 Book 1 Chapter 19 of The Crossing by Winston Churchill Chapter 19 The Hare Byer Trap To lie the night on adamant, pierced by the needles of the frosts, to wait shivering and vanished until the meaning of an inch of ice on the backwater comes to your These are not calculated to put a man into an equitable mood to listen to oratory. Nevertheless, there was a kind of oratory to fit the case. To picture the misery of these men is well-nigh impossible. They stood sluggishly in groups, dazed by suffering, and their faces were drawn and their eyes ringed. Their beards and hair matted. And many found it in their hearts to curse Clark and that government for which he fought. When the red fire of the sun glowed through the bare branches that morning, it seemed as if the campaign had spent itself like an arrow which drops at the foot of the mark. Could life and interest and enthusiasm be infused again and such as these? I have ceased to marvel how it was done. A man no less haggard than the rest, but with a compelling force in his eyes, pointed with a blade to the hills across the river. They must get to them, he said, and their troubles would be ended. He said more and they cheered him. These are the bare facts. He picked a man here and another there, and these went silently to a grim duty behind the regiment. Then he tried to go back, shoot them down, he cried. Then with a gun butt, he shattered the ice and was the first to leap into the water under it. They followed, some with a cheer that was most pitiful of all. They followed him blindly as men go to torture, but they followed him. And the splashing and crushing of the ice were sounds to freeze my body. I was put in a canoe. In my day I have beheld great suffering and hardship, and none of it compared to this. Torn with pity, I saw them reeling through the water, now grasping trees and bushes to try to keep their feet, the strongest breaking the way ahead and supporting the wheat between them. More than once Clark himself tottered where he beat the ice at the apex of the line. Some swooned and would have drowned had they not been dragged across the canoe and chafed back to consciousness. By inches the water shallered. Clark reached the high ground and then Bill Cowan with a man on each shoulder. Then others endured to the shallows to fall heavily in the crumbled ice and be dragged out before they died. But at length, by God's grace, the whole regiment was on the land. Fires would not revive some, but Clark himself seized a painting man by the arms and walked him up and down in the sunlight until his blood ran again. It was a glorious day, a day when the sap ran in the maples and the sun soared upwards in a sky of the palest blue. All this we saw through the tracery of the leafless branches, a mirthless shivering crowd crept through a hell of weather into the hair buyer's very lyre, and he neither heard nor seen. Down the steel blue lane of water between the ice came a canoe. Our stunted senses perceived it unresponsive. A man cried out, it was Tom Machesney. Now some of them had leaped into the parogue. Now they were returning. In the towed canoe, two fat and stolid squalls and a papoose were huddled, and beside them, God be praised, food, a piece of buffalo on its way to town, and in the end compartment of the boat, tallow and bears grease, lay revealed by two blows of the tomahawk. The kettles, long disused, were fetched and broth made and fed and sipsed to the weakest. While the strongest looked on and smiled in an agony of self-restraint. It was a fearful thing to see men whose legs had refused service, struggle to their feet, when they had drunk the steaming, greasy mixture. And the colonel, standing by the river's edge, turned his face away, downstream. And then, as often, I saw the other side of the man. Suddenly he looked at me, standing, wistful at his side. They cursed me, said he, by way of a question. They cursed me every day, and, seeing me silent, he insisted. Tell me, is it not so, Davey? It is so, I said, wondering that he should pry. But it was while they suffered, and some refrained, and you, he asked, queerly. I could not, sir, for I asked, leave to come. If they've condemned me to a thousand hells, said he, dispassionately. I should not blame them. Again, he looked at me. You understand what you've done, he asked. No, sir, I said, uneasily. And yet there are some human qualities in you, Davey. You've been worth more to me than another regiment. I stared. When you grow older, if you ever do, tell your children that, once upon a time, you put a hundred men to shame. It's no small thing. Seeing him relapse into silence, I did not speak. For the space of half an hour, he stared down the river. And I knew that he was looking vainly for the willing. At noon we crossed Peacemille, a deep lake in the canoes, and marching awhile came to a timber-covered rise, which our French prisoners named as the Warriors Island. And from the shelter of its trees, we saw the steely lines of a score of low ponds, and over the tops of as many ridges, a huddle of brown houses on the higher ground. And this was the place we have all but sold our lives to the hope. We were on the heights behind the town. We were at the back door, as it were. At the far side on the Wabash River was the front door, or Fort Sackville, where the banner of England snapped in the February breeze. We stood there, looking as the afternoon light flooded the plain. Suddenly the silence was broken. A rave of the sound of the sound of the rave. Suddenly the silence was broken. A ray for Clark cried a man at the edge of the cops. A ray for Clark, it was the whole regiment this time, from execration to exaltation was but a step, after all. And the Creoles fell to scuffing at their sufferings that even forgot their hunger in staring at the goal. The back woodsmen took matters more stolidly, having acquired long since the art of waiting. They lounged about, cleaning their guns, watching the myriad flux of wild ducks and geese casting blue-black shadows on the ponds. A raw machestney, said Terence, as he watched the circling birds. Clark's a great man, but his more river sense I'd have for him if one of them was sizzling at the end of me ramrod. I'd sooner have the hair buyer's scalp, said Tom. Presently there was a drama performed for our delectation. A shot came down the wind, and we perceived that several innocent Creole gentlemen, unconscious of what the timber held, were shooting the ducks and geese. Whereupon Clark chose Antoine and three of our own Creoles to sally out and shoot likewise as decoys. We watched them working their way over the ridges and finally saw them coming back with one of the Vincent's sportsmen. I cannot begin to depict the astonishment of this man when he reached the cops and was led before our lean, square-shouldered commander. Yes, monsieur, he was a friend of Les Americans. Did Governor Hamilton know that a visit was imminent? Pardoux, with many shrugs and outward gestures of the palms, Governor Hamilton had said if the long knives had wings or fins, they might reach him now. He was all unprepared. Gentlemen, said Colonel Clark to Captains Bowman and McCarty and Williams, we've come so far by audacity, and we must continue by audacity. It is of no use to wait for the gunboat, and every moment we run the risk of discovery. I shall write an open letter to the inhabitants of Vincent's, which the prisoners shall take into town. I shall tell them that those who are true to the oath they swore to Father Gabault shall not be molested if they remain quietly in their houses. Let those who are on the side of the hair-buyer general and his king go to the fort and fight there. He bed-knee fetched the portfolio he carried, and with dumbed fingers wrote the letter, while his captain stared in admiration and amazement. What a stroke was this! There were six hundred men in the town and fort, soldiers, inhabitants, and Indians, while we had but a hundred and seventy starved and weakened by their incredible march. But Clark was not to be daunted. Whipping out his steel glasses, he took a stand on a little mound under the trees, and followed the fast-galloping messenger across the plain, saw him enter the town, saw the stirrer in the streets, knots of men riding out and gazing, hands on parrots, towards the place where we were. But as the minutes rolled into hours, there was no further alarm, no gun, no beep to quarters or bugle call from Fort Sackville. What could it mean? Clark's next move was an enigma, for he set the men to cutting and trimming tall sapling poles. To these were tied, and all reverently. The twenty stands of colors which loving creole hands had stitched. The boisterous day was reddening to its clothes, as the Colonel lined his little army in front of the wood, and we covered the space of four thousand. For the men were twenty feet apart, and every tenth carried a standard. Suddenly we were aghast as the full meaning of the inspiration donned upon us. The command was given, and we started on our march toward Vincennes. But not straight, zigzagging, always keeping the ridges between us and the town, and to the watching inhabitants it seemed as if thousands were coming to crush them. Night fell, the colors were furrowed and the saplings dropped, and we pressed into serred ranks and marched straight over hill and dale for the lights that were beginning to twinkle ahead of us. We halted once more, a quarter of a mile away. Clark himself had picked fourteen men to go under Lieutenant Bailey through the town and take the fort from the other side. Here was audacity with a vengeance. You may be sure that Tom and Cowan and Ray were among these. And I tried it after them with the drum banging against my thighs. Was ever stronghold taken thus? They went right into the town, the fourteen of them into the main street that led directly to the fort. The simple citizens gave back stupefied at sight of the tall striding forms. Muffled Indians stood like statues as we passed, but these raised not a hand against us. Where were Hamilton, Hamilton soldiers and savages? It was as if we had come a trading. The street rose and fell in waves like the prairie over which it ran. As we climbed a ridge, here was a little long church, the rude cross on the belfry showing dark against the sky. And there in front of us, flanked by blockhouses with conical caps, was the frowning mass of Fort Sackville. Take cover, said Williams hoarsely. It seemed incredible. The men spread hither and thither, some behind the fences of the little gardens. Tom chose a great forest tree that had been left standing, and I went with him. He powdered his pan, and I laid down my drum beside the tree. And then, with an impulse that was rare, Tom seized me by the collar and drew me to him. Davey, he whispered, and I pinched him. Davey, I reckon Polly Ann, be countered, surprised if she knew where we was. I nodded. It seemed strange indeed to be talking thus at such a place. Life has taught me sense that it is not so strange, for however a man may strive and suffer for an object, he usually sits quiet at the consummation. Here we were in the dooryard of a peaceful cabin, the ground, frozen in lumps under our feet. And it seemed to me that the wind had something to do with the lightness of the night. Davey, whispered Tom again, I'd you like to see the little feller to home. I pinched him again and harder this time, for I was have a loss for adequate words. The muscles of his legs were as hard as the strands of a rope, and his buckskin breeches frozen so that they cracked under my fingers. Suddenly a flickering light arose ahead of us, and another, and we saw that there were candles beginning to twinkle through the palings of the fort. These were badly set, the width of a man's hand apart. Presently here comes a soldier with a torch, and as he walked we could see from crack to crack his bluff face all reddened by the light, and so near were we that we heard the words of his song. Oh, there came a last to Sudbury Fair with a hay and a whole nanny-nanny, and she had a rose and her raven hair with a hay and a whole nanny-nanny by the Eternal, said Tom, following the man along the palings with the muzzle of his deckard. By the Eternal, tis like shooting beef. A gust of laughter came from somewhere beyond, the burly soldier paused at the foot of the blockhouse. Hey, Jim, have you seen the journal's man? His honors and a high temper, I warn you. It was fortunate for Jim that he put his foot inside the blockhouse door. Now, boys, it was William's voice, and the 14 rifles sputtered out a ragged volley. There was an instant silence, and then a score of voices raised in consternation, shouting, cursing, commanding. Heavy feet pounded on the platform of the blockhouse. While Tom was savagely jamming his powder and ball, the wicked gate of the fort opened. A man came out and ran to a house, biscuits throw away, and ran back again before he was shot at, slamming the gate after him. Tom swore. We've got but the 10 rounds, he said, dropping his rifle to his knee. I reckoned there's no use to waste it. Your willing may come tonight, I answered. There was a bugle winding a strange call, and the roll of a drum, and the running continued. Don't fire till you're sure, boys, said Captain Williams. Our eyes caught sight of a form in the blockhouse port. There was an instant when a candle flung its rays upon a cannon's flank, and Tom's rifle spat a rod of flame. A red blot hid the cannon's mouth, and behind it a man staggered and fell on the candle, while the shot crunched its way through the logs of the cottage and the yard where we stood. And now the battle was on in earnest, fire darting here and there from the black wall, bullets swistling and flying wide, and at intervals cannon belching, their shot grinding through trees and houses. But our men waited until the gunners lit their matches in the cannon ports. It was no trick for back woodsmen. At length there came a popping right and left, and we knew that Bowman and McCarty's men had swung into position there. An hour passed, and a shadow came along our line darting from cover to cover. It was Lieutenant Bailey, and he sent me back to find the Colonel and tell him that the men had but a few rounds left. I sped through the streets on the errand, spied a creole company waiting in reserve and near them behind a warehouse, a knot of back woodsmen, French and Indians, lighted up by a smoking torch. And here was Colonel Clark talking to a big blanketed chief. I was hovering around the skirts of the crowd and seeking for an opening when a hand pulled me off my feet. Well, you be after now, said a voice which was Terence's. Let me go, I cried. I have a message from Lieutenant Bailey. Sure, said Terence. The man think you had the hair by her scalp in your pocket. The Colonel is treaty making with tobacco's son, the greatest Indian in Neve parts. I don't care, hissed, said Terence. Let me go, I yelled so loudly that the Colonel turned and Terence dropped me like a live coal. I wormed my way to where Clark stood. Tobacco's son was at that moment protesting that the big knives were his brothers and declaring that before morning broke he would have 100 warriors for the great white chief. Had he not made a treaty of peace with Captain Helm, who was even then a prisoner of the British general in the fort, Colonel Clark replied that he knew well of the fidelity of tobacco's son to the big knives that tobacco's son had remained a staunch in the face of bribes and presents. This was true. Now all that Colonel Clark desired of tobacco's son besides his friendship was that he would keep his warriors from battle. The big knives would fight their own fight. To this sentiment, Tobacco's son grunted extreme approval. Colonel Clark turned to me. What is it, Davey? He asked. I told him. Tobacco's son has dug up for us King George's ammunition, he said. Go tell Lieutenant Bailey that I will send him enough to last him a month. I sped away with the message. Presently I came back again upon another message and they were eating those reserves. They were eating as I had never seen many but once at Kaskaskia. The baker stood by with lifted palms imploring the saints that he might have some compensation until Clark sent him back to his shop to knead and bake again. The good creoles approached the fires with the contents of their larders in their hands. Terrence tossed me aloof the size of a cannonball and another. Fits that one. One had the voice, said he. I seized as much as my arms could hold and scurried away to the firing line once more and heedless of whistling bullets darted from man to man until the bread was exhausted. Not a one but gave me a God bless you, Davy. Here he seized it with a great hand and began to eat in wolfish bites his deckard always on the watch the while. There was no sleep in the village. All night long while the rifles sputtered, the villagers in their capotes, men, women and children huddled around the fires. The young men of the militia begged Clark to allow them to fight and to keep them well affected he sent some here and there amongst our lines. For our Colonel's strength was not counted by rifles or men alone. He fought with his brain. As Hamilton the hair buyer made his rounds, he believed the town to be in the possession of a horde of Kentuckians. Shouts, war hoops and bursts of laughter went up from behind the town. Surely a great force was there, a small part of which had been sent to play with him and his men. On the fighting line when there was a lull, our backwards men stood up behind their trees and cursed the enemy roundly and often by these taunts persuaded the furious gunners to open their ports and fire their cannons. Woe be to him that showed an arm or a shoulder. Though a casement be lifted ever so warily, a dozen bowls would fly into it. And at length when some of the besieged had died in their anger, the ports were opened no more. It was then our sharpshooters crept up boldly to within 30 yards of them. Nay, it seemed as if they lay under the very walls of the fort and through the night the figure of the Colonel himself was often seen amongst them praising their marksmanship, pleading with every man not to expose himself without cause. He spied me where I had wormed myself behind the footboard of a picket fence beneath the cannon port of a blockhouse. It was during one of the breathing spaces. What says, he said to Cowan sharply, feeling me under his foot. I reckon it's Davy, sir, said my friend somewhat sheepishly. We can't do nothing with him. He's been up and down the line 20 times this night. What doing, says the Colonel. Bread and powder and bullets, answered Bill. But that's all over, says Clark. He's the very devil to pry, answered Bill. The first we know, he'll be into the fort under the logs. Or between them, says Clark, with a glance at the open palings. I'm here, Davy. I followed him, dodging between the houses. And when we had got off the line, he took me by the two shoulders from behind. Your little rascal, said he, shaking me. How am I to look out for an army in you besides? Have you had anything to eat? Yes, sir, I answered. He came to the fires and Captain Bowman hurried up to meet him. We're piling up earthworks and barricades, said the Captain, for the fight tomorrow. My God, if the willing would only come, we could put our cannon into them. Clark laughed. Bowman, said he kindly. Has Davy fed you yet? No, says the Captain, surprised. I've had no time to eat. He seems to have fed the whole army, said the Colonel. He paused. Had they scented lamoth or masonville? Devil ascent, cried the Captain. And we've scoured wool and quagmire. They tell me that lamoth has a very pretty force of redskins at his heels. Let Machesney go, said Clark sharply. Machesney and Ray, I'll warrant they can find him. Now I knew that masonville had gone out a chasing Captain Willing's brother, he who had run into our arms. Lamoth was a noted Indian partisan and a dangerous man to be dogging our rear that night. Suddenly there came a thought that took my breath and set my heart a hammering. When the Colonel's back was turned, I slipped away beyond the range of the firelight, and I was soon on the prairie, stumbling over hummocks and floundering into ponds, yet going as quietly as I could, turning now and again to look back at the distant glow, or to listen to the rifles popping around the fort. The night was cloudy and pitchy dark. Twice the whirling of startled waterfowl frightened me out of my senses, but ambition pricked me on in spite of fear. I may have gone a mile thus, for chance two or three, straining every sense when a sound brought me to a stand. At first I could not distinguish it because of my heavy breathing, but presently I made sure that it was the low drone of human voices. Getting down on my hands and knees I crept forward and felt the ground rising. The voices had ceased. I gained the crest of a low ridge and threw myself flat. A rattle of musketry set me shivering, and in that agony of fright I looked behind me to discover that I could not be more than four hundred yards from the fort. I had made a circle. I lay very still. My eyes watered with staring, and then the droning began again. I went forward an inch, then another, and another down the slope, and at last I could have sworn that I saw dark blurs against the ground. I put out my hand. My weight went after, and I had crashed through a coat of ice up to my elbow in a pool. There came a second of sheer terror, a horse challenge in French, and then I took to my heels and flew towards the fort at the top of my speed. I heard them coming after me leap and bound, and crying out to one another. Ahead of me there might have been a floor or a precipice as the ground looks level at night. I heard my foot cruelly on a frozen clod of earth, slid down the washed bank of a run into the Wabash, picked myself up, scrambled to the top of the far side, and had gotten away again when my pursuer shattered the ice behind me. A hundred yards more, two figures loomed up in front, and I was pulled up, choking. Hang to him, Fletcher! said a voice. Great God! cried Fletcher. It's Davy. What are you up to now? Let me go! I cried as soon as I had got my wind. As luck would have it, I had run into a pair of daredevil young Kentuckians who had more than once tasted the severity of Clark's discipline. Fletcher, Blunt, and Jim Willis. They fairly shook out of me what had happened, and then dropped me with a war-hoop and started for the prairie, eye after them crying out to them to be aware of the run. A man must indeed be fleet of foot to have escaped these young ruffians, and so approved. When I reached the hollow, there were the two of them fighting with the man in the water, the ice jangling as they shifted their feet. What's your name? said Fletcher, cuffing and kicking his prisoner until he cried out for mercy. Masonville, said the man, whereupon Fletcher gave a war-hoop and kicked him again. That's no way to treat a prisoner, said I, hotly. Hold your mouth, Davy, said Fletcher. You didn't catch him. You wouldn't have him but for me, I retorted. Fletcher's answer was an oath. They put Masonville between them, ran him through the town up to the firing line, and there, to my horror, they tied him to a post and used him for a shield, despite his heart-rending yells. In mortal fear that the poor man would be shot down, I was running away to find someone who might have influence over them when I met a lieutenant. He came up and ordered them angrily to unbind Masonville and bring him before the Colonel. Fletcher laughed, whipped out his hunting knife and cut the thongs. But he and Willis had scarce got twenty paces from the officer before they seized poor Masonville by the hair and made shift to scalp him. This was merely Backwood's play had Masonville but known it. Persuaded, however, that his last hour had come, he made a desperate effort to clear himself, whereupon Fletcher cut off a piece of his skin by mistake. Masonville, making sure that he had been scalped, stood groaning and clapping his hand to his head while the two young rascals drew back and stared at each other. What to do now? said Willis. Take our medicine, I reckon, answered Fletcher grimly, and they seized the tottering man between them and marched him straightway to the fire where Clark stood. They had seen the Colonel angry before, but now they were fairly withered under his wrath, and he could have given them no greater punishment, for he took them from the firing line and sent them back to wait among the reserves until the morning. None did you, said Masonville, wrathfully as he watched them go. They should hang. The stuff that brought them here through ice and flood is apt to boil over, Captain. Remark the Colonel dryly. If you please, sir, said I. They did not mean to cut him, but he wiggled. Clark turned sharply. Eh? said he. Did you have a hand in this, too? Peste, cried the Captain. The little ferret you called him. He fined me on the prairie. I run to catch him with some men and fall into the creek. He pointed to his soaked leggings. And your demons, they fall on top of me. I wish to heaven you had caught Lamothe instead, Davey, said the Colonel, and joined despite himself in the laugh that went up. Falling sober again, he began to question the prisoner. Where was Lamothe? Pardo, Masonville could not say. How many men did he have, et cetera, et cetera? The circle about us deepened with eager listeners who uttered exclamations when Masonville, between his answers, put up his hand to his bleeding head. Suddenly the circle parted and Captain Bowman came through. Ray, as discovered Lamothe, said he. What shall we do? Let him into the fort, said Clark instantly. There was a murmur of astonished protest. Let him into the fort, exclaimed Bowman. Certainly, said the Colonel, if he finds he cannot get in, he will be off before the dawn to assemble the tribes. But the fort is provisioned for a month, Bowman expostulated, and they must find out tomorrow how weak we are. Tomorrow will be too late, said Clark. And suppose he shouldn't go in? He will go in, said the Colonel quietly. Withdraw your man, Captain, from the north side. Captain Bowman departed. Whatever he may have thought of these orders, he was too faithful a friend of the Colonel's to delay their execution. Murmuring, swearing, oaths of astonishment, man after man on the firing line dropped his rifle at the word, and sullenly retreated. The crack, crack of the decades on the south and east, were stilled. Not a barrel was thrust by the weary garrison through the logs, and the place became silent as the wilderness. It was the long hour before the dawn, and as we lay waiting on the hard ground, stiff and cold and hungry, talking and whispers, somewhere near six o'clock on that February morning, the great square of Fort Sackville began to take shape. There was the long line of the stockade, reprojecting blockhouses at each corner with peat caps, and a higher capped square tower from the center of the enclosure. The banner of England drooping there and clinging forlorn to its staff, as though with a presentiment. Then, as the light grew, the clothes-lipped casements were seen, scarred with our bullets. The little log houses of the town came out, the sapling palings and the bare trees, all grim and gaunt at that cruel season. Cattle load here and there, and horses witted to be fed. It was a dirty gray dawn, and we waited until it had done its best. From where we lay hid behind log house and palings, we strained our eyes towards the prairie to see if Lamolth would take the bait until our view was ended at the fuzzy top of a hillock. Bill Cowan, doubled up behind a woodpile and breathing heavily, nudged me. Davey? Davey? What'd you see? Was it a head that broke the line of the crest? Even as I stared, breathless, half a score of form shot up and were running madly for the stockade. Twenty more broke after them, Indians and Frenchmen dodging, swaying, crowding, looking fearfully to right and left. And from within the fort came forth a hubbub, cries and scuffling orders, oaths and shouts. In plain view of our impatient decades, soldiers manned the platform, and we saw that they were flinging down ladders. An officer in a faded scarlet coat stood out among the rest, shouting himself hoarse. Involuntarily, Cowan lined his sights across the woodpile on his mark of color. Lamoss men, a seething mass, were fighting like wolves for the ladders, fearful yet that a volley might kill half of them where they stood. And so fast did they scramble upwards that the men before them stepped on their fingers. All at once, and by acclamation, the fierce war hoops of our men rent the air, and some toppled in sheer terror and fell the twelve feet of the stockade of the sound of it. Then every man in the regiment, Creole and back Woodsman, lay back to laugh. The answer of the garrison was a defiant cheer, and those who had dropped, finding they were not shot at, picked themselves up again and gained the top, hoping to pull the ladders after them. Bowman's men swung back into place, the rattle and drag were heard in the blockhouse as the cannon were run out through the ports, and the battle which had held through the night watches began again with redoubled vigor. But there was more caution on the side of the British, for they had learned dearly how the Kentuckians could measure crack and crevice. There followed two hours and a futile waste of ammunition, the lead from the garrison flying harmless here and there, and not a patch of skin or cloth showing. End of Chapter 19, Book 1, Chapter 20 of The Crossing by Winston Churchill. This lever box recording is in the public domain. Chapter 20, The Campaign Ends. If I'm obliged to storm, you may depend upon such treatment as is justly due to a murderer, and beware of destroying stores of any kind or any papers or letters that are in your possession, or of hurting one house in the town, or by heaven if you do, there shall be no mercy shown you, to Lieutenant Governor Hamilton. So read Colonel Clark as he stood before the log fire and most durable tall's house at the back of the town. The captains grouped in front of him. Is that strong enough, gentlemen? He asked to raise his hair, said Captain Carlville. Captain Bellman laughed loudly. I reckon the boys will see to that, said he. Colonel Clark folded the letter, addressed it, and turned gravely to most sure about all. You will oblige me, sir, said he, by taking this to Governor Hamilton. You will be provided with a flag of truths. Most sure about all was a round little man, as his name suggested, and the man cheered him as he strode soberly up the street, a piece of sheeting tied to a sapling and flung over his shoulder. Through such humble agencies are the ends of Providence accomplished. Most sure about all walked up to the gate, disappeared sideways through the posture and set down to breakfast. In a very short time, most sure about all was seen coming back, and his face was not so impassive that the governor's message could not be read there on. It is not a love letter. He has our warrant, said Terence, as the little man disappeared into the house. So accurately had most sure about all space betrayed the news that the men went back to their posts without orders, some with half a breakfast in hand, and soon the rank and file had the message. Lieutenant Governor Hamilton begs leave to acquaint Colonel Clark that he and his garrison are not disposed to be awed into any action unworthy of British subjects. Our men had eaten, their enemy was within their grasp, and Clark and all his officers could scarce keep them from storming. Such was the deadliness of their aim that scarce a shot came back, and time and again I saw the men fling themselves in front of the breastworks with a war hoop, waved their rifles in the air and cry out that they would have a hair by our skull before night should fall. It could not last. Not tuned to the nicer courtesies of warfare, the memory of Hamilton's war parties of blackened homes, of families dead and missing, raged, unappeased. These were not content to leave vengeance in the Lord's hands, and when a white flag peaked timorously above the gate, a great yell of derision went up from riverbank to riverbank. Out of the post and stepped the officer with the faded scarlet coat, and in due time went back again haughtily his head high, casting contempt right and left of him. Again the post turned opened, and this time there was a cheer of a sight of a man in hunting shirt and leggings and coon skin cap. After him came a certain major hay, Indian enticer of detested memory, the lieutenant of him who followed the hair buyer himself. A murmur of hatred arose from the men stationed there, and many would have shot him where he stood but for Clark. The devil has the grip, said Cowan, though his eyes blazed. It was the involuntary tribute. Lieutenant Governor Hamilton stared indifferently at the glowering backwardsman as he walked the few steps to the church. Not so, Major Hay, his eyes fell. There was Colonel Clark waiting at the door through which the good creoles had been want to go to worship, bowing somewhat ironically to the British general. It was a strange meeting they had in St. Xavier's by the light of the candles on the altar. Hot words passed in that house of peace, the general demanding protection for all his men, and our Colonel replying that he would do with the Indian partisans as he chose. And whom do you mean by Indian partisans the undaunted Governor had demanded? I take Major Hay to be one of them, our Colonel had answered. It was soon a matter of common report that Clark had gazed fixedly at the Major when he said this and how the Major turned pale and trembled. With our own eyes we saw them coming out, Major Hay as near to staggering as a man could be, the Governor blushing red for shame of him. So we went sorrowfully back to the gate. Colonel Clark stood at the steps of the church looking after them. What was that firing he demanded sharply. I gave orders for a truce. We who stood by the church had indeed heard firing in the direction of the hills east of the town and had wondered there at. Proceeding a crowd gathered at the far end of the street, we all ran thither, saved the Colonel, who directed to have the offenders brought to him at Montsourbon Thons. We met the news halfway. A party of Canadians and Indians had just returned from the falls of the Ohio with scouts they had taken. Captain Williams had gone out with this company to meet them, had lured them on and finally had killed a number and was returning with the prisoners. Yes, here they were. Williams himself walked ahead with two disheveled and frightened purours du bois, to score at least of the townspeople of Vincennes, friends and relatives of the prisoners, pressing about and crying out to Williams to have mercy on them. As for Williams he took them into the Colonel, the townspeople pressing into the door yard and banking in front of it on the street. Behind all a tragedy impending. No, can I think of it now without sickening. The frightened creoles in the street gave back against the fence and from behind them issuing as a storm cloud came the half of Williams company yelling like madmen. Pushed and jostled ahead of them were four Indians, decked and feathered, a half dried scalps dangling from their belts, impassive, true to their creed despite the indignity of jolts and jars and blows. On and on pressed the mob gathering recruits at every corner and when they reached St. Xavier's before the fort half the regiment was there. Others watched two from the stockade and what they saw made their knees smite together with fear. Here were four bronzed statues in a row across the street. The space in front of them clear that their partisans in the fort might look and consider. What was passing in the savage mine no man might know. Not a lip trembled nor eye faltered. When a back woodsman his memory aflame at sight of the pitiful white scalps on their belts thrust through the crowd to curse them. Fletcher Blont, frenzied, snatched his tomahawk from his side. Sink, vomit, he cried with a great oath. By the eternal will pay the hair buyer in his own coin. Sound your drums, he shouted at the fort. Call the garrison for the show. He raised his arm and turned to strike when the savage put up his hand. Not in entreaty but as one man demanding a right from another. The cries, the curses, the murmurs even, were hushed. Throwing back his head, arching his chest, the notes of a song rose in the heavy air. Wild, strange notes they were that struck vibrant chords in my own quivering being and the song was the death song. I and a life song of a soul which had come into the world even as mine own. And somewhere there lay in the song half revealed the awful mystery of that creator whom the soul leaped forth to meet. The myriad green of the sun playing with the leaves, the fish swimming lazily in the brown pool, the doe grazing in the thicket, and a necked boy as free from care as these. And still the life grows brighter as strength comes and statue and power over man and beast. And then God knows what memories of fierce love and fiercer wars and triumphs of desires gained and enemies conquered. God who has made all lives akin to something which he holds in the hollow of his hand. And then the rain beating on the forest crown beating, beating, beating. The song ceased, the Indian knelt in the black mud, not at the feet of Fletcher Blunt, but on the threshold of the great spirit who ruled all things. The axe fell, yet he uttered no cry as he went before his master. So the four sang each in turn and died in the sight of some who pitted and some who feared and some who hated for the sake of land and women. So the four went beyond the power of gold and guckel and were dragged in the mire around the walls and flung into the yellow waters of the river. Through the dreary afternoon the men lounged about and cursed the parley and hearkened for the tattoo. The signal agreed upon by the leaders to begin the fighting. There had been no command against taunts and jeers and they gathered in groups under the walls to indulge themselves and even tried to bribe me as I set braced against a house with my drum between my knees and the sticks clutched tightly in my hands. Here's a Spanish dollar for a couple of taps, Davey, shouted Jack Turrell. Come on, you pack of rubble cutthroats, yelled a man on the wall. He was answered by a torrent of imprecations and so they flung it back and forth until nightfall. When out comes the same faded scarlet officer holding a letter in his hand and marches down the street to Mosher Botols, there would be no storming now nor any man suffered to lay fingers on the hair buyer. I remember in particular Hamilton the hair buyer, not the fiend my imagination had depicted. I've since learned that most villains do not look the part, but a man with a great sorrow stamped upon his face. The sun rose on that 25th of February and the mud melted and one of our companies drew up on each side of the gate. Downward slid the lion of England, the garrison drums beat a dirge and the hair buyer marched out at the head of his motley troops. Then came my own greatest hour. All morning I had been polishing and tightening the drum and my pride was so great as we fell into line that so much as a smile could not be got out of me. Picture it all. Been sins in black and white by reason of the bright day, eaves and gables, stockade line and capped towers sharply drawn and straight above these a stark flagstaff waiting for our colors. Pigs and fowls straying hither and thither unmindful that this day is red on the calendar. Ah, here is a bit of color too. The villagers on the side streets to see the spectacle. Gay wolves and gayer handkerchiefs there amid the joyous cheering crowd of price-changed nationality. Viva la bostonese! Viva la americans! Viva ma sure le canocloc! Viva la petite tambour! Viva la petite tambour! That was the drummer boy, stepping proudly behind the colonel himself with a soul lifted high above mire and puddle into the blue beyond. There was laughter amongst the giants behind me and Cowan saying softly as when we left Kaskaskia, go to it, Davey, my little game cock! And the whisper of it was repeated among the ranks drawn up by the gate. Yes, he was the gate, and now we were in the fort and an empire was gained, never to be lost again. The stars and stripes climbed the staff and the foals were caught by an eager breeze. Thirteen cannon thundered from the blockhouses, one for each colony that had braved a king. There in the Maori square within the Vincent's fort, thin and bronzed and travel stained, were the men who had dared the wilderness in ugliest mood, and yet none by himself would have done it. Each had come here compelled by a spirit stronger than his own by a mastermind that laughed at the body and its ailments. Colonel George Rogers Clark stood in the center of the square, under the flag to whose renown he had added three stars. Straight he was and square and self-contained. No weakening tremor of exaltation softened his face as he looked upon the men whose endurance he had been able to do this thing. He waited until the white smoke of the last gun had drifted away on the breeze, until the snapping of the flag and the distant village sounds alone broke the stillness. We had not suffered all things for a reward, he said, but because a righteous cause may grow, and though our names may be forgotten, our deeds will be remembered. We have conquered a vast land that our children and our children's children may be freed from tyranny, and we have brought a just vengeance upon our enemies. I thank you one and all in the name of the Continental Congress and of that Commonwealth of Virginia for which you have fought. You are no longer Virginians, Kentuckians, Cascaskians, and Cahokians. You are Americans. He paused and we were silent, though his words moved us strongly. They were beyond us. I mentioned no deeds of heroism, of unselfishness, of lives saved at the peril of others, but I am the debtor of every man here for the years to come to see that he and his family have justice from the Commonwealth and the nation. Again he stopped, and it seemed to us watching that he smiled a little. I shall name one, he said, who has never lagged, who never complained, who starved that the weak might be fed and walk. David Richie, come here. I trembled, my teeth chattered as the water had never made them chatter. I believe I should have fallen before Tom, who reached out from the ranks. I stumbled forward in the days to where the colonel stood, and the cheering from the ranks was a thing beyond me. The colonel's hand on my head brought me to my senses. David Richie, he said, I give you publicly the thanks of the regiment. The parade is dismissed. The next thing I knew, I was on Cowan's shoulders, and he was tearing round and round the fort with two companies at his heels. The devil, said Terence McCann, he drummed us over the weather and threw the weather, and foe he would have drummed the sculpt from Hamilton's head, and the colonel had said the word by a gar, cried Antoine Lagrice. Now he drummed us on to Detroit. Out of the gate rushed Cowan, the frightened villagers scattering right and left, Antoine had a friend who lived in this street, and in ten minutes there was rum in the powder horns, and the toast was on to Detroit. Colonel Clark was sitting alone in the commanding officer's room of the garrison, and the afternoon sun sliding through the square of the window fell upon the maps and papers before him. He had sent for me. I halted in sheer embarrassment on the threshold, looked up at his face, and came on troubled. Davey, he said, do you want to go back to Kentucky? I should like to stay to the end, Colonel. I answered. The end, he said. This is the end. And Detroit, sir, I returned. Detroit, he cried bitterly. A man of sense measures his force and does not try the impossible. I could as soon march against Philadelphia. This is the end, I say, and the general must give way to the politician. And may God have mercy on the politician who will try to keep a people's affection without money or help from Congress. He fell back wearily in his chair while I stood astonished, wondering. I had thought to find him elated with victory. Congress or Virginia, said he, will have to pay Monsieur Viggo and Father Gabont and Monsieur Gratiot, and the other good people who have trusted me. You think they will do so? The Congress are far from here, I said. I, he answered, too far to care about you and me and what we have suffered. He ended abruptly and sat for a while staring out of the window at the figures crossing and recrossing the muddy parade ground. Tom Machestney goes tonight to Kentucky with letters to the county lieutenant. Here to go with him and then I shall have no one to remind me when I'm hungry and bring me harmony. I shall have no financier, no strategist for a tight place. He smiled a little sadly at my sorrowful look and then drew me to him and patted my shoulder. It's no place for a young lad and idle garrison. I think he continued presently. I think you have a future, David, if you do not lose your head. Kentucky will grow and conquer and in 20 years be a thriving community. And presently you will go to Virginia and study law and come back. Do you hear? Yes, Colonel. And I would tell you one thing, said he with force, serve the people as all true men should in a republic, but do not rely upon their gratitude. You will remember that? Yes, Colonel. A long time he paused, looking on me with a significance I did not then understand. And when he spoke again, his voice showed no trace of emotion, saving the note of it. You have been a faithful friend, David, when I needed loyalty. Perhaps the time may come again. Promise me that you will not forget me if I am unfortunate. Unfortunate, sir? I exclaimed. Goodbye, David, he said. And God bless you. I have work to do. Still I hesitated. He stared at me, but with kindness. What is it, David? He asked. Please, sir? I said, if I might take my drum, at that he laughed. You may, said he, you may. For chance when they need it again. I went out from his presence vaguely troubled to find Tom. And before the early sun had set, we were gliding down the Wabash in a canoe, past places forever dedicated to our agonies, towards Kentucky and Polly Ann. David, said Tom, I reckon she'll be standing under the cemetery waiting for us with a little shaver in her arms. And so she was. End of chapter 20. Book two, flotsam and jetsam of the crossing by Winston Churchill, chapter one. This Lieberbach recording is in the public domain. Chapter one in the cabin. The Eden of one man may be the inferno of his neighbor, and now I am to throw to the winds like leaves of a worthless manuscript some years of time and introduce you to a new Kentucky, a Kentucky that was not for the pioneer. One page of this manuscript might have told of a fearful winter when the snow lay in great drifts in the bare woods, when Tom and I fashioned canoes or noggins out of the great roots. When I knew in feminine bit of humanity cried in the bark cradle and Polly Ann sowed deer leather. Another page may a dozen could be filled with Indian horrors and bescades and massacres. And also I might have told how they drifted into this land hitherto unsoiled, the refuge cast off by the older colonies. I must add quickly that we got more of our share of their best stock along with this. No sooner had the sun begun to pit the snow hillocks than wild creatures came in from the mountains, haggard with hunger and hardship. They had left their homes in Virginia and the Carolinas in the autumn. An unheralded wonder of arctic fierceness had caught them in its grip, bitter tales they told of wives and children buried among the rocks. Fast on the heels of these wretched ones trooped the spring settlers in droves and I had seen whole churches march singing into the forts, the preacher leading and thanking God loudly that he had delivered them from the wilderness and the savage. The little forts would not hold them and they went out to hue clearings from the forest and to build cabins and stockades. And our own people starved and snowbound went out likewise. Tom and Polly and their little family and myself to the farm at the riverside. And while the water flowed between the stumps over the black land, we planted and plowed and prayed, always alert, watching north and south against the cunning of the Indians. But Tom was no husband man. He and his kind were the scouts, the advanced guard of civilization, not tillers of the soil or lovers of close communities. Father and father they went to feel for game and always they grumbled sorely against this horde which had driven the deer from his cover and the buffalo from his wallow. Looking back, I can recall one evening when the long summer twilight lingered to a close. Tom was lounging lazily against the big persimmon tree, smoking his pipe, the two children digging at the roots and Polly Anne seated on the doorlog of sowing. As I drew near, she looked up at me from her work. She was a woman upon whose eternal freshness industry made no more. Davey, she exclaimed, how you growed. I thought you'd be a whizzing little buddy. But this year you shot up like a corn stalk. My father was six feet two inches in his moccasins. I said, he'll be walloping me soon, said Tom with a grin. He took a long whiff at his pipe and added thoughtfully. I reckon this ain't no place for me now, with all the settler folks and land gravers coming through the gap. Tom, said I, there's a bit of a fall on the river here. I, he said, and nary a fish left. Something's better, I answered. We'll put a dam there in a mill and a hominy pounder and make our fortune grinding corn for the settlers, cried Polly Anne, showing a line of very white teeth. I always said you'd be a rich man, Davey. Tom was mildly interested and went with us at daylight to measure the fall. And he allowed that he would have more time to hunt if the mill were a success. For a month I had had the scheme in my mind where the dam was to be put, the race and the wondrous wheel rimmed with corn horns to dip the water. And fixed on the wheel there was to be a crank that worked the pounder in the mortar. So we were to grind until I could arrange with Mr. Scarlett, the new storekeeper in Harrods Town, to have two grinding stones fetched across the mountains. While the corn ripened and the mellows swelled and the flax flowered, our axes rang by the riverside. And sometimes as we worked, Cowan and Terrell and McCann and other long hunters would come and cheer good naturedly because we were turning civilized. Often they gave us a lift. It was September when the millstones arrived and I spent a joyous morning of final bargaining with Mr. Myron Scarlett. This Mr. Scarlett was from Connecticut and had been a quartermaster in the army and did much risk, brought clouds and hardware and scissors and buttons and broadcloth and corduroy across the Alleghenies and down the Ohio and Flat Boats. These he sold at great profit. We had no money, not even the worthless script that Congress issued, but a beaver skin was worth 18 shillings, a bear skin 10, and a fox or a deer or a wildcat less. Half the village watched the barter. The rest lounged sullenly about the land court, the land court, curse of Kentucky. It was just a windowless log house built outside the walls, our temple of avarice. The case was this. Henderson, for whose company Daniel Boone cut the wilderness road, believed that he had bought the country and issued grants therefore. Tom held one of these grants, alas, and many others whom I knew. Virginia repudiated Henderson. King-faced speculators bought acre upon acre and track upon track from the state and crossed the mountains to extort. Claims conflicted, titles lapped. There was the court set in the sunlight in the midst of a fair land, held by the shameless, thronged day after day by the homeless and the needy, jostling, quarreling, beseeching. Even as I looked upon this strife, a man stood beside me. Dratom, said the stranger, as he watched a hawk-eyed extortioner in drab, for these did not condescend to hunting shirts. Dratom, if I had my way, I'd ring the neck of every mother's son of them. I turned with a start, and there was Mr. Daniel Boone. Howdy, Davey, he said. You've grown some since you've been with Clark. He paused, and then continued in the same strain. It is the same at Boonesboro and up there at the fall settlement. The critters is everywhere, robbing men of their claims, Davey, said Mr. Boone, earnestly. You know that I come into Kentucky when it weren't nothing but wilderness, and risk my lifetime and again. Them varmints is worse than redskins. They've robbed me already of half my claims. Robbed you, I exclaimed, indignant that he of all men should suffer. I, he said, robbed me. They've took one claim after another, tracks that I staked out long before they heard of Kentucky. He rubbed his rifle barrel with his buckskin sleeve. I get a little for my skin and a little by surveying. But when the game goes, I reckon I'll go after it. Where, Mr. Boone, I asked. Where? Where are the varmints? Can't follow. Across the Mississippi into the Spanish wilderness. And leave Kentucky? I cried. Davey, he answered sadly. You can cope with them. They tell me you're building a mill up in Machesnes. And I reckon you're as cute as any of them. They beat me. I'm good for nothing but shooting and exploring. We stood silent for a while. Our attention caught by a quarrel, which had suddenly come out of the doorway. One of the men was Jim Willis, my friend of Clark's campaign, who had a Henderson claim near Shawnee Springs. The other was the hawk-eyed man of whom Boone had spoken, and fragments of their curses reached us where we stood. The hunting shirts surged around them, alert now at the prospect of a fight. Men came running in from all directions and shouts of hang him, Tomahawk him, were heard on every side. Mr. Boone did not move. It was a common enough spectacle for him, and he was not excitable. Moreover, he knew that the death of one extortioner, more or less, would have no effect on the system. They had become as the fouls of the air. I was across the mountain last month, said Mr. Boone presently. And one of them scoops had stole Campbell's silver spoons at Abingdon. Campbell was out after him for a week with a call of rope on his saddle, but the varmint got to cover. Mr. Boone wished me luck in my new enterprise, made me goodbye, and set out for Redstone, where he was to measure a track for a revolutionary. The speculator having been rescued from Mr. Willis's clutches by the sheriff, the crowd, good and naturedly, helped us load our stones between pack horses. And some of them followed us all the way home that they might see the grinding. Half of McAfee's new station had heard the news and came over likewise. And from that day we ground as much corn as could be brought to us from miles around. Polly Ann and I ran the mill and kept the accounts. Often never crisp autumn morning we heard a gobble gobble above the tumbling of the water and found a wild turkey perched on top of the hopper, eating his fill. Some of our meat we got that way. As for Tom, he was off and on. When the roving spirit seized him, he made journeys to the westward with Cowan and Ray. Generally they returned with packs of skins, but sometimes soberly, thanking heaven that their hair was left growing on their heads. This, and patrolling the wilderness road and other militia duties, made up Tom's life. No sooner was the mill fairly started than off he went to the Cumberland. I mention this not alone because I remember well the day of his return, but because of a certain happening then that had a heavy influence on my afterlife. The episode deals with an easy-mannered gentleman named Potts, who was the agent for a certain major coal fax of Virginia. Tom owned under Henderson Grant. The major had been given this and other lands for his services in the war. Mr. Potts arrived one rainy afternoon and found me standing alone under the little lean-to that covered the hopper. How we served him with the aid of McCann and Cowan and other neighbors and how we were near getting into trouble because of the prank will be seen later. The next morning I rode into Harrodstown, not wholly easy in my mind concerning the wisdom of the thing I had done. There was no one to advise me for Colonel Clark was far away, building a fort on the banks of the Mississippi. Tom laughed at the consequences. He cared little about his land and was for moving into the wilderness again. But for poly and sake I wished that we had treated the land agent less cavalierly. I was soon distracted from these thoughts by the sight of Harrodstown itself. I had no sooner ridden out of the far shade when I saw that the place was an uproar, men and women gathering in groups and running here and there between the cabins. Urging on the mare I cantered across the fields and the first person I met was James Ray. What's the matter? I asked. Matter enough. An army of redskins has crossed the Ohio and not a man to take command. My God! cried Ray pointing angrily at the swarms about the land office. What trash we got this last year. Kentucky can go to the devil. Have the stations be wiped out and not a trite do they care. Have you sent word to the colonel? I asked. If he was here, said Ray bitterly, he'd have half of them swinging inside an hour. I'll warrant he'd send them to the right about. I rode on into the town. Pots gone out of my mind. Apart from the land office crowds and looking on in silent rage stood a group of the old settlers, tall, lean, powerful yet impotent for lack of a leader. A contrast they were those buckskin clan pioneers to the ill assorted humanity they watched. Absorbed in struggles from the very lands they had won. Pire the eternal, said Jack Turrell. If the earth were to swallow them up, they'd keep on a dickering in hell. Something's got to be done, Captain Harrod put in gloomily. The red varmints will be on us in another day. In God's name, where's Clark? Hold, cried Fletcher Blount. What's that? The brawling about the land court too was suddenly hushed. Men stopped in their tracks, staring fixedly at three forms which had come out of the woods into the clearing. Redskins, or there's no devil, said Terrell. Redskins they were, but not the blanketed kind that drifted every day through the station. Their war paint gleamed in the light and the white edges of the feathered headdresses caught the sun. One held up in his right hand a white belt, token of peace on the frontier. Lord Almighty, said Fletcher Blount, be they cricks? Chickasaws by the headgear, said Terrell. Davey, you've got a horse. Right out and look him over. Nothing lost. I put the mare into a gallop and I passed over the very place where Polly Ann had picked me up and saved my life long since. The Indians came on at a dog trot, but when they were within fifty paces of me they halted abruptly. The chief waved the white belt around his head. Davey, says he, and I trembled from head to foot. How well I knew that voice. Colonel Clark, I cried and rode up to him. Thank God you were come, sir, said I, for the people here are land mad and the northern Indians are crossing the Ohio. He took my bridle and leaving the horse began to walk rapidly towards the station. I, he answered, I know it. A runner came to me with the tidings when I was building a fort on the Mississippi and I took Willis here and Sanders and came. I glanced at my old friends who granded me through the very stain on their faces. We reached a ditch through which the rain of the night before was draining from the fields. Clark dropped the bridle, stooped down and rubbed his face clean. Up he got again and flung the feathers from his head and I thought that his eyes twinkled despite the sternness of his look. Davey, my lad, said he, you and I have seen some strange things together. For chance we shall see stranger today. A shout went up for he had been recognized and Captain Herod and Ray and Terrell and Cowan, who had just ridden in, ran up to greet him and press his hand. He called them each by name these men whose loyalty had been proved, but said no word more nor paused in his stride until he had reached the edge of the mob of outland court. There he stood for a full minute and we who knew him looked on silently and waited. The turmoil had begun again, the speculators calling out in strident tones, the settlers bargaining and pushing and all clamoring to be heard. While there was money to be made or land to be got, they had no ear for the public wheel. A man shouldered his way through roughly and they gave back, cursing, surprised. He reached the door and flinging those who blocked it right and left entered. There he was recognized and his name flew from mouth to mouth. Clark! He walked up to the table, strewn with books and beads. Silence, he thundered, but there was no need. They were still for once. This court is closed, he cried, while Kentucky is in danger. Not a deed shall be signed, nor an acre granted, until I come back from the Ohio. Out you go! Out they went indeed, judge, brokers, speculators, the evicted and the triumphant together. And when the place was empty, Clark turned the key and thrust it into his hunting shirt. He stood for a moment on the step and his eyes swept the crowd. Now, he said, there have been many to claim this land, but who will follow me to defend it? As I live, they cheered him. Hands were flung up that were past counting, and men who were barely rested from the hardships of the wilderness trail shouted their readiness to go, but others slump away and were found that morning grumbling and cursing the chants that had brought them to Kentucky. Within the hour, the news had spread to the farms, and men rode into Herod's town to tell the colonel of many who were leaving the plow and the furrow and the axe in the wood and starting off across the mountains in anger and fear. The colonel turned to me as he set writing down the names of the volunteers. Davey said he, when you're grown, you shall not stay at home, I promise you. Take your mare and ride for your life to Machesney and tell him to choose ten men and go to the crab orchard on the wilderness road. Tell him for me to turn back every man, woman and child who tries to leave Kentucky. I met Tom coming in from the field with his raw hide harness over his shoulders. Polly Ann stood calling him in the door, and the squirrel broth was steaming on the table. He did not wait for it. Kissing her, he flung himself into the saddle I had left, and we watched him mutely as he waved back to us from the edge of the woods. In the night I found myself sitting out in bed, listening to a running and stamping near the cannon. Polly Ann was stirring. Davey, she whispered, the stock is on easy. We peered out of the loophole together and threw the little orchard we had planted. The moon flooded the fields and beyond it the forest was a dark blur. I can recall the scene now, the rude mill standing by the water side, the twisted rail fences and the black silhouettes of the horses and cattle as they stood bunched together. Behind us little Tom stirred in his sleep and startled us. That very evening Polly Ann had frightened him into obedience by telling him that the Shawnees would get him. What was there to do? McAfee station was four miles away and Ray's clearing, too. Ray was gone with Tom. I could not leave Polly Ann alone. There was nothing for it but to wait. Silently that the children might not be waked and lurking savage might not hear. We put the powder and bullets in the middle of the room and loaded the guns and pistols. But Polly Ann had learned to shoot. She took the loopholes of one side of the cabin, eye of the other two, and then began the fearful watching and waiting which the frontier knows so well. Suddenly the cattle stared again and stampeded to the other corner of the field. There came a whisper from Polly Ann. What is it? I answered, running over to her. Look out, she said. What do you see near the mill? Her sharp eyes had not deceived her, for mine perceived plainly a dark form, skulking in the hickory grove. Next a movement behind the rail fence and darting back to my side of the house I made out a long black body wiggling at the edge of the withered corn patch. They were surrounding us. How I wished that Tom were home. A stealthy sound began to intrude itself upon my ears. Listening intently, I thought it came from the side of the cabin where the lean-to was, where we stored our wood in winter. The black shadow fell on that side and into a patch of bushes. Peering out of the loophole, I could perceive nothing there. The noise went on at intervals. All at once there grew on me with horror the discovery that there was digging under the cabin. How long the sound continued, I know not. It might have been an hour. It might have been less. Now I thought I heard it under the wall, now beneath the punchions of the floor. The pitchy blackness within was such that we could not see the boards moving, and therefore we must kneel down and feel them from time to time. Yes, this one was lifting from its bed on the hard floor beneath. I was sure of it. It rose an inch, then an inch more. Gripping the handle of my tomahawk, I prayed for guidance in my stroke, for the blade might go wild in the darkness. Upward crept the board, and suddenly it was gone from the floor. I swung a full circle into my horror. I felt the axe plunging into soft flesh and crutching on a bone. I had missed the head. A yell shattered the night as the punchion fell with a rattle on the boards, and my tomahawk was gone from my hand. Without the fierce war cry of the Shawnees that I knew so well echoed around the long walls, and the door trembled with a blow. The children awoke crying. There was no time to think. My great fear was that the devil in the cabin would kill Polly Ann. Just then I heard her calling out to me. Hide, I cried. Hide under the shakedown. Has he got you? I heard her answer, and then the sound of a scuffle that maddened me. Knife in hand I crept slowly about, and put my fingers on a man's neck and side. Next Polly Ann careened against me, and I lost him again. Davey, Davey! I heard her gasp. Look out for the floor! It was too late. The punchion rose under me. I stumbled, and it fell again. Once more the awful changing notes of the war whoop sounded without. A body bumped on the boards. A white light rose before my eyes, and a sharp pain leaked in my side. Then all was black again, but I had my senses still, and my fingers closed around the knotted muscles of an arm. I thrust the pistol in my hand against flesh, and fired. Two of us fell together. But the thought of Polly Ann got me staggering to my feet again, calling her name. By the grace of God I heard her answer. Are you hurt, Davey? No, said I. No, and you? We drifted together. To a she who had the presence of mine. To chest! Quick, the chest! We stumbled over a body and reaching it. We seized the handles, and with all our strength hauled it a thwart, the loose punchion that seemed to be lifting even then. A mighty splintering shook the door. To the ports! cried Polly Ann, as our heads knocked together. To find the rifles and prime them seemed to take an age. Next I was staring through the loophole, along a barrel, and beyond it were three black forms in line on a long beam. I think we fired Polly Ann and I at the same time. One fell. We saw a comedy of the beam dropping heavily on the foot of another, and he limping off with a guttural howl of rage and pain. I fired a pistol at him, but missed him, and then I was ramming a powder charge down the long barrel of the rifle. Suddenly there was silence. Even the children had ceased crying. Outside in the door yard, a feathered figure writhed like a snake towards the fence. The moon still etched the picture in black and white. Shots awoke me, I think. Distant shots. And they sounded like the ripping and tearing of cloth for a wound. To us no new sound to me. Davey, dear, said a voice tenderly. Out of the midst, the tear stained face of Polly Ann bent over me. I put up my hand and dropped it again with a cry. Then my senses coming with a rush, the familiar objects of the cabin outlined themselves. Tom's winter hunting shirt, Polly Ann's woollen shift and sun bonnet on their pegs. The big stone chimney, the ladder to the loft. The closed door with a long jagged line across it where the wood was splintered. And, dearest of all, the chevy forms of Peggy and little Tom playing on the trundle bed. Then my glance wandered to the floor, and on the pungents were three stains. I closed my eyes. Again came a far off rattle, like stones falling from a great height down a rocky bluff. What's that? I whispered. They're fighting at McAfee Station, said Polly Ann. She put her cool hand on my head, and little Tom climbed up on the bed and looked up into my face, wistfully calling my name. Oh, Davey, said his mother, I thought you were never coming back. And the red skins, I asked. She drew the child away lest he hurt me and shuddered. I reckoned it was only a war party, she answered. The rest is at McAfee's, and if they beat them all, she stopped abruptly. We shall be saved, I said. I shall never forget that day. Polly Ann left my side only to feed the children, and to keep watch out of the loopholes. And I lay on my back, listening and listening to the shots. At last these became scattered. Then, though we strained our ears, we heard them no more. Was the fort taken? The suns lit across the heavens and shot narrow blades of light, now through one loophole and now through another, until a ray slanted from the western wall and rested upon the red and black paint of two dead bodies in the corner. I stared with horror. I was afeard to open the door and throw him out, said Polly Ann apologetically. Still I stared. One of them had a great cleft across his face. But I thought I hit him in the shoulder, I exclaimed. Polly Ann thrust her hand gently across my eyes. Davey, you mustn't talk, she said. That's a deer. Drowsiness seized me. But I resisted. You killed him, Polly Ann. I murmured. You hush, said Polly Ann. And I slept again. End of chapter one. Book two, chapter two of The Crossing by Winston Churchill. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter two. The beggars are come to town. They was at destitute, said Tom. It was a pity to see them. And they'd be grand folks, you say, said Polly Ann. Grand folks, I reckon. And helpless as babes on the wilderness trail. They had two niggers, his nigger and hers, and they was tuckered to for a fact. Lossy, exclaimed Polly Ann. Be still, honey. Taking a piece of cornpone from the cupboard, she bent over and thrust it between little Peggy's chubby fingers. Be still, honey, and listen to what your pause says. Where'd you find them, Tom? To as Jim Ray found them, said Tom. He went up to grab orchard according to the colonel's orders, and we was there three days. Y'all'd have seen the trash, we turned back, Polly Ann. Most of them was scared, plumb, crazy. And they was forgetting out of Kentucky at any cost. Some was for fighting their way through us. The skulks, exclaimed Polly Ann. They tried to kill you. What did you do? Tom grinned his mouth full of bacon. Do, says he. We shot a couple of them in the legs and arms and bound them up again. They was in a tar and rage. I'm more feared of a scared man, a real scared man, nor a rattler. They cussed us till they was hoarse. Said they'd have us hung and clarked too. Said they had a right to go back to Virginia, if they had a mind. And what did you say? Demanded Polly Ann, pausing in her work, her eyes flashing with resentment. Did you tell them there was cowards to want to settle lands and not fight for them? Other folks lands, too. We didn't tell them nothing, said Tom. Just sent them kitten back to the stations where they come from. I reckon they won't go fooling with Clark's boys again, said Polly Ann, resuming a vigorous rubbing of the skillet. He was telling me about these fine folks, she fetched home. She tossed her head in the direction of the open door, and I wondered if the fine folks were outside. Oh yeah, said Tom. They was coming this way from the Carolinis. Jim Ray went out to look for a deer and found them off in the trail. By the eternal day he was tuckered. He was the worst, Jim said, lying down on a bed of laurels she and the niggers made. She has spirit, that woman. Jim fed him and he got up. She wouldn't eat nothing. Made Jim put him on his horse. She walked. I can't make out why them aristocrats wants to come to Kentucky. They're a sight too tender. Poor things, said Polly Ann, compassionately. So you fetched him home. They had no place to go, said he, and I reckoned would give them time to fetch breath and turn around. I told them living in Cantuck was kind of rough. Mercy, said Polly Ann, to think that they was used to silver spoons and linen and niggers to wait on them. Tom, you must shoot a turkey, and I'll do my best to give them a good supper. Tom rose obediently and seized his coonskin hat. She stopped him with a word. Tom, I, may have, may have, David would know him. He's been to Charleston with the gentry there. May have, agreed Tom. Poor little devil, said he. He's had a hard time. He'll be right again soon, said Polly Ann. He's been sleeping that way off and on for a week. Her voice faltered into a note of tenderness as her eyes rested on me. I reckon we owe David a heap, Polly Ann, said he. I was about to interrupt, but Polly Ann's next remark arrested me. Tom, said she. He ought to be educated. Educated? exclaimed Tom with a kind of dismay. Yes, educated, she repeated. He ain't like you and me. He's different. He ought to be a lawyer or something. Tom reflected. I answered. The colonel says that same thing. You ought to be sent over the mountains to get learning. And we'll be missing him sore, said Polly Ann with a sigh. I wanted to speak then, but the words would not come. Where have they gone, said Tom. To take a walk, said Polly Ann and laughed. The gentry has said, fancies is that. Tom, I reckon I'll fly over to Mrs. McCann's and beg some of that prom bacon she has. Tom picked up his rifle and they went out together. I lay for a long time reflecting. To the strange guests whom Tom and the kindness of his heart had brought back and befriended, I gave little attention. I was overwhelmed by the love which had just been revealed to me. And so I was to be educated. It had been in my mind these many years, but I had never spoken of it to Polly Ann. Dear Polly Ann. My eyes filled at the thought that she herself had determined upon this sacrifice. There were footsteps at the door and these I heard and he did not. Then there came a voice, a woman's voice, modulated and trained in the perfections of speech and in the art of treating things lightly. At the sound of that voice, I caught my breath. What a pastoral. Harry, if we have sought for virtue in the wilderness, we have found it. When have we ever sought for virtuous error? It was the man who answered and stirred another chord in my memory. When indeed, said the woman, his electorate, that is denied us, I fear me. Ye gad, we have run the gamut. All but that. I thought the woman sighed. Our hosts are gone out, she said. Bless their simple souls. Tis our caddy, Harry, where thieves do not break in and steal. That's biblical, isn't it? She paused and joined in the man's laugh. I remember she stomped abruptly. Thieves, said he, not in our sense. And yet a fortnight ago, this sylvan retreat was the scene of murder and sudden death. Yes, Indians, said the woman, but they're beaten off and forgotten. Troubles do not last here. Did you see the boy, he and there in the corner, getting well of a fearful hacking? Mrs. Machesney says he saved her and her brats. And I, Machesney told me, said the man, let's have a peep at him. In they came, and I looked on the woman and would have leaped from my bed had the strength been in me. Superb she was, though her close fitting traveling gown of green cloth was frayed and torn by the briars, and the beauty of her face enhanced by the marks of I know not what trials and emotions. Little dark penciled lines under the eyes were nigh robbing these of the haughtiness I had once seen and hated. Set high on her hair was a curving green hat with a feather ill suited to the wilderness. I looked at the man. He was as ill equipped as she. A London tailor must have cut his suit of gray. A single band of linen soiled by the journey was wound about his throat. And I remember oddly the button stuck on his knees and cuts, and these silk embroidered in a crisscross patterned lighter gray. Some had been torn off, as for his face was as handsome as ever for dissipation said well upon it. My thoughts flew back to that day long gone when a friendless boy rode up a long drive to a pillared mansion. I saw again the picture. The horse with the craning neck, the liveried servant at the bridle, the listless young gentleman with the shiny boots reclining on the horse block, and above him under the portico, the grand lady whose laugh had made me sad. And I remember too the wild neglected lad who had been to me as a brother, warmhearted and generous, who had shared what he had with a foundling who had wept with me in my first great sorrow. Where was he? For I was face to face once more with Mrs. Temple and Mr. Harry Riddle. The lady started as she gazed at me and her tired eyes widened. She clutched Mr. Riddle's arm. Harry, she cried. Harry, he puts me in mind of someone I cannot think. Mr. Riddle laughed nervously. There, there Sally, says he. All brats resemble somebody. I've heard you say so a dozen times. She turned upon him an appealing glance. Oh, she said with a little catch of her breath. Is there no such thing as oblivion? Is there a place in the world that is not haunted? I'm cursed with memory. All the lack of it answered Mr. Riddle pulling out a silver snuff box from his pocket and staring at it ruefully. Damn, the snuff I fetched from Paris is gone. Oh, but a pinch. Here's a real tragedy. It was the same in Rome. The lady continued unheating when we met the Isards and at Venice that nasty Colonel Tarleton saw us at the opera. In London, we must need to run into the manners from Maryland. In Paris, in Paris, we were safe enough. Mr. Riddle threw in easterly. And why? She flashed back at him. He did not answer that. A truce with your fancies, madam, said he. Behold, a soul of good nature. I have followed you through half the civilized countries of the globe. None of them are good enough. You must needs cross the ocean again and come to the wilds. We nearly die on the trail, are picked up by a Samaritan in buckskin and taken into the bosom of his worthy family. And forsooth, you look at a backwood's urchin and are nigh to swooning. Hush, Harry, she cried, starting forward and peering into my face. He will hear you. Tut! said Harry. What if he does? London and Paris are words to him. We might as well be speaking French. And I'll take my oath he's sleeping. The corner where LA was dark for the cabin had no windows. And if my life had depended upon speaking, I could have found no fit words then. She turned for me and her mood changed swiftly, for she laughed lightly, musically, and put a hand on his shoulder. For chance I am ghost-ridden, she said. There not ghosts of a past happiness at all events, he answered. She sat down on the stool before the hearth and, declasting her fingers upon her knee, looked thoughtfully into the embers of the fire. Presently, she began to speak in a low, even voice. He, looking down at her, his feet apart, his hand thrust backwards towards the heat. Harry, she said, do you remember all our contrivances? How you used to hold my hand in the garden under the table while I talked brazenly to Mr. Mason. And how jealous Jack Temple used to get, she laughed again softly, always looking at the fire. Damnably jealous, agreed Mr. Riddle, and yawned. Served him devilish right from Mary and you, and he was a blind fool for five long years. Yes, blind, the lady agreed. How could he have been so blind? How well I recall the day he rode after us in the woods. For as the parson told, curse him, said Mr. Riddle. We should have gone that night if your courage had held. My courage, she cried, flashing a look upwards. My foresight, a pretty mess we had made of it without my inheritance. It is small enough, the Lord knows. In Europe we should have been drakes. We should have starved in the wilderness with you a-farming. He looked down at her curiously. Devilish queer talk, said he. But while we're at it, I wonder where Temple is now. He got aboard the King's frigate with a price on his head. Williams told me he saw him in London at White's. Ev, have you ever heard, Sarah? She shook her head, her glance, returning to the ashes. No, she answered. Faith, says Mr. Riddle. He'll scarce turn up here. She did not answer that, but set motionless. He'll scarce turn up here in these wiles, Mr. Riddle repeated. And what I am wondering, Sarah, is how the devil we're to live here. How do these good people live, who helped us when we were starving? Mr. Riddle flung his hand eloquently around the cabin. There was something of disgust in the gesture. You see, he said, love in a cottage. But it is love, said the lady in a low tone. He broke into laughter. Sally, he cried, I have visions of you gracing the board at which we set today. Padding journey cakes on the hearth, stirring squirrel broth with the same pride that you once planned to route. Cleaning the pots and pans and standing anxious at the doorway, staring through a sun bonnet for your lord and master. My lord and master, said the lady, and there was so much of scorn in the words that Mr. Riddle winced. Um, he said, I grant now that you could make pan to shine like pure glasses, that you could cook bacon to a turn, although I would have laid a hundred guineas against it, some years ago. What then? Are you to be contented with four log walls? With the intellectual companionship of the machestneys and their friends? Are you to depend for excitement upon the chances of having the hair neatly cut from your head by red fiends? Come, we'll go back to the Rue Saint Dominique, to the suppers and the card parties of the Countess. We'll be rid of regrets for a life upon which we've turned our backs forever. She shook her head, sadly. It's no use, Harry, said she. We'll never be rid of regrets. We'll never have a barony, like Temple Bow, and races every week and gentry round about, but damn it, the rebels have spoiled all that since the war. Those are not the regrets I mean, answered Mrs. Temple. What then, in Heaven's name, he cried. You were not want to be thus, but now I vow you go beyond me. What then? She did not answer, but set leaning forward over the harp, he staring at her in angry perplexity. A sound broke the afternoon stillness, the pattering of small bare feet on the punchions. A tremor shook the woman's shoulders, and little Tom stood before her, a quaint figure in a butternut smock, his blue eyes questioning. He laid a hand on her arm. Then a strange thing happened. With a sudden impulse, she turned and flung her arms about the boy and strained him to her and kissed his brown hair. He struggled, but when she released him, he sat very still on her knee, looking into her face. For he was a solemn child. The lady smiled at him, and there were two splashes like raindrops on her fair cheeks. As for Mr. Riddle, he went to the door, looked out, and took a last pinch of snuff. Here's the mistress of the house coming back, he cried, and singing like the shepherdess in the opera. It was Polly Ann indeed. At the sound of his mother's voice, little Tom jumped down from the lady's lap and ran past Mr. Riddle at the door. Mrs. Temple's thoughts were gone across the mountains. And what is that you have under your arm? Said Mr. Riddle as he gave back. I fetched some prime bacon for your supper, sir, said Polly Ann, all rosy from her walk. What I have ain't fit to give you. Mrs. Temple rose. My dear, she said, what you have is too good for us. And if you do such a thing again, I shall be very angry. Lord, ma'am, exclaimed Polly Ann, and you used to dainies and silver and linen. Tom is going to try to get a turkey for you. She paused and looked compassionately at the lady. Bless you, ma'am. You're that tuckered from the mountains, because a fearsome journey. Yes, said the lady simply, I am tired. Small wonder, exclaimed Polly Ann, to think what you've been through. Your husband near to Diana for your eyes, and ye, a risk in your own life to save him. So Tom tells me, when Tom goes out of heightened redskins on that fidgety, I can't sit still. I wouldn't let him know what I feel for the world. But well, ye know the pain of it, who love your husband like that? The lady would have smiled bravely had the strength been given her. She tried, and then with a shudder, she hid her face in her hands. Oh, don't, she exclaimed. Don't, Mr. Riddle went out. There there, ma'am, she said. I had no right to speak, and ye fair worn out. She drew her gently into a chair. Sit down, ma'am, and don't she stir till supper's ready. She brushed her eyes with her sleeve, and stepping briskly to my bed bent over me. Davey, she said. Davey, how be ye? Davey, it was the lady's voice. She stood facing us, and never while I live, shall I forget that which I saw in her eyes. Some resemblance, it bore to the look of the hunted deer. But in the animal it is dumb, appealing. Understanding made the look of the woman terrible to behold. Understanding, I, and courage. For she did not lack this last quality. Polly Ann gave back in a kind of dismay, and I shivered. Yes, I answered. I am David Richie. You dare to judge me? She cried. I knew not why she said this. To judge you? I repeated. Yes, to judge me? She answered. I know you, David Richie, and the blood that runs in you. Your mother was a foolish saint, she laughed, who lifted her eyebrows when I married her brother, John Temple. That was her condemnation of me, and it stung me more than had a thousand sermons, a doting saint, because she followed your father into the mountain wiles to her death for a whim of his. And your father, a Calvinist fanatic, who had no mercy on sin, save for that particular weakness of his own. Stop, Mrs. Temple, I cried, lifting up in bed, and to my astonishment, she was silenced, looking at me in amazement. You had your vengeance when I came to you, when you turned from me with the lift of your shoulders at the news of my father's death. And now, and now, she repeated questioningly. Now I thought you were changed, I said slowly, for the excitement was telling on me. You listened, she said. I pitted you. Oh, pity, she cried, my God, that you should pity me. She strengthened and summoned all the spirit that was in her. I would rather be called a name than have the pity of you and yours. You cannot change it, Mrs. Temple, I answered and fell back on the Nettlebark sheets. You cannot change it. I heard myself repeating as though it were another's voice, and I knew that Polly Ann was bending over me and calling me. Where did they go, Polly Ann? I asked. Across the Mississippi to the lands of the Spanish King, said Polly Ann, and where in those dominions I demanded. John Sanders took them as far as the falls, Polly Ann answered. He loud they were going to say Louis, but they never said a word. I reckon they'll be hunted as long as they live. I had thought of them much as I lay on my back recovering from the fever, the fever for which Mrs. Temple was to blame. Yet I bore her no malice and many other thoughts I had, probing back into my childhood memories for the solving of problems there. I know you come of gentle folks, Davey. Polly Ann had said when they talked together. So I was first cousin to Nick and nephew of that selfish gentleman, Mr. Temple, in whose affectionate care I had been left in Charleston by my father, and my father, who had he been. I remembered the speech that he had used and taught me and how his neighbors had dubbed him aristocrat. But Mrs. Temple was gone, and it was not in likelihood that I should ever see her more. End of chapter two.