Part 2

He hurried his horse so that it stumbled many times going down the mountain, and splashed the water all over old Monkton in his anxiety to ford Clark’s Creek. He lathered his horse forcing him to trot up the steep contrefort which leads to “Tulliallan,” though he weighed hardly more than one hundred and twenty pounds. He drew rein before the door; no one rushed out to greet him, even the dogs were still. He made his escort dismount and pound the heavy brass knocker, fashioned in the form of an Indian’s head. After some delay, Peter Allen himself appeared, looking glum and deadly pale.

“What is wrong?” cried Penn who was naturally as intuitive as a woman, noting his altered demeanor.

“Can I tell you, sir, in the presence of your bodyguard?”

“Out, out with it, Allen,” shouted Penn, “I must know _now_.”

“Mary Warren has been gone a fortnight, we know not whither. She had taken the Berryhill children home after classes, and left them about five o’clock in the evening. She did not return, and we have searched everywhere. Strange to relate, George Smithgall, the young serving man whom you left here to look after your apartments, and who accompanied Mary from London is gone also; draw your own inferences.”

John Penn’s fair face was as red as his scarlet cloak. Despite Allen’s urging he would not dismount, but turned his horse’s head toward the river. He rode to Queenaskawakee, now called Clark’s Ferry, where there was a famous fording, and, accompanied by his guard, he made the crossing and posted for the Juniata country. Near Raystown Branch he caught up with the company of riflemen and scouts organized by “Black Jack,” the Wild Hunter of the Juniata, who was waiting for General Braddock’s arrival to enlist in the proposed attack on Fort Duquesne at Shannopin’s Town, now Pittsburg. Black Jack was no stranger to him, having often met him at social gatherings at Peter Allen’s, and the greeting between the two men was very friendly. John Penn occupied the same cabin as the Wild Hunter, and he told him his story.

“It is not news to me,” said Captain Jack. “I heard it before, from Smithgall. He went through here last week hunting for Mary.”

Despite this reassuring information, Penn refused to believe anything but that the lovely Quakeress had proved false and eloped with the German-American serving man. Word came in a few days that the vanguard of General Braddock’s army had reached the Loyalhanna, and were encamped there. Captain Jack, with John Penn riding at his side, and followed by his motley crew with their long rifles–Germans, Swiss, Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Indians, half breeds, Negroes and Spaniards–approached the luxurious quarters of General Edward Braddock, late of the Coldstream Guards. The portly General, his breast blazing with decorations, wearing his red coat, was seated in a carved armchair in front of a log cabin erected for his especial use by his pioneers, who preceded him on the march. A Sergeant-Major conveyed the news of “The Wild Hunter’s” presence to the General’s Aide, who in turn carried it to the august presence.

“I cannot speak to such a fellow, let alone accept him as a brother officer,” said Braddock, irritably. “Besides, his methods of fighting are contrary to all discipline, and I want no Pennsylvania troops. Tell him that if he insists I will make him top-sergeant, and place my own officers over his company.”

Captain Jack was half angry, half amused, when the rebuff was handed to him via the sergeant major.

“My father was a Spanish gentleman from the Minisink, and my mother a woman of tolerably good Hessian blood. I see no reason for such rank exclusiveness.”

Quickly turning his horse’s head, the sturdy borderer ordered his troop to proceed eastward.

“Don’t act too rashly, Captain,” entreated Penn. “General Braddock is ignorant of this country and Indian methods of warfare. He may have orders not to enlist native troops, yet without your aid I fear for the success of his expedition. Please let me intercede with him; he will do it when he hears that I am your friend.”

“To the devil with him and his kind, the swinish snob,” growled Captain Jack, while his black eyes flashed a diabolical hatred; his Spanish temper was uncontrollable. That night, when Captain Jack and John Penn were seated at their camp fire at Laurel Run, a messenger, a Major, not a Sergeant Major, from General Braddock was announced.

Saluting, the officer asked to be allowed to speak with John Penn, Esquire. Penn received the officer without rising, and was cooly civil throughout the interview, which consisted principally of reading a letter from Braddock, expressing deep regret “that he had not known that the son of his dear friend, Richard Penn, had been with –-- Jack,” and offering Penn the captaincy of _Black Jack’s_ company of scouts, “–-- Jack to be First Lieutenant.”

Naturally, Captain Jack was more enraged than ever, but he said: “Take it, John, I’ll withdraw and turn my men, who, you know, are the best shots in the Province, over to you. They would go through hell for you.”

“Never fear,” replied Penn, and, turning to the Major, he said: “Tell General Braddock, with my compliments, that I decline to accept a commission which he has no authority to tender. As for my companion, Captain Jack (laying emphasis on the Captain) the General had _his_ decision earlier in the day. Goodnight, Major.”

Thus terminated the “conference” which might have changed the face of history. As the result of Braddock’s pride and folly, his defeat and death are a part of history, known by every Pennsylvanian.

John Penn was wretchedly unhappy, even though Captain Jack tried to console him, when he shrewdly inferred that “Mary” had been kidnapped by emissaries of his relatives, and had not eloped with a vile serving man. His heart was too lacerated to remain longer with the Wild Hunter, now that no active service was to be experienced; so, accompanied by Monkton, the veteran of Preston, he set out the next morning for the West Branch of the Susquehanna to the unexplored countries.

At Waterford Narrows they passed the body of a trader recently killed and scalped by Indians.

“May I draw one of his teeth, sir?” said the old soldier, “and you can carry it in your pocket, for the old people say ‘The only thing that can break the enchantment of love is the tooth of a dead man’.”

Penn shook his head and rode on. For a considerable time Penn and Old Monkton visited with Dagonando (Rock Pine), a noted Indian Chief in Brush Valley (Centre County), for the young man, like the founder of Pennsylvania, possessed the same irresistible charm over the redmen.

Years afterwards, in Philadelphia, speaking to General Thomas Mifflin, Dagonando stated that had it not been for his unhappy love affairs, John Penn would have been the equal of his grandfather as Governor, and prevented the Revolutionary War. But his spirit was crushed; even a mild love affair with Dagonando’s daughter ended with shocking disaster. Reaching Fort Augusta, Penn became very ill; a “nervous breakdown” his ailment would be diagnosed today. During his illness he was robbed of his diary. He reached Philadelphia in the fall, and almost immediately set sail for England. He remained abroad until 1763, when he returned as Governor of Pennsylvania. He arrived in Philadelphia on October 30, in the midst of the terrific earthquake of that year, and on November 5, George Roberts in a letter to Samuel Powell, in describing the new Chief Magistrate, says:

“His Honor, Penn, is a little gentleman, though he may govern equal to one seven feet high.”

Charles P. Keith has thus summed up Penn’s career from the time of his first arrival in Pennsylvania: “He was one of the Commissioners to the Congress at Albany in the summer of 1754, and made several journeys to the neighboring colonies. Nevertheless, his trouble made him again despondent; he began to shun company; he would have joined Braddock’s army had any Pennsylvania troops formed part of it, and perhaps have died on the field which that officer’s imprudence made so disastrous. Some two months after the defeat he returned to England.”

On June 6, 1766, a brilliant marriage occurred in Philadelphia. John Penn, Lieutenant Governor, aged thirty-seven years, married Anne, the daughter of William Allen, Chief Justice; a strange fate had united the relative of Peter Allen of “Tulliallan” to the husband of Maria Cox, pronounced legally dead after an absence of eleven years in parts unknown. Commenting on this alliance, Nevin Moyer, the gifted Historian, remarks: “The marriage was an unpleasant one, on his (Penn’s) account, for he was found very seldom at home.” It was during the wedding that a fierce electrical storm occurred, unroofing houses and shattering many old trees.

It was not long after this marriage when a feeling of restlessness impelled him to start another of his many trips to the interior. This time it was given out that he wished to visit Penn’s Valley, the “empire” discovered in the central part of the province by Captains Potter and Thompson, and named in his honor, and Penn’s Cave, the source of the Karoondinha, a beautiful, navigable stream, rechristened “John Penn’s Creek.” He managed to stop over night, as everyone of any consequence did, at “Tulliallan,” and slept in the room with the Scotch thistles carved on the woodwork, and saw Peter Allen for the first time in twelve years.

A foul crime had recently been committed in the neighborhood. Indian Joshua, who used to live at the running spring, had gone to Canada the year of Braddock’s defeat (the year of Mary’s disappearance, Penn always reckoned it) and had lately returned to his old abode. He had been shot, as a trail of blood from his cabin down the mountain had been followed clear to Clark’s Creek, where it was lost. In fact, pitiful wailing had been heard one night all the way across the valley, but it was supposed to be a traveling panther. Arvas, or Silver Heels, had also come back for a time, but, after Joshua’s disappearance, had gone away.

“Maybe he killed his friend,” whispered Allen, looking down guiltily, as he spoke what he knew to be untruthful words.

“It is all clear to me now, Allen,” said Penn. “I should have believed Captain Jack, when in ’55 he told me that my late wife was carried off to Canada by Indians; the kidnappers came back, and for fear that they would levy hush money on those who had caused my Mary to be stolen, murdered Joshua as a warning.”

Allen did not answer, but Penn said: “You have kept a public house so long that you have forgotten to be a gentleman, and I do not expect you to tell the truth.”

In 1840 seekers after nestlings of the vultures climbed to the top of the King’s Stool, the dizzy pinnacle of the Third Mountain. There they found the skeleton of an Indian. It was all that was left of Joshua, who had climbed there in his agony and died far above the scenes which he loved so dearly. The hunters put the bones in their hunting pouches and climbed down the “needle,” and buried them decently at the foot of the rocks.

The King’s Stool is named for a similar high point near Lough Foyle, Ireland, and there are also King’s Stools in Juniata and Perry Counties. The North of Ireland pioneers were glad to recognize scenes similar to the natural wonders of the Green Isle!

A great light had come to John Penn, but he accepted his fate philosophically, just as he had the abuse heaped upon him for his vacillating policy towards the Indians. He followed up his vigorous attempt to punish the Paxtang perpetrators of the massacres of the Conestoga Indians at Christmas time, 1763, by promulgating the infamous scalp bounty of July, 1764, which bounty, to again quote Professor Moyer, paid “$134 for an Indian’s scalp, and $150 for a live Indian, and $50 for an Indian female or child’s scalp.”

There are not enough Indians to make hunting for bounties in Pennsylvania a paying occupation today, so instead there is a bounty on Wildcats and foxes, wiping out desirable wild life to satisfy the politicians’ filthy greed.

John Penn returned to Philadelphia without visiting Penn’s Valley or Penn’s Cave or John Penn’s Creek. He had seen them previously in 1755 when they bore their original Indian names, and his heart was still sad. It was not long after returning that he again started on another expedition up the Susquehanna, traveling by canoe, just as his grandfather, William Penn, had done in his supposedly fabulous trip to the sources of the West Branch at Cherry Tree, in 1700. A stop was made at Fisher’s stone house, Fisher’s Ferry. A group of pioneers had heard of his coming and gave the little Governor a rousing ovation. He felt nearest to being happy when among the frontier people, who understood him, and his trials had, like Byron, made him “the friend of mountains”; he was still simple at heart. In the kitchen, seated by the inglenook, he heard someone’s incessant coughing in an inner room. He asked the landlord, old Peter Fisher, who was suffering so acutely.

“Why, sir,” replied Fisher, “it’s an Englishwoman dying.”

In those days people’s nationalities in Pennsylvania were more sharply defined, and any English-speaking person was always called an “Englishwoman” or an “Englishman,” as the case might be.

“Tell me about her,” said the Governor, with ill-concealed curiosity.

“It’s a strange story, it might give Your Worship offense,” faltered the old innkeeper. “They tell it, sir, though it’s doubtless a lie, that Your Excellency cared for this Englishwoman, and your enemies had her kidnapped by two Indians and taken to Canada. The Indians were paid for keeping her there until a few years ago, when their remittances suddenly stopped and they came home; one, it is said, was murdered soon after. Arvas, his companion, was accused of the crime, but he stopped here for a night, a few weeks afterwards, and swore to me that he was guiltless. The Englishwoman finally got away and walked all the way back from a place called Muskoka, but she caught cold and consumption on the way, and is on her death-bed now. I knew her in all her youth and beauty at Peter Allen’s, where she was always the belle of the balls there; she had been brought up a Quaker, but my, how she could dance. You would not know her now.”

“I want to see her,” said the Governor, rising to his feet.

It was getting dark, so Fisher lit a rushlight, and led the way. He opened the heavy door without rapping. His wife and daughter sat on high-backed rush-bottomed chairs on either side of the big four-poster bed, which had come from the Rhine country. On the bed lay a woman of about forty years, frightfully emaciated by suffering, whose exaggeratedly clear-cut features were accentuated in their marble look by the pallor of oncoming dissolution. Her wavy, dark hair, parted in the middle, made her face seem even whiter.

“Mary, Mary,” said the little Governor, as he ran to her side, seizing the white hands which lay on the flowered coverlet.

“John, my darling John,” gasped the dying woman.

“Leave us alone together,” commanded the Governor.

The women looked at one another as they retired. The thoughts which their glances carried indicated “well, after all the story’s true.”

They had been alone for about ten minutes when Penn ran out of the door calling, “Come quick, someone, I fear she’s going.”

The household speedily assembled, but in another ten minutes “Mary Warren,” alias Maria Cox-Penn had yielded up the ghost. She is buried on the brushy African-looking hillside which faces the “dreamy Susquehanna,” the Firestone Mountains and the sunset, near where travelers across Broad Mountain pass every day. John Penn returned to Philadelphia and took no more trips to the interior. He divided his time between his town house, 44 Pine Street, and his country seat “Lansdowne.”

During the Revolution he was on parole. He died childless. February 9, 1795, and is said to be buried under the floor, near the chancel, in the historic Christ Church, Philadelphia, which bears the inscription that he was “One of the Late Proprietors of Pennsylvania.” Most probably his body was later taken to England. His wife, _nee_ Allen, survived him until 1813.

The other night in the grand hall of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in the Quaker City, a notable reception was given in honor of the grand historian-governor, William C. Sproul, fresh from his marvelous restoration of the Colonial Court House at Chester. As he stood there, the embodiment of mental and physical grace and strength, the greatest Governor of a generation, receiving the long line of those who came to pay their respects and well wishes, Albert Cook Myers, famed historian of the Quakers, mentioned that the present Governor of the Commonwealth was standing just beneath the portrait of John Penn, one of the last of the Proprietaries. And what a contrast there was! Penn looked so effete and almost feminine with his child-like blonde locks, his pink cheeks, weak, half-closed mouth, his slender form in a red coat, so different from the vigorous living Governor. Penn was also so inferior to the other notable portraits which hung about him–the sturdy Huguenot, General Henri Bouquet, the deliverer of Fort Duquesne in 1758 and 1763; the stalwart Scot, General Arthur St. Clair, of Miami fame, who was left to languish on a paltry pension of $180 a year at his rough, rocky farm on Laurel Ridge; the courageous-looking Irishman, General Edward Hand; and, above all, the bold and dashing eagle face of General “Mad Anthony” Wayne. Such company for the last of the Penns to keep! Though lacking the manly outlines of his fellows on canvas, who can say that his life had one whit less interest than theirs–probably much more so, for his spirit had felt the thrill of an undying love, which in the end surmounted all difficulties and left his heart master of the field.

Though his record for statecraft can hardly be written from a favorable light, and few of his sayings or deeds will live, he has joined an immortal coterie led down the ages by Anthony and the beautiful Egyptian queen, by Abelard and Heloise, Dante and Beatrice, Petrarch and Laura, Alfieri and the Countess of Albany, and here in Pennsylvania by Hugh H. Brackenridge and the pioneer girl, Sabina Wolfe, and Elisha Kent Kane, and the spiritualist, Maria Fox. Love is a force that is all-compelling, all-absorbing and never dies, and is the biggest thing in life, and the story of John Penn and Maria Cox will be whispered about in the backwoods cabins and wayside inns of the Pennsylvania Mountains long after seemingly greater men and minds have passed to forgetfulness.

But for a few lines in the writings of Charles P. Keith, H. M. Jenkins, Nevin W. Moyer and various Penn biographers, such as Albert Cook Myers, the verbal memories of ’Squire W. H. Garman, James Till, Mrs. H. E. Wilvert and other old-time residents of the vicinity of “Tulliallan,” all would be lost, and the inspiration of a story of overwhelming affection unrecorded in the annals of those who love true lovers.

II _At His Bedside_

When old Jacob Loy passed away at the age of eighty years, he left a pot of gold to be divided equally among his eight children. It was a pot of such goodly proportions that there was a nice round sum for all, and the pity of it was after the long years of privation which had collected it, that some of the heirs wasted it quickly on organs, fast horses, cheap finery and stock speculations, for it was before the days of player-pianos, victrolas and automobiles.

Yolande, his youngest daughter, was a really attractive girl, even had she not a share in the pot of gold, and had many suitors. Though farm raised and inured to hardships she was naturally refined, with wonderful dark eyes and hair, and pallid face–the perfect type of Pennsylvania Mountain loveliness.

Above all her admirers she liked best of all Adam Drumheller, a shrewd young farmer of the neighborhood, and eventually married him. Three children were born in quick succession, in the small tenant house on his father’s farm in Chest Township, where the young couple had gone to live immediately after their wedding.

Shortly after the birth of the last child old Jacob Drumheller died, and the son and his family moved into the big stone farmhouse near the banks of the sulphurous Clearfield Creek. It was not long after this fortuitous move that the young wife began to show signs of the favorite Pennsylvania mountain malady–consumption. Whether it was caused by a deep-seated cold or came about from sleeping in rooms with windows nailed shut, no one could tell, but the beautiful young woman became paler and more wax-like, until she realized that a speedy end was inevitable. Many times she found comfort in her misfortune by having her husband promise that in the event of her death he would never remarry.

“Never, never,” he promised. “I could never find your equal again.”

He was sincere in some respects; it would be hard to find her counterpart, and she had made a will leaving him everything she possessed, and he imagined that the pot of gold transformed into a bank balance or Government bonds would be found somewhere among her effects.

Before ill health had set in he had quizzed her many times, as openly as he dared, on the whereabouts of her share of the pot.

“It is all safe,” she would say. “It will be forthcoming some time when you need it more than you do today,” and he was satisfied.

As she grew paler and weaker Adam began to think more of Alvira Hamel, another comely girl whom he had loved when he railroaded out of Johnstown, at Kimmelton, and whom he planned to claim as his own should Yolande pass away.

Perhaps his thoughts dimly reflected on the dying wife’s sub-conscious mind, for she became more insistent every day that he promise never to remarry.

“Think of our dear little children,” she kept saying, “sentenced to have a stepmother; I would come back and _haunt_ you if you perpetrate such a cruelty to me and mine.”

Adam had little faith in a hereafter, and less in ghosts, so he readily promised anything, vowing eternal celebacy cheerfully and profoundly.

When Yolande did finally fade away, she died reasonably happy, and at least died bravely. She never shed a tear, for it is against the code of the Pennsylvania Mountain people to do so–perhaps a survival of the Indian blood possessed by so many of them.

Three days after the funeral Adam hied himself to Ebensburg to “settle up the estate,” but also to look up Alvira Hamel, who was now living there. She seemed glad to see him, and when he broached a possible union she acted as if pleased at everything except to go on to that lonely farm on the polluted Clearfield Creek.

By promising to sell out when he could and move to Barnesboro or Spangler, a light came in her dark eyes, and though he did not visit the lawyer in charge of his late wife’s affairs, his day in town was successful in arranging for the new alliance with his sweetheart of other days.

In due course of time it was discovered that the equivalent of Yolande’s share of the pot of gold left by old Jacob Loy was not to be found. “She may have kept it in coin and buried it in the orchard,” was some of the very consoling advice that the lawyer gave.

At any rate it was not located by the time that Adam and Alvira were married, but the bridegroom was well to do and could afford to wait. After a short trip to Pittsburg and Wheeling the newly married couple took up housekeeping in the big brick farmstead above the creek.