The Sun Maid: A Story of Fort Dearborn

"They are all unfitted to take care of themselves, though the girl has the best sense of the lot. The Fort is always overfull. They would be happier by themselves, and it will b...

As homes went in those early days, when Illinois was only a territory, and in that sparsely settled locality, it was a most roomy and comfortable abode. The childless couple whi...

"Shucks!" groaned the pioneer, as these words reached him where he stood beside the Sun Maid, eager to hear what she could tell him of the lad Gaspar. "Shucks! I've had a right...

Wahneenah did not lift her eyes. For the moment an unaccustomed fear held her spellbound, and it was the Sun Maid's happy cry which roused her at length, and restored them all t...

Under the incentive of love and excitement--heightened by a tinge of jealousy--all Wahneenah's former skill in horsemanship returned to her. When the Snake-Who-Leaps lifted the...

"Even a boy may have to do a man's work, this day, Gaspar Keith. I wish that you were strong enough to hold a gun; but you have been taught how to use an arrow. Is your quiver w...

"Not all because I do not like it; but because I am almost a man and I have found the chance of my life. There is one here, a _voyageur_, with his boat. The finest vessel I ever...

The dead son of the Woman-Who-Mourns had never been disobedient, and small Kitty Briscoe had never obeyed anybody. She had laughed and frolicked her way through all rules and ov...

Three abreast, the chestnut in the middle, the fugitives from the doomed village of Muck-otey-pokee rode like the wind in a straight, unswerving line across the prairie. After t...

"We can rest a little now, Kit. We are so far away that nobody could catch us if they tried. They won't try, any way, I guess. They'll think we'll go back."

"She is a spirit. I know that nothing can harm her. Yet many things can harm me. I have no desire to suffer any further anxiety. Therefore--this. My Girl-Child, my White Papoose...

Despite a really warm and hospitable heart, it was not pleasant for Mercy Smith to find that her submissive husband had taken upon himself to keep open house in this fashion for...

Fast it was. The faithful creature recognized the burden he carried, and his clean, small feet reeled off the distance like magic, till the village by the lake was left far behi...

"I tell you what, Chicago's a-growing. First _we_ come; then Gaspar; then Kitty and him get married; and I go to keeping tavern in the parson's house; and his son, One, goes up...

Wahneenah had lived so entirely within the seclusion of her own lodge that she had become almost a stranger in the village. It was long since she had travelled so far as the iso...

"The Black Partridge has served his white friends faithfully. He should now remember his own people, and rest his heart among them," said the White Pelican as he rode homeward b...

"What shall we do to celebrate your birthday, my child?" asked Grandmother Kitty, early in that first week of October on whose Saturday the young girl would reach to the dignity...

But the time passed on and the rumors died away, or ended in nothing more serious than had always disturbed the dwellers in that lonely land. Now and again a friendly, peace-lov...

"Oh, Kit; I can't bear to leave you behind! It breaks my old heart all to flinders!" lamented Abel, laboriously climbing into the great wagon which Jim and Pete were now to draw...

The glory of a brilliant August sunset crimsoned the tops of the sandhills on the west and the waters of the broad lake on the east; but if the preoccupied Indian observed this...

Not many hours after Black Partridge turned his back upon Muck-otey-pokee, all its fighting men, with their squaws and children, also left it, as their chief had foreseen they w...

Kitty had no time to ask further explanation. Already there was an ox team driving up to the cabin and, scanning the prairies, she saw others on the way, so merely stopped to cr...

"Well, I'm beat! I don't know what to do with myself. Out there to the clearing I was just crazy wild to get back to town; and now I'm here I'm nigh dead with plumb lonesomeness...

"But, my dear, do you consider? We are growing old, even we, who have never yet had time to realize it--till now. There are younger men, plenty of them. Your counsels at home----"