32 The Demand of the Tribes

It was not in reason that Hoyoquim’s most real acting should not create talk, but no opportunity was permitted me to hear it the next morning, as at rise of sun there came a message for me to attend at once at General Wayne’s quarters. Again was I sensible of the great kindness with which he treated me, and the manner in which he upheld with his power an outcast like myself. He received me in his usual sincere manner.

“I have sent for you, Jack,” he said, “because you know the ways of the savages, who are on the whole strange stuff to me. It was the wish of the Government that I first seek to treat with them before trying the edge of the sword. But I lack faith in the softer measures. It seems to me, Jack, that the bearing of these Indians since they have come among us is that of masters toward slaves, and it goes sorely against the grain of me to dance to the crack of a blanketed savage’s whip. What thinkest thou of it, Jack?”

“General Wayne,” I replied, “when the Niagara shall have drawn all the water from the Great Lakes, then will it be wise to be humble to the Indian.”

“’Tis my way of thinking, Jack, but the President is a man of peace, and the arm of the Government is not long—but it may grow, Jack—and we must even try what soft words will do, though ’tis wise at the same time to have the sword unsheathed. The Black Eagle and his comrades will be here with their demands within two hours, and I wish you to keep at my elbow, Jack, and advise me what they mean. They deal so much, in the sun and the moon and the stars and metaphors and allegories that they quite befog my brain, and I would know what they say.”

I laughed a little at the general’s vexation, although I knew that it came from good cause, and promised to be at hand for reference. In truth, I felt pleased at his trust, and would have been the most ungrateful of dogs not to have served him to the utmost. Major Carew, my friend Captain Hardy, and several others arrived presently, and at the appointed time the delegates from the allied tribes, in all their brave raiment, stalked into the general’s quarters. Then the usual interchange of courtesies and formalities followed. Both sides smoked the pipe of peace, talked for awhile of matters far from that in hand, and then through devious courses approached the true one. Hoyoquim’s bearing was haughty in the extreme, and it was apparent to one like myself, who knew the Indian nature, that the demands of the tribes would not be light.

General Wayne, as I saw very well, was thoroughly angry, but though he had the reputation—often a true one—of being a hot-blooded man, he held a fine rein over his temper on this occasion, and deflected not a hair’s breadth from the formal politeness with which he had received the delegates.

“And now,” he said at last to the chiefs, “I wish to tell to you the words of our Great Father in Philadelphia. His heart is full of grief because of the wars between the white man and his red brother. He hears of the brave men who have fallen on either side and the captives taken, but he would put an end to it all, and have the two nations smoke a pipe of peace that will last forever.”

“It shall be as the Great Father in Philadelphia wishes,” said Hoyoquim gravely, “if he will listen to the words of wisdom, and give to the tribes of the red men that which is theirs. What these are I, Hoyoquim, called in your language the Black Eagle, have been chosen by my brethren to tell.”

“What are these demands?” asked General Wayne. “Let the Black Eagle whose words are wisdom tell them and the white men will listen.”

“In the beginning,” replied Hoyoquim, “the red man owned all the land. The woods and the waters and what were in them were his. Then the white man came, and he was poor and sick, and he begged for a little land, only enough for him to build a cabin on, and the red man gave it to him. Then the white man grew strong, and more came with swords and rifles and great guns on wheels, and then they took all the land from the red man and drove him over the mountains. Now they cross the mountains and seek to take more land, that they may cut down the forests and drive away the game. But the Indians, who before fought among themselves, now fight together against the white man, and he can not stand before them. They have destroyed the army of the General-who-never-walks as they will destroy that of the Black Snake if he comes.”

“Your demands, Black Eagle?” said General Wayne patiently.

“My brethren of the allied tribes,” continued Hoyoquim in the same haughty tone, “have had a great talk, and they have chosen that I and those who come with me should tell to you their message. They bid you and all the white men to go back beyond the mountains, give up all the land of Kain-tuck-ee, and all the land on this side of the Ohio, the tribes to keep all the captives that they have taken in battle; when this is done there will be peace between your nation and mine.”

I saw General Wayne’s eyes flash at this preposterous demand, but again he was master of himself, and replied in even tones:

“You have given to me the message of the chiefs, Black Eagle, and now do you take mine to them. Tell them that the Great Father in Philadelphia is patient and loves his red children. But when madness like a fever creeps into their veins he must punish them. You have chosen to dig up the war hatchet, and he says that it is well. He has sent me with many soldiers to punish you, and I shall come and burn down your villages and slay your warriors, and the tribes will become as weak as a starving wolf!”

“The General-who-never-walks came with many soldiers,” replied Hoyoquim, “and where are they? Their women and children will never see them again. Their bones lie rotting in the woods, and their scalps hang in the Indian wigwams.”

“It is true,” replied General Wayne, “but I come with men who know the Indian ways, men who never sleep, men who see the Indian trail in the forest, though he pass as lightly as the deer, and even as you served the army of General St. Clair so we shall serve you.”

“Be it so,” replied Hoyoquim, and his whole manner expressed nothing but defiance. “Let the white general come, and, however soon, it will not be too soon for the Indian. You have chosen war, and our hearts are glad.”

He plucked the tomahawk from his belt, and with a mighty stroke buried it deep in the wood of the wall. Then his four brethren did likewise.

I knew the Indians’ ways, and taking from General Wayne’s hand the pipe of peace that he had been smoking, smashed it in pieces on the floor. The general took his cue at once.

“It is war,” he said, “and thus have we destroyed the pipe of peace. Go home to the old chiefs and tell them that I shall come with an army!”

Hoyoquim and his comrades said no more, but, drawing their tomahawks from the wall, strode haughtily from the room. An hour later they were again in the forest on the way to their villages in the north.

As I left the general’s quarters I met old Joe Grimes.

“What have they been saying in there, John?” he asked.

“Not many words, but they had meaning, Joe,” I replied.

“The chiefs are mighty stuck up,” he said. “I don’t have no use for an Indian any time, barrin’ Osseo and one or two others, an’ I can’t abide ’em at all now. If I had my way I’d fight ’em to the end. What did they ask?”

“That we give up Kentucky and all the Northwestern Territory, leave to them all the captives that they have taken from us, and go back east of the mountains.”

Old Joe’s face became as red as the rush of blood could make it, and he uttered a series of rapid and unintelligible oaths.

“And the general—what did he say?” he exclaimed at last.

“Of course we agreed,” I replied. “Next week we begin our march to the eastward; all the settlers go with us.”

Then the volcano burst. Old Joe despised soldiers; he believed them of little use, and now he consigned them to more warm places than are contained in all the theologies that I ever heard of. But in the midst of a fiery outbreak he saw my face.

“John Lee,” he said indignantly, “you’ve been stuffin’ mush in my ears.”

“Of course I have, Joe,” I replied. “What do you take General Wayne for? Don’t you know that he’s the kind of man who makes peace at the edge of the sword? He’s sent those chiefs back to the tribes with a message that he’s coming at the head of an army, and they’ll have to fight”

Then old Joe did a dance of delight, and swore that General Wayne was one of the few soldiers who knew anything about fighting Indians, and he, Joe Grimes, would prove it anywhere and to anybody. There was neither sentiment nor poetry in Joe’s nature, and, like so many other of the rugged borderers, he believed that the best way to settle the Indian question was to kill all the Indians, and truly, whenever a new tale of their atrocities came in, it seemed that he was right.

An hour later I was in General Wayne’s quarters again, called to him by a new message. He had dismissed his staff, and though he smiled, it was sourly. It was apparent enough that the blood was hot in his veins. When I entered he burst out, though not against me.

“By my soul, Jack!” he cried, “I have never before had such a struggle against myself. I, a man of hot temper, called upon to hold my tongue in the face of such insolence! Why, I could have seized that red savage, Black Eagle or Hoyoquim, by the throat! He tried to dictate as if I were in the dust with his foot on my neck.”

“He is a cunning Indian,” I said, “and a dangerous foe, but not so able as Little Turtle, who beat St. Clair.”

“Whatever he and his comrades are,” he said emphatically, “we march against ’em as soon as possible, and I pray to God that we beat ’em. Jack, do you know that I tremble sometimes at the responsibility. In the war with the British we were fighting a civilized foe, and if we failed we did not expect to see our women outraged and our children brained as we do here. They beat Harmar and St. Clair, and if they beat us too, God knows what will happen, for I fear much that the Government can do no more. You don’t know, Jack, how glad I am to have with me a comrade like you who understands this wilderness, and whom I can trust. It is enough to make an iron man weep when these tales of outrage come in, and if we are beaten again I hope, Jack, that I shall not be spared to tell it; and I love life, too.”

“General,” I said, “you must beware of an ambush. That is the thing which the soldier who goes against the savages should never forget. They can not stand before us in the open, but when they fight the white man in the forest they will beat him unless he has learned their ways.”

“Just what the President himself said, and as he was present at Braddock’s great slaughter he ought to know.”

Then he began to tell me his plans, and to ask about the country and where I thought the savages would meet him. These were points on which I could in truth be of service to him, and I drew some rude maps for his use; but above all I repeated my cautions as to the nature of Indian attacks. When you know the savage and his rules of warfare, which are wholly different from ours, you are much better fitted to advance against him. At the end of a half hour I said:

“General, you have done much for me, now will you add to my gratitude by granting one little request?”

“What is it?”

“Forbid Miss Carew to go with the army to Fort Greeneville.”

He looked at me in some surprise and then asked why.

“You heard the story of Hoyoquim,” I replied, “and you know well that it was Miss Carew whom he meant.”

“And I know, too, that the man whom he called a traitor was your cousin Jasper. I would that I had the proof; then I could at least send him back to the East; now I must keep him, though he shall have no responsibility—you know well, Jack, that a general can not always choose his own officers, and his influence was too much for me. But Miss Carew has my promise to go to Fort Greeneville, and I can not withdraw it. She is very anxious to go—perhaps she has reasons which seem good to her—a woman’s reasons are not always a man’s reasons, you know. Don’t ask me to break my word, Jack; I can not do it.”

I knew the uselessness of pursuing the quest further in that quarter, but when I left General Wayne I went straight in search of Rose Carew, and was fortunate enough to find her alone as before.

“I trust, Miss Carew,” I said, without preliminaries, “that you listened well to the tale Hoyoquim told last night.”

“I did, and it was an interesting story,” she said defiantly.

“You know that the white girl of whom he spoke was you, and the white man whom he called a traitor Jasper Lee?”

“And if so, what then?” with increasing defiance.

“You heard his threats and how direct they were; you know what a dangerous savage he is, and what your fate will be if you fall into his hands. I beg you again not to go with the army. If you do not think of yourself, think of others who would rather die than hear of you in the power of the savage chief.”

“Who, for instance?” Her eyes were sparkling, and she gazed at me with an intentness that made my own eyes waver. But I did not flinch in spirit and I answered her proudly, for I was not ashamed of the love I bore her:

“Myself!”

A deep blush suffused her countenance, but whether of anger I could not tell with my half-averted gaze. But when she replied it seemed to me that there waa some softness in her speech.

“I must go,” she said; “I think that I shall be safe with General Wayne’s army—he is not a St. Clair—and, moreover, I wish to be with my father when he is about to incur great danger. There are, too, other reasons——”

Here she hesitated, and my jealous heart, so ready to make Lawless her choice, now shifted to Jasper. She wished to watch over him and to save him from the particular wrath of the savages. Feminine influence even in the strictest of camps might be great.

“A woman must have her way even though she pay for it,” I said, the anger that rose in my veins making me forget my manners.

But she did not fling back at me as I expected.

“I owe you a great debt, Captain Lee,” she said, “and I would pay it if I could, but do not speak harshly to me now. I pray that you do not. I must go to Fort Greeneville. I have reasons that you yourself would call the best in the world if you knew them, but I can not tell them to you.”

I was ever discovering some new phase of her character, beholding some mood or passing fancy of which I had not dreamed—perhaps that was why she attracted me so much—and now she chose suddenly to appear as the most bewitching of supplicants, and to me. There was the suspicion of a pout in the curve of her lips, as if she feared that I would speak harshly to her, when God knows that I was not in a position to deal roughly with anybody, least of all with Rose Carew.

“We are good friends, are we not?” she said, joining her hands, still in a beseeching attitude, but a smile illumining her face like the rosy dawn driving away the night; “we are even partners in a way, as we fled through the wilderness together, and it is not an unhappy memory. You won’t refuse me my request, will you? You promised, you know, to spare Lieutenant Lawless, and you will do this, too, won’t you?”

A soft heart is the curse of man, and woman, knowing it, wheedles him; and man, knowing that she is wheedling him, lets her. I plead no immunity. I claim to be no exception, and I said no further word against that which seemed to be her heart’s desire, though my anger toward Jasper grew.

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