18 The Terror

It was my plan to return at once to the forest with Osseo, thinking my use past, but on second thought I lingered yet a few days at the fort. Such confusion and discord reigned in our councils, and there were so many rumours of an Indian advance in numbers far greater than at St. Clair’s defeat, that deep alarm reigned. Officers and men began to fear for our safety even behind log walls; and although I knew that the army of the savages had scattered for the present, it was a vain effort to tell them so. I was not believed. Moreover, the remnants of our force were indulging in fierce recriminations; the militia called the regulars fools, the regulars called the militia cowards, and the hunters agreed that both were right. Not having fought well against the enemy, we now fought well among ourselves.

It was at this juncture that Captain Hardy delivered to me a message.

“The militia are going home,” he said, “and they go whether General St. Clair wills it or not. They say that they have had enough, and I can not find it in my heart to blame them. All the women who survive will accompany them, including Miss Carew, and I ask you and your Indian comrades to go with them too. They need such men, for the danger from the savages will not be past until they cross the Ohio, and perhaps not then. Miss Carew wants you, as she has more confidence in you than in anybody else, and I make it a personal matter also.”

I could not refuse such, a request. Moreover, having gone so far, I was not willing to leave Miss Carew while she was yet in danger. I had given my promise to bring her back safely to Kentucky, and the task was unfinished.

So we started the next day, our party consisting of the militia, the women, and some of the scouts and hunters, including old Joe Grimes and Winchester. Few affectionate regrets were exchanged by the regulars and militia as they parted. The hunters and scouts said little, but that little burned.

“I hate a fool more than a coward, and a coward more than a fool,” said Joe Grimes to me. “These soldiers are mighty small potatoes, and mighty few in a hill. Look how they’ve been beat. I tell you a short horse is soon curried.”

“But it was a surprise, Joe,” I said. “Both regulars and militia did well under the circumstances. The blame was with the leaders. Think how Braddock’s army was cut to pieces in the same way by the savages at Fort Duquesne! The Hessians scarce made any resistance when we dropped on them that cold morning at Princeton, and they are fine soldiers, too.”

“What’s the use of good fighting when your general leads you straight into a hornets’ nest?” he repeated stubbornly. “The hornets sting you, but you can’t catch ’em. Now, I never put my hand out farther than I can draw it back. To the Old Nick, I say, with all soldiers! They’re sticks of wood with coloured clothes on. Kentucky had better cut loose and paddle her own canoe. If she don’t, she’ll sink where she stands. The Spaniard or the Frenchman would be a better friend than the Gov’ment back there in the East. You’re barking up the wrong tree when you praise it to me.”

Old Joe but spoke a feeling too prevalent in Kentucky, based upon the impotence of the Federal Government to protect its people from the savages and its weak dealings with them, a belief that had come to an alarming pass a little before in the Spanish intrigue; but I refused to listen to him, though seeing well that the great rout of St. Clair would stir it anew. Again I thought of Mr. Carew. He was just the man to take advantage of such a moment and turn it somehow to his own profit. One great plan of his had failed. He would be ready with another.

We travelled fast; in truth, we fled to the southward through the wintry forest and across the frozen streams. It was a lone and desolate wilderness now, without sign of human being save ourselves. Nowhere did the scouts behold the Indian token, and I was sure that our path lay clear before us.

“The tribes rest,” said Osseo. “Their hunger for scalps is great, but now their stomachs have been filled. We flee in peace.”

But our troubles nevertheless were great. Winter came upon us in full swing. On the second day of the march the sky turned a dirty gray, and the clouds trooped by in unbroken battalions. The wind blew out of the northwest, raw and chill. Daring the risk of the savages, we built, lest we freeze to death, a great fire in the forest, throwing upon it heaps of the fallen timber with which the wilderness was littered until the blaze rose higher than our heads and the popping of the dry wood was like volleys of pistol shots. I have learned that nothing can confer gaiety like a red and blazing fire on a cold night, and despite the horrors of the past, we began to grow cheerful. The women spread their hands before the flames, and I watched Rose Carew as she stood there, luminous in the glow, the red coming back to her cheeks, and all the spring and elasticity of youth and strength returning to her figure. I had, after all, much to be grateful for. I had saved her, and I was taking her back to her parents in Kentucky. Then I turned away with a sigh, not knowing why I was unhappy when I should be happy.

The clouds opened toward morning, and snow fell to the depth of several inches. When the women awoke and came from their blankets they saw a white wilderness. Earth and forest alike were covered, and the risen sun shining in all its glory was reflected back in rays of yellow and silver. The trees stood up, great cones of white, and the breaking of the branches under the weight of snow as we moved on through the wilderness made a steady crackle around us, like the fire of skirmishers. The skies were blue and clear once more, and the air was crisp and cold. It was a world in all its white beauty and splendour, and we pressed on with as much speed as Nature would allow, often in silence, save for the tread of our footsteps, the cracking of the branches, and the sighing fall of snow into snow. The brooks were frozen in their beds, and we passed them, scarce knowing they were there. By night our camp fire blazed through the forest, telling to all who would look where we lay, but no enemy came to our beacon light. The wilderness that curved around was yet lone and bare, and when we rested before the blazing logs we slept in peace, save those who watched.

The gaiety of our company increased, and the rebound of spirits was greatest in the women. I wish to give them full credit for all the courage that they had and showed. But there were some of us still gloomy. We were looking ahead, and saw the storm that would be let loose on the border by our great defeat. The savages would hang upon Kentucky like a cloud of hornets, and I beheld already the empty cabins and heard the mourning for the slaughtered. Moreover, I knew well what was passing in the mind of old Joe Grimes, and also in the minds of many other Kentuckians.

“What’s the good of a gov’ment that can’t protect yon?” he said on the fifth day of our march. “All these men from the East are tarred with the same stick, and when it comes to helping the West they stand back like a bound boy at a husking.”

“Give the Government another chance, Joe,” I said.

“It’s had too many already,” he replied passionately, “an’ you, John Lee, have the least cause of all men to defend it. When I’ve got a gun that’s no good I throw it away an’ get a better one; I don’t stand blinking like a toad in a thunderstorm; an’ that’s what men ought to do with a gov’ment. I tell you we’ve brought our pigs to a poor market.”

“But you don’t believe in any sort of government, Joe.”

“No, I don’t,” he replied with increasing stubbornness. “Abolish ’em all, I say, and let every fellow fend for himself: Then you won’t waste your breath singing tunes that nobody will listen to.”

In which opinion Joe Grimes was not alone among frontiersmen.

Winchester chanced to come near him at this moment, and old Joe turned upon him furiously.

“It’s you English that’s doin’ it!” he cried. “You keep the Northwestern posts, breakin’ the treaty, an’ you arm the savages an’ turn ’em loose upon us. You are as black as they are!”

“I don’t know the full facts about this question,” replied Winchester with dignity; and then, with a slight humorous smile, “the English Cabinet did not consult me about it, and so I decline to be responsible.”

“You know, Joe,” I said, “that Mr. Winchester is our friend, and there are some among us who owe him much.”

“That’s so,” he said with a revulsion of feeling.—“Shake hands, Mr. Winchester; I eat my words if they don’t strike you right.”

But I saw him a little later in deep conversation with some of the Kentucky militiamen, and I judged by their actions that they would not care to have their talk overheard by those in whom they did not have the utmost confidence.

Some rumour of the discontent reached the ears of Rose Carew, because she came to me that evening as I eat by the camp fire and asked:

“Mr. Lee, what do you think will be said in Kentucky when the tale of this slaughter shall have spread throughout the settlements?”

“Many things that will not be pleasing in the ears of the President and his Cabinet.”

“I do not doubt it, but they are making a great mistake.”

She sat on a log near me, and remained silent for a long time. Many thoughts were in her mind, and I believed myself able to read them. Her face was luminous in the fire, and it expressed her emotions as they passed. Her heart wept over the scourged and scarred border, and she feared, too, the black brows of the men who marched with us.

“Don’t blame them too much,” I said. “They have suffered and expect to suffer more. It’s a fit of passion that will not last.”

She looked up in surprise.

“You have guessed what I was thinking,” she said. “But I did not believe you would be so quick to say the feeling would pass. You have no cause to love this confederation.”

“Is love always logical?” I asked.

She did not answer me just then, but leaned her face upon her hands, where it was full in the red glow, and presently I saw a fire in her eyes which was not that shining from the red coals.

“No, it is not logical,” she said at length, “not even the love of country; but is it any the worse because of that? I love my country with a love that I do not wish to measure, and for which I do not try to account. Sometimes I think that women are better patriots than men, because we do not seek to reason about it. The fact is enough. If I were a man nothing could shake this love in me; even if I had done my country a great wrong or had been falsely convicted of such wrong, I would turn a cold ear to the disappointment and discontent of my countrymen. If guilty myself once, I would prove that I could never be so again; or, if suffering from the greatest injustice, I would show that the fact could not incite me to wrong.”

“Miss Carew,” I said, “the advice that you give me is good, and is meant well, nor do I wish to be impolite, but I did not need it.”

Her cheeks flamed into deeper red.

“I should ask your pardon, Mr. Lee,” she said. “What right have I, for whom you have done so much and who has done so little for you, to offer you advice? Yet I will not ask it, because I think that my motive was right.”

Then she rose and walked toward the women’s quarters.

We were now approaching the Ohio, and all that we had foreseen came to pass. There was a thin fringe of settlements along the northern shore of the river, scattered cabins, lone families seeking a new home in the wilderness under the very edge of the scalping knife, as others had done a few years before in Kentucky. Full of hope, they had seen the army of St. Clair go northward, and they waited to hear that the Indian power was destroyed. Now they saw a wretched remnant of that army returning, and terror spread to the farthest cabin. There was no longer any protection for them. Women and children alike would be given to the tomahawk. On any night they might find the savages at the door, and that would be the end—and, in truth, their fears were realized too often. Torch and the tomahawk soon raged along the border, and the smoke of the burning cabins told what St. Clair had cost us. The tale ran to the uttermost limit. There was naught that a man could rely on now save his own arm and eye. The Government could do nothing, or rather it made the bad worse; and now, after its great defeat, it was about to desert us. It was not a wonder that terror reigned; that the women in the lone cabins saw the edge of the tomahawk in every flash of sunlight, and heard the tread of the savage in every fall of snow from the overweighted bough.

Some of the families joined us as we marched southward, but most remained ready with a silent stubbornness to face whatever fate might come. It was the character of our borderers. When the wave of people had once rolled forward it never rolled back. The tomahawk, the scalping knife, the burning cabins, and the torture were alike unheeded. Now they had come to hold the land, and here they would stay.

“Why don’t they flee, Mr. Lee? Why don’t they cross the Ohio into Kentucky, where the white power grows strong?” asked Miss Carew of me as we passed a cabin whose inmates, though knowing the danger and appreciating our warning, refused to go.

“For the same reason that those who came to Kentucky would not turn back,” I answered,“and what that is I know not. Perhaps it is the love of a new land that grips our race so and makes it scorn death and torture. Look at Kentucky! It is watered with the blood of the white man, but a new commonwealth is rising there as surely as we live, and it was won in the way that these people will win the Northwest.”

I have heard that it takes an old country with many historic associations to inspire the love of its people, but the saying, I know, is not true. Already the men in Kentucky, not one of whom was born upon its soil, loved it with a passion not surpassed by the devotion of any Frenchman or Englishman to his native land.

As we advanced the terror grew. We found in many cases that the tale of the slaughter had preceded us, and it did not suffer in quantity or quality as it passed from cabin to cabin in the great woods. The fugitives, though still the exception, gradually gathered in our train, and they were a pitiful sight to see, mostly women and little children fleeing from the mercy of the red man, which in all but rare instances is no mercy at all.

It was now that I saw Rose Carew in her noblest character. She had passed through enough to break the spirit of most women, but in the presence of those poor fugitives she was all strength and elasticity. She tended them and she encouraged them. She said that another army would come and better generals would lead it; the savages would be crushed and the border made safe; the President himself would see to it, and there was no occasion for despair. She would not listen to any of the talk against the President and the Government; and once, when she heard old Joe Grimes upon his favourite topic, she denounced him so fiercely that he shrank back in affright, and then with a true backwoodsman’s gallantry would not say a word to her in his own defence.

Her bearing toward me changed. She treated me now as a comrade—as one with whom she had shared dangers and with whom she had triumphed over them, but to my great relief she said nothing of gratitude. She seemed to know that I did not wish it, but often she would call upon me to help her in her errands about the camp as if we were brothers in arms, and I acquired an ease in her presence which I had not known before.

Thus our march continued in the white world of winter, through snow-covered forests, over frozen streams, and across little prairies, until we reached the Ohio, which was running deep in its wide channel, and covered with floating ice, a formidable barrier to all but the most skilful. But the scouts brought a half-dozen canoes from coverts in the brush and rushes, and after many trips the last of us were taken over in safety. Osseo stopped here to await my return from the homes of the white men.

Now we entered Kentucky, and the terror spread there too. The savages would come again, and all the old tale of atrocity and suffering lasting so many years would be repeated. There was hardly a home in this new land which had not lost some member under the tomahawk, and they expected to see its flash again. The cry of alarm was heard in every home, and mingled with it was another and angrier cry—a cry of rage against the Government beyond the mountains because it had allowed such a scourge to be let loose upon them. It swelled into thunder, but I listened little to it then, hastening on with Miss Carew to Danville, where I expected to find her parents. I heard that Mr. Carew had organized an expedition of his own to secure her rescue, but I surmised that he was now on his way back to Danville, or was there, having heard of her safety. And I was sure, too, that his crafty ally, would be with him.

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