how they crept on their sleeping
enemies in the dawn. With renewed determination she thrust forward her
heavy rifle and strained her eyes and ears anew. Jack had trusted her;
she must not fail him.
Suddenly she started. Was something moving beside the great council oak
or was it a mere figment of her overstrained nerves. The horses were
moving uneasily; now and then they snorted. Did they scent something?
Alagwa remembered that more than once she had heard the Shawnee braves
complain that the sleeping whites had been awakened by their uneasy
horses.
Abruptly anger swelled in the girl’s heart. The braves had no right
to attack Jack’s party. She had sent word to Tecumseh that it must be
protected. True, Tecumseh could not yet have received her message, much
less have sent word to respect it. Any Indians who were creeping upon
the camp could only be a party of late recruits from Wapakoneta, bound
north to join Tecumseh and the British. Nevertheless, they were acting
counter to the orders that Tecumseh would surely give. Alagwa knew that
her anger was illogical, but she let it flame higher and higher as she
watched. If the Shawnees dared to attack----
Again she set herself to listen. She must not rouse the camp without
cause. Jack would laugh at her if she were frightened so easily. No!
He would not laugh! He was too kind to laugh. But he would despise
her. She must remember that she was playing the man; she must show no
weakness. Nothing had moved amid the tree trunks; she had only imagined
it. With a sigh of relief she lowered her rifle.
Simultaneously came a crash. A bullet drove the earth from the rampart
into her face, filling her eyes and mouth with its spatter. Then from
every tree, from every rock, forms, half naked, horrible, painted,
came leaping. Bullets whistled before them, rending the tortured air.
As they topped the ramparts one, wearing a woodsman’s garb, caught his
foot and fell forward, sprawling; the others hurled themselves toward
Jack and Cato. Alagwa did not stop to think that these were her people,
her friends. Instinctively the muzzle of her rifle found the naked
breast of the warrior who was springing at Jack, and instinctively she
pressed the trigger. Then, heedless of the kick of the heavy rifle, and
of the blinding smoke that curled from its barrel, and reckless of the
pulsing bullets she threw herself forward. “Stop!” she shrieked, in the
Shawnee tongue. “Stop! Tecumseh commands it.”
The braves did not stop. Relentlessly they came on. One of them sprang
at Cato; his tomahawk flashed in the dawn and the negro went down,
sprawling upon the ground. But Jack was up now; his rifle spoke and the
Indian who had felled Cato crashed across his body. As Jack turned, a
whirling hatchet struck him in the chest and he staggered backward.
But as the man who had thrown it whooped with triumph, Alagwa’s pistol
barked and he fell. From beneath him Jack rolled to Cato’s side and
caught up the rifle that had fallen from the negro’s flaccid fingers.
As he renewed the spilled priming, Alagwa, weaponless, heard a shot and
felt her cap fly from her head and go fluttering to the ground. Then
Jack marked the man who had fired upon her and shot him down.
Dazed, Alagwa staggered back. For a moment she saw the battlefield,
photographed indelibly upon the retinas of her eyes; saw the man at
whom Jack had fired clutching at the air as he fell; saw the sole
remaining foe, the man who had tripped at the rampart, a huge man,
broad and tall, leap at Jack. Then sight and sound were blotted out
together.