We rambled down the river side, then crossed the bridge and came up to recross it again. Mr. Gaynor had impressed some new workmen in his service and matters were being pushed ahead rapidly.
"And while mother goes to the vandue we will take a walk," I said. "We'll go to Fort Dearborn, and I'll tell you the story. Only it is very sad."
"The Indian stories always are," she said with a sigh. "Do you suppose God made them cruel like because they had to fight each other so much? And what is there clear out west when they get there?"
I shook my head. We had not much faith in the noble red men in those days, and those lingering about Chicago were rather disreputable.
Mother settled with Mr. Gaynor about going to the Simses' sale, and I arranged to take Ruth to Fort Dearborn. I would have only two days more.
Father was confident the mantle of honor would fall upon me. Sim Chase he declared a lazy lout. They had tried him at the mill.
The weather was still superb. Ruth and I crossed the bridge and picked our way over the dusty roads. Surely we needed rain—we were always either dust or mud.
No one remarked the Little Girl in her faded frock and sun-bonnet, now nearly white. Now and then someone looked sharply at me, and it brought the color to my cheek. I had never thought about girls. I had gone to a boys' school and had been pretty busy with lessons and rather fond of staying home with mother and hearing her talk of her young days. I had no especial consciousness about a girl now, my only wish being that she was truly my sister and lived with us.
It is all swept away but the tablet and the monument. But before the last century had ended, by the treaty of Granville with five Indian tribes, a piece of ground six miles square at the entrance of the Chicago river was set aside for the building of a fort where there had once been a French trading post. It was a stockade with block houses, to be one of the chain for outposts of defence for the trade growing of more importance every year. Down here came Captain Whistler and his son and the two wives from Detroit, with the company for work and for defence, and bravely they went at their task. On the north side was the sally port or passage leading from the parade ground to the river, to be used as an escape in time of emergency. There were no horses or oxen and the men hauled the wood. There were Indian outbreaks now and then, but the little colony increased and all about the fort clustered a settlement.
And so it remained for about nine years. The women had learned to be as brave as the men, as fearless too. Then came the sudden and unexpected orders from Detroit to evacuate the fort, as Detroit was to be surrendered to the English. There had been numerous Indian raids on other forts.