The Sun Maid: A Story of Fort Dearborn

“Never see such a country for wind as this is. Blows all the time, the year round. Hope Mercy’ll be able to keep ahead of the storm. She’s a powerful free traveller, Mercy is, an’ don’t stan’ for trifles. But – my soul! Ain’t she a talker? I realize that when her back’s turned. It’s so still in this cabin I could hear a pin drop, if there was anybody round hadn’t nothin’ better to do than to drop one. Hmm, I s’pose I could find some sort of job out there to the barn. But I ain’t goin’ to. I’m just goin’ to play hookey by myself this whole endurin’ day, an’ see what comes of it. I believe I’ll just tackle one of them pumpkin pies. ’Tain’t so long since breakfast, but eatin’ kind of passes the time along. I wish I had a newspaper. I wish somethin’ would turn up. I – I wouldn’t let Mercy know it, not for a farm; but ’tis lonesome here all by myself. I hain’t never noticed it so much as I do this mornin’. Whew! Hear that wind! It’s a good mile an’ a half to Waldron’s. I hope Mercy’s got there ’fore this.”

Abel closed the outer door, and crossed to the well-stocked cupboard. As he stood contemplating its contents, and undecided as to which would really best suit his present mood, there came a sound of somebody approaching the house along the slippery footpath. This was so unexpected that it startled the pioneer. Then he reflected: “Mercy. She’s come back!” and remained guiltily standing with his hand upon the edge of a pie plate, like a school-boy pilfering his mother’s larder.

“Rat-a-tat-a-tat!”

“Somebody knockin’! That ain’t Mercy! Who the land, I wonder!”

He made haste to see and opened the heavy door to the demand of a young boy, who stood shivering before it. At a little distance further from the house was, also, a woman wrapped in a blanket that glistened with sleet, and which seemed to enfold besides herself the form of a little child.

“My land! my land! Why, bubby! where in the world did you drop from? Is that your ma? No. I see she’s an Indian, an’ you’re as white as the frost itself. Come in. Come right in.”

But the lad lingered on the threshold and asked with chattering teeth, which showed how chilled he was:

“Can Wahneenah come too?”

“I don’t know who in Christendom Wahneeny is, but you folks all come straight in out of the storm. ’Twon’t do to keep the door open so long, for the sleet’s beating right in on Mercy’s carpet. There’d be the dickens to pay if she saw that.”

Gaspar, for it was he, ran quickly back toward the motionless Wahneenah, and, clutching the corner of her blanket, dragged her forward. She seemed reluctant to follow, notwithstanding her half-frozen condition and she glanced into Abel’s honest face with keen inquiry. Yet seeing nothing but good-natured pity in it, she entered the cabin, and herself shut the door. Yet she kept her place close to the exit, even after Gaspar had pulled the blanket apart and revealed the white face of the Sun Maid lying on her breast.

“Why, why, why! poor child! Poor little creatur’. Where in the world did you hail from to be out in such weather? Didn’t you have ary home to stay in? But, there. I needn’t ask that, because there’s Mercy off trapesing just the same, an’ her with the best cabin on the frontier. I s’pose this Wahneeny was took with a gossipin’ fit, too, an’ set out to find her own cronies. But I don’t recollect as I’ve heard of any Indians livin’ out this way.”

By this time the water that had been frozen upon the wanderers’ clothing had begun to melt, and was drip-dripping in little puddles upon Mercy’s beloved carpet. Abel eyed these with dismay, and finally hit upon the happy expedient of turning back the loose breadth of the heavy fabric which bordered the hearth. Upon the bare boards thus revealed he placed three chairs, and invited his guests to take them.

Gaspar dropped into one very promptly, but the squaw did not advance until the boy cried:

“Do come, Other Mother. Poor Kitty will wake up then, and feel all right.”

The atmosphere of any house was always uncomfortable to Wahneenah. Even then, she felt as if she had stepped from freedom into prison, cold though she was and half-famished with hunger. Personally, she would rather have taken her bit of food out under the trees; but the thought of her Sun Maid was always powerful to move her. She laid aside the wet blanket, and carried the drowsy little one to the fireside, where the warmth soon revived the child so that she sat up on her foster-mother’s lap, and gazed about her with awakening curiosity. Then she began to smile on Abel, who stood regarding her wonderful loveliness with undisguised amazement, and to prattle to him in her accustomed way.

“Why, you nice, nice man! Isn’t this a pretty place. Isn’t it beau’ful warm? I’m so glad we came. It was cold out of doors, wasn’t it, Other Mother? Did you know all the time what a good warm fire was here? Was that why we came?”

“I knew nothing,” answered Wahneenah, stolidly.

“But I did!” cried Gaspar. “As soon as I saw the smoke of your chimney I said: ‘That is a white man’s house. We will go and stay in it.’ It’s a nice house, sir, and, like Kitty, I am glad we came. Do you live here all alone?”

“No. My wife, Mercy, has gone a visitin’. That’s why I happen to be here doin’ nothin’. I mean – I might have been to the barn an’ not heard you. You’re lookin’ into that cupboard pretty sharp. Be you hungry? But I needn’t ask that. A boy always is.”

“I am hungry. We all are. We haven’t had anything to eat in – days, I guess. Are those pies – regular pies, on the shelves?”

“Yes. Do you like pies?”

“I used to. I haven’t had any since I left the Fort.”

“Left what?”

“The Fort. Fort Dearborn. Did you know it?”

“Course. That is, about it. But there ain’t no Fort now. Don’t tell stories.”

“I’m not. I’m telling the truth.”

If this was a refugee from that unhappy garrison, Abel felt that he could not do enough for the boy’s comfort. He could not refrain his suspicious glances from Wahneenah’s dark face, but as she kept her own gaze fixed upon the ground, he concluded she did not see them. In any case, she was only an Indian, and therefore to be treated with scant courtesy.

Mercy would have been surprised to see with what handiness her husband played the host in her absence and now he whipped off the red woollen cover from the table and rolled it toward the fireplace. But she would not have approved at all of the lavishness with which he set before his guests the best things from her cupboard. There was a cold rabbit patty, the pot of beans, light loaves of sweet rye bread, and a pat of golden butter. To these he added a generous pitcher of milk, and beside Gaspar’s own plate he placed both a pumpkin and a dried-apple pie.

“I’d begin with these, if I was you, sonny. Baked beans come by nature, seems to me, but pies are a gift of grace. Though I must say my wife don’t stint ’em when she takes it into her head to go gallivantin’ an’ leaves me to housekeep. ’Pears to think then I must have somethin’ sort of comfortin’. I’d start in on pie, if I was a little shaver, an’ take the beans last.”

This might not have been the best of advice to give a lad whose fast had been so long continued as Gaspar’s, but it suited that young person exactly. Indeed, in all his life he had never seen so well spread a table, and he lost no time in obeying his entertainer’s suggestion. But he noticed with regret that his foster-mother did not touch the proffered food, and that she ministered even gingerly to Kitty’s wants.

Yet there was nobody, however austere or unhappy, who could long resist the happy influence of the little girl, and least of all the woman who so loved her. As the Sun Maid’s color returned to her face, and her stiffened limbs began to resume their suppleness, something of the anxiety left Wahneenah’s eyes, and she condescended to receive a bowl of milk and a slice of bread from Abel’s hand.

The fact that she would at last break her own fast made all comfortable; and as soon as Gaspar’s appetite was so far appeased that he could begin upon the beans, the settler demanded:

“Now, sonny, talk. Tell me the whole endurin’ story from A to Izzard. Where’d you come from now? Where was you bound? What’s your name? an’ her’s? an’ the little tacker’s? My! but ain’t she a beauty! I never see ary such hair on anybody’s head, black or white. It’s gettin’ dry, ain’t it; an’ how it does fly round, just like foam.”

“I’m not ‘sonny,’ nor ‘bubby.’ I’m Gaspar Keith. I was brought up at Fort Dearborn. After the massacre, I was taken to Muck-otey-pokee. I – ”

But the lad’s thoughts already began to grow sombre, and he became so abruptly silent that Abel prompted him.

“Hmm, I’ve heard of that – that – Mucky place. Indian settlement, wasn’t it? Took prisoner, was you?”

“No. I wasn’t a prisoner, exactly. I was just a – just a friend of the family, I guess.”

“Oh? So. A friend of an Indian family, sonny?”

“If you’d rather not call me Gaspar, you can please say ‘Dark-Eye.’ That’s my new Indian name; but I hate those other ones. They make me think I am a baby. And I’m not. I am a man, almost.”

“So you be. So you be,” agreed Abel, admiring the little fellow’s spirit. “I ’low you’ve seen sights, now, hain’t you?”

“Yes, dreadful ones; so dreadful that I can’t talk about them to anybody. Not even to you, who have given us this nice food and let us warm ourselves. I would if I could, you see; only when I let myself think, I just get queer in the head and afraid. So I won’t even think. It doesn’t do for a boy to be afraid. Not when he has his mother and sister to take care of.”

There was the faintest lightening of the gloom upon the Indian woman’s face as Dark-Eye said this. But he was, apart from his terror of bloodshed and fighting, a courageous lad, and had, during their past days of wandering, proved the good stuff of which he was made. Many a day he had gone without eating that the remnant of their food might be saved for the Sun Maid; and though it was, of course, Wahneenah who had taken all the care of the children, if it pleased him to consider their cases reversed he should be left to his own opinion.

“You’re right, boy. I’ll call you Gaspar, easy enough. Only, you see, I hain’t got no sons of my own an’ it kind of makes things seem cosier if I call other folkes’s youngsters that way. Every little shaver this side of Illinois calls me ‘Uncle Abe,’ I reckon. But go on with your yarn. My, my, my! Won’t Mercy be beat when she comes home an’ hears all that’s happened whilst she was gone. Go on.”

So Gaspar told all that had occurred since the Black Partridge parted from his sister in the cavern and rode away toward St. Joseph’s. How that very day came one of the visiting Indians who had been staying at Muck-otey-pokee and whose behavior toward the neighboring white settlers had been a prominent cause of bringing the soldiers’ raid upon the innocent and friendly hosts who had entertained him.

The wicked like not solitude, and in the train of this traitor had followed many others. These had turned the cave into a pandemonium and had appropriated to their own uses the stores which Black Partridge had provided for Wahneenah. When to this robbery they had added threats against the lives of the white children, whose presence at the Indian village they in their turn declared had brought destruction upon it, the chief’s sister had taken such small portion of her own property as she could secure and had set out to find a new home or shelter for her little ones.

Since then they had been always wandering. Wahneenah now had a fixed dread of the pale-faces and had avoided their habitations as far as might be. They had lived in the woods, upon the roots and dried berries they could find and whose power to sustain life the squaw had understood. But now had come the cold of approaching winter and the Sun Maid had shown the effects of her long exposure. Then, at Gaspar’s pleading, Wahneenah had put her own distrust of strangers aside and had come with him to the first cabin of white people which they could find.

“And now we’re here, what will you do with us?” concluded the lad, fixing his dark eyes earnestly upon his host’s face.

Abel fidgetted a little; then, with his happy faculty of putting off till to-morrow the evil that belonged to to-day, he replied:

“Well, son – bub – I mean, Gaspar; we hain’t come to that bridge yet. Time enough to cross it when we do. But, say, that little creatur’ looks as if she hadn’t known what ’twas to lie on a decent bed in a month of Sundays. She’s ’bout dried off now; an’ my! ain’t she a pretty sight in them little Indian’s togs! S’pose your squaw-ma puts her to sleep on the bed yonder. Notice that bedstead? There ain’t another like it this side the East. I’ll just spread a sheet over the quilt, to keep it clean, an’ she can snooze there all day, if she likes. I’ll play you an’ Wahneeny a tune on my fiddle if you want me to.”

Gaspar was, of course, delighted with this offer but the chief’s sister was already tired of the hot house and had cast longing glances through the small window toward the barn in the rear. That, at least, would be cool, and from its doorway she calculated she could keep a close watch upon the door of the cabin, and be ready at a second’s notice to rush to her children’s aid should harm be offered them. Meanwhile, for this dark day, they would have the comfort to which their birthright entitled them. So she went out and left them with Abel.

The hours flew by and the storm continued. Abel had never been happier nor jollier; and as the twilight came down, and he finally gave up all expectation of Mercy’s immediate return, he waxed fairly hilarious, cutting up absurd antics for the mere delight of seeing the Sun Maid laugh and dance in response, and because, under these cheerful conditions, Gaspar’s face was losing its premature thoughtfulness and rounding to a look more suited to his years.

“Now, I’ll dance you a sailor’s hornpipe, and then I must go out and milk. If ma’d been home, it would have been finished long ago. But when the cat’s away the mice will play, you know; so here goes.”

Unfortunately, at that very moment the “cat” to whom he referred, Mercy, in fact, approached the cabin from a direction which even Wahneenah did not observe, and opened a rear door plump upon this unprecedented scene.

Abel stopped short in his jig, one foot still uplifted and his fiddle bow half drawn, while the Sun Maid was yet sweeping her most graceful curtsey; and even the serious Gaspar had left his seat to prance about the room to the notes of Abel’s music.

Mercy also remained transfixed, utterly dumfounded, and doubting the evidence of her own senses; but after a moment becoming able to exclaim:

“So! This is how lonesome you be when I leave you, is it?”

CHAPTER XII.

AFTER FOUR YEARS

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 all who chose to call; and, as she often expressed it, the settler’s wife “hated an Indian on sight.”

Upon her unexpected entrance, there had ensued a brief silence; then the two tongues which were accustomed to wag so nimbly took up their familiar task and a battle of words followed. Its climax came rather suddenly, and was not anticipated by the housewife who declared with great decision:

“I say the children may stay for a spell, till we can find a way to dispose of ’em. The boy’s big enough to earn his keep, if he ain’t too lazy. Male creatur’s mostly are. An’ the girl’s no great harm as I see, ’nless she’s too pretty to be wholesome. But that red-face goes, or I do. There ain’t no room in this cabin for me an’ a squaw to one time. You can take your druther. She goes or I do”; and she glanced with animosity toward Wahneenah, who, when hearing the fresh voice added to the other three, had come promptly upon Mercy’s return to take her stand just within the entrance. There she had remained ever since, silent, watchful, and quite as full of distrust concerning Mercy as Mercy could possibly have been toward herself.

“Well,” said Abel, slowly, and there was a new note in his voice which aroused and riveted his wife’s attention. “Well – you hear me. I don’t often claim to be boss, but when I do I mean it. Them children can stay here just as long as they will. For all their lives, an’ I’ll be glad of it. The Lord has denied us any little shavers of our own, an’ maybe just because in His providence He was plannin’ to send them two orphans here for us to tend. As for the squaw, she’s proved her soul’s white, if her skin is red, an’ she stays or goes, just as she elects – ary one. That’s all. Now, you’d better see about fixing ’em a place to sleep.”

Because she was too astonished to do otherwise, Mercy complied. And Wahneenah wisely relieved her unwilling hostess of any trouble concerning herself. She followed Abel to the barn, to attend him upon his belated “chores,” and to beg the use of some coarse blankets which she had found stored there. Until she could secure properly dressed skins or bark, these would serve her purpose well enough for the little tepee she meant to pitch close to the house which sheltered her children.

“For I must leave them under her roof while the winter lasts. They are not of my race, and cannot endure the cold. But I will work just so much as will pay for their keep and my own. They shall be beholden to the white woman for naught but their shelter. For that, too, I will make restitution in the days to come.”

“Pshaw, Wahneeny! I wouldn’t mind a bit of a sharp tongue, if I was you. Ma don’t mean no hurt. She’s used to bein’ boss, that’s all; an’ she will be the first to be glad she’s got another female to consort with. I wouldn’t lay up no grudge. I wouldn’t.”

But the matter settled itself as the Indian suggested. It was pain and torment to her to hear Mercy alternately petting and correcting her darlings, yet for their sakes she endured that much and more. She even failed to resent the fact that, after a short residence at the farm, the Smiths both began to refer to her as “our hired girl, that’s workin’ for her keep an’ the childern’s.”

It did not matter to her now. Nothing mattered so long as she was still within sight and sound of her Sun Maid’s beauty and laughter; and by the time spring came she had procured the needful skins to construct the wigwam she desired. Her skill in nursing, that had been well known among her own people, she now made a means of sustaining her independence. Such aid as she could render was indeed difficult to be obtained by the isolated dwellers in that wilderness; and having nursed Abel through a siege of inflammatory rheumatism, as he had never been cared for before, he sounded her praises far and near, and to all of the chance passers-by.

For her service among those who could pay she charged a very moderate wage, but it sufficed; and, for the sake of pleasing her children, she adopted a dress very like that worn by all the women of the frontier. Kitty, also, had soon been clothed “like a Christian” by Mercy’s decision; but Wahneenah still carefully preserved the dainty Indian costume Katasha had given the child; along with the sacred White Bow and the priceless Necklace.

As for the three horses on which she and the two children had stolen away from their enemies in the cave of refuge, Abel had long ago decided that they were but kittle cattle, unfitted for the sober work of life which his own oxen and old nag Dobbin performed so well. So they were left in idleness, to graze where they pleased, and were little used except by their owners for a rare ride afield. The Chestnut, however, carried Wahneenah to and fro upon her nursing trips; for, unless the case were too urgent to be left, she always returned at nightfall to her own lodge and the nearness of her Sun Maid.

Thus four uneventful years passed away, and it had come to the time of the wheat harvest.

“And it’s to be the biggest, grandest frolic ever was in this part of the country,” declared the settler, proudly.

Whereupon, days before, Mercy began to brew and bake, and even Wahneenah condescended to assist in the household labor. But she did this that she might if possible lighten that of her Sun Maid, who had now grown to a “real good-sized girl an’ just as smart as chain lightning.”

This was Abel’s description. Mercy’s would have been:

“Kitty’s well enough. But she hates to sew her seam like she hates poison. She’d ruther be makin’ posies an’ animals out my nice clean fresh-churned butter than learn cookin’. But she’s good-tempered. Never flies out at all, like Gaspar, ’cept I lose patience with Wahneeny. Then, look sharp!”

“Well, I tell you that out in this country a harvestin’ is a big institution!” cried Abel to Gaspar as, early on the morning of the eventful day, they were making all things ready for the accommodation of the people who would flock to the Smith farm to assist in the labor and participate in the fun. “If there’s some things we miss here, we have some that can’t be matched out East. Every white settler’s every other settler’s neighbor, even though there’s miles betwixt their clearin’s. All hands helpin’ so makes light work of raisin’ cabins or barns, sowin’, reapin’, or clearin’. I – I declare I feel as excited as a boy. But you don’t seem to. You’re gettin’ a great lad now, Gaspar, an’ one these days I’ll be thinkin’ of payin’ you some wages. If so be I can afford it, an’ – ”

“And Mercy will let you!”

“Hi, diddle diddle! What’s struck you crosswise, sonny?”

“I’m tired of working so hard for other people. I want a chance to do something for myself. I’m not ungrateful; don’t think it. But see. I am already taller than you and I can do as much work in a day. Where is the justice, then, of my labor going for naught?”

“Why, Gaspar. Why, why, why!” exclaimed the pioneer, too astonished to say more.

Gaspar went on with his task of clearing the barn floor and arranging tying places for the visitors’ teams; but his dark face was clouded and anxious, showing little of the anticipation which Abel’s did.

“I’m going to ask you, Father Abel, to let me try for a job somewhere else; that is, if you can’t really pay me anything, as your wife declares. Then, by and by, when I can earn enough to get ahead a little, I’d pay you back for all you’ve spent on us three.”

Abel’s face had fallen, and he now looked as if he might be expecting some dire disaster rather than a frolic. But it brightened presently.

“Yes, Gaspar; I know you’re big, and well-growed. But you’re young yet – dreadful young – ”

“I’m near fifteen.”

“Well, you won’t be out your time till you’re twenty-one.”

“What ‘time’?” asked the lad, angrily, though he knew the answer.

“Hmm. Of course, there wasn’t no regular papers drawed, but it was understood; it was always understood between ma and me that if we took you all in, and did for you while you was growin’ up, your service belonged to us. Same’s if you’d been bound by the authorities.”

“Get over there, Dobbin!”

“Pshaw! You must be real tried in your mind to hit a four-footed creatur’ like that. I hain’t never noticed that you was short-spoke with the stock – not before this morning. I wish you wouldn’t get out of sorts to-day, boy! I – well, there’s things afoot ’at I think you’d like to take a share in. There. That’ll do. Now, just turn another edge on them reapin’ knives, an’ see that there’s plenty o’ water in the troughs, an’ feed them fattin’ pigs in the pen, an’ – Shucks! He’s off already. I wonder what’s took him so short! I wonder if he’s got wind of anything out the common!”

The latter part of Abel’s words were spoken to himself, for Gaspar had taken his knives to the grindstone in the yard and was now calling for Kitty to turn the stone for him, while he should hold the blades against its surface.

But it was Mercy who answered his summons, appearing in the doorway with her sleeves rolled up, her apron floured, and her round face aglow with haste and excitement.

“Well? well, Gaspar Keith? What you want of Kit?”

“To help me.”

“Help yourself. I can’t spare her.”

“Then I can’t grind the knives. That’s all.” He tossed them down to wait her pleasure, and Mercy groaned.

“If I ain’t the worst bestead woman in the world! Here’s all creation coming to be fed, an’ no help but a little girl like Kit an’ a grumpy old squaw ’t don’t know enough to ’preciate her privileges. Hey! Gaspar! Call Abel in to breakfast. An’ after that maybe sissy can turn the stun. Here ’tis goin’ on six o’clock, if it’s a minute, an’ some the folks’ll be pokin’ over here by seven, sure!”