The Sun Maid: A Story of Fort Dearborn

“Thank you, but I must go. I am not much afraid for myself at any time, for I’ve known the red-skins always and – trusted them never! But a girl – did you ever hear of the Sun Maid?”

“Hear of her? Her? Well, I guess so! Who hasn’t, in these parts? Why?”

“It was to find her and protect her that I started last night from the Fort.”

“To protect her? Well, you could have saved your trouble. I wish that I was as safe in this wild country as she is. There is an old saying that her life is charmed; that nothing evil can ever happen to her; and so far it has proved true. As for the Indians, even the wickedest in the whole race would die to save her life. I hope you’ll find her, sir, all right; but if there’s any protecting to be done, she’ll protect you, not you her. Well, good-by, and good luck!”

Gaspar bared his head and rode away, on a straight trail this time, and with the exhilaration of the morning tingling through his healthful veins. On every side the great clouds of white mist rose and rolled apart. Blue violets and white windflowers began to peep upward at him from his path, and he remembered Kitty’s love for them. Then the sun broke through, and only those who have thus ridden across a dew-drenched prairie, at such an hour in such a season, can picture what that ride was like.

The spirit of life and love and that glorious morning thrilled both horse and master as they leaped forward and still forward till, on the top of a grassy rise, a sudden halt was made.

For what was this coming out of the west? – this fair white creature on her snowy mount, with the golden sunlight on her yellow hair, her glowing face, her modest maiden breast. Flowers wreathed her all about and a White Bow gleamed at her saddle horn. Behind her, and one on either side, rode dusky warriors, brave in their finest trappings and turning a reverent, attentive ear to the Maid’s words. Their horses’ footfalls deadened by the sodden grass, slowly they came into fuller view, as a picture grows under the painter’s brush.

Still the man on the black horse facing them sat still, spellbound. Could this be Kitty, his Kitty; to whom his thoughts had turned as to a half-grown, playful child, and over whom he had domineered with the masterful pride of boyhood? He was a man now, boyhood was past; but he had quite forgotten that girlhood also passes and the child becomes a woman.

He had grown rich and strong. After her supposed death he had devoted himself wholly to money-getting with the singleness of purpose that never fails of its object. He had come back to his old home to spend the fortune he had gained, feeling himself a master among men and his strength that of wisdom as well as wealth.

Now all his pride and arrogance passed from him before the nobility of this woman approaching. For on her youthful face sat the dignity which is higher than pride and from her beautiful eyes gleamed the beneficent love more far-reaching than wealth.

After a moment Gaspar rode slowly forward again, and soon espying, but not recognizing, him, the Sun Maid advanced. Then all at once the black horse and the white galloped to a meet.

“Kitty! My Kitty!”

“Gaspar!”

Their hands closed in a clasp that banished years of separation, and the black eyes searched the blue, questioning for the one sweet answer that rules all the world. There was a swift self-revelation in both hearts; a consciousness that this was what the God who made them had meant from the beginning. With a grave exaltation too deep and too high for words, the pure man and the pure woman came to their destiny and accepted it. Then their hands fell apart, the black Tempest wheeled into place beside the white Snowbird, and, as on a day long in the past, the pair passed swiftly and lightly eastward toward the lakeside village and their home.

“Ugh! The Sun Maid has found her mate!” muttered the foremost warrior grimly, and followed with his company at a soberer pace.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE CROOKED LOG

“I tell you what, Chicago’s a-growing. First we come; then Gaspar; then Kitty and him get married; and I go to keeping tavern in the parson’s house; and his son, One, goes up north to take a place in Gaspar’s business; and Gaspar sends Two and Three east to study law and medicine; and Four and his pa come to board in our tavern; and Osceolo – ”

“For the land’s sake, Abel Smith, do hold your tongue. Here you’ve got to be as big a talker as old Deacon Slim, that I used to hear about, who begun the minute he woke up and never stopped till his wife tied his mouth shut at night. Even then – ”

“Mercy, Mercy! Take care. Set me a good example, if you can; but don’t go to denying that this is a growin’ village.”

“I’ve no call to deny it. Why should I? But, say, Abel, just step round to the store, won’t you, an’ buy me some of that turkey red calico was brought in on the last team from the East. I’d admire to make Kitty a rising sun quilt for her bedroom. ’Twould be so ’propriate, too.”

“Fiddlesticks! Not a yard of stuff will I ever buy for you to set an’ snip, snip, like you used to in the woods. We’ve got something else to do now. As for Kit, between the Fort folks and the Indians, she’s had so many things give her a’ready, she won’t have room to put ’em. The idee! Them two children gettin’ married. Seems just like play make believe.”

“Well, there ain’t no make believe. It’s the best thing ’t ever happened to Chicago. Wonderful how they both ’pear to love the old hole in the mud,” answered Mercy.

“Yes, ain’t it? To hear Gaspar talk, you’d think he’d been to Congress, let alone bein’ President. All about the ‘possibilities of the location,’ the ‘fertility of the soil,’ the ‘big canawl,’ and the whole endurin’ business; why, I tell you, it badgers my wits to foller him.”

“Wouldn’t try, then, if I was you. Poor old wits ’most wore out, any how, and better save what’s left for this tavern business. Between you and your fiddle, thinkin’ you’ve got to amuse your guests, I’m about beat out. All the drudgery comes on me, same’s it always did.”

“Drudgery, Mercy? Now, come. Take it easy. Hain’t Kitty fetched you a couple of squaws to do your steps and dish washin’? All you have to do is to cook and – ”

“Oh! go along, Abel, and get me that calico. Don’t set there till you take root. I ain’t a-complainin’, an’ I ’low I’m as much looked up to here in Chicago without my bedstead as I was in the woods with it.”

“Looked up to? I should say so. There ain’t a woman in the settlement holds her head as top-lofty as you do. And with good reason, I ’low. I don’t praise you often, ma, but when I do, I mean it. If you hadn’t been smarter ’n the average, and had more gumption to boot, you’d never been asked in to help them army women cook Kitty’s weddin’ supper. By the way, where are the youngsters now? I hain’t seen ’em to-day.”

“Off over the prairie on their horses, just as they used to be when they were little tackers. I never saw bridal folks like them; from the very first not hangin’ round by themselves, but mixing with everybody, same’s usual, and beginning right away to do all the good they can with Gaspar’s money. Off now to see some folks burned their own barn up – ”

“W-h-a-t?” demanded Abel, with paling face.

“What ails you? A fool of a woman took a lighted candle into her hay loft and ruined herself. That happened the night Gaspar found Kitty; and they call it part of their weddin’ tower to go there and lend the farmer the money to replace it. Gaspar was for giving it outright, though he’s a shrewd feller too, but Kit wouldn’t. ‘They aren’t paupers, and it would hurt their pride,’ she said. ‘Lend it to them on very easy terms, and they’ll respect themselves and you.’”

“Well, of course he done it.”

“Sure. When a man gets a wife as wise as Kitty he’d ought to hark to her.”

“I’ll go and get the calico now, Mercy,” said Abel, and left rather suddenly.

At nightfall the young couple rode homeward once more, facing the moonlight that whitened the great lake and touched the homely hamlet beside it with an idealizing beauty; and looking upon it, the Sun Maid recalled her vision concerning it and repeated it to her husband.

“Ever since then, my Gaspar, the dream comes back to me in some form or shape. But it is always here, right here, that the crowds gather and the great roar of life sounds in my ears. In some strange way we are to be part of it; part of it all. In the dream I see the tall spires of churches, thick and shouldering one another like the trees in the forest behind us.”

“But, my darling, you have never seen a church of any sort. How, then, can you dream of them?”

“That I don’t know, unless it is from the pictures in the good Doctor’s books. I have learned so much from the pictures always. But, oh! I wish I could make you know some of the delight I felt when first I could read!”

“I do know it, sweetheart. I, too, craved knowledge and dug it out for myself, up there in the northern forests, from the few books that came my way and the rare visit of a man who could teach. The first dollar I had that was all my own I put aside for you. That was the beginning of our fortune. The second I invested in a spelling-book. The study, dear, was all that helped me bear the pain of your death. But you are not dead! Rather the most alive of any human being whom I ever saw.”

“That is true, Gaspar. I am alive. I just quiver with the force that drives me on from one task to another, from one point reached to one beyond. And now, with you beside me, there is no limit, it seems, to the help we can be to every single person who will come within our reach. Wasn’t the woman glad and grateful; and don’t you see, laddie, that it is better as I planned? You say you have been penurious, saving every cent not expended for your books and necessaries: and yet, now that you are happy again, you are ready to rush to the other extreme and throw your money away in thoughtless charity.”

She looked so young, so childlike, in the glimmering moonlight that the tall woodsman laughed.

“To hear my little Kit teaching her elders!”

“The elders must listen. It is for our home. You must spend every dollar you have, but you must do it in such a way that somebody will be helped. We don’t want money, just money, for itself. To hold it that way would make us ignoble. It’s the wealth we spend that will make us rich.”

“Kit, there’s some dark scheme afloat in that fair head of yours. Out with it!”

“Just for a beginning of things – this: There was a family came to the Fort to-day. The father is a skilled wood-carver. He is not over strong and his wife is frailer than he. They have a lot of little children and he must earn money. It has cost them more than they expected to get as far as this, even, and they should not go farther. Yet he is a man, a master workman. It would be an insult to offer him money. But give him work and you feed his soul as well as his body.”

“How, my love? Who that dwells in a log cabin needs fine carvings or would appreciate them if they had them?”

“Educate them to want and appreciate them. Open a school for just that branch. I myself will be his pupil. I remember with what delight I used to mould Mercy’s butter. Well, I’ve been moulding something ever since.”

“Your husband, for instance.”

“He’s a little difficult material; but time will improve him! Then there are the Doctor’s botanical treatises and specimens. Open a school. If you have to begin with a few only, still begin. Lay the seed. From our little workroom and classroom may grow one of those mighty colleges that have made Englishmen great and are making Americans their equals.”

“Hello there, child! Hold on a bit. Their equals? And you a soldier’s daughter!”