The Sun Maid: A Story of Fort Dearborn

CHAPTER X.

THE CAVE OF REFUGE

Three abreast, the chestnut in the middle, the fugitives from the doomed village of Muck-otey-pokee rode like the wind in a straight, unswerving line across the prairie. After they had left a considerable distance behind them, Wahneenah turned her stern face backward, and scanned the route over which they had passed; and when her keen vision detected something like a group of glistening bayonets – to ordinary sight no larger than a point against the horizon – she abruptly doubled on her course, then made a sharp detour westward. She had early dropped her own bridle, and had since guided her horse by her low spoken commands, while in either hand she clutched a bit-ring of the Snowbird and Tempest. Her change of direction must have brought her all the more plainly into view of the pursuing soldiers, but in a few moments she had gained the shelter of a group of trees.

These sprang, apparently, out of the midst of the plain, but she knew that they really concealed the entrance to the underground pathway to the cave; and once within their shelter, she paused to breathe and gaze upon the startled faces of her children.

That of the Sun Maid was pale, indeed, with the excitement of this mad ride, but showed no fear; while Gaspar’s, alas! wore an expression of abject terror. His eyes stared wildly, his teeth were set, his nostrils drawn and pinched. He was, his foster-mother saw, already on the verge of a collapse.

She leaped from her horse, and caught the fainting boy in her arms while she directed the Sun Maid:

“Jump down and tie the horses, as the Snake-Who-Leaps showed you, by their long bridles. In any case, there is little fear but they will stand. Then follow me.”

“But what ails my Gaspar, Other Mother?” asked the child, as she sprang from her saddle. “Did somebody hurt him when the guns fired?”

“No. Tie the horses. He will be right soon. It is the fright. Make haste, make haste!”

“Yes, yes, I will. My dear old Feather-man taught Kitty everything. Every single thing about my Snowbird. I can fasten her all tight so she will never, never get away, unless I let her. I will tie Gaspar’s, too; and shall your Chestnut stay here with them two?”

But for once Wahneenah did not stop to hear her darling out. She had seen the deftness with which the little girl’s small fingers had copied the instructions of her riding-master, and had wondered at it many times. She trusted it now, knowing that the lad needed her first care, and meaning to carry him through the passage into the cave, then return for the other. She knew, also, that if the soldiers she had seen following them should come upon the tethered horses, the fact of their presence would betray her own. But from this possibility there was no escape; and, had she known it, no need for such.

She had scarcely laid the unconscious boy down upon the floor of her retreat when Kitty came flying down the tunnel, her task completed.

“So quick, papoose?”

“Yes. Every one is fastened to a pretty tree, and every one is glad. Why did we ride so fast, Wahneenah? It ’most took Kitty’s breath out of her mouth. But I did like it till my Gaspar looked so queer. Is he sick, Other Mother? Why doesn’t he speak to me?”

“He is ill, in very fact, Girl-Child. Ill of terror. Young as he is, he has seen fearful sights, and they have hurt his tender heart. But he will soon be better; and when he is you must not talk to him of our old home, or of our ride, or of anything except that we are making another little festival here in our cave. One more cup of water, papoose, but take care you do not slip when you dip it from the spring. We will bathe his face and rub his hands, and by and by he will awake and talk.”

Then, leaving the lad to the ministrations of the child, and under pretence of making “all cosy for the picnic,” Wahneenah sped cautiously back through the passage to the edge of the little grove, casting a searching glance in each direction. To her infinite relief, the glistening speck had vanished from the landscape, and she concluded that the white soldiers had ridden but a short distance north of the village, and then returned to it. She noticed with pride how the little maid had fastened each of the brave animals that had served them so well in a spot where the grass was still green and plentiful, and that there was no need of her refastening the straps which held them.

“Surely, her wisdom is more than mortal!” she exclaimed in delight; such as more cultured mothers feel when they discover that their little ones are really gifted with the common intelligence that to them seems extraordinary.

Gaspar was awake, and looking about him curiously, when she got back into the cavern; and, in response to his silent inquiry, she drew a tree-branch before the opening and nodded smilingly:

“That is to keep the sunshine out of the Dark-Eyes.”

“But – where are we? Why – oh! I remember! I remember! Must I always, always see such awful things? Is there no place in this world where I can hide?”

“Why, yes, Dark-Eye. There is just such a place; and we have found it. Don’t you remember our sanctuary? Where the Black Partridge came to eat the fish you caught? Where we have such a store of good things put aside. Rest now, after your ride, and the White Papoose shall make a pillow for you of the rushes I will pull. Then we’ll shut the branch in close, like the curtain of our wigwam, and be as safe and happy as a bird in its nest.”

Wahneenah’s assumed cheerfulness did not deceive, though it greatly comforted, the terrified boy; and the quietude of the sheltered spot, added to its dimness and his own exhaustion, soon overcame him again, and his eyelids closed. But the sleep into which he drifted now was a natural and restful one, and he roused from it, at Kitty’s summons, with something of his old courage – the courage which had made him a hero that day when he first rode the black gelding, and had used his boyish strength to do a man’s work.

“When Other Mother did make a fire and cook us such a nice breakfast, we must eat it quick. Kitty’s ready. Kitty’s dreadful hungry, Kitty is. Is you hungry, too, Dark-Eye?”

He had not thought that he was. But now that she mentioned it, he realized the fact. Fortunately, he was so young and healthy that the scenes through which he seemed destined to pass at such frequently-recurring intervals could not really affect his physical condition for any length of time. To see Wahneenah moving about the little cavern as calmly as if it were her daily habit to be there, and to catch the sound of the Sun Maid’s joyous laughter, was to make the present seem the only reality.

“Why, it’s another picnic, isn’t it? Did the things actually happen back there as I thought? Were we here all night? I used to have such terrible dreams, when I lived at the Fort, that, when daylight came, I could not forget them. I get confused between the dreams and the true things.”

“An empty stomach makes a foolish head. Many a squaw is afraid of her warrior before he breaks his morning fast, and finds him a lamb after it is eaten,” said Wahneenah, sententiously.

“Gaspar is my warrior, Other Mother; but I am never afraid of him.”

“You are afraid of nothing, Kitty!” reproved the boy.

“But I am! I am afraid I shall get nothing to eat at all, if you don’t come!”

So the children ate, and Wahneenah served them. She was herself too anxious to partake of any food, and under her placid exterior she was straining every nerve to listen for any outward sounds which might prove that their refuge had been discovered.

But no sounds came to disturb them, and as the hours passed hope returned to her; and when the Sun Maid had fallen asleep, weary of frolic, and Gaspar again questioned her concerning the morning, she answered, in good faith:

“Probably, it was not half so bad as it seemed. There were many bad Indians in the village, and it is likely for them that the white soldiers were searching. They must have gone away long since. By and by, if nothing happens, we will return to our own tepee, and forget this morning’s fright. The Snake-Who-Leaps will be proud of his pupils for the way they rode at his bidding.”

A shiver ran through the lad’s frame, and he crept within the shelter of Wahneenah’s arm.

“But did you not see what happened to him? He lies beneath the curtains of your lodge, and he will teach us no more. A white soldier shot him. I saw him fall.”

The woman herself had not seen this, and she now sprang to her feet in a fury of indignation.

“A white man killed him! That grand old brave, who should have lived to be a hundred years! It cannot be.”

“But it was.”

She was the daughter of a mighty chief. Her blood was royal, and she gloried in it. All the race-hatred in her nature roused, and, for the moment only, she glowered upon the pale-faced youth before her, as if he represented, in his small person, all the sins of his own people.

Then the paroxysm passed, and her nobler self triumphed. Sitting down again, she sought to draw the boy back into her embrace, but he held himself aloof, and would not. So she began to talk with him there, with a simple wisdom and dignity that she had learned from nature itself.

“Why should we be angry, one with another, my son? The Great Spirit is our Father. No man comes into life nor leaves it by a chance. What the Mighty One decrees, that it is befalls. Between His red-skinned children and His pale-faced ones He has put an undying enmity. I have not always so believed. I have hoped and pleaded for the peace which should glorify the world, even as the sun is glorifying the wide land outside of this dim cavern. But it is not so to be. Even as the chief, the Black Partridge, said: there is a feud which can never be overcome, for it is of the Great Spirit’s own planting. He that made us all permits it. Let us, then, in our small place, cease to fight against the inevitable. We have made the compact. We will abide by it. In a tiny corner of the beautiful world we three will live in harmony. Let the rest go. Put away your anger against my people, as I now put aside mine against yours. The Sun Maid is of both races, it seems to me. She is our Bond, our Peace-maker, our Delight. Behold! She wakes. Before her eyes, let no shadow of our mutual trouble fall. I go outside to watch. If all seems well, we may ride home at nightfall.”

Save for the danger to her young charges, she would have done so even then. Far superior though she had always been to them, her heart yearned over the helpless women of her tribe whom she had left behind.

“But that cannot be. They were tied fast by their motherhood to the homes wherein they may have perished, even as I am tied here by my adopted ones. The beasts, too, are tied; but they, at least, may have a moment’s freedom.”

So she loosed them, and guided them to the pool where they could drink, and watched them curiously, to see if they would avail themselves of the liberty she had thus offered. But they did not. They quaffed the clear water, then tossed their velvet nostrils about its depths till it was soiled and worthless; yet they turned of their own accord away from the wind-swept prairie into the shelter of the trees, and grouped themselves beneath one, as if uniting against some common, unseen enemy.

“They are wiser than their masters,” said Wahneenah, patting her Chestnut’s beautiful neck; and seeing a deeper glade, where they might spend the night even more safely, she led them thither and fastened them again. Under ordinary circumstances she would have left them untethered; but she knew not then at what moment she might again need them, as they had been needed earlier in the day.

When the darkness fell, Wahneenah put aside the brushwood door which she had placed before the entrance to the cave, and sat down upon the withering branch to watch and wait. The children were both asleep, and she knew that if the Black Partridge were still alive and able he would seek her there, as he had promised on that day in the past when they had discussed the possibility of what had really now occurred.

She was not to be disappointed. While she sat, contrasting the happiness that had been hers on just the night before with the uncertainty of this, there sounded in the sloping tunnel the tread of a moccasined foot. Also, she could hear the crowding of a stalwart figure against its sides, and there was something in both sounds which told her who was coming.

“My brother is late.”

“It is better thus, it may be, than not at all.”

“The voice of the Black Partridge is sorrowful.”

“The heart of the chief is broken within him.”