The Sun Maid: A Story of Fort Dearborn

But, keen-sighted though he was, for once the woodsman blundered. Between him and the lowering sun the prairie dipped and rose again, the two borders of the hidden valley seeming to meet in one unbroken plain. It was in this little depression that the wigwams were pitched, and among them the Sun Maid was already moving and pleading with her friends for patience and peace.

Meanwhile, Gaspar continued on his chosen route, at a direct right angle from that he should have followed, till the twilight came down and the whole landscape was swathed in mist. For there had been heavy rains of late, and the vapor rose from the soaked and sun-warmed earth like a great white pall, filling the hunter’s nostrils and blinding his sight.

“Well, this is hopeless. I might ride over her and not find her in this fog. But I can’t stay here. It’s choking. Heaven grant my Kitty’s safe under shelter somewhere. My own safety is to keep moving. Good boy, Tempest! Take it easy, but don’t stop.”

After that, there was nothing to do but trust the horse’s instinct to find a path through the mist and to be grateful that the ground was so level.

“It’s a long lane that has no turning. It must be that we’ll strike something different after a while; if not a settler’s house, at least a clump of trees. Any shelter would be better than none, in this creeping moisture. It would be easy to get lost; and what a situation! Oh! if I knew that she was out of it. A messenger to the Indians, eh? My little Kit, my dainty foster-sister!”

The gelding’s nose was to the ground and, as a dog would have done, he picked his way, cautiously, yet surely, straight north where lay, though Gaspar did not know it, a settler’s clearing and comfortable cabin. The rider’s thoughts passed from his present surroundings back to the past and forward to the future; and when there sounded, almost at his feet, a cry of distress he did not hear it in his absorption.

But Tempest did. At the second wail he stopped short, and it was this that roused Gaspar from his reverie.

“Tired, old Tempest, boy? It won’t do to rest here. Take a breath, if you like, and get on again. Keeping at it is salvation.”

“Mamma! I want – my – mamma!”

“Whew! What’s that? Hello!”

The sound was not repeated, and yet Tempest would not advance.

“Hello!” shouted Gaspar; and after a moment of strained listening, again he caught the echo of a child’s sob.

“My God! A baby – here! Lost in this fog!”

He was off his horse and down upon his knees, reaching, feeling, creeping – calling gently, and finally touching the cold, drenched garment of the child he could not see.

In its terror at this fresh danger the little one shrieked and rolled away; but the man lifted it tenderly, and soothed it with kind words till its shrieks ceased and it clung close to its rescuer.

“There, there, poor baby! How came you here? Don’t be afraid. I’ll take you home. Tempest will find the way. Feel – the good horse knows. It was he that found you; we’ll get on his back and ride straight to mamma, for whom you called.”

Climbing slowly back into his saddle, because of the little one he held so carefully, Gaspar laid its cold hand upon the gelding’s neck, but it slid listlessly aside and he realized that he had come not a moment too soon.

All night they wandered, the child lying on Gaspar’s breast wrapped in his coat, while the mist penetrated his own clothing and seemed to creep into his very thoughts, numbing them to a sort of despair that no effort could cast off. The wail of the child lost in that dreariness had brought back, like a lightning’s flash, the earliest memories of his life and revived his never-dying hatred of his parent’s slayers.

“An Indian’s hand was in this work!” he mused. “Doubtless, the mother for whom it grieved has met the fate which befell my own. And Abel said that it was among such as these my Sun Maid had gone!”

Then justice called to mind his knowledge of Wahneenah, of the Black Partridge, old Winnemeg, and others, and his mood softened somewhat; but still memory tormented him and the white fog seemed a background for ghastly scenes too awful for words. Above all and through all, one consciousness was keener and fiercer than the others:

“My Kitty is among them at this moment! O, God, keep her!”

It was the strongest cry of his yearning heart; yet underneath lay an impotent rage at his own powerlessness to help in this preservation.

“For what is my manhood or my courage worth to her now? And even the Deity seems veiled by this deadening, suffocating mist!”

But Tempest moved steadily on once more, and the little child warmed to life on his breast; and by degrees the man’s self-torment ceased. Then he lifted his eyes afresh and struggled to pierce the gloom.

What was that? A light! A little yellow spot in the gray whiteness, which the horse was first to see and toward which he now hastened with a firmer speed.

“It’s a fire. No, a lamp in a house window. There, it’s gone. A will-o’-the-wisp by some hidden pool. It shines again. Well, Tempest sees it and believes in it.”

The man lacked the animal’s faith, and even when they had come to within a short distance of the glow, the clouds of vapor swept between it and them and Gaspar checked Tempest’s advance. But at last a slight wind rose, and the mist which rolled toward them was tinged with the odor of smoke, so the rider knew that his first surmise had been correct.

“It is a fire. A settler’s cabin, probably once this lost child’s home. The red man’s work!”

When he reached the very spot there were, indeed, the remnants of a great burning, yet in the circle of the light Gaspar saw a house still standing. He was at its threshold promptly, and entered through its open door upon a scene of desolation. A woman crouched by the hearth that was strewn with ashes, and her moans echoed through the gloom with so much of agony in them that the stranger’s worst fears were confirmed. Then he caught her murmured words, and they were all of one tenor:

“My baby! my baby! my baby! My one lost little child! The wolves – my little one – my all!”

Gaspar strode into the room, lighted only by the fitful glare from the ruins without, and gently spoke:

“Don’t grieve like that! The child is safe. It is here in my arms.”

“What? Safe! safe!”

The mother was up, and had caught the little one from him before the words had left her lips, and the passion of her rejoicing brought the tears to the man’s eyes as her sorrow had not done.

After a moment, she was able to speak clearly and to demand his story. Then she gave hers.

“I was here alone. My husband had gone hunting, and I went into the barn to seek for eggs. The loft was dark – ”

“Spare yourself. I can guess. The Indians.”

“The Indians? No, indeed. Myself. My own carelessness. I carried a candle, and dropped it. The hay caught. I barely escaped from having my clothing burned on me; but I did. Then I forgot everything except my terrible loss and my husband’s anger when he returns. I began to fight the fire. I remember my little one crying with fright, but I paid no attention, and when at length I realized that it was too late for me to save our stock I stopped to look for him. Fortunately, the cabin was too far from the barn to catch easily, and there was a wind blowing the other way. That’s all that saved the home; yet, when I missed my baby, I wished that it would burn, too, and me with it. Life without him would be a living death. And he would have died, any way. The wolves are awful troublesome this spring. We’ve lost more than twenty of our hogs and the only pair of sheep we had. So husband joined a party and went out to hunt them. What will he say, what will he say, when he comes back!”

In Gaspar’s heart there sprang up a great happiness. The ill which had happened here was so much less than he had anticipated that he took courage for himself. After all, the Sun Maid might be safe, as Abel had declared she said she should be. He remembered, at last, that not all men are evil, even red ones; and in the reaction of his own feelings, he exclaimed:

“What can he say, but give thanks that no worse befell him!”

However, now that her child was safe within her arms, the woman began to suffer in advance the torment she would have to undergo when she faced her indignant husband; and she retorted sharply:

“Worse! Well, I suppose so. But I don’t see why in the name of common sense I was let to be such a fool in the first place. He won’t, neither. It’s all very well when you’ve lost half your property to give thanks for not losing your life, too; but I don’t see any cause for losing ary one.”

This sounded so like Mercy and her philosophy that Gaspar threw back his head and laughed; which angered his new friend first, and then affected her, also, with something of his mirth.

“I can’t see a thing to laugh at, I, for one,” she remarked, trying to be stern.

“Oh! but I can. And I’m not a laughing man, in ordinary. But there’s one thing I know – I’m powerful hungry. Can’t we make another fire, one that we can control, and get a bit of supper? If there’s anything in the house to cook, I can cook it while you tend baby. Then we’ll talk over your affairs.”

“There’s plenty to cook, but you’ll not cook it, sir. I owe you my child’s life, and now things are getting straighter in my muddled mind. I lost the barn for Jacob, and I must help replace it. I’ve been a hard worker always, but I can stretch another point, I guess. Pshaw! I believe it’s getting daylight. It’ll be breakfast instead of supper, this time.”

It was daylight, indeed; and in a half-hour the simple meal was smoking on the table, and Gaspar sitting to eat it with the hearty appetite of a man who has lived always out-of-doors. But he could talk as fast as eat, when he was anxious as on that morning; and before he had drained his last cup of the “rye coffee” he had learned from his hostess that the Indian encampment he sought lay well to the southwestward of her cabin, and that by a way she could direct him he could reach it easily in a two-hours’ ride. This to Tempest, who had rested and fed, would be nothing, if he was anything the horse he used to be, and Gaspar believed, from the past night’s experience, that sometimes even a horse can improve with age.

“Well, I’ll be off, then. I’m anxious to get there. If all goes well I’ll get around this way again before long. Thank you for my entertainment, and here’s a trifle for the baby.”

He tossed a gold piece on the table and was leaving the cabin. But she restrained him.

“No, sir, I can’t take that, nor let the little one. And as for thanking me, I shall never cease to thank you, and the Lord for you, that you lost your way last night. But let me beg you, sir, to take a second thought. Jacob says the Indians are getting ready for an outbreak. It is like running your neck into a halter to go among them just now. I – I wish you wouldn’t. I couldn’t bear to have harm come to you after what you’ve done for me.”