A Patriot's Sacrifice
HE stood upon a bluff overlooking the Wabash. Outlined against an autumn sunset, his noble figure dominated the landscape.
A velvet cap with a jaunty plume rested lightly upon his short, snow-white, curling hair.
Velvet also were his coat and breeches and the sweeping cavalier cape that clasped on his shoulder. Silken hose and fine linen added to the magnificence of his costume.
It was of a style long gone by, even then, but its sumptuous fashion became him and set off his sturdy old age to its best advantage.
His dress was a habit. He wore it unconsciously. But the sword on his hip—that was another matter!
His lean and practised hand, a bit shaky with his seventy-six years, grew steady and as firm as youth when it swung to position and claspedthat hilt. His faithful blade was his best companion.
The deep red of oak, the scarlet of sumac, the yellow of maple, the brown of beech, every color of frost-kissed October mingled in the background and was reflected on the borders of the opal river whose shining length formed the waterway to the outside world.
The little town was all astir. It was a gala day. Banners fluttered at the door of each cozy cabin, and from the tall pole of the old wooden fort of St. Vincent swung the American flag, almost ready for the sunset gun.
On the river, rafts and flatboats, rowboats and small sail moved about and fell into position to make way for a procession of canoes coming down the stream.
The folk of the town, big and little, hurried to the water's edge, waving their arms in welcome and shouting until they were hoarse.
But the man on the bluff kept his high position and his attitude of martial waiting. Under his heavy white brows, his sharp black eyes grew large and tender, for in the distant canoes were his children—his careless, happy children—coming home to him, as they had done twice every year since the old days when he had begun to buy their furs of them. Younger businessmen now held the fur trade in their own hands, but the voyageurs continued their practice of holiday regatta to greet this white-haired man.
Obadiah Holman, hastening into town, far ahead of his father and mother, was decked in his buckskin. With rifle on shoulder and knife in belt and hound at heel, he walked on air. For he looked like a man, he felt like a man, and he was a man—almost!
More than satisfied with himself, he whistled as he strode, until he came to the person in velvet. Then his vanity dropped to his feet and was whisked away.
Here was one more elegantly attired than he had ever beheld a mortal.
"Doby, make your manners," he commanded himself. Off came his cap and he accomplished a bow.
The gentleman turned square upon him. The bold, dark eyes read him through and through.
The boy's face lit up with admiration at the sight of the noble countenance and at the sound of the kind voice saying, "I give you greeting, stranger."
Impulsive Doby had small knowledge of etiquette. Quite carried away by his good luck in meeting this man, he burst out, impetuously, "I do hope that you are Francis Vigo!"
The dark face—haughty and stern—flashed into a quick foreign smile, but the bare right hand gave Doby a good American grip. "From what my first arriving voyageur tells me, I suspect that you are M'sieu Holman, the son," he said.
They gazed at each other as men will who are destined to become friends. Further words were stopped by the sound of a distant chantey, clear and merry.
Forgetting all else, Francis Vigo answered the call of his children by turning his eyes toward the canoes.
Doby slipped unnoticed to a great rock halfway down the bluff. From this vantage he could watch the fleet of voyageurs. Furbished for their entrance to the town, each wore a turban of scarlet bandana and sash of parti-colors. Ear-rings, thumb-rings, metal compasses, were all adangle.
The paddles feathered as they dipped and the jeweled drops sparkled in the light. Purple martins awheel flipped into the eddies of their wake, great bass leaped athwart their bows, and tiny rainbows sprang anew from every disturbance of the water.
Voices rippled from chantey to roundelay and back to chantey again. The river carriedthe tune afar and the hills echoed and re-echoed it. From the forward canoe an excited arm pointed to Francis Vigo on the height. A full-throated, "Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!" rose to him.
He gave them a military salute.
They answered with cheers and burst into their best melody as they raced into port.
In the confusion of the shadowed landing torches began to glimmer. On the darker places of the river's brink lanterns bobbed. But a nimbus of golden light still shone around the gallant Vigo. And one by one, as they stepped ashore, the voyageurs ran up the slope to greet him—the hero of their hearts!
Doby gazed in amazement at the volatile Frenchmen surrounding him. "Judging by their enthusiasm, every one of these men might have followed him in battle. But they are most of them too young to have fought in 1779, as he did at the capture of Vincennes. They are honoring him for other things which he has done for them."
Truly they loved him for himself and the many brave deeds through which he had carried their kind.
Francis Vigo was a soldier of fortune—a man out of Spain. With one of his mother country's regiments he had come to the West Indies andto New Orleans; afterward on his own account he had traveled up the Mississippi to Fort St. Louis, where he joined a company of traders and was known as the "Merchant of St. Louis."
In his warehouse among his bundles of valuable skins he was the merchant prince who gave thirty thousand dollars—thirty thousand dollars in big Spanish doubloons—round golden doubloons—which he had bartered for and scared out of many a wicked Portuguese pirate who sneaked up the Mississippi to cheat him or to rob him—gave them to feed and equip the army of George Rogers Clark at a time when the Government had no money to finance anything.
Without the help which Vigo gave to Clark, the little American army could not have lived. Without the army the great Northwest could not have been won.
In pursuit of his business and in his joy of the wild, Vigo had often gone up and down the forest paths. He knew the country, was friendly with each trader, and could call every pirogue by its owner's name.
Doby's rather cool blood began to run faster and his heart to pound with sympathetic interest as, scrambling for turns, the voyageursfell upon Francis Vigo's neck, kissed his hands, and laughed aloud or wept outright in their delight at the meeting.
One old fellow, in an abandonment of affection, threw himself upon the ground and laid his forehead against the Spaniard's shoe, bathing it with his tears.
"O-o-h," cried Doby. "O-o-h! That is my voyageur! The one who brought my rifle! He was servant to Francis Vigo when they were both taken as spies at Vincennes, by the British Governor Hamilton. He told me so himself." Here the contagion of the old voyageur's devotion caught Doby and he had to swallow a sob or two. "It's perfectly right for him to be upset by memories. For when the Jesuit Father Gibault persuaded Hamilton to release Francis Vigo, this voyageur and that other old one went back with the Merchant of St. Louis to Colonel Clark at Kaskaskia and helped plan the attack which captured Vincennes." And Doby took off his cap and waved it and shouted with the best of them:
"Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!"
By the next morning's light, at call of reveille, these voyageurs, who had gathered from all points of the compass, made ready to set off for their various stations to begin their winter'swork of trapping or of gathering skins from Indians and settlers.
In one of the canoes, in plain attire, sat Francis Vigo and the oldest voyageur—his one-time servant. In another canoe sat the second voyageur of Vigo's historic spying expedition and—looking very conscious of himself and of his newly acquired servant—Doby! bound on a secret errand in the service of his country!
"We need young blood for our nation's future growth," Francis Vigo had said overnight to Mr. Holman. "Give me your son for my assistant on this voyage for the Government. I will train him—make a patriot of him."
Now Mr. Holman knew that Francis Vigo was the one man in the great valley whom Gen. William Henry Harrison had trusted to influence the Indians and the voyageurs in the troubled times before the War of 1812; the one who could go back and forth with negotiations to the Indians' Prophetstown on the Tippecanoe. Both races put their faith and their national confidence in this man. He was their ideal of justice.
So Mr. Holman, whose entire stock of cash in hand was three Spanish dollars—those storied "pieces of eight"—did not hesitate, during hisconversation with Francis Vigo, to lay these silver coins on the town blacksmith's anvil as an answer to the request for the boy's services.
The blacksmith had cut each one up into eight sections, like a pie. Two of these "bits" made a "quarter," and six of them equaled seventy-five cents.
This was the currency of the time. So unsettled had the War of 1812 made the nation's credit, so doubtful was the value of federal money, and so unsafe all banks, that a "bit" in the hand was worth, in actual purchasing power, many times its value of paper in the pocket.
One of his dollars Mr. Holman had presented to Francis Vigo with the formal request, "I beg you will accept my contribution to my country's cause in the matter of this voyage."
The second dollar he had given to Doby. "This is a stake for your future fortune," he said.
The third he had put in his own pocket.
Afterward, Doby had asked of his father: "Why did you give Francis Vigo money in such a way that he had to take it? He is the richest man in town. Everybody says so, because the Government owes him thirty thousand dollars. Nobody else in town has that much money."
Doby felt of the "bits" in his pocket and imagined them thirty thousand times as heavy. Rich indeed!
Mr. Holman had a gloomy expression. "I know we will continue to owe him." Then he quoted something about the "law's delay—the insolence of justice," but added, practically, "I don't suppose we ever have that much in our treasury that we want to pay debts with. Our money affairs are in disorder."
Scandalized Doby almost whispered, "Do you mean that he probably hasn't any money except what you gave him?"
Mr. Holman nodded, and glowered at fate. Doby knew that the mission to Fort Wayne on which they were this morning starting was a financial one.
As he sat in his canoe and gripped his paddle for the start, it gave him a curious sensation to reflect that the vigorous old man who was in the next one, ready to steer through the silver water out into the sunrise, was the Spaniard who had used his inherited fortune for the cause of exploration in the New World; was the colonist who had given the fortune he had earned to the cause of the Northwest conquest; was the true American now ready to risk his sole capital of eight bits toward securingfinancial liberty for an embarrassed government.
Silver and rose, the sky hung over the river. Silver and rose, the water reflected it. The forest, mysterious and vague, surrounded the town. The embarked voyageurs, now in working clothes, looked toward Francis Vigo. They rested on their paddles.
He rose in his prow. Baring his head, he threw out his arms in the form of a cross.
With the simplicity of little children, the voyageurs folded their hands and said their prayers; they crossed themselves; then lifted up their voices in such a hymn that the valley resounded with their praise.
"It is that we separate for the half-year," explained Doby's voyageur, as with every few miles of going up-stream some canoe turned in at a tributary and disappeared for its trading-grounds.
After that morning burst of song they all moved silently. The paddles made no sound. The dull colors of the boats themselves—some birch-bark canoes, some hollowed-out log pirogues—mingled like foliage with the shore line. The men in butternut brown or fur were mere shadows on the river. The woodland and its streams were swallowing up its wild men.
By and by the two canoes with Francis Vigo and Doby in them were alone upon the river.
"Look!" signaled Francis Vigo's eyes to Doby.
A red deer was drinking on the brink.
"Look!"
A bear was at his bath.
"Look!"
A blue heron was fishing in the shallows.
And a saucy kingfisher helped himself to a bite of the red haws stuck in Doby's cap, so much a part of the primeval vastness had they already become.
Once, as they stopped for dinner on the shore, the odor of frying bacon was so delicious to some of the forest creatures that they had a glimpse of a mother wolf bringing her whole whelp family to take a peep at those men creatures who sometimes left such savory scraps behind, and who were, upon a pinch, not such bad eating themselves.
"They like bacon cooked, but they would take me raw," and Doby was glad that he had a rifle of his very own.
In the silence of their forest night camp, whilst the two voyageurs slept with their feet to the fire and the harvest moon looked down upon them through the Indian-summer haze, Francis Vigo explained to the boy the nature of his errand.
"I am getting old," he said. "Time is too precious to waste in making money for myself. I must teach the Northwest the value of an honest currency, else all business will be ruined and our country fall into poverty."
He showed Doby a package wrapped in oilskin. "This priceless paper did not go to Corydon with the documents of Indiana State. It is Government property and must be secretly delivered to the proper agent at Fort Wayne, to go on to Washington. We should have safe banks and vaults for such moneys and papers. They should not be exposed to the mercy of fire and water and chance journeys as this one is. I must use this as an argument to those in authority for the need of national banks. I shall also prove to them the demand for a tariff to protect our industries. These are our present necessities."
"The tariff is to make us money and the banks are to guard it," said Doby, who knew that these two vital measures were expected to influence the fate of the great valley as much as any war had ever done. "So you want to get there before election. And you want them to vote for James Monroe for President, don't you?"
"Yes; because as Secretary of State and as Secretary of War he carried us through the war,we now need him to take us over the financial crisis which always follows a war."
All Saints' Day came in glorious October sunshine. On that day they entered Fort Wayne.
Again in velvet, with gleaming sword, Francis Vigo made ready for an audience.
An enthusiastic bugler of the fort was so impressed by the appearance of the dignitaries in the approaching canoes that he went through his entire repertoire of calls without waiting for official permission, and brought all the people of the town to give welcome to the visitors.
So Doby had the feeling of walking up-stage as he entered the village.
That sensation stayed with him during the few days that they spent at the fort; and it rose high in the hour of their departure when the entire populace showered blessings after them as the velvet cap of the smiling leader waved, "Farewell."
Their going was a spectacle. Yet when they made a landing down the river for the night's camp, all the glory faded. The beautiful country turned cruel and sordid.
"That is a threatening sky," commented Francis Vigo, as he put away his velvet and began to prepare for rough weather.
"Bad wind," from one dejected voyageur.
"More cold," from the other.
"Here comes the rain!" cried Doby.
Dark November filled their camp with melancholy discomfort.
In place of the gallant soldier there hovered over the damp and sickly fire an old, old man, blue with chill, and tired and dispirited.
Doby said to himself: "In the matter of delivering the precious papers and of teaching the district the value of tariff and sound banks, the errand for the Northwest was successful. But in the business of collecting some interest to live on he has failed. That means that he has no way to feed himself this winter. Red tape makes poor clothes and worse meals."
Dismayed and pitiful, the boy longed to comfort that good man who had fallen into the habit of sacrificing himself for his country.
"S-w-i-s-h! S-w-i-s-h!" poured the rain; "W-h-e-w! W-h-e-w!" howled the wind, as the swollen current of the Wabash bore them homeward next day.
"H-o-n-k! H-o-n-k!" cried the wild geese overhead.
"Q-u-a-c-k! Q-u-a-c-k!" complained the migrating ducks as, wearied by the buffeting, they dropped to the water for a little respite and surrounded the canoes with the querulous wails.
A heartless loon laughed long and discordantly over their wretched plight.
The river which had beckoned them with sunlight and with song, now with fickle change of face grabbed them by the prows and hurtled them along at terrific flood speed.
To a voyageur his canoe was as a second skin. He would never think of abandoning it. He took whatever the weather sent.
But as they came to a bend in the river, "Yi! Yi!" shrieked one voyageur in panic. "Yi! Yi!" for danger seemed about to overwhelm them.
A giant sycamore, undermined by the flood, swayed toward them and came over into the river with a crash and spatter that deafened and almost swamped them.
In one moment its mighty top had divided a portion of the river, as a child's hand might turn a rill from a spring, and the new current, seeking an outlet, leaped into a bayou and went sweeping down it, to make a new channel. With instant turn of paddles to escape the tree the voyageurs spun the canoes into the midst of this new current and were borne by its irresistible force through the bayou, over a bar, and into a stream that ran parallel with the river and finally emptied into it.
Like the débris on its surface, the canoes bobbed and tossed with the runaway stream, in constant danger of being crushed by rocks and snagged by thickets. They were part of chaos. With all their might they backed water. The clever voyageurs steered between trees and around stones as the truant flood bore them headlong to almost certain destruction.
But louder than the storm in the trees, stronger than the rush of wind in their ears as they tore along, came the ominous roar of water over a tremendous dam.
To shoot such rapids as he knew was one thing to a voyageur, as part of his day's work. To go over an unknown dam at freshet pace, as the result of an accident, was quite another. Huge, muddy boulders rose suddenly on all sides of them.
"Fend!" yelled the voyageurs as they gripped the paddles to steady the last rush. Dozens of smaller black stones looked like streaks as they miraculously flashed through this strange, rocky gully without hitting a stone.
"The dam is broken!" howled Doby, although he knew he could not be heard. They all saw the broken center and they whirled through it at the speed of an express train, one close behind the other. Below the dam were dozensmore of the small black stones, which to their straining eyes seemed to shift and move as fast as they were going themselves.
The almost unendurable strain on their arms and backs suddenly gave way. The new stream emptied itself into a wide bottom and spread out harmlessly in a tame and shallow lake which looked toward the Wabash.
They edged out of the current into quiet backwater. All was as tame as a mill-pond.
Doby, thoroughly shaken, exhausted, and amazed, cried out: "That was about the luckiest escape any one could have! Big stones and little stones! I never saw such a rocky gully! Howdidwe miss them!"
Francis Vigo crossed himself and looked at the boy in grave reproof. He did not believe in luck.
The voyageurs clapped their hands and laughed aloud. To Doby's astonishment, all three of his wet, tired, and discouraged companions glowed with warmth and some new interest.
Their escape—their danger—was already forgotten. They were keen for some plan which had formed in their minds as they came to safe water.
Doby could not follow their thoughts. He turned round eyes from one to the other.
"Big stones were beaver houses," smiled one trader.
"Little black stones were beaver heads," explained the other.
And Francis Vigo added: "The dangerous way of our duty has brought us to the beavers in a year when their fur is of double value. Since towns and people and money have failed us, the wood and stream will give us our living for the year."
Doby's economical Anglo-Saxon mind suddenly flowered into Latin courtesy. He took off his cap to the Spaniard and said so fervently that he knew his gift would be accepted, "Because of the education this voyage has been to me and as a thank-offering that my life is preserved, I present my share in this beaver find to my creditor, Francis Vigo!"
Francis Vigo's face beamed kindly on the ardent boy.
Doby was proud of his dramatic success in this elaborate speech of politeness. He thrilled pleasantly and made a little flourish with his cap.
Alas and alack!
Erratic movement above the point of balance is not the thing for a canoe's safety. Doby's gesture was an unsportsman-like thing and hemight have paid for his vanity by a fatal capsize had not the alert voyageur, always suspicious of his impulsive passenger, bent his own body quickly and restored the balance.
The canoe was still upright, but the action of the paddle, the surging of the craft and the other canoe's violent action to avoid being caught in disaster brought them so close to the main stream, that the current had seized them again. Before Doby could realize his fault they were whirling down the Wabash as before.
Whether they would or no, they were on their way home. Some other day in quiet water they would come back to the town of beavers.
Later and later grew the hour. Slowly and more slowly flowed the river. The channel had widened. The pent waters were finding space. The harassed travelers looked about for a landing-spot to spend the night.
At last, the top of a fallen tree at the bottom of a gradual hill seemed to promise a practical buffer.
"Merci!" cried Doby's voyageur. "Fend!" He backed water, and as the other canoe came alongside he raised a shaggy eyebrow in question to Vigo, who assented with a nod.
Together they eased their frail craft from thesweep of the river into the resilient branches of the tree.
They edged inshore, found the ground solid, and pulled up the boats. Other people had picked the tree as a safe harbor. When Doby straightened himself to ease his tired back his eyes met the baleful gleam of an Indian's glance.
Before he could gasp a warning to the others strong fingers closed upon his windpipe. He was lifted by his hair and borne to the top of the hill. All thought and feeling left him.
There was no sound but the r-r-i-i-p-p-p of leaves as heavy bodies were dragged through them; no light but the uncertain moon through ragged clouds.
He had no sense of up or down, of earth or sky. He hurtled along through space with his feet dangling.
He struck a tree, freed himself from the strangler, and collapsed in a heap.
Dimly some sort of light reddened around him. People were feeding a fire. The hollow glade in which he lay swam like a mirage before him.
About the fire circled a dozen or so of very old Indians. They were so absorbed in the ritual of their dance that they ignored thepresence of the other group of younger Indians who had brought in the prisoners. Prisoners were a minor thing and of no importance compared with this ceremony, which must not be interrupted.
The old Indians went round and round and round and round, without words, without music, without sound of any kind. Their hands were weaponless, their gestures were as one.
Dizzied and dumfounded by this circular marching, Doby closed his eyes and waited for death by violence.
Vigo and the two voyageurs were in the same plight. Yet none of them was gagged or bound or weaponless. Their captors did not rush forward in triumph with their prey, nor give the conqueror's war-whoop.
They stayed half hidden in the background. Their one desire seemed to be to keep the silence unbroken.
The voyageurs, rough adventurers, soon recovered from the surprise of their capture, and stood lightly poised either to fight or to run.
Escape was the first thought in their minds. Their expression soon changed from shock to curiosity; from curiosity to wide-eyed incredulity.
Even Doby's shattered wits found an uncanny aspect of things. Abject fear was swallowed up by a thrill at the weirdness which breathed from the glade.
The whites looked from the young savages, unarmed, guarding them, to the old ones, unarmed, gyrating monotonously, and using their hands rhythmically.
One of the hardy voyageurs turned green and ghastly under his tan and his knees doubled under him.
Francis Vigo, following his glance, went white to the lips. But the poniard up his sleeve shot out and he pricked the fainting voyageur cruelly. The pain revived the man. His companion received the same treatment.
Even then they were plainly weak with horror. And Francis Vigo, the intrepid soldier, closed his eyes, as though the dancing men were the most dreadful sight of his life—a vision sickening beyond endurance.
While his captors stood rigid in shadow, while the voyageurs shook with nervous chill, while Vigo glanced wildly here and there, Doby stared at this curious feast which could so undo strong men.
For despite its dull and lugubrious setting, feast of some kind it certainly must be.
This place was not a village. There were no wigwams, no women, no children, no ponies, no dogs. All the interest centered on a great flat stone in the center of the glade. It held a bed of glowing coals. Savory meat was roasting there.
The old men, swooping slowly back and forth, were gorging themselves in a strange and barbarous ceremony of united forms of handling—biting—chewing. Solemnly, in an ancient, long-forbidden and almost-forgotten rite, they were invoking some spirit of evil.
From one detail of the medicine-men's costumes to another, from one mesmeric swing of arm and body to the next went Doby's glance in vague alarm. Last of all, he viewed the sizzling rock.
A sacrificial cannibal rock!
Not all the poniards of the realm could have helped Doby to self-control. He swooned upon the turf.
Bending to raise the boy, Francis Vigo brought his own face into a patch of moonlight. His captor recognized him. For what Indian did not know Francis Vigo? Vigo caught the expression of friendliness, and with an imperious gesture signified that they must be taken from this spot.
It was daytime when Doby again opened his eyes. He was between the voyageurs under the fallen tree near the canoes. On the river bank sat the old Indians. Francis Vigo, jaunty in velvet, cap, plume, and sword, was smoking the calumet.
One voyageur whispered to Doby, "Indians want to burn Vincennes."
The other murmured, "Père François tries to prevent that."
The first again: "They mean to join with renegades and capture the fort. Renegades get Government money. Indians get fire-water."
Doby whispered back, "Has he told them that he took the money and the papers worth money to Fort Wayne?"
Both nodded.
"Do they know he has had the fire-water moved away?"
They nodded again.
"Will they believe what he tells them?"
Emphatic bobs of both heads.
With the point of his sword Francis Vigo was drawing a map on the alluvial mud of the inlet. The Indians bent over it. The voyageurs exchanged dismayed glances.
Even before he saw the map it was not hard to guess, that the "merchant of Saint Louis," knowing how to turn greed into profit, had bought thelives of his three followers and had purchased the safety of his home town with the one thing he had to sell—the newly found fur tract.
"They agree to take the beaver dam," was the meaning of one voyageur's sigh.
"They go to it instead of to Vincennes," was the translation of the other's shrug.
Doby thought, "To their old bones, the certainty of furs to bring fire-water is better than the risk of a clash with the whites, who always defeat them."
So the hunched, misshapen, and degraded old savages, each with his attendant youth, embarked upon the now quiet river and paddled out of sight of the alien race who loathed them.
The dominant Vigo, who had lazily watched them depart, now dropped his assumed calm as suddenly as he did the velvet coat.
"Home!" he commanded. "To warn the fort!"
As they hurried along, he declared: "The renegades must be captured and defeated. They are wicked men."
"The Indians are dreadfully wicked," shuddered Doby.
"They know nothing better than their own customs; I pity them," said the great friend of Indians. "Some day over that sacrificial stone shall be hung a bell—I vow it now. I put it inmy will. I promise it to my country. A deep-toned bell! It shall call all children to a school to learn the laws of civilization, and all men to a court of justice to keep those laws in force. Old Vigo's tongue can live in a bell and go on preaching something better than greed, something higher than money!"
(For many, many years gone by, and for to-day and for to-morrow, the deep-toned bell above the forgotten stone is calling melodiously. Hundreds of boys have listened to "Old Vigo," the bell, talking to them.)
Although he planned for the better defense of the fort, Vigo was no longer the commandant of militia, as he had been some seasons before this. But he knew that both citizens and soldiers would respond to his warning as to nothing else, so he outlined his strategy as he paddled toward Vincennes.
"The renegades will come across the river by my private ferry—they think I will be far from home—and they expect to meet the savages by appointment at midnight." His face glowed with the spirit which could not be subdued. "They will meet soldiers instead. I can fight bad men of my own race with good appetite," he declared.
It was long past dark when they came to theirown town. The dock was deserted. So Doby set off at a run to rouse the early-to-bed militiamen and to summon them to the post.
He had a vast sense of his own importance when he stuck his head in the unlatched doors of the unsuspicious sleeping citizens and yelled: "Arm! Arm! Come to the fort!"
For such clamor followed as few boys may ever be able to stir up. Nightcaps and flintlocks were poked from the windows. But he was beyond the reach of questions or shot ere they got their eyes open. A stream of men, first awakened, were running toward the fort before the last ones could find their boots.
Light-headed from hunger, lack of sleep, and excitement, Doby could not follow all the plans for defense. Friendly Indians and boys disguised as Indians were to take the place of the ones whom Colonel Vigo had bought off up-river. These decoys were to follow the renegades, and in the attack upon the fort were to fight them from the rear.
Doby, with his loaded rifle in his hands for the first attack, and his knife on hip for hand-to-hand work, was given a man's place at a loop-hole of the stockade. He waited in the dark for the signal to the impromptu garrison to surprise the surprisers.
There was a muffled stirring of many feet. First a scuffle—then a run. Shadowy forms advanced upon the seemingly unguarded fort. Thieving hands fumbled at the gates.
In the breathless silence, Colonel Vigo's voice sounded like a pistol-shot. "Fire!" he snapped.
Two dozen rifles spat. The cracking took the invaders completely off their guard. They fell back in astonishment. But they rallied quickly and returned the fusillade.
Boys within the fort lighted torches and waved them to show the defenders how the battle lay.
The attacking renegades were made up of numbers of outlaws, of deserters from the army, and of unlucky or incompetent settlers. Every post in the Northwest had more or less of this human riffraff and many towns had the same unlucky experiences with them.
These robbers did not trust their Indian allies. Treacherous themselves, they suspected the old Indians' motives in joining them. So they had purposely given their own number as much smaller than it was, lest the Indians should turn upon them.
Doby's heart was not the only one which thumped with dismay as the flare of the torches lit up the goodly number of the besiegers.Even Francis Vigo's strategy of replacing their allied Indians with friends of the town could not assure Vincennes of victory. She would have to fight for her life. How curious if the far-away beaver dam should be the thing that bought her safety! It had lessened her foes and given her a fighting chance.
Madly the renegades charged the stockade. Staunchly the citizens helped the handful of soldiers to hold it.
Again the rabble advanced. Fell back! Advanced! Fell back!
Mercy and justice had no place in Doby's mind. His duty was to hold his section of the fort. He banged away with the best of the volunteers and howled like an Indian as the renegades ran from his fire into the volleys of the disguised men behind them.
During a lull in the battle he was proud to be obliged to tie up his head where a bullet had grazed it, and to swagger like an old war-dog as he moved across a barrier to help Colonel Vigo tie up a flesh wound in his sword arm.
Then—on came the renegades! "Hi! Hi! Hi!" was their rallying call.
"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!" answered the flintlocks.
Over the walls piled the enemy. Throughthe gates came the disguised Indians, fighting for the fort, and against their supposed allies.
Hand to hand—without command—without system—without mercy. One of those free-for-all defenses in which frontiersmen had to become victorious if they hoped to survive.
The renegades were beaten down, overcome, captured, and imprisoned. The town was saved, as many a settlement in the Great Valley was held for the white race—by the determined spirit of its founders.
Little blood was shed; less talk was heard; least record was made. One item in a dusty old book is all that is printed about that lively night. To wit:
This da. novem. 12. 1816. by Col. F. Vigo licensdferry freebooters attackdstockade. 9 woundd. loss 1 pk. horse. Attack repulsd.
This da. novem. 12. 1816. by Col. F. Vigo licensdferry freebooters attackdstockade. 9 woundd. loss 1 pk. horse. Attack repulsd.
This document marked the final touch to Doby's education for that important year. He was on his way toward becoming a man and a citizen—for he was at last a soldier—a volunteer soldier—a victorious soldier—in defense of the Great Valley.