The Crossing

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"Come on, ye pack of Rebel cutthroats!" yelled a man on the wall.

He was answered by a torrent of imprecations. And so they flung it back
and forth until nightfall, when out comes the same faded-scarlet officer,
holding a letter in his hand, and marches down the street to Monsieur
Bouton's. There would be no storming now, nor any man suffered to lay
fingers on the Hair Buyer.

* * * * *

I remember, in particular, Hamilton the Hair Buyer. Not the fiend my
imagination had depicted (I have since learned that most villains do not
look the part), but a man with a great sorrow stamped upon his face. The
sun rose on that 25th of February, and the mud melted, and one of our
companies drew up on each side of the gate. Downward slid the lion of
England, the garrison drums beat a dirge, and the Hair Buyer marched out
at the head of his motley troops.

Then came my own greatest hour. All morning I had been polishing and
tightening the drum, and my pride was so great as we fell into line that
so much as a smile could not be got out of me. Picture it all:
Vincennes in black and white by reason of the bright day; eaves and
gables, stockade line and capped towers, sharply drawn, and straight
above these a stark flagstaff waiting for our colors; pigs and fowls
straying hither and thither, unmindful that this day is red on the
calendar. Ah! here is a bit of color, too,--the villagers on the side
streets to see the spectacle. Gay wools and gayer handkerchiefs there,
amid the joyous, cheering crowd of thrice-changed nationality.

"Vive les Bostonnais! Vive les Americains! Vive Monsieur le Colonel
Clark! Vive le petit tambour!"

"Vive le petit tambour!" That was the drummer boy, stepping proudly
behind the Colonel himself, with a soul lifted high above mire and puddle
into the blue above. There was laughter amongst the giants behind me,
and Cowan saying softly, as when we left Kaskaskia, "Go it, Davy, my
little gamecock!" And the whisper of it was repeated among the ranks
drawn up by the gate.

Yes, here was the gate, and now we were in the fort, and an empire was
gained, never to be lost again. The Stars and Stripes climbed the staff,
and the folds were caught by an eager breeze. Thirteen cannon thundered
from the blockhouses--one for each colony that had braved a king.

There, in the miry square within the Vincennes fort, thin and bronzed and
travel-stained, were the men who had dared the wilderness in ugliest
mood. And yet none by himself would have done it--each had come here
compelled by a spirit stronger than his own, by a master mind that
laughed at the body and its ailments.

Colonel George Rogers Clark stood in the centre of the square, under the
flag to whose renown he had added three stars. Straight he was, and
square, and self-contained. No weakening tremor of exultation softened
his face as he looked upon the men by whose endurance he had been able to
do this thing. He waited until the white smoke of the last gun had
drifted away on the breeze, until the snapping of the flag and the
distant village sounds alone broke the stillness.

"We have not suffered all things for a reward," he said, "but because a
righteous cause may grow. And though our names may be forgotten, our
deeds will be remembered. We have conquered a vast land that our
children and our children's children may be freed from tyranny, and we
have brought a just vengeance upon our enemies. I thank you, one and
all, in the name of the Continental Congress and of that Commonwealth of
Virginia for which you have fought. You are no longer Virginians,
Kentuckians, Kaskaskians, and Cahokians--you are Americans."

He paused, and we were silent. Though his words moved us strongly, they
were beyond us.

"I mention no deeds of heroism, of unselfishness, of lives saved at the
peril of others. But I am the debtor of every man here for the years to
come to see that he and his family have justice from the Commonwealth and
the nation."

Again he stopped, and it seemed to us watching that he smiled a little.

"I shall name one," he said, "one who never lagged, who never complained,
who starved that the weak might be fed and walk. David Ritchie, come
here."

I trembled, my teeth chattered as the water had never made them chatter.
I believe I should have fallen but for Tom, who reached out from the
ranks. I stumbled forward in a daze to where the Colonel stood, and the
cheering from the ranks was a thing beyond me. The Colonel's hand on my
head brought me to my senses.

"David Ritchie," he said, "I give you publicly the thanks of the
regiment. The parade is dismissed."

The next thing I knew I was on Cowan's shoulders, and he was tearing
round and round the fort with two companies at his heels.

"The divil," said Terence McCann, "he dhrummed us over the wather, an'
through the wather; and faix, he would have dhrummed the sculp from
Hamilton's head and the Colonel had said the worrd."

"By gar!" cried Antoine le Gris, "now he drum us on to Detroit."

Out of the gate rushed Cowan, the frightened villagers scattering right
and left. Antoine had a friend who lived in this street, and in ten
minutes there was rum in the powder-horns, and the toast was "On to
Detroit!"

Colonel Clark was sitting alone in the commanding officer's room of the
garrison. And the afternoon sun, slanting through the square of the
window, fell upon the maps and papers before him. He had sent for me. I
halted in sheer embarrassment on the threshold, looked up at his face,
and came on, troubled.

"Davy," he said, "do you want to go back to Kentucky?"

"I should like to stay to the end, Colonel," I answered.

"The end?" he said. "This is the end."

"And Detroit, sir?" I returned.

"Detroit!" he cried bitterly, "a man of sense measures his force, and
does not try the impossible. I could as soon march against Philadelphia.
This is the end, I say; and the general must give way to the politician.
And may God have mercy on the politician who will try to keep a people's
affection without money or help from Congress."

He fell back wearily in his chair, while I stood astonished, wondering.
I had thought to find him elated with victory.

"Congress or Virginia," said he, "will have to pay Monsieur Vigo, and
Father Gibault, and Monsieur Gratiot, and the other good people who have
trusted me. Do you think they will do so?"

"The Congress are far from here," I said.

"Ay," he answered, "too far to care about you and me, and what we have
suffered."

He ended abruptly, and sat for a while staring out of the window at the
figures crossing and recrossing the muddy parade-ground.

"Tom McChesney goes to-night to Kentucky with letters to the county
lieutenant. You are to go with him, and then I shall have no one to
remind me when I am hungry, and bring me hominy. I shall have no
financier, no strategist for a tight place." He smiled a little, sadly,
at my sorrowful look, and then drew me to him and patted my shoulder.
"It is no place for a young lad,--an idle garrison. I think," he
continued presently, "I think you have a future, David, if you do not
lose your head. Kentucky will grow and conquer, and in twenty years be a
thriving community. And presently you will go to Virginia, and study
law, and come back again. Do you hear?"

"Yes, Colonel."

"And I would tell you one thing," said he, with force; "serve the people,
as all true men should in a republic. But do not rely upon their
gratitude. You will remember that?"

"Yes, Colonel."

A long time he paused, looking on me with a significance I did not then
understand. And when he spoke again his voice showed no trace of
emotion, save in the note of it.

"You have been a faithful friend, Davy, when I needed loyalty. Perhaps
the time may come again. Promise me that you will not forget me if I
am--unfortunate."

"Unfortunate, sir!" I exclaimed.

"Good-by, Davy," he said, "and God bless you. I have work to do."

Still I hesitated. He stared at me, but with kindness.

"What is it, Davy?" he asked.

"Please, sir," I said, "if I might take my drum?"

At that he laughed.

"You may," said he, "you may. Perchance we may need it again."

I went out from his presence, vaguely troubled, to find Tom. And before
the early sun had set we were gliding down the Wabash in a canoe, past
places forever dedicated to our agonies, towards Kentucky and Polly Ann.

"Davy," said Tom, "I reckon she'll be standin' under the 'simmon tree,
waitin' fer us with the little shaver in her arms."

And so she was.






BOOK II

FLOTSAM AND JETSAM


CHAPTER I

IN THE CABIN

The Eden of one man may be the Inferno of his neighbor, and now I am to
throw to the winds, like leaves of a worthless manuscript, some years of
time, and introduce you to a new Kentucky,--a Kentucky that was not for
the pioneer. One page of this manuscript might have told of a fearful
winter, when the snow lay in great drifts in the bare woods, when Tom and
I fashioned canoes or noggins out of the great roots, when a new and
feminine bit of humanity cried in the bark cradle, and Polly Ann sewed
deer leather. Another page--nay, a dozen--could be filled with Indian
horrors, ambuscades and massacres. And also I might have told how there
drifted into this land, hitherto unsoiled, the refuse cast off by the
older colonies. I must add quickly that we got more than our share of
their best stock along with this.

No sooner had the sun begun to pit the snow hillocks than wild creatures
came in from the mountains, haggard with hunger and hardship. They had
left their homes in Virginia and the Carolinas in the autumn; an
unheralded winter of Arctic fierceness had caught them in its grip.
Bitter tales they told of wives and children buried among the rocks.
Fast on the heels of these wretched ones trooped the spring settlers in
droves; and I have seen whole churches march singing into the forts, the
preacher leading, and thanking God loudly that He had delivered them from
the wilderness and the savage. The little forts would not hold them; and
they went out to hew clearings from the forest, and to build cabins and
stockades. And our own people, starved and snowbound, went out
likewise,--Tom and Polly Ann and their little family and myself to the
farm at the river-side. And while the water flowed between the stumps
over the black land, we planted and ploughed and prayed, always alert,
watching north and south, against the coming of the Indians.

But Tom was no husbandman. He and his kind were the scouts, the advance
guard of civilization, not tillers of the soil or lovers of close
communities. Farther and farther they went afield for game, and always
they grumbled sorely against this horde which had driven the deer from
his cover and the buffalo from his wallow.

Looking back, I can recall one evening when the long summer twilight
lingered to a close. Tom was lounging lazily against the big persimmon
tree, smoking his pipe, the two children digging at the roots, and Polly
Ann, seated on the door-log, sewing. As I drew near, she looked up at me
from her work. She was a woman upon whose eternal freshness industry
made no mar.

"Davy," she exclaimed, "how ye've growed! I thought ye'd be a wizened
little body, but this year ye've shot up like a cornstalk."

"My father was six feet two inches in his moccasins," I said.

"He'll be wallopin' me soon," said Tom, with a grin. He took a long
whiff at his pipe, and added thoughtfully, "I reckon this ain't no place
fer me now, with all the settler folks and land-grabbers comin' through
the Gap."

"Tom," said I, "there's a bit of a fall on the river here."

"Ay," he said, "and nary a fish left."

"Something better," I answered; "we'll put a dam there and a mill and a
hominy pounder."

"And make our fortune grinding corn for the settlers," cried Polly Ann,
showing a line of very white teeth. "I always said ye'd be a rich man,
Davy."

Tom was mildly interested, and went with us at daylight to measure the
fall. And he allowed that he would have the more time to hunt if the
mill were a success. For a month I had had the scheme in my mind, where
the dam was to be put, the race, and the wondrous wheel rimmed with cow
horns to dip the water. And fixed on the wheel there was to be a crank
that worked the pounder in the mortar. So we were to grind until I could
arrange with Mr. Scarlett, the new storekeeper in Harrodstown, to have
two grinding-stones fetched across the mountains.

While the corn ripened and the melons swelled and the flax flowered, our
axes rang by the river's side; and sometimes, as we worked, Cowan and
Terrell and McCann and other Long Hunters would come and jeer
good-naturedly because we were turning civilized. Often they gave
us a lift.

It was September when the millstones arrived, and I spent a joyous
morning of final bargaining with Mr. Myron Scarlett. This Mr. Scarlett
was from Connecticut, had been a quartermaster in the army, and at much
risk brought ploughs and hardware, and scissors and buttons, and
broadcloth and corduroy, across the Alleghanies, and down the Ohio in
flatboats. These he sold at great profit. We had no money, not even the
worthless scrip that Congress issued; but a beaver skin was worth
eighteen shillings, a bearskin ten, and a fox or a deer or a wildcat
less. Half the village watched the barter. The rest lounged sullenly
about the land court.

The land court--curse of Kentucky! It was just a windowless log house
built outside the walls, our temple of avarice. The case was this:
Henderson (for whose company Daniel Boone cut the wilderness road)
believed that he had bought the country, and issued grants therefor. Tom
held one of these grants, alas, and many others whom I knew. Virginia
repudiated Henderson. Keen-faced speculators bought acre upon acre and
tract upon tract from the State, and crossed the mountains to extort.
Claims conflicted, titles lapped. There was the court set in the
sunlight in the midst of a fair land, held by the shameless, thronged day
after day by the homeless and the needy, jostling, quarrelling,
beseeching. Even as I looked upon this strife a man stood beside me.

"Drat 'em," said the stranger, as he watched a hawk-eyed extortioner in
drab, for these did not condescend to hunting shirts, "drat 'em, ef I had
my way I'd wring the neck of every mother's son of 'em."

I turned with a start, and there was Mr. Daniel Boone.

"Howdy, Davy," he said; "ye've growed some sence ye've ben with Clark."
He paused, and then continued in the same strain: "'Tis the same at
Boonesboro and up thar at the Falls settlement. The critters is
everywhar, robbin' men of their claims. Davy," said Mr. Boone,
earnestly, "you know that I come into Kaintuckee when it waren't nothin'
but wilderness, and resked my life time and again. Them varmints is
wuss'n redskins,--they've robbed me already of half my claims."

"Robbed you!" I exclaimed, indignant that he, of all men, should suffer.

"Ay," he said, "robbed me. They've took one claim after another, tracts
that I staked out long afore they heerd of Kaintuckee." He rubbed his
rifle barrel with his buckskin sleeve. "I get a little for my skins, and
a little by surveyin'. But when the game goes I reckon I'll go after
it."

"Where, Mr. Boone?" I asked.

"Whar? whar the varmints cyant foller. Acrost the Mississippi into the
Spanish wilderness."

"And leave Kentucky?" I cried.

"Davy," he answered sadly, "you kin cope with 'em. They tell me you're
buildin' a mill up at McChesney's, and I reckon you're as cute as any of
'em. They beat me. I'm good for nothin' but shootin' and explorin'."

We stood silent for a while, our attention caught by a quarrel which had
suddenly come out of the doorway. One of the men was Jim Willis,--my
friend of Clark's campaign,--who had a Henderson claim near Shawanee
Springs. The other was the hawk-eyed man of whom Mr. Boone had spoken,
and fragments of their curses reached us where we stood. The hunting
shirts surged around them, alert now at the prospect of a fight; men came
running in from all directions, and shouts of "Hang him! Tomahawk him!"
were heard on every side. Mr. Boone did not move. It was a common
enough spectacle for him, and he was not excitable. Moreover, he knew
that the death of one extortioner more or less would have no effect on
the system. They had become as the fowls of the air.

"I was acrost the mountain last month," said Mr. Boone, presently, "and
one of them skunks had stole Campbell's silver spoons at Abingdon.
Campbell was out arter him for a week with a coil of rope on his saddle.
But the varmint got to cover."

Mr. Boone wished me luck in my new enterprise, bade me good-by, and set
out for Redstone, where he was to measure a tract for a Revolutioner.
The speculator having been rescued from Jim Willis's clutches by the
sheriff, the crowd good-naturedly helped us load our stones between
pack-horses, and some of them followed us all the way home that they
might see the grinding. Half of McAfee's new station had heard the news,
and came over likewise. And from that day we ground as much corn as
could be brought to us from miles around.

Polly Ann and I ran the mill and kept the accounts. Often of a crisp
autumn morning we heard a gobble-gobble above the tumbling of the water
and found a wild turkey perched on top of the hopper, eating his fill.
Some of our meat we got that way. As for Tom, he was off and on. When
the roving spirit seized him he made journeys to the westward with Cowan
and Ray. Generally they returned with packs of skins. But sometimes
soberly, thanking Heaven that their hair was left growing on their heads.
This, and patrolling the Wilderness Road and other militia duties, made
up Tom's life. No sooner was the mill fairly started than off he went to
the Cumberland. I mention this, not alone because I remember well the
day of his return, but because of a certain happening then that had a
heavy influence on my after life.

The episode deals with an easy-mannered gentleman named Potts, who was
the agent for a certain Major Colfax of Virginia. Tom owned under a
Henderson grant; the Major had been given this and other lands for his
services in the war. Mr. Potts arrived one rainy afternoon and found me
standing alone under the little lean-to that covered the hopper. How we
served him, with the aid of McCann and Cowan and other neighbors, and how
we were near getting into trouble because of the prank, will be seen
later. The next morning I rode into Harrodstown not wholly easy in my
mind concerning the wisdom of the thing I had done. There was no one to
advise me, for Colonel Clark was far away, building a fort on the banks
of the Mississippi. Tom had laughed at the consequences; he cared little
about his land, and was for moving into the Wilderness again. But for
Polly Ann's sake I wished that we had treated the land agent less
cavalierly. I was soon distracted from these thoughts by the sight of
Harrodstown itself.

I had no sooner ridden out of the forest shade when I saw that the place
was in an uproar, men and women gathering in groups and running here and
there between the cabins. Urging on the mare, I cantered across the
fields, and the first person I met was James Ray.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"Matter enough! An army of redskins has crossed the Ohio, and not a man
to take command. My God," cried Ray, pointing angrily at the swarms
about the land office, "what trash we have got this last year! Kentucky
can go to the devil, half the stations be wiped out, and not a thrip do
they care."

"Have you sent word to the Colonel?" I asked.

"If he was here," said Ray, bitterly, "he'd have half of 'em swinging
inside of an hour. I'll warrant he'd send 'em to the right-about."

I rode on into the town, Potts gone out of my mind. Apart from the
land-office crowds, and looking on in silent rage, stood a group of the
old settlers,--tall, lean, powerful, yet impotent for lack of a leader.
A contrast they were, these buckskin-clad pioneers, to the ill-assorted
humanity they watched, absorbed in struggles for the very lands they had
won.

"By the eternal!" said Jack Terrell, "if the yea'th was ter swaller 'em
up, they'd keep on a-dickerin in hell."

"Something's got to be done," Captain Harrod put in gloomily; "the red
varmints'll be on us in another day. In God's name, whar is Clark?"

"Hold!" cried Fletcher Blount, "what's that?"

The broiling about the land court, too, was suddenly hushed. Men stopped
in their tracks, staring fixedly at three forms which had come out of the
woods into the clearing.

"Redskins, or there's no devil!" said Terrell.

Redskins they were, but not the blanketed kind that drifted every day
through the station. Their war-paint gleamed in the light, and the white
edges of the feathered head-dresses caught the sun. One held up in his
right hand a white belt,--token of peace on the frontier.

"Lord A'mighty!" said Fletcher Blount, "be they Cricks?"

"Chickasaws, by the headgear," said Terrell. "Davy, you've got a hoss.
Ride out and look em over."

Nothing loath, I put the mare into a gallop, and I passed over the very
place where Polly Ann had picked me up and saved my life long since. The
Indians came on at a dog trot, but when they were within fifty paces of
me they halted abruptly. The chief waved the white belt around his head.

"Davy!" says he, and I trembled from head to foot. How well I knew that
voice!

"Colonel Clark!" I cried, and rode up to him. "Thank God you are come,
sir," said I, "for the people here are land-mad, and the Northern Indians
are crossing the Ohio."

He took my bridle, and, leading the horse, began to walk rapidly towards
the station.

"Ay," he answered, "I know it. A runner came to me with the tidings,
where I was building a fort on the Mississippi, and I took Willis here
and Saunders, and came."

I glanced at my old friends, who grinned at me through the berry-stain on
their faces. We reached a ditch through which the rain of the night
before was draining from the fields Clark dropped the bridle, stooped
down, and rubbed his face clean. Up he got again and flung the feathers
from his head, and I thought that his eyes twinkled despite the sternness
of his look.

"Davy, my lad," said he, "you and I have seen some strange things
together. Perchance we shall see stranger to-day."

A shout went up, for he had been recognized. And Captain Harrod and Ray
and Terrell and Cowan (who had just ridden in) ran up to greet him and
press his hand. He called them each by name, these men whose loyalty had
been proved, but said no word more nor paused in his stride until he had
reached the edge of the mob about the land court. There he stood for a
full minute, and we who knew him looked on silently and waited.

The turmoil had begun again, the speculators calling out in strident
tones, the settlers bargaining and pushing, and all clamoring to be
heard. While there was money to be made or land to be got they had no
ear for the public weal. A man shouldered his way through, roughly, and
they gave back, cursing, surprised. He reached the door, and, flinging
those who blocked it right and left, entered. There he was recognized,
and his name flew from mouth to mouth.

"Clark!"

He walked up to the table, strewn with books and deeds.

"Silence!" he thundered. But there was no need,--they were still for
once. "This court is closed," he cried "while Kentucky is in danger.
Not a deed shall be signed nor an acre granted until I come back from the
Ohio. Out you go!"

Out they went indeed, judge, brokers, speculators--the evicted and the
triumphant together. And when the place was empty Clark turned the key
and thrust it into his hunting shirt. He stood for a moment on the step,
and his eyes swept the crowd.

"Now," he said, "there have been many to claim this land--who will follow
me to defend it?"

As I live, they cheered him. Hands were flung up that were past
counting, and men who were barely rested from the hardships of the
Wilderness Trail shouted their readiness to go. But others slunk away,
and were found that morning grumbling and cursing the chance that had
brought them to Kentucky. Within the hour the news had spread to the
farms, and men rode in to Harrodstown to tell the Colonel of many who
were leaving the plough in the furrow and the axe in the wood, and
starting off across the mountains in anger and fear. The Colonel turned
to me as he sat writing down the names of the volunteers.

"Davy," said he, "when you are grown you shall not stay at home, I
promise you. Take your mare and ride as for your life to McChesney, and
tell him to choose ten men and go to the Crab Orchard on the Wilderness
Road. Tell him for me to turn back every man, woman, and child who tries
to leave Kentucky."

I met Tom coming in from the field with his rawhide harness over his
shoulders. Polly Ann stood calling him in the door, and the squirrel
broth was steaming on the table. He did not wait for it. Kissing her,
he flung himself into the saddle I had left, and we watched him mutely as
he waved back to us from the edge of the woods.