UNDER A WHITE MAN'S ROOF.
The log cabin of Abel and Mercy Smith stood within a bit of forest
that bordered the rich prairie.
As homes went in those early days, when Illinois was only a territory,
and in that sparsely settled locality, it was a most roomy and
comfortable abode. The childless couple which dwelt in it were
comfortable also, although to hear their daily converse with one
another a stranger would not so have fancied. They had early come into
the wilderness, and had, therefore, lived much alone. Yet each was of
a most social nature, and the result, as their few neighbors said, of
their isolated situation was merely "a case of out-talk."
When Mercy's tongue was not wagging, Abel's was, and often both were
engaged at the same moment. Her speech was sharp and decisive; his
indolent, and, to one of her temperament, exceedingly aggravating.
But, between them, they managed to keep up almost a continuous
discourse. For, if Abel went afield, Mercy was sure to follow him
upon various excuses; unless the weather were too stormy, when, of
course, he was within doors.
However, there were times when even their speech lagged a little, and
then homesickness seized the mistress of the cabin; and after several
days of preparation she would set out on foot or on horseback,
according to the distance to be traversed, for some other settler's
cabin and a wider exchange of ideas.
On a late November day, when the homesickness had become overpowering,
Mercy tied on her quilted hood and pinned her heavy shawl about her.
She had filled a carpet bag with corn to pop and nuts to crack, for
the children of her expected hostess and had "set up" a fresh pair of
long stockings to knit for Abel. She now called him from the stable
into the living room to hear her last remarks.
"If I should be kep' over night, Abel, you'll find a plenty to eat.
There's a big pot of baked beans in the lean-to, and some apple pies,
and a pumpkin one. The ham's all sliced ready to fry, and I do hope to
goodness you won't spill grease 'bout on this rag carpet. I'm the only
woman anywhere 's round has a rag carpet all over her floor, any way,
and the idee of your sp'ilin' it just makes me sick. I----"
"But I hain't sp'iled it yet, ma. You hain't give me no chance. If you
do--"
"If I do! Ain't I leavin' you to get your own breakfast, in case I
don't come back? It might rain or snow, ary one, an' then where'd I
be?"
"Right where you happened to be at, I s'pose," returned Abel,
facetiously.
But it was wasted wit. The idea of being storm-stayed now filled the
housewife's mind. She was capable, and full of New England gumption;
but her husband "was a born botch." True, he could split a log, or
clear a woodland with the best; and as for a ploughman, his richly
fertile corn bottom and regular eastern-sort-of-garden testified to
his ability. But she was leaving him with the possibility of woman's
work to do; and as she reflected upon the condition of her cupboard
when she should return and the amount of cream he would probably
spill, should he attempt to skim it for the churning, her mind misgave
her and she began slowly to untie the great hood.
"I believe I won't go after all."
"Won't go, ma? Why not?"
"I'm afraid you'll get everything upset."
"I won't touch a thing more 'n I have to. I'll set right here in the
chimney-corner an' doze an' take it easy. The fall work's all done,
an' I'd ought to rest a mite."
"Rest! Rest? Yes. That's what a man always thinks of. It's a woman who
has to keep at it, early an' late, winter an' summer, sick or well.
If I should go an' happen to take cold, I don't know what to the land
would become of you, Abel Smith."
"I don't either, ma."
There was a long silence, during which Mercy tied and untied her
bonnet-strings a number of times; and each time with a greater
hesitancy. Finally, she pulled from her head the uneasy covering and
laid it on the table. Then she unpinned her shawl, and Abel regarded
these signs ruefully. But he knew the nature with which he had to
deal; and the occasional absences that were so necessary to Mercy's
happiness were also seasons of great refreshment to himself. During
them he felt almost, and sometimes quite, his own master. He loafed,
and smoked, and whittled, and even brought out his old fiddle and just
"played himself crazy"--so his wife declared. Even then he was already
recalling a tune he had heard a passing teamster whistle and was
longing to try it for himself. He abruptly changed his tactics.
Looking into Mercy's face with an appearance of great gladness, he
exclaimed:
"Now ain't that grand! Here was I, thinkin' of myself all alone, and
you off havin' such a good time, talkin' over old ways out East an'
hearin' all the news that's going. There. Take right off your things
an' I'll help put 'em away for you. You've got such a lot cooked up
you can afford to get out your patchwork, and I'll fiddle a bit
and----"
"Abel Smith! I didn't think you'd go and begrudge me a little
pleasure. Me, that has slaved an' dug an' worked myself sick a
help-meetin' an' savin' for you. I really didn't."
"Well, I'm not begrudging anybody. An' I don't s'pose there is much
news we hain't heard. Though there was a new family of settlers moved
out on the mill-road last week, I don't reckon they'd be anybody that
we'd care about. Folks have to be a mite particular, even out here in
Illinois."
Mercy paused, with her half-folded shawl in her hands. Then, with
considerable emphasis, she unfolded it again, and deliberately
fastened it about her plump person.
"Well, I'm goin'. It's rainin' a little, but none to hurt. I've fixed
a dose of cough syrup for Mis' Waldron's baby, an' I'd ought to go an'
give it to her. Them new folks has come right near her farm, I hear.
If you ain't man enough to look out for yourself for a few hours, you
cert'nly ain't enough account for me to worry over. But take good care
of yourself, Abel. I'm goin'. I feel it my duty. There's a roast
spare-rib an' some potatoes ready to fry; an' the meal for the
stirabout is all in the measure an'--good-by. I'll likely be back
to-night. If not, by milkin' time to-morrow morning."
Abel had taken down the almanac from its nail in the wall and had
pretended to be absorbed in its contents. He did not even lift his
eyes as his wife went out and shut the door. He still continued to
search the "prognostics" long after the cabin had become utterly
silent, not daring to glance through the small window, lest she should
discover him and be reminded of some imaginary duty toward him that
would make her return.
But, at the end of fifteen minutes, since nothing happened and the
stillness remained profound, he hung the almanac back in its place,
clapped his hands and executed a sort of joy-dance which was quite
original with himself. Then he drew his splint-bottomed chair before
the open fire, tucked his fiddle under his chin, and proceeded to
enjoy himself.
For more than an hour, he played and whistled and felt as royal and
happy as a king. By the end of that time he had grown a little tired
of music, and noticed that the drizzle of the early morning had
settled into a steady, freezing downpour. The trees were already
becoming coated with ice and their branches to creak dismally in the
rising wind.
"Never see such a country for wind as this is. Blows all the time,
the year round. Hope Mercy'll be able to keep ahead of the storm.
She's a powerful free traveller, Mercy is, an' don't stan' for
trifles. But--my soul! Ain't she a talker? I realize _that_ when her
back's turned. It's so still in this cabin I could hear a pin drop, if
there was anybody round hadn't nothin' better to do than to drop one.
Hmm, I s'pose I could find some sort of job out there to the barn. But
I ain't goin' to. I'm just goin' to play hookey by myself this whole
endurin' day, an' see what comes of it. I believe I'll just tackle one
of them pumpkin pies. 'Tain't so long since breakfast, but eatin' kind
of passes the time along. I wish I had a newspaper. I wish somethin'
would turn up. I--I wouldn't let Mercy know it, not for a farm; but
_'tis_ lonesome here all by myself. I hain't never noticed it so much
as I do this mornin'. Whew! Hear that wind! It's a good mile an' a
half to Waldron's. I hope Mercy's got there 'fore this."
Abel closed the outer door, and crossed to the well-stocked cupboard.
As he stood contemplating its contents, and undecided as to which
would really best suit his present mood, there came a sound of
somebody approaching the house along the slippery footpath. This was
so unexpected that it startled the pioneer. Then he reflected: "Mercy.
She's come back!" and remained guiltily standing with his hand upon
the edge of a pie plate, like a school-boy pilfering his mother's
larder.
"Rat-a-tat-a-tat!"
"Somebody knockin'! That ain't Mercy! Who the land, I wonder!"
He made haste to see and opened the heavy door to the demand of a
young boy, who stood shivering before it. At a little distance further
from the house was, also, a woman wrapped in a blanket that glistened
with sleet, and which seemed to enfold besides herself the form of a
little child.
"My land! my land! Why, bubby! where in the world did you drop from?
Is that your ma? No. I see she's an Indian, an' you're as white as the
frost itself. Come in. Come right in."
But the lad lingered on the threshold and asked with chattering teeth,
which showed how chilled he was:
"Can Wahneenah come too?"
"I don't know who in Christendom Wahneeny is, but you folks all come
straight in out of the storm. 'Twon't do to keep the door open so
long, for the sleet's beating right in on Mercy's carpet. There'd be
the dickens to pay if she saw that."
Gaspar, for it was he, ran quickly back toward the motionless
Wahneenah, and, clutching the corner of her blanket, dragged her
forward. She seemed reluctant to follow, notwithstanding her
half-frozen condition and she glanced into Abel's honest face with
keen inquiry. Yet seeing nothing but good-natured pity in it, she
entered the cabin, and herself shut the door. Yet she kept her place
close to the exit, even after Gaspar had pulled the blanket apart and
revealed the white face of the Sun Maid lying on her breast.
"Why, why, why! poor child! Poor little creatur'. Where in the world
did you hail from to be out in such weather? Didn't you have ary home
to stay in? But, there. I needn't ask that, because there's Mercy off
trapesing just the same, an' her with the best cabin on the frontier.
I s'pose this Wahneeny was took with a gossipin' fit, too, an' set out
to find her own cronies. But I don't recollect as I've heard of any
Indians livin' out this way."
By this time the water that had been frozen upon the wanderers'
clothing had begun to melt, and was drip-dripping in little puddles
upon Mercy's beloved carpet. Abel eyed these with dismay, and finally
hit upon the happy expedient of turning back the loose breadth of the
heavy fabric which bordered the hearth. Upon the bare boards thus
revealed he placed three chairs, and invited his guests to take them.
Gaspar dropped into one very promptly, but the squaw did not advance
until the boy cried:
"Do come, Other Mother. Poor Kitty will wake up then, and feel all
right."
The atmosphere of any house was always uncomfortable to Wahneenah.
Even then, she felt as if she had stepped from freedom into prison,
cold though she was and half-famished with hunger. Personally, she
would rather have taken her bit of food out under the trees; but the
thought of her Sun Maid was always powerful to move her. She laid
aside the wet blanket, and carried the drowsy little one to the
fireside, where the warmth soon revived the child so that she sat up
on her foster-mother's lap, and gazed about her with awakening
curiosity. Then she began to smile on Abel, who stood regarding her
wonderful loveliness with undisguised amazement, and to prattle to him
in her accustomed way.
"Why, you nice, nice man! Isn't this a pretty place. Isn't it beau'ful
warm? I'm so glad we came. It was cold out of doors, wasn't it, Other
Mother? Did you know all the time what a good warm fire was here? Was
that why we came?"
"I knew nothing," answered Wahneenah, stolidly.
"But I did!" cried Gaspar. "As soon as I saw the smoke of your chimney
I said: 'That is a white man's house. We will go and stay in it.' It's
a nice house, sir, and, like Kitty, I am glad we came. Do you live
here all alone?"
"No. My wife, Mercy, has gone a visitin'. That's why I happen to be
here doin' nothin'. I mean--I might have been to the barn an' not
heard you. You're lookin' into that cupboard pretty sharp. Be you
hungry? But I needn't ask that. A boy always is."
"I am hungry. We all are. We haven't had anything to eat in--days, I
guess. Are those pies--regular pies, on the shelves?"
"Yes. Do you like pies?"
"I used to. I haven't had any since I left the Fort."
"Left what?"
"The Fort. Fort Dearborn. Did you know it?"
"Course. That is, about it. But there ain't no Fort now. Don't tell
stories."
"I'm not. I'm telling the truth."
If this was a refugee from that unhappy garrison, Abel felt that he
could not do enough for the boy's comfort. He could not refrain his
suspicious glances from Wahneenah's dark face, but as she kept her own
gaze fixed upon the ground, he concluded she did not see them. In any
case, she was only an Indian, and therefore to be treated with scant
courtesy.
Mercy would have been surprised to see with what handiness her husband
played the host in her absence and now he whipped off the red woollen
cover from the table and rolled it toward the fireplace. But she would
not have approved at all of the lavishness with which he set before
his guests the best things from her cupboard. There was a cold rabbit
patty, the pot of beans, light loaves of sweet rye bread, and a pat of
golden butter. To these he added a generous pitcher of milk, and
beside Gaspar's own plate he placed both a pumpkin and a dried-apple
pie.
"I'd begin with these, if I was you, sonny. Baked beans come by
nature, seems to me, but pies are a gift of grace. Though I must say
my wife don't stint 'em when she takes it into her head to go
gallivantin' an' leaves me to housekeep. 'Pears to think then I must
have somethin' sort of comfortin'. I'd start in on pie, if I was a
little shaver, an' take the beans last."
This might not have been the best of advice to give a lad whose fast
had been so long continued as Gaspar's, but it suited that young
person exactly. Indeed, in all his life he had never seen so well
spread a table, and he lost no time in obeying his entertainer's
suggestion. But he noticed with regret that his foster-mother did not
touch the proffered food, and that she ministered even gingerly to
Kitty's wants.
Yet there was nobody, however austere or unhappy, who could long
resist the happy influence of the little girl, and least of all the
woman who so loved her. As the Sun Maid's color returned to her face,
and her stiffened limbs began to resume their suppleness, something of
the anxiety left Wahneenah's eyes, and she condescended to receive a
bowl of milk and a slice of bread from Abel's hand.
The fact that she would at last break her own fast made all
comfortable; and as soon as Gaspar's appetite was so far appeased that
he could begin upon the beans, the settler demanded:
"Now, sonny, talk. Tell me the whole endurin' story from A to Izzard.
Where'd you come from now? Where was you bound? What's your name? an'
her's? an' the little tacker's? My! but ain't she a beauty! I never
see ary such hair on anybody's head, black or white. It's gettin' dry,
ain't it; an' how it does fly round, just like foam."
"I'm not 'sonny,' nor 'bubby.' I'm Gaspar Keith. I was brought up at
Fort Dearborn. After the massacre, I was taken to Muck-otey-pokee.
I--"
But the lad's thoughts already began to grow sombre, and he became so
abruptly silent that Abel prompted him.
"Hmm, I've heard of that--that--Mucky place. Indian settlement, wasn't
it? Took prisoner, was you?"
"No. I wasn't a prisoner, exactly. I was just a--just a friend of the
family, I guess."
"Oh? So. A friend of an Indian family, sonny?"
"If you'd rather not call me Gaspar, you can please say 'Dark-Eye.'
That's my new Indian name; but I hate those other ones. They make me
think I am a baby. And I'm not. I am a man, almost."
"So you be. So you be," agreed Abel, admiring the little fellow's
spirit. "I 'low you've seen sights, now, hain't you?"
"Yes, dreadful ones; so dreadful that I can't talk about them to
anybody. Not even to you, who have given us this nice food and let us
warm ourselves. I would if I could, you see; only when I let myself
think, I just get queer in the head and afraid. So I won't even think.
It doesn't do for a boy to be afraid. Not when he has his mother and
sister to take care of."
There was the faintest lightening of the gloom upon the Indian woman's
face as Dark-Eye said this. But he was, apart from his terror of
bloodshed and fighting, a courageous lad, and had, during their past
days of wandering, proved the good stuff of which he was made. Many a
day he had gone without eating that the remnant of their food might be
saved for the Sun Maid; and though it was, of course, Wahneenah who
had taken all the care of the children, if it pleased him to consider
their cases reversed he should be left to his own opinion.
"You're right, boy. I'll call you Gaspar, easy enough. Only, you see,
I hain't got no sons of my own an' it kind of makes things seem cosier
if I call other folkes's youngsters that way. Every little shaver this
side of Illinois calls me 'Uncle Abe,' I reckon. But go on with your
yarn. My, my, my! Won't Mercy be beat when she comes home an' hears
all that's happened whilst she was gone. Go on."
So Gaspar told all that had occurred since the Black Partridge parted
from his sister in the cavern and rode away toward St. Joseph's. How
that very day came one of the visiting Indians who had been staying at
Muck-otey-pokee and whose behavior toward the neighboring white
settlers had been a prominent cause of bringing the soldiers' raid
upon the innocent and friendly hosts who had entertained him.
The wicked like not solitude, and in the train of this traitor had
followed many others. These had turned the cave into a pandemonium and
had appropriated to their own uses the stores which Black Partridge
had provided for Wahneenah. When to this robbery they had added
threats against the lives of the white children, whose presence at the
Indian village they in their turn declared had brought destruction
upon it, the chief's sister had taken such small portion of her own
property as she could secure and had set out to find a new home or
shelter for her little ones.
Since then they had been always wandering. Wahneenah now had a fixed
dread of the pale-faces and had avoided their habitations as far as
might be. They had lived in the woods, upon the roots and dried
berries they could find and whose power to sustain life the squaw had
understood. But now had come the cold of approaching winter and the
Sun Maid had shown the effects of her long exposure. Then, at Gaspar's
pleading, Wahneenah had put her own distrust of strangers aside and
had come with him to the first cabin of white people which they could
find.
"And now we're here, what will you do with us?" concluded the lad,
fixing his dark eyes earnestly upon his host's face.
Abel fidgetted a little; then, with his happy faculty of putting off
till to-morrow the evil that belonged to to-day, he replied:
"Well, son--bub--I mean, Gaspar; we hain't come to that bridge yet.
Time enough to cross it when we do. But, say, that little creatur'
looks as if she hadn't known what 'twas to lie on a decent bed in a
month of Sundays. She's 'bout dried off now; an' my! ain't she a
pretty sight in them little Indian's togs! S'pose your squaw-ma puts
her to sleep on the bed yonder. Notice that bedstead? There ain't
another like it this side the East. I'll just spread a sheet over the
quilt, to keep it clean, an' she can snooze there all day, if she
likes. I'll play you an' Wahneeny a tune on my fiddle if you want me
to."
Gaspar was, of course, delighted with this offer but the chief's
sister was already tired of the hot house and had cast longing glances
through the small window toward the barn in the rear. That, at least,
would be cool, and from its doorway she calculated she could keep a
close watch upon the door of the cabin, and be ready at a second's
notice to rush to her children's aid should harm be offered them.
Meanwhile, for this dark day, they would have the comfort to which
their birthright entitled them. So she went out and left them with
Abel.
The hours flew by and the storm continued. Abel had never been happier
nor jollier; and as the twilight came down, and he finally gave up all
expectation of Mercy's immediate return, he waxed fairly hilarious,
cutting up absurd antics for the mere delight of seeing the Sun Maid
laugh and dance in response, and because, under these cheerful
conditions, Gaspar's face was losing its premature thoughtfulness and
rounding to a look more suited to his years.
"Now, I'll dance you a sailor's hornpipe, and then I must go out and
milk. If ma'd been home, it would have been finished long ago. But
when the cat's away the mice will play, you know; so here goes."
Unfortunately, at that very moment the "cat" to whom he referred,
Mercy, in fact, approached the cabin from a direction which even
Wahneenah did not observe, and opened a rear door plump upon this
unprecedented scene.
Abel stopped short in his jig, one foot still uplifted and his fiddle
bow half drawn, while the Sun Maid was yet sweeping her most graceful
curtsey; and even the serious Gaspar had left his seat to prance about
the room to the notes of Abel's music.
Mercy also remained transfixed, utterly dumfounded, and doubting the
evidence of her own senses; but after a moment becoming able to
exclaim:
"So! This is how lonesome you be when I leave you, is it?"