第61章 DAYS OF TRIAL(1)

But I was not immediately to take up the study of French.Things began to happen in Kaskaskia.In the first place, Captain Bowman's company, with a few scouts, of which Tom was one, set out that very afternoon for the capture of Cohos, or Cahokia, and this despite the fact that they had had no sleep for two nights.If you will look at the map,[1] you will see, dotted along the bottoms and the bluffs beside the great Mississippi, the string of villages, Kaskaskia, La Prairie du Rocher, Fort Chartres, St.Philip, and Cahokia.Some few miles from Cahokia, on the western bank of the Father of Waters, was the little French village of St.Louis, in the Spanish territory of Louisiana.From thence eastward stretched the great waste of prairie and forest inhabited by roving bands of the forty Indian nations.Then you come to Vincennes on the Wabash, Fort St.Vincent, the English and Canadians called it, for there were a few of the latter who had settled in Kaskaskia since the English occupation.

[1] The best map which the editor has found of this district is in vol.VI, Part 11, of Winsor's ``Narrative and Critical History of America,'' p.721.

We gathered on the western skirts of the village to give Bowman's company a cheer, and every man, woman, and child in the place watched the little column as it wound snakelike over the prairie on the road to Fort Chartres, until it was lost in the cottonwoods to the westward.

Things began to happen in Kaskaskia.It would have been strange indeed if things had not happened.One hundred and seventy-five men had marched into that territory out of which now are carved the great states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and to most of them the thing was a picnic, a jaunt which would soon be finished.Many had left families in the frontier forts without protection.

The time of their enlistment had almost expired.

There was a store in the village kept by a great citizen, --not a citizen of Kaskaskia alone, but a citizen of the world.This, I am aware, sounds like fiction, like an attempt to get an effect which was not there.But it is true as gospel.The owner of this store had many others scattered about in this foreign country: at Vincennes, at St.Louis, where he resided, at Cahokia.He knew Michilimackinac and Quebec and New Orleans.He had been born some thirty-one years before in Sardinia, had served in the Spanish army, and was still a Spanish subject.The name of this famous gentleman was Monsieur Francois Vigo, and he was the Rothschild of the country north of the Ohio.Monsieur Vigo, though he merited it, I had not room to mention in the last chapter.Clark had routed him from his bed on the morning of our arrival, and whether or not he had been in the secret of frightening the inhabitants into making their wills, and then throwing them into transports of joy, I know not.

Monsieur Vigo's store was the village club.It had neither glass in the window nor an attractive display of goods; it was merely a log cabin set down on a weedy, sun-baked plot.The stuffy smell of skins and furs came out of the doorway.Within, when he was in Kaskaskia, Monsieur Vigo was wont to sit behind his rough walnut table, writing with a fine quill, or dispensing the news of the villages to the priest and other prominent citizens, or haggling with persistent blanketed braves over canoe-loads of ill-smelling pelts which they brought down from the green forests of the north.Monsieur Vigo's clothes were the color of the tobacco he gave in exchange; his eyes were not unlike the black beads he traded, but shrewd and kindly withal, set in a square saffron face that had the contradiction of a small chin.As the days wore into months, Monsieur Vigo's place very naturally became the headquarters for our army, if army it might be called.Of a morning a dozen would be sitting against the logs in the black shadow, and in the midst of them always squatted an unsavory Indian squaw.

A few braves usually stood like statues at the corner, and in front of the door another group of hunting shirts.

Without was the paper money of the Continental Congress, within the good tafia and tobacco of Monsieur Vigo.

One day Monsieur Vigo's young Creole clerk stood shrugging his shoulders in the doorway.I stopped.

``By tam!'' Swein Poulsson was crying to the clerk, as he waved a worthless scrip above his head.``Vat is money?''

This definition the clerk, not being a Doctor Johnson, was unable to give offhand.

``Vat are you, choost? Is it America?'' demanded Poulsson, while the others looked on, some laughing, some serious.``And vich citizen are you since you are ours? You vill please to give me one carrot of tobacco.''

And he thrust the scrip under the clerk's nose.

The clerk stared at the uneven lettering on the scrip with disdain.

``Money,'' he exclaimed scornfully, ``she is not money.

Piastre--Spanish dollare--then I give you carrot.''

``By God!'' shouted Bill Cowan, ``ye will take Virginny paper, and Congress paper, or else I reckon we'll have a drink and tobacey, boys, take or no take.''

``Hooray, Bill, ye're right,'' cried several of our men.

``Lemme in here,'' said Cowan.But the frightened Creole blocked the doorway.

``Sacre'!'' he screamed, and then, ``Voleurs!''

The excitement drew a number of people from the neighborhood.Nay, it seemed as if the whole town was ringed about us.

``Bravo, Jules!'' they cried, ``garde-tu la porte.A bas les Bostonnais! A bas les voleurs!''

``Damn such monkey talk,'' said Cowan, facing them suddenly.I knew him well, and when the giant lost his temper it was gone irrevocably until a fight was over.

``Call a man a squar' name.''

``Hey, Frenchy,'' another of our men put in, stalking up to the clerk, ``I reckon this here store's ourn, ef we've a mind to tek it.I 'low you'll give us the rum and the 'bacey.Come on, boys!''

In between him and the clerk leaped a little, robin-like man with a red waistcoat, beside himself with rage.