The French Who Followed the Explorers
THERE was a glint of sun on metal. It came through the branches of the willows at the edge of the homestead clearing. A bit of red cloth wavered beside it.
Again the metal shone with a twinkling flash, again the scarlet patch nodded in the light. Beneath the willows the prow of a canoe pushed silently from the Wabash River into the mouth of a little creek that wandered through the farm.
Obadiah Holman crouched motionless like a rabbit when he caught that flash. At the canoe's movement forward he bounded toward home, as a frightened rabbit leaps from danger.
"Indians!" he signaled to his father. "Indians!"
The father, who was unhitching his horses, hastily got them into the log barn. With the flintlock on his arm as it had been all throughthe fall plowing in this natural open glade of his section of land, he, too, leaped for the cabin, which was already being barricaded by the boy and his mother.
Through peepholes the family watched.
Soon a solitary figure appeared.
"That can't be an Indian," breathed the mother; "but it may be some kind of an Indian decoy."
"We will hold our aim on him and keep under cover," the father decided.
They could see that the new-comer had a mobile, laughing face. His clothes were of fur, picked out with bright cloth, somewhat ragged. A bandana tied back his grizzled curls to show the gold hoops in his ears. A strap across his forehead bore the weight of a pack which hung down his back.
He was playing a lively tune upon an elder flute, stepping to its measures with his moccasined feet.
While eying the man to be sure that he was not a treacherous disguised Indian, and to decide what sort of a chance comer he might be, the father's brow wrinkled with thoughts of this big Northwest and the men it had known and the origin of this wayfarer.
"Whom have we here, Doby?" he asked.
But Doby could not answer. Neither could his mother. Both were on the verge of panic. For it is a nerve-racking thing to stand still and wait for the next movement of a doubtful visitor, who may be going to send a burning arrow into the barn loft or to call a band of warriors to attack the house.
To give his wife and son a chance to collect their wits, the father queried: "Who were the first white folks to come to this part of the country? Perhaps we can guess who this man is."
"The French came earliest," answered the mother.
"When?"
"About a hundred years ago," she said.
"What did they do?"
"They built a fort and trading post at Miamis where Fort Wayne now is. Then they set up another at Ouiatanon and still another one here." As she stared at the motley figure coming nearer, the mother smiled, for she began to understand that she was now to meet quite a different sort of habitant from any of the varied peoples she had seen in the long journey to this old French settlement of Vincennes.
"Ha!" cried Doby, trying to keep one eye on the loophole and the other on his father's face."When the Spanish discovered America, they claimed the whole continent. If they had known about this place, they would have set up a flag here. But the French explorers really did find it and their flag is the one that covered it." Here he caught a hint from his father's questions and his mother's recovered calm. "'Twas a race of traders who followed the explorers." He now became eager to examine the stranger. "A half-breed trader! That's what he is!"
"He is so queer-looking," was the mother's objection to him.
Doby was quick with his surmises. "If these French traders made friends with the Indians and sometimes lived with them in their wigwams, and copied all the clever things the Indians knew about living in the open, they would become half Indians themselves. This odd old man is a voyageur. I know he is!"
"But," faltered the mother, "if he is friendly to the Indians, he may not be safe for us to know."
Mr. Holman was sure of his harmless character. "The French never incited the Indians to cruelty. Their influence was all for peaceful barter. He wants to buy any pelts we have for sale and to trade with us."
The mother's New England habits made her long for any kind of a trader to dicker with. No matter how outlandish his garb nor how strange his manner, a peddler was a peddler, and as such she was glad to see him.
So they opened wide the door and called a welcome.
As Doby examined the voyageur at close range, he thought, "I never did see such a wild-looking man," yet the stranger's joyous face, his quick gestures, and his lilting music drew the boy to him irresistibly.
For Doby's pleasure, after the greetings were over, the guest sang the words of his song and then he piped it, as a plover might have done. He whistled the tune and then he trotted it. He changed to calls of feathered songsters and to other measures and to different steps.
Whatever the melody or whatever the dance; whether he sang or whistled or piped, he was a constant swirl of music and laughter and motion. Into Doby's sober life he came as a figure of purest joy, never to be forgotten—a faun of the forest—a creature of fantasy.
To live out of doors and to follow the seasons, to be away from all care, and free to take up the next trading path that beckoned him in the strange new country—that was a voyageur's happy life.
No wonder that these bold spirits of the Old World crowded into the white-winged caravals that could bear them to the great valley of romance and adventure!
No other country has ever seen the like of these voyageurs. No other country ever will. Even in the far north, they are vanishing with the forests and the fur-bearing animals. They can never come again.
There were no bounds to Doby's delight in the grotesque appearance, the bird music, and the elfin dancing of this one.
The contents of his pack were small assortments of hardware. He spread them upon the stump by the log-cabin door.
In a mixture of French and English, as musical as any verse, he told them that ammunition was lying in his canoe. He went and fetched it, and also brought with it his own rifle. These things, even the gun, he would trade for skins.
"All these of the best, the finest, n'est ce pas?" he asked, throwing out his hands and showing his beautiful teeth. "Voilà, m'sieu!"
Doby's father was in need of powder and shot. They fell to business whilst the mother busied herself with supper. She wanted pins, needles, and a candle-snuffer. She hoped afterhe had eaten home-made dainties, the trader might offer her bargains.
Doby stood enthralled beside the collection of nails, hooks, gimlets, and plow-points. Here were the convenient odds and ends needed to make the work on their new home complete.
First of all—above and beyond everything else in a boy's sight—was the voyageur's percussion-cap rifle. It was the most improved and best firearm of that day. It was not as heavy as most of them. It had seen service. And what was a curious, but entirely sensible thing, someone had cut off a couple of feet from the end of the barrel!
"I believe I could handle that gun," said the boy. "Everybody thinks I am growing fast."
The trader took the hint and nodded for him to try it.
Doby's greedy fingers closed over the trigger. It was rather heavy, of course, but he could lift and he could carry it.
"Fifteen going on sixteen is an age when every boy should have his own rifle," said his father. "But I'm sure our whole fall collection of skins would not pay for it."
The trader gave one appraising glance at the really fine stock they had spread for hisexamination and shook his head until his ear-rings danced.
Doby's heart sank like lead. Why was he always so foolish as to set his hopes on the one thing that was beyond reach? Why were guns so expensive?
The crafty voyageur was not anxious to part with it. "I think to sell it at much gain to one very rich youth—a hunter great and successful. He is newly a citizen of Vincennes. To him I bear a letter and a present of elegance supreme."
"We back out from the trade," laughed Mr. Holman. "We cannot overbid the rich and great."
Doby's mind shrank into a sordid little ball of envy. It was not fair for a rich boy to have a "present of elegance supreme" and the rifle both! As he opened his mouth to utter his selfish disappointment, a glance at his mother's sympathetic face, and at his father's resigned one, moved him to shut it again. If he could not own a gun, he could at least be decently quiet about his fate. But to be forever borrowing a gun was so humiliating to a big boy!
"Who is this wonderful hunter?" asked the mother, in neighborly curiosity.
"Of the family there are two; it is m'sieu the father, and m'sieu the son. For that son isthe letter. I go to the town yonder. I inquire. I present myself to him."
"But what is his name?" insisted Doby's mother.
The voyageur smiled at her vaguely. Then she knew that he could not read the message which he carried. His instructions were to find a hunter and show the letter. Now he pawed around in his nondescript garment and brought out a soiled paper.
The letter had been written on a large sheet of white paper. Then the paper had been folded in such a way that the writing was concealed and the corners turned over to look like a modern envelope. Envelopes themselves had not then been invented. It was sealed with a big red daub of wax.
"Two bits" had been paid to the messenger, who now pointed to the plain script of the address, which he held carefully wrong side up.
Mrs. Holman twisted her head. Then she gasped, and hastily reversing the letter in his polite and willing hand, she looked at her family with startled eyes.
Letters were so much of a rarity in those good old days of long distances and slow transportation that it was perfectly correct to show interest in any man's correspondence.
Indeed, every inhabitant of Vincennes hadbeen known to handle at least twice any letter which came to town, and to register several guesses as to its probable contents, before the person to whom it was addressed felt that he had a social right to claim and open it.
So Doby and his father would not have been considered in the least rude as they sprang to look over the voyageur's shoulder as the mother was already doing.
They read in concert:
"Obadiah Holman, EsquireVincennesIndiana"
The voyageur, who could not spell out an address, was quick enough at reading faces. He said to Mr. Holman, "I make my respects to that hunter so rich and great." And he presented the letter with formality.
"No, no!" cried the father. He handed the legal-looking document to "m'sieu, the son." Now Doby had never before had a letter in his own name. His fingers were shaking and clumsy as he broke the seal, unfolded the sheet, and read in a strained and unnatural voice:
"Harmony, Indiana, August 31, 1816"Obadiah Holman, Esq."Honored Sir:"For value received in the matter of garden truck, field corn, hived honey, et cetera, saved in the shooting of ashe bear by your respected self, the community of Harmony voted to pay the pelt of the bear aforesaid; likewise the pelt of the he bear belonging to the same. Said pelts herewith attached and forwarded."Your very obedient servant,Frederick Rapp."
"Harmony, Indiana, August 31, 1816"Obadiah Holman, Esq."Honored Sir:
"For value received in the matter of garden truck, field corn, hived honey, et cetera, saved in the shooting of ashe bear by your respected self, the community of Harmony voted to pay the pelt of the bear aforesaid; likewise the pelt of the he bear belonging to the same. Said pelts herewith attached and forwarded.
"Your very obedient servant,Frederick Rapp."
The voyageur, plainly interested, hastened to get the pelts, to spread them out, and to indicate, now that his best moment had come, that these two bearskins plus two big beaverskins—the finest of their collection—were the price of the rifle.
Privately, Mr. Holman thought this rather a hard bargain, even more than the "much gain" which the trader was entitled to have. Beaver had been scarce and high in value for two years. A good beaver, taken in October, outpriced an August bear whose winter coat was coming well but was not yet in its prime.
One glance at Doby's face brought to the father's mind the day when he had acquired his own flintlock; so he nodded indulgently to close the deal.
The voyageur's words, "It is that you become owner, m'sieu," were the sweetest of sounds in Doby's ears.
Then followed a blissful hour of target-shooting, to learn the ways of the new gun, and then followed, as a matter of course, the over-confident moment when the excited boy let the trigger down upon a clumsy thumb.
As his father patiently dressed his wound, Doby's conscience—that New England torch always flickering before his mind—threw its light on a point of conduct he had not noticed until this moment. He saw that he ought to do something that he did not want to do.
The voyageur, chuckling cozily by the hearth, with his picturesque head abob, never knew that the half-grown Doby, who sat staring at his bandaged thumb, was struggling with spiritual forces that nearly tore his heart asunder.
No stranger could guess how great a victory over his own selfish desires the boy had won when he raised his face to his father's and said, "I think, pa, that you should take this new rifle for your own gun and give me the old flintlock."
Doby's father was of upright stuff himself; and he now saw that his son, also, had the making of a just man in him. So he looked at Doby kindly, and the two understood each other perfectly. But all the father said was: "I've had my old flintlock ever since I was your age. I use it every day. I couldn't learn the tricks of one of these newfangled rifles. No, Doby, you can't swap firearms with your pa!"