Children's Literature Part 148

"What do you here, child?" he said, hurriedly. "Go quickly, before the British reach us, and tell your father that, Quaker or no Quaker, he shall ride to Was.h.i.+ngton, on the Brandywine, and tell him that we, but one hundred men, are besieged by three hundred British cavalry in Chichester Meeting-house, with but little powder left. Tell him to make all haste to us."

Turning, he hastened into the meeting-house, now converted into a fort, and as the doors closed behind him Betty saw a black muzzle protruding from every window.

With trembling fingers the little maid picked up her sampler, and as the thud of horses' hoofs grew louder and louder, she ran fearfully into the house, locked and bolted the ma.s.sive door, and then flying up the broad stairs, she seated herself in a little window overlooking the meeting-house yard. She had gone into the house none too soon. Up the road, with their red coats gleaming and their harness jangling, was sweeping a detachment of British cavalry, never stopping until they reached the meeting-house--and then it was too late.

A sheet of flame shot out from the wall before them, and half a dozen troopers fell lifeless to the ground, and half a dozen riderless horses galloped wildly down the road. The leader shouted a sharp command, and the whole troop retreated in confusion.

Betty drew back shuddering, and when she brought herself to look again the troopers had dismounted, had surrounded the meeting-house, and were pouring volley after volley at its doors and windows. Then for the first time Betty thought of the officer's message, and remembered that the safety of the Americans depended upon her alone, for her father was away, no neighbor within reach, and without powder she knew they could not resist long.

Could she save them? All her stern Quaker blood rose at the thought, and stealing softly to the paddock behind the barn, she saddled Daisy and led her through the bars into the wood road, which opened into the highway just around the bend. Could she but pa.s.s the pickets without discovery there would be little danger of pursuit; then there would be only the long ride of eight miles ahead of her.

Just before the narrow wood road joined the broader highway Betty mounted Daisy by means of a convenient stump, and starting off at a gallop, had just turned the corner when a voice shouted "Halt!" and a shot whistled past her head. Betty screamed with terror, and bending over, brought down her riding-whip with all her strength upon Daisy, then, turning for a moment, saw three troopers hurriedly mounting.

Her heart sank within her, but, beginning to feel the excitement of the chase, she leaned over and patting Daisy on the neck, encouraged her to do her best. Onward they sped. Betty, her curly hair streaming in the wind, the color now mounting to, now retreating from her cheeks, led by five hundred yards.

But Daisy had not been used for weeks, and already felt the unusual strain. Now they thundered over Naaman's Creek, now over Concord, with the nearest pursuer only four hundred yards behind; and now they raced beside the clear waters of Beaver Brook, and as Betty dashed through its shallow ford, the thud of horse's hoofs seemed just over her shoulder.

Betty, at first sure of success, now knew that unless in some way she could throw her pursuers off her track she was surely lost. Just then she saw ahead of her a fork in the road, the lower branch leading to the Brandywine, the upper to the Birmingham Meeting-house. Could she but get the troopers on the upper road while she took the lower, she would be safe; and, as if in answer to her wish, there flashed across her mind the remembrance of the old cross-road which, long disused, and with its entrance hidden by drooping boughs, led from a point in the upper road just out of sight of the fork down across the lower, and through the valley of the Brandywine. Could she gain this road unseen she still might reach Was.h.i.+ngton.

Urging Daisy forward, she broke just in time through the dense growth which hid the entrance, and sat trembling, hidden behind a dense growth of tangled vines, while she heard the troopers thunder by. Then, riding through the rustling woods, she came at last into the open, and saw spread out beneath her the beautiful valley of the Brandywine, dotted with the white tents of the Continental army.

Starting off at a gallop, she dashed around a bend in the road into the midst of a group of officers riding slowly up from the valley.

"Stop, little maiden, before you run us down," said one, who seemed to be in command. "Where are you going in such hot haste?"

"Oh, sir," said Betty, reining in Daisy, "can thee tell me where I can find General Was.h.i.+ngton?"

"Yes, little Quakeress," said the officer who had first spoken to her; "I am he. What do you wish?"

Betty, too exhausted to be surprised, poured forth her story in a few broken sentences, and (hearing as if in a dream the hasty commands for the rescue of the soldiers in Chichester Meeting-house) fell forward in her saddle, and, for the first time in her life, fainted, worn out by her n.o.ble ride.

A few days later, when recovering from the shock of her long and eventful ride, Betty, awaking from a deep sleep, found her mother kneeling beside her little bed, while her father talked with General Was.h.i.+ngton himself beside the fireplace; and it was the proudest and happiest moment of her life when Was.h.i.+ngton, coming forward and taking her by the hand, said, "You are the bravest little maid in America, and an honor to your country."

Still the peaceful meeting-house and the gambrel-roofed home stand unchanged, save that their time-beaten timbers and crumbling bricks have taken on a more sombre tinge, and under the broad walnut-tree another little Betty sits and sews.

If you ask it, she will take down the great key from its nail, and swinging back the new doors of the meeting-house, will show you the old worm-eaten ones inside, which, pierced through and through with bullet-holes, once served as a rampart against the enemy. And she will tell you, in the quaint Friend's language, how her great-great-grandmother carried, over a hundred years ago, the news of the danger of her countrymen to Was.h.i.+ngton, on the Brandywine, and at the risk of her own life saved theirs.

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Some two decades ago thousands were reading about the highly romantic career of Charles Brandon in _When Knighthood Was in Flower_ (1898), and other thousands were applauding Julia Marlowe's impersonation of the beautiful and fascinating Princess Mary in the dramatic version of that book. The author was Charles Major (1856-1913), an Indiana lawyer turned novelist, who wrote, also, the equally romantic story of _Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall_ (1902). Between these two pieces of delightful romance, he wrote a series of sketches of pioneer life in Indiana under the t.i.tle of _The Bears of Blue River_ (1901). It is an account of boy life in the early days, full of dramatic interest, simply written, and entirely worthy of the high place which it has already taken among stories of its type. The first adventure in that book follows by special arrangement with the publishers. (Copyright. The Macmillan Company, New York.)

THE BIG BEAR

CHARLES MAJOR

Away back in the "twenties," when Indiana was a baby state, and great forests of tall trees and tangled underbrush darkened what are now her bright plains and sunny hills, there stood upon the east bank of Big Blue River, a mile or two north of the point where that stream crosses the Michigan road, a cozy log cabin of two rooms--one front and one back.

The house faced the west, and stretching off toward the river for a distance equal to twice the width of an ordinary street, was a blue-gra.s.s lawn, upon which stood a dozen or more elm and sycamore trees, with a few honey-locusts scattered here and there. Immediately at the water's edge was a steep slope of ten or twelve feet. Back of the house, mile upon mile, stretched the deep dark forest, inhabited by deer and bears, wolves and wildcats, squirrels and birds, without number.

In the river the fish were so numerous that they seemed to entreat the boys to catch them, and to take them out of their crowded quarters.

There were ba.s.s and black suckers, sunfish and catfish, to say nothing of the sweetest of all, the big-mouthed redeye.

South of the house stood a log barn, with room in it for three horses and two cows; and enclosing this barn, together with a piece of ground, five or six acres in extent, was a palisade fence, eight or ten feet high, made by driving poles into the ground close together. In this enclosure the farmer kept his stock, consisting of a few sheep and cattle, and here also the chickens, geese, and ducks were driven at nightfall to save them from "varmints," as all prowling animals were called by the settlers.

The man who had built this log hut, and who lived in it and owned the adjoining land at the time of which I write, bore the name of Balser Brent. "Balser" is probably a corruption of Baltzer, but, however that may be, Balser was his name, and Balser was the hero of the bear stories which I am about to tell you.

Mr. Brent and his young wife had moved to the Blue River settlement from North Carolina, when young Balser was a little boy five or six years of age. They had purchased the "eighty" upon which they lived, from the United States, at a sale of public land held in the town of Brookville on Whitewater, and had paid for it what was then considered a good round sum--one dollar per acre. They had received a deed for their "eighty"

from no less a person than James Monroe, then President of the United States. This deed, which is called a patent, was written on sheepskin, signed by the President's own hand, and is still preserved by the descendants of Mr. Brent as one of the t.i.tle-deeds to the land it conveyed. The house, as I have told you, consisted of two large rooms, or buildings, separated by a pa.s.sageway six or eight feet broad which was roofed over, but open at both ends--on the north and south. The back room was the kitchen, and the front room was parlor, bedroom, sitting room and library all in one.

At the time when my story opens Little Balser, as he was called to distinguish him from his father, was thirteen or fourteen years of age, and was the happy possessor of a younger brother, Jim, aged nine, and a little sister one year old, of whom he was very proud indeed.

On the south side of the front room was a large fireplace. The chimney was built of sticks, thickly covered with clay. The fireplace was almost as large as a small room in one of our cramped modern houses, and was broad and deep enough to take in backlogs which were so large and heavy that they could not be lifted, but were drawn in at the door and rolled over the floor to the fireplace.

The prudent father usually kept two extra backlogs, one on each side of the fireplace, ready to be rolled in as the blaze died down; and on these logs the children would sit at night, with a rough slate made from a flat stone, and do their "ciphering," as the study of arithmetic was then called. The fire usually furnished all the light they had, for candles and "dips," being expensive luxuries, were used only when company was present.

The fire, however, gave sufficient light, and its blaze upon a cold night extended halfway up the chimney, sending a ruddy, cozy glow to every nook and corner of the room.

The back room was the storehouse and kitchen; and from the beams and along the walls hung rich hams and juicy sidemeat, jerked venison, dried apples, onions, and other provisions for the winter. There was a glorious fireplace in this room also, and a crane upon which to hang pots and cooking utensils.

The floor of the front room was made of logs split in halves with the flat, hewn side up; but the floor of the kitchen was of clay, packed hard and smooth.

The settlers had no stoves, but did their cooking in round pots called Dutch ovens. They roasted their meats on a spit or steel bar like the ramrod of a gun. The spit was kept turning before the fire, presenting first one side of the meat and then the other, until it was thoroughly cooked. Turning the spit was the children's work.

South of the palisade enclosing the barn was the clearing--a tract of twenty or thirty acres of land, from which Mr. Brent had cut and burned the trees. On this clearing the stumps stood thick as the hair on an angry dog's back; but the hard-working farmer ploughed between and around them, and each year raised upon the fertile soil enough wheat and corn to supply the wants of his family and his stock, and still had a little grain left to take to Brookville, sixty miles away, where he had bought his land, there to exchange for such necessities of life as could not be grown upon the farm or found in the forests.

The daily food of the family all came from the farm, the forest, or the creek. Their sugar was obtained from the sap of the sugar-trees; their meat was supplied in the greatest abundance by a few hogs, and by the inexhaustible game of which the forests were full. In the woods were found deer just for the shooting; and squirrels, rabbits, wild turkeys, pheasants, and quails, so numerous that a few hours' hunting would supply the table for days. The fish in the river, as I told you, fairly longed to be caught.

One day Mrs. Brent took down the dinner horn and blew upon it two strong blasts. This was a signal that Little Balser, who was helping his father down in the clearing, should come to the house. Balser was glad enough to drop his hoe and to run home. When he reached the house his mother said:

"Balser, go up to the drift and catch a mess of fish for dinner. Your father is tired of deer meat three times a day, and I know he would like a nice dish of fried redeyes at noon."

"All right, mother," said Balser. And he immediately took down his fis.h.i.+ng-pole and line, and got the spade to dig bait. When he had collected a small gourdful of angle-worms, his mother called to him:

"You had better take a gun. You may meet a bear; your father loaded the gun this morning, and you must be careful in handling it."

Balser took the gun, which was a heavy rifle considerably longer than himself, and started up the river toward the drift, about a quarter of a mile away.

There had been rain during the night and the ground near the drift was soft.

Here, Little Balser noticed fresh bear tracks, and his breath began to come quickly. You may be sure he peered closely into every dark thicket, and looked behind all the large trees and logs, and had his eyes wide open lest perchance "Mr. Bear" should step out and surprise him with an affectionate hug, and thereby put an end to Little Balser forever.

So he walked on cautiously, and, if the truth must be told, somewhat tremblingly, until he reached the drift.

Balser was but a little fellow, yet the stern necessities of a settler's life had compelled his father to teach him the use of a gun; and although Balser had never killed a bear, he had shot several deer, and upon one occasion had killed a wildcat, "almost as big as a cow," he said.

I have no doubt the wildcat seemed "almost as big as a cow" to Balser when he killed it, for it must have frightened him greatly, as wildcats were sometimes dangerous animals for children to encounter. Although Balser had never met a bear face to face and alone, yet he felt, and many a time had said, that there wasn't a bear in the world big enough to frighten him, if he but had his gun.