THE drama of the war was unfolding. The first act was filled with
martial music and with the tramp of armed men marching northward to
wrest from the British king the remainder of his great American empire
and to extend the bounds of the United States to the foot of the aurora
borealis. War had been declared in the middle of June and the late
summer of 1812 saw three armies afoot, one at the western end of Lake
Erie, one at Niagara, and one on Lake Champlain.
The first clash of arms came in the west. Burning with zeal, General
Hull and his soldiers cut a road through the Black Swamp, occupied
Detroit, and early in July crossed into Canada. The country rang with
the news of their triumphant advance. The country did not realize,
though it was soon to do so, that for years the British in Canada had
been providing against this very eventuality, and had been building a
red bulwark against attack. For years they had been winning the good
will of the Indians with presents, had been cajoling them with soft
words, and had been providing them with arms and ammunition. And when
the war came they had their reward. While Hull was marching so gaily
forward thousands of savages were closing in behind him, surrounding
him with a red cordon that he was never to break. At first they moved
slowly, lacking a white leader. Soon they were to find one in General
Brock and the Americans were to realize too late that they had to
meet not merely a handful of British and Canadians but a horde of the
fiercest foes that any land could produce, some of whom, like Tecumseh,
hoped to establish an Indian kingdom whose barriers would hold back
the Americans forever, but most of whom fought merely for the spoils
of war, secure in the British promise to give them a free hand and
to protect them against any ultimate vengeance like that which had
befallen them when they had risen in the past.
All this, however, lay in the womb of the future in July and early
August, when Jack was slowly fighting his way back to health. The
wound on his head healed rapidly, disappearing even before that on
Cato’s thick skull, and by the first of August he had recovered much
of his physical strength though little of his mental powers. One day
he would look out upon the world with sane eyes, gladdening Alagwa’s
sore heart with the hope that her vigil was nearing its end; the next
day some trifle, some slight excitement, even some memory, would strike
him down, and for days he would toss in delirium or lie in a state of
coma that seemed like death itself. It needed all the cheeriness that
Fantine could muster and all the assurances that Major Stickney and
Captain Wells could offer to sustain the girl’s hope that he would ever
be himself again.
Meanwhile information that the war was not going well for the Americans
began to trickle in to Fort Wayne or, rather, to the white men adjacent
to it who enjoyed the confidence of the Indians.
Owing to his Miami wife, Peter Bondie’s affiliations with the Indians
were close and he received early news of all that took place at the
front. Before any one else at Fort Wayne he knew that Hull had been
driven back from Canada to Detroit. He learned almost instantly when
Hull’s lines of communication were broken and the small force that
was bringing cattle and other food to his aid was halted at the River
Raisin, and he was kept well informed as the lines about Hull himself
grew closer and closer. Lieutenant Hibbs and the garrison at the fort,
meanwhile, seemed to dwell in a fool’s paradise.
The first publicly admitted news that all was not going well was
that of the surrender of the fifty-seven men who garrisoned Fort
Michilimackinac, far to the northward. This, however, made little
impression. Fort Michilimackinac was unimportant and was isolated; its
surrender amounted to nothing. The next day, however, word was received
from General Hull that Fort Dearborn, one hundred and fifty miles to
the west, on the site where Chicago now stands, was to be evacuated.
Lieutenant Hibbs was instructed to consult with Major Stickney and
Captain Wells and to devise some means by which the order could be
safely transmitted and the garrison safely withdrawn. The next day
Captain Wells, with one white man and thirty-five supposedly friendly
Miami Indians, set out for Fort Dearborn to carry the orders. Even
this, however, did not disturb the optimism that ruled in the fort.
Dearborn, like Michilimackinac, was isolated and unimportant.
The first news of the British and Indian successes, slight though they
were, bewildered Alagwa. In vain she assured herself that she ought to
rejoice. Her friends were winning. They were driving back the braggart
Americans. They were regaining all that the slow years had stolen from
them. Tecumseh’s drama of a great Indian kingdom would come true. She
ought to be glad! glad! glad!
Nevertheless, her heart sank lower and lower. She could not understand
why this should be so. She was no friend to the Americans, she told
herself. She loved Jack, but she hated his people. She was still an
ally to the Shawnees and to the British. She hoped, hoped, hoped that
they would overwhelm the Americans and drive them back forever. But
still the pain at her heart grew sharper and sharper.
Moreover her own actions began to trouble her. No longer could she
keep up the fiction that she was a prisoner. Prisoners do not bring
their captors back to the jail from which they have escaped. Moreover
she had conspired against this very fort, under whose protecting walls
she had sought refuge for herself and Jack. Gloze the fact over as she
might she could not wholly put away the thought that her acts were
both treacherous and ungrateful. Throughout July she had seen nothing
of the runner and had heard no word to tell that Tecumseh had received
her message or had acted upon it. None of the Miamis, who lived in the
vicinity, had approached her with any word from the Shawnee chieftain.
Early in August, however, Metea, chief of the Pottawatomies, who lived
a little to the west, sought her out and gave her to understand that he
knew who she was and to assure her that any message she wished to send
to Tecumseh would be transmitted.
“Metea goes to Yondotia (Detroit),” he said. “Even now his moccasins
are on his feet and his tomahawk in his belt. Has the white maiden any
word to send.”
His words struck Alagwa with a panic which she found herself unable to
conceal. Falteringly she declared that she had no word to send other
than that she was faithful to the redmen’s cause and would help it all
she could. She did not repeat her message about the scarcity of powder
at the fort. When Metea had gone she hid herself and wept.
The next day, however, Jack took a sudden turn for the better, and the
girl’s joy in his improvement drove all misgivings from her mind.
Once it had begun Jack’s improvement grew apace. A week went by without
sign of relapse. His eyes shone with the light of reason; his voice
grew smooth; his figure straightened; almost he seemed himself again.
The surgeon from the fort, however, still counselled caution.
With returning strength the lad began to fret about the failure of his
mission to the northwest and to declare that he must be off to Detroit
in search of his cousin. In vain Alagwa urged upon him that he must
be fully restored to health before he attempted to exert himself, and
in vain the surgeon warned him that any sudden stress, either mental
or physical, was likely to bring about a relapse. Jack felt well and
strong and chafed bitterly at his inaction.
One day, a little past the middle of August, he and Alagwa (with Cato
hovering in the background) sought temporary refuge from the heat
beneath the great tree before the door of the hotel--the tree whence
Alagwa had sounded the call of the whip-poor-will on that June night
nearly two months before.
August had worked its merciless will on the land. The bare ground was
baked and hard beaten and the turf was dry as powder. The brooks that
had wandered across the prairie to join the Maumee were all waterless.
The air was heavy; not a breath of wind was stirring. Overhead the sky
quivered, glittering like a great brazen bowl. Inside the hotel the
heat was unbearable, but beneath the tree some respite could be gained.
Jack was talking of the one topic that engrossed his thoughts in those
days.
“Think of myself!” he echoed, to Alagwa’s pleadings. “I’ve thought of
myself too long! I’ve got to think of that poor girl now. What in God’s
name has become of her while I have been chasing shadows. First I let
Williams make a fool of me and lead me out of my way. Then I make a
fool of myself by camping for the night in the most dangerous place in
all the northwest--and get my silly head beaten in to pay for it. And
now I’m lying here idle while she--Good God! Where is she and what is
she doing?”
Alagwa said nothing. She knew that by one word she could end Jack’s
anxiety, and again and again she had tried to utter it. But always it
died unspoken upon her lips. If Jack persisted in periling his life by
starting out too soon, and if she could stop him only by confessing her
secret, she would confess it. But she would not do so till the last
possible moment.
Jack jumped to his feet. “And where’s Rogers?” he demanded. “What’s
become of him? I told him to report to me from time to time. By
heavens, I won’t wait here much longer! I’m well now, and if that fool
doctor doesn’t pretty soon say I can start, I’ll start without his
permission. He didn’t do anything for me, anyhow. It was you who saved
my life”--he turned on the girl--“it was you. You bully little pal,
you.”
Alagwa looked down. Jack’s voice had a note of tenderness that she had
not heard before.
“Yes! It was you,” he went on. “You’re a hero, whether you know it or
not. You won’t tell me much about what happened after Brito struck me
down, but Cato’s told me a lot. And apart from that you’ve nursed me
like a little brick. No woman could have been more tender. And I won’t
forget it.”
Alagwa’s heart was singing. She dared not raise her head, lest Jack
should see the love light shining in her eyes and guess her secret.
Persistently she looked down.
Then suddenly she heard Jack’s voice, in quite a new note. “By George!”
he cried. “There comes Rogers.”
Over the dusty road from the fort the old man came trotting. When he
saw the light of reason in Jack’s eyes his own lighted. “Dog my cats!”
he cried. “But I’m plumb glad to see you, Jack. I been a-lookin’ for
you all up and down the Maumee and I never got a smell of you till I
met that skunk Williams just now and he told me you was plumb crazy.
Lord! Lord! How people do like to lie. If they wouldn’t talk so much
they wouldn’t lie so much and----”
Jack interrupted. He was eager to divert the old man to the missing
girl.
Rogers was entirely willing to be diverted. He did not care what he
talked about so long as he talked.
“I ain’t got any news of her,” he declared. “She’s plumb disappeared.
She ain’t nowhere about Wapakoneta; that’s certain. I reckon she’s gone
north, and if you ask me I reckon she’s gone with that big cuss in the
red coat. He’s the sort that takes the eyes of the girls. You were
right in ’s’posing that he didn’t go north as soon as Colonel Johnson
thought he did. He didn’t go till a day or two before I got to Girty’s
Town, an’ maybe he didn’t go then. But he’s gone now.”
Rogers stopped to take breath and Jack nodded. In telling the tale of
the attack at Fort Defiance Alagwa had said nothing about Brito or his
part in the fight, and Jack had followed her example. After all, the
affair was a family one and he saw no need of taking the people at Fort
Wayne into his confidence. Even now he merely accepted Rogers’s opinion
and did not inform him that he knew very well indeed the time at which
Brito had left the headwaters of the Auglaize.
Rogers, indeed, gave him little chance to say anything. Vigorously he
rattled on. “There’s a letter coming from Piqua for you,” he said. “I
reckon it’s from your home folks. I saw it there and I’d a-brung it,
but I wasn’t certain that I was coming here when I left. I guess it’ll
get here tonight on a wagon that’s coming. I guess it’s from your
sweetheart.”
Jack’s face had lighted up at the old man’s mention of a letter, but
it clouded slightly at his last words. “Not from a sweetheart, no,” he
declared. “I have no sweetheart. I shall never marry!”
“Sho! You don’t tell me!” Rogers’s eyes twinkled incredulously. “Well!
You got time enough to change your mind. You ain’t like me. I got to
hurry. I don’t want to deceive you none, so I’ll own up that I ain’t as
young as I was once.” He glanced out of the corners of his eyes and saw
Fantine coming from the hotel toward the party. Instantly he raised his
voice and went on.
“If I could find a nice woman, somebody that’s big enough to balance a
little shaver like me, I reckon I’d fall plumb hard in love with her,”
he declared. “You don’t know no such a woman round about here, do you
now, Jack?”
Jack did not answer, for Fantine had come up. “Bon jour, M. Rogers,”
she cried. “You have been away long, n’est ce pas? What do you talk
about, eh?”
Rogers grinned at her. “Oh! We was talking about gettin’ married,” he
declared brazenly. “Jack here was saying he was never goin’ to marry.”
Fantine glanced swiftly at Jack. Then out of the corner of her eye she
searched Alagwa’s face. “Oh! La! La!” she cried. “These men! Truly they
all of a muchness. When they are young they all run after a pretty face
and if they lose it they think the world stops. Later they know better.
M. Jack will seek a bride some day. And when you do, M. Jack, see that
you choose one who will stand at your side when you face the peril, one
who will draw the sword and pistol to defend you. Do not choose some
fair lady who will faint at the sight of blood and leave you to your
foes. That goes not on the frontier. Do I not know it, me?”
Jack stared. There was a note in the voice of the light-hearted French
woman that he had never heard before. For a moment it bewildered him.
Then he laughed.
“Oh! No! No!” he cried. “I want no such bride as that. You have
described a friend, a comrade--yes, that’s it, a good comrade--like
my little Bob here.” He glanced at Alagwa affectionately, but she had
bowed her face, and he could not see it. “But I would not choose such
a one for a bride,” he went on. “I would never marry such a comrade,
brave and helpful though she might be. If I ever marry, I shall marry
some sweet gentle lady who never saw the frontier, who knows nothing of
war, who has tread no rougher measures than those of the minuet. I want
a bride whom I can shield from the world, not a mannish creature who
can protect me. I want--Good Lord! What’s the matter?”
Alagwa had sprung to her feet, gasping. For a moment she stood; then
she turned and fled to the house. Fantine glared at Jack; her lips
moved but no sound came from them. For once, the situation was beyond
her. With a hopeless gesture she followed the girl. Rogers stood
staring.
Jack caught at Cato’s shoulder and scrambled to his feet, his face was
white. “What--what--what”--he babbled. “Good Lord! What----”
Half way to the hotel Fantine turned. She had remembered Jack’s
condition. “Nom d’un nom!” she cried. “Sit you down, M. Jack. It is
nothing, nothing. It--is the heat. Never have I seen its like. The boy
is overwrought. I will calm him. Sit you down! Do you want to fall ill
again?”
Jack sat down, not because Fantine’s words satisfied him, but because
his strength was failing. He leaned against the tree, staring at the
house into which Alagwa had disappeared.
At last he looked up at Rogers and Cato. “I don’t understand,” he
muttered. “I’ve hurt Bob some way. But how? I wouldn’t hurt him for
the world. How did I do it? How did I do it?” Heedless of the others’
bewildered answers he babbled on, wonderingly.
After a while he got up and went slowly to his room and lay down.
An hour later, when Alagwa remorsefully sought him, he was sleeping
heavily. Frightened lest this might mean a relapse, but not daring to
awake him, the girl stole out of the room and joined the others at the
table.