It has already been mentioned that Indians, arriving singly or in squads, to report at Hamilton's headquarters, were in the habit of firing their guns before entering the town or the fort, not only as a signal of their approach, but in order to rid their weapons of their charges preliminary to cleaning them before setting out upon another scalp-hunting expedition. A shot, therefore, or even a volley, heard on the outskirts of the village, was not a noticeable incident in the daily and nightly experience of the garrison. Still, for some reason, Governor Hamilton started violently when, just after nightfall, five or six rifles cracked sharply a short distance from the stockade.
He and Helm with two other officers were in the midst of a game of cards, while a kettle, swinging on a crane in the ample fire-place, sang a shrill promise of hot apple-jack toddy.
"By Jove!" exclaimed Farnsworth, who, although not in the game, was amusing himself with looking on; "you jump like a fine lady! I almost fancied I heard a bullet hit you."
"You may all jump while you can," remarked Helm. "That's Clark, and your time's short—He'll have this fort tumbling on your heads before daylight of to-morrow morning comes."
As he spoke he arose from his seat at the card table and went to look after the toddy, which, as an expert, he had under supervision.
Hamilton frowned. The mention of Clark was disturbing. Ever since the strange disappearance of Lieutenant Barlow he had nursed the fear that possibly Clark's scouts had captured him and that the American forces might be much nearer than Kaskaskia. Besides, his nerves were unruly, as they had been ever since the encounter with Father Beret; and his vision persisted in turning back upon the accusing cold face of Alice, lying in the moonlight. One little detail of that scene almost maddened him at times; it was a sheeny, crinkled wisp of warm looking hair looped across the cheek in which he had often seen a saucy dimple dance when Alice spoke or smiled. He was bad enough, but not wholly bad, and the thought of having darkened those merry eyes and stilled those sweet dimples tore through him with a cold, rasping pang.
"Just as soon as this toddy is properly mixed and tempered," said Helm, with a magnetic jocosity beaming from his genial face, "I'm going to propose a toast to the banner of Alice Roussillon, which a whole garrison of British braves has been unable to take!"
"If you do I'll blow a hole through you as big as the south door of hell," said Hamilton, in a voice fairly shaken to a husky quaver with rage. "You may do a great many insulting things; but not that."
Helm was in a half stooping attitude with a ladle in one hand, a cup in the other. He had met Hamilton's glowering look with a peculiarly innocent smile, as if to say: "What in the world is the matter now? I never felt in a better humor in all my life. Can't you take a joke, I wonder?" He did not speak, however, for a rattling volley of musket and rifle shots hit the top of the clay-daubed chimney, sending down into the toddy a shower of soot and dirt.
In a wink every man was on his feet and staring.
"Gentlemen," said Helm, with an impressive oath, "that is Clark's soldiers, and they will take your fort; but they ought not to have spoiled this apple toddy!"
"Oh, the devil!" said Hamilton, forcibly resuming a calm countenance, "it is only a squad of drunken Indians coming in. We'll forego excitement; there's no battle on hand, gentlemen."
"I'm glad you think so, Governor Hamilton," Helm responded, "but I should imagine that I ought to know the crack of a Kentucky rifle. I've heard one occasionally in my life. Besides, I got a whiff of freedom just now."
"Captain Helm is right," observed Farnsworth. "That is an attack."
Another volley, this time nearer and more concentrated, convinced Hamilton that he was, indeed, at the opening of a fight. Even while he was giving some hurried orders to his officers, a man was wounded at one of the port-holes. Then came a series of yells, answered by a ripple of sympathetic French shouting that ran throughout the town. The patrol guards came straggling in, breathless with excitement. They swore to having seen a thousand men marching across the water-covered meadows.
Hamilton was brave. The approach of danger stirred him like a trumpet-strain. His fighting blood rose to full tide, and he gave his orders with the steadiness and commanding force of a born soldier. The officers hastened to their respective positions. On all sides sounds indicative of rapid preparations for the fight mingled into a confused strain of military energy. Men marched to their places; cannon were wheeled into position, and soon enough the firing began in good earnest.
Late in the afternoon a rumor of Clark's approach had gone abroad through the village; but not a French lip breathed it to a friend of the British. The creoles were loyal to the cause of freedom; moreover, they cordially hated Hamilton, and their hearts beat high at the prospect of a change in masters at the fort. Every cabin had its hidden gun and supply of ammunition, despite the order to disarm issued by Hamilton. There was a hustling to bring these forth, which was accompanied with a guarded yet irrepressible chattering, delightfully French and infinitely volatile.
"Tiens! je vais frotter mon fusil. J'ai vu un singe!" said Jaques Bourcier to his daughter, the pretty Adrienne, who was coming out of the room in which Alice lay.
"I saw a monkey just now; I must rub up my gun!" He could not be solemn; not he. The thought of an opportunity to get even with Hamilton was like wine in his blood.
If you had seen those hardy and sinewy Frenchmen gliding in the dusk of evening from cottage to cottage, passing the word that the Americans had arrived, saying airy things and pinching one another as they met and hurried on, you would have thought something very amusing and wholly jocund was in preparation for the people of Vincennes.
There was a current belief in the town that Gaspard Roussillon never missed a good thing and always somehow got the lion's share. He went out with the ebb to return on the flood. Nobody was surprised, therefore, when he suddenly appeared in the midst of his friends, armed to the teeth and emotionally warlike to suit the occasion. Of course he took charge of everybody and everything. You could have heard him whisper a bowshot away.
"Taisons!" he hissed, whenever he met an acquaintance. "We will surprise the fort and scalp the whole garrison. Aux armes! les Americains viennent d'arriver!"
At his own house he knocked and called in vain. He shook the door violently; for he was thinking of the stores under the floor, of the grimy bottles, of the fragrant Bordeaux—ah, his throat, how it throbbed! But where was Madame Roussillon? Where was Alice? "Jean! Jean!" he cried, forgetting all precaution, "come here, you scamp, and let me in this minute!"
A profoundly impressive silence gave him to understand that his home was deserted.
"Chiff! frightened and gone to stay with Madame Godere, I suppose—and I so thirsty! Bah! hum, hum, apres le vin la bataille, ziff!"
He kicked in the door and groped his way to the liquors. While he hastily swigged and smacked he heard the firing begin with a crackling, desultory volley. He laughed jovially, there in the dark, between draughts and deep sighs of enjoyment.
"Et moi aussi," he murmured, like the vast murmur of the sea, "I want to be in that dance! Pardonnez, messieurs. Moi, je veux danser, s'il vous plait."
And when he had filled himself he plunged out and rushed away, wrought up to the extreme fighting pitch of temper. Diable! if he could but come across that Lieutenant Barlow, how he would smash him and mangle him! In magnifying his prowess with the lens of imagination he swelled and puffed as he lumbered along.
The firing sounded as if it were between the fort and the river; but presently when one of Hamilton's cannon spoke, M. Roussillon saw the yellow spike of flame from its muzzle leap directly toward the church, and he thought it best to make a wide detour to avoid going between the firing lines. Once or twice he heard the whine of a stray bullet high overhead. Before he had gone very far he met a man hurrying toward the fort. It was Captain Francis Maisonville, one of Hamilton's chief scouts, who had been out on a reconnoissance and, cut off from his party by some of Clark's forces, was trying to make his way to the main gate of the stockade.
M. Roussillon knew Maisonville as a somewhat desperate character, a leader of Indian forays and a trader in human scalps. Surely the fellow was legitimate prey.
"Ziff! diable de gredin!" he snarled, and leaping upon him choked him to the ground, "Je vais vous scalper immediatement!"
Clark's plan of approach showed masterly strategy. Lieutenant Bailey, with fourteen regulars, made a show of attack on the east, while Major Bowman led a company through the town, on a line near where Main street in Vincennes is now located, to a point north of the stockade. Charleville, a brave creole, who was at the head of some daring fellows, by a brilliant dash got position under cover of a natural terrace at the edge of the prairie, opposite the fort's southwestern angle. Lieutenant Beverley, in whom the commander placed highest confidence, was sent to look for a supply of ammunition, and to gather up all the Frenchmen in the town who wished to join in the attack. Oncle Jazon and ten other available men went with him.
They all made a great noise when they felt that the place was completely invested. Nor can we deny, much as we would like to, the strong desire for vengeance which raised those shouting voices and nerved those steady hearts to do or die in an undertaking which certainly had a desperate look. Patriotism of the purest strain those men had, and that alone would have borne them up; but the recollection of smouldering cabin homes in Kentucky, of women and children murdered and scalped, of men brave and true burned at the stake, and of all the indescribable outrages of Indian warfare incited and rewarded by the commander of the fort yonder, added to patriotism the terrible urge of that dark passion which clamors for blood to quench the fire of wrath. Not a few of those wet, half-frozen, emaciated soldiers of freedom had experienced the soul rending shock of returning from a day's hunting in the forest to find home in ashes and loved ones brutally murdered and scalped, or dragged away to unspeakable outrage under circumstances too harrowing for description, the bare thought of which turns our blood cold, even at this distance. Now the opportunity had arrived for a stroke of retaliation. The thought was tremendously stimulating.
Beverley, with the aid of Oncle Jazon, was able to lead his little company as far as the church before the enemy saw him. Here a volley from the nearest angle of the stockade had to be answered, and pretty soon a cannon began to play upon the position.
"We kin do better some'rs else," was Oncle Jazon's laconic remark flung back over his shoulder, as he moved briskly away from the spot just swept by a six-pounder. "Come this yer way, Lieutenant. I hyer some o' the fellers a talkin' loud jes' beyant Legrace's place. They ain't no sort o' sense a tryin' to hit anything a shootin' in the dark nohow."
When they reached the thick of the town there was a strange stir in the dusky streets. Men were slipping from house to house, arming themselves and joining their neighbors. Clark had sent an order earlier in the evening forbidding any street demonstration by the inhabitants; but he might as well have ordered the wind not to blow or the river to stand still. Oncle Jazon knew every man whose outlines he could see or whose voice he heard. He called each one by name:
"Here, Roger, fall in!—Come Louis, Alphonse, Victor, Octave—venez ici, here's the American army, come with me!" His rapid French phrases leaped forth as if shot from a pistol, and his shrill voice, familiar to every ear in Vincennes, drew the creole militiamen to him, and soon Beverley's company had doubled its numbers, while at the same time its enthusiasm and ability to make a noise had increased in a far greater proportion. In accordance with an order from Clark they now took position near the northeast corner of the stockade and began firing, although in the darkness there was but little opportunity for marksmanship.
Oncle Jazon had found citizens Legrace and Bosseron, and through them Clark's men were supplied with ammunition, of which they stood greatly in need, their powder having got wet during their long, watery march. By nine o'clock the fort was completely surrounded, and from every direction the riflemen and musketeers were pouring in volley after volley. Beverley with his men took the cover of a fence and some houses sixty yards from the stockade. Here to their surprise they found themselves below the line of Hamilton's cannon, which, being planted on the second floor of the fort, could not be sufficiently depressed to bear upon them. A well directed musket fire, however, fell from the loopholes of the blockhouses, the bullets rattling merrily against the cover behind which the attacking forces lay.
Beverley was thinking of Alice during every moment of all this stir and tumult He feared that she might still be a prisoner in the fort exposed to the very bullets that his men were discharging at every crack and cranny of those loosely constructed buildings. Should he ever see her again? Would she care for him? What would be the end of all this terrible suspense? Those remote forebodings of evils, formless, shadowy, ineffable, which have harried the lover's heart since time began, crowded all pleasant anticipations out of his mind.
Clark, in passing hurriedly from company to company around the line, stopped for a little while when he found Beverley.
"Have you plenty of ammunition?" was his first inquiry.
"A mighty sight more'n we kin see to shoot with," spoke up Oncle Jazon. "It's a right smart o' dad burn foolishness to be wastin' it on nothin'; seems like to me 'at we'd better set the dasted fort afire an' smoke the skunks out!"
"Speak when you are spoken to, my man," said the Colonel a trifle hotly, and trying by a sharp scrutiny to make him out in the gloom where he crouched.
"Ventrebleu! I'm not askin' YOU, Colonel Clark, nor no other man, when I shill speak. I talks whenever I gits ready, an' I shoots jes' the same way. So ye'd better go on 'bout yer business like a white man! Close up yer own whopper jawed mouth, ef ye want anything shet up!"
"Oho! is that you, Jazon? You're so little I didn't know you! Certainly, talk your whole damned under jaw off, for all I care," Clark replied, assuming a jocose tone. Then turning again to Beverley: "Keep up the firing and the noise; the fort will be ours in the morning."
"What's the use of waiting till morning?" Beverley demanded with impatience. "We can tear that stockade to pieces with our hands in half an hour."
"I don't think so, Lieutenant. It is better to play for the sure thing. Keep up the racket, and be ready for 'em if they rush out. We must not fail to capture the hair-buyer General."
He passed on, with something cheerful to say whenever he found a squad of his devoted men. He knew how to humor and manage those independent and undisciplined yet heroically brave fellows. What to see and hear, what to turn aside as a joke, what to insist upon with inflexible mastery, he knew by the fine instantaneous sense of genius. There were many men of Oncle Jazon's cast, true as steel, but refractory as flint, who could not be dominated by any person, no matter of what stamp or office. To them an order was an insult; but a suggestion pleased and captured them. Strange as it may seem, theirs was the conquering spirit of America—the spirit which has survived every turn of progress and built up the great body of our independence.
Beverley submitted to Clark's plan with what patience he could, and all night long fired shot for shot with the best riflemen in his squad. It was a fatiguing performance, with apparently little result beyond forcing the garrison now and again to close the embrasures, thus periodically silencing the cannon. Toward the close of the night a relaxation showed itself in the shouting and firing all round the line. Beverley's men, especially the creoles, held out bravely in the matter of noise; but even they flagged at length, their volatility simmering down to desultory bubbling and half sleepy chattering and chaffing.
Beverley leaned upon a rude fence, and for a time neglected to reload his hot rifle. Of course he was thinking of Alice,—he really could not think in any other direction; but it gave him a shock and a start when he presently heard her name mentioned by a little Frenchman near him on the left.
"There'll never be another such a girl in Post Vincennes as Alice Roussillon," the fellow said in the soft creole patois, "and to think of her being shot like a dog!"
"And by a man who calls himself a Governor, too!" said another. "Ah, as for myself, I'm in favor of burning him alive when we capture him. That's me!"
"Et moi aussi," chimed in a third voice. "That poor girl must be avenged. The man who shot her must die. Holy Virgin, but if Gaspard Roussillon were only here!"
"But he is here; I saw him just after dark. He was in great fighting temper, that terrible man. Ouf! but I should not like to be Colonel Hamilton and fall in the way of that Gaspard Roussillon!"
"Morbleu! I should say not. You may leave me out of a chance like that! I shouldn't mind seeing Gaspard handle the Governor, though. Ah, that would be too good! He'd pay him up for shooting Mademoiselle Alice."
Beverley could scarcely hold himself erect by the fence; the smoky, foggy landscape swam round him heavy and strange. He uttered a groan, which brought Oncle Jazon to his side in a hurry.
"Qu' avez-vous? What's the matter?" the old man demanded with quick sympathy. "Hev they hit ye? Lieutenant, air ye hurt much?"
Beverley did not hear the old man's words, did not feel his kindly touch.
"Alice! Alice!" he murmured, "dead, dead!"
"Ya-as," drawled Oncle Jazon, "I hearn about it soon as I got inter town. It's a sorry thing, a mighty sorry thing. But mebby I won't do a little somepin' to that—"
Beverley straightened himself and lifted his gun, forgetting that he had not reloaded it since firing last. He leveled it at the fort and touched the trigger. Simultaneously with his movement an embrasure opened and a cannon flashed, its roar flanked on either side by a crackling of British muskets. Some bullets struck the fence and flung splinters into Oncle Jazon's face. A cannon ball knocked a ridge pole from the roof of a house hard by, and sent it whirling through the air.
"Ventrebleu!—et apres? What the devil next? Better knock a feller's eyes out!" the old man cried. "I ain't a doin' nothin' to ye!"
He capered around rubbing his leathery face after the manner of a scalded monkey. Beverley was struck in the breast by a flattened and spent ball that glanced from a fence-picket. The shock caused him to stagger and drop his gun; but he quickly picked it up and turned to his companion.
"Are you hurt, Oncle Jazon?" he inquired. "Are you hurt?"
"Not a bit—jes' skeert mos' into a duck fit. Thought a cannon ball had knocked my whole dang face down my throat! Nothin' but a handful o' splinters in my poorty count'nance, makin' my head feel like a porc'-pine. But I sort o' thought I heard somepin' give you a diff."
"Something did hit me," said Beverley, laying a hand on his breast, "but I don't think it was a bullet. They seem to be getting our range at last. Tell the men to keep well under cover. They must not expose themselves until we are ready to charge."
The shock had brought him back to his duty as a leader of his little company, and with the funeral bell of all his life's happiness tolling in his agonized heart he turned afresh to directing the fire upon the block-house.
About this time a runner came from Clark with an order to cease firing and let a returning party of British scouts under Captain Lamothe re-enter the fort unharmed. A strange order it seemed to both officers and men; but it was implicitly obeyed. Clark's genius here made another fine strategic flash. He knew that unless he let the scouts go back into the stockade they would escape by running away, and might possibly organize an army of Indians with which to succor Hamilton. But if they were permitted to go inside they could be captured with the rest of the garrison; hence his order.
A few minutes passed in dead silence; then Captain Lamothe and his party marched close by where Beverley's squad was lying concealed. It was a difficult task to restrain the creoles, for some of them hated Lamothe. Oncle Jazon squirmed like a snake while they filed past all unaware that an enemy lurked so near. When they reached the fort, ladders were put down for them and they began to clamber over the wall, crowding and pushing one another in wild haste. Oncle Jazon could hold in no longer.
"Ya! ya! ya!" he yelled. "Look out! the ladder is a fallin' wi' ye!"
Then all the lurking crowd shouted as one man, and, sure enough, down came a ladder—men and all in a crashing heap.
"Silence! silence!" Beverley commanded; but he could not check the wild jeering and laughing, while the bruised and frightened scouts hastily erected their ladder again, fairly tumbling over one another in their haste to ascend, and so cleared the wall, falling into the stockade to join the garrison.
"Ventrebleu!" shrieked Oncle Jazon. "They've gone to bed; but we'll wake 'em up at the crack o' day an' give 'em a breakfas' o' hot lead!"
Now the fighting was resumed with redoubled spirit and noise, and when morning came, affording sufficient light to bring out the "bead sights" on the Kentucky rifles, the matchless marksmen in Clark's band forced the British to close the embrasures and entirely cease trying to use their cannon; but the fight with small arms went merrily on until the middle of the forenoon.
Meantime Gaspard Roussillon had tied Francis Maisonville's hands fast and hard with the strap of his bullet-pouch.
"Now, I'll scalp you," he said in a rumbling tone, terrible to hear. And with his words out came his hunting knife from its sheath.
"O have mercy, my dear Monsieur Roussillon!" cried the panting captive; "have mercy!"
"Mercy! yes, like your Colonel's, that's what you'll get. You stand by that forban, that scelerat, that bandit, and help him. Oh, yes, you'll get mercy! Yes, the same mercy that he showed to my poor little Alice! Your scalp, Monsieur, if you please! A small matter; it won't hurt much!"
"But, for the sake of old friendship, Gaspard, for the sake—"
"Ziff! poor little Alice!"
"But I swear to you that I—"
"Tout de meme, Monsieur, je vais vous scalper maintenant."
In fact he had taken off a part of Maisonville's scalp, when a party of soldiers, among whom was Maisonville's brother, a brave fellow and loyal to the American cause, were attracted by his cries and came to his rescue.
M. Roussillon struggled savagely, insisting upon completing his cruel performance; but he was at last overpowered, partly by brute force and partly by the pleading of Maisonville's brother, and made to desist. The big man wept with rage when he saw the bleeding prisoner protected. "Eh bien! I'll keep what I've got," he roared, "and I'll take the rest of it next time."
He shook the tuft of hair at Maisonville and glared like a mad bull.
Two or three other members of Lamothe's band were captured about the same time by some of the French militiamen; and Clark, when on his round cheering and directing his forces, discovered that these prisoners were being used as shields. Some young creoles, gay with drink and the stimulating effect of fight, had bound the poor fellows and were firing from behind them! Of course the commander promptly put an end to this cruelty; but they considered it exquisite fun while it lasted. It was in broad daylight, and they knew that the English in the fort could see what they were doing.
"It's shameful to treat prisoners in this way," said Clark. "I will not permit it. Shoot the next man that offers to do such a thing!"
One of the creole youths, a handsome, swarthy Adonis in buckskin, tossed his shapely head with a debonair smile and said:
"To be sure, mon Colonel! but what have they been doing to us? We have amused them all winter; it's but fair that they should give us a little fun now."
Clark shrugged his broad shoulders and passed on. He understood perfectly what the people of Vincennes had suffered under Hamilton's brutal administration.
At nine o'clock an order was passed to cease firing, and a flag of truce was seen going from Clark's headquarters to the fort. It was a peremptory demand for unconditional surrender. Hamilton refused, and fighting was fiercely resumed from behind rude breastworks meantime erected. Every loop-hole and opening of whatever sort was the focus into which the unerring backwoods rifles sent their deadly bullets. Men began to fall in the fort, and every moment Hamilton expected an assault in force on all sides of the stockade. This, if successful, would mean inevitable massacre. Clark had warned him of the terrible consequences of holding out until the worst should come. "For," said he in his note to the Governor, "if I am obliged to storm, you may depend upon such treatment as is justly due to a murderer."
Historians have wondered why Hamilton became so excited and acted so strangely after receiving the note. The phrase, "justly due to a murderer," is the key to the mystery. When he read it his heart sank and a terrible fear seized him. "Justly due to a murderer!" ah, that calm, white, beautiful girlish face, dead in the moonlight, with the wisp of shining hair across it! "Such treatment as is justly due to a murderer!" Cold drops of sweat broke out on his forehead and a shiver went through his body.
During the truce Clark's weary yet still enthusiastic besiegers enjoyed a good breakfast prepared for them by the loyal dames of Vincennes. Little Adrienne Bourcier was one of the handmaidens of the occasion. She brought to Beverley's squad a basket, almost as large as herself, heaped high with roasted duck and warm wheaten bread, while another girl bore two huge jugs of coffee, fragrant and steaming hot. The men cheered them lustily and complimented them without reserve, so that before their service was over their faces were glowing with delight.
And yet Adrienne's heart was uneasy, and full of longing to hear something of Rene de Ronville. Surely some one of her friends must know something about him. Ah, there was Oncle Jazon! Doubtless he could tell her all that she wanted to know. She lingered, after the food was distributed, and shyly inquired.
"Hain't seed the scamp," said Oncle Jazon, only he used the patois most familiar to the girl's ear. "Killed an' scelped long ago, I reckon."
His mouth was so full that he spoke mumblingly and with utmost difficulty. Nor did he glance at Adrienne, whose face took on as great pallor as her brown complexion could show.
Beverley ate but little of the food. He sat apart on a piece of timber that projected from the rough breastwork and gave himself over to infinite misery of spirit, which was trebled when he took Alice's locket from his bosom, only to discover that the bullet which struck him had almost entirely destroyed the face of the miniature.
He gripped the dinted and twisted case and gazed at it with the stare of a blind man. His heart almost ceased to beat and his breath had the rustling sound we hear when a strong man dies of a sudden wound. Somehow the defacement of the portrait was taken by his soul as the final touch of fate, signifying that Alice was forever and completely obliterated from his life. He felt a blur pass over his mind. He tried in vain to recall the face and form so dear to him; he tried to imagine her voice; but the whole universe was a vast hollow silence. For a long while he was cold, staring, rigid; then the inevitable collapse came, and he wept as only a strong man can who is hurt to death, yet cannot die.
Adrienne approached him, thinking to speak to him about Rene; but he did not notice her, and she went her way, leaving beside him a liberal supply of food.
Governor Hamilton received the note sent him by Colonel Clark and replied to it with curt dignity; but his heart was quaking. As a soldier he was true to the military tradition, and nothing could have induced him to surrender his command with dishonor.
"Lieutenant-Governor Hamilton," he wrote to Clark, "begs leave to acquaint Colonel Clark that he and his garrison are not disposed to be awed into any action unworthy of British subjects."
"Very brave words," said Helm, when Hamilton read the note to him, "but you'll sing a milder tune before many minutes, or you and your whole garrison will perish in a bloody heap. Listen to those wild yells! Clark has enough men to eat you all up for breakfast. You'd better be reasonable and prudent. It's not bravery to court massacre."
Hamilton turned away without a word and sent the message; but Helm saw that he was excited, and could be still further wrought up.
"You are playing into the hands of your bitterest enemies, the frog-eaters," he went on. "These creoles, over whom you've held a hot poker all winter, are crazy to be turned loose upon you; and you know that they've got good cause to feel like giving you the extreme penalty. They'll give it to you without a flinch if they get the chance. You've done enough."
Hamilton whirled about and glared ferociously.
"Helm, what do you mean?" he demanded in a voice as hollow as it was full of desperate passion.
The genial Captain laughed, as if he had heard a good joke.
"You won't catch any fish if you swear, and you look blasphemous," he said with the lightness of humor characteristic of him at all times. "You'd better say a prayer or two. Just reflect a moment upon the awful sins you have committed and—"
A crash of coalescing volleys from every direction broke off his levity. Clark was sending his response to Hamilton's lofty note. The guns of freedom rang out a prophecy of triumph, and the hissing bullets clucked sharply as they entered the solid logs of the walls or whisked through an aperture and bowled over a man. The British musketeers returned the fire as best they could, with a courage and a stubborn coolness which Helm openly admired, although he could not hide his satisfaction whenever one of them was disabled.
"Lamothe and his men are refusing to obey orders," said Farnsworth a little later, hastily approaching Hamilton, his face flushed and a gleam of hot anger in his eyes. "They're in a nasty mood; I can do nothing with them; they have not fired a shot."
"Mutiny?" Hamilton demanded.
"Not just that. They say they do not wish to fire on their kinsmen and friends. They are all French, you know, and they see their cousins, brothers, uncles and old acquaintances out there in Clark's rabble. I can do nothing with them."
"Shoot the scoundrels, then!"
"It will be a toss up which of us will come out on top if we try that. Besides, if we begin a fight inside, the Americans will make short work of us."
"Well, what in hell are we to do, then?"
"Oh, fight, that's all," said Farnsworth apathetically turning to a small loop-hole and leveling a field glass through it. "We might make a rush from the gates and stampede them," he presently added. Then he uttered an exclamation of great surprise.
"There's Lieutenant Beverley out there," he exclaimed.
"You're mistaken, you're excited," Hamilton half sneeringly remarked, yet not without a shade of uneasiness in his expression. "You forget, sir."
"Look for yourself, it's easily settled," and Farnsworth proffered the glass. "He's there, to a certainty, sir."
"I saw Beverley an hour ago," said Helm. "I knew all the time that he'd be on hand."
It was a white lie. Captain Helm was as much surprised as his captors at what he heard; but he could not resist the temptation to be annoying.
Hamilton looked as Farnsworth directed, and sure enough, there was the young Virginian Lieutenant, standing on a barricade, his hat off, cheering his men with a superb show of zeal. Not a hair of his head was missing, so far as the glass could be relied upon to show.
Oncle Jazon's quick old eyes saw the gleam of the telescope tube in the loop-hole.
"I never could shoot much," he muttered, and then a little bullet sped with absolute accuracy from his disreputable looking rifle and shattered the object-lens, just as Hamilton moved to withdraw the glass, uttering an ejaculation of intense excitement.
"Such devils of marksmen!" said he, and his face was haggard. "That infernal Indian lied."
"I could have told you all the time that the scalp Long-Hair brought to you was not Beverley's," said Helm indifferently. "I recognized Lieutenant Barlow's hair as soon as I saw it."
This was another piece of off-hand romance. Helm did not dream that he was accidentally sketching a horrible truth.
"Barlow's!" exclaimed Farnsworth.
"Yes, Barlow's, no mistake—"
Two more men reeled from a port-hole, the blood spinning far out of their wounds. Indeed, through every aperture in the walls the bullets were now humming like mad hornets.
"Close that port-hole!" stormed Hamilton; then turning to Farnsworth he added: "We cannot endure this long. Shut up every place large enough for a bullet to get through. Go all around, give strict orders to all. See that the men do not foolishly expose themselves. Those ruffians out there have located every crack."
His glimpse of Beverley and the sinister remark of Helm had completely unmanned him before his men fell. Now it rushed upon him that if he would escape the wrath of the maddened creoles and the vengeance of Alice's lover, he must quickly throw himself upon the mercy of Clark. It was his only hope. He chafed inwardly, but bore himself with stern coolness. He presently sought Farnsworth, pulled him aside and suggested that something must be done to prevent an assault and a massacre. The sounds outside seemed to forebode a gathering for a desperate rush, and in his heart he felt all the terrors of awful anticipation.
"We are completely at their mercy, that is plain," he said, shrugging his shoulders and gazing at the wounded men writhing in their agony. "What do you suggest?"
Captain Farnsworth was a shrewd officer. He recollected that Philip Dejean, justice of Detroit, was on his way down the Wabash from that post, and probably near at hand, with a flotilla of men and supplies. Why not ask for a few days of truce? It could do no harm, and if agreed to, might be their salvation. Hamilton jumped at the thought, and forthwith drew up a note which he sent out with a white flag. Never before in all his military career had he been so comforted by a sudden cessation of fighting. His soul would grovel in spite of him. Alice's cold face now had Beverley's beside it in his field of inner vision—a double assurance of impending doom, it seemed to him.
There was short delay in the arrival of Colonel Clark's reply, hastily scrawled on a bit of soiled paper. The request for a truce was flatly refused; but the note closed thus:
"If Mr. Hamilton is Desirous of a Conferance with Col. Clark he will meet him at the Church with Captn. Helms."
The spelling was not very good, and there was a redundancy of capital letters; yet Hamilton understood it all; and it was very difficult for him to conceal his haste to attend the proposed conference. But he was afraid to go to the church—the thought chilled him. He could not face Father Beret, who would probably be there. And what if there should be evidences of the funeral?—what if?—he shuddered and tried to break away from the vision in his tortured brain.
He sent a proposition to Clark to meet him on the esplanade before the main gate of the fort; but Clark declined, insisting upon the church. And thither he at last consented to go. It was an immense brace to his spirit to have Helm beside him during that walk, which, although but eighty yards in extent, seemed to him a matter of leagues. On the way he had to pass near the new position taken up by Beverley and his men. It was a fine test of nerve, when the Lieutenant's eyes met those of the Governor. Neither man permitted the slightest change of countenance to betray his feelings. In fact, Beverley's face was as rigid as marble; he could not have changed it.
But with Oncle Jazon it was a different affair. He had no dignity to preserve, no fine military bearing to sustain, no terrible tug of conscience, no paralyzing grip of despair on his heart. When he saw Hamilton going by, bearing himself so superbly, it affected the French volatility in his nature to such an extent that his tongue could not be controlled.
"Va t'en, bete, forban, meurtrier! Skin out f'om here! beast, robber, murderer!" he cried, in his keen screech-owl voice. "I'll git thet scelp o' your'n afore sundown, see 'f I don't! Ye onery gal-killer an' ha'r buyer!"
The blood in Hamilton's veins caught no warmth from these remarks; but he held his head high and passed stolidly on, as if he did not hear a word. Helm turned the tail of an eye upon Oncle Jazon and gave him a droll, quizzical wink of approval. In response the old man with grotesque solemnity drew his buckhorn handled knife, licked its blade and returned it to its sheath,—a bit of pantomime well understood and keenly enjoyed by the onlooking creoles.
"Putois! coquin!" they jeered, "goujat! poltron!"
Beverley heard the taunting racket, but did not realize it, which was well enough, for he could not have restrained the bitter effervescence. He stood like a statue, gazing fixedly at the now receding figure, the lofty, cold-faced man in whom centered his hate of hates. Clark had requested him to be present at the conference in the church; but he declined, feeling that he could not meet Hamilton and restrain himself. Now he regretted his refusal, half wishing that—no, he could not assassinate an enemy under a white flag. In his heart he prayed that there would be no surrender, that Hamilton would reject every offer. To storm the fort and revel in butchering its garrison seemed the only desirable thing left for him in life.
Father Beret was, indeed, present at the church, as Hamilton had dreaded; and the two duelists gave each other a rapier-like eye-thrust. Neither spoke, however, and Clark immediately demanded a settlement of the matter in hand. He was brusque and imperious to a degree, apparently rather anxious to repel every peaceful advance.
It was a laconic interview, crisp as autumn ice and bitter as gallberries. Colonel Clark had no respect whatever for Hamilton, to whom he had applied the imperishable adjective "hair-buyer General." On the other hand Governor Hamilton, who felt keenly the disgrace of having to equalize himself officially and discuss terms of surrender with a rough backwoodsman, could not conceal his contempt of Clark.
The five men of history, Hamilton, Helm, Hay, Clark and Bowman, were not distinguished diplomats. They went at their work rather after the hammer-and-tongs fashion. Clark bluntly demanded unconditional surrender. Hamilton refused. They argued the matter. Helm put in his oar, trying to soften the situation, as was his custom on all occasions, and received from Clark a stinging reprimand, with the reminder that he was nothing but a prisoner on parole, and had no voice at all in settling the terms of surrender.
"I release him, sir," said Hamilton. "He is no longer a prisoner. I am quite willing to have Captain Helm join freely in our conference."
"And I refuse to permit his acceptance of your favor," responded Clark. "Captain Helm, you will return with Mr. Hamilton to the fort and remain his captive until I free you by force. Meantime hold your tongue."
Father Beret, suave looking and quiet, occupied himself at the little altar, apparently altogether indifferent to what was being said; but he lost not a word of the talk.
"Qui habet aures audiendi, audiat," he inwardly repeated, smiling blandly. "Gaudete in illa die, et exultate!"
Hamilton rose to go; deep lines of worry creased his face; but when the party had passed outside, he suddenly turned upon Clark and said:
"Why do you demand impossible terms of me?"
"I will tell you, sir," was the stern answer, in a tone in which there was no mercy or compromise. "I would rather have you refuse. I desire nothing so much as an excuse to wreak full and bloody vengeance on every man in that fort who has engaged in the business of employing savages to scalp brave, patriotic men and defenseless women and children. The cries of the widows and the fatherless on our frontiers require the blood of the Indian partisans at my hands. If you choose to risk the massacre of your garrison to save those despicable red-handed partisans, have your pleasure. What you have done you know better than I do. I have a duty to perform. You may be able to soften its nature. I may take it into my head to send for some of our bereaved women to witness my terrible work and see that it is well done, if you insist upon the worst."
Major Hay, who was Hamilton's Indian agent, now, with some difficulty clearing his throat, spoke up.
"Pray, sir," said he, "who is it that you call Indian partisans?"
"Sir," replied Clark, seeing that his words had gone solidly home, "I take Major Hay to be one of the principals."
This seemed to strike Hay with deadly force. Clark's report says that he was "pale and trembling, scarcely able to stand," and that "Hamilton blushed, and, I observed, was much affected at his behavior. "Doubtless, if the doughty American commander had known more about the Governor's feelings just then, he would have added that an awful fear, even greater than the Indian agent's, did more than anything else to congest the veins in his face."
The parties separated without reaching an agreement; but the end had come. The terror in Hamilton's soul was doubled by a wild scene enacted under the walls of his fort; a scene which, having no proper place in this story, strong as its historical interest unquestionably is, must be but outlined. A party of Indians returning from a scalping expedition in Kentucky and along the Ohio, was captured on the outskirts of the town by some of Clark's men, who proceeded to kill and scalp them within full view of the beleaguered garrison, after which their mangled bodies were flung into the river.
If the British commander needed further wine of dread to fill his cup withal, it was furnished by ostentatious marshaling of the American forces for a general assault. His spirit broke completely, so that it looked like a godsend to him when Clark finally offered terms of honorable surrender, the consummation of which was to be postponed until the following morning. He accepted promptly, appending to the articles of capitulation the following reasons for his action: "The remoteness from succor; the state and quantity of provisions, etc.; unanimity of officers and men in its expediency; the honorable terms allowed; and, lastly, the confidence in a generous enemy."
Confidence in a generous enemy! Abject fear of the vengeance just wreaked upon his savage emissaries would have been the true statement. Beverley read the paper when Clark sent for him; but he could not join in the extravagant delight of his fellow officers and their brave men. What did all this victory mean to him? Hamilton to be treated as an honorable prisoner of war, permitted to strut forth from the feat with his sword at his side, his head up—the scalp-buyer, the murderer of Alice! What was patriotism to the crushed heart of a lover? Even if his vision had been able to pierce the future and realize the splendor of Anglo-Saxon civilization which was to follow that little triumph at Vincennes, what pleasure could it have afforded him? Alice, Alice, only Alice; no other thought had influence, save the recurring surge of desire for vengeance upon her murderer.
And yet that night Beverley slept, and so forgot his despair for many hours, even dreamed a pleasant dream of home, where his childhood was spent, of the stately old house on the breezy hill-top overlooking a sunny plantation, with a little river lapsing and shimmering through it. His mother's dear arms were around him, her loving breath stirred his hair; and his stalwart, gray-headed father sat on the veranda comfortably smoking his pipe, while away in the wide fields the negroes sang at the plow and the hoe. Sweeter and sweeter grew the scene, softer the air, tenderer the blending sounds of the water-murmur, leaf-rustle, bird-song, and slave-song, until hand in hand he wandered with Alice in greening groves, where the air was trembling with the ecstacy of spring.
A young officer awoke him with an order from Clark to go on duty at once with Captains Worthington and Williams, who, under Colonel Clark himself, were to take possession of the fort. Mechanically he obeyed. The sun was far up, shining between clouds of a leaden, watery hue, by the time everything was ready for the important ceremony. Beside the main gate of the stockade two companies of patriots under Bowman and McCarty were drawn up as guards, while the British garrison filed out and was taken in charge. This bit of formality ended, Governor Hamilton, attended by some of his officers, went back into the fort and the gate was closed.
Clark now gave orders that preparations be made for hauling down the British flag and hoisting the young banner of liberty in its place, when everything should be ready for a salute of thirteen guns from the captured battery.
Helm's round face was beaming. Plainly it showed that his happiness was supreme. He dared not say anything, however; for Clark was now all sternness and formality; it would be dangerous to take any liberties; but he could smile and roll his quid of tobacco from cheek to cheek.
Hamilton and Farnsworth, the latter slightly wounded in the left arm, which was bandaged, stood together somewhat apart from their fellow officers, while preliminary steps for celebrating their defeat and capture were in progress. They looked forlorn enough to have excited deep sympathy under fairer conditions.
Outside the fort the creoles were beginning a noise of jubilation. The rumor of what was going to be done had passed from mouth to mouth, until every soul in the town knew and thrilled with expectancy. Men, women and children came swarming to see the sight, and to hear at close range the crash of the cannon. They shouted, in a scattering way at first, then the tumult grew swiftly to a solid rolling tide that seemed beyond all comparison with the population of Vincennes. Hamilton heard it, and trembled inwardly, afraid lest the mob should prove too strong for the guard.
One leonine voice roared distinctly, high above the noise. It was a sound familiar to all the creoles,—that bellowing shout of Gaspard Roussillon's. He was roaming around the stockade, having been turned back by the guard when he tried to pass through the main gate.
"They shut me out!" he bellowed furiously. "I am Gaspard Roussillon, and they shut me out, me! Ziff! me voici! je vais entrer immediatement, moi!"
He attracted but little attention, however; the people and the soldiery were all too excited by the special interest of the occasion, and too busy with making a racket of their own, for any individual, even the great Roussillon, to gain their eyes or ears. He in turn scarcely heard the tumult they made, so self-centered were his burning thoughts and feelings. A great occasion in Vincennes and he, Gaspard Roussillon, not recognized as one of the large factors in it! Ah, no, never! And he strode along the wall of the stockade, turning the corners and heavily shambling over the inequalities till he reached the postern. It was not fastened, some one having passed through just before him.
"Ziff!" he ejaculated, stepping into the area and shaking himself after the manner of a dusty mastiff. "C'est moi! Gaspard Roussillon!" His massive under jaw was set like that of a vise, yet it quivered with rage, a rage which was more fiery condensation of self-approval than anger.
Outside the shouting, singing and huzzahs gathered strength and volume, until the sound became a hoarse roar. Clark was uneasy; he had overheard much of a threatening character during the siege. The creoles were, he knew, justly exasperated, and even his own men had been showing a spirit which might easily be fanned into a dangerous flame of vengeance. He was very anxious to have the formalities of taking possession of the fort over with, so that he could the better control his forces. Sending for Beverley he assigned him to the duty of hauling down the British flag and running up that of Virginia. It was an honor of no doubtful sort, which under different circumstances would have made the Lieutenant's heart glow. As it was, he proceeded without any sense of pride or pleasure, moving as a mere machine in performing an act significant beyond any other done west of the mountains, in the great struggle for American independence and the control of American territory.
Hamilton stood a little way from the foot of the tall flag-pole, his arms folded on his breast, his chin slightly drawn in, his brows contracted, gazing steadily at Beverley while he was untying the halyard, which had been wound around the pole's base about three feet above the ground. The American troops in the fort were disposed so as to form three sides of a hollow square, facing inward. Oncle Jazon, serving as the ornamental extreme of one line, was conspicuous for his outlandish garb and unmilitary bearing. The silence inside the stockade offered a strong contrast to the tremendous roar of voices outside. Clark made a signal, and at the tap of a drum, Beverley shook the ropes loose and began to lower the British colors. Slowly the bright emblem of earth's mightiest nation crept down in token of the fact that a handful of back-woodsmen had won an empire by a splendid stroke of pure heroism. Beverley detached the flag, and saluting, handed it to Colonel Clark. Hamilton's breast heaved and his iron jaws tightened their pressure until the lines of his cheeks were deep furrows of pain.
Father Beret, who had just been admitted, quietly took a place at one side near the wall. There was a fine, warm, benignant smile on his old face, yet his powerful shoulders drooped as if weighted down with a heavy load. Hamilton was aware when he entered, and instantly the scene of their conflict came into his memory with awful vividness, and he saw Alice lying outstretched, stark and, cold, the shining strand of hair fluttering across her pallid cheek. Her ghost overshadowed him.
Just then there was a bird-like movement, a wing-like rustle, and a light figure flitted swiftly across the area. All eyes were turned upon it. Hamilton recoiled, as pale as death, half lifting his hands, as if to ward off a deadly blow, and then a gay flag was flung out over his head. He saw before him the girl he had shot; but her beautiful face was not waxen now, nor was it cold or lifeless. The rich red blood was strong under the browned, yet delicate skin, the eyes were bright and brave, the cherry lips, slightly apart, gave a glimpse of pearl white teeth, and the dimples,—those roguish dimples,—twinkled sweetly.
Colonel Clark looked on in amazement, and in spite of himself, in admiration. He did not understand; the sudden incident bewildered him; but his virile nature was instantly and wholly charmed. Something like a breath of violets shook the tenderest chords of his heart.
Alice stood firmly, a statue of triumph, her right arm outstretched, holding the flag high above Hamilton's head; and close by her side the little hunchback Jean was posed in his most characteristic attitude, gazing at the banner which he himself had stolen and kept hidden for Alice's sake, and because he loved it.
There was a dead silence for some moments, during which Hamilton's face showed that he was ready to collapse; then the keen voice of Oncle Jazon broke forth:
"Vive Zhorzh Vasinton! Vim la banniere d'Alice Roussillon!"
He sprang to the middle of the area and flung his old cap high in air, with a shrill war-whoop.
"H'ist it! h'ist it! hissez la banniere de Mademoiselle Alice Roussillon! Voila, que c'est glorieuse, cette banniere la! H'ist it! h'ist it!"
He was dancing with a rickety liveliness, his goatish legs and shriveled body giving him the look of an emaciated satyr.
Clark had been told by some of his creole officers the story of how Alice raised the flag when Helm took the fort, and how she snatched it from Hamilton's hand, as it were, and would not give it up when he demanded it. The whole situation pretty soon began to explain itself, as he saw what Alice was doing. Then he heard her say to Hamilton, while she slowly swayed the rippling flag back and forth:
"I said, as you will remember, Monsieur le Gouverneur, that when you next should see this flag, I should wave it over your head. Well, look, I am waving it! Vive la republique! Vive George Washington! What do you think of it, Monsieur le Gouverneur?"
The poor little hunchback Jean took off his cap and tossed it in rhythmical emphasis, keeping time to her words.
And now from behind the hollow square came a mighty voice:
"C'est moi, Gaspard Roussillon; me voici, messieurs!"
There was a spirit in the air which caught from Alice a thrill of romantic energy. The men in the ranks and the officers in front of them felt a wave of irresistible sympathy sweep through their hearts. Her picturesque beauty, her fine temper, the fitness of the incident to the occasion, had an instantaneous power which moved all men alike.
"Raise her flag! Run up the young lady's flag!" some one shouted, and then every voice seemed to echo the words. Clark was a young man of noble type, in whose veins throbbed the warm chivalrous blood of the cavaliers. A waft of the suddenly prevailing influence bore him also quite off his feet. He turned to Beverley and said:
"Do it! It will have a great effect. It is a good idea; get the young lady's flag and her permission to run it up."
Before he finished speaking, indeed at the first glance, he saw that Beverley, like Hamilton, was white as a dead man; and at the same time it came to his memory that his young friend had confided to him during the awful march through the prairie wilderness, a love-story about this very Alice Roussillon. In the worry and stress of the subsequent struggle, he had forgotten the tender basis upon which Beverley had rested his excuse for leaving Vincennes. Now, it all reappeared in justification of what was going on. It touched the romantic core of his southern nature.
"I say, Lieutenant Beverley," he repeated, "beg the young lady's permission to use her flag upon this glorious occasion; or shall I do it for you?"
There were no miracles in those brave days, and the strain of life with its terrible realities braced all men and women to meet sudden explosions of surprise, whether of good or bad effect, with admirable equipoise; but Beverley's trial, it must be admitted, was extraordinary; still he braced himself quickly and his whole expression changed when Clark moved to go to Alice. For he realized now that it was, indeed, Alice in flesh and blood, standing there, the center of admiration, filling the air with her fine magnetism and crowning a great triumph with her beauty. He gave her a glad, flashing smile, as if he had just discovered her, and walked straight to her, his hands extended. She was not looking toward him; but she saw him and turned to face him. Hers was the advantage; for she had known, for some hours, of his presence in Vincennes, and had prepared herself to meet him courageously and with maidenly reserve.
There is no safety, however, where Love lurks. Neither Beverley nor Alice was as much agitated at Hamilton, yet they both forgot, what he remembered, that a hundred grim frontier soldiers were looking on. Hamilton had his personal and official dignity to sustain, and he fairly did it, under what a pressure of humiliating and surprising circumstances we can fully comprehend. Not so with the two young people, standing as it were in a suddenly bestowed and incomparable happiness, on the verge of a new life, each to the other an unexpected, unhoped-for resurrection from the dead. To them there was no universe save the illimitable expanse of their love. In that moment of meeting, all that they had suffered on account of love was transfused and poured forth,—a glowing libation for love's sake,—a flood before which all barriers broke.
Father Beret was looking on with a strange fire in his eyes, and what he feared would happen, did happen. Alice let the flag fall at Hamilton's feet, when Beverley came near her smiling that great, glad smile, and with a joyous cry leaped into his outstretched arms.
Jean snatched up the fallen banner and ran to Colonel Clark with it. Two minutes later it was made fast and the halyard began to squeak through the rude pulley at the top of the pole. Up, up, climbed the gay little emblem of glory, while the cannon crashed from the embrasures of the blockhouse hard by, and outside the roar of voices redoubled. Thirteen guns boomed the salute, though it should have been fourteen,—the additional one for the great Northwestern Territory, that day annexed to the domain of the young American Republic. The flag went up at old Vincennes never to come down again, and when it reached its place at the top of the staff, Beverley and Alice stood side by side looking at it, while the sun broke through the clouds and flashed on its shining folds, and love unabashed glorified the two strong young faces.