CHAPTER III
THE RAPE OF THE DEMIJOHN
The row down at the river house was more noise than fight, so far asresults seemed to indicate. It was all about a small dame jeanne offine brandy, which an Indian by the name of Long-Hair had seized andrun off with at the height of the carousal. He must have been sobererthan his pursuers, or naturally fleeter; for not one of them couldcatch him, or even keep long in sight of him. Some pistols were emptiedwhile the race was on, and two or three of the men swore roundly tohaving seen Long-Hair jump sidewise and stagger, as if one of the shotshad taken effect. But, although the moon was shining, he somewaydisappeared, they could not understand just how, far down beside theriver below the fort and the church.
It was not a very uncommon thing for an Indian to steal what he wanted,and in most cases light punishment followed conviction; but it was feltto be a capital offense for an Indian or anybody else to rape ademijohn of fine brandy, especially one sent as a present, by a friendin New Orleans, to Lieutenant Governor Abbott, who had until recentlybeen the commandant of the post. Every man at the river houserecognized and resented the enormity of Long-Hair's crime and each was,for the moment, ready to be his judge and his executioner. He hadbroken at once every rule of frontier etiquette and every bond ofsympathy. Nor was Long-Hair ignorant of the danger involved in hisdaring enterprise. He had beforehand carefully and stolidly weighed allthe conditions, and true to his Indian nature, had concluded that alittle wicker covered bottle of brandy was well worth the risk of hislife. So he had put himself in condition for a great race by slippingout and getting rid of his weapons and all surplus weight of clothes.
This incident brought the drinking bout at the river house to a suddenend; but nothing further came of it that night, and no record of itwould be found in these pages, but for the fact that Long-Hairafterwards became an important character in the stirring historicaldrama which had old Vincennes for its center of energy.
Rene de Ronville probably felt himself in bad luck when he arrived atthe river house just too late to share in the liquor or to join inchasing the bold thief. He listened with interest, however, to thestory of Long-Hair's capture of the commandant's demijohn and could notrefrain from saying that if he had been present there would have been aquite different result.
"I would have shot him before he got to that door," he said, drawinghis heavy flint-lock pistol and going through the motions of one aimingquickly and firing. Indeed, so vigorously in earnest was he with thepantomime, that he actually did fire, unintentionally of course,--theball burying itself in the door-jamb.
He was laughed at by those present for being more excited than they whowitnessed the whole thing. One of them, a leathery-faced and grizzledold sinner, leered at him contemptuously and said in queer French, witha curious accent caught from long use of backwoods English:
"Listen how the boy brags! Ye might think, to hear Rene talk, that heactually amounted to a big pile."
This personage was known to every soul in Vincennes as Oncle Jazon, andwhen Oncle Jazon spoke the whole town felt bound to listen.
"An' how well he shoots, too," he added with an intolerable wink;"aimed at the door and hit the post. Certainly Long-Hair would havebeen in great danger! O yes, he'd 'ave killed Long-Hair at the firstshot, wouldn't he though!"
Oncle Jazon had the air of a large man, but the stature of a small one;in fact he was shriveled bodily to a degree which suggested comparisonwith a sun-dried wisp of hickory bark; and when he chuckled, as he wasnow doing, his mouth puckered itself until it looked like a scar on hisface. From cap to moccasins he had every mark significant of adesperate character; and yet there was about him something thatinstantly commanded the confidence of rough men,--the look ofself-sufficiency and superior capability always to be found inconnection with immense will power. His sixty years of exposure,hardship, and danger seemed to have but toughened his physique andstrengthened his vitality. Out of his small hazel eyes gleamed a lightas keen as ice.
"All right, Oncle Jazon," said Rene laughing and blowing the smoke outof his pistol; "'twas you all the same who let Long-Hair trot off withthe Governor's brandy, not I. If you could have hit even a door-post itmight have been better."
Oncle Jazon took off his cap and looked down into it in a way he hadwhen about to say something final.
"Ventrebleu! I did not shoot at Long-Hair at all," he said, speakingslowly, "because the scoundrel was unarmed. He didn't have on even aknife, and he was havin' enough to do dodgin' the bullets that the restof 'em were plumpin' at 'im without any compliments from me to bother'im more."
"Well," Rene replied, turning away with a laugh, "if I'd been scalpedby the Indians, as you have, I don't think there would be anyparticular reason why I should wait for an Indian thief to go and armhimself before I accepted him as a target."
Oncle Jazon lifted a hand involuntarily and rubbed his scalpless crown;then he chuckled with a grotesque grimace as if the recollection ofhaving his head skinned were the funniest thing imaginable.
"When you've killed as many of 'em as Oncle Jazon has," remarked abystander to Rene, "you'll not be so hungry for blood, maybe."
"Especially after ye've took fifty-nine scalps to pay for yer one,"added Oncle Jazon, replacing his cap over the hairless area of hiscrown.
The men who had been chasing Long-Hair, presently came straggling backwith their stories--each had a distinct one--of how the fugitiveescaped. They were wild looking fellows, most of them somewhatintoxicated, all profusely liberal with their stock of picturesqueprofanity. They represented the roughest element of the well-nighlawless post.
"I'm positive that he's wounded," said one. "Jacques and I shot at himtogether, so that our pistols sounded just as if only one had beenfired--bang! that way--and he leaped sideways for all the world like abird with a broken leg. I thought he'd fall; but ve! he ran faster'never, and all at once he was gone; just disappeared."
"Well, to-morrow we'll get him," said another. "You and I and Jacques,we'll take up his trail, the thief, and follow him till we find him. Hecan't get off so easy."
"I don't know so well about that," said another; "it's Long-Hair, youmust remember, and Long-Hair is no common buck that just anybody canfind asleep. You know what Long-Hair is. Nobody's ever got even with'im yet. That's so, ain't it? Just ask Oncle Jazon, if you don'tbelieve it!"
The next morning Long-Hair was tracked to the edge. He had beenwounded, but whether seriously or not could only be conjectured. Asprinkle of blood, here and there quite a dash of it, reddened thegrass and clumps of weeds he had run through, and ended close to thewater into which it looked as if he had plunged with a view to bafflingpursuit. Indeed pursuit was baffled. No further trace could be found,by which to follow the cunning fugitive. Some of the men consoledthemselves by saying, without believing, that Long-Hair was probablylying drowned at the bottom of the river.
"Pas du tout," observed Oncle Jazon, his short pipe askew far over inthe corner of his mouth, "not a bit of it is that Indian drowned. He'sjes' as live as a fat cat this minute, and as drunk as the devil. He'llget some o' yer scalps yet after he's guzzled all that brandy and slep'a week."
It finally transpired that Oncle Jazon was partly right and partlywrong. Long-Hair was alive, even as a fat cat, perhaps; but not drunk,for in trying to swim with the rotund little dame jeanne under his armhe lost hold of it and it went to the bottom of the Wabash, where itmay be lying at this moment patiently waiting for some one to fish itout of its bed deep in the sand and mud, and break the ancient wax fromits neck!
Rene de Ronville, after the chase of Long-Hair had been given over,went to tell Father Beret what had happened, and finding the priest'shut empty turned into the path leading to the Roussillon place, whichwas at the head of a narrow street laid out in a direction at rightangles to the river's course. He passed two or three diminutive cabins,all as much alike as bee-hives. Each had its squat veranda and thatchedor clapboarded roof held in place by weight-poles ranged in roughlyparallel
rows, and each had the face of the wall under its verandaneatly daubed with a grayish stucco made of mud and lime. You may seesuch houses today in some remote parts of the creole country ofLouisiana.
As Rene passed along he spoke with a gay French freedom to the damesand lasses who chanced to be visible. His air would be regarded asviolently brigandish in our day; we might even go so far as to thinkhis whole appearance comical. His jaunty cap with a tail that wagged ashe walked, his short trousers and leggins of buckskin, and his looseshirt-like tunic, drawn in at the waist with a broad belt, gave hisstrong figure just the dash of wildness suited to the armament withwhich it was weighted. A heavy gun lay in the hollow of his shoulderunder which hung an otter-skin bullet-pouch with its clear powder-hornand white bone charger. In his belt were two huge flint-lock pistolsand a long case-knife.
"Bon jour, Ma'm'selle Adrienne," he cheerily called, waving his freehand in greeting to a small, dark lass standing on the step of averanda and indolently swinging a broom. "Comment allez-vous aujourd'hui?"
"J'm'porte tres bien, merci, Mo'sieu Rene," was the quick response; "etvous?"
"Oh, I'm as lively as a cricket."
"Going a hunting?"
"No, just up here a little way--just on business--up to Mo'sieuRoussillon's for a moment."
"Yes," the girl responded in a tone indicative of something very likespleen, "yes, undoubtedly, Mo'sieu de Ronville; your business thereseems quite pressing of late. I have noticed your industriousapplication to that business."
"Ta-ta, little one," he wheedled, lowering his voice; "you mustn't goto making bug-bears out of nothing."
"Bug-bears!" she retorted, "you go on about your business and I'llattend to mine," and she flirted into the house.
Rene laughed under his breath, standing a moment as if expecting her tocome out again; but she did not, and he resumed his walk singingsoftly--
"Elle a les joues vermeilles, vermeilles, Ma belle, ma belle petite."
But ten to one he was not thinking of Madamoiselle Adrienne Bourcier.His mind, however, must have been absorbingly occupied; for in thestraight, open way he met Father Beret and did not see him until hecame near bumping against the old man, who stepped aside withastonishing agility and said--
"Dieu vous benisse, mon fils; but what is your great hurry--where canyou be going in such happy haste?" Rene did not stop to parley with thepriest. He flung some phrase of pleasant greeting back over hisshoulder as he trudged on, his heart beginning a tattoo against hisribs when the Roussillon place came in sight, and he took hold of hismustache to pull it, as some men must do in moments of nervousness andbashfulness. If sounds ever have color, the humming in his ears was ofa rosy hue; if thoughts ever exhale fragrance, his brain overflowedwith the sweets of violet and heliotrope.
He had in mind what he was going to say when Alice and he should bealone together. It was a pretty speech, he thought; indeed a verythrilling little speech, by the way it stirred his own nerve-centers ashe conned it over.
Madame Roussillon met him at the door in not a very good humor.
"Is Mademoiselle Alice here?" he ventured to demand.
"Alice? no, she's not here; she's never here just when I want her most.V'la le picbois et la grive--see the woodpecker and the robin--eatingthe cherries, eating every one of them, and that girl running offsomewhere instead of staying here and picking them," she railed inanswer to the young man's polite inquiry. "I haven't seen her thesefour hours, neither her nor that rascally hunchback, Jean. They're upto some mischief, I'll be bound!"
Madame Roussillon puffed audibly between phrases; but she suddenlybecame very mild when relieved of her tirade.
"Mais entrez," she added in a pleasant tone, "come in and tell me thenews."
Rene's disappointment rushed into his face, but he managed to laugh itaside.
"Father Beret has just been telling me," said Madame Roussillon, "thatour friend Long-Hair made some trouble last night. How about it?"
Rene told her what he knew and added that Long-Hair would probablynever be seen again.
"He was shot, no doubt of it," he went on, "and is now being nibbled byfish and turtles. We tracked him by his blood to where he jumped intothe Wabash. He never came out."
Strangely enough it happened that, at the very time of this chatbetween Madame Roussillon and Rene Alice was bandaging Long-Hair'swounded leg with strips of her apron. It was under some willows whichoverhung the bank of a narrow and shallow lagoon or slough, which inthose days extended a mile or two back into the country on the fartherside of the river. Alice and Jean went over in a pirogue to see if thewater lilies, haunting a pond there, were yet beginning to bloom. Theylanded at a convenient spot some distance up the little lagoon, madethe boat fast by dragging its prow high ashore, and were on the pointof setting out across a neck of wet, grassy land to the pond, when adeep grunt, not unlike that of a self-satisfied pig, attracted them tothe willows, where they discovered Long-Hair, badly wounded, welteringin some black mud.
His hiding-place was cunningly chosen, save that the mire troubled him,letting him down by slow degrees, and threatening to engulf him bodily;and he was now too weak to extricate himself. He lifted his head andglared. His face was grimy, his hair matted with mud. Alice, althoughbrave enough and quite accustomed to startling experiences, uttered acry when she saw those snaky eyes glistening so savagely amid theshadows. But Jean was quick to recognize Long-Hair; he had often seenhim about town, a figure not to be forgotten.
"They've been hunting him everywhere," he said in a half whisper toAlice, clutching the skirt of her dress. "It's Long-Hair, the Indianwho stole the brandy; I know him."
Alice recoiled a pace or two.
"Let's go back and tell 'em," Jean added, still whispering, "they wantto kill him; Oncle Jazon said so. Come on!"
He gave her dress a jerk; but she did not move any farther back; shewas looking at the blood oozing from a wound in the Indian's leg.
"He is shot, he is hurt, Jean, we must help him," she presently said,recovering her self-control, yet still pale. "We must get him out ofthat bad place."
Jean caught Alice's merciful spirit with sympathetic readiness, andshowed immediate willingness to aid her.
It was a difficult thing to do; but there was a will and of course away. They had knives with which they cut willows to make a standingplace on the mud. While they were doing this they spoke friendly wordsto Long-Hair, who understood French a little, and at last they got holdof his arms, tugged, rested, tugged again, and finally managed to helphim to a dry place, still under the willows, where he could lie more atease. Jean carried water in his cap with which they washed the woundand the stolid savage face. Then Alice tore up her cotton apron, inwhich she had hoped to bear home a load of lilies, and with the stripsbound the wound very neatly. It took a long time, during which theIndian remained silent and apparently quite indifferent.
Long-Hair was a man of superior physique, tall, straight, with themuscles of a Vulcan; and while he lay stretched on the ground half cladand motionless, he would have been a grand model for an heroic figurein bronze. Yet from every lineament there came a strange repellinginfluence, like that from a snake. Alice felt almost unbearable disgustwhile doing her merciful task; but she bravely persevered until it wasfinished.
It was now late in the afternoon, and the sun would be setting beforethey could reach home.
"We must hurry back, Jean," Alice said, turning to depart. "It will beall we can do to reach the other side in daylight. I'm thinking thatthey'll be out hunting for us too, if we don't move right lively. Come."
She gave the Indian another glance when she had taken but a step. Hegrunted and held up something in his hand--something that shone with adull yellow light. It was a small, oval, gold locket which she hadalways worn in her bosom. She sprang and snatched it from his palm.
"Thank you," she exclaimed, smiling gratefully. "I am so glad you foundit."
The chain by which the locket had hung was broken, doubtless b
y somemovement while dragging Long-Hair out of the mud, and the lid hadsprung open, exposing a miniature portrait of Alice, painted when shewas a little child, probably not two years old. It was a sweet babyface, archly bright, almost surrounded with a fluff of golden hair. Theneck and the upper line of the plump shoulders, with a trace of richlydelicate lace and a string of pearls, gave somehow a suggestion ofpatrician daintiness.
Long-Hair looked keenly into Alice's eyes, when she stooped to take thelocket from his hand, but said nothing.
She and Jean now hurried away, and, so vigorously did they paddle thepirogue, that the sky was yet red in the west when they reached homeand duly received their expected scolding from Madame Roussillon.
Alice sealed Jean's lips as to their adventure; for she had made up hermind to save Long-Hair if possible, and she felt sure that the only wayto do it would be to trust no one but Father Beret.
It turned out that Long-Hair's wound was neither a broken bone nor acut artery. The flesh of his leg, midway between the hip and the knee,was pierced; the bullet had bored a neat hole clean through. FatherBeret took the case in hand, and with no little surgical skillproceeded to set the big Indian upon his feet again. The affair had tobe cleverly managed. Food, medicines and clothing were surreptitiouslyborne across the river; a bed of grass was kept fresh under Long-Hair'sback; his wound was regularly dressed; and finally his weapons--atomahawk, a knife, a strong bow and a quiver of arrows--which he hadhidden on the night of his bold theft, were brought to him.
"Now go and sin no more," said good Father Beret; but he well knew thathis words were mere puffs of articulate wind in the ear of the grim andsilent savage, who limped away with an air of stately dignity into thewilderness.
A load fell from Alice's mind when Father Beret informed her ofLong-Hair's recovery and departure. Day and night the dread lest someof the men should find out his hiding-place and kill him had depressedand worried her. And now, when it was all over, there still hoveredlike an elusive shadow in her consciousness a vague haunting impressionof the incident's immense significance as an influence in her life. Tofeel that she had saved a man from death was a new sensation of itself;but the man and the circumstances were picturesque; they invitedimagination; they furnished an atmosphere of romance dear to all youngand healthy natures, and somehow stirred her soul with a strange appeal.
Long-Hair's imperturbable calmness, his stolid, immobile countenance,the mysterious reptilian gleam of his shifty black eyes, and thesoulless expression always lurking in them, kept a fascinating hold onthe girl's memory. They blended curiously with the impressions left bythe romances she had read in M. Roussillon's mildewed books.
Long-Hair was not a young man; but it would have been impossible toguess near his age. His form and face simply showed long experience andimmeasurable vigor. Alice remembered with a shuddering sensation thelook he gave her when she took the locket from his hand. It was of buta second's duration, yet it seemed to search every nook of her beingwith its subtle power.
Romancers have made much of their Indian heroes, picturing them asmodels of manly beauty and nobility; but all fiction must be taken withliberal pinches of salt. The plain truth is that dark savages of thepure blood often do possess the magnetism of perfect physicaldevelopment and unfathomable mental strangeness; but real beauty theynever have. Their innate repulsiveness is so great that, like thesnake's charm, it may fascinate; yet an indescribable, haunting disgustgoes with it. And, after all, if Alice had been asked to tell just howshe felt toward the Indian she had labored so hard to save, she wouldpromptly have said:
"I loathe him as I do a toad!"
Nor would Father Beret, put to the same test, have made a substantiallydifferent confession. His work, to do which his life went as fuel tofire, was training the souls of Indians for the reception of divinegrace; but experience had not changed his first impression of savagecharacter. When he traveled in the wilderness he carried the Word andthe Cross; but he was also armed with a gun and two good pistols, notto mention a dangerous knife. The rumor prevailed that Father Beretcould drive a nail at sixty yards with his rifle, and at twenty snuff acandle with either one of his pistols.