After dinner we rode down to the ferry, Nick on the thoroughbred which had beat Mr.Jackson's horse, and his man, Benjy, on a scraggly pony behind.Benjy was a small, black negro with a very squat nose, alert and talkative save when Nick turned on him.Benjy had been born at Temple Bow; he worshipped his master and all that pertained to him, and he showered upon me all the respect and attention that was due to a member of the Temple family.For this I was very grateful.It would have been an easier journey had we taken a boat down to Fort Massac, but such a proceeding might have drawn too much attention to our expedition.I have no space to describe that trip overland, which reminded me at every stage of the march against Kaskaskia, the woods, the chocolate streams, the coffee-colored swamps flecked with dead leaves,--and at length the prairies, the grass not waist-high now, but young and tender, giving forth the acrid smell of spring.Nick was delighted.He made me recount every detail of my trials as a drummer boy, or kept me in continuous spells of laughter over his own escapades.In short, I began to realize that we were as near to each other as though we had never been parted.
We looked down upon Kaskaskia from the self-same spot where I had stood on the bluff with Colonel Clark, and the sounds were even then the same,--the sweet tones of the church bell and the lowing of the cattle.We found a few Virginians and Pennsylvanians scattered in amongst the French, the forerunners of that change which was to come over this country.And we spent the night with my old friend, Father Gibault, still the faithful pastor of his flock; cheerful, though the savings of his lifetime had never been repaid by that country to which he had given his allegiance so freely.Travelling by easy stages, on the afternoon of the second day after leaving Kaskaskia we picked our way down the high bluff that rises above the American bottom, and saw below us that yellow monster among the rivers, the Mississippi.A blind monster he seemed, searching with troubled arms among the islands for his bed, swept onward by an inexorable force, and on his heaving shoulders he carried great trees pilfered from the unknown forests of the North.
Down in the moist and shady bottom we came upon the log hut of a half-breed trapper, and he agreed to ferry us across.As for our horses, a keel boat must be sent after these, and Monsieur Gratiot would no doubt easily arrange for this.And so we found ourselves, about five o'clock on that Saturday evening, embarked in a wide pirogue on the current, dodging the driftwood, avoiding the eddies, and drawing near to a village set on a low bluff on the Spanish side and gleaming white among the trees.And as I looked, the thought came again like a twinge of pain that Mrs.Temple and Riddle might be there, thinking themselves secure in this spot, so removed from the world and its doings.
``How now, my man of mysterious affairs?'' cried Nick, from the bottom of the boat; ``you are as puckered as a sour persimmon.Have you a treaty with Spain in your pocket or a declaration of war? What can trouble you?''
``Nothing, if you do not,'' I answered, smiling.
``Lord send we don't admire the same lady, then,'' said Nick.``Pierrot,'' he cried, turning to one of the boatmen, ``il y a des belles demoiselles la, n'est-ce pas?''
The man missed a stroke in his astonishment, and the boat swung lengthwise in the swift current.
``Dame, Monsieur, il y en a,'' he answered.
``Where did you learn French, Nick?'' I demanded.
``Mr.Mason had it hammered into me,'' he answered carelessly, his eyes on the line of keel boats moored along the shore.Our guides shot the canoe deftly between two of these, the prow grounded in the yellow mud, and we landed on Spanish territory.
We looked about us while our packs were being unloaded, and the place had a strange flavor in that year of our Lord, 1789.A swarthy boatman in a tow shirt with a bright handkerchief on his head stared at us over the gunwale of one of the keel boats, and spat into the still, yellow water; three high-cheeked Indians, with smudgy faces and dirty red blankets, regarded us in silent contempt; and by the water-side above us was a sled loaded with a huge water cask, a bony mustang pony between the shafts, and a chanting negro dipping gourdfuls from the river.A road slanted up the little limestone bluff, and above and below us stone houses could be seen nestling into the hill, houses higher on the river side, and with galleries there.We climbed the bluff, Benjy at our heels with the saddle-bags, and found ourselves on a yellow-clay street lined with grass and wild flowers.A great peace hung over the village, an air of a different race, a restfulness strange to a Kentuckian.Clematis and honeysuckle climbed the high palings, and behind the privacy of these, low, big-chimneyed houses of limestone, weathered gray, could be seen, their roofs sloping in gentle curves to the shaded porches in front; or again, houses of posts set upright in the ground and these filled between with plaster, and so immaculately whitewashed that they gleamed against the green of the trees which shaded them.Behind the houses was often a kind of pink-and-cream paradise of flowering fruit trees, so dear to the French settlers.
There were vineyards, too, and thrifty patches of vegetables, and lines of flowers set in the carefully raked mould.
We walked on, enraptured by the sights around us, by the heavy scent of the roses and the blossoms.Here was a quaint stone horse-mill, a stable, or a barn set uncouthly on the street; a baker's shop, with a glimpse of the white-capped baker through the shaded doorway, and an appetizing smell of hot bread in the air.A little farther on we heard the tinkle of the blacksmith's hammer, and the man himself looked up from where the hoof rested on his leather apron to give us a kindly ``Bon soir, Messieurs,'' as we passed.And here was a cabaret, with the inevitable porch, from whence came the sharp click of billiard balls.