Donald McElroy, Scotch Irishman Part 22

Clark's face darkened and flushed, but with an effort he controlled himself. "As her kinsman, McElroy, you doubtless have a right to speak thus to me. You refer to my love for strong drink, and speak of my pa.s.sion for adventure. The one I could easily resign for Ellen's sake; the other--'tis embedded in my nature, yet even adventure, methinks, might be well exchanged for the love of such a woman; for domestic joys with her to share them; for friends, home and children. Yes, McElroy, I can imagine myself a quiet, respectable, church-going citizen--and yet content."

"Then the decision rests with Ellen alone. Should she choose you, I promise to give my sanction to her choice. But I fear there is small hope for either of us. Have you not heard her say that she intends to take the veil, to be a nun?"

"Yes, but I have never believed that she meant it in her heart of hearts, though she has deceived herself into thinking she does, by telling herself that it is her holy duty."

"She does not seem to me called to the vocation of a nun." I was smiling at the mere thought of the brilliant Ellen in a nunnery.

"Surely she is not, McElroy; could she be happy, think you, shut out from a world which interests her so fully? Your quiet valley, with its dull routine of duty and religion made her rebellious, then how would she endure life in a convent? No, she greatly misunderstands herself. I should rather, by far, see her your wife, McElroy, than to know that all her brilliancy and charms were hidden behind the chill walls of a convent."

"And I would far rather see her your wife than a nun."

"Then let us pledge mutual aid, thus far--that we will both use all the influence we may have with her to keep her from a convent. Shall we go now to see her, and bid her choose between us?"

"It does not seem to me to be the wisest course. Suppose she should absolutely refuse both of us? or even in case we can persuade her that she is not called to a convent life, and can induce her to make choice, suppose one of us should be killed in this attack upon Vincennes, and he the one she had chosen? Might she not afterwards feel it disloyal to the memory of that one to listen to the addresses of the other, and so be more than ever disposed to think herself set apart to virgin consecration? Let us leave the matter undecided until one or both of us return from Vincennes. I can trust you to take no less interest in my safety on that account, and you, I think, can likewise trust me. Should I fall, my rights in Ellen, such as they are, become yours. Should you be killed, I inherit your claim to her. Meantime both are pledged to use our utmost endeavors to keep her out of a convent--even though to do so, we must help the other to win her."

"Shrewdly said, McElroy," replied the Colonel, with a hearty laugh. "It is a true Scotch-Irishman's bargain you propose--many chances to win, few to lose. Your hand on it. Once more we are good friends, and loyal comrades, pledged together and twice over to two n.o.ble causes: one--the independence of the United States of America and the saving of the world for democracy, and the other--to preserve to the world the beauty, the wit, and the spirit of Ellen O'Neil."

CHAPTER XXII

I shall pa.s.s over the details of our arduous midwinter march of one hundred and sixty miles to Vincennes across swamps and flooded plains.

Also any account of the three separate mutinies of our French recruits and the almost irreparable loss of our boat, the _Willing_, and consequent lack of food and rest while we worked feverishly, knee deep in water, building canoes.

The timely capture, after we had crossed the swollen river and reached firmer ground, of an Indian canoe loaded with buffalo meat, corn, and (strange circ.u.mstance) several large kettles, alone saved our men from starving and our hazardous attempt from total disaster. On the afternoon of the eighteenth day we reached Vincennes, and with our numerous flags, which through all the suffering of the march we had never relinquished, mounted on long poles, Clark disposed his little band in squads, and ordered them to march some distance apart and to follow the winding road (easily seen from the village, though hidden from the fort) to the town.

Not only did we meet with no resistance from the townspeople, but numbers of them offered to a.s.sist us in storming the fort. Tabac and his hundred Indians, who were camping near the town, likewise offered their services as allies.

When the firing upon Fort Sackville began, General Hamilton was in Captain Helm's quarters playing piquet with his prisoner, while the latter brewed upon the hearth his favorite beverage--a spiced apple toddy. Helm's room had been pointed out to us, and we aimed at his chimney. Soot and plaster came tumbling down, half filled the kettle and ruined the smoking drink. The players sprang to their feet.

"I'll wager it's Clark, and his riflemen, General," said the jovial Helm. "They'll take the fort, for they are the finest marksmen in the world. Meantime they've spoiled our toddy, d---- 'em, and with malicious intent you may be sure; some villager has indicated my quarters to McElroy, I dare say, and he pays his respects to me, and announces their presence this way. D---- their sure bullets and their rude jokes; wish we had drunk that toddy sooner. Now look at it!" and he held out a ladle full, gritty with dried mud, and black with soot.

"You are cool ones, you Americans," said Hamilton, with an uneasy laugh.

"Pray, how do you suppose Clark would get his men here through these floods?"

"They swam, maybe--oh, Clark and his riflemen are equal to anything.

Might as well run up your white flag, General, and be done the sooner with this unpleasant business; we can finish our game then, and have Clark in to help drink my second brewing--he's good at that as at fighting; we'll make a jolly party."

"Curse your impudence, Helm! I'll not surrender the fort while there's a man to the guns!" and Hamilton departed, sputtering with angry excitement.

All night brisk firing was kept up on both sides; at the same time detachments of us worked like beavers to make a trench about a hundred yards in front of the main gate. Early next morning Clark sent in a flag with a bold demand for surrender, and during the respite afforded by its reception the men ate a hearty breakfast, provided by the well disposed townspeople. It was the first meal they had had in five days. This was the message sent by Clark under his flag of truce, and it is so characteristic of the man that I quote it verbatim:

"Sir--In order to save yourself from the impending storm that now threatens you, I order you immediately to surrender yourself with all your garrison, stores, etc., etc. For if I am obliged to storm, you may depend on such treatment as is justly due a murderer. Beware of destroying stores of any kind, or any papers or letters that are in your possession, for, by Heaven, if you do, there shall be no mercy shown you.

"G. R. CLARK."

An angry and scornful refusal was returned by General Hamilton to this stern demand, and the firing was renewed. Wherever a port-hole was open, a dozen rifles were aimed upon it, and the bullets poured through like hail; the gunners were killed as fast as they were sent to the guns.

Even the cracks in the walls afforded targets to the death-dealing bullets of the riflemen, and more than one of the garrison fell pierced through the eye.

The afternoon of the second day brought a flag of truce from General Hamilton, asking for a cessation of hostilities for three days, and a conference with Colonel Clark at the fort. Clark refused the terms offered by Hamilton, but agreed to a conference in the village church.

At this conference Clark's bold determination again won, and next morning Fort Sackville was surrendered, with all its stores and supplies, and General Hamilton and his garrison became prisoners of war.

This was on the twenty-fifth day of February, 1779. It is a date deserving enrollment among eventful days of American history. Henceforth the Northwest was Virginia territory, until ceded by her to the Union.

In the negotiations which preceded the final treaty with England, it was this fact--that Virginia troops had fought for, and conquered the right bank of the Mississippi--which gave potency to the claim of our commissioners, that the Father of Waters and not the Alleghanies, or the Ohio, was our rightful boundary line on the west.

Among our Revolutionary heroes, George Rogers Clark should stand high, not only because of his daring and his achievements, but because of the important and far-reaching results of his conquest.

In the last few years, observing the rapidity with which our vast Western territory is being settled and civilized, noting the rapid increase of its population and prosperity, I begin to set a true value upon the importance of this territory to the republic. Not only has it given us room for necessary expansion, but it has quickened all our energies, kindled our imaginations, and furnished a safe outlet for the vigorous, throbbing life of our young nation. Moreover, there is no way to calculate the important part this common territory has played in uniting, into a firm and reasonable union, the several States of America. It gave us a common interest, at a time when we thought our state interests divergent; furnished us a means of satisfying with land grants our discontented and unpaid soldiers; and is teaching us, through experience learned in governing a joint possession, broad principles of democratic government. In truth, the more I think upon it, the more highly I rate the achievement of George Rogers Clark--in which those of my race bore a worthy part.

"Since fate has not ended our rivalry for us, McElroy," said Clark--when affairs had been satisfactorily settled at Vincennes, Helm reinstated with a somewhat larger garrison, and the other troops ready to return to Kaskaskia--"the decision rests still with Queen Eleanor. We must force her to a choice, somehow, and certainty is preferable to this suspense."

"The sooner we know her decision the better I shall be suited," I responded, "for, now that my year's parole has expired, I am eager to get back to the regular service, especially as reenforcements from Virginia can now be counted upon. Moreover, you are not likely to need a large force to enable you to hold what we have won."

"I agree with you," replied Clark. "You have stood by me and the enterprise, like a brave man, and a true comrade, McElroy, and I am glad our business is finished before your duty calls you back to Virginia.

You have been my right hand, though all my officers and men have alike acquitted themselves n.o.bly, from first to last."

"With a leader such as we have had, only worthy conduct is possible," I said, my eyes suddenly dim.

"Thank you for that word, McElroy. That worthy men should deem me a worthy leader, is all the praise I ask. And whatever may come between us in the future, comrade, let us not forget that we have stood together in peril and in suffering, have shared risks and dangers in a cause dear to the hearts of both--not even the love of woman should separate comrades such as we have been."

"Nor shall it," I answered earnestly. "G.o.d bear me witness, Clark, that I shall feel no malice should Ellen's heart answer to yours. I shall wish you both happiness in all sincerity, and seek solace in my duty."

"No fear, McElroy; you have the st.u.r.diest and best traits of a n.o.ble people. I have some of them, doubtless, as my Saxon blood gives me right, but mixed, I fear, with a strain of wildness. I doubt if the anchors of duty are strong enough to hold me to a wise, sane life--unless Ellen's love shall help to weight them. As you have said, comrade, an adventurous, reckless life has strong temptation for me; therefore, if Ellen's love is not for me--and I forebode it is not, though I'm not yet ready to resign all hope--I shall take it for a sign that a kind fate is sparing her the woeful doom of a drunkard's wife."

He added, after a brief pause, during which a deep melancholy settled upon his face, "Sometimes a man is doomed from his birth; from the beginning he moves on to a prefixed destiny, and all his struggles to save himself from the end he fears, avail nothing."

My reply combatted Clark's fatalism with all the arguments I could command, but I soon saw that his views on the subject of his destiny were fixed; that with all his cheerful courage, and calculating boldness, there was in his nature that strange vein of superst.i.tion or fatalism which has marked so many military heroes:--Hannibal, Alexander, Caesar, Robert Bruce, Frederick the Great, and others less renowned. Nor can one lay the fatalistic views Clark held to the charge of his religion. Though Scotch-Irish by birth, he knew no more of Presbyterian doctrines than did Father Gibault, and he had no religious principles.

Clark, as I have said, was a fatalist, though he had no religion. I was and am a Presbyterian, yet I have always believed in cause and effect, the working of natural laws to natural ends. Nevertheless, though it be apparently a contradiction, I believe in an overruling Providence, and the care of G.o.d over the most insignificant of His creatures. Therefore, when I knew myself to be ill, on that last day of our return march, and said to Clark, "It seems, after all, comrade, as if fate meant to settle this matter of rivalry between us," I meant it not as it was said, but as Clark might look upon it. My future lay, I knew, in G.o.d's hands, and even in that hour of evil apprehension--for I realized that my illness would be a long and serious one--I felt satisfied to leave it there, and to trust my life and Ellen's to His guidance.

A faith that can sustain a man, and leave him calm and undismayed in each crisis of his life, is worth much to him--call it by what name or sect, distinguish it by whatsoever creed, you will. And these small variations of our small minds, are, I conceive, little taken into account by the Infinite, who knows we are but children, in mental and spiritual development, and values our faith and our honest striving without regard to the creeds with which we confuse ourselves.

CHAPTER XXIII

Beyond this comforting a.s.surance of my religion, there was but one idea floating through my confused and fever-consumed brain, and that was a longing vision rather than an idea--a vision of my mother's downy, rose-scented beds; and then, as next best, of the heaps of feathers, covered with gay Indian blankets, which const.i.tuted the pride of the Kaskaskian homes. Oh, to feel a thick pillow under my head, to stretch my aching limbs on the yielding feathers! It was the one thing in life I wanted. I longed for rest as a tired infant longs for his mother's soft breast, and tender arms. The hope of it alone gave me courage to drag my weighted feet over the last two miles of our way.

It was a little strange that the realization of the bliss of repose was my first conscious thought after an illness of many days, so that I could never realize that more than a night had intervened between the longing and the realization, the agony and the relief. My first conscious moment lasted just long enough for me to appreciate the comfort of my couch; almost immediately I sank again into sleep or unconsciousness. The next time I came to myself I was not only wide awake, but alert and curious as I opened my eyes to note my surroundings. They were rough limed walls with a low sloping ceiling; bright-hued Indian rugs were upon the floor, and half-burned logs on heavy dog-irons, with sputtering candle ends, burning upon a round stand, in the farthest corner. In the shadow of the corner sat a figure, its head against the wall. Some one had been good enough to sit up all the night with me, and now that day was breaking, his eyes could be kept open no longer, and he had fallen into a doze. I would be very quiet and not wake him.

Presently the figure stirred, rose and came to the bedside. I recognized Clark, even in the dimness of the gray dawn.

"You have been watching me, my Colonel?" I questioned, trying to smile, and to put out the hand that was too feeble to answer to my will. Clark came closer, saw my purpose, gave my hand a warm pressure, and lifted me a little higher on my pillows.

"Have I been very ill?" I asked.