Part 2
When the skies cleared Wa-be-no-je piled more rocks over the entrance to the cave and started homeward with a light heart. Weary miles were traversed before he could see the faint light on the horizon against the sky at night. During two nights he heard wolves howling in the distance, and the next night they were much closer. They gradually closed in toward him and he knew that danger had come. He had but two good arrows. The others were lost or broken. He came to a small stream and waded it for a mile or so to throw his hungry followers off his trail, but they soon found it again. Yellow eyeballs reflected his firelight while he slept. Once he loosed one of the precious arrows to save his life. The pack immediately fell upon their wounded comrade and devoured him. Their hunger was only partially appeased and they kept close to Wa-be-no-je until the following evening. He knew that unless he could find some means of shaking them off he would never see Taheta or his people again. He decided to attempt to pick his way through the end of a wide marsh, believing that his pursuers would not follow him into the water. If he could get safely across, he would be able to elude them.
The swamp was full of quaking bogs, and near the middle the water was quite deep. His progress was impeded by the soft mud and decayed vegetation on the bottom, and the further he went the chances became more desperate. One foot sank suddenly in the soft ooze and then the other. He could neither retreat nor go ahead. He had reached a mass of quicksand, and with every attempt to extricate himself he sank a little lower. He clutched the ends of a few sodden grasses and held them for some time, but the stagnant murky waters slowly closed over him and he was gone.
The baffled wolves howled along the margins of the marsh for a while but soon disappeared, like all enemies whose quarry has met finality. The little fire on the horizon flared up brightly, as though fresh sticks had been piled upon it, and gleamed through the darkness brighter than ever before. It faded away in the gray of the morning and its watcher followed the steep trail down the side of Wud-ju-na-gow to rest.
Wa-be-no-je’s silent departure from the world left hardly a ripple in the marsh. It is human to cherish the hope, or fondly believe, that some store of gold, or grandeur of achievement--some sculptured monument, or service to mankind--will stand at our place of exit and be eloquent while the ages last, but the Waters of Oblivion hide well their secrets. Beneath them are neither pride nor vanity. The primordial slime from which we came reclaims without pomp or jewelled vesture, and if there be a Great Beyond, poor Wa-be-no-je may reach it from the quicksand as safely as he who becomes dust within marble walls.
The early snows came and the nightly fires on Wud-ju-na-gow still glowed. Only one guardian sat beside them, for Wa-be-no-je’s people now believed that he would never return. Hope still abided in Taheta’s loyal heart, and night after night she climbed the shelving steeps and built her fire. One cold, stormy night she sat huddled in her blanket and listened to the north wind. The snow swirled around her and toward morning the light was gone. The next day they found the rigid little form in the blanket and buried it below the ashes of her fire.
Today the Fireweed, that ever haunts the burnt places, lifts its slender stalk above the spot, and it may be that the soul of faithful Taheta lurks among the tender pink blossoms--a halo that may be seen from the dark waters of the distant marsh.
III
THE HERON’S POOL
III
THE HERON’S POOL
The pool was far back from the big marshes through which the lazy current of the river wound. It was in one of those secluded nooks that the seeping water finds for itself when it would hide in secret retreats and form a little world of its own. It was bordered by slushy grasses and small willows; its waters spread silently among the bulrushes, lily pads and thick brush tangles. A few ghostly sycamores and poplars protruded above the undergrowth, and the intricate network of wild grape-vines concealed broken stumps that were mantled with moss. The placid pool was seldom ruffled, for the dense vegetation protected it from the winds. Wandering clouds were mirrored in its limpid depths. Water-snakes made silvery trails across it. Sinister shadows of hawks’ wings sometimes swept by, and often the splash of a frog sent little rings out over the surface. Opalescent dragon-flies hovered among the weeds and small turtles basked in the sun-light along the margins.
The Voices of the Little Things were in this abode of tranquillity--the gentle sounds that fill nature’s sanctuaries with soft music. There were contented songs of feathered visitors, distant cries of crows beyond the tree-tops, faint echoes of a cardinal, rejoicing in the deep woods, and the drowsy hum of insects--the myriad little tribes that sing in the unseen aisles of the grasses.
One spring a gray old heron winged his way slowly over the pool, and, after a few uncertain turns over the trees, wearily settled among the rushes. After stalking about in the labyrinth of weeds along the shallow edges for some time, he took his station on a dead branch that protruded from the water near the shore, and solemnly contemplated his surroundings.
His plumage was tattered, and he bore the record of the years he had spent on the marshy wastes along the river. His eye had lost its lustre, and the delicate blue that had adorned the wings of his youth had faded to a pale ashen gray. The tired pinions were slightly frayed--the wings hung rather loosely in repose, and the lanky legs carried scars and crusty gray scales that told of vicissitudes in the battle for existence. He looked long and curiously at a round white object on the bottom near his low perch. The round object had a history, but its story did not come within the sphere of the heron’s interests, and he returned to his meditations on the gnarled limb. He may have dreamed of far-off shores and happy homes in distant tree-tops. A memory of a mate that flew devotedly by his side, but could not go all the way, may have abided with him. The peace of windless waters brooded in this quiet haven. It was a refuge from the storms and antagonisms of the outer world, its store of food was abundant, and in it he was content to pass his remaining days.
When night came his still figure melted into the darkness. A fallen luna moth, whose wet wings might faintly reflect the starlight, would sometimes tempt him, and he would listen languidly to the lonely cries of an owl that lived in one of the sycamores. The periodic visits of coons and foxes, that prowled stealthily in the deep shadows, and craftily searched the wet grasses for small prey, did not disturb him. They well knew the power of the gray old warrior’s cruel bill. All his dangerous enemies were far away. The will-o’-the-wisps that spookily and fitfully hovered along the tops of the rushes, and the erratic flights of the fire-flies, did not mar his serenity. He was spending his old age in comfort and repose.
There is a certain air, or quality, about certain spots which is indefinable. An elusive and intangible impression, an idea, or a story, may become inseparably associated with a particular place. With a recurrence of the thought, or the memory of the story there always comes the involuntary mental picture of the physical environment with which it is interwoven. This association of thought and place is in most cases entirely individual, and is often a subtle sub-consciousness--more of a relationship of the soul, than the mind, to such an environment. Something in or near some particular spot that imparts a peculiar and distinctive character to it, or inspires some dominant thought or emotion, constitutes the “genius” of that place. The Genius of the Place may be a legend, an unwritten romance, a memory of some event, an imaginary apparition, an unaccountable sound, the presence of certain flowers or odors, a deformed tree, a strange inhabitant, or any thought or thing that would always bring it to the mind.
When the heron came to the pool the Genius of the Place was old Topago, a chief of the Pottawattomies. A great many years ago he lived in a little hut, rudely built of logs and elm bark, on an open space a few hundred feet from the pool. The fortunes of his tribe had steadily declined, and their sun was setting. After the coming of the white man, war and sickness had decimated his people. The wild game began to disappear and hunger stalked among the little villages. The old chief brooded constantly over the sorrows of his race. As the years rolled on his melancholy deepened. He sought isolation in the deep woods and built his lonely dwelling near the pool to pass his last years in solitude. His was the anguish of heart that comes when hope has fled. Occasionally one of the few faithful followers who were left would come to the little cabin and leave supplies of corn and dried meat, but beyond this he had no visitors. His contact with his tribe had ceased.
One stormy night, when the north wind howled around the frail abode, and the spirits of the cold were sighing in the trunks of the big trees, the aged Indian sat over his small fire and held his medicine bag in his shrivelled hands. Its potent charm had carried him safely through many perils, and he now asked of it the redemption of his people. That night the wind ceased and he felt the presence of his good manitous in the darkness. They told him that the magic of his medicine was still strong. If he would watch the reflections in the pool, there would sometime appear among them the form of a crescent moon that would foretell a great change in the fortunes of his race, but he must see the reflection with his own eyes.
In the spring, as soon as the ice had melted, he began his nightly vigils at the foot of an ancient pine that overhung the water. Through weary years he gazed with dimmed eyes upon the infinite and inscrutable lights that gleamed and trembled in the pool. Many times he saw the new moon shine in the twilights of the west, and saw the old crescent near the horizon before the dawn, but no crescent was ever reflected from the zenith into the still depths below. Only the larger moons rode into the night skies above him. His aching heart fought with despair and distrust of his tribal gods. The wrinkles deepened on his wan face. The cold nights of spring and fall bent the decrepit figure and whitened the withered locks. Time dealt harshly with the faithful watcher, nobly guarding his sacred trust.
One spring a few tattered shreds of a blanket clung to the rough roots. Heavy snow masses around the pine had slipped into the pool sometime during the winter, and carried with them a helpless burden. The melting ice had let it into the sombre depths below. The birds sang as before, the leaves came and went, and Mother Nature continued her eternal rhythm.
During a March gale the ancient pine tottered and fell across the open water. In the grim procession of the years it became sodden and gradually settled into the oozy bottom. Only the gnarled and decayed branch--the perch of the old heron--remained above the surface.
One night in early fall, when there was a tinge of frost in the air, and the messages of the dying year were fluttering down to the water from the overhanging trees, the full moon shone resplendent directly above the pool. The old heron turned his tapering head up toward it for a moment, plumed his straggling feathers for a while, nonchalantly gazed at the white skull that caught the moon’s light below the water near his perch, and relapsed into immobility. A rim of darkness crept over the edge of the moon, and the earth’s shadow began to steal slowly across the silver disk. The soft beams that glowed on the trees and grasses became dimmed and they retreated into the shadows. The darkened orb was almost eclipsed. Only a portion of it was left, but far down in the chill mystery of the depths of the pool, among countless stars, was reflected a crescent moon.
The magic of Topago’s medicine was still potent. The hour for the redemption of the red man had come, but he was no more. The mantle of the Genius of the Place had fallen upon the old heron. He was the keeper of the secret of his pool.
IV
THE STORY OF THE STREAM
IV
THE STORY OF THE STREAM
The bistre-colored waters of French Creek seep sluggishly out of the ancient peat beds far away in the country back of the dunes. Countless tiny rivulets of transparent golden brown creep through the low land among the underbrush and mingle with the gentle current that whispers in the deep grasses, ripples against decayed branches and fallen trunks, hides under masses of gnarled roots and projecting banks, and enters the long sinuous ravine that winds through the woods and sand-hills. The ravine ends abruptly at the broad shore of the lake. The stream spreads out over the beach and tints the incoming surf with wondrous hues.
In the daytime occasional gleams of light from the gliding water can be seen through the small openings in the labyrinths of undergrowth and between the tall tree trunks that crowd the shadowy defile. At night there are tremulous reflections of the moon among the thick foliage. Strange ghostly beams touch the boles of the solemn pines and sycamores and filter into the sombre recesses.
The dramas of human life leave romance behind them. Its halo hovers over these darkened woods, for it was here that the beautiful Indian girl, Omemee, was brought by her dusky Pottawattomie lover, in the moon of falling leaves, and it was here that the threads of their fate were woven nearly a hundred years ago.
Red Owl first saw her among the wild blackberry bushes near the village of her people. She had responded to his entreaties with shy glances, and after many visits and much negotiation, her father, a wrinkled old chief, had consented to their union. Omemee’s savage charms had brought many suitors to her father’s wigwam. Her graceful willowy figure, long raven hair, musical voice, dark luminous eyes and gentle ways had made her a favorite of her village. She was called the dove in the language of her tribe. There was sorrow when she went away.
Red Owl’s prowess as a hunter, his skill in the rude athletic sports of the village, displayed on his frequent visits during the wooing, had won the admiration of the old warrior. Among the many bundles of valuable pelts that were borne along the Great Sauk Trail to the traders’ posts, the largest were usually those of Red Owl. The fire-water of the white man did not lure him to disaster as it did many of his red brothers. He always transacted his business quickly and returned from the posts with the ammunition, traps and other supplies for which he had exchanged his furs.
For a year he quietly accumulated a secret hoard of selected skins, which he laid before the door of the fond father as the marriage offering. The lovers disappeared on the trail that was to lead them to their home. For five days they travelled through the dunes and primeval forests. They came down the trail that crossed French Creek, climbed out of the ravine, and entered the village of Red Owl’s people. The wigwams were scattered along the stretch of higher ground among the trees. Omemee was cordially welcomed and soon grew accustomed to her new environment.
For many years the young men of the tribe had trapped muskrats, beaver and mink along the creek and in the swamps beyond its headwaters. Small furred animals were abundant for many miles around, and, during the fur season, the trappers were dispersed over a wide extent of territory.
When “Peg Leg” Carr came into the dune country the only human trails he found were those of the red men. He came alone and built a cabin on the creek not far from the Indian Village. Peg Leg may have still cherished a secret longing for human society which he was not willing to admit, even to himself. He had abandoned his last habitat for the ostensible reason that “thar was too many people ’round.” He came from about a hundred miles back on the Sauk Trail. After a family disagreement he had left his wife and two sons to their own devices in the wilderness, and was not heard of for nearly ten years. He suddenly appeared one morning, stumping along the trail, with his left knee fitted to the top of a hickory support. The lower part of the leg was gone, and he explained its absence by declaring that it had been “bit off.” The time-worn pleasantry seemed to amuse him, and no amount of coaxing would elicit further details. There was a deep ugly scar in the left side of his neck. His vocal chords had been injured and he could talk only in hoarse whispers. He said that his throat had been “gouged out.” Somebody or something had nearly wrecked Peg Leg physically, but the story, whatever it was, remained locked in his bosom. He admitted that he had “been to sea,” but beyond that no facts were obtainable.
After a brief sojourn at his old home he shouldered his pack and started west. When he arrived at French Creek he spent several days in looking the country over before deciding on the location of his cabin. He was a good-natured old fellow and the Indians did not particularly resent his intrusion, even when he began to set a line of traps along the creek. The small animals were so numerous that one trapper more or less made little difference, and he got on very well with his red neighbors. They rather pitied his infirmities and were disposed to make allowances. He was over seventy and apparently harmless.
When the old man had accumulated a small stock of pelts it was his custom to carry them to a trading post located about forty miles back on the trail and exchange them for supplies for his simple housekeeping and other necessities. These trips often consumed ten days, as his loads were heavy and he was compelled to travel slowly. On his return, when he came to the rude log bridge over which the trail crossed the creek in the ravine, he would sometimes wearily lay his pack down and pound on the timbers with his hickory stump as a signal to those above. He was unable to reach them with his impaired voice. Somebody in the wigwams usually heard him and came down to help the exhausted old trapper carry his burden up the steep incline. After resting awhile he would trudge on to his cabin.
A few years after the advent of Peg Leg a troop of soldiers arrived and built a fort. For strategic reasons the commander of the government post at Detroit decided to keep a small garrison at the end of the lake. A spot was cleared on the bluff and two small brass cannon were mounted in the block-house inside the log stockade. The tops of the surrounding trees were cut away so that the guns would command the trail from where it entered the north side of the ravine to the point at which it disappeared around a low hill south of the fort.
The French Creek Trail was a branch of the Great Sauk Trail, which was the main thoroughfare from the Detroit post to the mouth of Chicago river. It was joined near the headwaters of the St. Joseph and Kankakee rivers, in what is now northeastern Indiana, by another trail that followed the north banks of the Kankakee from the Illinois country. The sinuous routes had been used from time immemorable. They were the established highways of the red men and the arteries of their simple commerce. Thousands of moccasined feet traversed them on peaceful errands, and grim war parties sometimes moved swiftly along the numberless forest paths that connected with the main trails. There was a net-work of these all through the Indian country. Trees twisted and bent in a peculiar way, which we now often see in the woods, were landmarks left by the makers of various small trails that were travelled infrequently.
Soon after the fort was built at French Creek, Pierre Chenault came and established a trading post near the village. He was followed by a number of settlers who built log houses along the edge of the bluff. The red man’s fatherland was invaded. The civilization of the white man--or the lack of it--had come, with its attending evils of strong waters and organized rapacity. The waves of an alien race, with strange tongues and new weapons of steel, had broken over him. His means of subsistence dwindled. His heritage was passing to the sway of the despoiler.
The Indians loitered around Pierre Chenault’s trading post, bartered their few valuables for fire-water, and neglected the pursuits that had made them happy and prosperous. Chenault was a half-breed. His father belonged to that hardy race of French-Canadian voyageurs who had broken the paths of the wilderness in the north country, and penetrated the fastnesses of the territory of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. His mother was an Ojibwa on the south shore of Lake Superior. He was about forty, with a lean and hardened frame. His straight black hair was beginning to be streaked with gray, and fell to his shoulders. Piercing eyes looked out from under the heavy brows with an expression of low cunning, and his face carried the stamp of villainy. He was a mongrel, and in his case the mixture was a failure. He inherited the evil traits of both races and none of the virtues of either.
The creek was now practically abandoned as a trapping ground by the Indians. With the exception of Red Owl and Peg Leg, who divided the few miles of the stream, the trappers had sought other regions that were less disturbed. The dwellers in the wigwams contemplated a general removal to a more congenial habitat. Their neighbors were getting too numerous for comfort, and their ways of life were meeting with too much interference. They did not object to Peg Leg, but he was all of their white brothers that they felt they needed.
As the fur grew scarcer Red Owl rather resented the rivalry of the old man’s interests, and occasionally appropriated an otter or mink, when he passed Peg Leg’s traps, and had found nothing in his own. He probably lulled his conscience with the idea that the animals naturally belonged to the Indians, and that Peg Leg’s privileges were a form of charity that need not be extended to the point of his own self-denial.
Many times the half-breed had looked longingly on the quiet-eyed Omemee when she came to his post. He coveted Red Owl’s savage jewel. Wickedness fermented in his depraved mind, but he was too wise to make advances. He knew of Red Owl’s surreptitious visits to Peg Leg’s traps and laid his plans with far-seeing craft. One still February morning he saw him go into the ravine and start up the creek on the ice. He seized his rifle and crept through the thick timber and undergrowth, away from the creek, paralleling the course taken by the unsuspecting Indian. After going a mile or so Red Owl stopped near the projecting roots of a large elm. One of Peg Leg’s traps was there and his rival was soon engaged in killing and extracting a mink from the steel jaws of the trap. The half-breed stole up to within a hundred yards. A report rang in the crisp air and a bullet crashed into the back of the Indian’s head. The murderer left no trail near the frozen creek. He made a wide detour, returned to his post, after hiding his rifle in the snow, and awaited results.
A couple of hours later Peg Leg hobbled along the white water course to inspect his traps. He followed Red Owl’s trail and came upon the still form lying in the blood-stained snow on the ice. He speculated for some time over the mystery and went to the settlement to report what he had found.