3 The Tale the Forest Told

I met, the next morning, Winchester, the English trader with whom I had come, an honest man of open countenance, and we walked together. Yet we said little, each finding his thoughts sufficient for the moment.

I was of the forest now, and the sight of this little town rising from the recent wilderness was unreal to me. I shut my eyes, and that wilderness, sombre and unconquerable, came back again. The veneer of civilization seemed so thin and weak that a hostile touch must sweep it away. But I knew better. Where the man of my race had come to make his home there he would stay. Yet it would be a bitter struggle, and I sighed for those around me, though I saw then nothing but peace hovering over a beautiful open country of grassy hills and slopes, with the little city set in the centre like a jewel.

While we walked a procession came into the town, and it was of a kind not strange to the West. Two half-grown girls, rescued from the savages, were just returning to their own people, and, even as we looked, those who loved them most ran to meet the saved as if they had risen from the dead, and others crowded about, with an involuntary wish to share in the joy. Soon I saw Miss Carew standing near, and her eyes were wet.

“What you told no longer seems unreal and far away,” she said.

“There is scarcely a family in Kentucky that has not lost some one,” I replied.

“But these have come back.”

“Most of them never come back.”

Jasper approached at that moment, and began to talk to her, ignoring my presence. He would have her to think that he took a philosophical view of all such incidents. The vanguard of every nation must suffer; it shed its blood that those who came later might reap a harvest from the soil thus so richly watered. But his fine theories had no effect upon her then, and being ill-timed, were of little profit to his own cause. Yet he went with her back to her father’s house, and Winchester and I remained in the open air, talking with those whom we knew upon the one topic—the advance of St. Clair and the expected destruction of the Northwestern Confederacy.

Kentucky, I repeat, had been making a lone fight, begun when our Union was in the desperate throes of the Revolutionary War, and could send no help. The resolute vanguard was surrounded by a mighty wilderness in which dwelt a wary, numerous, and cruel foe, who continually struck at it, emerging from those shades when no one knew that they came, and hiding in them again when the blow had fallen. Men bled and suffered, but never gave back an inch. I knew the dangers clustering so thickly around these people, and I knew, too, the joy that they felt as the army of St. Clair prepared for its advance into the great Northwestern forests to meet their bitter and treacherous enemy. The East, so populous and wealthy by comparison with the West, had not forgotten them, and was coming to their defence; they would be released from the long scourge, and could now develop the land as they pleased. Theirs was a rich and fine country, well worth the toil of any race to win, and they had my sympathy both in their sufferings and the hope of release.

I went again, despite Jasper’s warning eyes, to the house of Mr. Carew, and in the presence of many spoke boldly with his daughter. I saw that I had stirred her imagination. I was a rover of the great wilderness; I seemed to her wild in aspect, and yet I spoke a cultivated tongue; it was the contrast that appealed to her, though she did not know it. I too was drawn, but it was by the sight of a beautiful face and the sound of a familiar accent after so many years.

As I talked to her I was smitten suddenly and so keenly with the longing for home that I was willing to risk everything, and Jasper’s warning seemed to me a little thing. After all, I had nothing to lose.

Mr. Carew received me with smooth words; it was not his part to be either cold or warm until he knew his man better. I had read him from the first—a fencer by nature, one always seeking to test the guard of another and measure his skill and value to himself, John Carew. He was, in truth, to use another comparison, his own yardstick.

“You go soon to join St. Clair?” said Miss Carew to me.

“Such is my intention,” I replied. “All in the West should serve now when there is so much need of it.”

“And St. Clair will get a valuable soldier in Mr. Lee,” said Jasper, who was near.

“I do not doubt it,” said Miss Carew, coming warmly to my defence as she saw Jasper’s purpose to gibe.

“An efficient and valuable officer,” continued Jasper. He had given me his warning, which I had defied, and now it was evident to my mind that he wished to torture me in the presence of Miss Carew.

“I infer, from what Captain Lee said, that you have been a soldier?” she asked, turning bright and inquiring eyes upon me.

“Captain Lee sees fit to jest,” I replied calmly. “I shall not be an officer with St. Clair; merely a common soldier, or rather a scout. A life spent in the wilderness fits me for nothing else.”

She did not accept my statement wholly, an air of doubt hanging over her, increased speedily by Jasper’s words. The man had in him something of the cat, liking to inflict cruelty for cruelty’s sake. He called the past to my mind by a hundred suggestions and in a hundred ways, and yet at no time did he say anything that would give Miss Carew a clew. No, that was not his purpose. He would save his knowledge of me to use when there was a profit in it. It was not Jasper’s way to waste any resource. But he let me alone by-and-bye, and I resolved to have a plain talk with him as soon as I might.

Miss Carew, with an insistence which I knew was steadily swelling Jasper’s anger—and I was glad then to have his anger—kept me beside her. She wanted to hear more of the great wilderness, of the woods so dense and dark that the sunlight never entered them, of rivers unmarked and unnamed, of the vast plains beyond, and of adventures by flood and forest. The fascination and mystery of the mighty West were upon her, and though I was loath to tell at first, I soon found myself launched upon the full stream of narrative, current and wind together carrying me on. She listened like a new Desdemona, and when I stopped suddenly, recalling to myself that I was about to lose my caution, she exclaimed:

“It is, indeed, to have been a man to have seen and to have done all these things!”

“But not many can get the chance,” said Jasper, over her shoulder. “There are few of us who have cause to turn wilderness rovers.”

She wheeled upon him with a questioning look, but he said nothing more, and I, waiting until he left for the evening, followed close behind him.

“You wished to talk with me two nights ago, Cousin Jasper,” I said, “and now I wish to talk with you.”

“Well?”

“I told you then that I should serve with St. Clair.”

“And I warned you against it.”

“So you did, but I chose to let the warning pass; instead, I wish now to give you one. If you undertake to deride or torture me I shall reply with the sword. I do not fear you, Jasper Lee.”

He gave me a look which he intended to be one of scorn, but it fell before mine.

“You grow bold in the light of a lady’s smile,” he said.

I felt my face flush despite myself.

“Oh, I have seen how Rose Carew hung upon your words,” he continued. “You spin a fine tale, and any girl might well listen, but think who and what you are to dare so much.”

“I have not dared anything yet,” I said, “and your threat upon that point is not needed.”

He changed suddenly from a hostile to a friendly air, asking me of my life in the woods, St. Clair’s probable line of advance and the chance that the allied forces of the tribes would await his coming. He was to be on the general’s staff, he added, and he anticipated honours sufficient to warm the heart of any man. I said him nay in no case, and, even as we talked, runners arrived calling for volunteers to serve with St. Clair. A great and crushing blow was to be struck, and the Kentucky militia must help.

There was a willing response, the way being prepared already. One company left Danville on the following day, and another, I heard, had gone from Lexington. The border was on fire with ardour, and people spoke of the time soon to come when the Indian tomahawk should have no more terrors for them.

I felt that I too ought to hasten, and yet I lingered a little longer, receiving a day or two later a message from Mr. Carew that he wished to see me again.

“You are going with St. Clair,” he said, when I came, “and so is Captain Jasper Lee. He is a young man who is dear to me, and with your knowledge of the forest you may help him in this arduous campaign. I think I can rely upon you to be his good friend, can I not?”

This was a strange request to make of me, that I should be the ally of Jasper, of all men in the world, in a measure watching over him and contributing to his future, and it seemed such a jest of Fate that I was tempted to smile. Yet I refrained, nor could I see anything in Mr. Carew’s look to indicate a sense of the true situation.

“Captain Lee shall have all the aid that I can give him,” I replied, and I spoke with truthful intent. “Perhaps he will need it. Our Eastern officers do not appreciate the immensity and dangers of the wilderness.”

I was full of the subject, and I began to tell him of the vast distances, the wily character of the foe, and the ignorance inherent in such an army as St. Clair led, but he scoffed at me.

“Think you,” he said, “that a nation which fought, and fought with success, all the power of Great Britain, has need to fear a few prowling savages?”

And with that I was forced to be content. He would not hear more of such talk, his mind being set upon his great land enterprises, already counting with eager anticipation the profits of the soil on which the tribes still dwelt. Then he told me that he was going on the following day to the Falls of the Ohio, and his daughter with an escort would follow later. His wife, an invalid who had come down the Ohio by boat, and who was not yet prepared to take the land journey to Danville, was there now, waiting for them.

“I shall be at the Falls myself shortly,” I said, “as my duties will take me that way.”

He invited me with much courtesy, in such event, to visit him and his family, and again he gave me that shrewd look by which he seemed to estimate my worth. It was increasingly evident that he thought me useful to him, and did not intend that I should wander again into the forest without returning a dividend upon my value.

I bade Miss Carew good-bye the next day, and Jasper, who was present, did not like my appearance there; nor did I fancy his calm air of ownership.

“You go into the great wilderness,” she said. “I wish sometimes that I were a man, that I might penetrate its mysteries.”

“It is well enough for men,” I said, “but not for women.”

“An excellent place for some men,” said Jasper, with cunning intimation. She glanced quickly at him and then at me, but our eyes showed nothing, and presently I left her, glad that my face was turned again toward the forest. She recalled too much. I liked to be in her presence, but it made me think, nevertheless, of all that I had lost, and the thought was not pleasant. I had not spent so many years in putting down memory to have it rise afresh at the mere sound of a woman’s voice, and my mind turned now toward the forest and my chosen comrade, Osseo, who would meet me beyond the Ohio.

Winchester and I travelled together, he intending to follow St. Clair at once, and I to join the general a little later, a letter which reached me at Lexington from Colonel Darke, of the Kentucky militia, asking me first to obtain news of the tribes and their intentions. I saw, as we advanced, more fully than ever before, the work that was going on west of the mountains. On every side hung the cloud of Indian war—a kind of war so terrible and ghastly that the whole tale of it can never be told—but the people still came, down the rivers, through the forest, and over the hills, stopping at nothing, daunted by no report of suffering from those who had gone before. The armies, the red and the white, gathered, but, careless of either, the men, the women, and the children advanced, lured by tales of rich soil and good climate, and anxious for new wonders. They knew that the tomahawk was there threatening them, but they dared it. If one fell beneath its edge, another was left, and the human stream flowed on.

“The earth-hunger is the keenest hunger of all, and our Anglo-Saxon race suffers most from it,” said Winchester to me.

And when I judge from what I have seen and heard, I think that he was right.

I knew that the tribes would not yield this land without a struggle, and with the advantage they had in their forests I was unable to say which would succeed. They were gathering now for an effort mightier than the red man had ever made before on our soil. The great chief, Little Turtle, had called them to war, and all the valiant and numerous tribes of the Northwest were coming, the Miamis, the Shawnees, and the Wyandots leading them. Already the daring settlers beyond the Ohio beheld bloody warnings.

Winchester left me at the river, and I passed into the Northwest, following for days upon Indian traces, and finding everywhere new proofs that St. Clair would have to face the might of the allied tribes. Then I turned back toward the south, and at a place appointed by us a month before I met my friend Osseo, whose name means in the Iroquois tongue Son of the Evening Star.

He was a strange Indian in many ways. I never knew his tribe. He would paint himself, but he did not follow any method by which he could be classified. He wore his hair sometimes in the scalp lock, and then would let it fall down his back in long, coarse strings like a horse’s mane. He had some relics of a missionary education, the better parts of which he seemed to like, and he was disposed to be friendly to the whites, being well hated by the Northwestern Indians. I have always thought that he was the last survivor of some old Eastern tribe, a man without a nation. I should add to this that he was the finest master of woodcraft I ever knew, and my good friend. He was painted now as a warrior of the nation of the Iroquois, of the tribe of the Mohawks, of the totem Cahenhisnhonen.¹ He smiled when we met, and the corner of his eye drooped in a most suggestive manner. Osseo had a sense of humour.

“It was as such that I went among them five days ago,” he said. “I was Nokalis, the Mohawk who had come from the far East to help them fight the white men, and lo! I bring news that the warriors continue to gather; they come from all the forest, and even from the grass plains beyond. It is not an idle wind that will blow into the face of the white general.”

I knew that Osseo spoke the truth. What his eyes beheld was but cumulative testimony to the proof of mine, and I lingered no longer, hastening on with him toward the Falls of the Ohio.

It was only a little town by the Falls that they had built—Louisville they called it, after the French king, to whom we owed much—and my business there was of scant weight, but I did not turn back from the journey. Perhaps I should now be with St. Clair, I reflected as I went on, but it would be easy for Osseo and myself, travelling so light, to overtake the general, and I was resolute to keep my promise to Rose Carew.

I did not seek to conceal to myself the chief reason that took me to the Falls. The face of woman is beautiful to all men, and one who has lived long in the woods hungers most for the sight of it. She had spoken to me with sympathy and listened in suspense to my tales of the wilderness. Nor could Jasper’s sly words, with their hint at something unknown, poison her against me.

We travelled toward the southwest into the eye of the setting sun, and drew near our destination, crossing the Ohio at last, and pursuing our journey along the southern shore, within the line of travel now from the older towns like Danville and Lexington to the Falls. It was the same beautiful country, a little wilder perhaps, with higher hills and deeper forests, but, like the region which we call the Bluegrass, a noble territory for the white man to win.

And it was not yet won. The axe had just begun to level the oaks, and here was where the red warriors passed but yesterday; yonder across the broad stream they still lay in the unbroken forests. Truly it was a black wilderness on the other shore, and good cause had the white women of this new land to look toward it in dread and fear.

“The warriors are there,” said Osseo, following my eyes, “and the river will not hold them back.”

He spoke the truth. While St. Clair prepared to crush them the tribes were striking. Daring bands more than once had crossed the Ohio into the land which they still claimed, and the tomahawk was falling on defenceless heads. Hoyoquim, the chief of the Wyandots, the boldest of all the Northwestern warriors, led the strongest party, it was said, and we found the terror of his advance spreading before us. Armed men were gathering, but none could tell where such an elusive foe would pass or when he would strike. It was like pursuing a shadow.

“They reach out a hand for Hoyoquim,” said Osseo, “and he is not there. While they wonder, he strikes from behind; and then he is gone, and no one can follow.”

He described the case truly, and I hastened our journey, being told, at a house within one day’s travel of the Falls, that a lady riding with three men, the latter evidently of inferior degree, had passed but a few hours before. “Tall, with blue eyes, yellow hair like corn silk, and very young,” they said, and I knew that it was Rose Carew. The men most likely were in her father’s employ, and were the escort of which he had spoken.

I had grown daring in these days, and I might go with her, so I thought, to the little town by the Falls. Surely there would be none to dispute my right save Miss Carew herself, and it was yet for her to say.

I suggested to Osseo that we travel faster, and he obeyed without question. It was a part of this man’s nature to fulfil the wishes of a friend and never ask the reason why.

The way led now through the woods, and then through little stretches of open. Man, even on the south side of the river, had yet made but little mark upon the forest, and for the present we saw none at all. It was the wilderness as God had left it. I swept the circle of my vision, but saw the smoke of no chimney—only the black rim of the forest; heard nothing but the chattering of the squirrels in the oaks and the fall of the acorns.

Osseo stopped suddenly, gazed intently at the earth, and when he looked up again his face was full of gravity.

“Lee,” he said, “the warriors have passed.”

I followed his pointing finger and beheld the footsteps. I doubted not that they were those of Hoyoquim, a man whom I knew well, and whose valour and skill I respected. A sudden great dread seized me, and when Osseo said, “It is well to hasten,” I felt the full truth of his words. This was yet no man’s land, and there was safety only within a circle of armed hands.

“A white lady and three men have passed on ahead,” I said to Osseo. “Think you that their journey will be untroubled?”

“Manito alone knows,” he said, and even as he spoke a horse, saddled and bridled, but riderless, galloped ahead of us through the woods, his eyes wild with terror, and foam on his flanks.

“Manito knows, and he has spoken his will,” said Osseo.

The fear in my heart leaped up again, and I rushed forward at utmost speed. I did not think until days later that Osseo made no effort to restrain me after his cautious fashion when he feared an ambush—he knew even then that such danger had passed for us.

We reached the darkest shadow of the forest, and there we beheld the sight of which my fears had warned me, and which even before my eyes looked upon it I felt doomed to see. The three men lay dead under the trees, smitten down by an unseen foe, but the girl was gone, vanished, no more trace of her left than if made of thin air she had melted away before a wind.

Overpowered, I put my face in my hands and groaned, and yet it was but such a tragedy as this land had seen a thousand times before. Abrupt it might be, but not more so than many others.

“Hoyoquim and the Wyandots passed here,” said Osseo.

“Which way do their footsteps lead?” I asked.

“To the river, They have crossed it now, and taking the white girl as their prisoner, go back with the other warriors to meet the white general.”

I confess that this event was like a sudden blow. I had long since become hardened in a measure to the news of women captured and men slain. It was the wilderness road that we were compelled to tread, and many in the West had ceased to count the price, knowing that it must be paid. But she was not of the West; hers were another land and atmosphere; she had spoken of such things as far away and unreal; even when she witnessed the return of the captives in Danville the full truth was but the impression of the moment, and must soon grow distant and unreal again. Now she was proving in her own person what it was to tread this wilderness road. I felt a great pity for her, and it was in my mind to follow at once and bring her back if I could. Surely forest skill might be of some avail. But later thought showed that such a purpose was folly. We must go on to the Falls and spread the news there, and then my duty would call me. St. Clair was advancing, and the blow that he struck might save not Rose Carew alone, but many. Her best chance lay in his victory, and I was cool enough now to see it. One could not speak to the savages of ransom while they were preparing to meet St. Clair. It was my part, too, to contribute all I could to the weight of the arm that was to strike this blow, and we hastened to the Falls, I faintly hoping for her, Osseo saying nothing.

We found the little town in deep alarm over the forays, and our tale did not help. Mr. Carew had not yet come, Jasper was with St. Clair, and the mother was there alone. But she sent for me, and I came at once to her call. When I saw the grief in that worn, pale face, I felt that it was such as she who had most to suffer as we built up the nation in the West. She said that Rose Carew had written of me, telling about the famous woodsman whom she had met in Danville; I had saved others from the savages, and now I must save her daughter, the girl who had believed in me; surely I would do it—I could not deny her.

When she had spoken thus, she lay back and gazed at me with great eyes, to whose demand I dared not say nay. I could not refuse such an infinite grief, and yet when I came away from her presence I cursed myself and my fate because my hands were tied for the time.

“Will Lee go for the girl now?” asked Osseo, his inscrutable eyes upon me.

“How can I, Osseo, how can I?” I asked.

I was to march the next day with the detachment to join St. Clair. I had made a boast to Jasper that I would join the army. I was not my own man now, and it behooved me more than any other whom I knew to walk in the straight path, as Jasper had said. The liberty of choice was not left me.

“I shall seek her, Osseo,” I replied, “but I shall seek the army first.”

“Lee is right,” said Osseo. “He has promised that he will fight beside the Long Knives, and he can not break his word. Moreover, the white army goes where Lee would go.”

We left an hour later, hurrying away, because I was not willing to look again into the face of that poor invalid, or to have her know while I was there that I was not hastening at once for her daughter. I received permission from our captain to go on before as a scout, and with Osseo by my side I plunged into the Northwestern forest, speeding through the deep woods, now burning in the full glory of autumn colours, and thinking of Rose Carew and her fate. What a blow it must be to the ambition of her father!

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