Part 2

I had a breech-loading rifle which I loved better than all my other rifles, for it was a most powerful weapon. I could use it with either steel-pointed bullets or shells. I named the rifle "Bull-dog." The only fault I found with Bull-dog was that it was very heavy to carry, for it weighed sixteen pounds.

When I carried Bull-dog I had a feeling that I was with my best friend, one upon which I could rely in case of great danger, no matter how huge or fierce the wild animal might be. That feeling always gave me confidence, and I aimed with great steadiness, for my faith in the power of Bull-dog was unbounded, and I knew I had a shot to spare in case of wounding the animal.

Bull-dog was well known among my hunters. They looked at it with wonder, and were always glad when Bull-dog was going with us. They used to say: "Bull-dog never misses, but brings death in its path. The elephants, leopards, gorillas, and hippopotami fall dead when hit by its bullets." My men knew Bull-dog among all my rifles, and there was always rejoicing among them when I said to one of them, "Go and fetch Bull-dog from my hut, and carry it for me until we reach the hunting-ground," or when I started with it.

Bull-dog was so heavy that by the end of the day my shoulders, especially the left one, felt sore. In the course of time that left shoulder had become quite black from the effects of carrying it or other guns. A gun that is quite light the first hour becomes heavier every hour afterwards, and very heavy by the end of the day.

* * * * *

Now that we have become acclimatized, and have learned the language, we must bid good-by to the sea-shore King.

After many wanderings I came to a very wild tribe who knew the use of fire-arms. The natives were kind-hearted toward me. I had been left there by the people of another tribe, who immediately afterwards returned to their country. The King loved me, and after I had remained with him for a while and hunted, and thought it was time to leave, he called a great council, and after a whole day of deliberation it was agreed that Mienjai--a man of great bravery--and other men should take me and my outfit to another tribe further inland.

We left. The path had been much neglected on account of war; in many places it could be seen but indistinctly, and in other places we had to guess our way through a dense jungle before we found it again.

The third day we lost our way, and after wandering through the forest for quite a while Mienjai saw a path, and said: "Let us follow it. I think it is a hunting-path, and that it leads to one of the villages of the tribe to which we are going." So we took the path, and soon we came to another, which was much used by people. When Mienjai saw this he smiled, and his big mouth seemed to open from ear to ear, and at the same time showed two rows of teeth, the upper and lower incisors, or front teeth, being filed to a point.

After walking in the path for about two hours we came to a village, which barred the way. The village was fenced all round with high poles, upon many of which were skulls of wild beasts. The gate was closed, and we could hear the sound of many voices inside. Mienjai shouted to the people that he was Mienjai, the nephew of Rabolo, that we were friendly, and that they must let us in. Two men came to the gate, and after holding a conversation with Mienjai and my men they let us in.

How strange and wild-looking these two men appeared! Each carried an old-fashioned flint-gun. Their faces and bodies were painted with different colors. Each had round his waist a leopard-skin belt. They looked at me with amazement. I had long black hair, which fell on my shoulders, and this filled them with wonder. The houses of the village were built of the bark of trees; they had no windows and only one door. At the end of the street, which was not very long, there was a great crowd of people, and every man had one of those trade flint-guns. I did not like the looks of the people with those guns, for I would rather see natives armed with spears, even with poisoned arrows, than with guns.

Then we passed by the idol-house, and I saw a big idol, of the size of a human being and representing a woman. How ugly she looked! One of her cheeks was painted yellow, the other white; she held in her hand a stick.

Not far from the idol was a big veranda, under which my men put down their loads and, leaving me alone, went toward the crowd. Soon after, three bunches of plantains, a goat, two fowls, and six eggs were put at my feet.

The King sent word that he could not see me that day. The next day he came and asked me why I came to his country. I replied: "King, I heard your village was filled with great hunters. I want to go into the forest with them, for I wish to kill all the wild beasts I can and stuff them. I want to kill all the birds I can and stuff them. Then I want to catch all the butterflies and insects I can and keep them." The King looked at me with wonder, and spoke to Mienjai, saying, "Does the spirit mean what he says?" After a little while he said, "Yes, I will give to the Moguizi the best hunters of our tribe."

The following morning he called his people and said, "We must provide hunters for the Moguizi who has come to live among us." Then he shouted: "Men who are brave and who are not afraid of wild beasts, come forward. Where is Okili?" shouted the King. Okili then came forward. A fine fellow Okili, I thought, as I surveyed him from head to foot. He was tall and slender. His limbs were strong, he had a keen eye, his body was tattooed all over. Then the King shouted, "Where is Mbango?" Then Mbango came forward. He was quite the opposite of Okili, short of stature and stout. I looked at him and saw that his eyes were full of daring, and that he appeared to be gifted with great determination. He was just the right kind of man I would choose to go with me. "He will be one of your hunters," shouted the King. Then Mbango went by the side of Okili.

"Macondai, where are you?" cried the King. Macondai came forward. His body was covered with scars. He was a great warrior who had seen many fights and had many times been wounded. After I took a look at him he went to where Mbango and Okili were. Then I heard the King call for Niamkala. Niamkala was a gray-headed warrior who had seen many fights. He was a great elephant-hunter, and wore a belt upon which were hung the tails of twenty-three elephants which he had killed. He was a grim-looking warrior and hunter who did not seem to be afraid of anything. After I had eyed him he went to where the other hunters who had preceded him stood. "I do not see Fasiko," said the King. "Where is he?" "Here he comes," shouted the people. Fasiko came forward. He was covered with fetiches and charms. He was a man celebrated for leopard-hunting. He wore a necklace of the teeth of the leopards he had killed. I liked his looks. I said to myself this fellow is cool-headed. After I looked at him he joined the other hunters. "Ogoola!" shouted the King. "Why do you keep in the background? Come forward; be not bashful." Ogoola looked every inch a hunter. He wore a belt adorned with trophies of the wild animals he had killed. "I do not see Obindji," said the King, inquiringly, to his people. They answered: "He will arrive this evening. He was not at the plantation when you sent word." Then suddenly they all shouted, "Here he comes!" Obindji was a favorite slave of the King, a mighty hunter, and he looked like it. His front teeth were filed sharp to a point. Obindji was somewhat lame, for he had been badly wounded years before by a leopard he had shot, but which had strength enough to spring upon him, fortunately falling dead as its claws fastened in his legs.

"Where is Makooga?" shouted the King. "Here I am," responded a small man in the crowd. After pushing his way through, he stood before the King. He was very short, not over five feet three inches in height. "Moguizi," said the King to me, "never mind his size; his heart knows no fear; he is a good shot; he is daring, and one of the best hunters we have. No one can come nearer game than he does. He is like a snake." Makooga went where the other hunters were.

"A fine set of fellows they are," I said to myself as I looked at them all. Then the King said, "Okili must always be by the side of the Moguizi."

Then I said to them: "Men with brave hearts, be not afraid of me. I am your friend. We are going to live in the forest and hunt wild beasts together. You are men; I can see it by your faces. Come to my house. I have something for you--beads for your wives and brass rods for you, and powder also." They all shouted! "You are a good Moguizi. We will go with you wherever you say, and we will kill big game. You will see if we are men or not."

Then the King said: "These men will follow you wherever you go, Moguizi. They know every tree, every path of the forest. They know where the game is to be found." Then, addressing them, he said: "Go make your guns ready; see that their flints are right so that they do not miss fire, and cook food enough for three or four days. Be here in two days." They followed me to my house, and I gave to each what I promised. At night I called the King, gave him a brand-new flint-gun, two brass kettles, ten brass rods, and several bunches of beads. He was delighted, and took hold of my foot as a token of submission, which meant that he would obey me.

PAUL DU CHAILLU.

HAROLD WHITE'S PERIL.

BY G. T. FERRIS.

"I tell you, Captain Heald, this is an awful responsibility you're shouldering. Not one, but two hundred lives hang on it. General Hull could never have meant his orders to be absolute. At such times something must be left to the commanding officer. He must know better than a superior two hundred miles away."

The swarthy brows of Kinzie, the Indian trader, who knew redskin nature better than any other man at Fort Dearborn, were puckered with anger and contempt. It was the hour for a quick-witted and resolute soldier, not for a timid martinet, the slave of the letter and not of the spirit of his orders. The commander of that little garrison of fifty, many of whom were non-effectives, was "a round peg in a square hole"--and a hole, too, that yawned big and deep for human life.

"You're not a military man," was the peevish answer. "My business is to obey orders and not reason on them. The General has determined to withdraw all garrisons from outlying posts, and I must do my duty at any risk."

"At risk to yourself, yes! but not to helpless women and children and a lot of sick soldiers not able to pull a trigger or stagger five miles in a broiling sun," John Kinzie retorted, quickly. And pointing through the gate of the palisade, he continued: "Look at those savages on the beach watching like vultures. A thousand lie within call of a war-whoop. How many scalps would remain at the end of an hour if you put yourself in their hands? D'ye think Black Partridge would have said those words last night if there had been a ray of hope?[1] You have ample stores and ammunition, and can hold out for a month or more behind these timber walls. Anything else is madness. As for me," said the trader, with an air of noble pride, "the danger is less. So I don't speak for myself or mine. I have dealt with every tribe for two hundred miles about. I have never tricked a savage in trade. They have eaten of my dish and drunk of my cup, and found shelter under my roof. My wife has been a guardian angel to their sick and needy. But be sure of one thing: friendship for the Kinzies will never save the life of any other pale-face at the hands of a redskin."

[1] Captain Heald, commanding Fort Dearborn, had received despatches by an Indian runner from General Hull, commanding the Americans at Detroit in the war of 1812, directing him to destroy his surplus ammunition, divide his stores among the Indians as a peace-offering, evacuate the post, and, trusting his safety to a savage escort, fall back within the American lines. On the day after the council where he had, in opposition to the remonstrances of his junior officers, announced his purpose of prompt obedience, Black Partridge, a Pottawattamie chief who had always been a friend of the Americans, stalked into his quarters, and threw the medal he had received from Congress on the table with these words: "Father, I come to give you back the medal I wear. It was given me by the Americans in token of our friendship. But our young men are resolved to bathe their hands in the blood of the whites. I cannot hold them back, and I will not wear a token of peace while I am compelled to act as an enemy."

"Mr. Kinzie must decide for himself whether he will accompany the troops or not if he is so sure of his Indian friends," said the Captain, stung by the words of the other. "We march at nine to-morrow morning," and he turned on his heel into the parade-ground. As he passed through the groups of settlers who had sought shelter in the fort, and noticed the look of foreboding stamped on every face, he was almost inclined to change his purpose, though the soldiers were even then dismantling the arsenal and knocking in the heads of the spirit-barrels.

John Kinzie walked rapidly to the head of a sand knoll which gave him a wide view of the scene. Groups of dark figures were scattered over the shining beach as if they were statues of copper, or they waded in the ripples of the beautiful blue lake, throwing water at one another with loud laughter. One could scarcely have fancied that close to the edge of this sportive mood the spirit of murder hid in ambush with cocked rifle and sharp hatchet. A mile away lay the Indian camp, which had grown five times bigger within as many days, like an assemblage of huge ant-hills, with the ants thickly swarming about. But it must be time for Harold White to return, and he passed to the rear of the palisades, where the men, rolling the casks through the underground sally-port, were emptying the powder and whiskey into the river. Just across the stream opposite the fort, set in the midst of green trees and fields, were his home and warehouses. He had sent his young clerk, a lad of fifteen, with a message to Mrs. Kinzie, for he had preferred to have his family stay in their own house till the last moment.

"Did ye ever hear tell of such a 'fool' business as this, Bill?" he heard one soldier say to another, shaking his fist in the direction of the fort. "I guess mighty few of us will hev as much hair on our heads this time to-morrer."

"I don't keer for myself," said the other, gloomily; "a soldier's got to buck agin the wuss thing as comes without sayin' a word. But I'm a-thinkin' of the old 'oman and the little gals."

Mr. Kinzie saw the canoe shoot from under a clump of bushes and skim swiftly across the narrow river, to-day a black and unattractive body of muddy water, but at that time a pellucid stream where fish leaped to the angler's bait.

"To-pee-nee-be's messenger has come," said Harold, "and brings word that the two big canoes will cross to-night from St. Joseph to take off the family at sunrise."

"Thank God!" cried the trader, fervently, for sure as he felt for himself of the comparatively friendly feeling of the savage horde gathered there, he knew Indian nature too well to trust it when mad with the thirst for blood-shed. The chief of the St. Joseph band had a few days before warned him of treachery, and offered to convey his wife and children across the lake to his own village. "Harold, you must stay with Mrs. Kinzie in the canoes," said he. "I shall march with the troops, and do what I can. Perhaps I may have some influence till if comes to the worst. I depend on you. I know what your wish is, but you must forego it now. You've had your taste of Indians already. Remember, you only escaped by the skin of your teeth last spring."

"Yes," was Harold's reply; "and I shall never be happy till I've--" He bit the words off short, but the boy's smooth face was a man's in its stamp of passion and resolve, for the frontier lads often got old in will and courage before their chins grew beards. Some of the legends of boys' doings in the annals of Indian warfare are as stirring as the stories of Homer's heroes. Harold had had righteous cause for his feelings. Four mouths before, on a bright spring day, a score of Pottawattomies had entered the house of his uncle, about two miles up the river from the fort, and asked for food. Their tongues were friendly, but their eyes sullen.

"Harold," said his uncle Lee, "go over the river with Beaubien and feed the horses," but his look said, "Paddle as fast as you can to the fort for help." The Frenchman and he had scarcely gotten well into the stream before there came the spit of bullets, and then came a continuous crackle, with the shrieking of women and children, and then silence. Harold, left friendless, found a protector in Mr. Kinzie; but his heart flamed always hot with that memory. The Kinzie family would be as safe without him, and he was swept by his rash fancies as if his will were a soap-bubble.

The sun hung in the sky, on the fatal August morning, a burnished copper ball. Scarcely a breath heaved the dark surface of the lake, and no laughter of light danced in the sparkle of a crest. A pallor lay on the sandy levels and ridges of the beach similar to the upturned face of some one dead. Nature had set the stage for the tragedy of man. The little column left the fort at nine o'clock, a small company of friendly Indians in the van, then the caravan of transport wagons, loaded with rations and with women, children, and sick soldiers, then a few armed settlers, then a meagre uniformed platoon of less than two-score fighting-men. A double column of Pottawattomies formed on either side. As they began to move, the soldiers presented arms to the flag fluttering down from its staff. They might have spoken the words of the gladiators when they trooped into the arena in olden time, "_Ave, Cæsar! morituri te salutamus_" (Hail, Cæsar! we, the death-doomed, salute you). It is even a historical fact that the band played the Dead March when that funeral procession tramped out on the road of destiny between walls of living bronze.

Harold, armed with a double-barrelled rifle, had hidden behind a big sand knoll near the gate. When John Kinzie helped his family into their frail barks of safety he had marked the absence of the lad, but there was no time to think further or search, for there was much business afoot. Harold saw his guardian now expostulating with Indian chiefs, now urging some special course on Captain Heald, who marched with his detachment, now encouraging the trembling women in the wagons. And so the column wended its slow course over the burning sand away from the fort.

Suddenly came other sounds than the distant drone of trumpet and tuba. Surely that was gun-firing. There could be no mistake, indeed, for punctuating the muffled roar was heard the long-drawn "wow-wow-wow" of the whooping savages. The hour had come. A mile and a half from the fort, where now stands a memorial tablet under an old cottonwood-tree in the thick of the princeliest residences of a great city, the cloud had burst. From behind the sand ridge which divided the prairie from the beach five hundred warriors had sprung suddenly to their feet, like arrows drawn to the head, and poured in a hail-storm of bullets, to which the treacherous escort added their quota. Harold had stood for some time spellbound by his own thoughts and fears, but the trance was now broken. He ran hot-foot toward the scene of the struggle. Each step brought the sights and sounds of the massacre clearer. Shrieks, yells, the rumble of the firing, dark forms leaping like madmen with uplifted arms, or bending like wild-beasts over objects on the sand. It was a tumult of horror beyond words. After a little the confusion lessened, and there was a pause, followed by the howl of triumph which is the Indian's pæan of victory. Harold, primped out by his wild run, had hidden behind a sand hill for breath, within a stone's-throw of the scene, for the savages, absorbed in their work of death, had not noticed his advancing figure. One wagon, from which now came the wail of a sick child, had escaped their fierce handiwork, and three warriors with bare tomahawks bounded toward it. The boy, taking steady aim, discharged both barrels of his rifle, and one of the red men fell. Every nerve tense with excitement, Harold sprang forward with his clubbed gun, and, catching a tomahawk cut on the barrel, dashed the butt into the head of the nearest savage. As the latter fell with closing eyes, it was with a thrill of satisfaction, strangely blended with awe, as if some higher power had struck by his hand, that the boy recognized the face of the leader of the savages who had slain his uncle and his family. The next moment he was half throttled by a clutch about his throat.

"Boy my prisoner; make no noise," he heard as the iron grip loosened. It was the voice of Black Partridge, who, an unwilling actor in the tragedy, had by his craft, as afterwards turned out, saved several lives on this occasion. Mr. Kinzie, Captain Heald, and another officer, with their wives and a few others, had escaped the slaughter, and were captives. As for the rest, their mutilated bodies lay dead on the sands down to the very water's brink, where their road had been.

"Perhaps not able to save Harold, for boy kill warriors," continued the friendly chief. "Better crawl through grass like Indian back to fort, and hide in cellar till dark; then swim cross to Kinzie's." So he led his charge to the edge of the rank prairie-grass with, "See Black Partridge bym-by."

Bending in his covert, Harold retreated stealthily as a coyote to the empty fort. As he passed through the gate into the dismal solitude, with all its suggestions of recent life and cheer, his heart quivered afresh with the sense of what it all meant. He knew the subterranean secrets of the fort well; and knew, too, that some of the Indians were likely to stray back at any time. Both block-houses of the post had deep stoned cellars, from which were exits into the underground sally-port opening on the river bank. He could easily hide himself here among the rubbish and lumber, and perhaps find something to eat. He did indeed discover some scraps of bread and bacon, and, better yet, a retreat to elude the keenest eye down in that dusky cavern. As the day waxed the heat grew stifling, but there was a well in the cellar which relieved his thirst. In fumbling about the place for the pump-handle, he found several barrels apparently undisturbed. He marvelled what they could be, and by some blind instinct did not make his hiding-place here, but selected a spot protected by a mound of empty boxes close to a little timber gate which opened into the sally-port.