Part 19

The young bride seemed radiantly happy. She had every reason to be; the other Indian maids whispered from lip to lip, was she not marrying the greatest warrior and hunter of his generation, the handsomest man in a hundred tribes? Secretly envied by all of her age, possessing her stalwart prize, the fair bride started on her honeymoon, showered with acorns and good wishes.

So far as is known the wedding trip passed off blissfully. There were smiles on the bright faces of both bride and groom when they returned to their spacious new lodge-house, which the tribe had erected for them in their absence, by the banks of the sparkling Bohundy. But the course of life did not run smoothly for the pair. Though outwardly Wisamek was the handsomest and most youthful-looking of men, he was still an old man at heart. Annapalpeteu was as pleasure-loving as she was beautiful. She wanted to dance and sing and mingle with youthful company. She wanted her good time in life; her joy of living was at its height, her sense of enjoyment at its zenith.

On the other hand, Wisamek hated all forms of gaieties or youthful amusements. He wanted to sit about the lodge-house in the sun, telling of his warlike triumphs of other days; he wanted to sleep much, he hated noise and excitement.

Annapalpeteu, dutiful wife that she was, tried to please him, but in due course of time both husband and wife realized that romance was dying, that they were drifting apart. Wisamek was even more aware of it than his wife. It worried him greatly, his dreams were of an unhappy nature. He pictured the end of the trail, with his wife, Annapalpeteu, in love with some one else of her own age, some one whose heart was young. He had spells of moodiness and irritability, as well as several serious quarrels with his wife, whom he accused of caring less for him than formerly.

The relations became so strained that life in the commodious lodge-house was unbearable. At length it occurred to Wisamek that he might again visit the fountain of youth, this time to revive his soul. Perhaps he had not remained in the water long enough to touch the spirit within. He informed his spouse that he was going on a long journey on invitation of the war chief of a distant tribe, and that she must accompany him. He was insanely jealous of her now. He could not bear her out of his sight. He imagined she had a young lover back of every tree, though she was honor personified.

The trip was made pleasantly enough, as the husband was in better spirits than usual. Annapalpeteu enjoyed the waters of the warm springs, would liked to have tarried. He thought he saw the surcease of his troubles ahead of him!

When he reached the Beaver Dam Meadows, at the foot of Egg Hill, near the site of the present town of Spring Mills, beautiful level flats which in those days were a favorite camping ground for the red men, he requested the beautiful Annapalpeteu to remain there for a few days, that he was going through a hostile country, he would not jeopardize her safety. He was going on an important mission that would make her love him more than ever when he returned. In reality no unfriendly Indians were about, but in order to give a look of truth to his story he left her in charge of a strong bodyguard.

Wisamek’s conduct of late had been so peculiar that his wife was not sorry to see her lord and master go away. Handsome though he was, a spiritual barrier had arisen between them which grew more insurmountable with each succeeding day. Yet, on this occasion, when he was out of her sight, she felt apprehensive about him. She had a strange presentiment that she would never see him again.

Wisamek was filled with hopes; his spirits had never been higher, as he strode along, followed by his henchmen. When he reached the top of the path which led to the mouth of the enchanted cave he met old Gamunk, the guardian. The aged redman expressed surprise at seeing him again.

“I have come for a very peculiar reason,” he said. “The bath which I took last year outwardly made me young, but only _outwardly_. Within I am as withered and joyless as a centenarian. I want to bathe once more, to try to revive the old light in my soul.”

Gamunk shook his head. “You may succeed; I hope you will. I never heard of any one daring to take a second bath in these waters. The tradition of the hereditary guardians, of whom I am the hundredth in direct succession, has it that it would be fatal to take a second immersion, especially to remain in the water for twenty-four hours.”

Then he asked Wisamek for the talisman which gave him the right to bathe. Wisamek drew himself up proudly, and, with a gesture of his hand indicating disdain, said he had no talisman, that he would bathe anyhow. He advanced to the brink and plunged in. Until the same hour the next day he floated and paddled about the greenish depths, filled with expectancy. For some reason it seemed longer this time than on the previous visit.

At last, by the light which filtered down through the treetops at the cave’s mouth, he knew that the hour had come for him to emerge–emerge as Chief Wisamek–young in heart as in body. Proudly he grasped the rocky ledge and swung himself out on dry land. He arose to his feet. His head seemed very light and giddy. He fancied he saw visions of his old conquests, old loves. There was the sound of music in the air. Was it the martial drums, played to welcome the conqueror, or the wind surging through the feathery tops of the maple and linden trees at the mouth of the cave? He started to climb the steep path. He seemed to be treading the air. Was it the buoyant steps of youth come again? He seemed to float rather than walk. The sunlight blinded his eyes. Suddenly he had a flash of normal consciousness. He dropped to the ground with a thud like an old pine falling. Then all was blackness, silence. Jaybirds complaining in the treetops alone broke the stillness.

His bodyguards, who were waiting for him at old Gamunk’s lodge-house, close to where the hotel now stands, became impatient at his non-appearance, as the hour was past. Accompanied by the venerable watchman they started down the path. To their horror they saw the dead body of a hideous, wrinkled old man, all skin and bones, like a desiccated mummy, lying stretched out across it, a few steps from the entrance to the cave. When they approached closely they noticed several familiar tattoo marks on the forehead, which identified the body as that of their late master, Wisamek.

Frightened lest they would be accused of his murder, and shocked by his altered appearance, the bodyguards turned and took to their heels. They disappeared in the trackless forests to the north and were never seen again.

Old Gamunk, out of pity for the vain-glorious chieftain, buried the remains by the path near where he fell. As for poor Annapalpeteu, the beautiful, she waited patiently for many days by the Beaver Dam, but her waiting was in vain. At length, concluding that he had been slain in battle in some valorous encounter, she started for her old home on the Bohundy.

It is related that on the way she met and married a warrior of her own age, living happily ever afterwards in a comfortable cabin somewhere in the majestic Bower Mountains. In him she found the loving response, the congeniality of pleasures which had been denied the dried, feeble soul of Wisamek, who bathed too often in the fountain of youth.

XXIII _Compensations_

It seemed that Andrew McMeans and Oscar Wellendorf were born to be engaged in rivalry, although judging by their antecedents, the former was in a class beyond, McMeans being well-born, of old Scotch-Irish stock, a valuable asset on the Allegheny. Wellendorf, of Pennsylvania Dutch origin, of people coming from one of the eastern counties, was consequently rated much lower socially, had much more to overcome in the way of life’s obstacles. The boys were almost of school age; Wellendorf, if anything, was a month or two older. In school in Hickory Valley neither was a brilliant scholar, but they were evenly matched, and although not aspiring to lead their classes, felt a keen rivalry between one another.

When school days were over, and they took to rafting as the most obvious occupation in the locality, their rivalries as to who could run a fleet quickest to Pittsburg, and come back for another, was the talk of the river. In love it was not different, and despite the talk in McMean’s family that he should marry Anna McNamor, daughter of his father’s life-long friend, Tabor McNamor, the girl showed an open preference for Oscar Wellendorf.

The old Scotch-Irish families were, as the London Times said in commenting on some of the characteristics of the late Senator Quay (inherited from his mother, born Stanley) “clannish to degree,” and Anna’s “people” were equally anxious that she marry one of her own stock, and not ally herself with the despised and socially insignificant “Dutch”. Old Grandmother McClinton called attention to the fact that the headstrong beauty was not without a strain of “Dutch” blood herself, for her great, great grandmother had been none other than the winsome Madelon Ury, a Swiss-Huguenot girl of Berks County, who, when surprised in the field hoeing corn by a blood-thirsty Indian, had dropped her hoe and taken to her heels. She ran so fast over the soft ground that she would have escaped her moccasined pursuer had she not taken time to cross a stone fence. This gave the red man the chance to throw his tomahawk, striking her in the neck, and she fell face downward over the wall. Just as her foe was overtaking her, Martin McClinton, a sword maker from Lancaster, who was passing along the Shamokin trail en route to deliver a sabre to Colonel Conrad Weiser, at Heidelberg, rushed to her rescue and shot down the Indian, so that he fell dead across his fair victim.

McClinton extricated the tomahawk from her neck, bound up the wound with his own neckerchief and carried her to her parent’s home, near the Falling Springs. He remained until the wound healed, when he married her. Later the pair migrated west of the Alleghenies.

Madelon McClinton was very dark, with an oval face and aquiline features, possibly having had a strain of Pennsylvania Jewish blood to account for her brunette type of beauty. She always wore a red scarf wrapped about her neck, being proud and sensitive of the ugly long white scar left by the Indian’s weapon.

This ancestress, so Grandmother McClinton thought, was responsible for Anna’s affinity for the rather prosaic Dutchman Wellendorf. Although the girl was open in her preference for Oscar, she did not make a decision as to matrimony for some time. When Wellendorf was absent, she was nicer to McMeans than anyone else. However, if Oscar appeared on the scene, she had eyes and ears for no other.

On one occasion when the two young men started down the river on their rafts, proudly standing at the steering oars in the rear, for the Allegheny pilots rode at the back of the rafts, whereas those on the Susquehanna were always at the front. Anna was at the water’s edge, under a huge buttonwood tree–or, as Wellendorf called it in the breezy vernacular of the Pennsylvania Dutch, a “wasserpitcher”–and waved a red kerchief impartially at both.

McMean’s raft on this trip was of “pig iron”, that is unpeeled hemlock logs, as heavy as lead, and became submerged when he had only gotten as far as the mouth of French Creek. He had to run ashore to try and devise ways and means to save it from sinking altogether, while Wellendorf floated along serenely on his raft of white pine, and was to Pittsburg and back home before McMeans ever reached the “Smoky City.” “John C. French tells us, "White Pine (pinus strobus) was King, and his dusky Queen was a beautiful Wild Cherry, lovely as Queen Alliquippa of the redmen. Rafting lumber from Warren County began about 1800, and it reached its maximum in the decade, 1830 to 1840. The early history of Warren County abounds in very interesting incidents, along the larger Allegheny River, from rafts of pine lumber assembled to couple up for Pittsburg fleets.

"After the purchase of Louisiana, in 1804, the hardy lumbermen decided to extend their markets for pine beyond Pittsburg, Wheeling, Cincinnati and Louisville–to go, in fact, to New Orleans with pine and cherry lumber. So large boats were built in the winter of 1805 and 1806 at many mills. Seasoned lumber of the best quality was loaded into the flat boats and they untied on April 1, 1806, for the run of two thousand miles, bordered by forests to the river’s edge.

"It was in defiance to ‘All Fools’ Day’, but they went through and sold both lumber and boats. For clear pine lumber, $40.00 was the price per one thousand feet received at New Orleans–just double the Pittsburg price at that date. For three years thereafter the mills of Warren County sent boats to New Orleans loaded with lumber, and the men returned on foot. Joseph Mead, Abraham Davis and John Watt took boats through in 1807, coming back via Philadelphia on coastal sailing ships.

"The pilots and men returned by river boats or on foot, as they best could. The markets along the Ohio from Pittsburg to St. Louis soon took all the lumber from the Allegheny mills, and the longer trips were gladly discontinued.

"It was in 1850 that there came the first lumber famine at Pittsburg. Owing to the low price of lumber and an unfavorable winter for the forest work, few rafts of lumber and board timber went down the Allegheny on the spring freshets, but the November floods brought one hundred rafts that sold for more favorable prices than had previously prevailed. Clear pine lumber sold readily for $18.00 and common pine lumber for $9.00 per one thousand feet.

"The renown of these prices stimulated lumbering on the Allegheny headwaters and the larger creeks. So the demand for lumber was supplied and the railroads soon began to bring lumber from many sawmills. The board timber was hewed on four sides, so there were only five inches of wane on each of the four corners. These rafts of round-square timber were sold by square feet to Pittsburg sawmills.

"Rafts of pine boards at headwater mills were made up of platforms, 16 feet square and from 18 to 25 courses thick, 9 pins or “grubs” holding boards in place as rafted. Four or five platforms were coupled in tandem with 3 feet “cribs” at each joint, making an elastic piece 73 feet or 92 feet long for a 4 or 5 platform piece as the case might be, 10 feet wide.

"At Larrabee or at Millgrove four of these pieces were coupled into a Warren fleet, 32 feet wide, 149 feet or 187 feet long.

"Four Warren pieces or fleets were put together at Warren to make up a Pittsburg fleet. At Pittsburg four or more Pittsburg fleets were coupled to make an Ohio River fleet. Some became very large, often covering nearly two acres of surface, containing about 1,500,000 feet of lumber at Cincinnatti or at Louisville. They each had a hut for sheltering the men and for cooking their food. They often ran all night on the Ohio. To find where the shore was on a very dark night, the men would throw potatoes, judging from the sound how far away the river bank was and of their safe or dangerous position. These men were of rugged bodies and of daring minds.

"A small piece, in headwaters and creeks, had an oar or sweep at each end of the piece to steer the raft with. Each oar usually had two men to pull it. An oar-stem was from 28 to 35 feet long, 8″ by 8″, and tapered to 4″ by 4″, shaved to round hand-hold near the end toward center of raft. The oar blade was 12′, 14′ or 16′ long, and 18″ to 20″ wide, a pine plank, 4″ thick at the oar-stem socket, and 1″ thick at the out-end, tapered its whole length.

"There were other sizes of stem and blade, but the above indicates the power that guided a raft of lumber along the flood-tides, crooked streams, and over a dozen mill dams to the broader river below.

"From the Allegheny boats or scows, 30 feet long and 11 feet wide, carried loads of baled hay, butter, eggs and other farm produce to the oil fields of Venango County in the ’60’s, sold there and took oil in barrels to the refinery at Pittsburg. Then sold the scows to carry coal or goods down the Ohio.

"Mr. Westerman built five boats at Roulette about 1870, 40 feet long and 12 feet wide, loaded them with lumber and shingles and started for Pittsburg, but the boats were too long for the dams and broke up at Burtville, the first dam.

"Much of the pine timber of the west half of Potter county was cut in sawlogs and sent to mills at Millgrove and Weston’s in log drives down the river and Oswayo Creek into the State of New York. The lumber was shipped via the Genesee Valley Canal to Albany and New York City and other points on the Hudson River.

"The first steamboat to steam up the river from Warren was in 1830. It was built by Archibald Tanner, Warren’s first merchant, and David Dick and others of Meadville. It was built in Pittsburg; the steamer was called Allegheny. It went to Olean, returned and went out of commission.

"The late Major D. W. C. James furnished the incident of the Allegheny voyage. A story was told by James Follett regarding the trip of the Allegheny from Warren, which illustrates the lack of speed of steamboats on the river at that early day.

"While the steamer was passing the Indian reservation, some twenty odd miles above Warren, the famous chief, Cornplanter, paddled his canoe out to the vessel and actually paddled his small craft up stream and around the Allegheny, the old chief giving a vigorous war hoop as he accomplished the proud feat.

"Chief Cornplanter, alias John O’Bail, first took his young men to Clarion County, about 1795, to learn the method of lumbering, and in 1796 he built a sawmill on Jenneseedaga Creek, later named Cornplanter Run, in Warren County, and rafted lumber down the Allegheny to Pittsburg for many years.

"Many tributary streams, such as Clarion, Tionesta and Oswayo, contributed rafts each year to make up the fleets that descended the Allegheny River from 1796 to 1874, our rafting days.

"We must mention the Hotel Boyer, on the Duquesne Way, on the Allegheny River bank, near the “Point” at Pittsburg, where the raftsmen and the lumbermen foregathered, traded, ate and drank together, after each trip. Indians were good pilots, but must be kept sober on the rafts. ‘Bootleggers’ along the river often ran boats out to the rafts and relieved the droughty crews by dispensing bottles of ‘red-eye’ from the long tops of the boots they wore."

Of the big trees in the Allegheny country, Dr. J. T. Rothrock, “Father of Pennsylvania Forestry,” has said: "About 1860, when I was with a crew surveying the line for the Sunbury & Erie Railroad, we had some difficulty in getting away from a certain location. A preliminary line came in conflict with an enormous original white pine tree, and the transitman shouted ‘cut down that tree’. After it was felled another nearby was found to be in the way, and was ordered out. The stump of the first tree, four feet above the ground measured 6 feet, 3 inches in diameter; of the second tree a trifle over 6 feet. Such was the wastefulness of the day."

As soon as Oscar returned he saw Anna forthwith. She was in a particularly pliant mood, and in response to his direct question if she would marry him, replied she would, and the couple boarded the train at Warren for Buffalo City, where they were married.

When Andrew McMeans came back from his protracted expedition they were already home from their honeymoon, and residing with the elder McNamors in the big brick house, overlooking the Bend. Andrew McMeans felt his jilting deeply; it was the first time that any real disappointment had come in the twenty-one years of his life; he had imagined that, despite her predilection for Wellendorf, he would yet win her, and his pride as well as his heart was lacerated. Outwardly he revealed little, but inwardly a peculiar melancholy such as he had never felt before overcame him, and like Lincoln, after the death of Ann Rutledge, he realized that he must either “die or get better.”

Anna seemed happy enough in her new life, and liked to flaunt her devotion to Oscar whenever her rejected lover was about. Ordinarily this might have wounded him still deeper, but he was absorbing fresh anxieties, reading Herbert Spencer, whose abominable agnosticism soon wrecked his faith, and bereft of love and the solace of immortality, he became the most wretched of men.

It was five years after Anna’s elopement, and when she was twenty-one years old, that one morning she started for Endeavor to get the mail and make some purchases at the country store. It was a cold, raw day in the early spring, and the wild pigeons were flying. The beechwoods on both sides of the road were alive with gunners, old and young. Some one fired a shot which hurtled close to the nose of the old roan family horse, a track horse in his day, and he took the bit in his teeth and ran away madly, with the buggy careening after him. Anna, standing up in the vehicle, was sawing on the lines until he crashed into a big ash tree and fractured the poor girl’s skull. She was picked up by some of the hunters and carried home unconscious the next thing was to get the news to her husband. Oscar at that time had just finished a raft on West Hickory Creek, while his old time rival, McMeans, was completing one on East Hickory, which stream flowed into “The Beautiful River”, almost directly opposite to the West Hickory Run.

About the moment that Anna received her cruel death stroke, the two rafts were being launched simultaneously, with much cheering on both banks, for partisanship ran high among dwellers on either side of the river. Members of the family hurried to the river side to watch for the Wellendorf raft, to “head him off” before it was too late. It was several hours after the accident when the two rival rafts, with the stalwart young pilots at the sterns, swept around the Bend, traveling “nip and tuck”. It promised to be an evenly matched race, barring accidents, clear to Pittsburg. The skippers of the contending yachts for the American Cup could not have been more enthused for their races than were Andrew McMeans and Oscar Wellendorf.

In front of the McNamor homestead several women were to be seen running up and down the grassy sward, frantically waving red and green shawls. What could they mean? They were so vehement that Oscar divined something was wrong, and steered ashore, followed by McMeans, who, noting the absence of Anna from the signaling party, feared that a mishap had befallen her.

Both young men jumped ashore almost simultaneously, leaving their rafts to their helpers. The worst had happened–Anna was in the house with a fractured skull, and the doctors said she could not live the night. If anything, McMeans turned the paler of the two. The men said little as they followed the women up the boardwalk to the house.

That night McMeans, who asked to be allowed to remain until the outcome of the case, for the river had lost its attractions, was sitting in the kitchen with Grandmother McClinton. The raw air had blown itself into a gale after sundown, and during the night the fierce wind beat about the eaves and corners of the house like an avenging fury. The old tall clock, made years before by John Vanderslice, of Reading, on top of which was a stuffed Colishay, or gray fox, with an uncommonly fine brush, was striking twelve. Amid the storm a wailing voice joined in the din, incessantly, so that there was no mistaking it, the Warning of the McClintons.