THE CROOKED LOG.
"I tell you what, Chicago's a-growing. First _we_ come; then Gaspar;
then Kitty and him get married; and I go to keeping tavern in the
parson's house; and his son, One, goes up north to take a place in
Gaspar's business; and Gaspar sends Two and Three east to study law
and medicine; and Four and his pa come to board in our tavern; and
Osceolo----"
"For the land's sake, Abel Smith, do hold your tongue. Here you've got
to be as big a talker as old Deacon Slim, that I used to hear about,
who begun the minute he woke up and never stopped till his wife tied
his mouth shut at night. Even then----"
"Mercy, Mercy! Take care. Set me a good example, if you can; but don't
go to denying that this is a growin' village."
"I've no call to deny it. Why should I? But, say, Abel, just step
round to the store, won't you, an' buy me some of that turkey red
calico was brought in on the last team from the East. I'd admire to
make Kitty a rising sun quilt for her bedroom. 'Twould be so
'propriate, too."
"Fiddlesticks! Not a yard of stuff will I ever buy for you to set an'
snip, snip, like you used to in the woods. We've got something else to
do now. As for Kit, between the Fort folks and the Indians, she's had
so many things give her a'ready, she won't have room to put 'em. The
idee! Them two children gettin' married. Seems just like play make
believe."
"Well, there ain't no make believe. It's the best thing 't ever
happened to Chicago. Wonderful how they both 'pear to love the old
hole in the mud," answered Mercy.
"Yes, ain't it? To hear Gaspar talk, you'd think he'd been to
Congress, let alone bein' President. All about the 'possibilities of
the location,' the 'fertility of the soil,' the 'big canawl,' and the
whole endurin' business; why, I tell you, it badgers my wits to foller
him."
"Wouldn't try, then, if I was you. Poor old wits 'most wore out, any
how, and better save what's left for this tavern business. Between you
and your fiddle, thinkin' you've got to amuse your guests, I'm about
beat out. All the drudgery comes on _me_, same's it always did."
"Drudgery, Mercy? Now, come. Take it easy. Hain't Kitty fetched you a
couple of squaws to do your steps and dish washin'? All you have to
do is to cook and----"
"Oh! go along, Abel, and get me that calico. Don't set there till you
take root. I ain't a-complainin', an' I 'low I'm as much looked up to
here in Chicago without my bedstead as I was in the woods with it."
"Looked up to? I should say so. There ain't a woman in the settlement
holds her head as top-lofty as you do. And with good reason, I 'low. I
don't praise you often, ma, but when I do, I mean it. If you hadn't
been smarter 'n the average, and had more gumption to boot, you'd
never been asked in to help them army women cook Kitty's weddin'
supper. By the way, where are the youngsters now? I hain't seen 'em
to-day."
"Off over the prairie on their horses, just as they used to be when
they were little tackers. I never saw bridal folks like them; from the
very first not hangin' round by themselves, but mixing with everybody,
same's usual, and beginning right away to do all the good they can
with Gaspar's money. Off now to see some folks burned their own barn
up----"
"W-H-A-T?" demanded Abel, with paling face.
"What ails you? A fool of a woman took a lighted candle into her hay
loft and ruined herself. That happened the night Gaspar found Kitty;
and they call it part of their weddin' tower to go there and lend the
farmer the money to replace it. Gaspar was for giving it outright,
though he's a shrewd feller too, but Kit wouldn't. 'They aren't
paupers, and it would hurt their pride,' she said. 'Lend it to them on
very easy terms, and they'll respect themselves and you.'"
"Well, of course he done it."
"Sure. When a man gets a wife as wise as Kitty he'd ought to hark to
her."
"I'll go and get the calico now, Mercy," said Abel, and left rather
suddenly.
At nightfall the young couple rode homeward once more, facing the
moonlight that whitened the great lake and touched the homely hamlet
beside it with an idealizing beauty; and looking upon it, the Sun Maid
recalled her vision concerning it and repeated it to her husband.
"Ever since then, my Gaspar, the dream comes back to me in some form
or shape. But it is always here, right here, that the crowds gather
and the great roar of life sounds in my ears. In some strange way we
are to be part of it; part of it all. In the dream I see the tall
spires of churches, thick and shouldering one another like the trees
in the forest behind us."
"But, my darling, you have never seen a church of any sort. How,
then, can you dream of them?"
"That I don't know, unless it is from the pictures in the good
Doctor's books. I have learned so much from the pictures always. But,
oh! I wish I could make you know some of the delight I felt when first
I could read!"
"I do know it, sweetheart. I, too, craved knowledge and dug it out for
myself, up there in the northern forests, from the few books that came
my way and the rare visit of a man who could teach. The first dollar I
had that was all my own I put aside for you. That was the beginning of
our fortune. The second I invested in a spelling-book. The study,
dear, was all that helped me bear the pain of your death. But you are
not dead! Rather the most alive of any human being whom I ever saw."
"That is true, Gaspar. I _am_ alive. I just quiver with the force that
drives me on from one task to another, from one point reached to one
beyond. And now, with you beside me, there is no limit, it seems, to
the help we can be to every single person who will come within our
reach. Wasn't the woman glad and grateful; and don't you see, laddie,
that it is better as I planned? You say you have been penurious,
saving every cent not expended for your books and necessaries: and
yet, now that you are happy again, you are ready to rush to the other
extreme and throw your money away in thoughtless charity."
She looked so young, so childlike, in the glimmering moonlight that
the tall woodsman laughed.
"To hear my little Kit teaching her elders!"
"The elders must listen. It is for our home. You must spend every
dollar you have, but you must do it in such a way that somebody will
be helped. We don't want money, just money, for itself. To hold it
that way would make us ignoble. It's the wealth we spend that will
make us rich."
"Kit, there's some dark scheme afloat in that fair head of yours. Out
with it!"
"Just for a beginning of things--this: There was a family came to the
Fort to-day. The father is a skilled wood-carver. He is not over
strong and his wife is frailer than he. They have a lot of little
children and he must earn money. It has cost them more than they
expected to get as far as this, even, and they should not go farther.
Yet he is a man, a master workman. It would be an insult to offer him
money. But give him work and you feed his soul as well as his body."
"How, my love? Who that dwells in a log cabin needs fine carvings or
would appreciate them if they had them?"
"Educate them to want and appreciate them. Open a school for just that
branch. I myself will be his pupil. I remember with what delight I
used to mould Mercy's butter. Well, I've been moulding something ever
since."
"Your husband, for instance."
"He's a little difficult material; but time will improve him! Then
there are the Doctor's botanical treatises and specimens. Open a
school. If you have to begin with a few only, still _begin_. Lay the
seed. From our little workroom and classroom may grow one of those
mighty colleges that have made Englishmen great and are making
Americans their equals."
"Hello there, child! Hold on a bit. Their equals? And you a soldier's
daughter!"
"Since I am a soldier's daughter, I can afford to be just, and even
generous. It is all nonsense, because we have gained our independence,
to say we are better than our fathers were. For they were our fathers,
surely; and they had had time in their rich country, with their ages
of instruction, to grow learned and great. But we Americans are their
children, and, just as is already proving, each generation is wiser
than the one which went before. So presently we shall be able to do
even better than they----"
"Give them another dose of Yankee Doodle?"
"If they require it, yes. But come back to just right here in this
little town. Besides the schools for white children, can't we have
those for the Indians?"
"No, dear; not here. Not anywhere, I fear, that will ever result in
permanent good. At least, the time is not yet ripe for that part of
your dreaming to come true."
"But think of Wahneenah. She is teachable and there is none more
noble. Yet she is an Indian."
"She is one, herself. In all her race I have seen none other like her.
There is Black Partridge, too, and Gomo, and old Winnemeg. They are
exceptions. But, my love, there are, also, the Black Hawk and the
Prophet."
He did not add his opinion, which agreed with that of the wisest men
he knew, that Illinois would know no real prosperity till the savages,
which disturbed its peace, were removed from its borders. For she
loved them, hoped for them, believed in them; even though her own
common sense forced her to agree with him that the time was not ripe
then, if it ever would be, for their civilization. So he held his
peace and soon they were at home.
"Heigho! There are lights in our cabin. Hear me prophesy: Mother Mercy
has come over with a roast for our supper and Mother Wahneenah has
quietly set it aside to wait until her own is eaten. Ho there within!"
he called merrily. "Who breaches our castle when its lord is absent?"
Mercy promptly appeared in the doorway. She was greatly excited and
hastily led them to the rear of the house, pointing with both hands to
an animal fastened behind it.
"There's your fine Indian for you! See that?"
"Indeed I do!" laughed Kitty. "An ox, Jim, isn't it? with the Doctor's
saddle on his back and his botanizing box, and--What does it mean? I
knew he was absent-minded, but not like this."
"Absent-minded. Absent shucks! That's Osceolo--_that_ is!" in a tone
of fiercest indignation. "He's such a crooked log he can't lie still."
"Is that his work? He dared not play his tricks on the dear Doctor!"
"Yes, it's his'n. The idee! There was Abel went and gave old Dobbin to
the parson, to save his long legs some of their trampin' after weeds
and stuff and 'cause he was afraid to ride ary other horse in the
settlement. And there was Osceolo, that for a feller's hired out to a
regular tavern-keeper like us, to be a hostler and such, he don't earn
his salt. All the time prankin' round on some tomfoolery. And Abel's
just as bad. A man with only two or three little weeny tufts o' hair
left on his head and mighty little sense on the inside, at his time of
life, a-fiddlin' and cuttin' up jokes, I declare--I declare, I'm beat,
and I wish----"
"But what is it?" demanded Kitty, bringing her old friend back to
facts.
"Why, nothing. Only when the dominie came home and stopped here, as he
always does after he's been a-prairieing, to show you his truck and
dicker, Osceolo happens along and is took smart! The simpleton! Just
set old Dobbin scamperin' off back into the grass again and clapped
the saddle and tin box and what not on to the ox's back. Spected he'd
see the parson come out and mount and never notice. 'Stead of that,
along comes Abel--strange how constant he has to visit to your
house!--and sees the whole business. Well, he'd caught some sort of a
wild animal, and--say, Kitty Briscoe, I mean Keith!--_that Indian'd
drink whiskey, if he got a chance_, just as quick as one raised in the
woods, instead of one privileged to set under such a saint as the
Doctor all his days. I tell you--Well, what you laughing at, Gaspar
Keith? Ain't I tellin' the truth?"
"Yes, Mother Mercy, doubtless you are. But it isn't so long back, as
Abel says, that you objected to 'setting under' the Doctor yourself."
"Suppose it wasn't? I didn't know him then, not as I do now. He's
orthodox, I found out, and that's all I wanted. But I know what I'm
talkin' about. Osceolo, he's always beggin' for Abel to keep liquor:
an' we teetotallers! An' he's teased so much that the other day Abel
thought he'd satisfy him. So he got an old bottle, looked as if some
tipsy Indian had thrown it away, and filled it with a dose of boneset
tea. He made a terrible mystery of the whole matter, pretendin' to be
sly of me, and took it out from under his coat and gave it to Ossy out
behind in the stable, like it was a wonderful secret. Do you know,
that Indian hain't never let on a single word about that business yet?
Oh! he's a master hand for bein' close-mouthed. They all be. They just
_do_--but don't talk."
"Mercy, if _you_ were only a little more talkative, you'd be better
company!" teased Gaspar, who was eager for the finish of the story and
his supper.
"Now--you! Well, laugh away. I don't mind. All is, when Abel saw the
trick Ossy had played on the Doctor, he plays one on Ossy. He'd caught
a queer sort of animal, as I said, and he was fetchin' it to Kit.
Everybody brings her everything, from rattlesnakes up. But when he saw
that ox, he just opens the tin box and claps the creature inside and
then hunts up Ossy. He says: 'There's something in that box pretty
suspicious, boy. You might look an' see what 'tis but don't let on.'
He's that curiosity, Osceolo has, that he forgot everything else and
stuck his hand in sly. I expect he thought it was something to eat, or
likely to drink, and he got bit. Hand's all tore and sore, and now
Abel's scared and gone off with him to the surgeon at the Fort, and
there'll be trouble. Ossy was muttering something about the 'Black
Hawk coming and that he'd had enough of the white folks. He was born
an Indian, and an Indian he'd die'; and to the land! I hope he will!
He makes more mischief in this settlement than you can shake a stick
at!"
"'It's hard for a bird to get away from its tail,'" quoted Gaspar,
lightly. "Osceolo began life wrong and his reputation clings to him.
I'll take the saddle off Jim, and let's go in to supper. None of my
Sun Maid's tribe is to be feared, I think, no matter how direly they
may threaten."
Yet the young husband glanced toward his wife with an anxiety that he
would not have liked her to see. During the weeks since his return to
the village he had learned much more than he had told her of a
movement far beyond the Indian encampments she was accustomed to
visit, which would bring serious trouble, if not complete disaster,
upon their beloved home. Osceolo was the Sun Maid's devoted follower;
yet the prank he had played upon the old Doctor, whom she so
reverenced, showed that he was already throwing aside the restraints
of his enforced civilization; and the sign was ominous.