A Dream of Empire Part 7

He went up to his daughter, who impulsively kissed him, as if to solace his disappointment. He seemed about to enter the cottage, when, like one suddenly recollecting a neglected duty, he wheeled round and again approached the strangers.

"Do me ze honor, messieurs, before you depart to enter in my poor dwelling and drink with me one gla.s.s of wine."

An invitation so navely extended could not be declined. Burr felt a kindly impulse toward the cordial sire and was not averse to wasting a few stray glances on mademoiselle.

"It will give us great pleasure to accept your hospitality and also to have your company as our guest on the boat. There is room, and you shall be accommodated."

The doctor's spirits rose. His face shone with gratification.

"Your courtesy lift my heart. I shall never forsake to do you ze friendly service. Is it convenient now that we present us. I am your servant, Eloy Deville."

Having imparted his own name, the flighty Frenchman waited not for the completion of the ceremony he had proposed, but, taking on trust the respectability of the strangers, he hastily led the way to his cottage. Burr noticed that he was attired in a tight-fitting suit of brown cloth, clean and well pressed but threadbare and redeemed from shabbiness only by the st.i.tch in time. The feminine apparition vanished from the threshold as the travellers approached, but the father, ushering them in, placed chairs beside a small table, and called out cheerily: "_Lucrece, ma chere enfant une bouteille de vin_." The girl promptly obeyed by carrying in a salver on which were a flask and three tiny wine-gla.s.ses. She glided to the table upon which she set her light burden, keeping her head demurely bowed and her eyes cast down bashfully.

"Messieurs, permit that I you present my daughter, my _aide chirurgeon_." Thus introduced, Lucrece, raising her head, bestowed a modest smile of welcome on her father's guests and divided between them a coy courtesy.

She could not elude the pardonable glances cast upon her by the strangers--glances which left in their memories the form and face of a dainty brunette with large and very brilliant black eyes. Her waist was slender, her hands and feet were nimble and delicate, and her dress fitted her so neatly that she looked the personation of trimness.

"This wine is not original of Ohio. No, no. Ze cask was from Bordeaux, very old, very old--he has fourteen years. Presented to me by my countryman, Comte Malartie. I speak ze truth. From this very cask I have ze honor to drink also ze health of ze General St. Clair, and at one time of Daniel Boone. _Eh bien!_ Long have I suffer in this wilderness; it is fifteen years that Eloy Deville was ze fool to leave France, to leave my native Lyons, and seek ze Terre promise--to find ze tree of natural sugar, ze plants also with wax candles for ze fruit, ze no work, no tax, no war, no king--ze paradise on ze ground!

_Oui_, sold I not all my property--take ze ship, take ze wagon, ze flatboat--_en route pour Gallipolis!_ Ah! _mon dieu!_ ze d.a.m.n fever kill _ma femme_; you see ze old Frenchman in ze poverty; _voila sa richesse! une cabane, un verre de vin--et ma bien aimee--ma pauvre fille--ma Lucrece!_"

To justify his grievance, the excited man sprang up and ran to a drawer, from which he took an old French map of the Seven Ranges of the Ohio, representing as cleared and inhabited lands large tracts of unbroken wilderness. This chart had been used by speculators to induce French families to migrate to the Ohio Valley.

"See!" continued Deville explosively; "ze scoundrel Barlow cheat my honest poor friends--he print here no veracity--he draw here only to deceive! Look on this place I put my finger"--he tapped the paper angrily--"you see ze Premiereville--ze Premiereville? Eh? I come to Premiereville--no street--no house, only ze forest tree! Messieurs, my little axe make ze first log in ze city, in Premiereville, where we drink now this wine."

The doctor's preparations for the trip down the river were quickly made. Half the population of the village, led by Lucrece, flocked to the boat-landing to see him safely off. After the pa.s.sengers had gone on board, and while the damsel stood waiting their departure, Burke Pierce, leering in her direction, threw her a kiss and as the boat was pushed off began to sing a ribald song. Deville did not witness the insult, but Arlington, with quick anger kindling his chivalrous blood, strode up to Pierce.

"You ought to be flogged, you filthy cur."

The boatman scowled and clenched his fists, but did not attempt to strike the imperious Southerner.

"Cur? I'll remember that!" he muttered, and swaggered away. "I'm a dog, a filthy cur! But I'll have my day!" he growled to Sheldrake.

The loquacity of the French doctor seemed accelerated by the motion of the boat and the breezy freedom of its deck. Unlike most of his Gallic brethren who left their native land to come to America in 1790, he was in sympathy with the Revolution, and had rejoiced at the falling of the Bastile. By chance a copy of the Ma.r.s.eillaise Hymn had reached him, and s.n.a.t.c.hes of this he would sing, keeping time to the music with his own springing steps as he marched up and down. The cry of "_Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite_," often broke from his lips. When Burr opened to him part of the plausible scheme against Mexico he eagerly volunteered to join any expedition gotten up in the name of freedom. He proffered his services as surgeon, and asked with amusing simplicity what would be the emoluments.

"_Sacre!_" exclaimed he. "_Il faut vivre!_ Let us destroy ze Spaniard. _Vive l'amerique! Vive le General Bur-r-r! Vive Eloy Deville!_"

The tedious pa.s.sage from Gallipolis to Cincinnati required almost a week's time. On the last day of the voyage, soon after breakfast, while Burr and Deville were enjoying the morning sunshine and discussing the French Revolution, Arlington heard a knock on the door of his room, in which he sat writing a letter.

"Come in," he shouted, hurrying to pen down the sentence that was in his mind. The door opened, and Burke Pierce thrust his head and shoulders into the room. Arlington glanced up from his writing and saw a flushed face and a pair of bloodshot eyes.

"You know what you called me up at Gallipolis?"

"Yes--dog."

"I'm a dog, eh? a filthy cur?"

The Virginian made an impatient gesture and dipped his quill into the ink. The drunken boatman after a moment's pause said:

"I want you out here in the kitchen."

Arlington paid no attention to the insolent speech, but went on with his letter writing.

Pierce, without closing the door, stepped back into the narrow quarters in which Sheldrake did the cooking, and a minute later reappeared with two long butcher knives, which he flung down on the table, in front of Arlington.

"Take your choice."

Arlington picked up both the ugly weapons, one in each hand, and stepping to a window, tossed them out into the river. The contemptuous act raised the fury of the captain to the point of frenzy; he seized a stick of firewood and rushed forward. Arlington parried the stroke, closed in, and grappled his a.s.sailant. The noise of the scuffle brought to the place Sheldrake and others of the crew. Summoning all his strength, Arlington hurled Pierce backward over a chair with such violence that the ruffian, falling on his head, was rendered senseless. The Southerner stood on the defensive, expecting to be attacked by the others, as he would have been, had not Burr strode into the room, followed by the French doctor. The colonel's sudden appearance on the scene prevented further turbulent demonstrations.

The three pa.s.sengers repaired to the deck, leaving the drunken captain to be revived by his faithful henchman, Sheldrake.

Arlington in few words told how he had been challenged, not stating any cause for Burke Pierce's animosity.

"Wanted to butcher you without provocation! Has the fellow gone mad?"

"Mad from drink."

"This fellow's bellicose propensity," said Burr, "must be punished. I shall have him arrested by the first magistrate I can find."

"Not on my account, colonel. He'll sober off. Your unctuous agent in Pittsburg allowed that when cap is drunk he's vicious."

"_Sacre!_" burst in the doctor, "not always a gentleman shall be able to observe formality in a quarrel with ze savage. I who tell it you was one time attack on this very river by three red devil in ze canoe.

See here, ze scar on my head! Ze wild gentlemen make no ceremony--he yell, and he shall right away take ze scalp with his knife. _Pardieu!_ By good chance I shoot ze one impolite Iroquoix--and ze two, his second, paddle away!"

"We must beat our swords and pistols into scalping-knives and bludgeons," remarked Burr, banteringly. "The code of honor is not observed by Indians or Western boatmen. Mr. Arlington, you may be compelled to adapt yourself to the customs of the country."

VII. CONSPIRACY.

Near Yeatman's Cove, at the foot of Sycamore Street, Cincinnati, stood a commodious tavern, built with some reference to architectural effect. Being directed to this resort, the party from the boat climbed the slope of the levee, ascended a flight of wooden steps, and entered the vestibule of the inn, a long, narrow corridor which the landlord considered very imposing. The first objects to attract attention in this public haunt were life-size wax-figures of two men fighting a duel. One of the figures represented Burr with an aimed pistol in hand, the other Hamilton staggering forward mortally wounded. To Arlington Burr remarked as they pa.s.sed by the waxen show:

"The artist makes me a beauty, don't he? What boots! What eyes!"

Seldom had genial Grif Yeatman welcomed guests more desirable and less like one another than were the strongly individualized men who came from the flatboat to his tavern to take temporary lodging before hunting up the several citizens they wished to meet.

Burr's arrival in the embryo Queen City of the West was noised from house to house, and within an hour many citizens had called to shake hands. The suave New York politician had partisan adherents and personal friends in the Buckeye State. Among these was John Smith, whose acquaintance he had made in Washington--the Hon. John Smith, one of the first two senators representing Ohio in Congress.

Burr procured a fine saddle-horse, and after bidding good-by to Arlington set out to visit the Senator who lived some twelve miles from town. The solitary horseman was not sorry to leave behind him the raw metropolis, the dirty streets of which were lined with log cabins and dingy white frame houses. Beyond Deer Creek the horseman spurred eastward along a black loamy wagon road, trotting through groves and half-cleared fields until he pa.s.sed a small hamlet bearing the great name Columbia. Beyond this cl.u.s.ter of habitations lay Turkey Bottom, so named on account of the wild flocks which made it their resort.

Burr selected the most distinctly marked of the several discernible trails and traces in the mazy wilderness before him. Uncertain wheel tracks indicated that the backwoods farmers, whose cabins were never less than a mile apart, took various routes, according to their fancy or the exigencies of the season. At one place a tree, recently blown down, lay across the bridle-path, and, while guiding his horse around this obstacle the rider saw a brown bear lurch off, swaying its head in sulky humor.

The grandeur of the primeval solitude impressed Burr more profoundly than he had imagined possible. The solemn majesty of the brotherhood of lofty trees around and above him inspired awe. A sense of bewilderment stole upon him. "Am I lost in the woods?" he wondered, looking around for signs of human life. So strange did everything appear that he was in doubt whether the log house not a hundred feet ahead of him was an actual structure. The house was real, and in the dooryard he saw a human being busy about some task. He rode up and asked the way to Senator Smith's.

"Smith? You mean Elder Smith?" gossipped a woman, pausing from her soap-making, near an ash-hopper. "Some do call him Senator, and some call him Preacher, but most call him Elder Smith or else plain John."

"Does he preach?"

"Yes; some Sundays; generally he only exhorts. Turn to your right after pa.s.sing that wild-cherry, and you will see the Miami; follow along up stream, and you can't miss sight of the mill and the still-house. They belong to him, and so does the big store at Columbia. John Smith is the richest man in these parts, but he isn't proud and stuck up. When you come to the mill they'll show the way to the house. A mighty fine house it is."