The Fairy Isle in Burr's Conspiracy
"LET'S pretend, Doby, that I'm an Indian," whispered Obadiah Holman to himself, as he slipped along, pigeon-toed and silent, in his moccasins, "and I'll sneak up on that buck and give it a scare."
The white flag of the buck's tail had caught Doby's eye. His keen sight made out the dun form under the antlers. He advanced slowly through the undergrowth, knowing that the wind blew toward him—that the buck could not catch his scent.
He hoped to have a good view of it. Then he meant to give a great shout to startle it, just for the fun of seeing it flee, crashing through the forest.
His father's flatboat was tied to a tree on the lee shore of an island which was sometimes called the Fairy Isle and sometimes the HauntedIsle. Near by, across the Ohio River, was the settlement of Belpre.
Mr. Holman, on trading bent, had taken his scow to Belpre, while his wife watched the flatboat and Doby went hunting for fresh meat in the safety of the Haunted Isle.
It was secure from the ordinary dangers of the river, for Indians and renegades alike avoided this place. They feared the ghost of a beautiful scarlet-cloaked lady, the ghost of a magnificent velvet-clad gentleman, and the ghosts of liveried servants wandering there.
Once upon a time the common people of Belpre and the soldiery of her army post would scull across the river to catch envious glimpses of the island's house of brick and stone, so different from their own wooden cabins, and to stare open-mouthed at fine folk arrayed in satins and laces, living so elegantly just beyond the frontier's workaday world.
Then on an evil day the gallant family on the island had been arrested and marched away and exiled as criminals. The house had been burned to warn other offenders against the Republic.
And ever since, on chill and foggy days, when the mists hung over the river, ghosts walked in the ruins of the splendid mansion hidden amongthe flowering trees of the Fairy Isle. They drifted through the desolation where once sweet gardens bloomed. They danced with the wind in weird couples on the forsaken lawns. And when the broken moonlight came it showed them huddled in gray, fantastic groups along the shore.
The shuddering boatmen hugged the opposite bank and turned away their faces that they might not see too plainly the beckoning fingers of vapor, the foggy hair, and the trailing robes of cloud, so unreal, so full of romance, and so disquieting to all who knew the story of this place.
Doby was not to be startled by ghosts; at least he said he wasn't. Though ghosts and goblins were merely names to him, he liked the idea of a Fairy Isle.
Few boys could carry the heavy guns of that day for any distance. Doby did not try to do so. His plan was to get what game he could with snare and knife. He was bidden to keep within running distance of the boat, and he set rabbit-traps in the brier patches.
From the briers he had sighted the buck. It was all aquiver, snorting and twitching its ears. Doby hid behind a buckeye and softly shinned into the first crotch lest the restless beast should turn and charge in his direction.
"I'd like to know what is the matter with the buck," thought Doby. "It is watching something that makes it half curious and half afraid."
The boy stared into the glen before him until his eyes became accustomed to the shadows—until he saw what the buck saw. When he did see he almost fell out of the tree with astonishment. He looked again. He shut his eyes; he opened them; stared some more; he blinked; then he gazed fixedly.
"No wonder the buck is nervous," gasped Doby. "I'm s'prised myself," and still he looked and could not believe that he saw what he really did see.
For there on a log, in the shade of an elm, sat a gnome—a big gnome.
Doby was perfectly willing to be entertained by ghosts and fairies in the gossip of the river towns. He liked such stories. But he knew, of course, that there are no such things as wraiths and sprites. Even on a fairy isle there could not possibly be a gnome.
"I feel dreadfully queer to be looking at him when I know he isn't there," and something inside of Doby began to turn round and round.
The gnome, all of a faded bark color like the earth he grubbed in, sat with his feet crossed,his thin arms akimbo, his beard hanging in a point down his breast, and his hair tied in a wad on his head so that it had a shape something of a peaked-cap style.
He was motionless. He was not a crooked stump. He was not a gnarled branch. He was alive! Laughter was running out of his mouth like cider gurgling from a jug. Between chuckles, his soft, clear voice was scolding the buck.
"Now, Mr. Red Deer," he was saying, "this is the third time I have caught you trying to break down the brush barricade and nipping at my seedling apple-trees. Don't you know that seedlings can never grow up to be trees and bear fruit if you tear the fence and reach over and bite their heads off?"
The deer was so inquisitive about the quaint, still figure with the soothing voice, that it advanced and retreated as if in fascination, while the voice flowed on: "How can you be so greedy, Mr. Deer? I'm ashamed of you. I'll have to carry away the seedlings so you can't get them. I'll plant them in neat orchard rows for a farmer I know."
Doby craned forward, his mouth agape. He must watch this thing through, no matter what happened.
"If I were you," continued the gnome, "I'd be a good stag and run along home, before some boy with a stone knife speared at me." Here the unbelievable gnome stared straight across the glade into Doby's face and winked. Winked!
This was too much! With a thump Doby tumbled from the tree. With a leap the deer vanished from the glen.
Doby thought, "This is the queerest dream I've ever had. I know I'll be all right as soon as I wake up."
He did not wake up. He was picked up—by the gnome!
Gentle hands helped him. A friendly face looked into his. A musical voice said, "I reckon you're not hurt a mite. That was no bump for a boy. I was wishing I had some one to help me; so you are in time to give Johnny a boost with his apple seedlings."
Johnny! Apple seedlings!
"O—o—h!" Doby regarded the gnome with a different interest. "O—o—h! Are you Johnny Appleseed? The man who is traveling over this countryside, gathering up apple seeds from the cider presses, cleaning and sprouting and transplanting them for the farmers who don't know how to do it for themselves? Startingorchards for settlers? Teaching 'em how to make trees grow?"
"Yes, I'm Jonathan Chapman, the nurseryman."
"Coming down the river, we talked about you. I heard about these secret seedling-pens where you hid people while the War of 1812 was going on. Those folks must have been much obliged to you for saving their scalps from the British Indians."
Modest Johnny nodded. Then, "Take your knife, son," he said. "It looks like a good flint. I'll show you how to prune these little trees as we handle and move them. Now is your chance to learn spring planting."
Doby rolled up his sleeves, spat on his hands, dug his soft-shod toes into the ground, and went at it. His teacher was the wisest grower in the Ohio Valley.
This eerie companion told him: "Our native fruits, cherries, plums, haws, crabapples, pawpaws, huckleberries, gooseberries, and grapes, all reached perfection in the magic gardens of this isle, where once the owners of this fine estate helped me with my experiments in raising plants. I find that they need only a little cultivation to make them hang heavy with harvest around every barren frontier home."
Doby licked his lips. "I suppose you know how to gather sugar from maple-tree sap and when to pick honey from bee-trees!" He was sure that, "Fruit does make corn bread and bacon taste better."
"Wild roses, honeysuckle, goldenrod, and clematis would nod a glad 'Good morning' at the door of every lonesome cabin if we welcomed them with care," continued Johnny, hoping to interest the boy.
The idea of spreading healthfulness through a fruit diet and joy by way of flower-gardens was part of Johnny's self-sacrificing religion. He preached it with ardor to every listener.
For more than a hundred years his words and his plants have borne fruit through these valleys.
Doby stopped work from time to time to ramble and root about the wreckage of the fine house. He asked, "Wasn't that grand Irish gentleman, Mr. Blennerhasset, who bought this island home, a friend of Aaron Burr's when Burr was Vice-President of the United States?"
"He was a friend and a welcome guest here," Johnny answered.
"If Mr. Blennerhasset and other friends of Aaron Burr wanted to give him ships from the boat-builders in Marietta and hire him menfrom the idlers in the West, why shouldn't they be allowed to do so? Why shouldn't they man a fleet for him? If Aaron Burr wished to help free Mexico from the Spanish, why wasn't it right for him to try it? Mexico is always out of luck."
Johnny's face grew sad. "Many good people, like the Blennerhassets, thought it right to help free Mexico. But our Government learned that Burr had plans to take a piece of our Western country, to organize it into a separate state, to join it to Mexico and perhaps to rule it all himself."
"To split off a part of his own country and make himself a king! Gold crowns and scepters—oh—fine!" cried Doby, sarcastically. "That's why they call him a traitor, and no wonder. The people who helped him to break up our independent nation ought to be punished, even if they were innocent of his motive. No good comes of treason."
Johnny brightened up. "Perhaps great good may, after all, grow out of the sad mistake of Burr's conspiracy. It has made the Government think that if the East and West had been better acquainted, if the people of both sections had been able to travel back and forth and had come to think of themselves as all belongingto the same United States, the idea of separating under Burr would never have occurred to them. So now, to guard against any more such treason, it is going to build a fine road straight 'cross country, from East to West, so that the two sections will be tied together with a bond which all can understand."
Doby studied over the idea. "'Twill stir up commerce and patriotism and loyalty. All travelers, all farmers, all dealers, even you and I will be glad to have a great highway—a big national pike."
He picked up an arm-load of trees to lug them toward the shore. Johnny told him to look back. "The buck may follow us," he said.
Doby was sure that its antlers showed among the brush. "I'll have pa shoot it when he comes back. If I don't get a rabbit we will need venison."
"Don't," begged Johnny. "I can't bear to see anything shot. I want to be a brother to dumb animals as well as to men and to plants."
"What if the buck chews these trees?" asked the boy. "What if it gets dangerous?"
The gentle answer was: "Be more careful of the trees. Take heed for yourself. Never hurt any living thing. Let that pretty creature be.Some day I may be able to domesticate the deer and the buffalo as I am doing now with our wild plants."
Quite to himself, hungry Doby gave an impatient sniff. He was thinking, "I don't intend to abuse anything; likewise I don't intend to let anything abuse me—not an old bobtailed thief of a buck, anyway."
His mother climbed a stool and peeped over the high wall of baggage on the flatboat to smile at him and his new friend, as he took his spade and tried to keep pace with Johnny in digging a series of deep holes.
The nurseryman said, "I intend to plant mulberry-trees in this sunny spot."
"I know," cried Doby. "This hole grows to grow a tree to grow a leaf to grow a worm to grow a silk frock to grow a fine lady," and he returned his mother's smile.
Behind them the silent buck had ventured up to take a browse at the seedlings. Doby foolishly ran toward it to drive it off. Angrily it rose on its hind legs to strike him.
Horrified Johnny felt that death was coming in that brutal downward cut of hoof. Instantly, desperately, he flung his spade at the deer. The metal clanged on its antlers. The deer turned aside. Doby vaulted to the top ofthe boat's barricade, yelling for Johnny to follow him.
Johnny had seized the other spade and had thrown it in his own defense. It hit the deer on the flank. Doby and his mother shrieked like mad. Startled and confused by the attack and the noise, the buck took flight.
Whirling about wildly, it chose the one dangerous direction—straight away, over the sunny open space where the digging had been done. Its forelegs went down in one hole, its head seemed to light in another, and the flying brute turned a complete somersault. Leaves and grass and dirt filled the air.
Doby's screams redoubled. Johnny gained the boat's wall. He knew they were out of danger's reach, should the buck turn back to rend them, for the baggage stockade would protect them.
But he was shaken by their peril. While getting his breath and calming Doby and his mother, he watched uneasily for the next movement of the irate beast.
After many minutes of waiting he knew that it would never move again. Its neck was broken.
Then Johnny Appleseed leaned his bark-colored form back against the woodsy settingof the leaf-covered boat wall, crossed his feet, set his arms akimbo—the kindest gnome who ever lived, the good spirit of the Fairy Isle, the best-known and most-beloved character on the frontier—and murmured to Doby:
"Now that the deer has done the killing himself, you might as well have some fresh venison to eat before we go on with our work."