``They have gran' time in Louisville to-night, Davy,''
said Jake Landrasse, as he paddled me towards the Kentucky shore; ``you hear?''
``I should be stone deaf if I didn't,'' I answered, for the shouting which came from the town filled me with forebodings.
``They come back from the barbecue full of whiskey,''
said Jake, ``and a young man at the tavern come out on the porch and he say, `Get ready you all to go to Louisiana!
You been hole back long enough by tyranny.'
Sam Barker come along and say he a Federalist.They done have a gran' fight, he and the young feller, and Sam got licked.He went at Sam just like a harricane.''
``And then?'' I demanded.
``Them four wanted to leave,'' said Jake, taking no trouble to disguise his disgust, ``and I had to fetch 'em over.I've got to go back and wait for 'em now,'' and he swore with sincere disappointment.``I reckon there ain't been such a jamboree in town for years.''
Jake had not exaggerated.Gentlemen from Moore's Settlement, from Sullivan's Station on the Bear Grass,--to be brief, the entire male population of the county seemed to have moved upon Louisville after the barbecue, and I paused involuntarily at the sight which met my eyes as I came into the street.A score of sputtering, smoking pine-knots threw a lurid light on as many hilarious groups, and revealed, fantastically enough, the boles and lower branches of the big shade trees above them.
Navigation for the individual, difficult enough lower down, in front of the tavern became positively dangerous.There was a human eddy,--nay, a maelstrom would better describe it.Fights began, but ended abortively by reason of the inability of the combatants to keep their feet; one man whose face I knew passed me with his hat afire, followed by several companions in gusts of laughter, for the torch-bearers were careless and burned the ears of their friends in their enthusiasm.Another person whom I recognized lacked a large portion of the front of his attire, and seemed sublimely unconscious of the fact.His face was badly scratched.Several other friends of mine were indulging in brief intervals of rest on the ground, and I barely avoided stepping on them.Still other gentlemen were delivering themselves of the first impressive periods of orations, only to be drowned by the cheers of their auditors.These were the snatches which I heard as I picked my way onward with exaggerated fear:--``Gentlemen, the Mississippi is ours, let the tyrants who forbid its use beware!'' ``To hell with the Federal government!'' ``I tell you, sirs, this land is ours.We have conquered it with our blood, and I reckon no Spaniard is goin' to stop us.We ain't come this far to stand still.
We settled Kaintuck, fit off the redskins, and we'll march across the Mississippi and on and on--'' ``To Louisiany!''
they shouted, and the whole crowd would take it up, ``To Louisiany! Open the river!''
So absorbed was I in my own safety and progress that Idid not pause to think (as I have often thought since)of the full meaning of this, though I had marked it for many years.The support given to Wilkinson's plots, to Clark's expedition, was merely the outward and visible sign of the onward sweep of a resistless race.In spite of untold privations and hardships, of cruel warfare and massacre, these people had toiled over the mountains into this land, and impatient of check or hindrance would, even as Clark had predicted, when their numbers were sufficient leap the Mississippi.Night or day, drunk or sober, they spoke of this thing with an ever increasing vehemence, and no man of reflection who had read their history could say that they would be thwarted.One day Louisiana would be theirs and their children's for the generations to come.One day Louisiana would be American.
That I was alive and unscratched when I got as far as the tavern is a marvel.Amongst all the passion-lit faces which surrounded me I could get no sight of Nick's, and Imanaged to make my way to a momentarily quiet corner of the porch.As I leaned against the wall there, trying to think what I should do, there came a great cheering from a little way up the street, and then I straightened in astonishment.Above the cheering came the sound of a drum beaten in marching time, and above that there burst upon the night what purported to be the ``Marseillaise,''
taken up and bawled by a hundred drunken throats and without words.Those around me who were sufficiently nimble began to run towards the noise, and I ran after them.And there, marching down the middle of the street at the head of a ragged and most indecorous column of twos, in the centre of a circle of light cast by a pine-knot which Joe Handy held, was Mr.Nicholas Temple.
His bearing, if a trifle unsteady, was proud, and--if Icould believe my eyes--around his neck was slung the thing which I prized above all my possessions,--the drum which I had carried to Kaskaskia and Vincennes!
He had taken it from the peg in my room.