第53章 KASKASKIA(1)

For one more day we floated downward on the face of the waters between the forest walls of the wilderness, and at length we landed in a little gully on the north shore of the river, and there we hid our boats.

``Davy,'' said Colonel Clark, ``let's walk about a bit.

Tell me where you learned to be so silent?''

``My father did not like to be talked to,'' I answered, ``except when he was drinking.''

He gave me a strange look.Many the stroll I took with him afterwards, when he sought to relax himself from the cares which the campaign had put upon him.

This night was still and clear, the west all yellow with the departing light, and the mists coming on the river.And presently, as we strayed down the shore we came upon a strange sight, the same being a huge fort rising from the waterside, all overgrown with brush and saplings and tall weeds.The palisades that held its earthenwork were rotten and crumbling, and the mighty bastions of its corners sliding away.Behind the fort, at the end farthest from the river, we came upon gravelled walks hidden by the rank growth, where the soldiers of his most Christian Majesty once paraded.Lost in thought, Clark stood on the parapet, watching the water gliding by until the darkness hid it, --nay, until the stars came and made golden dimples upon its surface.But as we went back to the camp again he told me how the French had tried once to conquer this vast country and failed, leaving to the Spaniards the endless stretch beyond the Mississippi called Louisiana, and this part to the English.And he told me likewise that this fort in the days of its glory had been called Massacre, from a bloody event which had happened there more than three-score years before.

``Threescore years!'' I exclaimed, longing to see the men of this race which had set up these monuments only to abandon them.

``Ay, lad,'' he answered, ``before you or I were born, and before our fathers were born, the French missionaries and soldiers threaded this wilderness.And they called this river `La Belle Riviere,'--the Beautiful River.''

``And shall I see that race at Kaskaskia?'' I asked, wondering.

``That you shall,'' he cried, with a force that left no doubt in my mind.

In the morning we broke camp and started off for the strange place which we hoped to capture.A hundred miles it was across the trackless wilds, and each man was ordered to carry on his back provisions for four days only.

``Herr Gott!'' cried Swein Poulsson, from the bottom of a flatboat, whence he was tossing out venison flitches, ``four day, und vat is it ve eat then?''

``Frenchies, sure,'' said Terence; ``there'll be plenty av thim for a season.Faith, I do hear they're tinder as lambs.''

``You'll no set tooth in the Frenchies,'' the pessimistic McAndrew put in, ``wi' five thousand redskins aboot, and they lying in wait.The Colonel's no vera mindful of that, I'm thinking.''

``Will ye hush, ye ill-omened hound!'' cried Cowan, angrily.``Pitch him in the crick, Mac!''

Tom was diverted from this duty by a loud quarrel between Captain Harrod and five men of the company who wanted scout duty, and on the heels of that came another turmoil occasioned by Cowan's dropping my drum into the water.While he and McCann and Tom were fishing it out, Colonel Clark himself appeared, quelled the mutiny that Harrod had on his hands, and bade the men sternly to get into ranks.

``What foolishness is this?'' he said, eying the dripping drum.

``Sure, Colonel,'' said McCann, swinging it on his back, ``we'd have no heart in us at Kaskasky widout the rattle of it in our ears.Bill Cowan and me will not be feeling the heft of it bechune us.''

``Get into ranks,'' said the Colonel, amusement struggling with the anger in his face as he turned on his heel.

His wisdom well knew when to humor a man, and when to chastise.

``Arrah,'' said Terence, as he took his place, ``I'd as soon l'ave me gun behind as Davy and the dhrum.''

Methinks I can see now, as I write, the long file of woodsmen with their swinging stride, planting one foot before the other, even as the Indian himself threaded the wilderness.Though my legs were short, I had both sinew and training, and now I was at one end of the line and now at the other.And often with a laugh some giant would hand his gun to a neighbor, swing me to his shoulder, and so give me a lift for a weary mile or two; and perchance whisper to me to put down my hand into the wallet of his shirt, where I would find a choice morsel which he had saved for his supper.Sometimes I trotted beside the Colonel himself, listening as he talked to this man or that, and thus I got the gravest notion of the daring of this undertaking, and of the dangers ahead of us.

This north country was infested with Indians, allies of the English and friends of the French their subjects; and the fact was never for an instant absent from our minds that our little band might at any moment run into a thousand warriors, be overpowered and massacred; or, worst of all, that our coming might have been heralded to Kaskaskia.

For three days we marched in the green shade of the primeval wood, nor saw the sky save in blue patches here and there.Again we toiled for hours through the coffee-colored waters of the swamps.But the third day brought us to the first of those strange clearings which the French call prairies, where the long grass ripples like a lake in the summer wind.Here we first knew raging thirst, and longed for the loam-specked water we had scorned, as our tired feet tore through the grass.For Saunders, our guide, took a line across the open in plain sight of any eye that might be watching from the forest cover.But at length our column wavered and halted by reason of some disturbance at the head of it.Conjectures in our company, the rear guard, became rife at once.

``Run, Davy darlin,' an' see what the throuble is,'' said Terence.