CHAPTER III
THE RAPE OF THE DEMIJOHN
The row down at the river house was more noise than fight, so
far as results seemed to indicate. It was all about a small dame
jeanne of fine brandy, which an Indian by the name of Long-Hair
had seized and run off with at the height of the carousal. He
must have been soberer than his pursuers, or naturally fleeter;
for not one of them could catch him, or even keep long in sight
of him. Some pistols were emptied while the race was on, and two
or three of the men swore roundly to having seen Long-Hair jump
sidewise and stagger, as if one of the shots had taken effect.
But, although the moon was shining, he someway disappeared, they
could not understand just how, far down beside the river 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 felt to be a capital offense for an Indian or anybody
else to rape a demijohn of fine brandy, especially one sent as
a present, by a friend in New Orleans, to Lieutenant Governor
Abbott, who had until recently been the commandant of the post.
Every man at the river house recognized and resented the enormity
of Long-Hair's crime and each was, for the moment, ready to be
his judge and his executioner. He had broken at once every rule
of frontier etiquette and every bond of sympathy. Nor was Long-Hair
ignorant of the danger involved in his daring enterprise. He had
beforehand carefully and stolidly weighed all the conditions,
and true to his Indian nature, had concluded that a little wicker
covered bottle of brandy was well worth the risk of his life.
So he had put himself in condition for a great race by slipping
out and getting rid of his weapons and all surplus weight of clothes.
This incident brought the drinking bout at the river house to
a sudden end; but nothing further came of it that night, and no
record of it would be found in these pages, but for the fact that
Long-Hair afterwards became an important character in the stirring
historical drama which had old Vincennes for its center of energy.
Rene de Ronville probably felt himself in bad luck when he arrived
at the river house just too late to share in the liquor or to
join in chasing the bold thief. He listened with interest, however,
to the story of Long-Hair's capture of the commandant's demijohn
and could not refrain from saying that if he had been present
there would have been a quite different result.
"I would have shot him before he got to that door,"
he said, drawing his heavy flint-lock pistol and going through
the motions of one aiming quickly and firing. Indeed, so vigorously
in earnest was he with the pantomime, that he actually did fire,
unintentionally of course,--the ball burying itself in the door-
jamb.
He was laughed at by those present for being more excited than
they who witnessed the whole thing. One of them, a leathery-faced
and grizzled old sinner, leered at him contemptuously and said
in queer French, with a curious accent caught from long use of
backwoods English:
"Listen how the boy brags! Ye might think, to hear Rene talk,
that he actually amounted to a big pile."
This personage was known to every soul in Vincennes as Oncle Jazon,
and when 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 have been in great danger! O yes, he'd 'ave killed Long-Hair
at the first shot, 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
comparison with a sun-dried wisp of hickory bark; and when he
chuckled, as he was now doing, his mouth puckered itself until
it looked like a scar on his face. From cap to moccasins he had
every mark significant of a desperate character; and yet there
was about him something that instantly commanded the confidence
of rough men,--the look of self-sufficiency and superior capability
always to be found in connection with immense will power. His
sixty years of exposure, hardship, and danger seemed to have but
toughened his physique and strengthened his vitality. Out of his
small hazel eyes gleamed a light as keen as ice.
"All right, Oncle Jazon," said Rene laughing and blowing
the smoke out of his pistol; "'twas you all the same who
let Long-Hair trot off with the Governor's brandy, not I. If you
could have hit even a door-post it might have been better."
Oncle Jazon took off his cap and looked down into it in a way
he had when about to say something final.
"Ventrebleu! I did not shoot at Long-Hair at all," he
said, speaking slowly, "because the scoundrel was unarmed.
He didn't have on even a knife, and he was havin' enough to do
dodgin' the bullets that the rest of '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 scalped by the Indians, as you have, I don't think there
would be any particular reason why I should wait for an Indian
thief to go and arm himself 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
of having his head skinned were the funniest thing imaginable.
"When you've killed as many of 'em as Oncle Jazon has,"
remarked a bystander 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 his crown.
The men who had been chasing Long-Hair, presently came straggling
back with their stories--each had a distinct one--of how the fugitive
escaped. They were wild looking fellows, most of them somewhat
intoxicated, all profusely liberal with their stock of picturesque
profanity. They represented the roughest element of the well-nigh
lawless post.
"I'm positive that he's wounded," said one. "Jacques
and I shot at him together, so that our pistols sounded just as
if only one had been fired--bang! that way--and he leaped sideways
for all the world like a bird with a broken leg. I thought he'd
fall; but ve! he ran faster'n ever, 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. He can't get off so easy."
"I don't know so well about that," said another; "it's
Long-Hair, you must remember, and Long-Hair is no common buck
that just anybody can find 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't believe it!"
The next morning Long-Hair was tracked to the edge. He had been
wounded, but whether seriously or not could only be conjectured.
A sprinkle of blood, here and there quite a dash of it, reddened
the grass and clumps of weeds he had run through, and ended close
to the water into which it looked as if he had plunged with a
view to baffling pursuit. Indeed pursuit was baffled. No further
trace could be found, by which to follow the cunning fugitive.
Some of the men consoled themselves by saying, without believing,
that Long-Hair was probably lying drowned at the bottom of the
river.
"Pas du tout," observed Oncle Jazon, his short pipe
askew far over in the corner of his mouth, "not a bit of
it is that Indian drowned. He's jes' as live as a fat cat this
minute, and as drunk as the devil. He'll get 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 partly
wrong. 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 arm he lost hold of it and it went to the bottom of
the Wabash, where it may be lying at this moment patiently waiting
for some one to fish it out of its bed deep in the sand and mud,
and break the ancient wax from its 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's hut empty turned into the path leading to the Roussillon
place, which was at the head of a narrow street laid out in a
direction at right angles 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 thatched or clapboarded roof held in
place by weight-poles ranged in roughly parallel rows, and each
had the face of the wall under its veranda neatly daubed with
a grayish stucco made of mud and lime. You may see such houses
today in some remote parts of the creole country of Louisiana.
As Rene passed along he spoke with a gay French freedom to the
dames and lasses who chanced to be visible. His air would be regarded
as violently brigandish in our day; we might even go so far as
to think his whole appearance comical. His jaunty cap with a tail
that wagged as he walked, his short trousers and leggins of buckskin,
and his loose shirt-like tunic, drawn in at the waist with a broad
belt, gave his strong figure just the dash of wildness suited
to the armament with which it was weighted. A heavy gun lay in
the hollow of his shoulder under which hung an otter-skin bullet-pouch
with its clear powder-horn and white bone charger. In his belt
were two huge flint-lock pistols and a long case-knife.
"Bon jour, Ma'm'selle Adrienne," he cheerily called,
waving his free hand in greeting to a small, dark lass standing
on the step of a veranda and indolently swinging a broom. "Comment
allez-vous auj ourd'hui?"
"J'm'porte tres bien, merci, Mo'sieu Rene," was the
quick response; "et vous?"
"Oh, I'm as lively as a cricket."
"Going a hunting?"
"No, just up here a little way--just on business--up to Mo'sieu
Roussillon's for a moment."
"Yes," the girl responded in a tone indicative of something
very like spleen, "yes, undoubtedly, Mo'sieu de Ronville;
your business there seems quite pressing of late. I have noticed
your industrious application to that business."
"Ta-ta, little one," he wheedled, lowering his voice;
"you mustn't go to making bug-bears out of nothing."
"Bug-bears!" she retorted, "you go on about your
business and I'll attend to mine," and she flirted into the
house.
Rene laughed under his breath, standing a moment as if expecting
her to come out again; but she did not, and he resumed his walk
singing softly--
"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
the straight, open way he met Father Beret and did not see him
until he came near bumping against the old man, who stepped aside
with astonishing agility and said--
"Dieu vous benisse, mon fils; but what is your great hurry--where
can you be going in such happy haste?" Rene did not stop
to parley with the priest. He flung some phrase of pleasant greeting
back over his shoulder as he trudged on, his heart beginning a
tattoo against his ribs when the Roussillon place came in sight,
and he took hold of his mustache to pull it, as some men must
do in moments of nervousness and bashfulness. If sounds ever have
color, the humming in his ears was of a rosy hue; if thoughts
ever exhale fragrance, his brain overflowed with the sweets of
violet and heliotrope.
He had in mind what he was going to say when Alice and he should
be alone together. It was a pretty speech, he thought; indeed
a very thrilling little speech, by the way it stirred his own
nerve- centers as he 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--eating the cherries, eating every one of them,
and that girl running off somewhere instead of staying here and
picking them," she railed in answer to the young man's polite
inquiry. "I haven't seen her these four hours, neither her
nor that rascally hunchback, Jean. They're up to some mischief,
I'll be bound!"
Madame Roussillon puffed audibly between phrases; but she suddenly
became very mild when relieved of her tirade.
"Mais entrez," she added in a pleasant tone, "come
in and tell me the news."
Rene's disappointment rushed into his face, but he managed to
laugh it aside.
"Father Beret has just been telling me," said Madame
Roussillon, "that our friend Long-Hair made some trouble
last night. How about it?"
Rene told her what he knew and added that Long-Hair would probably
never be seen again.
"He was shot, no doubt of it," he went on, "and
is now being nibbled by fish and turtles. We tracked him by his
blood to where he jumped into the Wabash. He never came out."
Strangely enough it happened that, at the very time of this chat
between Madame Roussillon and Rene Alice was bandaging Long-Hair's
wounded leg with strips of her apron. It was under some willows
which overhung the bank of a narrow and shallow lagoon or slough,
which in those days extended a mile or two back into the country
on the farther side of the river. Alice and Jean went over in
a pirogue to see if the water lilies, haunting a pond there, were
yet beginning to bloom. They landed at a convenient spot some
distance up the little lagoon, made the boat fast by dragging
its prow high ashore, and were on the point of setting out across
a neck of wet, grassy land to the pond, when a deep grunt, not
unlike that of a self-satisfied pig, attracted them to the willows,
where they discovered Long-Hair, badly wounded, weltering in 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 and glared. His face was grimy, his hair matted with
mud. Alice, although brave enough and quite accustomed to startling
experiences, uttered a cry when she saw those snaky eyes glistening
so savagely amid the shadows. But Jean was quick to recognize
Long-Hair; he had often seen him about town, a figure not to be
forgotten.
"They've been hunting him everywhere," he said in a
half whisper to Alice, clutching the skirt of her dress. "It's
Long-Hair, the Indian who stole the brandy; I know him."
Alice recoiled a pace or two.
"Let's go back and tell 'em," Jean added, still whispering,
"they want to kill him; Oncle Jazon said so. Come on!"
He gave her dress a jerk; but she did not move any farther back;
she was 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 of that bad place."
Jean caught Alice's merciful spirit with sympathetic readiness,
and showed immediate willingness to aid her.
It was a difficult thing to do; but there was a will and of course
a way. They had knives with which they cut willows to make a standing
place on the mud. While they were doing this they spoke friendly
words to Long-Hair, who understood French a little, and at last
they got hold of his arms, tugged, rested, tugged again, and finally
managed to help him to a dry place, still under the willows, where
he could lie more at ease. Jean carried water in his cap with
which they washed the wound and the stolid savage face. Then Alice
tore up her cotton apron, in which she had hoped to bear home
a load of lilies, and with the strips bound the wound very neatly.
It took a long time, during which the Indian remained silent and
apparently quite indifferent.
Long-Hair was a man of superior physique, tall, straight, with
the muscles of a Vulcan; and while he lay stretched on the ground
half clad and motionless, he would have been a grand model for
an heroic figure in bronze. Yet from every lineament there came
a strange repelling influence, like that from a snake. Alice felt
almost unbearable disgust while doing her merciful task; but she
bravely persevered until it was finished.
It was now late in the afternoon, and the sun would be setting
before they could reach home.
"We must hurry back, Jean," Alice said, turning to depart.
"It will be all we can do to reach the other side in daylight.
I'm thinking that they'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.
He grunted and held up something in his hand--something that shone
with a dull yellow light. It was a small, oval, gold locket which
she had always worn in her bosom. She sprang and snatched it from
his palm.
"Thank you," she exclaimed, smiling gratefully. "I
am so glad you found it."
The chain by which the locket had hung was broken, doubtless by
some movement while dragging Long-Hair out of the mud, and the
lid had sprung open, exposing a miniature portrait of Alice, painted
when she was a little child, probably not two years old. It was
a sweet baby face, archly bright, almost surrounded with a fluff
of golden hair. The neck and the upper line of the plump shoulders,
with a trace of richly delicate lace and a string of pearls, gave
somehow a suggestion of patrician daintiness.
Long-Hair looked keenly into Alice's eyes, when she stooped to
take the locket from his hand, but said nothing.
She and Jean now hurried away, and, so vigorously did they paddle
the pirogue, that the sky was yet red in the west when they reached
home and duly received their expected scolding from Madame Roussillon.
Alice sealed Jean's lips as to their adventure; for she had made
up her mind to save Long-Hair if possible, and she felt sure that
the only way to 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 a cut artery. The flesh of his leg, midway between the hip
and the knee, was pierced; the bullet had bored a neat hole clean
through. Father Beret took the case in hand, and with no little
surgical skill proceeded to set the big Indian upon his feet again.
The affair had to be cleverly managed. Food, medicines and clothing
were surreptitiously borne across the river; a bed of grass was
kept fresh under Long-Hair's back; his wound was regularly dressed;
and finally his weapons--a tomahawk, a knife, a strong bow and
a quiver of arrows--which he had hidden 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 that his words were mere puffs of articulate wind
in the ear of the grim and silent savage, who limped away with
an air of stately dignity into the wilderness.
A load fell from Alice's mind when Father Beret informed her of
Long-Hair's recovery and departure. Day and night the dread lest
some of the men should find out his hiding-place and kill him
had depressed and worried her. And now, when it was all over,
there still hovered like an elusive shadow in her consciousness
a vague haunting impression of the incident's immense significance
as an influence in her life. To feel that she had saved a man
from death was a new sensation of itself; but the man and the
circumstances were picturesque; they invited imagination; they
furnished an atmosphere of romance dear to all young and 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 the
soulless expression always lurking in them, kept a fascinating
hold on the girl's memory. They blended curiously with the impressions
left by the romances she had read in M. Roussillon's mildewed
books.
Long-Hair was not a young man; but it would have been impossible
to guess near his age. His form and face simply showed long experience
and immeasurable vigor. Alice remembered with a shuddering sensation
the look he gave her when she took the locket from his hand. It
was of but a second's duration, yet it seemed to search every
nook of her being with its subtle power.
Romancers have made much of their Indian heroes, picturing them
as models of manly beauty and nobility; but all fiction must be
taken with liberal pinches of salt. The plain truth is that dark
savages of the pure blood often do possess the magnetism of perfect
physical development and unfathomable mental strangeness; but
real beauty they never have. Their innate repulsiveness is so
great that, like the snake's charm, it may fascinate; yet an indescribable,
haunting disgust goes with it. And, after all, if Alice had been
asked to tell just how she felt toward the Indian she had labored
so hard to save, she would promptly have said:
"I loathe him as I do a toad!"
Nor would Father Beret, put to the same test, have made a substantially
different confession. His work, to do which his life went as fuel
to fire, was training the souls of Indians for the reception of
divine grace; but experience had not changed his first impression
of savage character. When he traveled in the wilderness he carried
the Word and the Cross; but he was also armed with a gun and two
good pistols, not to mention a dangerous knife. The rumor prevailed
that Father Beret could drive a nail at sixty yards with his rifle,
and at twenty snuff a candle with either one of his pistols.