Chapter V: Part 5

They could see that the new-comer had a mobile, laughing face. His clothes were of fur, picked out with bright cloth, somewhat ragged. A bandana tied back his grizzled curls to show the gold hoops in his ears. A strap across his forehead bore the weight of a pack which hung down his back.

He was playing a lively tune upon an elder flute, stepping to its measures with his moccasined feet.

While eying the man to be sure that he was not a treacherous disguised Indian, and to decide what sort of a chance comer he might be, the father's brow wrinkled with thoughts of this big Northwest and the men it had known and the origin of this wayfarer.

"Whom have we here, Doby?" he asked.

But Doby could not answer. Neither could his mother. Both were on the verge of panic. For it is a nerve-racking thing to stand still and wait for the next movement of a doubtful visitor, who may be going to send a burning arrow into the barn loft or to call a band of warriors to attack the house.

To give his wife and son a chance to collect their wits, the father queried: "Who were the first white folks to come to this part of the country? Perhaps we can guess who this man is."

"The French came earliest," answered the mother.

"When?"

"About a hundred years ago," she said.

"What did they do?"

"They built a fort and trading post at Miamis where Fort Wayne now is. Then they set up another at Ouiatanon and still another one here." As she stared at the motley figure coming nearer, the mother smiled, for she began to understand that she was now to meet quite a different sort of habitant from any of the varied peoples she had seen in the long journey to this old French settlement of Vincennes.

"Ha!" cried Doby, trying to keep one eye on the loophole and the other on his father's face. "When the Spanish discovered America, they claimed the whole continent. If they had known about this place, they would have set up a flag here. But the French explorers really did find it and their flag is the one that covered it." Here he caught a hint from his father's questions and his mother's recovered calm. "'Twas a race of traders who followed the explorers." He now became eager to examine the stranger. "A half-breed trader! That's what he is!"

"He is so queer-looking," was the mother's objection to him.

Doby was quick with his surmises. "If these French traders made friends with the Indians and sometimes lived with them in their wigwams, and copied all the clever things the Indians knew about living in the open, they would become half Indians themselves. This odd old man is a voyageur. I know he is!"

"But," faltered the mother, "if he is friendly to the Indians, he may not be safe for us to know."

Mr. Holman was sure of his harmless character. "The French never incited the Indians to cruelty. Their influence was all for peaceful barter. He wants to buy any pelts we have for sale and to trade with us."

The mother's New England habits made her long for any kind of a trader to dicker with. No matter how outlandish his garb nor how strange his manner, a peddler was a peddler, and as such she was glad to see him.

So they opened wide the door and called a welcome.

As Doby examined the voyageur at close range, he thought, "I never did see such a wild-looking man," yet the stranger's joyous face, his quick gestures, and his lilting music drew the boy to him irresistibly.

For Doby's pleasure, after the greetings were over, the guest sang the words of his song and then he piped it, as a plover might have done. He whistled the tune and then he trotted it. He changed to calls of feathered songsters and to other measures and to different steps.

Whatever the melody or whatever the dance; whether he sang or whistled or piped, he was a constant swirl of music and laughter and motion. Into Doby's sober life he came as a figure of purest joy, never to be forgotten--a faun of the forest--a creature of fantasy.

To live out of doors and to follow the seasons, to be away from all care, and free to take up the next trading path that beckoned him in the strange new country--that was a voyageur's happy life.

No wonder that these bold spirits of the Old World crowded into the white-winged caravals that could bear them to the great valley of romance and adventure!

No other country has ever seen the like of these voyageurs. No other country ever will. Even in the far north, they are vanishing with the forests and the fur-bearing animals. They can never come again.

There were no bounds to Doby's delight in the grotesque appearance, the bird music, and the elfin dancing of this one.

The contents of his pack were small assortments of hardware. He spread them upon the stump by the log-cabin door.

In a mixture of French and English, as musical as any verse, he told them that ammunition was lying in his canoe. He went and fetched it, and also brought with it his own rifle. These things, even the gun, he would trade for skins.

"All these of the best, the finest, n'est ce pas?" he asked, throwing out his hands and showing his beautiful teeth. "Voilà, m'sieu!"

Doby's father was in need of powder and shot. They fell to business whilst the mother busied herself with supper. She wanted pins, needles, and a candle-snuffer. She hoped after he had eaten home-made dainties, the trader might offer her bargains.

Doby stood enthralled beside the collection of nails, hooks, gimlets, and plow-points. Here were the convenient odds and ends needed to make the work on their new home complete.

First of all--above and beyond everything else in a boy's sight--was the voyageur's percussion-cap rifle. It was the most improved and best firearm of that day. It was not as heavy as most of them. It had seen service. And what was a curious, but entirely sensible thing, someone had cut off a couple of feet from the end of the barrel!

"I believe I could handle that gun," said the boy. "Everybody thinks I am growing fast."

The trader took the hint and nodded for him to try it.

Doby's greedy fingers closed over the trigger. It was rather heavy, of course, but he could lift and he could carry it.

"Fifteen going on sixteen is an age when every boy should have his own rifle," said his father. "But I'm sure our whole fall collection of skins would not pay for it."

The trader gave one appraising glance at the really fine stock they had spread for his examination and shook his head until his ear-rings danced.

Doby's heart sank like lead. Why was he always so foolish as to set his hopes on the one thing that was beyond reach? Why were guns so expensive?

The crafty voyageur was not anxious to part with it. "I think to sell it at much gain to one very rich youth--a hunter great and successful. He is newly a citizen of Vincennes. To him I bear a letter and a present of elegance supreme."

"We back out from the trade," laughed Mr. Holman. "We cannot overbid the rich and great."

Doby's mind shrank into a sordid little ball of envy. It was not fair for a rich boy to have a "present of elegance supreme" and the rifle both! As he opened his mouth to utter his selfish disappointment, a glance at his mother's sympathetic face, and at his father's resigned one, moved him to shut it again. If he could not own a gun, he could at least be decently quiet about his fate. But to be forever borrowing a gun was so humiliating to a big boy!

"Who is this wonderful hunter?" asked the mother, in neighborly curiosity.

"Of the family there are two; it is m'sieu the father, and m'sieu the son. For that son is the letter. I go to the town yonder. I inquire. I present myself to him."

"But what is his name?" insisted Doby's mother.

The voyageur smiled at her vaguely. Then she knew that he could not read the message which he carried. His instructions were to find a hunter and show the letter. Now he pawed around in his nondescript garment and brought out a soiled paper.

The letter had been written on a large sheet of white paper. Then the paper had been folded in such a way that the writing was concealed and the corners turned over to look like a modern envelope. Envelopes themselves had not then been invented. It was sealed with a big red daub of wax.

"Two bits" had been paid to the messenger, who now pointed to the plain script of the address, which he held carefully wrong side up.

Mrs. Holman twisted her head. Then she gasped, and hastily reversing the letter in his polite and willing hand, she looked at her family with startled eyes.

Letters were so much of a rarity in those good old days of long distances and slow transportation that it was perfectly correct to show interest in any man's correspondence.

Indeed, every inhabitant of Vincennes had been known to handle at least twice any letter which came to town, and to register several guesses as to its probable contents, before the person to whom it was addressed felt that he had a social right to claim and open it.

So Doby and his father would not have been considered in the least rude as they sprang to look over the voyageur's shoulder as the mother was already doing.

They read in concert:

"Obadiah Holman, Esquire
Vincennes
Indiana"

The voyageur, who could not spell out an address, was quick enough at reading faces. He said to Mr. Holman, "I make my respects to that hunter so rich and great." And he presented the letter with formality.

"No, no!" cried the father. He handed the legal-looking document to "m'sieu, the son." Now Doby had never before had a letter in his own name. His fingers were shaking and clumsy as he broke the seal, unfolded the sheet, and read in a strained and unnatural voice:

"HARMONY, INDIANA, August 31, 1816
"OBADIAH HOLMAN, ESQ.
"Honored Sir:

"For value received in the matter of garden truck, field corn, hived
honey, et cetera, saved in the shooting of a she bear by your
respected self, the community of Harmony voted to pay the pelt of the
bear aforesaid; likewise the pelt of the he bear belonging to the
same. Said pelts herewith attached and forwarded.

"Your very obedient servant,
FREDERICK RAPP."

The voyageur, plainly interested, hastened to get the pelts, to spread them out, and to indicate, now that his best moment had come, that these two bearskins plus two big beaverskins--the finest of their collection--were the price of the rifle.

Privately, Mr. Holman thought this rather a hard bargain, even more than the "much gain" which the trader was entitled to have. Beaver had been scarce and high in value for two years. A good beaver, taken in October, outpriced an August bear whose winter coat was coming well but was not yet in its prime.

One glance at Doby's face brought to the father's mind the day when he had acquired his own flintlock; so he nodded indulgently to close the deal.

The voyageur's words, "It is that you become owner, m'sieu," were the sweetest of sounds in Doby's ears.

Then followed a blissful hour of target-shooting, to learn the ways of the new gun, and then followed, as a matter of course, the over-confident moment when the excited boy let the trigger down upon a clumsy thumb.

As his father patiently dressed his wound, Doby's conscience--that New England torch always flickering before his mind--threw its light on a point of conduct he had not noticed until this moment. He saw that he ought to do something that he did not want to do.

The voyageur, chuckling cozily by the hearth, with his picturesque head abob, never knew that the half-grown Doby, who sat staring at his bandaged thumb, was struggling with spiritual forces that nearly tore his heart asunder.

No stranger could guess how great a victory over his own selfish desires the boy had won when he raised his face to his father's and said, "I think, pa, that you should take this new rifle for your own gun and give me the old flintlock."

Doby's father was of upright stuff himself; and he now saw that his son, also, had the making of a just man in him. So he looked at Doby kindly, and the two understood each other perfectly. But all the father said was: "I've had my old flintlock ever since I was your age. I use it every day. I couldn't learn the tricks of one of these newfangled rifles. No, Doby, you can't swap firearms with your pa!"

XIV

THE BEAVERS' DAM

_A Patriot's Sacrifice_

He stood upon a bluff overlooking the Wabash. Outlined against an autumn sunset, his noble figure dominated the landscape.

A velvet cap with a jaunty plume rested lightly upon his short, snow-white, curling hair.

Velvet also were his coat and breeches and the sweeping cavalier cape that clasped on his shoulder. Silken hose and fine linen added to the magnificence of his costume.

It was of a style long gone by, even then, but its sumptuous fashion became him and set off his sturdy old age to its best advantage.

His dress was a habit. He wore it unconsciously. But the sword on his hip--that was another matter!

His lean and practised hand, a bit shaky with his seventy-six years, grew steady and as firm as youth when it swung to position and clasped that hilt. His faithful blade was his best companion.

The deep red of oak, the scarlet of sumac, the yellow of maple, the brown of beech, every color of frost-kissed October mingled in the background and was reflected on the borders of the opal river whose shining length formed the waterway to the outside world.

The little town was all astir. It was a gala day. Banners fluttered at the door of each cozy cabin, and from the tall pole of the old wooden fort of St. Vincent swung the American flag, almost ready for the sunset gun.

On the river, rafts and flatboats, rowboats and small sail moved about and fell into position to make way for a procession of canoes coming down the stream.

The folk of the town, big and little, hurried to the water's edge, waving their arms in welcome and shouting until they were hoarse.

But the man on the bluff kept his high position and his attitude of martial waiting. Under his heavy white brows, his sharp black eyes grew large and tender, for in the distant canoes were his children--his careless, happy children--coming home to him, as they had done twice every year since the old days when he had begun to buy their furs of them. Younger business men now held the fur trade in their own hands, but the voyageurs continued their practice of holiday regatta to greet this white-haired man.

Obadiah Holman, hastening into town, far ahead of his father and mother, was decked in his buckskin. With rifle on shoulder and knife in belt and hound at heel, he walked on air. For he looked like a man, he felt like a man, and he was a man--almost!

More than satisfied with himself, he whistled as he strode, until he came to the person in velvet. Then his vanity dropped to his feet and was whisked away.

Here was one more elegantly attired than he had ever beheld a mortal.

"Doby, make your manners," he commanded himself. Off came his cap and he accomplished a bow.

The gentleman turned square upon him. The bold, dark eyes read him through and through.

The boy's face lit up with admiration at the sight of the noble countenance and at the sound of the kind voice saying, "I give you greeting, stranger."

Impulsive Doby had small knowledge of etiquette. Quite carried away by his good luck in meeting this man, he burst out, impetuously, "I do hope that you are Francis Vigo!"

The dark face--haughty and stern--flashed into a quick foreign smile, but the bare right hand gave Doby a good American grip. "From what my first arriving voyageur tells me, I suspect that you are M'sieu Holman, the son," he said.

They gazed at each other as men will who are destined to become friends. Further words were stopped by the sound of a distant chantey, clear and merry.

Forgetting all else, Francis Vigo answered the call of his children by turning his eyes toward the canoes.

Doby slipped unnoticed to a great rock halfway down the bluff. From this vantage he could watch the fleet of voyageurs. Furbished for their entrance to the town, each wore a turban of scarlet bandana and sash of parti-colors. Ear-rings, thumb-rings, metal compasses, were all adangle.

The paddles feathered as they dipped and the jeweled drops sparkled in the light. Purple martins awheel flipped into the eddies of their wake, great bass leaped athwart their bows, and tiny rainbows sprang anew from every disturbance of the water.

Voices rippled from chantey to roundelay and back to chantey again. The river carried the tune afar and the hills echoed and re-echoed it. From the forward canoe an excited arm pointed to Francis Vigo on the height. A full-throated, "Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!" rose to him.

He gave them a military salute.

They answered with cheers and burst into their best melody as they raced into port.

In the confusion of the shadowed landing torches began to glimmer. On the darker places of the river's brink lanterns bobbed. But a nimbus of golden light still shone around the gallant Vigo. And one by one, as they stepped ashore, the voyageurs ran up the slope to greet him--the hero of their hearts!

Doby gazed in amazement at the volatile Frenchmen surrounding him. "Judging by their enthusiasm, every one of these men might have followed him in battle. But they are most of them too young to have fought in 1779, as he did at the capture of Vincennes. They are honoring him for other things which he has done for them."

Truly they loved him for himself and the many brave deeds through which he had carried their kind.

Francis Vigo was a soldier of fortune--a man out of Spain. With one of his mother country's regiments he had come to the West Indies and to New Orleans; afterward on his own account he had traveled up the Mississippi to Fort St. Louis, where he joined a company of traders and was known as the "Merchant of St. Louis."

In his warehouse among his bundles of valuable skins he was the merchant prince who gave thirty thousand dollars--thirty thousand dollars in big Spanish doubloons--round golden doubloons--which he had bartered for and scared out of many a wicked Portuguese pirate who sneaked up the Mississippi to cheat him or to rob him--gave them to feed and equip the army of George Rogers Clark at a time when the Government had no money to finance anything.

Without the help which Vigo gave to Clark, the little American army could not have lived. Without the army the great Northwest could not have been won.

In pursuit of his business and in his joy of the wild, Vigo had often gone up and down the forest paths. He knew the country, was friendly with each trader, and could call every pirogue by its owner's name.

Doby's rather cool blood began to run faster and his heart to pound with sympathetic interest as, scrambling for turns, the voyageurs fell upon Francis Vigo's neck, kissed his hands, and laughed aloud or wept outright in their delight at the meeting.

One old fellow, in an abandonment of affection, threw himself upon the ground and laid his forehead against the Spaniard's shoe, bathing it with his tears.

"O-o-h," cried Doby. "O-o-h! That is my voyageur! The one who brought my rifle! He was servant to Francis Vigo when they were both taken as spies at Vincennes, by the British Governor Hamilton. He told me so himself." Here the contagion of the old voyageur's devotion caught Doby and he had to swallow a sob or two. "It's perfectly right for him to be upset by memories. For when the Jesuit Father Gibault persuaded Hamilton to release Francis Vigo, this voyageur and that other old one went back with the Merchant of St. Louis to Colonel Clark at Kaskaskia and helped plan the attack which captured Vincennes." And Doby took off his cap and waved it and shouted with the best of them:

"Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!"

By the next morning's light, at call of reveille, these voyageurs, who had gathered from all points of the compass, made ready to set off for their various stations to begin their winter's work of trapping or of gathering skins from Indians and settlers.

In one of the canoes, in plain attire, sat Francis Vigo and the oldest voyageur--his one-time servant. In another canoe sat the second voyageur of Vigo's historic spying expedition and--looking very conscious of himself and of his newly acquired servant--Doby! bound on a secret errand in the service of his country!

"We need young blood for our nation's future growth," Francis Vigo had said overnight to Mr. Holman. "Give me your son for my assistant on this voyage for the Government. I will train him--make a patriot of him."

Now Mr. Holman knew that Francis Vigo was the one man in the great valley whom Gen. William Henry Harrison had trusted to influence the Indians and the voyageurs in the troubled times before the War of 1812; the one who could go back and forth with negotiations to the Indians' Prophetstown on the Tippecanoe. Both races put their faith and their national confidence in this man. He was their ideal of justice.

So Mr. Holman, whose entire stock of cash in hand was three Spanish dollars--those storied "pieces of eight"--did not hesitate, during his conversation with Francis Vigo, to lay these silver coins on the town blacksmith's anvil as an answer to the request for the boy's services.

The blacksmith had cut each one up into eight sections, like a pie. Two of these "bits" made a "quarter," and six of them equaled seventy-five cents.

This was the currency of the time. So unsettled had the War of 1812 made the nation's credit, so doubtful was the value of federal money, and so unsafe all banks, that a "bit" in the hand was worth, in actual purchasing power, many times its value of paper in the pocket.

One of his dollars Mr. Holman had presented to Francis Vigo with the formal request, "I beg you will accept my contribution to my country's cause in the matter of this voyage."

The second dollar he had given to Doby. "This is a stake for your future fortune," he said.

The third he had put in his own pocket.

Afterward, Doby had asked of his father: "Why did you give Francis Vigo money in such a way that he had to take it? He is the richest man in town. Everybody says so, because the Government owes him thirty thousand dollars. Nobody else in town has that much money."

Doby felt of the "bits" in his pocket and imagined them thirty thousand times as heavy. Rich indeed!

Mr. Holman had a gloomy expression. "I know we will continue to owe him." Then he quoted something about the "law's delay--the insolence of justice," but added, practically, "I don't suppose we ever have that much in our treasury that we want to pay debts with. Our money affairs are in disorder."

Scandalized Doby almost whispered, "Do you mean that he probably hasn't any money except what you gave him?"

Mr. Holman nodded, and glowered at fate. Doby knew that the mission to Fort Wayne on which they were this morning starting was a financial one.

As he sat in his canoe and gripped his paddle for the start, it gave him a curious sensation to reflect that the vigorous old man who was in the next one, ready to steer through the silver water out into the sunrise, was the Spaniard who had used his inherited fortune for the cause of exploration in the New World; was the colonist who had given the fortune he had earned to the cause of the Northwest conquest; was the true American now ready to risk his sole capital of eight bits toward securing financial liberty for an embarrassed government.

Silver and rose, the sky hung over the river. Silver and rose, the water reflected it. The forest, mysterious and vague, surrounded the town. The embarked voyageurs, now in working clothes, looked toward Francis Vigo. They rested on their paddles.

He rose in his prow. Baring his head, he threw out his arms in the form of a cross.

With the simplicity of little children, the voyageurs folded their hands and said their prayers; they crossed themselves; then lifted up their voices in such a hymn that the valley resounded with their praise.

"It is that we separate for the half-year," explained Doby's voyageur, as with every few miles of going up-stream some canoe turned in at a tributary and disappeared for its trading-grounds.

After that morning burst of song they all moved silently. The paddles made no sound. The dull colors of the boats themselves--some birch-bark canoes, some hollowed-out log pirogues--mingled like foliage with the shore line. The men in butternut brown or fur were mere shadows on the river. The woodland and its streams were swallowing up its wild men.

By and by the two canoes with Francis Vigo and Doby in them were alone upon the river.

"Look!" signaled Francis Vigo's eyes to Doby.

A red deer was drinking on the brink.

"Look!"

A bear was at his bath.

"Look!"

A blue heron was fishing in the shallows.

And a saucy kingfisher helped himself to a bite of the red haws stuck in Doby's cap, so much a part of the primeval vastness had they already become.

Once, as they stopped for dinner on the shore, the odor of frying bacon was so delicious to some of the forest creatures that they had a glimpse of a mother wolf bringing her whole whelp family to take a peep at those men creatures who sometimes left such savory scraps behind, and who were, upon a pinch, not such bad eating themselves.

"They like bacon cooked, but they would take me raw," and Doby was glad that he had a rifle of his very own.

In the silence of their forest night camp, whilst the two voyageurs slept with their feet to the fire and the harvest moon looked down upon them through the Indian-summer haze, Francis Vigo explained to the boy the nature of his errand.

"I am getting old," he said. "Time is too precious to waste in making money for myself. I must teach the Northwest the value of an honest currency, else all business will be ruined and our country fall into poverty."

He showed Doby a package wrapped in oilskin. "This priceless paper did not go to Corydon with the documents of Indiana State. It is Government property and must be secretly delivered to the proper agent at Fort Wayne, to go on to Washington. We should have safe banks and vaults for such moneys and papers. They should not be exposed to the mercy of fire and water and chance journeys as this one is. I must use this as an argument to those in authority for the need of national banks. I shall also prove to them the demand for a tariff to protect our industries. These are our present necessities."

"The tariff is to make us money and the banks are to guard it," said Doby, who knew that these two vital measures were expected to influence the fate of the great valley as much as any war had ever done. "So you want to get there before election. And you want them to vote for James Monroe for President, don't you?"

"Yes; because as Secretary of State and as Secretary of War he carried us through the war, we now need him to take us over the financial crisis which always follows a war."

All Saints' Day came in glorious October sunshine. On that day they entered Fort Wayne.

Again in velvet, with gleaming sword, Francis Vigo made ready for an audience.

An enthusiastic bugler of the fort was so impressed by the appearance of the dignitaries in the approaching canoes that he went through his entire repertoire of calls without waiting for official permission, and brought all the people of the town to give welcome to the visitors.

So Doby had the feeling of walking up-stage as he entered the village.

That sensation stayed with him during the few days that they spent at the fort; and it rose high in the hour of their departure when the entire populace showered blessings after them as the velvet cap of the smiling leader waved, "Farewell."

Their going was a spectacle. Yet when they made a landing down the river for the night's camp, all the glory faded. The beautiful country turned cruel and sordid.

"That is a threatening sky," commented Francis Vigo, as he put away his velvet and began to prepare for rough weather.

"Bad wind," from one dejected voyageur.

"More cold," from the other.

"Here comes the rain!" cried Doby.

Dark November filled their camp with melancholy discomfort.

In place of the gallant soldier there hovered over the damp and sickly fire an old, old man, blue with chill, and tired and dispirited.

Doby said to himself: "In the matter of delivering the precious papers and of teaching the district the value of tariff and sound banks, the errand for the Northwest was successful. But in the business of collecting some interest to live on he has failed. That means that he has no way to feed himself this winter. Red tape makes poor clothes and worse meals."

Dismayed and pitiful, the boy longed to comfort that good man who had fallen into the habit of sacrificing himself for his country.

"S-w-i-s-h! S-w-i-s-h!" poured the rain; "W-h-e-w! W-h-e-w!" howled the wind, as the swollen current of the Wabash bore them homeward next day.

"H-o-n-k! H-o-n-k!" cried the wild geese overhead.

"Q-u-a-c-k! Q-u-a-c-k!" complained the migrating ducks as, wearied by the buffeting, they dropped to the water for a little respite and surrounded the canoes with the querulous wails.

A heartless loon laughed long and discordantly over their wretched plight.

The river which had beckoned them with sunlight and with song, now with fickle change of face grabbed them by the prows and hurtled them along at terrific flood speed.

To a voyageur his canoe was as a second skin. He would never think of abandoning it. He took whatever the weather sent.

But as they came to a bend in the river, "Yi! Yi!" shrieked one voyageur in panic. "Yi! Yi!" for danger seemed about to overwhelm them.

A giant sycamore, undermined by the flood, swayed toward them and came over into the river with a crash and spatter that deafened and almost swamped them.

In one moment its mighty top had divided a portion of the river, as a child's hand might turn a rill from a spring, and the new current, seeking an outlet, leaped into a bayou and went sweeping down it, to make a new channel. With instant turn of paddles to escape the tree the voyageurs spun the canoes into the midst of this new current and were borne by its irresistible force through the bayou, over a bar, and into a stream that ran parallel with the river and finally emptied into it.

Like the débris on its surface, the canoes bobbed and tossed with the runaway stream, in constant danger of being crushed by rocks and snagged by thickets. They were part of chaos. With all their might they backed water. The clever voyageurs steered between trees and around stones as the truant flood bore them headlong to almost certain destruction.

But louder than the storm in the trees, stronger than the rush of wind in their ears as they tore along, came the ominous roar of water over a tremendous dam.

To shoot such rapids as he knew was one thing to a voyageur, as part of his day's work. To go over an unknown dam at freshet pace, as the result of an accident, was quite another. Huge, muddy boulders rose suddenly on all sides of them.

"Fend!" yelled the voyageurs as they gripped the paddles to steady the last rush. Dozens of smaller black stones looked like streaks as they miraculously flashed through this strange, rocky gully without hitting a stone.

"The dam is broken!" howled Doby, although he knew he could not be heard. They all saw the broken center and they whirled through it at the speed of an express train, one close behind the other. Below the dam were dozens more of the small black stones, which to their straining eyes seemed to shift and move as fast as they were going themselves.

The almost unendurable strain on their arms and backs suddenly gave way. The new stream emptied itself into a wide bottom and spread out harmlessly in a tame and shallow lake which looked toward the Wabash.

They edged out of the current into quiet backwater. All was as tame as a mill-pond.

Doby, thoroughly shaken, exhausted, and amazed, cried out: "That was about the luckiest escape any one could have! Big stones and little stones! I never saw such a rocky gully! How _did_ we miss them!"

Francis Vigo crossed himself and looked at the boy in grave reproof. He did not believe in luck.

The voyageurs clapped their hands and laughed aloud. To Doby's astonishment, all three of his wet, tired, and discouraged companions glowed with warmth and some new interest.

Their escape--their danger--was already forgotten. They were keen for some plan which had formed in their minds as they came to safe water.

Doby could not follow their thoughts. He turned round eyes from one to the other.

"Big stones were beaver houses," smiled one trader.

"Little black stones were beaver heads," explained the other.

And Francis Vigo added: "The dangerous way of our duty has brought us to the beavers in a year when their fur is of double value. Since towns and people and money have failed us, the wood and stream will give us our living for the year."

Doby's economical Anglo-Saxon mind suddenly flowered into Latin courtesy. He took off his cap to the Spaniard and said so fervently that he knew his gift would be accepted, "Because of the education this voyage has been to me and as a thank-offering that my life is preserved, I present my share in this beaver find to my creditor, Francis Vigo!"

Francis Vigo's face beamed kindly on the ardent boy.

Doby was proud of his dramatic success in this elaborate speech of politeness. He thrilled pleasantly and made a little flourish with his cap.

Alas and alack!

Erratic movement above the point of balance is not the thing for a canoe's safety. Doby's gesture was an unsportsman-like thing and he might have paid for his vanity by a fatal capsize had not the alert voyageur, always suspicious of his impulsive passenger, bent his own body quickly and restored the balance.

The canoe was still upright, but the action of the paddle, the surging of the craft and the other canoe's violent action to avoid being caught in disaster brought them so close to the main stream, that the current had seized them again. Before Doby could realize his fault they were whirling down the Wabash as before.

Whether they would or no, they were on their way home. Some other day in quiet water they would come back to the town of beavers.

Later and later grew the hour. Slowly and more slowly flowed the river. The channel had widened. The pent waters were finding space. The harassed travelers looked about for a landing-spot to spend the night.

At last, the top of a fallen tree at the bottom of a gradual hill seemed to promise a practical buffer.

"Merci!" cried Doby's voyageur. "Fend!" He backed water, and as the other canoe came alongside he raised a shaggy eyebrow in question to Vigo, who assented with a nod.

Together they eased their frail craft from the sweep of the river into the resilient branches of the tree.

They edged inshore, found the ground solid, and pulled up the boats. Other people had picked the tree as a safe harbor. When Doby straightened himself to ease his tired back his eyes met the baleful gleam of an Indian's glance.

Before he could gasp a warning to the others strong fingers closed upon his windpipe. He was lifted by his hair and borne to the top of the hill. All thought and feeling left him.

There was no sound but the r-r-i-i-p-p-p of leaves as heavy bodies were dragged through them; no light but the uncertain moon through ragged clouds.

He had no sense of up or down, of earth or sky. He hurtled along through space with his feet dangling.

He struck a tree, freed himself from the strangler, and collapsed in a heap.

Dimly some sort of light reddened around him. People were feeding a fire. The hollow glade in which he lay swam like a mirage before him.

About the fire circled a dozen or so of very old Indians. They were so absorbed in the ritual of their dance that they ignored the presence of the other group of younger Indians who had brought in the prisoners. Prisoners were a minor thing and of no importance compared with this ceremony, which must not be interrupted.

The old Indians went round and round and round and round, without words, without music, without sound of any kind. Their hands were weaponless, their gestures were as one.

Dizzied and dumfounded by this circular marching, Doby closed his eyes and waited for death by violence.

Vigo and the two voyageurs were in the same plight. Yet none of them was gagged or bound or weaponless. Their captors did not rush forward in triumph with their prey, nor give the conqueror's war-whoop.

They stayed half hidden in the background. Their one desire seemed to be to keep the silence unbroken.

The voyageurs, rough adventurers, soon recovered from the surprise of their capture, and stood lightly poised either to fight or to run.

Escape was the first thought in their minds. Their expression soon changed from shock to curiosity; from curiosity to wide-eyed incredulity.

Even Doby's shattered wits found an uncanny aspect of things. Abject fear was swallowed up by a thrill at the weirdness which breathed from the glade.

The whites looked from the young savages, unarmed, guarding them, to the old ones, unarmed, gyrating monotonously, and using their hands rhythmically.

One of the hardy voyageurs turned green and ghastly under his tan and his knees doubled under him.

Francis Vigo, following his glance, went white to the lips. But the poniard up his sleeve shot out and he pricked the fainting voyageur cruelly. The pain revived the man. His companion received the same treatment.

Even then they were plainly weak with horror. And Francis Vigo, the intrepid soldier, closed his eyes, as though the dancing men were the most dreadful sight of his life--a vision sickening beyond endurance.

While his captors stood rigid in shadow, while the voyageurs shook with nervous chill, while Vigo glanced wildly here and there, Doby stared at this curious feast which could so undo strong men.

For despite its dull and lugubrious setting, feast of some kind it certainly must be.

This place was not a village. There were no wigwams, no women, no children, no ponies, no dogs. All the interest centered on a great flat stone in the center of the glade. It held a bed of glowing coals. Savory meat was roasting there.

The old men, swooping slowly back and forth, were gorging themselves in a strange and barbarous ceremony of united forms of handling--biting--chewing. Solemnly, in an ancient, long-forbidden and almost-forgotten rite, they were invoking some spirit of evil.

From one detail of the medicine-men's costumes to another, from one mesmeric swing of arm and body to the next went Doby's glance in vague alarm. Last of all, he viewed the sizzling rock.

A sacrificial cannibal rock!

Not all the poniards of the realm could have helped Doby to self-control. He swooned upon the turf.

Bending to raise the boy, Francis Vigo brought his own face into a patch of moonlight. His captor recognized him. For what Indian did not know Francis Vigo? Vigo caught the expression of friendliness, and with an imperious gesture signified that they must be taken from this spot.

It was daytime when Doby again opened his eyes. He was between the voyageurs under the fallen tree near the canoes. On the river bank sat the old Indians. Francis Vigo, jaunty in velvet, cap, plume, and sword, was smoking the calumet.

One voyageur whispered to Doby, "Indians want to burn Vincennes."

The other murmured, "Père François tries to prevent that."

The first again: "They mean to join with renegades and capture the fort. Renegades get Government money. Indians get fire-water."

Doby whispered back, "Has he told them that he took the money and the papers worth money to Fort Wayne?"

Both nodded.

"Do they know he has had the fire-water moved away?"

They nodded again.

"Will they believe what he tells them?"

Emphatic bobs of both heads.

With the point of his sword Francis Vigo was drawing a map on the alluvial mud of the inlet. The Indians bent over it. The voyageurs exchanged dismayed glances.

Even before he saw the map it was not hard to guess, that the "merchant of Saint Louis," knowing how to turn greed into profit, had bought the lives of his three followers and had purchased the safety of his home town with the one thing he had to sell--the newly found fur tract.

"They agree to take the beaver dam," was the meaning of one voyageur's sigh.

"They go to it instead of to Vincennes," was the translation of the other's shrug.

Doby thought, "To their old bones, the certainty of furs to bring fire-water is better than the risk of a clash with the whites, who always defeat them."

So the hunched, misshapen, and degraded old savages, each with his attendant youth, embarked upon the now quiet river and paddled out of sight of the alien race who loathed them.

The dominant Vigo, who had lazily watched them depart, now dropped his assumed calm as suddenly as he did the velvet coat.

"Home!" he commanded. "To warn the fort!"

As they hurried along, he declared: "The renegades must be captured and defeated. They are wicked men."

"The Indians are dreadfully wicked," shuddered Doby.

"They know nothing better than their own customs; I pity them," said the great friend of Indians. "Some day over that sacrificial stone shall be hung a bell--I vow it now. I put it in my will. I promise it to my country. A deep-toned bell! It shall call all children to a school to learn the laws of civilization, and all men to a court of justice to keep those laws in force. Old Vigo's tongue can live in a bell and go on preaching something better than greed, something higher than money!"

(For many, many years gone by, and for to-day and for to-morrow, the deep-toned bell above the forgotten stone is calling melodiously. Hundreds of boys have listened to "Old Vigo," the bell, talking to them.)

Although he planned for the better defense of the fort, Vigo was no longer the commandant of militia, as he had been some seasons before this. But he knew that both citizens and soldiers would respond to his warning as to nothing else, so he outlined his strategy as he paddled toward Vincennes.

"The renegades will come across the river by my private ferry--they think I will be far from home--and they expect to meet the savages by appointment at midnight." His face glowed with the spirit which could not be subdued. "They will meet soldiers instead. I can fight bad men of my own race with good appetite," he declared.

It was long past dark when they came to their own town. The dock was deserted. So Doby set off at a run to rouse the early-to-bed militiamen and to summon them to the post.

He had a vast sense of his own importance when he stuck his head in the unlatched doors of the unsuspicious sleeping citizens and yelled: "Arm! Arm! Come to the fort!"

For such clamor followed as few boys may ever be able to stir up. Nightcaps and flintlocks were poked from the windows. But he was beyond the reach of questions or shot ere they got their eyes open. A stream of men, first awakened, were running toward the fort before the last ones could find their boots.

Light-headed from hunger, lack of sleep, and excitement, Doby could not follow all the plans for defense. Friendly Indians and boys disguised as Indians were to take the place of the ones whom Colonel Vigo had bought off up-river. These decoys were to follow the renegades, and in the attack upon the fort were to fight them from the rear.

Doby, with his loaded rifle in his hands for the first attack, and his knife on hip for hand-to-hand work, was given a man's place at a loop-hole of the stockade. He waited in the dark for the signal to the impromptu garrison to surprise the surprisers.

There was a muffled stirring of many feet. First a scuffle--then a run. Shadowy forms advanced upon the seemingly unguarded fort. Thieving hands fumbled at the gates.

In the breathless silence, Colonel Vigo's voice sounded like a pistol-shot. "Fire!" he snapped.

Two dozen rifles spat. The cracking took the invaders completely off their guard. They fell back in astonishment. But they rallied quickly and returned the fusillade.

Boys within the fort lighted torches and waved them to show the defenders how the battle lay.

The attacking renegades were made up of numbers of outlaws, of deserters from the army, and of unlucky or incompetent settlers. Every post in the Northwest had more or less of this human riffraff and many towns had the same unlucky experiences with them.

These robbers did not trust their Indian allies. Treacherous themselves, they suspected the old Indians' motives in joining them. So they had purposely given their own number as much smaller than it was, lest the Indians should turn upon them.

Doby's heart was not the only one which thumped with dismay as the flare of the torches lit up the goodly number of the besiegers. Even Francis Vigo's strategy of replacing their allied Indians with friends of the town could not assure Vincennes of victory. She would have to fight for her life. How curious if the far-away beaver dam should be the thing that bought her safety! It had lessened her foes and given her a fighting chance.

Madly the renegades charged the stockade. Staunchly the citizens helped the handful of soldiers to hold it.

Again the rabble advanced. Fell back! Advanced! Fell back!

Mercy and justice had no place in Doby's mind. His duty was to hold his section of the fort. He banged away with the best of the volunteers and howled like an Indian as the renegades ran from his fire into the volleys of the disguised men behind them.

During a lull in the battle he was proud to be obliged to tie up his head where a bullet had grazed it, and to swagger like an old war-dog as he moved across a barrier to help Colonel Vigo tie up a flesh wound in his sword arm.

Then--on came the renegades! "Hi! Hi! Hi!" was their rallying call.

"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!" answered the flintlocks.

Over the walls piled the enemy. Through the gates came the disguised Indians, fighting for the fort, and against their supposed allies.

Hand to hand--without command--without system--without mercy. One of those free-for-all defenses in which frontiersmen had to become victorious if they hoped to survive.

The renegades were beaten down, overcome, captured, and imprisoned. The town was saved, as many a settlement in the Great Valley was held for the white race--by the determined spirit of its founders.

Little blood was shed; less talk was heard; least record was made. One item in a dusty old book is all that is printed about that lively night. To wit:

This da. novem. 12. 1816. by Col. F. Vigo licens^d ferry freebooters
attack^d stockade. 9 wound^d. loss 1 pk. horse. Attack repuls^d.

This document marked the final touch to Doby's education for that important year. He was on his way toward becoming a man and a citizen--for he was at last a soldier--a volunteer soldier--a victorious soldier--in defense of the Great Valley.

AFTERWORD

THE glory of the Great Valley is in the deeds of her heroes whose conquests are blazoned on the tablets of the nation's memory.

Her prosperity is in the genius of her inventors and the hands of her artisans--those renowned creators of her colossal fortunes.

But her safety lies deep in the hearts of her common people whose names are seldom heard.

On their integrity depends the fate of this land. They are the very life of the United States.

How can we better understand the stuff whereof our people are made, the labor they have done, the ideals they have created, the institutions they have reared in the two centuries since they first set foot in this valley, than by studying their present by the light of their past?

How can we thank them more appropriately for the treasures they give us, than by imitating the sincerity of their lives?

One of them, a boy pioneer, who lived in the times half-way between the lads of to-day and the young men who built the fort at Ouiatanon, has told us his story. It is the plain tale of his hardships and successes in the struggle for a home, where his small daily tasks might help to keep alive, upon the altar of its hearth, the sacred flame of love.

Through his adventures runs the plea for honest citizenship.

His acts declare: Not in war, but in work uplifted by service for others, in peace fraught with neighborly good-will, in self-sacrifice for our country's sake, is the spirit of patriotism that will keep afloat forever over the Great Valley the flag of the Stars and Stripes!

THE END

BOOKS BY KATE DICKINSON SWEETSER

_TEN BOYS FROM DICKENS_
_TEN GIRLS FROM DICKENS_
_TEN BOYS FROM HISTORY_
_TEN GIRLS FROM HISTORY_
_BOYS AND GIRLS FROM GEORGE ELIOT_
_BOYS AND GIRLS FROM THACKERAY_
_BOOK OF INDIAN BRAVES_
_TEN GREAT ADVENTURERS_

"Particularly spirited is Miss Sweetser's biographical work. Accuracy of historic fact has been the author's commendable aim in all her books. Luckily she has likewise treated her characters as human beings, something which cannot be said of most writers of biography for children."--_The Nation._

Octavo, Pictorial Covers, numerous full-page illustrations, many in color

HARPER'S PRACTICAL BOOKS

_HARPER'S BOOK FOR YOUNG GARDENERS_
_HARPER'S INDOOR BOOKS FOR BOYS_
_HARPER'S OUTDOOR BOOK FOR BOYS_
_HARPER'S CAMPING AND SCOUTING_
_HARPER'S BOATING BOOK FOR BOYS_
_HARPER'S ELECTRICITY BOOK FOR BOYS_
_HARPER'S BOOK FOR YOUNG NATURALISTS_
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_HARPER'S MACHINERY BOOK FOR BOYS_
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_THE STORY OF OUR GREAT INVENTIONS_
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FAMOUS BOOKS ILLUSTRATED BY LOUIS RHEAD

_THE ARABIAN NIGHTS_
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HARPER'S CAMP LIFE SERIES

_CAMPING ON THE GREAT RIVER_

BY RAYMOND S. SPEARS

_A farmer's son ventures out into the great world to make a man of himself and succeeds. He embarks in a shanty-boat and sails down the Ohio and Mississippi, where he has all kinds of adventures which will make the boy-reader long to imitate him._

_CAMPING ON THE GREAT LAKES_

BY RAYMOND S. SPEARS

_A story of self-reliance and independence as well as adventure. Will Sayne and Miles Breton take a voyage of discovery from Ontario and Erie, through Huron to the vast stretch of Lake Superior. They become involved innocently in smugglers' plots._

_CAMPING IN THE WINTER WOODS_

BY ELMER RUSSELL GREGOR