Chapter 7 - THE HOME ON THE INDIAN BORDER

IN no year of his mission did Johnny set his feet on the road to the west with such a feeling of well-being and happiness as in the spring of 1811. A gen- eral thaw that broke the back of winter in the middle of February brought him into Pittsburg with his seeds. By start- ing ten days sooner than usual he could get through with the work he had mapped out for the early part of the season, and reach Betty's home for a day's rest in apple-blossom time. At least once in every year it was nec- essary to reassure himself that Betty and her babies were safe and happy in their little Eden on the border.

In the other book which had become a second Bible to him, there was a text that ex- plained how zeal had lent wings to his purpose:

"He arrives sooner who eagerly desires it." Beyond all he had dared hope, his labor of love had prospered. As population increased his nurseries everywhere were cared for; and once his trees were planted fewer of them died or reverted to their wild ancestry than had been the experience in the east. They came into full bearing much earlier, and, unless re- strained by pruning, shot up as tall as forest trees. Even in the wildest backwoods clear- ings, where scant attention could be given them by hard-pressed pioneers, they bore small but abundant fruit of a mellowness and spicy flavor such as no ungrafted tree would bear in the worn-out soils of to-day.

Late in his third winter among the cider- mills Dr. True, who was obliged to go up to Pittsburg for medical supplies, went through a number of old orchards with him. On the quick return trip by the mail-packet he had taken buds wrapped in wet moss and hemp bagging, and grafted them on the young nursery stock in the cove. Year after year there had been persistent and intelligent co- operation with Johnny, and Marietta and Belpre would soon have all the old favorite varieties of apples in their orchards, and therewould be fruit to ship to New Orleans. Grafts from the first of these good trees were now being carried westward and up the larger tributaries.

His nurseries must be kept up to supply the ever-increasing flood of new-comers with trees; but Johnny had trained caretakers for his plantations now, and, given seeds, much of his work could be left to them. This re- leased him to press his mission more vigor- ously in the Indian country. Conditions had long been working ruin for the tribes of the Northwest, and their growing poverty and helplessness was a piteous thing.

In the winter Indians still hunted in the eastern hills, but with diminishing returns for their labors, and Johnny journeyed westward with them in the spring. This year a Ger- man farmer rode with him to the first camp on the Great Trail. There he meant to ask the loan of a horse for the season, and to go on alone. As room was made for him in the circle about the fire, a brave said that they had been expecting him. He pointed to the pearly crescent that hung low in the west.

"It's Johnny Appleseed moon."

There were grins at his start of surprise.

IT S  MOON

Yes, white settlers called him that, too. Well, that was good. It moved him profoundly to have won a nickname that stood for the faithful performance of his engagements. The Indians honored him, although they had neglected his nurseries and made little use of his ability and willingness to serve them in many practical ways. And to them he owed everything. Without their hospitality in the harder seasons and on the wilder trails his mission must have failed; and without their ponies and canoes he never could have jour- neyed over such great regions of country. Now they waited in silence until he had eaten of the generous bowl of hominy cooked with chestnuts and butternut meats that a squaw prepared for him, before they talked of their misfortunes.

The game was almost gone. Famine stared the children of the forest in the face. When Johnny asked if they would have food to last until the corn came in, they said that they could get what was needed at the forts in Canada. The British were their friends, and had supplied them with warm blankets and the best guns for hunting.

Johnny's heart sank with a sense of swiftly coming disaster. There were rumors of war with England. He stood up and looked ac- cusingly into every shifty eye.

"Where will you get skins to pay for these things? The British are bribing and arming you. If they make war on the Americans they will expect you to help them. The Americans will never be driven from the homes they have worked so hard to gain. If you are so foolish as to let yourselves be used against your neighbors you will lose all you possess. The game is gone, to return no more. Your truest friends are those who will help you get cattle, tools and seeds, and teach you the habits and tasks of white men."

Until far into the night he talked of the blessings of industry and peace. There was no famine in Piqua for Logan's tribe, which numbered seven hundred braves. In that farm village on the Miami there were warm cabins, full barns and corn-cribs, cattle in fenced pastures, meat in smoke-houses and potatoes and apples in winter pits. The squaws had spinning-wheels and looms, and in exchange for their furs the braves were buying useful tools of the Indian agent. Blackhoof, Lewis and wise old Crane, Grand Sachem of the Wyandots, knew that this was the way of wisdom. The teachings of Te- cumseh and The Prophet, that they should go to war to get back their lost lands, were evil. On what they had they could live in comfort and security.

Into that council of bitterness and despair he brought love and hope. Now he must mul- tiply himself; engage the help of the more civilized tribes, and convert the settlers on the border to take up that heroic task of saving themselves while saving a dying race. His plans all changed, he rode away at dawn. In the waxing of his moon, and the snows and gales of early March, he went up the Cuya- hoga Valley trail to Cleveland. In that region he marked trees for distribution and left sup- plies of seeds. Then, from the shore of Lake Erie, he turned southwest into the border trail which white men had blazed with ax-cuts on trees all the way to Dayton.

Under every rude roof that sheltered a family Johnny stopped to beg sympathy and help for the starving tribes, to warn, to reconcile. From one Indian village to an- other he traveled to plant seeds and to take such promise of relief as he could get. Buton both sides of the border there was much to forgive, more to fear, and race antipathies that no argument or appeal could break down. And now the hunters, returning in desperate straits, were committing fresh offenses. John- ny's apprehension and compassion for white people and red grew, as he rode through the misty emerald aisles of April toward Betty's home.

Unless he made haste the orchard would have dropped its blossoms. At sunset one day he was still ten miles from his journey's end, and riding so fast that he would have overlooked a rough little black - and - white puppy, if that wise young dog had not lain with his keen fox nose in the path. Lamed by a thorn in his foot, he had dropped behind a wagon, and had waited there for hours, confident that some one would come by who needed a lonesome, hungry and well-inten- tioned little dog.

Johnny picked up the waif  for he m left a domestic animal in the woods  washed the injured foot at a spring, shared his last dry hoecake, and set the grateful little fellow comfortably across his saddle-bow. It was long after nightfall and the house was dark when he drew rein; but a dewy incense came up from the orchard that lay in snowy drifts and mounds in the moonlighted glade.

The tall gate that opened on the trail was always padlocked at night, so he rode around the inclosure and up from the creek into the yard. He turned the horse loose in the pas- ture, and, not wishing to disturb the family, took his seeds and blanket to a bench under the blossoming trees. The puppy whimper- ing with hunger, he was obliged to go back to the spring-house to get him some milk. He was fumbling with the fastenings of the door when David called from the house:

"Who's there?"

"Johnny!"

David came out into the stoop, set his shot- gun down, and shut the door behind him.

"You'd better halloo from the road after this. I might have filled you with bird-shot. Indians drove off one of my cows last week and raided the smoke-house. I'll shoot the next one that comes sneaking around my place."

"They are starving. The game is gone."

"Well, I can't feed them. They have land. Let them work as I do."

"They don't know how to work, David, and have nothing to work with. They must be helped for a long time, and be taught the simplest tasks with kindness and patience."

"You can't teach wolves to herd sheep. How are you, Johnny? Betty and the chil- dren count the days until you come." His arm went around the slender shoulders in warm affection. He fetched out a crock of milk and pushed the wagging puppy's muzzle into the creamy pool. "Stuff your skin full and grow, you little rascal. Jerusalem! John- ny, this is an English sheep-dog! He'll be as lean and swift as a hound, with a voice like a bugle and the grit to tackle his own weight in wildcats. What luck! Look here, will you?"

He unlocked the barn door and, dragging Johnny in, excitedly showed him, tied in a horse-stall, a splendid specimen of a merino ram. Napoleon had raided the flocks of Spain, and the chief duty of the United States consul at Lisbon, at that time, was buying blooded sheep for the wool-growers of New England. So serious was the need of woolen clothing in the West that men of resource and public spirit in Ohio were now bringing these valuable animals over the mountains, guard- ing them as they did their children, and pay- ing bounties on wolf scalps.

"That ram came from the royal monastery of Guadeloupe, and has a pedigree as long as your arm. We call him the Little Corporal. With the ewes that Colonel Cushing is to get for me he'll cost me a quarter-section of land. What flocks we can have on these thousand hills when we get the wolves and the Indians cleaned out!"

While the door was being secured again Johnny stood with bent head. There were ten thousand warriors on the Ohio frontier, under able leadership, and driven to frenzy by suf- fering and evil counsel. Nothing was safe here, however so well defended by lock and gun and guardian dog.

" David, there will be war with England. Tecumseh and The Prophet are organizing and inflaming the Indians, and the British are feeding and arming them. The more civilized tribes are friendly to us, and others could be won over. We must get at that work now, this summer, while those misguided chiefs are out on the Wabash with a thousand of the most savage of the warriors  "

"General Harrison will attend to them," David interrupted, impatiently. "We might as well fight it out. If we have to lick the redcoats and the redskins both at once, why I guess we can."

"A white family has been massacred near Sandusky!"

"I know about that. Don't tell Betty. I've got an arsenal in the house, and the men of this neighborhood are building a stockade."

"Then at the first sign of trouble send Betty and the children down to Marietta. For every defenseless thing in your care you will have to answer at the bar of God."

He turned at once and went to the orchard, so heavy of heart that it was long before he slept. From dreadful dreams of the war- cry, tomahawk and torch, he woke now and then to a night that was absolutely still. The blossoming trees over which were gather- ing the dark clouds of savage war stood in a tranced and fragrant loveliness. Betty, com- ing out in a morning that was like the first that blushed on Eden, caught her breath in the sheer bliss of being alive in such a world. Johnny was asleep, and when David joined her she put her finger to her lips.

" Don't wake him. When he opens his eyes he'll look as if he thought he had died and gone to heaven."

The children tumbled out of the cabin into the happy day  Mary Lake's namesake, who was going-on-seven ; David and Jonathan, the inseparable twins, and two-year-old Jim- my. Betty hushed their cries of delight over the jolly little dog, and sent them with a gourd full of wet cornmeal to feed the yellow balls of peepy chickens.

"Mary," she said in the quaint phrase that the motherly little girl had adopted, and that had won for her the nickname of Mary-go- 'round, "you go 'round, dear, and look after brother Jimmy."

She hurried through her morning's work, and got out the supply of new clothing that she managed always to have ready for the beloved wanderer. Then, while he still slept she refilled his food-pouch, for he was liable to be off before any one was stirring in the morning. Fetching the low rocking-chair from the house, she sat under a tent of blos- soming boughs with a bit of sewing, and watched him with the solicitude of the child of the cove of near a dozen years before.

Tears filled her eyes. All over Ohio fam- ilies would be out, to-day, under the orchards he had planted, while Johnny was homeless. And he was beginning to look  not old, for he was only thirty-six, and he would have a certain look of youth if he lived to be a hun- dredbut marked with his years of toil and solitude, worn, purified by self-sacrifice, the gentle and ardent spirit shining through. No one in the region ever spoke of him except with tender reverence. It was a new miracle that, defenseless, he had never been in serious danger from man or beast or the elements, in a vast wilderness that bristled with perils. Just now his face was shadowed by some anxiety so deep that it pursued him into his troubled dreams. He woke with a start.

For a moment of bewilderment he thought himself back in the Pittsburg orchard on that far-away morning. Here was the rosy foam of apple-blossoms, the murmur of bees, the lilt of bird-song, the rumble of a caravan on the road; and in the little rocking-chair the appealing guest? No, he had found her grave by a deserted cabin, and had planted an apple-tree where she lay dead from an unhelped child birth, with the babe on her breast. This was Betty, and she was saying:

"Johnny, do you remember the night Aunt Mary Lake died? There was no one in the world then, belonging to me. And now I have David, and my arms full of darling little children, and you are here on this morning when the home you made for us all is so beautiful that I never want to go away to heaven/ '

"It will be like this on the other shore, Betty." He quoted from his new gospel: "For every wayside rose there is a rose idea that blooms beside the River of Life."

She placed his breakfast before him on a small rustic table, and when she sat down again she folded the useful hands that were so seldom idle. The mother of four children, she was only twenty-five, and she had the light, quick step, the merry laugh and the ready blush and tears of a girl. They had so many thoughts and memories in common, and there was only this one day in the year in which to share them.

"You remember what Dr. True used to say, Johnny, 'People can be sick any time, but my apple-tree blooms but once a year.'

There are such a lot of things to be done, but I am not going to do them to-day."

In the happy hours that followed Johnny went about the orchard pinching back buds, removing suckers, cutting out superfluous and aspiring twigs, to keep the trees headed low and open to the sun. He got a scythe and mowed the grass, and told Betty not to have it raked away. It would soon disappear in the new growth, and as it decayed some- thing from it would be washed into the soil that would paint the fruit in the colors of ruby and gold.

"There w r ill be company this afternoon, Johnny. We have a party every day while the trees are in bloom. People come miles from the new, bare clearings. I've made a bushel of maple sugar and nut cookies. On Sunday we'll have church. David reads from the Bible, and we sing the old hymns."

She asked Johnny to bring out the big table so they could have dinner in the orchard.

"It was Mrs. Blennerhasset who taught us the pleasure of eating out of doors. We used to row down to Isle le Beau to have straw- berries and cream on the lawn. Used to! Oh, Johnny, I can't believe that our dear

Queen of the Fairy Isle has been gone five years, and is poor and in dreadful trouble. Do people blame them for being mixed up in Aaron Burr's treason?"

"No, Betty. Every one who knew them is sorry they were deceived and ruined. The island is still theirs. They should come back and live among the friends who love and trust them."

"We never could understand it. Burr was under the cloud of the duel with Hamil- ton, and had used and betrayed old friends before he came out to Marietta. But he daz- zled every one with his plan for a colony far down the Mississippi that was to make poor settlers rich. You know how generous the Blennerhassets were. He got them to use their money to build a fleet of boats at Ma- rietta, and to outfit them for what was a treasonable military expedition. Then war- rants were out. Mr. Blennerhasset and hun- dreds of young men had to fly. A search party went over to Isle le Beau. Drunken militia from Virginia camped on the lawn, tore up the gardens, wrecked the furnishings, and even shot holes through the hall ceiling into Mrs. Blennerhasset' s bedroom, to tryto frighten her into betraying her husband. Colonel Cushing got a flatboat and smuggled her and the children away on a bitter Decem- ber night. What misery ! And the author of it all was never punished."

This was a thing upon which Johnny had often pondered. The wicked had fled when no man pursued.

"Yes, Betty, he is being punished every hour. He is living in exile, despised and for- saken. Stripped of friends, honor and op- portunity, his life can end only in poverty and neglect. It must be punishment enough for a man of evil and selfish ambitions to fail, and then to have to live out the length of his days in his own company."

"Oh, that is true!" She listened as to the voice of some old Hebrew prophet. And as she never had before, she understood John- ny's compensation. He might dwell with the beasts of the fields, but in what blessedness and peace he would live with himself to the end ! Presently she asked : "The house  that fairy palace? Is it gone, too?"

"No, that looks much the same from Bel- pre. A man from Kentucky rents the farm from Colonel Cushing, and comes with slaves every summer to grow a crop of hemp. But from October to April the place is deserted.rfcies ' - young people still go over to gather the nuts."

' I wish Mrs. Blennerhasset could know that. She was so good to us  so eager to give us pleasure. I am keeping the May- queen gown she gave me for my wedding, for Mary. Johnny, I wish we could take the children to the island. They cannot go into the forest here; but there, with no wild ani- mals larger than squirrels, they could wander all day."

That island of refuge ! There in the wave- washed woods of Isle le Beau, where Indi- ans never stopped, was a place of safety : t flying people for whom there would not be room in the few, small forts.

When Betty went into the house to pre- pare dinner, Johnny was reminded by coax- ing voices and tugging little hands that it was time to go 'round the world. This was a custom begun when Mary was two years old. With the littlest baby on his back, Johnny always took them around the high- walled home-world of several acres, showed them wonders that no one else could find, and brought them back to mother in an hour.

There was a ruby-throat among the honey- suckles that clambered over the stoop, in- quiring about when there would be coral flagons of nectar. Although few were in bloom, Johnny named and described the com- ing blossoms of the flowering annuals that bordered the graveled path to the spring- house. Water gurgled about the milk and butter crocks. It would talk and laugh and play leap-frog all the long way to the ocean. Minnows darted in the pool. A toad hopped out, blinking, from under the willows. A big green frog went "plunk!" into the creek under a sparkling fountain of spray. The trees, the flocks of fleeces in the blue sky, the ferns that fringed the bank, and even the children all stood on their heads in the water.

They stalked the troops of fairies who lived in the ferns, but those gay and clever little people were not to be caught. Then on all- fours, like bear cubs, they went around the picket-fence equator, under a tangle of shrub- bery that was full of nests. They saw a chip- munk, and then they didn't, so quick that they batted their eyes. They listened at thegrass-ball nest of a field-mouse that was packed with squeaking babies no bigger than bumblebees. There were armored and skurrying little beetles, furry pussies of cater- pillars that stopped to have their backs stroked, and garden spiders spinning their fairy wheels. And up above, from Johnny's shoulder, another world was to be seen that was all flowers and butterflies.

For a long time they sat on the grass in the orchard and watched the bees visiting the apple-blossoms, and carrying their bags of honey home through the tiny doors of their street of straw hives. The chicken-yard had to have a call, and every one took turns in the swing under the arbor of fox -grapes. Johnny had a lump of salt in his pocket to coax the cows to the bars, so the calves could be petted, and apples for his horse that was resting in the pasture.

The Little Corporal had a high-fenced in- closure to himself, and for all his royal state bleated like a lamb in his lonely exile. They stayed there a long time to comfort him with handfuls of clover. Then, squealing like the fat little pink-and-white pigs in the pen, they scrambled through a plumed and tuftedhedge of lilacs and snowballs. They had a drink from the mossy, splashy bucket at the well, under pink banners of apple bloom, and there they were at the stoop again. It was noon by the mark on the new floor of broad, white maple boards, and mother was blow- ing a beautiful blast on the horn to call father from some place outside the world to a picnic dinner.

In the afternoon they were all out in the orchard, the children romping with the puppy on the grass, Betty shamelessly idle, and Johnny, propped on his elbows, reading from his other book, or just listening to the talk and laughter. How beautiful it was  how peaceful and sweet, this little tiring- room of Paradise where a happ}^ family was having a foretaste on earth of the joys of eternity. It seemed incredible that this lovely and innocent sanctuary should ever be violated by the passions of men.

By and by a neighbor whose new cabin stood in a snake-fenced, stump-littered clear- ing two miles away, was left at the gate by her husband on his way to the mill. Alary, who was always bursting with eager friend- liness, reached up a plump little hand.

" Don't you want to go 'round with me and Johnny?"

"No, dear. Miz Varnum, if you don't mind, ma'am, I'd just like to set and look a spell. Them apple-trees air mighty han'- some."

Johnny told her that there would be trees in the nursery down the creek bank that David would select and help them to set out properly in the fall. Betty promised to save flower and garden seeds for her. When oth- er visitors came she and Mary served the cookies, and spicy, pink sassafras tea in the blue cups in the orchard.

Before sundown the guests were gone. The children were fed and tucked into trundle- beds in the wing that had been added to the cabin. The still and odorous dusk folded softly like a perfumed garment about that little home of peace and love.

David came in from the fields. While Betty moved about busily in the firelight, get- ting supper, he began, with absorbed pleas- ure in the task, the serious education of the sheep-dog. First he must have a name, and learn to obey instantly when called. With duties around the imperial person of the Little Corporal, it was found that no name would do but Old Guard. David remarked that he must go out after supper to put the ram in the barn and lock the gate.

They were at the table, which was spread with every kind of good food that a well- kept farm afforded, when an old Indian, a figure of ferocity that was like an apparition from Johnny's dreams of horror of the night, appeared at the open door and demanded something to eat.

"Get out!" David jerked a horse -pis- tol from the chimney - shelf. The Indian did not move, but glared hungrily at the table.

They were all on their feet. Betty had gone white and trembling, but pity was stronger than fear.

"David, won't you let me give the poor old man something? Please, dear."

"That dirty, drunken savage! Sit down, Betty. Get out! Begone with you!"

Johnny burned with sorrow and indigna- tion. Here, in the last extremity, was the Shawnee brave who had loaned him the beautiful painted canoe, made of birch-bark from the far shores of Lake Huron, for his first voyage down the Muskingum. There was no time to use this personal plea now, but only for the soft answer.

"He may be drunk, David, but he is starv- ing, too, and dangerous as a wolf." He turned to the Indian and tried to reach the crazed brain by speaking in the man's own dialect. " Black Arrow, you know me  Logan's brother. I have slept with you un- der one blanket. I have food in my pouch. Go up to the trail and I will fetch it to you."

In the delirium of the famished the man only stared at him, drew his knife and lurched toward the table. David fired. The sav- age turned then and staggered out of the house, to be lost at once in the dense shad- ows of the shrubbery. The children, startled from sleep by the shot, ran from their beds. Betty was down on the hearth with them, hushing their frightened crying.

As in a nightmare it seemed to take hours to find and light a lantern. When Johnny and David stood on the stoop with the door shut behind them, the silence of the soft spring night was stabbed through and through with a single, piteous bleat.

The Indian lay dead in the sheep-pasture. Beside him was his wet knife, and the Little Corporal with a dark stream flowing from the wound in his neck.