Chapter 9 - THE SAVIOR OF THE REFUGEES

H1LD GUARD shot out of the thicket on the flood bank when | Johnny ran down the creek, leaped ferociously, and then fawned upon him in frantic delight and raced back to the nursery. Johnny put his lips to the close- woven, leafy screen.

"Betty! Are you all there? Safe?" His knees gave way under him when he heard the breath of a reply. On the other side he knew that she too knelt, thanking God that he was here. After a moment he was able to whisper:

"Wait. There are some things I must do." He gave the whinnying pony a slap on the flank that sent him flying across the water and into the woods. No grazing animal could starve, and in summer it was not likely to be attacked by wolves. Then he turned to the painted savage who lay not a hundred yards away, a ghastly thing with his throat torn open by Old Guard, and dragged the body into the densest part of the undergrowth. Washing the dog's bloody muzzle in the creek, he bade him run up the slope and jump into the inclosure. Scrambling over the sway- ing trellis, he pulled Ellen up after him.

Betty was crouched with the children in the cave-like hollow at the back, behind the plantation of apple-twigs. Out of her drawn and colorless face her heavily ringed eyes stared like the unseeing eyes of the dead. But for her terror-stricken little people there was merciful diversion in the Indian maid. A gorgeous tropical bird dropping from the sky could not have astonished them more. In her petticoat of crimson cloth, her elabo- rately beaded moccasin-leggings of deerskin, and the jaunty blue jacket that dripped silver buttons, she looked to be all that Johnny described her.

"This is Princess Nelly Logan, of 1 lqua.

Nothing but friendly and admiring looks greeted the forlorn and blameless child; but the Princess Nelly shrank back. She hadseen such things as must make white people turn with horror from one of her race. With the face of a stone image, but a heaving breast, she stood aloof until Mary-go-'round ran and laid a rosy cheek against her own of warm bronze.

"I never had a sister. Let's be twin sisters."

"All right." There was a tear that Mary kissed away. The two little girls lay down together on a bed of leaves in the cave, with their arms around each other like the babes in the woods, when Johnny whispered that they must all go to sleep at once, so they would be rested for travel at night. When he went back to the screen with the sentinel dog, Betty followed him.

"What  what has happened?"

"Detroit has fallen."

With a choking sound she swayed against him. A question about David was on her blue lips, but she forbore to ask it, and Johnny did not tell her. She could bear no more, and would need all the hope and courage she could keep to sustain her in the terrible days to come. At this moment her distracted mind must be turned into safer channels.

"Dear Betty, think of the children you must help me save, and try to sleep," he begged. But when, staggering from the ex- haustion of he knew not how many hours of waking, he fell in a limp heap at her feet, he knew that she would sit there beside him, shuddering, all the waning afternoon. Katy- dids were calling across the dusk when she woke him and gave him bread and told him the brief story of their escape.

"The smoke alarmed me. Wood-pigeons streamed out, complaining, as if the whole border was on fire. Then chickens, pigs and cattle were on the trail. I sent the chil- dren on ahead. The dog drove the farm animals into the woods, and I got a basket of food and the children's shoes. We heard  things that will ring in our ears forever. When they had burned the house the Indians searched for us. And after a band went by overhead Old Guard dashed out at some- thing  someone  ' '

"Don't think about it any more." The thought of the death that had almost tracked her and hers to this hiding-place turned his own heart to ashes. She did make an effort to think of other things, and pointed to the trampled nursery in mute distress. At that Johnny could find it in him to smile.

"I'm glad. Oh, I pray to God that all my nurseries may lie in ruins under the feet of people who escaped the fate of their homes and orchards."

Now they must plan what they were to do. He told her that they might not find safe shelter until they reached the Ohio. Once across the Scioto, they could make for Bel- pre through the wild country which lay back of the valley of the Hocking, avoiding the river, the trails and the settlements. And on their way they must rescue every one they could. While Johnny went out to find the rowboat, where it was hidden among the willows, Betty gathered up the food and knotted the children's leather shoe-strings. Then, looking at the Princess Nelly, she thought of something that would not have occurred to the wisest man.

"My dear! This will never do! Have you nothing plainer to wear?"

Few backwoods families ever had anything more than the ugliest and scantiest of cloth- ing, and they went barefooted eight months in the year. This beautiful raiment on oneof the feared and hated race would a me bitter resentment, and perhaps violence, in poor fugitives. With loving compassion she helped the little girl into a linscy slip and clumsy shoes, and hid the offending splendor in the small bundle of necessaries that she carried on her back.

Johnny had them all lie down in the boat. Using an oar for a rudder to keep the light craft in the shadow of the bank, he let it drift down the dark stream. The moon would not rise until three o'clock in the morning. Before midnight they reached the stockade on the Scioto. The settlement had been burned, and the tiny fort was crowded. Many had gone by to Chillicothe, and more were arriving every hour. One family had been overtaken and massacred in full view of the gate. The bodies would have to he out until morning. Crying had been heard, of a child or a panther, or perhaps an Indian to lure rescuers to an ambush.

Telling a sentinel that he would remain near this crossing of trails as long as people continued to come, and save all he could, Johnny went down. He was getting into the boat when the sheep-dog came out of the undergrowth with the handle of a splint basket in his mouth. Betty lifted the baby that a doomed mother had pushed into the brush as she ran, and hushed its wail of hunger with a bit of maple sugar tied up in a ker- chief. For the first time in that long day of horrors she found the relief of tears.

Johnny turned the boat into the Scioto. A mile down-stream he shot it across to a point on the eastern bank where a parting of the hills was covered with small swamp- timber. In late summer the ground was nearly dry, but under the low branches of the trees it was all a tangle of pea-vines, noi- some water-weeds, and thorny shrubs. In the black jungle snakes had to be risked. Taking three-year-old Jimmy on his back, and post- ing the dog at the rear, he broke the way to a grassy opening.

"Not here," he signaled. Plunging into the woods, he mounted a grassy rise that was covered with acres of wild grapes. The scared and weary children dropped, sobbing, in the pitch blackness of the leafy tents. Wise little Ellen Logan put her hand firmly and repeatedly over every quivering mouth, and whispered that it was dangerous to cry.

With a word of reassurance and orders to Old Guard, Johnny was gone. Making his way back to the stockade, he lay below the trail with his ear to the ground until he heard the beat of galloping hoofs and the rumble of a wagon. Pursuit was close behind this fleeing family when he sprang to the horses' heads.

"Jump out! Throw out your food! ,, He fairly hurled them into the brush, and lashed the horses into a run down the steep bank and across the ford. The shots that rang from the blockhouse were returned by the Indians as they dashed by and plunged into the riv- er. In the confusion of loud noises, Johnny reached out a hand and spoke to the sturdy young German who was comforting his weep- ing wife.

"Hermann, take your wife and child down to the boat and stay there with them." When he had a load of rescued people he left this first man to watch the trails, and went down the river.

Betty came out of the black camp with the infant whose screams of hunger imperiled them all. "Is there a woman here with a baby? She must give one breast to this motherless child."

Dawn glimmered in the forest fastness as the third boat-load was brought in. One family had a bag of meal and a small iron kettle. A fire was built in a wild-grape tepee, and by instalments enough mush was boiled for thirty people. Remembering that farm animals were everywhere at large, Betty took Old Guard's long muzzle in her hands and looked into his intelligent eyes.

Drive home the cows."

The sheep-dog was plainly puzzled; but presently he put his nose to the ground and trotted away. The sun was high when, with all the pride of discovery, he brought in two cows with dripping udders.

For two days and another night the wom- en and children lay hidden, with the dog and one man to guard them, while Johnny and the other men took turns in watching the trails and scouring the woods. Every hour exhausted and half-crazed people were brought in. Some came down from the stockade, which held only a small supply of food, and was liable at any time to be at- tacked in force. A woman was found in a hollow tree. Two children were traced to a blackberry - patch, to which they had been led by the almost human footprints of bears.

In the wild flight naked feet had been cruel- ly bruised and cut, so that many could not hope to keep up on the hard night marches. Ellen helped solve that problem. Going about timidly, she bathed the wounds and bound them with cool plantain leaves. From a horse-blanket Betty cut bag moccasins with a hunting-knife, and laced them about ankles with strips from a rawhide harness. The men fashioned soles of tough beech bark, and tied them on with raveled hemp rope.

More than a hundred people followed Johnny on the first night's march down a ravine whose ribbon of bright water was arched over by phantasmal sycamores. Night after night they made their slow way over forest-clad ridges, through tangled slashings and gullies, and baffling mazes of laurel on rough hillsides. By day they camped in wild vineyards, in deep, brush-grown pockets of the hills, and in the dry beds of ponds in the middle of rustling marshes. At times war- whoops came faintly to their ears, and along some distant, elevated trail pine-knot torches glimmered like fireflies. When smoke from a burning cabin or settlement drifted over them, more people would be found huddled in a cave or in one of Johnny's nurseries.

Famine marched with them, although food was in abundance. The smallest stream had fish; the wild oats were full of quail; myr- iads of water-fowl skimmed every pond ; and flocks of turkeys fed in the oak and chestnut groves on last year's withered acorns and nuts. But they dared not fire a rifle, nor cook any savory thing whose odor would be- tray them. Only in the most hidden situa- tions, indeed, could they venture to roast the potatoes and corn which they found about the few deserted cabins that had been over- looked by the Indians. The cows that Old Guard drove in kept the children alive. Once meal was discovered in a half -burnt mill which had broken from its moorings and drifted into back-water.

A small number of people, able to scatter and move about freely by day, could have foraged for plums, beaten out the oats, and dug lily roots in the marshes. But this fur- tive and flying company grew to a small army, and every addition to the ranks in- creased the suffering and peril of all. Speechwas abandoned. They fell into the silence of fortitude or listening terror, of dumb be- wilderment or dull misery. Johnny had to shorten the marches. On the last night there was a journey of only a few hours to be made, but that was in the rough knobs of the Ohio River. Up and down the steep hills, densely wooded with oaks and hickories, staggering men carried limp children and fainting women supported one another. Johnny's cheering word went back to spur the falling line to another effort.

Courage now! Almost there!" After a terrible hour they broke through to thinner growth on the crest of a grassy, spur- like ridge. A gun-shot brought them to a standstill, with such a shock of cruel fright that women and children sank weeping to the ground.

"Halt! Who's there?" The challenge came up from below, where, at every ten rods of the three miles of rail fence w T hich stretched along the woods at the top of the farms, Belpre had posted a sentinel.

" Johnny Appleseed with refugees." Young Waldo Putnam ran up from the fields, and dropped his rifle when he saw thatfamishing host. "The Lord save us, John- ny ! How are we to care for all the perishing people who are coming down upon us? Every house is full to the ridge-pole, and two hun- dred are living in Farmers' Castle. We have food, but no shelter."

"Is any one living on Isle le Beau?"

"Not now. You know Indians never stop there, but the tenant took his niggers and lit out for Kentucky like a scared rabbit when the first runners made the crossing."

"We'll camp in the woods on the lower end of the island."

People who had dropped were dragged to their feet again. For a mile the low ridge ran across the meadows, dividing the farm village into the upper and lower towns, and rising to a hundred-foot bluff above the water. They could hear the rustling corn and smell the laden orchards, but the scattered houses of the long street that fronted the river were dark. Johnny laid Betty in the midst of her spent children under the cedars. Almost fall- ing down the slope in his haste and weakness, he hammered on Colonel Cushing's door.

A strange, wild figure, stricken with famine, transfigured by his errand, he was. Since he left Dayton in May he had been in the wilder- ness, in such stress of mind and circumstances that his dark hair had grown to his shoulders and fallen about his gaunt face. His shirt was in tatters, and because they impeded his movements he had cut his ragged trousers to the knees, exposing his scarred and swol- len legs and bark-sandaled feet. The family, startled from their beds by what they thought an Indian alarm, were not certain of his identity until, with a frantic cry, he crumpled up in the doorway.

"Help for starving people in the cedar- grove on the bluff !"

Doors flew open and lights appeared. People boiled out of the houses and the timber chateau of Farmers' Castle like bees from hives, and swarmed on the beach. There was a confusion of shouts and running foot- steps. Johnny fainted from sheer relief when he saw the huge negro, Kitt Putnam, in the van of the stalwart men who started up the bluff to carry the helpless down. When he came to himself, with his head in Mrs. Cush- ing's lap and a cup of warm milk at his lips, the boats and the ferry were being manned, and the young girls of Belpre, in their light summer gowns, were moving about with candles, ministering to the prostrate crowd on the sand.

It was near morning before all were got across. In the fear that some Indian might be lurking about, sentinels were posted at the landing-place. Family groups slept wher- ever they dropped in that woodland sanctuary  slept to waken late in the day, to be fed and comforted, and to sleep again. So the scores that Johnny had led to safety won their way back to health and sanity, and to the taking up of their broken lives.

Six weeks later he returned to Belpre. Knowing the country as did no one else, he had guided a force of armed and mounted men from the Ohio River settlements, all over the region up to Zanesville and the new town of Columbus, to relieve the beleaguered stock- ades, bury the dead, and round up the farm animals in the woods. It was incredible that civilized human beings would ever re-people that desolated wilderness; but no other talk was heard than to fight it out, then to go back and begin again.

Such courage and faith thrilled Johnny. With autumn colors flaming against the sil-very blue of Indian-summer skies, it was seed- time, and he must be off to replant his ruined nurseries, in such wild solitude and danger as he had never faced before. Wolves would increase and become bolder. There would be no friendly faces to greet him, no sheltering cabins except in the few, defensible settle- ments, no Indian camps on the Great Trail. And he must stay out nine months in the year, traveling fast and incessantly, to keep his plots from being overrun with weeds and forest seedlings.

His dark-gray eyes burned with zeal when he brought Mrs. Cushing in haste to the door to assure him that his seeds and tools had come up from Cincinnati. The Princess Nel- ly's beautiful, long-tailed pony had been found, and Johnny ran to the mill to arrange for Kitt Putnam to be spared a week to take the chief's little daughter on in state to Kentucky. Aside from Kitt's special quali- ties, no escort was as safe for woman or child as a negro, upon whom the most savage Indi- an looked with sympathy as a dark-skinned brother of misfortune.

Colonel Cushing was drilling raw recruits on the beach  "licking these young cubs intoshape so General Harrison can use 'em," he explained to Johnny. In bordering states, and in every far-flung settlement of the Old Northwest, there was grim determination to overcome this paralyzing disaster. Here in Belpre the new wheat was being ground; wheel and loom hummed and clattered in ev- ery house, and grandmothers and little girls knitted in the sun for the soldiers. Pigs were being fattened; standing corn and the recovered horses and cattle guarded in field and pasture, and potatoes and apples gath- ered to store in winter pits.

Never had Johnny seen such a harvest of apples. They lay in glowing heaps under the trees of three miles of almost continuous orchards, coloring the earth and perfuming the air. All the old fall and winter favorites were there  the Bellflowers and Pippins, the Greenings and Spies, the Seek -no -furthers and Never-fails, the Russets and Rambos. Very early in the last century this town, on its rich, alluvial meadow, became famous for the cargoes of fruit that it shipped to New Orleans. This crop was to have gone into the hold of the Comet, the amazing new steam- boat that went plunging and shrieking like some fiery dragon up and down the forest- walled floods of the Ohio and Mississippi.

Johnny's instant thought was that, in the matter of orchards, the river settlements could now take care of themselves, and after the war there would be nurserymen in the larger towns. He was released to work in the backwoods. Now for an hour he gave himself up to the pleasure of strolling under the trees which were dropping their leaves in preparation for peaceful sleep, and feasting on the fruit in the company of this New- Englander of such genial and sterling vir- tues. They spoke of the refugees on Isle le Beau. Many had already gone on to friends, and shelter must be found for all before winter set in. As for the orphans, there would al- ways be "room for one or two more" under Colonel Cushing's roof.

"My good wife and I are getting on in years, Johnny, but we'll take in all we can. I guess the youngsters won't mind sleeping three in a bed. There'll be a bed for you, too, if it turns my rheumatic old bones out on the floor. What will you do now?"

"Go back. Begin again."

"Hm, yes, after the war we'll all have to 215begin again. Johnny, we meant to pay you for this bounty in one lump sum when we sold the surplus of this crop. Now we must keep what we have for the army and to feed home- less people. But better days are coming. When the war is over the East is going to break up and move West."

Then the eager words tumbled out: "You can pay me now with a horse, a blanket and a bag of meal. There must be orchard trees to set out when these brave people return to their fire-swept clearings. No," he inter- rupted the shocked protest, "I shall not starve and the Indians will not molest me. An apple-twig in his bridle protects my horse from thieves. Good-by! Unless you set up cider-mills so I can get seeds down here, I may not see you again. New-comers will pour into the Indian lands that will be for- feited or purchased now, and I must go west- ward on the crest of every new wave."

He gripped the hand of this long-time friend and turned away at once. So he had parted from David Varnum and Logan. So, with a sharper pang, he must part from Betty and miss from his life the little Eden that had, for so many years, been his heart's home onthe border. Until the little boys grew up, he thought, she would be obliged to live in Marietta, where David's people and Dr. True would see that she lacked nothing. Except in spirit he could hold to no one. He could foresee his life as one long story of hail and farewell.

In a voice gone husky Colonel Cushing bade him Godspeed. These bowering orchards were the gift of this missionary of peace and beauty and brotherly love who had woven himself into the very fabric of their lives. Now they were losing him, and to the chil- dren of the third generation he would be a legend, his blossoming and fruiting memo- rials benefits forgot. With a lump in his throat and misty eyes he watched Johnny stride across the fields and beach, and launch a canoe  watched until he had leaped to the landing and disappeared among the majestic trees of Isle le Beau.

That Fairy Island! Its queen in ruined exile, her white palace stood in a stained and battered beauty. On the weedy lawn bare patches marked the bonfires of vandals. The tall picket fence of the garden was down, with its wall-fruit trees barked and dead. Behind the classic pillars of the curving verandas that flanked the front, baled hemp was stored, inviting the accidental fire which destroyed the historic mansion on the Christmas eve of that year. Within, the wainscoted hall had been turned into a sleeping -kennel by black field laborers. The Cushings and Put- nams had rescued the spinet, a portion of the library, and much else, in a forlorn hope that the owners would return to claim them. But here were torn draperies hanging from broken windows, wrecked furniture, shattered mir- rors, wanton bullet-holes, dishonored books, cobwebs, dust, and the dissolution that comes to the house untenanted.

At the end of the two-mile walk across the pastures and up through the woods he found Betty sitting on a fallen log, directing a group of women in cutting and sewing new gar- ments. In a secret closet of Mrs. Blenner- hasset's big garret workroom, where her free black servants had spun and wove and fash- ioned clothing for a numerous and lavish household, some bolts of linen and woolen cloth had been discovered, and a store of knitting-yarns.

Betty was in black for David. All her bright color was gone. Something of youth had left her, never to return, but there was in her grave and gentle look the quiet forti- tude and decision with which frail and timid women often meet disaster and stand erect under crushing burdens. She did not speak of her bereavement at once, but of busy days. She had been of use to these poor, distracted women who had never had much to work with. Then she spoke of the happy children, who had forgotten that time of suffering and ter- ror, and were having an unforgetable holiday in the freedom and joy of the woods of Isle le Beau.

Small fires were being replenished to cook the noonday meal, and Old Guard was round- ing up the scattered children who were forag- ing with the squirrels for the falling nuts, when Johnny and Betty walked down to the tapering point of the island. Autumn rains had not yet begun, and the River Beautiful was at its lowest and clearest, a gently flowing current of heavenly blue. In the absence of shipping it had slipped back at once into its old, wild solitude.

Betty sat on a rocky grotto, so pale and still, with her chin cupped in her palm, that

Johnny's heart went out to her in that early passion of protecting love. He knew now that he must love her forever.

"Tired, Betty?"

"No. Thinking of all I must do  alone."

"It will come right. You will go to Ma- rietta soon?"

"For the winter  until the war is over." She turned to him a face of bright bravery and high resolve. "We are going back. David would not rest in his soldier's grave with his children growing up in dependence. I will let his people help me with seed and tools and cattle; and that first family you rescued on the Scioto trail will go with us  strong young Germans who lost their all. I have too much land, and can make it worth while for them to stay with us for ten years. We can live in a half -faced camp the first year. It will be hard, but indeed, Johnny, I could not live anywhere else. The place is peopled with memories. There is a little, lonely grave. It will be long before we have such comforts, and our home will never be as beautiful again, but  "

"It shall be as beautiful. I am going back now."

She gave a little cry of fright and grief. Then her face kindled. "It  it makes one brave just to look at you. People tell me it will be so hard that it may well shorten my life/'

Whatever his own sense of coming sorrow and loss, he could not but choose the best for her. "He who loseth his life shall find it."

"I never understood that before  why you have to go back now, and perish if you must." After she had eased her heart in quiet weeping, she spoke again. "There are so many things David wanted to do  give land for a school- house, have regular church services, clear the forest of wolves and breed sheep, send the boys to the academy at Marietta; do all the things that are necessary to keep the next generation around us from falling back into rudeness, ignorance and impiety. He left those tasks in trust to me."

As they walked back to the camp she told him that she would have some things of the old days to keep memory green. A week be- fore the alarm she had had an impulse to gather up treasures of the heart  David's Bible, Johnny's little rocking-chair in which she had nursed all her children, Aunt Alary

Lake's cooky-jar, and her wedding-gown for Mary's great day of happiness, and hide them in the cave in the nursery. And now she had another  Mrs. Blennerhasset's riding- habit of scarlet broadcloth which had been left in the workroom closet for repairs.

"I can see that kind and beautiful lady every time I look at it  the Fairy Queen who had only to wave her wand to give every one pleasure. Out of that I shall make a cir- cular cloak. The color of it in our soberly clad lives! As a child I remember thinking that no hour could be so dark and cold that this glowing thing would not warm and cheer it."

Nearly twenty years afterward, in an hour of darkness, of bitter cold and wild storm, Johnny remembered these wistful words and spread that mantle above her. Now, with the old look of pale exaltation, he parted from her until the war should be ended, and crossed to Belpre. He spent the short afternoon in preparations for departure, made a supper of apples, and camped in the cedar-grove on the bluff.

Joy came with the morning that was crisp with a light rime of hoar-frost. So earlythat no one was stirring in the town, he rode through the fragrant orchards and out over the Bloody Way, to begin another dozen years of work that should make that ravaged wilderness bloom again.