Chapter 8 - TRAGEDY

After the outbreak of the early spring the Indians fell into a sullen apathy from which it was difficult to arouse them. All summer Johnny labored among them in a spiritual atmosphere that was like a hot and humid day. But, living in large groups as they did, it was easier to help them than to serve the same number of scattered white people.

To settlements as distant as Marietta he sent Logan for cattle, seeds and plows; and Piqua supplied teachers who could turn fur- rows, yoke oxen, make harnesses of ropes and rawhide, and build rail fences and corn-cribs. Then, as the corn ripened, the outlook be- came brighter. In October there was better feeling, and more food stored for winter in the Indian country of northwestern Ohio,than for many a year. No fresh reports or trouble had come from the Wabash Valley, where Tecumseh and The Prophet had their armed camp to defend the lands of the Miamis from a proposed government survey. His heart high with hope of better days Johnny made a last round of the new nur- series and then went east with the hunters.

The battle of Tippecanoe was forced by General Harrison at an opportune moment in November. But so long did it take news to travel from Indiana Territory that Pitts- burg did not hear of the event for a month. With that came word of the violent and con- tinued earthquake shocks in the Mississippi and Ohio valleys. The Prophet seized upon these disturbances to enrage the superstitious Indians. His frenzied eloquence filled the woods with painted runners to the Gulf, to dance the Lakes dances and inflame tribes to fight for their lost lands.

Johnny was then far up the Allegheny Valley, struggling through the drifted glens to reach the cider - mills, and heard nothing of these menacing matters until he brought in his seeds. The band that he joined on the Great Trail had dwindled to a dozen discouraged old men. The young braves had gone back early in the winter to take part in whatever exciting business was afoot. So far as they knew, the explosion had spent it- self, and there would be no war unless the British gave the word.

The night was sharp and clear when he lay down by the camp-fire for a few hours of much-needed sleep. But suddenly they all sprang to their feet in alarm. The stars had vanished, and the hushed air was filled with a suffocating, sulphurous vapor that made the flames shoot up in long streamers and burn blue. Then the earth heaved with a vast but gentle movement, as if sighing in its sleep. Trees crashed all around the camp, a mile of caving bank thundered into the creek, and water swept in a storm-lashed flood across a marsh to their feet. Wolf -packs howled, and flying clouds of water -fowl screamed in the awful darkness. It was as if all nature was in a state of dissolution.

No shock had been felt so far east before. This lasted less than a minute, but it trans- formed the Indians into such primitive hu- mans of brute fear and ferocity, with con- torted limbs and bloodshot eyes, as must have inhabited an antediluvian world of monsters. For an hour they went through horrid rites to appease the anger of the Great Spirit. And even more deeply was Johnny shaken. What times were these  what por- tents of disaster!

He had long believed that one who lives in solitude and self-denial might see heavenly visions, and have that speech with angels which is heard within. Now, as he lay wide-eyed in the restored tranquility of the night, lifting up his heart in prayer for guidance, he thought he saw Mary Lake  not here in this wild camp, but in Betty's distant home, bending over Betty's bed. Then, a wraith-like shape that wavered in a bleak wind, she opened the door and called  the old signal for help in the emer- gencies of sickness  and from that dim room behind her came the sound as though a fright- ened child sobbed in her sleep.

Johnny roused the Indians. He had had a message and must go at once. They must take his seeds to Chief Crane at Sandusky, and let him have their best pony and a pack- age of warrior's bread. In a quarter of an hour he was riding in midnight darkness over the Great Trail. After crossing the Muskingum, and with only a pocket compass for a guide, he plunged into the trackless forest. It was after nightfall of the fourth day that he dropped from the spent and mired pony at the door.

Within the lighted house Old Guard whined to be let out on this intruder. He leaped like a wolf, and had to be called off, when Betty let Johnny in. She stood there alone with a shotgun that fell from her shaking hands.

"You frightened me. I thought it was an Indian. So  so foolish of me. The Indians are so quiet now that David went down to Chillicothe. He has raised a militia com- pany, and will get his captain's commission from Governor Meigs.' '

At once she was all concern for Johnny, fetching dry socks for his half -frozen feet, and a bowl of hot mush and milk. He asked the usual questions about the children, who were asleep, and then waited in silence for her to recover her self-control. In mending the fire she stooped with such difficulty that he took the tongs from her. At that she dropped to the hearth, and against his knees sobbed out the terror that had broken her courage.

" D-David wouldn't have left me for that   now. He was obliged to go, to  to fetch a doctor  to help me. We didn't think  I'd need help  so soon. I cried for Aunt Mary Lake. She'd come if she could, Johnny. I was afraid I might die  and the children be left here  alone."

''She called me!" His voice was hushed with the wonder and glory of the vision that had brought him here. He told Betty about it as he lifted her to the bed. "I am going back to a sugar-camp to get an Indian wom- an. Dr. True says that some old squaws can beat him at this kind of big medicine. Old Guard is a regiment in himself. He knew before he was born that it would be his duty to protect something. Put up the bars and go to sleep."

On the return journey the horse that he took from the stable carried double. The ancient and hideous dame had come unwilling- ly, and only on the promise of a horse-load of potatoes, pork and apples; but when she saw Betty her black eyes sparkled with pro- fessional pride, and she spoke tenderly enough in her soft Shawnee tongue.

Pretty squaw! Her all right now."

Johnny was glad that there were things to be done  animals to be fed, cows to be milked, wood and water to be fetched, and scared children to be reassured, kept out of doors and told something of the sacred mys- tery of birth.

"You must be quiet and happy. There's a little angel hovering over this house, try- ing to come down to earth to be a brother or sister to you. Mother will be in there, waiting, until God lays the darling little bit of a baby in her arms."

After an Indian camp-fire dinner in the barn-lot, and a romp in the haymow, the three little boys went to sleep and Mary covered them warm with the sweet-smelling hay. Leaving Old Guard on duty, she and Johnny went a half-mile down the creek to the nursery. To the child who could count on her dimpled fingers the few times that she had been taken out of the home inclos- ure, this was thrilling adventure. Back from the gravelly margin of the stream stretched a flood bank that was covered with a low growth of leafless willows and alders, and last year's tall, rusty ferns. The thicket closed behind them, and left no trace oftheir passage when they crossed it to the higher ground that sloped steeply up to the forest-screened trail.

In a natural, under-washed bend of the bluff, and behind a tall, stake-and-brush fence that was woven with the living cables of fox- grapes, the nursery was concealed from all but its canopy of gray sky. Bursting with delight, but noiselessly as any squirrel, for Johnny had whispered that this was a secret place, Mary scrambled up the stout trellis and dropped near orderly rows of apple- twigs. In every settled district in Ohio Johnny now had these forest fastnesses, of which the Indians knew nothing, where fly- ing people might find temporary safety. He had a purpose in bringing the child here, but must not frighten her.

"Mary-go-' round, father knows about this, but might not think of it, or be at home when  Tell mother what a fine place it is for hiding, so if she ever wanted to take you all away  in a hurry  "

Mary nodded with gay understanding. To a child it is the happy impulse of any moment to want to go somewhere else in a hurry. She would never have her mother's delicate beauty nor the gentle sweetness that won the heart and made it ache. But a friendly, helpful, cheerful little person in a brown, butternut- dyed cloak, squirrel-skin hood, and red knitted stockings and mittens, she flitted about like a winter robin while Johnny went over the ground foot by foot, to make sure there were no snake-holes.

The squaw was gone when, on the third day, David burst into the house with an ashen face and hoarse voice. "The Indians have broken out again. The woods are full of murdering bands. Fetch the children !"

He wrapped Betty and the day-old babe that lay on her breast in the bed-clothing, swept them up into his arms, and raced down the frozen lawn to the creek bank. While the children were scrambling into outer gar- ments, Johnny ran with the bearskin rugs, to be laid in the rowboat and over mother and child. Mary sat by them to keep the coverings tucked in, and David took the oars. Johnny followed in the big canoe with the little boys and Old Guard.

Torn veils of fine, dry snow streamed be- fore a westerly wind that sent them scudding down the swollen creek. In an hour they reached the stockade in a tiny settlement on the Scioto, into which frantic people were gathering. Johnny helped carry Betty up the bluff and into a blockhouse, where she would at least have the care of women. No doctor could be spared from the small capital, where there was much sickness. As long as he lived he never forgot how she lay with the wee, downy face of the gasping infant pressed to her breaking heart.

He had left her  to suffer this. How would it be with him if she perished?

He spent a week driving down cows and taking boat and wagon loads of provisions to the log fort. David remained in command, and half the men returned to cultivate the fields and protect the deserted homes. A few were shot from ambush at their plows ; horses and cattle were run off, and some cabins and orchards burned. Betty's baby died from the exposure, and Johnny buried it under the apple-tree with the low, roomy crotch, where she could have the sad comfort of seeing the short, grassy mound from the door- way. The coming struggle was claiming its first, innocent victims.

War was not yet a certainty, and was, indeed, not declared until the middle of June; but troops had been ordered to proceed to Dayton in May, to impress the Indians and to prepare the Northwest for defense. John- ny went up to Sandusky for his seeds, and spent the next six weeks in Indian villages where no work was being done.

In the outbreak of early winter even peaceful and industrious tribes had reverted to savagery, broken their plows and looms, eaten their seed for this year's crops, and slaughtered their cattle for horrid feasts. Now they repented in a bitter poverty that was relieved only by thieving raids across the border. Other tribes Johnny found in the brief enjoyment of a dreadful prosperity. The braves had new blankets and firearms, and their villages were abundantly supplied with beef and flour. He rebuked them for their treacherous folly, and refused to eat anything of theirs except the forest nuts, and the corn they had grown with their own honest labor.

The orchards that he had planted  apple- trees whose ripening fruits would be roasted on their living branches  were in blossom when, as if some secret word was borne onthe wind, the braves went westward. In a week not a warrior was to be seen east of the Miami, and the border settlers returned to their homes. Since nothing would be planted that year but men, no harvests gathered be- sides souls, Johnny rode out to Piqua, where Logan had his seven hundred warriors un< arms to defend his village and the American trading-post. Going on dow r n to Dayton, he sent his seeds and tools to Cincinnati, to be forwarded to Colonel Cushing at Belpre, and then turned to the work of re- lieving suffering.

The outlook was appalling. Of the army that was gathering, only one regiment was United States regulars. The young pioneers of the Ohio militia and volunteers w r ere wholly untrained, and were led by self-chosen offi- cers, and they came in the poor clothing that they had worn at their work in field and forest. They brought their own arms: cheap shotguns, rusty muskets and rifles that their fathers had used in Mad Anthony's campaign of eighteen years before, and even some flintlocks  sacred relics of the Revolu- tion. Blacksmiths came up from Cincinnati to mend these worthless weapons, and farmers lS 3molded bullets and emptied their powder- horns to supply ammunition. Johnny nursed the sick, for teeth were chattering with ague, and he scoured the country for blankets and shoes, corn and pork.

Yet this feeble force of five thousand men, under the leadership of a Revolutionary vet- eran who was in his dotage, was expected to cut its way through two hundred miles of Indian -owned forests to Detroit, with five times its number of perfectly equipped sav- ages hanging on the flanks and waiting for orders from British officers in Fort Maiden.

A cry of fury and despair went up from the poor and scattered settlers on a long frontier, a cry for an army and supplies adequate to the task, with their own Indian - fighter, General Harrison, in command. But Wash- ington was far away, and the peril of the bor- der but an incident to a nation unprepared. After gun and torch and tomahawk had rav- aged the country to the Ohio River, the Old Northwest must defend itself, find the men and money, train its own leaders, and build its own fleet of green timber on Lake Erie.

There was one thing that these young pioneers knew how to do supremely  how tofell trees, and with them build blockhouses and log bridges, and lay the swamps with corduroy. When the word was given the axes rang up the valley of the Miami. Johnny found Captain Varnum leading his company in a mighty slaughter of ancient timber, and learned that Betty and the children were on the farm. Neighbors were caring for the corn and cattle. When the fighting began they would go down to Marietta.

"I'll be where the earliest news is to be had, and alarm the people along the border if there is need," Johnny reassured him.

There was a wild hurrah of relief and pride when word went abroad that the gallant boys had cut their way into Detroit. With such a feeling of security as the Northwest had not had in a year and a half, men returned to their corn-fields, never dreaming that this strong key-fortress could be so speedily lost. But Johnny knew. An amazing mistake had been made. At the rapids of the Maumee, finding the march through the woods ham- pered by the transport of supplies, the food, military stores and medicines were loaded on a sailing-vessel and sent by water. The exhausted troops dropped in the barrackswithin the gates, only to learn that war had been declared and that the boat had been captured by the British on Lake Erie. A small force of Ohio volunteers was sent back at once to the vine-clad banks of the River Raisin to meet and protect the reinforcements and supplies that had been started north. This was ambushed by a band of Tecumseh's warriors who slipped over from Canada.

At this news, which struck consternation to the hearts of the defenders, Johnny sought the colonel of the Third Ohio Volunteers. A man seven years younger than himself, Lewis Cass had come out to Marietta in the same year, to study law with Governor Meigs and then to ride the Muskingum Valley cir- cuit. Even at thirty he was a ponderous young man of heavy figure and large, smooth- shaven, immobile face. His words were few and well considered, and he had a reputation for honesty, solid learning, clear thinking, and a quiet, constructive patriotism that must lead to some distinguished service. It was the future Governor who was destined to transform the wilderness of Michigan Ter- ritory into a modern state who answered Johnny's question with deliberation.

"A criminal blunder has been committed, and we must pay for it. It will take two years to overcome the mistake. Get out, Johnny, and save all the people you can."

When Captain David Varnum marched with the second relief party out of the beleaguered fortress, Johnny disappeared in the woods to learn what he could of the enemy's plans from the native Indians. At Brownstown he found a village of friendly Wyandots, whose young braves were out warning the scattered families of French trappers and scouting for the American army. If the fort was sur- rendered they were to take the news to the valleys of the Maumee, Miami and Wabash. Thence it could be carried swiftly to Dayton and Vincennes. With the Ohio border this tribe was unacquainted, and they could not, in any case, reach it in time.

"Why?" Johnny was startled. Chief Walk-in-the-Water drew a map of the head of Lake Erie in the ashes. Word of a British and Indian victory would be carried by canoe to Sandusky. From there the run- ners would scatter, small bands striking the border at many points at once. Killing and burning everything in their path, theywould make for the crossing-places of the Ohio River, and stir up tribes to war from Michigan to Alabama. Braves from San- dusky were with Tecumseh.

"I cannot believe that!" cried Johnny. Chief Crane is a stanch friend of the Ameri- cans, and a wise and honest man."

There was a shrug. The Grand Sachem was old. Many evil things were done under his nose, and to much that he saw he shut his eyes, for he could no longer hold the hot- heads of his tribe who were all for war. No doubt ample means for carrying out this plot were hidden near his village.

"Then I must find and destroy them."

With a bag of parched corn for food, and a horse that knew the narrow trace through the jungle of the Black Swamp which stretched from the Maumee to the Sandusky River, Johnny slipped around the deserted shore of the lake. Making a detour of the populous Indian town, he camped in the edge of the woods on a sandy point that overlooked the wide entrance to the bay. Night after night, in the light of the full moon, when the forest was peopled with a host of shifting shadows and one more could pass unnoticed, he creptdown - shore. Near the landing - place and around the village he searched the brush- grown hollows until he found the unopened cases of firearms and ammunition. Not know- ing how much time he would have, and frantic with fear for the thousands of imperiled peo- ple, it was all he could do to wait for the dark of the moon. Then paddling cautiously out in a canoe, he dropped the guns in deep water. The powder he emptied in bog-holes and cov- ered with muck, and to the thirsty sand he gave the kegs of fire-water.

There was more that he failed to find; but the loss of so much would alarm and delay the runners, and he dared not risk discovery. Moving several miles to the east, he lay hidden on the lake-shore trail, with his horse saddled and tethered in a grassy glade, while he lived on parched corn and wild black- berries. In the long hours of watching he worked out the details of the feat of Logan w T ho, unaided, had fetched twenty-five white women and children out of Fort Wayne and down through a hundred miles of forest swarm- ing with hostile savages, in safety, to Piqua. There was more than a chance that he could do that. Like the foxes of the hills, in whose dens he had slept, he knew the twists and turns and secret retreats of every wild way in Ohio.

The year declined from the zenith and drowsed through the long days of August. At four o'clock in the morning the disk of the dog-star burned like a little moon above the silvery expanse of the most placid of all the Great Lakes. At noon the sun shimmered on a blue field that was seldom ruffled by storm; and it set late, in splendor, behind the violet islands. Sixteen hours a day Johnny watched those low, wooded masses and rocky headlands. In crossing this wide body of water Indians rested midway, and when the weather was clear a camp-fire could be seen, like a flickering red star, low down on the water. But men who turn into demons and run on the devil's errands stop for nothing. It was out from under a rising morning mist that an enormous fleet of canoes appeared and sped toward the bay. As they neared the shore the reckless braves stood up and waved their arms in the contortions of the primitive war-dance. Some leaped over- board and swam to the landing.

Detroit had surrendered!

Johnny dashed into the woods and leaped to the saddle. By riding south, straight down the Scioto trail, he could make sure of rescu- ing Betty and her children. But if he did that the scattered settlers along the lake shore, and the many people on the nearer border for a hundred miles southwestward from Cleveland, would have no warning. Massacre unchecked would run red to the Great Crossing of the Muskingum.

Digging the only pair of spurs he ever owned into the flanks of the horse, he galloped east. All day he pounded through heavy sands and struggled across the wide, marshy mouths of the innumerable waterways. At isolated cabins standing in corn-fields and orchards he called out his message. It was dusk when his horse fell dead before a door where a family ran out from a rude supper- table at his shout:

"Detroit has fallen! Indians coming! Keep off the trails! Warn your neighbors! Take the news to Cleveland! A horse and food!"

From a fresh mount he drank a gourd of milk. A woman stuffed his pockets with hoe- cakes. In five minutes he was gone into thetwilight aisles of the border trail. Thunder- ing through the sloughs, and up and down the undulations of the watershed, he blew blasts from a sawed-off powder-horn that could be heard a mile. With his trumpet-call, which sounded like the day of judgment, he aroused cabins and settlements where people slept with their doors open in the stifling heat of the August night. Into the darkness and into the ghostly light of a late-rising moon they sprang from their beds. Many began to harness their oxen and horses to old cara- vans, and to bring out their household goods, but Johnny cried:

"Fly at once! Take what food you can, and pile onto your horses ! Turn your cattle and pigs loose in the woods ! Hide the women and children in the nursery until the Indians have passed! The men must stay out to warn every family they can reach! Then make for the nearest stockade through the wildest glens and swamps! If that is crowd- ed, go by night marches, afoot, to the Ohio River!" "

On through the short summer night he rode. In the earliest hours in the morning his horse flagged in his pace. He dragged the saddle off and turned the animal into a grassy glade to give him a chance of life. At the next cabin, a mile away, he captured a half-broken colt in a pasture. His ears

HE BLEW BLASTS FROM A SAWED-OFF POWDER-HORN THAT COULD BE HEARD A MILE ringing with screams, a panorama of horror- stricken faces swimming before his eyes, he raced on.

He saw the sick carried from their beds, and he herded families that, in the moment of panic, would have scattered. In an or- chard, her apron full of windfalls, he found a half -foolish and palsied grandmother who had been forgotten. Sweeping her up to the saddle, he restored her to the distracted family. At a log mill he ran into a dozen farmers who were waiting for their grist, ten and twenty miles from their homes. Par- alyzed for a moment by his message, they stood like dead trees, then leaped to their horses and fled.

In the middle of the second night he heard yells and saw the smoky flare of pine-knot torches. A bullet whistled by his head, and his colt leaped as if shot and sped like an arrow. Rising in the stirrups, Johnny gave the war-whoop to deceive the Indians into thinking him one of themselves. Cold sweat burst from every pore. Massacre and burn- ing had overtaken him! In a dawn of rose and gold and amethyst he passed a cabin whose smoldering ruin was ringed withcharred corn. Slain animals lay on the ground, but by some miracle the people had escaped. But looking down a small water- way he heard triumphant yells and saw a great volume of fiery smoke billow up from the woods.

At that he reeled in his saddle and ceased to think. He was still a trumpet-call  a voice crying in a wilderness of nameless hor- rors  but his mind was lifted above con- scious thought in one wild prayer for Betty and her little brood. In this hour of an- guish he remembered the pallid face and wide blue eyes that the war -orphaned child of the cove above the shipyard at Marietta had turned upon him. Now, in tortured fancy, he saw her so again, but lying among the ferns on the creek bank, staring up at God.

It was true that her home lay on the Piqua trail, twenty miles within the border; but the beautiful place was widely known, and even in the first rush the Indians would go out of their way to destroy it. Every farm that he passed had been swept by fire, and ghastly shapes lay on the ground. And now another messenger was abroad  smoke. In the dead air of a day of humidity heavy vaporswere unable to rise above the canopy of the forest. The vistas were blue with the suffo- cating cloud, and flights of complaining wood- pigeons streamed out to the clearer air of the hilltops.

He had turned eastward on the long home- stretch when he overtook Logan on horseback with his ten-year-old daughter Ellen on a pony. Not knowing that Detroit had surren- dered the chief had left Piqua two days be- fore to take this child, who was the apple of his eye, to Chillicothe out of the perils of savage warfare. From there he meant to send her on to the family of his foster- father, Captain Logan, near Lexington, Ken- tucky. Now he transferred her to Johnny's care.

"My wife will not leave her people, and the lads are braves who must share the fate of their tribe. Nelly will not delay you. She can ride as hard and fast as you. Take her on with you and save your friends. I will ride down the border to Dayton."

"Have you heard anything of Captain Varnum?"

"Fell in a second ambush on the River

Raisin."

They gripped hands with the sense of loss which comes from a last parting.

As they separated the dark father and child faced each other. "Farewell, Nelly. The lodge will be lonely without you. Love your new home and friends. Grow up white." Their looks clung to each other until the chief wheeled and galloped away. Their next meeting was in the land of the Great Spirit, for Logan was killed in the fol- lowing year when scouting for General Har- rison. If this little royal exile shed a tear, now, no one knew. Burying her face in the pony's long mane she raced after Johnny.

Along the smoke-dimmed, winding trail the endless lines of motionless trees made the shadowy, inescapable walls of a labyrinth seen in a nightmare. The sun had begun to de- cline when Johnny swayed dizzily on smelling burned wood and roasted apples. His horse shied and bolted, leaving him on the wreck- age of the wagon-gate of Betty's home. Within the circle of blasted orchard trees the field-stone chimney stood above the dying embers of the house.