For one more day we floated downward on the face of the waters between
the forest walls of the wilderness, and at length we landed in a little
gully on the north shore of the river, and there we hid our boats.
“Davy,” said Colonel Clark, “let’s walk about a bit. Tell me where you
learned to be so silent?”
“My father did not like to be talked to,” I answered, “except when he
was drinking.”
He gave me a strange look. Many the stroll I took with him afterwards,
when he sought to relax himself from the cares which the campaign had
put upon him. This night was still and clear, the west all yellow with
the departing light, and the mists coming on the river. And presently,
as we strayed down the shore we came upon a strange sight, the same
being a huge fort rising from the waterside, all overgrown with brush
and saplings and tall weeds. The palisades that held its earthenwork
were rotten and crumbling, and the mighty bastions of its corners
sliding away. Behind the fort, at the end farthest from the river, we
came upon gravelled walks hidden by the rank growth, where the soldiers
of his most Christian Majesty once paraded. Lost in thought, Clark stood
on the parapet, watching the water gliding by until the darkness hid
it,--nay, until the stars came and made golden dimples upon its surface.
But as we went back to the camp again he told me how the French had
tried once to conquer this vast country and failed, leaving to the
Spaniards the endless stretch beyond the Mississippi called Louisiana,
and this part to the English. And he told me likewise that this fort
in the days of its glory had been called Massacre, from a bloody event
which had happened there more than threescore years before.
“Threescore years!” I exclaimed, longing to see the men of this race
which had set up these monuments only to abandon them.
“Ay, lad,” he answered, “before you or I were born, and before our
fathers were born, the French missionaries and soldiers threaded
this wilderness. And they called this river ‘La Belle Rivière,’--the
Beautiful River.”
“And shall I see that race at Kaskaskia?” I asked, wondering.
“That you shall,” he cried, with a force that left no doubt in my mind.
In the morning we broke camp and started off for the strange place which
we hoped to capture. A hundred miles it was across the trackless wilds,
and each man was ordered to carry on his back provisions for four days
only.
“Herr Gott!” cried Swein Poulsson, from the bottom of a flatboat, whence
he was tossing out venison flitches, “four day, und vat is it ve eat
then?”
“Frenchies, sure,” said Terence; “there’ll be plenty av thim for a
season. Faith, I do hear they’re tinder as lambs.”
“You’ll no set tooth in the Frenchies,” the pessimistic McAndrew put in,
“wi’ five thousand redskins aboot, and they lying in wait. The Colonel’s
no vera mindful of that, I’m thinking.”
“Will ye hush, ye ill-omened hound!” cried Cowan, angrily. “Pitch him in
the crick, Mac!”
Tom was diverted from this duty by a loud quarrel between Captain Harrod
and five men of the company who wanted scout duty, and on the heels of
that came another turmoil occasioned by Cowan’s dropping my drum into
the water. While he and McCann and Tom were fishing it out, Colonel
Clark himself appeared, quelled the mutiny that Harrod had on his hands,
and bade the men sternly to get into ranks.
“What foolishness is this?” he said, eying the dripping drum.
“Sure, Colonel,” said McCann, swinging it on his back, “we’d have no
heart in us at Kaskasky widout the rattle of it in our ears. Bill Cowan
and me will not be feeling the heft of it bechune us.”
“Get into ranks,” said the Colonel, amusement struggling with the anger
in his face as he turned on his heel. His wisdom well knew when to humor
a man, and when to chastise.
“Arrah,” said Terence, as he took his place, “I’d as soon l’ave me gun
behind as Davy and the dhrum.”
Methinks I can see now, as I write, the long file of woodsmen with their
swinging stride, planting one foot before the other, even as the Indian
himself threaded the wilderness. Though my legs were short, I had both
sinew and training, and now I was at one end of the line and now at
the other. And often with a laugh some giant would hand his gun to a
neighbor, swing me to his shoulder, and so give me a lift for a weary
mile or two; and perchance whisper to me to put down my hand into the
wallet of his shirt, where I would find a choice morsel which he had
saved for his supper. Sometimes I trotted beside the Colonel himself,
listening as he talked to this man or that, and thus I got the gravest
notion of the daring of this undertaking, and of the dangers ahead of
us. This north country was infested with Indians, allies of the English
and friends of the French their subjects; and the fact was never for an
instant absent from our minds that our little band might at any moment
run into a thousand warriors, be overpowered and massacred; or, worst of
all, that our coming might have been heralded to Kaskaskia.
For three days we marched in the green shade of the primeval wood, nor
saw the sky save in blue patches here and there. Again we toiled for
hours through the coffee-colored waters of the swamps. But the third day
brought us to the first of those strange clearings which the French call
prairies, where the long grass ripples like a lake in the summer wind.
Here we first knew raging thirst, and longed for the loam-specked water
we had scorned, as our tired feet tore through the grass. For Saunders,
our guide, took a line across the open in plain sight of any eye that
might be watching from the forest cover. But at length our column
wavered and halted by reason of some disturbance at the head of it.
Conjectures in our company, the rear guard, became rife at once.
“Run, Davy darlin,’ an’ see what the throuble is,” said Terence.
Nothing loath, I made my way to the head of the column, where Bowman’s
company had broken ranks and stood in a ring up to their thighs in the
grass. In the centre of the ring, standing on one foot before our angry
Colonel, was Saunders.
“Now, what does this mean?” demanded Clark; “my eye is on you, and
you’ve boxed the compass in this last hour.”
Saunders’ jaw dropped.
“I’m guiding you right,” he answered, with that sullenness which comes
to his kind from fear, “but a man will slip his bearings sometimes in
this country.”
Clark’s eyes shot fire, and he brought down the stock of his rifle with
a thud.
“By the eternal God!” he cried, “I believe you are a traitor. I’ve been
watching you every step, and you’ve acted strangely this morning.”
“Ay, ay,” came from the men round him.
“Silence!” cried Clark, and turned again to the cowering Saunders. “You
pretend to know the way to Kaskaskia, you bring us to the middle of the
Indian country where we may be wiped out at any time, and now you have
the damned effrontery to tell me that you have lost your way. I am a man
of my word,” he added with a vibrant intensity, and pointed to the limbs
of a giant tree which stood at the edge of the distant forest. “I will
give you half an hour, but as I live, I will leave you hanging there.”
The man’s brown hand trembled as he clutched his rifle barrel.
“‘Tis a hard country, sir,” he said. “I’m lost. I swear it on the
evangels.”
“A hard country!” cried Clark. “A man would have to walk over it but
once to know it. I believe you are a damned traitor and perjurer,--in
spite of your oath, a British spy.”
Saunders wiped the sweat from his brow on his buckskin sleeve.
“I reckon I could get the trace, Colonel, if you’d let me go a little
way into the prairie.”
“Half an hour,” said Clark, “and you’ll not go alone.” Sweeping his eye
over Bowman’s company, he picked out a man here and a man there to go
with Saunders. Then his eye lighted on me. “Where’s McChesney?” he said.
“Fetch McChesney.”
I ran to get Tom, and seven of them went away, with Saunders in the
middle, Clark watching them like a hawk, while the men sat down in the
grass to wait. Fifteen minutes went by, and twenty, and twenty-five, and
Clark was calling for a rope, when some one caught sight of the squad in
the distance returning at a run. And when they came within hail it was
Saunders’ voice we heard, shouting brokenly:--
“I’ve struck it, Colonel, I’ve struck the trace. There’s a pecan at the
edge of the bottom with my own blaze on it.”
“May you never be as near death again,” said the Colonel, grimly, as he
gave the order to march.
The fourth day passed, and we left behind us the patches of forest and
came into the open prairie,--as far as the eye could reach a long, level
sea of waving green. The scanty provisions ran out, hunger was added to
the pangs of thirst and weariness, and here and there in the straggling
file discontent smouldered and angry undertone was heard. Kaskaskia was
somewhere to the west and north; but how far? Clark had misled them. And
in addition it were foolish to believe that the garrison had not been
warned. English soldiers and French militia and Indian allies stood
ready for our reception. Of such was the talk as we lay down in the
grass under the stars on the fifth night. For in the rank and file an
empty stomach is not hopeful.
The next morning we took up our march silently with the dawn, the
prairie grouse whirring ahead of us. At last, as afternoon drew on, a
dark line of green edged the prairie to the westward, and our spirits
rose. From mouth to mouth ran the word that these were the woods which
fringed the bluff above Kaskaskia itself. We pressed ahead, and the
destiny of the new Republic for which we had fought made us walk unseen.
Excitement keyed us high; we reached the shade, plunged into it, and
presently came out staring at the bastioned corners of a fort which rose
from the centre of a clearing. It had once defended the place, but now
stood abandoned and dismantled. Beyond it, at the edge of the bluff, we
halted, astonished. The sun was falling in the west, and below us was
the goal for the sight of which we had suffered so much. At our feet,
across the wooded bottom, was the Kaskaskia River, and beyond, the
peaceful little French village with its low houses and orchards and
gardens colored by the touch of the evening light. In the centre of it
stood a stone church with its belfry; but our searching eyes alighted on
the spot to the southward of it, near the river. There stood a rambling
stone building with the shingles of its roof weathered black, and all
around it a palisade of pointed sticks thrust in the ground, and with a
pair of gates and watch-towers. Drooping on its staff was the standard
of England. North and south of the village the emerald common gleamed in
the slanting light, speckled red and white and black by grazing cattle.
Here and there, in untidy brown patches, were Indian settlements, and
far away to the westward the tawny Father of Waters gleamed through the
cottonwoods.
Through the waning day the men lay resting under the trees, talking in
undertones. Some cleaned their rifles, and others lost themselves in
conjectures of the attack. But Clark himself, tireless, stood with
folded arms gazing at the scene below, and the sunlight on his face
illumined him (to the lad standing at his side) as the servant of
destiny. At length, at eventide, the sweet-toned bell of the little
cathedral rang to vespers,--a gentle message of peace to war. Colonel
Clark looked into my upturned face.
“Davy, do you know what day this is?” he asked.
“No, sir,” I answered.
“Two years have gone since the bells pealed for the birth of a new
nation--your nation, Davy, and mine--the nation that is to be the refuge
of the oppressed of this earth--the nation which is to be made of all
peoples, out of all time. And this land for which you and I shall fight
to-night will belong to it, and the lands beyond,” he pointed to the
west, “until the sun sets on the sea again.” He put his hand on my head.
“You will remember this when I am dead and gone,” he said.
I was silent, awed by the power of his words.
Darkness fell, and still we waited, impatient for the order. And when at
last it came the men bustled hither and thither to find their commands,
and we picked our way on the unseen road that led down the bluff, our
hearts thumping. The lights of the village twinkled at our feet, and
now and then a voice from below was caught and borne upward to us. Once
another noise startled us, followed by an exclamation, “Donnerblitzen”
and a volley of low curses from the company. Poor Swein Poulsson had
loosed a stone, which had taken a reverberating flight riverward.
We reached the bottom, and the long file turned and hurried silently
northward, searching for a crossing. I try to recall my feelings as I
trotted beside the tall forms that loomed above me in the night. The
sense of protection they gave me stripped me of fear, and I was not
troubled with that. My thoughts were chiefly on Polly Ann and the child
we had left in the fort now so far to the south of us, and in my fancy
I saw her cheerful, ever helpful to those around her, despite the load
that must rest on her heart. I saw her simple joy at our return. But
should we return? My chest tightened, and I sped along the ranks to
Harrod’s company and caught Tom by the wrist.
“Davy,” he murmured, and, seizing my hand in his strong grip, pulled me
along with him. For it was not given to him to say what he felt; but
as I hurried to keep pace with his stride, Polly Ann’s words rang in my
ears, “Davy, take care of my Tom,” and I knew that he, too, was thinking
of her.
A hail aroused me, the sound of a loud rapping, and I saw in black
relief a cabin ahead. The door opened, a man came out with a horde of
children cowering at his heels, a volley of frightened words pouring
from his mouth in a strange tongue. John Duff was plying him with
questions in French, and presently the man became calmer and lapsed into
broken English.
“Kaskaskia--yes, she is prepare. Many spy is gone out--cross la rivière.
But now they all sleep.”
Even as he spoke a shout came faintly from the distant town.
“What is that?” demanded Clark, sharply.
The man shrugged his shoulders. “Une fête des nègres, peut-être,--the
negro, he dance maybe.”
“Are you the ferryman?” said Clark.
“Oui--I have some boat.”
We crossed the hundred and fifty yards of sluggish water, squad by
squad, and in the silence of the night stood gathered, expectant, on the
farther bank. Midnight was at hand. Commands were passed about, and men
ran this way and that, jostling one another to find their places in a
new order. But at length our little force stood in three detachments
on the river’s bank, their captains repeating again and again the part
which each was to play, that none might mistake his duty. The two larger
ones were to surround the town, while the picked force under Simon
Kenton himself was to storm the fort. Should he gain it by surprise and
without battle, three shots were to be fired in quick succession, the
other detachments were to start the war-whoop, while Duff and some with
a smattering of French were to run up and down the streets proclaiming
that every habitan who left his house would be shot. No provision being
made for the drummer boy (I had left my drum on the heights above), I
chose the favored column, at the head of which Tom and Cowan and Ray
and McCann were striding behind Kenton and Colonel Clark. Not a word
was spoken. There was a kind of cow-path that rose and fell and twisted
along the river-bank. This we followed, and in ten minutes we must
have covered the mile to the now darkened village. The starlight alone
outlined against the sky the houses of it as we climbed the bank. Then
we halted, breathless, in a street, but there was no sound save that
of the crickets and the frogs. Forward again, and twisting a corner,
we beheld the indented edge of the stockade. Still no hail, nor had our
moccasined feet betrayed us as we sought the river side of the fort
and drew up before the big river gates of it. Simon Kenton bore against
them, and tried the little postern that was set there, but both were
fast. The spikes towered a dozen feet overhead.
“Quick!” muttered Clark, “a light man to go over and open the postern.”
Before I guessed what was in his mind, Cowan seized me.
“Send the lad, Colonel,” said he.
“Ay, ay,” said Simon Kenton, hoarsely.
In a second Tom was on Kenton’s shoulders, and they passed me up with
as little trouble as though I had been my own drum. Feverishly searching
with my foot for Tom’s shoulder, I seized the spikes at the top,
clambered over them, paused, surveyed the empty area below me,
destitute even of a sentry, and then let myself down with the aid of the
cross-bars inside. As I was feeling vainly for the bolt of the postern,
rays of light suddenly shot my shadow against the door. And next, as
I got my hand on the bolt-head, I felt the weight of another on my
shoulder, and a voice behind me said in English:--
“In the devil’s name!”
I gave the one frantic pull, the bolt slipped, and caught again. Then
Colonel Clark’s voice rang out in the night:--
“Open the gate! Open the gate in the name of Virginia and the
Continental Congress!”
Before I could cry out the man gave a grunt, leaned his gun against the
gate, and tore my fingers from the bolt-handle. Astonishment robbed me
of breath as he threw open the postern.
“In the name of the Continental Congress,” he cried, and seized his gun.
Clark and Kenton stepped in instantly, no doubt as astounded as I, and
had the man in their grasp.
“Who are you?” said Clark.
“Name o’ Skene, from Pennsylvanya,” said the man, “and by the Lord God
ye shall have the fort.”
“You looked for us?” said Clark.
“Faith, never less,” said the Pennsylvanian. “The one sentry is at the
main gate.”
“And the governor?”
“Rocheblave?” said the Pennsylvanian. “He sleeps yonder in the old
Jesuit house in the middle.”
Clark turned to Tom McChesney, who was at his elbow.
“Corporal!” said he, swiftly, “secure the sentry at the main gate! You,”
he added, turning to the Pennsylvanian, “lead us to the governor. But
mind, if you betray me, I’ll be the first to blow out your brains.”
The man seized a lantern and made swiftly over the level ground until
the rubble-work of the old Jesuit house showed in the light, nor Clark
nor any of them stopped to think of the danger our little handful ran
at the mercy of a stranger. The house was silent. We halted, and Clark
threw himself against the rude panels of the door, which gave to inward
blackness. Our men filled the little passage, and suddenly we found
ourselves in a low-ceiled room in front of a great four-poster bed. And
in it, upright, blinking at the light, were two odd Frenchified figures
in tasselled nightcaps. Astonishment and anger and fear struggled in the
faces of Monsieur de Rocheblave and his lady. A regard for truth
compels me to admit that it was madame who first found her voice, and no
uncertain one it was.
First came a shriek that might have roused the garrison.
“Villains! Murderers! Outragers of decency!” she cried with spirit,
pouring a heap of invectives, now in French, now in English, much to the
discomfiture of our backwoodsmen, who peered at her helplessly.
“Nom du diable!” cried the commandant, when his lady’s breath was gone,
“what does this mean?”
“It means, sir,” answered Clark, promptly, “that you are my prisoner.”
“And who are you?” gasped the commandant.
“George Rogers Clark, Colonel in the service of the Commonwealth of
Virginia.” He held out his hand restrainingly, for the furious Monsieur
Rocheblave made an attempt to rise. “You will oblige me by remaining in
bed, sir, for a moment.”
“Coquins! Canailles! Cochons!” shrieked the lady.
“Madame,” said Colonel Clark, politely, “the necessities of war are
often cruel.”
He made a bow, and paying no further attention to the torrent of her
reproaches or the threats of the helpless commandant, he calmly searched
the room with the lantern, and finally pulled out from under the bed a
metal despatch box. Then he lighted a candle in a brass candlestick
that stood on the simple walnut dresser, and bowed again to the outraged
couple in the four-poster.
“Now, sir,” he said, “you may dress. We will retire.”
“Pardieu!” said the commandant in French, “a hundred thousand thanks.”
We had scarcely closed the bedroom door when three shots were heard.
“The signal!” exclaimed Clark.
Immediately a pandemonium broke on the silence of the night that must
have struck cold terror in the hearts of the poor Creoles sleeping in
their beds. The war-whoop, the scalp halloo in the dead of the morning,
with the hideous winding notes of them that reached the bluff beyond
and echoed back, were enough to frighten a man from his senses. In the
intervals, in backwoods French, John Duff and his companions were heard
in terrifying tones crying out to the habitans to venture out at the
peril of their lives. Within the fort a score of lights flew up and down
like will-o’-the-wisps, and Colonel Clark, standing on the steps of the
governor’s house, gave out his orders and despatched his messengers. Me
he sent speeding through the village to tell Captain Bowman to patrol
the outskirts of the town, that no runner might get through to warn Fort
Chartres and Cohos, as some called Cahokia. None stirred save the few
Indians left in the place, and these were brought before Clark in
the fort, sullen and defiant, and put in the guard-house there. And
Rocheblave, when he appeared, was no better, and was put back in his
house under guard.
As for the papers in the despatch box, they revealed I know not what
briberies of the savage nations and plans of the English. But of
other papers we found none, though there must have been more. Madame
Rocheblave was suspected of having hidden some in the inviolable
portions of her dress.
At length the cocks crowing for day proclaimed the morning, and while
yet the blue shadow of the bluff was on the town, Colonel Clark sallied
out of the gate and walked abroad. Strange it seemed that war had come
to this village, so peaceful and remote. And even stranger it seemed to
me to see these Arcadian homes in the midst of the fierce wilderness.
The little houses with their sloping roofs and wide porches, the gardens
ablaze with color, the neat palings,--all were a restful sight for our
weary eyes. And now I scarcely knew our commander. For we had not gone
far ere, timidly, a door opened and a mild-visaged man, in the simple
workaday smock that the French wore, stood, hesitating, on the steps.
The odd thing was that he should have bowed to Clark, who was dressed
no differently from Bowman and Harrod and Duff; and the man’s voice
trembled piteously as he spoke. It needed not John Duff to tell us that
he was pleading for the lives of his family.
“He will sell himself as a slave if your Excellency will spare them,”
said Duff, translating.
But Clark stared at the man sternly.
“I will tell them my plans at the proper time,” he said and when Duff
had translated this the man turned and went silently into his house
again, closing the door behind him. And before we had traversed the
village the same thing had happened many times. We gained the fort
again, I wondering greatly why he had not reassured these simple people.
It was Bowman who asked this question, he being closer to Clark than any
of the other captains. Clark said nothing then, and began to give out
directions for the day. But presently he called the Captain aside.
“Bowman,” I heard him say, “we have one hundred and fifty men to hold
a province bigger than the whole of France, and filled with treacherous
tribes in the King’s pay. I must work out the problem for myself.”
Bowman was silent. Clark, with that touch which made men love him and
die for him, laid his hand on the Captain’s shoulder.
“Have the men called in by detachments,” he said, “and fed. God knows
they must be hungry,--and you.”
Suddenly I remembered that he himself had had nothing. Running around
the commandant’s house to the kitchen door, I came unexpectedly upon
Swein Poulsson, who was face to face with the linsey-woolsey-clad figure
of Monsieur Rocheblave’s negro cook. The early sun cast long shadows of
them on the ground.
“By tam,” my friend was saying, “so I vill eat. I am choost like an ox
for three days, und chew grass. Prairie grass, is it?”
“Mo pas capab’, Michié,” said the cook, with a terrified roll of his
white eyes.
“Herr Gott!” cried Swein Poulsson, “I am red face. Aber Herr Gott,
I thank thee I am not a nigger. Und my hair is bristles, yes. Davy”
(spying me), “I thank Herr Gott it is not vool. Let us in the kitchen
go.”
“I am come to get something for the Colonel’s breakfast,” said I,
pushing past the slave, through the open doorway. Swein Poulsson
followed, and here I struck another contradiction in his strange nature.
He helped me light the fire in the great stone chimney-place, and we
soon had a pot of hominy on the crane, and turning on the spit a piece
of buffalo steak which we found in the larder. Nor did a mouthful pass
his lips until I had sped away with a steaming portion to find the
Colonel. By this time the men had broken into the storehouse, and the
open place was dotted with their breakfast fires. Clark was standing
alone by the flagstaff, his face careworn. But he smiled as he saw me
coming.
“What’s this?” says he.
“Your breakfast, sir,” I answered. I set down the plate and the pot
before him and pressed the pewter spoon into his hand.
“Davy,” said he.
“Sir?” said I.
“What did you have for your breakfast?”
My lip trembled, for I was very hungry, and the rich steam from the
hominy was as much as I could stand. Then the Colonel took me by the
arms, as gently as a woman might, set me down on the ground beside him,
and taking a spoonful of the hominy forced it between my lips. I was
near to fainting at the taste of it. Then he took a bit himself,
and divided the buffalo steak with his own hands. And when from the
camp-fires they perceived the Colonel and the drummer boy eating
together in plain sight of all, they gave a rousing cheer.
“Swein Poulsson helped get your breakfast, sir, and would eat nothing
either,” I ventured.
“Davy,” said Colonel Clark, gravely, “I hope you will be younger when
you are twenty.”
“I hope I shall be bigger, sir,” I answered gravely.