I should make but a poor historian, for I have not stuck to my chronology.But as I write, the vivid recollections are those that I set down.I have forgotten two things of great importance.First, the departure of Father Gibault with several Creole gentlemen and a spy of Colonel Clark's for Vincennes, and their triumphant return in August.The sacrifice of the good priest had not been in vain, and he came back with the joyous news of a peaceful conquest.The stars and stripes now waved over the fort, and the French themselves had put it there.
And the vast stretch of country from that place westward to the Father of Waters was now American.
And that brings me to the second oversight.The surprise and conquest of Cahokia by Bowman and his men was like that of Kaskaskia.And the French there were loyal, too, offering their militia for service in the place of those men of Bowman's company who would not reenlist.These came to Kaskaskia to join our home-goers, and no sooner had the hundred marched out of the gate and taken up their way for Kentucky than Colonel Clark began the drilling of the new troops.
Captain Leonard Helm was sent to take charge of Vincennes, and Captain Montgomery set out across the mountains for Williamsburg with letters praying the governor of Virginia to come to our assistance.
For another cloud had risen in the horizon: another problem for Clark to face of greater portent than all the others.A messenger from Captain Bowman at Cohos came riding down the street on a scraggly French pony, and pulled up before headquarters.The messenger was Sergeant Thomas McChesney, and his long legs almost reached the ground on either side of the little beast.
Leaping from the saddle, he seized me in his arms, set me down, and bade me tell Colonel Clark of his arrival.
It was a sultry August morning.Within the hour Colonel Clark and Tom and myself were riding over the dusty trace that wound westward across the common lands of the village, which was known as the Fort Chartres road.The heat-haze shimmered in the distance, and there was no sound in plain or village save the tinkle of a cowbell from the clumps of shade.Colonel Clark rode twenty paces in front, alone, his head bowed with thinking.
``They're coming into Cahokia as thick as bees out'n a gum, Davy,'' said Tom; ``seems like there's thousands of 'em.Nothin' will do 'em but they must see the Colonel,--the varmints.And they've got patience, they'll wait thar till the b'ars git fat.I reckon they 'low Clark's got the armies of Congress behind him.If they knowed,''
said Tom, with a chuckle, ``if they knowed that we'd only got seventy of the boys and some hundred Frenchies in the army! I reckon the Colonel's too cute for 'em.''
The savages in Cahokia were as the leaves of the forest.
Curiosity, that mainspring of the Indian character, had brought the chiefs, big and little, to see with their own eyes the great Captain of the Long Knives.In vain had the faithful Bowman put them off.They would wait.
Clark must come.And Clark was coming, for he was not the man to quail at such a crisis.For the crux of the whole matter was here.And if he failed to impress them with his power, with the might of the Congress for which he fought, no man of his would ever see Kentucky again.
As we rode through the bottom under the pecan trees we talked of Polly Ann, Tom and I, and of our little home by the Salt River far to the southward, where we would live in peace when the campaign was over.Tom had written her, painfully enough, an affectionate scrawl, which he sent by one of Captain Linn's men.And I, too, had written.My letter had been about Tom, and how he had become a sergeant, and what a favorite he was with Bowman and the Colonel.Poor Polly Ann! She could not write, but a runner from Harrodstown who was a friend of Tom's had carried all the way to Cahokia, in the pocket with his despatches, a fold of nettle-bark linen.
Tom pulled it from the bosom of his hunting shirt to show me, and in it was a little ring of hair like unto the finest spun red-gold.This was the message Polly Ann had sent,--a message from little Tom as well.
At Prairie du Rocher, at St.Philippe, the inhabitants lined the streets to do homage to this man of strange power who rode, unattended and unafraid, to the council of the savage tribes which had terrorized his people of Kentucky.From the ramparts of Fort Chartres (once one of the mighty chain of strongholds to protect a new France, and now deserted like Massacre), I gazed for the first time in awe at the turgid flood of the Mississippi, and at the lands of the Spanish king beyond.With never ceasing fury the river tore at his clay banks and worried the green islands that braved his charge.And my boyish fancy pictured to itself the monsters which might lie hidden in his muddy depths.
We lay that night in the open at a spring on the bluffs, and the next morning beheld the church tower of Cahokia.
A little way from the town we perceived an odd gathering on the road, the yellowed and weathered hunting shirts of Bowman's company mixed with the motley dress of the Creole volunteers.Some of these gentlemen wore the costume of coureurs du bois, others had odd regimental coats and hats which had seen much service.Besides the military was a sober deputation of citizens, and hovering behind the whole a horde of curious, blanketed braves, come to get a first glimpse of the great white captain.So escorted, we crossed at the mill, came to a shady street that faced the little river, and stopped at the stone house where Colonel Clark was to abide.