Chapter III: Part 3

Again he heard that never-to-be-forgotten chime of distant silver bells, that low gurgle of exquisite music. He would have known that voice any place. How did the Virginia slave happen to be here and not with the wagons? Why should that note of sadness creep into his sigh? Why was he weeping?

His sobbing rose, so touched with grief, so poignant with despair, that Doby's heart-strings tightened. He could hardly bear to hear it.

Then some motherly creature began to croon, "Da, chil' honey, poo' chil' honey, don' you cry--"

The lyric tenor wailed in broken syllables: "My daddy--he whipped--he die--my mammy--she whipped--she run away. I want my mammy--"

"Da, chil' honey, poo' chil' honey, don' you cry--"

"I want my mammy--I don' want ole Virginny--I don' want this yere--I want my mammy--" The chant was torn with sorrow.

Then came the comforting, "Don' cry, honey," over and over again.

Poor Doby, listening in distressed sympathy, could not in the least make out this black thief of the rabbit foot, whose lilting laughter had turned to such bitter tears.

The boy who had heard both, stole away to hide in one of the wagons and to cry himself to sleep over a trouble he could not understand.

He was ashamed to worry his father or Simon Kenton with further questions about the slaves, who left them next day when the Virginians stopped at their prospective settlement north of Lexington.

With the picturesque and merry blacks went much of the zest of life in the wagon-train, and Doby was glad when the Ohio River came in sight and the journey was at an end.

Busying himself with the luggage behind some hogsheads on the wharf while the wagon-train was loading the ferryboat to cross the river, Doby heard a strange Kentuckian hiss to another in a stage whisper, "How many Quaker women in this company?"

He could not catch the mumbled reply, but the decision of the first Kentuckian, "We will speak to each one of those women and find out," held such menace in its tone that it made the boy uncomfortable.

These women of the Society of Friends, whom Doby had never thought of counting in all the time that he had been with them, had already gone aboard the ferry. Through the long hard trip they had managed to keep their calm appearance of perfect neatness and order in dress and possessions.

Their full gray skirts almost touched the ground. Their clean white kerchiefs were crossed surplice-wise on their gray waists. Snowy inner caps showed at the edges of their gray scoop bonnets. Long gray shawls were folded over their hands clasped primly in front of them.

They looked as much alike as doves in a cote.

It was an adventure for Doby to peer down into the tunnel of one of these bonnets. He never could tell whether he would find a kindly grandmother, an earnest matron, or a blushing maid, in the other end of its cavernous depths.

Why, then, since they were all so much alike outwardly, should these two rough men, who had sprung from the wharf, have reason to speak to any one of them? What difference did it make how many there were of them?

As he went aboard, they all looked as usual to him. Seated on the boxes and bales, they had as much serene dignity as though the noisy boat had been a bench in a silent "meeting-house."

It was plain, as the boat left shore, that the two Kentuckians meant to carry out their plan. Doby, close on their heels, heard them ask the same question of each in turn, "Are you going to Cincinnati?"

If she lifted her head as she gently answered, one man glanced sharply into her bonnet. If she did not look up, the other man stooped and stared into the bonnet. Between them they made sure of a view of every concealed face.

Mr. Holman whispered to Doby, "Sheriff and deputy," and Doby was more confused than ever. What were they hunting for?

He was so curious that he stood closer and closer to them, until one turned upon him with a harsh scowl and bade him "git!"

Baffled, he retreated to the bow, and was about to seat himself on a coil of rope on the up-stream side when he noticed another Quakeress standing behind some tall piles of boxes. She was without a shawl. Her bonnet strings were untied. Her arms were folded and her hands shoved out of sight in her surplice.

She was shaking as with a chill; her whole figure, in spite of its immaculate dress, had a hunched-up and miserable appearance.

Doby started toward her to offer help in case she was ill.

She was peeping round the corner of the pile of boxes and she drew back suddenly as the two officers came toward the bow. Although they had not yet seen her, they were sure to do so. But why should she be afraid of them?

They stepped forward briskly. She started violently and fell headlong into the river.

With a shriek for "Help!" Doby jumped to the rail. In the wild glance that he gave to locate the Quakeress before he dived to her assistance he saw the white soles of two bare feet, two long black legs in frog stroke, a bonnet sinking, a kinky head atop black arms, which came out freely from gray flowing sleeves.

With an expert movement, to make a turn and a neat dive, the figure went under the ferryboat. It was the lyric tenor! Sucked under by the current!

All this Doby noted in one flash, as, too late to check his own impetuous jump to the rescue, he also went into the river.

He swam upward against the current. That much of common sense was left in him, for all the surprise and horror of the darky's dreadful disappearance under the boat where the doomed creature could not rise, and where no one could rescue him.

There was a cry of, "Man overboard!"

Every person on the boat rushed to starboard. In Doby's ears there was great confusion and roaring. On the boat was the same thing. But one tidy Quakeress, without rumpling her surplice, made fast one end of the rope coil to the rail and threw the other end to Doby.

April is not a good month for swimming even in the friendly Ohio. Shirt and breeches of buckskin were very heavy; the chill of the water was unnerving. The current was stronger than he thought, and the nearing shore seemed much farther than it had looked from the deck of the ferry. So he was not too proud of his swimming skill to allow himself to be hauled on board. He was deeply grateful for the line.

There was too much help, Doby thought. His clothes were peeled off, he was rubbed dry, and dressed anew, with some dozen or so men, women, and children taking part in his toilet and the eyes of everybody on him and his unlucky ducking.

With the chill and the shock, his teeth chattered so that he could not tell them about the poor darky, try as he would.

So the two Kentucky officers went ashore, each grumbling to the other about some "miscount." And Doby was hurried to his own flatboat home, standing at the wharf, where a warm welcome and a cozy supper were given to them and their guest, Simon Kenton, by Doby's waiting mother.

Then, and not till then, did Doby's father indulge in laughter long and loud. But Kenton, with a merry twinkle, merely asked, "Tell us, son, how much was on purpose and how much just happened so."

His father added, "You managed to get all the attention of the boat at the time the runaway did not want it for himself."

Doby was still shuddering with horror at the fate of the black, and he was ready to faint as he gasped, "The darky is drownded!"

"Don't think it," cried Mr. Holman. "He swam underwater with the current, came up clear, took a big breath, dived toward the shore, and swam away perfectly safe. I saw him climb into the bushes on shore. He will roll in somebody's hay until his dress is dry; then travel north to-night, watching for the Quakers to pick him up."

"The Society of Friends is working out a regular plan for helpin' runaways that is liable to grow into a big thing one of these days," was Simon Kenton's prophecy.

When the first Quaker who felt a throb of pity for the wretched runaway cowering for mercy at his feet, resolved to be a true Friend to the unfortunate, by defying man's law of property and obeying God's law of mercy, he surveyed in his mind the earliest routes for the underground railway, as he considered to which Friend farther north he should send this fugitive.

The underground railway was never built of wooden cross-ties nor of steel rails. Its right of way was in the hearts of those who guarded the secret paths and the hidden shelters through which the slaves passed to the land of their hopes.

Past the perils of the auction-block, the lash, and the bloodhounds, a vast emigration of blacks were smuggled through Cincinnati--the Cumberland Gap of their race--and, guided by that celestial scout, the north star, won their way to Canada and to freedom.

Doby was vastly relieved about his lyric tenor. Still, he asked, "How will he know which way to go?"

Simon Kenton sang softly,

"He wave hes tail,
Hes sma', wee tail,
At no'th star in de sky."

Then Doby smiled happily, "And he won't mind cold and hunger and he can't be captured while he has such faith in the luck that a boy--almost red-headed--gave him; and he wears in his kinks the left hind foot of a stolen rabbit!"

VII

THE DROWSY VILLAGE

_Edward Eggleston's Favorite Spring at Vevay_

A STEAMBOAT'S paddles churned the Ohio backwater as she strove to make a landing at Vevay, coming down.

Everybody on ships and on shore rushed for places to get a view of her. Plainly her name showed on her sides, the _New Orleans_. A queer little vessel was she. Robert Fulton, the inventor of the steam-engine, had himself designed and built her. She was the second steam craft in the whole wide world, and the first on Western waters.

Several others had been set afloat in the four years since she had made her initial trip, but she was still certain to have a crowd of cheering admirers whenever she chose to show off her great accomplishment of going up-stream against the current.

For two months he had been a river-traveler, and, therefore, Obadiah Holman knew that she could puff away as soon as she cared to do so, no matter if the landlubbers did use hot arguments to prove that, "It stands to reason that she cain't never go ag'in natur'."

The boy hung over the side of his father's flatboat and watched the people who were watching the steamer. "I've seen a lot of towns," thought he, "but never any as quiet as this."

There was something in the changing sky above the misty blue hills, something in the deep water which reflected the sky and the hills, something in the long vistas and the fragrant air, that may have reminded a little band of Swiss colonists of their native mountain-land. They loved this place as soon as they saw it and settled here.

Log cabins were built somewhat like the cottages which the herdsmen of Switzerland set up among the Alps. Tiny chalets they were, and they were perched on the prettiest heights above the river and the valley so that the beauty-loving Swiss might have the finest views.

"Oh, sleepy little town! how enchanting you are!" The boy inhaled the breeze. "It smells delicious." He scanned the acres of good bottom-land between Indian and Plum creeks and took in the terraced hillsides. Everywhere were stakes and trellises. "Ha! Grapes are in bloom. That's what I smell. They are raising grapes."

He eagerly studied out the plan of the vineyards and the fields. It interested him, this art which the Swiss had brought with them to the banks of the Ohio. It would have been even more interesting could he have foreseen that the grape culture begun by John Francis Dufour and his brother John James Dufour in this valley was to spread up and down the river and along the Great Lakes and become one of the sources of the wealth of the Middle West.

His thirsty senses soon discovered a spring on the hillside. Reaching down to the deck, he picked up a light-weight wooden bucket by its woven-willow bail, resolving as soon as the boat docked to run up the hill and get a drink from the spring. The taste of river water was becoming tiresome to him.

"The landing looks like a hay-field," he laughed as the people bobbed about. Every woman and child and nearly every man wore a straw hat, the first ones he had ever seen. Skill in weaving straw was another art introduced by the clever Swiss. In the May sunshine this entirely new style of head-covering suggested comfort. "Take off your 'coonskin, Doby," said the boy to himself. "Its season is over. The Swiss are weaving the left-over straw-stacks into a millinery show."

He examined the faces under the hats. It was easy to pick out the Swiss from among the New England emigrants and the roustabouts of the river. They were more graceful and shorter of stature. Indeed, the Swiss were so compact in physique that the master of the wagon-train who freighted them from their port at Norfolk, Virginia, in 1801, across the Alleghany Mountains to the flatboats at Pittsburg, complained that six and one-quarter cents a hundredweight was not enough money for the women and children who rode, since it took more than one person to make a hundredweight and little people were as much trouble as big ones.

The Swiss used French words. And because the French were always friendly to Indians, the squaws of the region seemed to feel sure of the hospitality of this village. They hung about the Swiss like bees about the grape blooms.

"Beggars, beggars, beggars!" sneered Doby. "They beg for themselves and beg for the pappooses slung up behind them. They beg for their families and beg for the dogs at their heels."

He scowled at our native red race as it filed along below him on the wharf. "They can't be made to work and the Swiss will have to feed 'em or the braves will threaten war." Some idea of ultimate justice stirred in Doby's mind, for he shook his head at a fat pappoose as he reflected: "We have taken their hunting-ground without their leave. They are making us pay for it without our leave."

Moving about with the crowd was one figure more uncouth than the squaws. It was a ragged, blanketed, straw-hatted creature. Doby noticed it. On its feet were mismatched gear, a torn moccasin for the right foot, a broken leather boot for the left. No scarecrow could have worn worse clothes.

As Doby leaned over the edge of the boat and stared, the shapeless thing raised its head and returned the gaze. Then he saw that it was a man, a white man, whose face was sodden with gin and lined with evil; a degraded outcast deported from some Old World prison.

Numbers of such wretches were dumped on Eastern coasts. Few wandered so far inland as Vevay. Doby recoiled from the threatening leer the drunkard threw at him. Instinctively he laid his right hand on the hilt of his stone knife, for he had the same sense of danger approaching that the man has who claps his hand to his sword.

The steamboat was already loading with produce for the up-river trip. Piles of new straw hats were tossed aboard. Skins of grape-juice, protected by straw cratings, were stacked on deck. Firkins of marmalade were handled carefully. Straw boxes of raisins were properly stowed. A few bottles of delicate home-made wine were handed as compliments to the officers of the boat.

Bottles always aroused the thirst of Indians. A bulky squaw threw herself between an officer and the giver of the wine. She demanded "firewater."

"Go along," cried the indignant officer. "This is not firewater. You can't get drunk on this," and he retreated with his present.

The squaw imagined that one long orgy gurgled in that bottle. She snatched it from him and rushed through the groups near by. As she ran she slipped the bottle into the cloth wrappings which held the pappoose on her back. Ducking down among her friends, she came up in another place and stood with her hands folded, looking as innocent as any squaw could.

No one could tell her from the others except the scarecrow whom Doby was watching. With his eyes on Doby's face, he slipped a ready hand about the pappoose and lifted the bottle out. The squaw, whose heart and mind and nerves were all entwined about that one thing, felt it go. She gave a grunt and lunged at the man.

Away he scampered. She pounded after him. There was the cry, "Stop thief!" And the crowd, who had only a vague idea of what it was all about, galloped through the town in his wake.

Still clinging to his bucket, Doby leaped the gap between his boat and the shore and caught up with the others just as the people, now grown angry, had made the man a prisoner. The squaw was also taken in custody. The marshal held the bottle. A dignified gentleman, the only unruffled person in town, was saying in a quiet voice, "Bring them into my house."

Although this gentleman's house was only fourteen feet by twenty, it had, since the beginning of the settlement, been used as a county clerk's office, a post-office, and a court-house. Its owner, John Francis Dufour, had been given most of the town's positions of trust.

The house filled with the principal actors in the play. The mob, who could not see or hear what was happening, stood outside and yelled: "Put 'em in jail! Give 'em the whipping-post!" The Indians stood in sullen rage.

Doby had never seen a mob before. It made him think of Pontius Pilate, and he was filled with worry.

The whipping-post was an old affair. The town was tired of it. It had never done any business. But the jail was new. A court-house--a brick one--and a jail--a log one--had been building through the year. The court-house was not yet finished, but the jail was.

One offender had already been sentenced to the jail. No sooner had he been put in at night than he began to whittle, and in the morning he was gone. Now that they had another captive, civic pride demanded that justice be satisfied in some way. His colonists looked to Dufour to do this for them.

This man was famous for his sturdy common sense and that quality which the early Hoosiers dubbed "gumption."

He immediately sent the harmful bottle of harmless wine back to the unlucky officer, so that the boat might leave port at once. Part of the mob followed the bottle. He turned the squaw over to three other squaws with directions to take her home. Of course the whole tribe trailed along to see this feat accomplished. Thus away went a second dangerous group in quite another direction.

Then Judge Dufour said to the prisoner: "I will bind you over for trial. In default of bail, you must be temporarily incarcerated." Between two citizens sworn in for the purpose the prisoner shuffled past Doby on his way to the jail. He was locked and double locked up. He was a very satisfactory picture of a villain as he glowered through the bars. This dramatic glimpse of a truly bad man satisfied the remnant of the mob. The excitement died down.

But Doby himself was restless. He went to the spring and filled his bucket. It was a good spring and most attractive to boys. For the two famous Vevay brothers, Edward and George Cary Eggleston, who years later wrote delightful stories of this part of Indiana and other histories of their country, found as much fascination and beauty around the hillside springs as Doby did.

Several times during the day he wandered back to the spring. At each one he found himself taking a round-about way past the jail to get another peep at the outlaw. He shuddered till his bucket rattled when he recalled how this criminal had suddenly turned the friendly villagers into a vindictive mob.

After supper he tried to explain his nervousness by saying: "This moonlight gives me fidgets. I guess I'll run up to the spring again and get us all a fresh drink before we go to bed. I'm not a bit sleepy."

"It's rather late for boys to be out," objected his mother.

"It is," agreed his father. "But 'tis such a bright night that I'll sit here and watch you climb. I do not feel sleepy myself."

The open hillside had seemed inviting as Doby viewed it from the boat. As he mounted higher and higher the perspective changed. The sheltering home boat sank in lonesome distance. The shadows of the trellises twisted grotesquely at his feet as if to twine about them. Calls of "whip-poor-will" came mournfully from afar. The May night was turning chill. The solitary path had lost its accustomed look. He began to shiver.

"This isn't as pleasant as I thought 'twould be. I'll get the water and hurry home," he resolved as he knelt at the spring. In the damp loam where the spring dribbled in front of him were the prints of the feet of one who had been there before him. They were fresh and distinct. Born and bred near the frontier and raised to read its signs, he understood the prints at a glance. But he bent nearer in the moonlight to be sure he was not mistaken.

One was of a broken boot sole. The other was a moccasin impression.

There was nothing else.

He did some thinking. "This is odd. A white man wouldn't hop up on one foot to drink. Neither would an Indian. And no one man would wear a moccasin on his right foot and a boot on his left." Oh, wouldn't he? Doby's memory jumped. The scarecrow on the wharf, the prisoner in the jail, had just such feet.

He retreated from the spot as though the culprit himself stood in the tracks. He was not thirsty any more. He told himself in quaking thoughts: "Even if I didn't notice the prints this afternoon, they must have been there. They can't be fresh, 'though they _do_ look so. The man has been in jail for hours."

Perhaps so; but the boy could not drive himself back to the spring. The moonlight only served to make the shadows blacker. They threatened him. He seemed paralyzed where he stood. Nothing was real but the dread that filled him. Even the earth and sky were changing hideously.

From the town came the cry of, "Fire! fire! fire!"

Bells clanged. Women screamed. Dogs howled. Men yelled for "help! help! help!"

A red glare filled the valley. Smoke hid the moon.

"The jail is on fire! The prisoner will burn!"

The whole village was violently astir. Yet Doby could not move. He was frozen.

A series of malicious chuckles, a burst of derisive laughter, wild shouts of defiance echoed along the hillside. And the escaped prisoner--the fire-bug--glad to find some one to vent his fury upon, came plunging toward the boy.

The red eyes, the jagged teeth, the outstretched claws, in movement, broke the spell upon him. He leaped aside to save himself. There was no time to draw his knife. He flipped the empty bucket wrong side up, over the drunkard's head.

Surprised and blinded, the man clutched and tore at the bail under his chin. He had trouble in freeing himself. In that moment of respite Doby flew down-hill like blowing tumbleweed. He sprang into the flatboat and flung up the barricade.

But there was no danger. The prisoner--a prisoner no longer--did not follow. He fled into the wilderness never to return.

John Francis Dufour directed the men in putting out the fire. He promised them another jail in case another bad man came to town. He reassured the women. He cuddled the frightened children. For a second time that day he quieted his village.

Doby, still wide awake, stuck close to the boat and to his father. No more running around at night! He thought these matters over. If one small bottle of mildest wine had set a thousand folks into a turmoil twice within twelve hours, what might not a big jug of genuine "firewater" have done?

"I have decided," he murmured, when at last he became as quiet and as drowsy as the village of Vevay, "that I'll take my stand with the men who say, 'Down with the demon, RUM!'"

VIII

GOIN' TO MEETIN'

_Circuit-riding over the "Buffalo Trace"_

ON the flat top of the stump by the log-cabin door was a trencher of soft soap. By its side stood a big gourd dipper of spring water. A wash-trough, made from a five-foot section of oak-tree trunk which had been burnt and scraped through the center to hollow it out like a tub, was closer to the door, almost on its threshold.

This home-made tub was steaming with ten gallons or so of hot water. A hand-woven towel hung over its edge.

Obadiah Holman sat on the rail fence and viewed these articles with disfavor. He did not like the look of things.

It was not his cabin nor his stump. His family were visitors here. They had floated down the Ohio River from Pittsburg to the settlements where the Big Falls stretched across the stream. The rainbow mist above the tumbled beauty of the rapids marked the end of the water road.

Boats could go no farther. So all were being unloaded, and a strong party of emigrants were making up a wagon-train to take the trail across Indiana to the fort at Vincennes.

Settlers in and around the Big Falls were eager to open their cabins to these travelers.

New Albany was built below the Falls on the rich alluvial bottom-land, and, alas! also within reach of the river freshets.

"She reminds me," Doby had thought at first sight of her, "of a pretty girl shaking in her shoes for fear the water will come up and wet her feet. About every other year she gets a soaking. When the river goes down she keeps on shaking with chills 'n' fever from the ague vapors that the floods leave behind. It is the price she has to pay for the big crops the bottom-land gives her."

If Doby ever came to be seized with the dreaded chills 'n' fever--the great scourge of all new countries--the one malady the pioneers were sure to catch from the miasma of newly opened ground, he would never again speak lightly of it.

When two settlers met, the most important greeting was, "Ketched the agur yit?" The dismal head-shaking which the one who had had it gave, struck such apprehension into the heart of the one who had not had it, that he really could not enjoy the perfect health of the moment for the dread of that future hour when "the shakes would git 'im sure."

The circuit-riding preachers who ministered to the souls of these river people carried ample saddle-bags. In those saddle-bags was an endless collection of "yarbs" and powders and bottles, which the preachers carried to comfort the bodies of their hearers.

The pioneer doctor of divinity was "called" to preach, not by the financial head of his congregation, but by the voice of the Lord. He would not accept worldly money for spiritual service. But for the herbs he gathered and brewed and the bitter concoctions he made, he expected to be paid. On the sale of them he lived.

Some emigrants avoided the river. In the beautiful hills above the falls, higher still than Jeffersonville, were tiny hamlets of Old World folk, Irish, Swiss, German, and French, still wearing their native peasant costumes.

All these places gave shelter and staple foods to the emigrants. In return they accepted salt, tobacco, sugar, steel tools, and the small luxuries of the river like packets of mail and newspapers and almanacs.

Doby liked the people. "But whenever we come to a town, then ma begins to wash me," he sighed. "I don't see why. My hands are hardly dirty at all. Brooks are good enough tubs for me. I do not need so much soap. That towel is ma's. I know that towel whatever town I see it in. 'Tis so scratchy that it skins the curlicues in my ears." He eyed the instruments of torture askance.

He had to draw on his stock of courage to prepare himself for the ordeal by thinking, "I do want to go to meeting and I can't go unless I'm washed according to ma's ideas."

So when the call came, "Dob-ee! Dob-ee! Time for a scrub!" he went meekly to the operation.

Red and shining, his hair slicked down stylishly with bear's grease, his best homespun suit on, Doby mounted a borrowed horse to sit behind his mother, and formed one of a company who fared away to the grove where the meeting was held.

His shoes were tied round his waist by a thong. They were ready to put on when he came in sight of the meeting-place. Cobbled shoes of leather were the most expensive luxury a pioneer boy could own. Neither Doby nor any other backwoods fellow would think of wearing them if he could possibly go barefoot or use his moccasins.

He and his mother were following a little procession of neighbors over the very best thoroughfare in all that region, the "Buffalo Trace."

In the spring when the buffalo came up from the South to graze through the summer on Northern plains, the great herds crossed the Ohio River below the Big Falls. There were thousands and thousands of buffalo. It took days and days for the long parade of them to pass the settlements. Their countless hoofs beat out a path wide enough for the largest wagons and hard enough to make a perfect road.

Riding the "Buffalo Trace" was the best of going.

"Although it is a new country and a strange horse, I feel safe on the road to-day," said his mother, "for there is plenty of company. The preacher rides around such a big circle of settlements that he cannot get to any one place very often."

"When he does come," Doby observed, "it is the big event. Everybody goes to hear him. But _I_ don't think there are many folks near us just now. Some have dropped out of sight around the bend and there isn't any one ahead of us."

For a moment the mother was uneasy. The "Trace" between the grim lines of dark forests seemed suddenly a dreary lane. The distant murmur of the Big Falls always trembling in the air was very like a growling beast. She gave the nag a hasty whack and jounced along at livelier gait.

"Now I can see horses ahead of us," began Doby in a loud tone. "But"--and his voice sank to a whisper--"the men are not on them. How odd their motions are! What _are_ they doing?"

The mother stopped their horse as suddenly as she had started it. She backed into some elders and, peeping through the blossoms, she studied the scene so far before them. She decided: "Those four men are up to mischief. I know it--I am perfectly sure of it by the way they act. They are sneaking away from something."

"They haven't seen us, but they are ready to make tracks. See 'em go!" cried Doby, as the men sprang to saddle and fled at a gallop along the "Trace" to the meeting-grounds.

The mother considered a moment. "Such young rowdies like to play pranks on the preacher. They must have been doing something of that kind when we first saw them at the forest edge of bushes. Perhaps they have hidden his Bible. That is one of the things such jokers do. We will follow their tracks into the undergrowth and get his Book back for him."

Doby did not fancy entering that unknown forest where more miscreants might be lurking. But as his mother expected him to hold the flintlock ready for any danger they might meet, there was nothing for him to do but to swallow his doubts and to turn the horse in when they came to the trampled spot.

More boldly than he felt, he peered about as they followed the line of disturbed branches into the heart of the forest.

After a few rods, "O-o-oh!" murmured his mother, "o-o-oh!" with pity and indignation in her tone.

Here was a jest! The best of all frontier tricks! The funniest thing a practical joker could imagine!

In front of them, tied to a tree, was not the preacher's Bible, but the preacher himself, bound and gagged and left alone.

The hour for his sermon was close at hand, yet here he was, silent and helpless, a mile from the meeting. Young huskies of the border considered it a fair game to bait the circuit-riders and to make it as difficult as possible for them to reach their hearers. If one baffled them and arrived at the appointed place on his circuit, they tried to keep him from preaching by all sorts of traps.

Why not? they argued. He was a grown man. Let him take his chances in work and play, just as they did themselves.

Doby leaped from the horse, whipped out his knife, and cut the thongs.

The preacher, as he found himself released, rolled his eyes in a frenzy of excitement and exclaimed: "Behold! I prayed for help, and, lo! an angel of the Lord with his shining sword hath freed me from the bondage of sinners."

The boy blushed awkwardly at the idea of acting the part of an angel. But privately he thought it not too much praise for his cherished knife. "No big, long sword could have done as good a job of snipping loose as this sharp stone knife did," he bragged to himself.

To the mother's words of sympathy and further offers of help the preacher gave no heed. He cared nothing for his bodily hurts, nothing for his humiliation, nothing for himself. "I am a shepherd in the service of my Master. I must go to feed my lambs."

With immense nervous energy, even while they stood staring, he retrieved his horse, which had been stampeded farther into the wood. Then he fixed his rummaged saddle-bags, mounted, and galloped off, singing a hymn so loudly and triumphantly that it echoed in their ears like a battle-call.

"His name is Lorenzo Dow. He is not afraid of man or devil," said the mother, half in praise, half in criticism of this great Methodist preacher. "His manner is strange beyond belief; yet he sways all hearts toward righteousness."

"He is a lively one. They must have sneaked up on him, four to one, to get him," Doby guessed.

Mother and son hurried after him and came to the top of the next hill in time to see him, at a mad run and yelling lustily, charge down upon his late captors as they crossed the valley.

The huskies were taken all aback. There was something of witchcraft in the way their prisoner appeared before them. Their minds were too slow to form a plan to stop him. He whirled past them like a storm, went over the next hill, and straightway was in the grove.

Doby and his mother were among the many to see the spare figure of the circuit-riding preacher mount a stump in the grove and in ringing tones proclaim the Church militant.

It was that perfect thing which comes in the easy times after corn-planting, a May day of sunshine and balmy airs.

Boards for seats had been carried from a barn close by and people sat under the new leaves within scent of the wild honeysuckle. Later in the dry summer season these outdoor meetings would become camp-meetings of a sort which lasted for a week at a time. Whole families would bring enough household gear and food and shelter to enable them to live on the spot for that length of time.

Church and prayer meetings would be going day and night under pressure of religious revival. To-day was to be a foretaste of the form of worship the summer-time was sure to bring.

Madcap young pioneers had ridden miles for the sake of a little excitement. They meant to make the preacher furnish them with a wrestling-match as well as a sermon.

Older citizens tried to prevent what seemed to them a sacrilegious brawl. They were outnumbered by the mischief-makers.

Women hid in the barn and peeped through the cracks. "No place for females 'til the tussle is over," quoth the men.

Doby hastily put on his almost forgotten shoes. If there was a fight he wanted to see it. Nobody knew better than he did what a poor place for bare toes a crowd of booted men can be.

The rowdy leader pulled off his 'coonskin cap and grinned at the Methodist. "I learned one lesson from ye in the woods and on the road to-day; in wits ye are smarter than I be. In muscle I kin down ye. Right here on the buffaler waller I kin force ye to a fall."

Lorenzo Dow threw off his shad-bellied coat and his stock, girded up his breeches, stepped into the smooth, hard ring of earth made by wallowing buffaloes, and stood grimly ready for the attack.

Perhaps he was glad to fight. If he won, the news would fly as though the bees had carried it. His cause would then win honor from a successful bout and men would flock to the standard of a Church unafraid. If he lost, he became a sufferer with the martyrs. And for whom do more friends rise up than for the persecuted?

So he welcomed action. He would do anything and bear anything which brought him and his message before the stripling who so much needed the life of the Spirit. He seemed a gallant figure struggling against huge odds.

But he was not so much to be pitied as Doby thought. For he was only forty--not nearly so old as his adventurous life on two continents had made him look. And from constant hard riding over bad roads every muscle in him had taken on the spring of oak.

To wrestle in prayer for his people, to wrestle in set-to for his Church, both were part of his day's work. He went at both with all his might.

Amid wild cheers and wilder cries from the folks about them the wrestler and the preacher clinched. They strained--slipped--pulled--stamped--puffed--tore--in a cruel embrace.

Once the preacher's shoulders touched the dusty mat of the wallow. How the huskies yelled! How the hidden women wailed!

Another struggle followed, more terrific and of longer duration. Doby clapped for the preacher and shrieked and jumped about and enjoyed himself disgracefully. Then before the gaping crowd the sweating, desperate preacher tried a new grapple which he had learned in England. Under the strain of this unexpected hold the confident youth could not use all of his brawn to save himself. He went down--once --twice--three times. There he was; so pinned that he could not rise.

"'Nough?" shouted the onlookers.

"'Nough," groaned the rowdy.

Then the victor, all tousled, stood again upon the stump, his hand on the shoulder of the vanquished. In the silence which followed their discovery of his prowess he began a funny story. At its quips the audience burst into gales of laughter. He told another funny one, and then another, with uproarious results.

Doby listened to every word, yet he could not tell how it happened that presently the voice of Dow, rich and magnetic, held them all entranced. He went from merriment to pathos. The men drew nearer. The women stole out from the barn and joined his audience. Soon under his kind and searching words the throng grew still. These simple folks were touched to the heart. The preacher, now sure of their attention, rose to inspired heights of oratory. He called and held them at his will.

He denounced their sins. They wept over their misdoings. They gave way to hysterical wailings. They cowered on the ground in their remorse and shook with the excitement in spasms called "jerks."

He promised forgiveness to those who truly repented. Over his pictures of a better life they shouted aloud with joy. He gathered them into his Father's fold like hungry lambs and fed them with His Word.

This was Doby's first plunge into the great wave of religious frenzy which was sweeping over the whole country, leaving some extravagances, but much lasting good behind it.

As the borrowed horse plodded on the homeward "Trace" and the Big Falls resounded like a blessing in their ears, Doby, whose face now shone with something brighter than soft soap and water, said to his mother in a tone of high resolve: "I'm a-goin' to mind that preacher. I'm a-goin' to keep the soul inside of me just as clean as clean can be!"

IX

UNDER THE ELM

_The Building of a Mid-Western State_

A MAN sat on a horse. A boy hung on behind the man. And the horse jounced along the trail toward the stone State House at Corydon.

Corydon was near the center of population in Indiana, and for that reason had been made the capital.

Two months before this, in April, 1816, James Madison, President of the United States, had signed an Enabling Act which allowed the people of Indiana Territory to vote for delegates to represent them in writing out a State constitution and in arranging a form of State government.

The delegates had been selected at a popular election. And now, every morning in this fine June weather, they were meeting at the very new State House--that proud stone house--in constitutional convention for the yet newer State, at the sound of the newest possible bell.

Obadiah Holman settled himself on the sharp bones of the old nag's back and said to his father: "Don't you suppose, pa, that it would be a good plan for us to settle in this new State? We are helping with the constitution all we can, and it makes me feel just as though I wanted to be a Hoosier!"

The emigrant-train which was bearing the Holmans' fortunes had left the "river beautiful" far behind and was following a trail "blazed" through a land even more charming than the water path had been.

A big canvas-covered wagon had taken the place of the flatboat. Two oxen tugged the wagon. A horse and a cow ambled behind it. Buckets and tools swung rattling under the bed, clothing dangled at the sides. On the tailgate was spread, three times a day, the jolly good meals that pioneer mothers knew how to cook.

The wagons of the train, all very much alike, kept close together, one behind the other, through the shadowy, sweet-smelling forest. The men walked beside the animals, viewing the land with the inquiring eyes of prospective settlers in this happy Hoosier State where even the Indians and wild beasts were less dangerous than elsewhere.

The train had stopped short at Corydon and gone into camp by the wayside, because the men who formed it wanted to stay through the convention and see what happened. As builders of the new West, they wanted to take lessons from these sturdy Hoosiers who were so seriously bent on making Indiana a good State.

"You see, Doby," explained Mr. Holman, "the reason they discuss questions day after day is because they want to find the very best legal provisions that will give the new State civil and religious liberty, protect the rights of every class, help free education, forbid slavery, take care of the poor, keep down rum, and punish lawbreakers."

At the word "lawbreakers" Doby thought of his own troubles in connection with Corydon and the convention, and he began to snuffle audibly.

"Don't cry," said his father, kindly; "this business of an arrest and a trial is not your fault."

The son dried his eyes by rubbing them across the ringed tail which dangled in front of him from the 'coonskin cap on his father's head, as the horse tried to trot.

Doby did not own a handkerchief. Few pioneer boys did. When he wanted a rag to clean a gun, or to scrub a rabbit-trap, or to bind a wounded knee, or to do any of the things a boy needs a handkerchief for, he had to tear a piece from his homespun shirt or use some other substitute.

At this moment the 'coon's tail was the handy thing.

"I'm not cry--cry--cry--ing," he choked. "I'm just thinking how sor--sor--sor--ry I am because it is my knife that makes the trial--be--cause--cause the cobbler's son is such a bad boy that he had to be arrested."

Now the cobbler was a hunched-back dwarf who went from one settler's homestead to another, making shoes for each family. He was a useful guest in the cabins. Everybody liked him. He was as honest as honest could be. But the cobbler's son--a hulking fellow--"took after" his "ma's folks" and was "light-fingered."

The homely treasures of the wagon-train had tempted him. While following his father around he had looted it of small trinkets.

For his father's sake, Corydon had already forgiven him much petty thieving among his townspeople; but when he robbed the town's guests under the assembled eyes of the greatest lawyers in the whole region it seemed like a defiance of the new State, and of the convention and of the constitution as well.

So it was resolved to make an example of this unruly citizen; to arrest, try, and punish him by a due process of law during a recess of the convention.

And Doby, because his knife was the most important thing stolen, was the chief witness against him.

To change the unhappy current of the boy's thoughts, his father said: "It will be hot in the State House to-day. I hope they will move the session out of doors under that big elm close by. They have talked of doing that as a matter of comfort," and Mr. Holman fanned himself with his fur cap.

"To-day they are doing it," Doby declared as they came in sight of the giant elm with its spread of some hundred and fifty feet of grateful shade.

There the delegates were sitting on chairs, boxes, boards, and stumps, and going on most comfortably with the work in hand. And there Doby, pressed into service for the refreshment of the convention, bore a bucket of spring water and a gourd, from one distinguished politician to another, serving the ones who wanted a drink, and looking into their strong faces, listening to their debates, and watching for the important decisions.

These delegates had come together from all parts of the new State. And since there were no turnpikes nor plank roads nor canals any place in the State, some were splattered with the mire of swampy valleys, some were dusty from the windy hilltops, some were in worn hunting garb, and some had on their farming clothes of homespun. Others had been able to pick their way over better trails and by a process of seeming magic were able to bloom out all "dressed up" for the occasion.

Such lucky ones wore blue-cloth coats with brass buttons and long tails, buff "small clothes" which were something like a boy's "short pants," fine white ruffled linen shirts with "stocks," hand-knitted silk stockings, low shoes, huge beaver hats, and although it was beginning to go out of fashion, those who had "fine heads of hair" wore a queue much beribboned. Also they carried immense canes. They flourished gold watches almost as large and nearly as noisy as alarm-clocks.

Each expected to be addressed as "squire." And every one of them was so called; and with the greatest respect, too, since nearly every one of them had earned this title. But then, the plainly clothed delegates were also called "squire," and for the same reason--they had earned it; and the Hoosiers were quick to give honestly deserved honors.

Yet the men in "smart" attire were exactly like the ones in every-day garments in this one thing--they were bent on doing their work on the constitution the way it ought to be done. It was a sacred trust to them.

For this constitution of the State had to lay down the principles which all future laws were to follow. It outlined the different departments and decided upon the duties of each one. In a system of representative government there must be a legislative department composed of men elected to make the laws, an executive department having control of troops and police officers whose business it is to enforce the laws, and a judicial department made up of courts which are meant to secure justice for all persons under the laws.

Then there must be State officers. Doby counted them on his fingers to be sure that he remembered them, for he was in a hurry to grow up and vote. And after he had watched these delegates take such pains with the constitution, he made up his mind that he should always vote for the best man and keep an eye on him to see that he carried out his oath of office.

On his right hand were, after the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor: Thumb--Secretary of State, who puts the big seal on papers; forefinger--Auditor of State, who keeps the accounts; middle finger--Treasurer of State, who takes care of the money; ring finger--Attorney-General, who is lawyer for the Commonwealth; little finger--Geologist, who knows where the good farm-lands are.

On his left hand were: Superintendent of State Schools; Librarian of State Books; clerk of Supreme Court, who keeps records; clerk of decisions, who publishes them; and a statistician whose official name Doby could not pronounce, but whom he regarded as the wisest man of all since his head was full of figures on every possible subject and he could tell any number, from millions down to one-seventeenth of one-nineteenth per cent. of any articles that could be counted.

Besides these, there were enough boards and committees and various minor offices to have numbered all his toes.

Late in the afternoon the convention adjourned. Court sat. The case of the cobbler's son was called. A stump was spread with the tools of the law. There was a big family Bible for taking the oath, a gourd of home-made poke-berry ink, goose-quills for pens, and a rare sheet or two of paper.

At one side was a magpie nest of small, shining articles--silver spoons and thimbles, gold beads and pewter cups, some pipes and a snuffer. Brave among them was a knife in a "Long Hunter's" sheath--Doby's knife.

How the boy did gloat over that knife!

But he had to let it lie and go to take his place on a log with the other witnesses.

"'Tis far and away the best thing there," thought he as the clerk of the court picked up the leather sheath, took out the curious stone knife, examined it with interest, tried its edge, and then began to sharpen a goose-quill pen-point with it. "I'll keep an eye on it," the nervous owner decided.

A bailiff drummed on the log with a stone until Doby had to shake his ears as though he had been in swimming. This stone gavel called the court to order. A curious crowd of country people, of townspeople, and of delegates gathered under the elm.

Jonathan Jennings, president of the constitutional convention, afterward first Governor of Indiana, and a member of Congress, acting as local or associate judge, sat upon the bench, which in this case was a sturdy, literal bench, it having been borrowed from under the tubs in a neighbor's wash-house.

William Hendricks, afterward third Governor of Indiana and later Senator from Indiana, who was secretary of the convention, became clerk of this local court, by appointment, _pro tem_.

Both of these empire-builders gave to the case of Doby's old knife the same formal attention that the cause of justice should always command even in the smallest courts.

Jonathan Jennings was young, not much over thirty, and as rosy and blond as Doby himself. His manner was grave and kind as he said: "The court is ready to try the case of the State of Indiana versus Jerry Cobbler. Is the State ready?"

Answer: "It is."

"Is the defendant ready?"

Answer: "He is."

"Then let the case proceed."