Alice of Old Vincennes Part 38

Toward the end of the long march a decided fall of temperature added ice to the water through which our dauntless patriots waded and swam for miles. The wind shifted northwesterly, taking on a searching chill.

Each gust, indeed, seemed to shoot wintry splinters into the very marrow of the men's bones. The weaker ones began to show the approach of utter exhaustion just at the time when a final spurt of unflinching power was needed. True, they struggled heroically; but nature was nearing the inexorable limit of endurance. Without food, which there was no prospect of getting, collapse was sure to come.

Standing nearly waist-deep in freezing water and looking out upon the muddy, sea-like flood that stretched far away to the channel of the Wabash and beyond, Clark turned to Beverley and said, speaking low, so as not to be overheard by any other of his officers or men:

"Is it possible, Lieutenant Beverley, that we are to fail, with Vincennes almost in sight of us?"

"No, sir, it is not possible," was the firm reply. "Nothing must, nothing can stop us. Look at that brave child! He sets the heroic example."

Beverley pointed, as he spoke, at a boy but fourteen years old, who was using his drum as a float to bear him up while he courageously swam beside the men.

Clark's clouded face cleared once more. "You are right," he said, "come on! we must win or die."

"Sergeant Dewit," he added, turning to an enormously tall and athletic man near by, "take that little drummer and his drum on your shoulder and lead the way. And, sergeant, make him pound that drum like the devil beating tan-bark!"

The huge man caught the spirit of his commander's order. In a twinkling he had the boy astride of his neck with the kettle-drum resting on his head, and then the rattling music began. Clark followed, pointing onward with his sword. The half frozen and tottering soldiers sent up a shout that went back to where Captain Bowman was bringing up the rear under orders to shoot every man that straggled or shrank from duty.

Now came a time when not a mouthful of food was left. A whole day they floundered on, starving, growing fainter at every step, the temperature falling, the ice thickening. They camped on high land; and next morning they heard Hamilton's distant sunrise gun boom over the water.

"One half-ration for the men," said Clark, looking disconsolately in the direction whence the sound had come. "Just five mouthfuls apiece, even, and I'll have Hamilton and his fort within forty-eight hours."

"We will have the provisions, Colonel, or I will die trying to get them," Beverley responded "Depend upon me."

They had constructed some canoes in which to transport the weakest of the men.

"I will take a dugout and some picked fellows. We will pull to the wood yonder, and there we shall find some kind of game which has been forced to shelter from the high water."

It was a cheerful view of a forlorn hope. Clark grasped the hand extended by Beverley and they looked encouragement into each other's eyes.

Oncle Jazon volunteered to go in the pirogue. He was ready for anything, everything.

"I can't shoot wo'th a cent," he whined, as they took their places in the cranky pirogue; "but I might jes' happen to kill a squir'l or a elephant or somepin 'nother."

"Very well," shouted Clark in a loud, cheerful voice, when they had paddled away to a considerable distance, "bring the meat to the woods on the hill yonder," pointing to a distant island-like ridge far beyond the creeping flood. "We'll be there ready to eat it!"

He said this for the ears of his men. They heard and answered with a straggling but determined chorus of approval. They crossed the rolling current of the Wabash by a tedious process of ferrying, and at last found themselves once more wading in back-water up to their armpits, breaking ice an inch thick as they went. It was the closing struggle to reach the high wooded lands. Many of them fell exhausted; but their stronger comrades lifted them, holding their heads above water, and dragged them on.

Clark, always leading, always inspiring, was first to set foot on dry land. He shouted triumphantly, waved his sword, and then fell to helping the men out of the freezing flood. This accomplished, he ordered fires built; but there was not a soldier of them all whose hands could clasp an ax-handle, so weak and numbed with cold were they.

He was not to be baffled, however. If fire could not be had, exercise must serve its purpose. Hastily pouring some powder into his hand he dampened it and blacked his face. "Victory, men, victory!" he shouted, taking off his hat and beginning to leap and dance. "Come on! We'll have a war dance and then a feast, as soon as the meat arrives that I have sent for. Dance! you brave lads, dance! Victory! victory!"

The strong men, understanding their Colonel's purpose, took hold of the delicate ones; and the leaping, the capering, the tumult of voices and the stamping of slushy moccasins with which they a.s.saulted that stately forest must have frightened every wild thing thereabout into a deadly rigor, dark's irrepressible energy and optimism worked a veritable charm upon his faithful but almost dying companions in arms. Their trust in him made them feel sure that food would soon be forthcoming.

The thought afforded a stimulus more potent than wine; it drove them into an ecstasy of frantic motion and shouting which soon warmed them thoroughly.

It is said that fortune favors the brave. The larger meaning of the sentence may be given thus: G.o.d guards those who deserve His protection. History tells us that just when Clark halted his command almost in sight of Vincennes--just when hunger was about to prevent the victory so close to his grasp--a party of his scouts brought in the haunch of a buffalo captured from some Indians. The scouts were Lieutenant Beverley and Oncle Jazon. And with the meat they brought Indian kettles in which to cook it.

With consummate forethought Clark arranged to prevent his men doing themselves injury by bolting their food or eating it half-cooked. Broth was first made and served hot; then small bits of well broiled steak were doled out, until by degrees the fine effect of nourishment set in, and all the command felt the fresh courage of healthy reaction.

"I ain't no gin'ral, nor corp'ral, nor nothin'," remarked Oncle Jazon to Colonel Clark, "but 'f I's you I'd h'ist up every dad dinged ole flag in the rig'ment, w'en I got ready to show myself to 'em, an' I'd make 'em think, over yander at the fort, 'at I had 'bout ninety thousan' men. Hit'd skeer that sandy faced Gov'nor over there till he'd think his back-bone was a comin' out'n 'im by the roots."

Clark laughed, but his face showed that the old man's suggestion struck him forcibly and seriously.

"We'll see about that presently, Oncle Jazon. Wait till we reach the hill yonder, from which the whole town can observe our manoeuvres, then we'll try it, maybe."

Once more the men were lined up, the roll-call gone through with satisfactorily, and the question put: "Are we ready for another plunge through the mud and water?"

The answer came in the affirmative, with a unanimity not to be mistaken. The weakest heart of them all beat to the time of the charge step. Again Clark and Beverley clasped hands and took the lead.

When they reached the next high ground they gazed in silence across a slushy prairie plot to where, on a slight elevation, old Vincennes and Fort Sackville lay in full view.

Beverley stood apart. A rush of sensations affected him so that he shook like one whose strength is gone. His vision was blurred. Fort and town swimming in a mist were silent and still. Save the British flag twinkling above Hamilton's headquarters, nothing indicated that the place was not deserted. And Alice? With the sweet name's echo Beverley's heart bounded high, then sank fluttering at the recollection that she was either yonder at the mercy of Hamilton, or already the victim of an unspeakable cruelty. Was it weakness for him to lift his clasped hands heavenward and send up a voiceless prayer?

While he stood thus Oncle Jazon came softly to his side and touched his arm. Beverley started.

"The nex' thing'll be to shoot the everlastin' gizzards outen 'em, won't it?" the old man inquired. "I'm jes' a eetchin' to git a grip onto that Gov'nor. Ef I don't scelp 'em I'm a squaw."

Beverley drew a deep breath and came promptly back from his dream. It was now Oncle Jazon's turn to a.s.sume a reflective, reminiscent mood. He looked about him with an expression of vague half tenderness on his shriveled features.

"I's jes' a thinkin' how time do run past a feller," he presently remarked. "Twenty-seven years ago I camped right here wi' my wife--ninth one, ef I 'member correct--jes' fresh married to 'r; sort o' honey-moon. 'Twus warm an' sunshiny an' nice. She wus a poorty squaw, mighty poorty, an' I wus as happy as a tomt.i.t on a sugar-trough.

We b'iled sap yander on them n.o.bs under the maples. It wus glor'us. Had some several wives 'fore an' lots of 'm sence; but she wus sweetes' of 'm all. Strange how a feller 'members sich things an' feels sort o'

lonesome like!"

The old man's mouth drooped at the corners and he hitched up his buckskin trousers with a ludicrous suggestion of pathos in every line of his att.i.tude. Unconsciously he sidled closer to Beverley, remotely feeling that he was giving the young man very effective sympathy, well knowing that Alice was the sweet burden of his thoughts. It was thus Oncle Jazon honestly tried to fortify his friend against what probably lay in store for him.

But Beverley failed to catch the old man's crude comfort thus flung at him. The a.n.a.logy was not apparent. Oncle Jazon probably felt that his kindness had been ineffectual, for he changed his tone and added:

"But I s'pose a young feller like ye can't onderstan' w'at it is to love a 'oman an' 'en hev 'er quit ye for 'nother feller, an' him a buck Injin. Wall, wall, wall, that's the way it do go! Of all the livin'

things upon top o' this yere globe, the mos' onsartin', crinkety-crankety an' slippery thing is a young 'oman 'at knows she's poorty an' 'at every other man in the known world is blind stavin'

crazy in love wi' 'er, same as you are. She'll drop ye like a hot tater 'fore ye know it, an' 'en look at ye jes' pine blank like she never knowed ye afore in her life. It's so, Lieutenant, sh.o.r.e's ye'r born. I know, for I've tried the odd number of 'em, an' they're all jes' the same."

By this time Beverley's ears were deaf to Oncle Jazon's querulous, whining voice, and his thoughts once more followed his wistful gaze across the watery plain to where the low roofs of the creole town appeared dimly wavering in the twilight of eventide, which was fast fading into night. The scene seemed unsubstantial; he felt a strange lethargy possessing his soul; he could not realize the situation. In trying to imagine Alice, she eluded him, so that a sort of cloudy void fell across his vision with the effect of baffling and benumbing it. He made vain efforts to recall her voice, things that she had said to him, her face, her smiles; all he could do was to evoke an elusive, tantalizing, ghostly something which made him shiver inwardly with a haunting fear that it meant the worst, whatever the worst might be.

Where was she? Could she be dead, and this the shadowy message of her fate?

Darkness fell, and a thin fog began to drift in wan streaks above the water. Not a sound, save the suppressed stir of the camp, broke the wide, dreary silence. Oncle Jazon babbled until satisfied that Beverley was unappreciative, or at least unresponsive.

"Got to hev some terbacker," he remarked, and shambled away in search of it among his friends.

A little later Clark approached hastily and said:

"I have been looking for you. The march has begun. Bowman and Charleville are moving; come, there's no time to lose."

CHAPTER XVIII

A DUEL BY MOONLIGHT

When Hamilton, after running some distance, saw that he was gaining upon Alice and would soon overtake her, it added fresh energy to his limbs. He had quickly realized the foolishness of what he had done in visiting the room of his prisoner at so late an hour in the night. What would his officers and men think? To let Alice escape would be extremely embarra.s.sing, and to be seen chasing her would give good ground for ridicule on the part of his entire command. Therefore his first thought, after pa.s.sing through the postern and realizing fully what sort of predicament threatened him, was to recapture her and return her to the prison room in the block-house without attracting attention. This now promised to be an easier task than he had at first feared; for in the moonlight, which on account of the dispersing clouds, was fast growing stronger, he saw her seem to falter and weaken. Certainly her flight was checked and took an eccentric turn, as if some obstruction had barred her way. He rushed on, not seeing that, as Alice swerved, a man intervened. Indeed he was within a few strides of laying his hand on her when he saw her make the strange movement. It was as if, springing suddenly aside, she had become two persons instead of one. But instantly the figures coincided again, and in becoming taller faced about and confronted him.