Chapter 4 - THE QUEEN OF THE FAIRY ISLAND

^JOHNNY got away so very early the next morning that the blue wood -smoke had not begim to curl up from the chimn. of the town. He was storing things away compactly in the canoe when Betty ran down the bluff and sat upon a rocky shelf above him. She w of that breed of New England women who, from beach and wharf and decked house- top, watch their men go down to the sea in ships, and do what weeping they must in the night-watches. Now she gave Johnny a straw hat of her own deft and patient bra: ing, and then sat talking to him as he work

"Won't you stay for the launching? Plea . Johnny! Such crowds and fun! And I want you to see our Queen of the Fain- Island, Mrs. Blennerhasset. She lives in a big whitepalace on Isle le Beau, across from Belpre, and she's the most beautiful lady in the world. She'll ride up through the woods to-day on a black-satin horse, and wear her scarlet habit of British army cloth. Her father was Gen- eral Agnew of the English army, and she's so proud of it that she wears his colors."

Johnny smiled and shook his head at the eager child. He must be off at once and make the most of the shortened season. But he meant to stop at Isle le Beau, where he was sure of quick sympathy and intelligent co- operation. The Blennerhassets, with their fabulous wealth, luxurious style of living, and the magnificent estate that they were build- ing up on an island in the Ohio, made a tale of Arabian Nights' enchantment to the poor and struggling people of the river settlements. And they did not hold themselves aloof. The mistress of the mansion lavished on these wilds accomplishments that had graced the courts of Europe, and the master backed ev- ery forward movement. It was he who was financing this ship-building venture. With the English love for gardening and a knowl- edge of botany they had made a velvet lawn, imported rare flowers, trained peach and peartrees flat against sunny walls, and were ex- perimenting with the taming of fox-grapes and the wild berries of the forest.

"Mrs. Blennerhasset just loves Aunt Mary and she hates everything mean and cruel. One day, in Muskingum Street, she struck a man across the face with her riding-whip for beating a little colored boy. Then she wiped the whip with her lace handkerchief and rode away as scornful as a queen."

"That was fine!"

"And, Johnny, she does the kindest, sweet- est things that no one else can do. She's to give a May party just to amuse people. I'm to be queen. She's making me an Empire gown of India muslin and a stockinet veil that I'm to keep for my wedding-day." She blushed prettily. "You know I'm fourteen. At sixteen I shall have to marry some one ' '  her blue eyes clouded with trouble  "and perhaps go away back in the woods to live, and"

She caught his look of brooding tenderness for one of those pioneer mothers, of whom life took such fearful toll in child-bearing, hardship and danger.

"Oh, I won't mind the work, and I'd loveto have a dozen little bits of babies; but there's sure to be another Indian war, and Johnny, I couldn't bear to  to leave little children as my mother left me."

"I'll look after those babies, Betty. The Indians are friendly with me," he said, with grave gentleness. She had taken in these fears with the milk from a martyred mother's breast, and they were not groundless, even now.

She watched him wistfully as he pushed off, waved to him from the bluff, and con- tinued to wave until his canoe passed Fort Harmer and disappeared under the arching sycamores that all but hid the mouth of the Muskingum.

The River Beautiful was a silver veil, fall- ing from some unmarked horizon in the east; but when the sun came up over the mountains it was a narrow sea that was all one wrinkled sparkle from shore to shore. The world was merry and sweet, with dancing water, high- flying clouds, and the blowing foliage of full- leafed forests. Johnny had only to use his paddle for a rudder, for the light craft floated like a cork on the current.

From the Ohio shore the land rolled up insoft, wooded billows. For miles the water was edged with sand or pebbled beaches, and in places the forest was pushed back by al- luvial bottoms. Ten miles down he passed the cluster of cabins at Stone's Landing, and from the many boats headed up-stream and the people w T ho were riding along the edge of the woods he knew there must be clearings up the creeks. It was still in the early hours of the morning when he ran his boat up the crescent sand beach of Belpre, the very pret- tiest little settlement on the river.

An offshoot of Puritan Marietta, it had a French name for its wide, terraced meadow; and it was built like a French farm village  every good house of hewn timbers facing the river on a forty-rod front, and the narrow farms marching in line back and up to a forest of oaks and hickories. At the east end of the mile-long street the stockade and block- houses of Farmers' Castle guarded the town like a baron's chateau, and at the west the woods ran to the river's edge, where a grove of cedars crowned a hundred-foot bluff. Johnny marked that dry lookout for a camp.

The landing for the settlement and thecrossing to the head of Isle le Beau was at the foot of the bluff. From there he saw the white, mansard-roofed mansion, its colon- naded wings curving in a wide ellipse at the top of a sloping lawn that was shaded by a score of forest trees. Fronting the near mountains and the parted flood, and flanked by all but unbroken woods, its ordered beauty was nothing less than that of a fairy palace.

The town looked to be deserted, but as Johnny was beaching the canoe a muscular man of fifty, with the fine military bearing so common in the region, came out of a house and introduced himself as Colonel Cushing with the ease of one born to the best society of New England.

"I was to leave this canoe with you for Black Arrow, a Shawnee brave who will call for it," Johnny explained.

Together they got the handsome specimen of Indian craftsmanship into the boat-house. With keen black eyes the Colonel studied this worn and shabby young man who had been intrusted with such valuable property by an Indian. It was not until Johnny asked if there was a bit of unoccupied and de- fensible land near by, in which he might planta nursery for the community, that he was recognized.

"Whoop -ee! If it isn't Johnny! Ex- cuse me if I shake your arm off. You're the best news we've heard since the treaty of

REAR VIEW OF BLENXERHASSET HOUSE

Greenville. Colonel Israel Putnam and Mr. Blennerhasset meant to kidnap you from Marietta to-day. We have plots cleared for you, here and on the island, and fenced in according to instructions from Dr. True."

Johnny filled his pockets with seeds, shoul- dered his tools, and was making off through a kitchen garden when his host overtook him with a pair of huge, cowhide boots.

"Snakes in a swamp you have to cross  big, bad rattlers and copperheads that could take bites out of a scythe. You'd better wrap your legs with marsh-grass, too. I'll blow the dinner-horn, but it's pot-luck to- day, with your humble servant for cook. The family piled into boats and on to every- thing with four legs, and went to the launch- ing. Yes, I have a full quiver, God bless 'em! and a boy and a girl orphaned by the war that we are bringing up. There's always room for one or two more in a big family."

It was a dozen years before that "room for one or two more" had any personal bearing for Johnny, but he remarked now how the people here obeyed the Biblical injunction concerning the hungry and naked, the sick and the fatherless. The Colonel laughed.

"I'll get my pay out of you, Johnny, the first time I see my youngsters set their little teeth in juicy apples. The children born out here never saw an apple, and that's some- thing you can't describe."

"No."

They exchanged a long look that held boy- hood memories of gnarly old New England orchards and the winey bins of dark cellars.

Johnny went whistling up that sloping mile of mellow furrows and through a belt of woods that was honey-sweet with blossoming tulip- trees. Blackbirds skurried up from the rank growth of the swamp that was knee-deep in ooze, and blue heron swung low over acres of budding flags and lily-pads. He saw no reptiles, but while he was putting in his seeds on the drained and sheltered bank, a doe came down to a spring to drink and an In- dian paddled out to open water to shoot ducks. In the five years since the close of the war the river settlements had not been able to push back the wilderness more than two miles.

After dinner Johnny started to return to Stone's Landing. He had scarcely passed beneath the shadow of the forest when he heard a piteous whinnying from the way- side. A horse lay there in the undergrowlh, his head in a little space of cropped clover.

By dint of much encouragement Johnny got the animal to his feet and down the bankinto the water. But after the horse had drunk he stood so drooping and trembling, lifting one foot after the other, that Johnny, fearing he might fall and drown, got him back to the sand. Help was needed, but his shouts were not heard in Belpre. He was standing at the horse's head when the gay cavalcade came riding down from Marietta under the green foliage of the woods.

Mrs. Blennerhasset, in naming habit and plumed hat of white beaver, was in front with her husband, and a negro groom in livery, and the youth of Belpre followed in her train. With her beauty and her high-bred grace and charm she might have appeared so among the canvases of a castle gallery or in the pages of old romance. She knew Johnny at once. Dropping from the saddle, she ran across the beach and gave her hand and the smile that won all hearts.

"What is the trouble?" Her black-lashed blue eyes looked straight into his, and, seeing the pity and perplexity there, she turned and stroked the horse's nose with her gauntleted hand.

Johnny's jaw was set and he swallowed hard. "He has cast his shoes and been overdriven.

The heels are cracked, and the tendons so sore that  I think he has been beaten across the legs, and when he dropped he was left in the woods to starve."

MRS. BLENNERHASSET IN FLAMING HABIT AND PLUMED HAT OF

WHITE BEAVER

She flung her arms around the horse's neck. "The man who did this should be found and tied to the whipping-post in Marietta."

"Don't be too hard on him, Margaret. These poor devils of emigrants are in desper- ate plights sometimes." In his buff small- clothes and silk stockings Mr. Blennerhasset was down in the sand beside the groom. The love of domestic animals and the intelligent care of them were in the blood of this Irish gentleman. He remarked the slender legs and neck and fine coat of the saddle-horse. "Yes," he replied to his wife's appeal, "we'll get him over to the island. Send the poleman back with the ferry. Ransom, go out and help Johnny hold up that horse."

The suffering animal had hobbled back into the water for the grateful coolness about his feet. Johnny and the negro stood at his head on either side and Mr. Blennerhasset fed him with handsful of forage from the woods.

They were there when the St. Clair went by, scudding over the white-capped waves. It had a cargo, not only of flour and pork for New Orleans or Havana, but of hopes. The river would never see those homespun sails of flax and hemp again, for the vessel could not be brought back, and months must pass before this doughty Commodore Whipple,who had sunk the Gaspe in '72, could return over the mountains with the proceeds of the St. Clair's sale in Philadelphia. So every sort of water craft known on Western waters was in its escort down to Louisville, where hearts would stand still until it was safely warped over the falls. Now it was ringed about with the music of Revolutionary fifes and drums, boat bugles, and French violins.

When the pageant had gone by, the silence of the wilderness fell again  a stillness that was woven through and through with water ripple and leaf rustle, then the song of a wood-thrush, wild and sweet.

It was an hour before the horse was got over to the island and into a grassy paddock in the pasture. There he was groomed, and bedded on bright straw, with his feet cleaned and poulticed and his legs bandaged. His bay coat shone in the sun, and he had his head up, giving promise of a beautiful arch to the neck, when Mrs. Blennerhasset ap- peared at the bars with her brood of sturdy little children. They were all in the rough ,garb of the country, ready for a tramp.

"You will have a fine, gentle horse, Johnny, when he is cured of his lameness," she said. 87

"No, he is yours. A horse like that could not go where I am going."

"What he needs is a tough little Indian pony that can scramble over these murderous hills like a goat and live on underbrush,' ' Mr. Blennerhasset observed. Neither of them knew that Johnny had not a penny in the world, and to him the fact was immaterial.

They all went to the open glade in the forest, where a plot had been prepared for his plant- ing. The place was girdled with enormous trees, draped with woodbines and honey- suckles, and the sunny close, open to the sky, was musical with bird song. Isle le Beau lay in the track of travel of birds and men. The red tribes and the feathered made their sea- sonal journeys over the river and up and down the western base of the mountains. The trail known as "The Bloody Way," which ran unbroken from Lake Erie to the Gulf, crossed the Ohio at Belpre. Indians were always passing the head of the island, but they seldom stopped, because there was no large game for the hunter. So this green canoe of land, moored in the flood, had be- come an island of refuge for everything small and defenseless. Mr. Blennerhassettold these things to Johnny as he worked, and added:

"When war comes, your nursery at Belpre may be destroyed, but this is not likely to be molested."

Johnny suddenly stood up. "You think there will be war?"

Mr. Blennerhasset shrugged his shoulders in the old shooting- jacket in which he felt most comfortable. "Nothing is being done to prevent it. When the game is gone and we begin to crowd the Indians there will be trouble. We should be trying to understand their difficulties and to help them. A few of their leaders are educated and far-seeing men. As a boy Logan, the young chief of the Shawnees at Piqua, was a hostage in the home of Captain Logan of Kentucky, and was brought up with the sons of the house. He is living in a good cabin and cultivating a farm  trying to get his own tribe and others to adopt the white man's w T ay of living. When war comes who could estimate the human value of one civilized and prosperous tribe on the border? Logan is working against tre- mendous odds, and his time is limited. He needs help."

"He shall have it."

Johnny felt himself and his mission swept into the stream of large and tragic events. His host reminded him that white men went into the Indian country at their own risk. Arrangements could be made for him to meet Logan on the river. He came down to Ma- rietta and Belpre every year, at uncertain times, to learn what he could of building, farming and stock-raising.

Johnny shook his head. His own move- ments would be uncertain, and he could wait on no man. He would seek the Indians in their own territory. Mrs. Blennerhasset sud- denly flung out her hands in protest.

"You would perish, and we cannot spare you." Then her proud head, with its coronet of chestnut braids, went up. She had soldier blood in her to meet undaunted the incredible misfortune which waited in her future. Be- cause of their idealism, generosity and trust in their friends, the Blennerhassets were in- volved to their ruin in the traitorous schem- ing of Aaron Burr. "But it is worth dying for. This concerns all the Northwest Terri- tory. And remember, Johnny, here is your island of refuge from every mischance of life."

After that it was so still in the sunny glade that the birds, thinking themselves alone, burst into song. Johnny remarked, pres- ently :

" There will be trees here not worth trans- planting. We can leave them to make a grove of wild apples for the birds."

"Harman, I sometimes think there are such groves in heaven." The emphasis was on the "are," as if the subject had been discussed before.

Johnny looked up in quick sympathy with the thought, to see Mr. Blennerhasset shake a playful finger at his wife.

"You've been reading that fantastic vis- ionary, Swedenborg, again, Margaret."

She admitted it with a smile of pensive sweetness. They stood there hand in hand, breathing the incense of the wood and listen- ing to Johnny talking to the children about tucking the seeds in soft, warm beds as though they were babies. Dominic, the lit- tle son and heir of the house, was cuddling a seed in his brown hand.

"May I keep this one, Johnny?"

"To plant?"

"No. I want to see the little tree in it."

"You can't see it. It's too small."

Johnny had found the germs and watched the wonderful processes of germination in the larger seeds of field and garden, but the apple- seed with its tough case and tiny seed-leaves had baffled him.

"It can be seen under the solar micro- scope, ' ' Mr. Blennerhasset assured him. Then, humorously: "Don't be alarmed at the wis- dom of my young hopefuls. I've forgotten all I knew at their age, and am having to begin with them where I left off."

It was in the little laboratory, set up in an alcove of a library of belles-lettres by this grad- uate from Dublin University, who had a bent for the natural sciences, that Johnny split the brown shell, parted the seed-leaves on a piercing needle, and fixed the seed under the magic lens. There, hidden away in its in- most heart, was the spark of life breathed in by the Creator the pearly dot that held the impulse, the longing, to burst its bonds and lift itself up to sun and rain and bird song, and realize itself in blossom, fruit and ripened seed.

To Johnny it was the soul of the apple- tree. He could not talk about it. He hadmeant to stop at Isle le Beau for the night, but a home-seeker's flatboat tied up at Bel- pre would be off at sunrise, and on that he hoped he could arrange to work his passage down to the French grant at Galliopolis. So he asked to be set across at once. Mrs. Blennerhasset ran down to the landing with the gift of a pocket compass and a book that he could carry in his food -pouch with his Bible.

"This will interest you, Johnny. It was written by a great natural scientist who came so to know and reverence animal and plant life that he made a new kind of heaven to take in all we love on earth."

It was six weeks before he returned from the West for the portion of the seeds that he had left with Colonel Cushing. Bit by bit, by fire or candle light, or in brief intervals of rest, he had read the burning message of the little book  Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell.

It is difficult for us to realize that the brotherhood of man with the lower orders, which is a part of the moral law of to-day, was the new, religious doctrine of a century ago. To people of the gentle feeling and cul- tivated mind of Mrs. Blennerhasset it hadits poetic and humane appeal without dis- turbing orthodoxy. But to many it was nothing less than a divine revelation, and a few like Johnny accepted it as the only rule of life. Loving all living things as he did, it was easy for him to see, in every flower and bird, creeping worm and aspiring tree, the Indwelling Spirit, and to see them all, in death, translated to the skies in supernal beauty and dwelling with angels in the Gar- den of God. There it was, the faith that, in every age and clime, and for countless creeds, has fired the souls of men to do im- possible and imperishable deeds.

It was a waste of time and energy to com- bat opposition, so he said nothing of his in- tentions. Supper had been eaten at the long and laden board, where there was "room for one or two more,'' when Colonel Cush- ing began to talk of the earliest years of Belpre.

"One winter we had famine, pestilence and savage war. Shut up in Farmers' Castle we lived on fish without salt; then on maple- sap porridge and boiled nettles. The dogs that lived through it ate green corn when it came in. It's as bad as that to-day, in the back clearings, when a man has a crop failure and gets out of ammunition."

He gave Johnny a hunter's homespun suit, dyed forest green for greater safety in sum- mer, and a package of warrior's bread  parched corn meal and maple sugar  for emergencies, and cautioned him:

"Take plenty of powder and shot, Johnny. There are more wildcats than cabins in these woods, and very little to eat except what runs or flies."

It was late when he went up on the bluff to camp under the cedars, between the river's murmuring flow and the silent stream of stars in the sky, and to take counsel of his soul. In the tender light of a half-moon of pearl the shadows of the bare tree-trunks had the density of black velvet on the dry and odor- ous bed of needles. Once a keel-boat went by, its long shape slipping through the silver current like a swimming otter. From the next bend below the note of its bugle came back, mellowed by distance and darkness into some ineffable call. Uplifted, Johnny lay in a shining solitude and peace that was like a benediction on his purpose.

The sun was on the water and the dew onthe lawn when he rowed across to Isle le Beau. The house was as silent as the palace of the Sleeping Beauty. No one was in the French drawing-room, nor in the wainscoted hall, with its fireplace filled with feathery greens, its gun-rack and antlered heads. In a mo- ment the master and mistress would descend to the breakfast-room, which was open to the fresh June morning, and happy children would come sliding down the only broad banister in the Northwest Territory. Mrs. Blennerhasset's garden hat and gloves, rose- basket and shears, were on the hall table. Johnny left his gun beside them, and a note in the basket:

You will understand that I can no longer kill my little brothers of the earth and air. Thank you for this news straight from Heaven.

In the cedar grove he changed to the green suit, and on the edge of the bluff he shouldered his tools and lightened pack. Looking across to the island, he saw Mrs. Blennerhasset run- ning down the lawn to the landing, as if she must overtake him. Waving his hat to the blowing white draperies at the head of Isle le Beau, Johnny was gone, defenseless, into the wilds.

