The Shadow of Victory: A Romance of Fort Dearborn

"Have you had Queen out this morning?"

"Yes, I rode her half-way to Fort Wayne and back. She got pretty well used up, but it did her good."

"How dare you!" flamed Beatrice, stamping her foot.

Ronald laughed and leaned easily against the side of the house while she stormed at him. Even Robert's appearance did not have any effect upon her wrath.

"Say, Rob," said the Ensign, when she paused to take breath, "your cousin here doesn't seem to know a joke when she sees it. She thinks I'd ride that old gun-carriage she keeps in the garrison stables. Calm her down a bit, will you? Bye-bye!"

The fire died out of the girl's eyes and her lips quivered. Her breast was heaving, but she kept herself in check till Ronald slammed the gate, then her shoulders shook with sobs.

"Bee!" cried Robert. "Don't, dear!"

Instinctively he put his arm around her, and she leaned against his shoulder, sobbing helplessly, her self-control quite gone. Ronald was untying a pirogue at the landing, when he looked back and saw the inspiring tableau.

"Good Lord!" he said, under his breath, as Robert, with his arm still around her, led Beatrice into the house.

Later in the week, as Robert was on his way to breakfast, he met Maria Indiana in the long, narrow passage back of the living-rooms. "What have you there, baby?" he asked.

Maria Indiana held out a small Indian basket of wonderful workmanship, filled with berries, fresh and fragrant, with the dew still on them. Tucked in at one side was a note, written upon his own stationery, as he could not help seeing. "It's for Tuzzin Bee!" lisped the child. "Misser George said nobody mus' see!"

The little feet pattered down the passage, but Robert stood still for a moment, as if he had turned to stone. Then wild unrest possessed him and stabs of pain pierced his consciousness. "Fool that I was!" he said to himself, bitterly; "blind, cursed fool!"

All at once he knew that he loved Beatrice with every fibre of his being – that she held his heart in the hollow of her hand, to crush or hurt as she pleased. He was shaken like an aspen in a storm – this, then, was why her flower-like face had haunted his dreams.

Swiftly upon the knowledge came a great uplifting, such as Love brings to the man whose life has been clean. It was a proud heart yielding only to the keeper of its keys – the absolute surrender of a kingdom to its queen.

Beatrice was late to breakfast, as usual; and Robert, acutely self-conscious, could not meet her eyes. She brought the basket with her and offered the berries as her contribution to the morning meal. Between gasps of laughter she read the poem, thereby causing mixed emotions in Forsyth. "Did you ever hear anything so ridiculous?" she asked, wiping the tears of mirth from her eyes.

Robert wished that the giver might see the rare pleasure his gift had brought to the recipient, but swiftly reproached himself for the ungenerous thought.

"It was nice of him to remember your birthday, Bee," said Mrs. Mackenzie, who was always ready to defend Ronald.

"How did he know it was my birthday?" demanded Beatrice.

"I told him," replied Mrs. Mackenzie. "He asked me, long ago, to find out when it was and to let him know."

"Clever of him," commented Beatrice, somewhat mollified. "Why didn't you get something for my birthday, Cousin Rob?" she asked, with a winning smile.

"Perhaps I did," he answered; "the day is still young."

He had already decided what to give her, and knew that his offering would not suffer by comparison with Ronald's, even though no poem went with it; but when he went to his room to look in his box for the moccasins he had bought so long ago, he was astonished to find that they were gone.

He ransacked the room thoroughly, but without success. He could not even remember when he had seen them last, though he knew he had taken them down from the wall of his room and put them away. Still, he was not greatly concerned, for he was sure that he could go to the Indian camp and find another pair.

After school he started off on a long, lonely tramp, and returned at sunset, empty handed and exasperated. Beatrice had on her pink calico gown, and was sitting demurely upon the piazza – alone. She seemed like a rose to her lover, and he was about to tell her so, but she forestalled him.

"Where's my birthday present?" she asked, sweetly; "I've been looking for it all day!"

Then he told her about the moccasins he had for her, though he failed to mention the fact that he had bought them for her long before she came to Fort Dearborn. "When I went after them this morning," he said, "I discovered that they had been stolen. I've been out now to see if I couldn't get another pair, but I couldn't even find a squaw who was willing to make them. You don't know how sorry I am!"

"Never mind," she said soothingly, "it's no matter. Of course, I'd love to have the moccasins, but it's the thought, rather than the gift, and I'd rather know that you found out from Aunt Eleanor when my birthday was, and tried to give me pleasure, than to have the pleasure itself."

The colour mounted to Robert's temples, but he could not speak. He felt that his silence was a lie, and a cowardly one at that, but he was helpless before the girl's smile.

"What's that?" asked Beatrice, suddenly, pointing across the river.

There was a stir at the Fort. Men ran in and out, evidently under stress of great excitement, then a tall and stately being, resplendent in a new uniform, came out and turned a handspring on the esplanade.

"What's up?" shouted Robert.

Ronald turned another handspring and threw his cap high in the air before he condescended to answer. "Bully!" he roared; "we're going to fight! War is declared against England!"

CHAPTER XIV

HEART'S DESIRE

Those who had complained of Captain Franklin's lax methods were silent now. The fortifications were strengthened at every possible point and pickets were stationed in the woods, at points on the lake shore, along the Fort Wayne trail, and at various places on the prairie. There was no target practice for fear of a scarcity of ammunition; but the women were taught to handle the pistols, muskets, and even the cannon in the blockhouses.

Mackenzie, Forsyth, and Chandonnais divided the night watch at the trading station. At the first sound of a warning gun, the women and children were to be taken to the Fort. As before, Beatrice was to go to Captain Franklin's, Mrs. Mackenzie and the children to Lieutenant Howard's, and the men to barracks.

"I guess I'll move over anyway," said Beatrice. "I wouldn't care to make the trip in the night. I'll sleep at the Captain's and eat wherever I happen to be."

Mrs. Franklin was not told of the plan until Beatrice and Robert appeared at her door with the enterprising young woman's possessions, but she made her guest very welcome.

"Why didn't you tell me you were coming?" she asked.

"What would be the use of telling you?" inquired Beatrice. "You'd be obliged to say you wanted me, so I just came."

The Captain's wife was genuinely glad, for of late she had been very lonely. Franklin was always more or less absorbed in his own affairs, and the feeling between Lieutenant Howard and his superior officer did not tend to promote friendly relations between the women. There had been no open break, but each felt that there might be one at any time.

Ronald was in high spirits. Since he had given Beatrice the basket she had treated him more kindly, and he led Queen twenty times around the Fort every day for exercise, without a murmur of complaint. Beatrice stood at the gate and kept count; while, across the river, Forsyth sat on the piazza and envied the Ensign, even during his monotonous daily round.

Among the officers at the Fort the declaration of war had not been altogether unexpected, for vague rumours of England's arrogance upon the high seas had reached the western limits of civilisation, but the situation was covered only by general orders from the War Department.

For once, Lieutenant Howard agreed with the Captain, in that there seemed to be no great possibility of a British attack. However valiantly defended, the Fort could not be held long in the face of a vigorous assault from the enemy, since the fighting force numbered less than sixty men, but England would have nothing to gain from that quarter. Other points were far more important than Fort Dearborn, but the garrison was ready to fight, nevertheless.

Ronald was more sanguine, and lived in hourly hope of hearing the signal of the enemy's approach. He sharpened the edge of his sword to the keen thinness of a knife blade, and slept with one hand upon his pistol. Doctor Norton, too, was making elaborate preparations in the way of lint and bandages, and Ronald helped him make stretchers enough to last during a lifetime of war.

But the days passed peacefully, and there were no signs of fighting. The Indians were particularly lawless, but confined their violence to their own people, though they had lost, in a great measure, their wholesome fear of the soldiers at the Fort.

"The devils are insolent because they think there's going to be trouble, and in the general confusion it will escape notice," remarked Ronald, as he sat in the shade of Lieutenant Howard's piazza. "I'm in favour of stringing up a few of 'em by way of example to the rest."

"Yes," replied Howard, twisting his mustache, "and in a few minutes we'd have the entire Pottawattomie tribe upon us. You don't seem to understand that they knew war had been declared long before we did, and that even now, in all probability, they are in league with the enemy. No people on earth are too low down for England to ally herself with when she wants territory."

"True," answered Ronald; "but I'm not afraid of England. She's had one good lesson, and we'll give her another any time she wants it."

"We've got enough on our hands right here," sighed the Lieutenant, "without any more foreign wars. We've got to have it out with the Indians yet, and fight our way step by step. The trail of blood began at Plymouth and will end – God knows where. England is more or less civilised, but she isn't above setting the Indians upon us to serve her own ends."