第87章 THE CAMPAIGN ENDS(2)

Pushed and jostled ahead of them were four Indians decked and feathered, the half-dried scalps dangling from their belts, impassive, true to their creed despite the indignity of jolts and jars and blows.On and on pressed the mob, gathering recruits at every corner, and when they reached St.Xavier's before the fort half the regiment was there.Others watched, too, from the stockade, and what they saw made their knees smite together with fear.Here were four bronzed statues in a row across the street, the space in front of them clear that their partisans in the fort might look and consider.What was passing in the savage mind no man might know.Not a lip trembled nor an eye faltered when a backwoodsman, his memory aflame at sight of the pitiful white scalps on their belts, thrust through the crowd to curse them.Fletcher Blount, frenzied, snatched his tomahawk from his side.

``Sink, varmint!'' he cried with a great oath.``By the etarnal! we'll pay the H'ar Buyer in his own coin.Sound your drums!'' he shouted at the fort.``Call the garrison fer the show.''

He had raised his arm and turned to strike when the savage put up his hand, not in entreaty, but as one man demanding a right from another.The cries, the curses, the murmurs even, were hushed.Throwing back his head, arching his chest, the notes of a song rose in the heavy air.Wild, strange notes they were, that struck vibrant chords in my own quivering being, and the song was the death-song.Ay, and the life-song of a soul which had come into the world even as mine own.And somewhere there lay in the song, half revealed, the awful mystery of that Creator Whom the soul leaped forth to meet: the myriad green of the sun playing with the leaves, the fish swimming lazily in the brown pool, the doe grazing in the thicket, and a naked boy as free from care as these; and still the life grows brighter as strength comes, and stature, and power over man and beast; and then, God knows what memories of fierce love and fiercer wars and triumphs, of desires gained and enemies conquered,--God, who has made all lives akin to something which He holds in the hollow of His hand; and then--the rain beating on the forest crown, beating, beating, beating.

The song ceased.The Indian knelt in the black mud, not at the feet of Fletcher Blount, but on the threshold of the Great Spirit who ruleth all things.

The axe fell, yet he uttered no cry as he went before his Master.

So the four sang, each in turn, and died in the sight of some who pitied, and some who feared, and some who hated, for the sake of land and women.So the four went beyond the power of gold and gewgaw, and were dragged in the mire around the walls and flung into the yellow waters of the river.

Through the dreary afternoon the men lounged about and cursed the parley, and hearkened for the tattoo,--the signal agreed upon by the leaders to begin the fighting.There had been no command against taunts and jeers, and they gathered in groups under the walls to indulge themselves, and even tried to bribe me as I sat braced against a house with my drum between my knees and the sticks clutched tightly in my hands.

``Here's a Spanish dollar for a couple o' taps, Davy,''

shouted Jack Terrell.

``Come on, ye pack of Rebel cutthroats!'' yelled a man on the wall.

He was answered by a torrent of imprecations.And so they flung it back and forth until nightfall, when out comes the same faded-scarlet officer, holding a letter in his hand, and marches down the street to Monsieur Bouton's.

There would be no storming now, nor any man suffered to lay fingers on the Hair Buyer.

** ** ***

I remember, in particular, Hamilton the Hair Buyer.

Not the fiend my imagination had depicted (I have since learned that most villains do not look the part), but a man with a great sorrow stamped upon his face.The sun rose on that 25th of February, and the mud melted, and one of our companies drew up on each side of the gate.

Downward slid the lion of England, the garrison drums beat a dirge, and the Hair Buyer marched out at the head of his motley troops.

Then came my own greatest hour.All morning I had been polishing and tightening the drum, and my pride was so great as we fell into line that so much as a smile could not be got out of me.Picture it all: Vincennes in black and white by reason of the bright day; eaves and gables, stockade line and capped towers, sharply drawn, and straight above these a stark flagstaff waiting for our colors; pigs and fowls straying hither and thither, unmindful that this day is red on the calendar.Ah! here is a bit of color, too,--the villagers on the side streets to see the spectacle.Gay wools and gayer handkerchiefs there, amid the joyous, cheering crowd of thrice-changed nationality.

``Vive les Bostonnais! Vive les Americains! Vive Monsieur le Colonel Clark! Vive le petit tambour!''

``Vive le petit tambour!'' That was the drummer boy, stepping proudly behind the Colonel himself, with a soul lifted high above mire and puddle into the blue above.

There was laughter amongst the giants behind me, and Cowan saying softly, as when we left Kaskaskia, ``Go it, Davy, my little gamecock!'' And the whisper of it was repeated among the ranks drawn up by the gate.

Yes, here was the gate, and now we were in the fort, and an empire was gained, never to be lost again.The Stars and Stripes climbed the staff, and the folds were caught by an eager breeze.Thirteen cannon thundered from the blockhouses--one for each colony that had braved a king.

There, in the miry square within the Vincennes fort, thin and bronzed and travel-stained, were the men who had dared the wilderness in ugliest mood.And yet none by himself would have done it--each had come here compelled by a spirit stronger than his own, by a master mind that laughed at the body and its ailments.