It was one of those beautiful days in the late spring, when all nature seemed to be trying to show man a picture of heaven. The soft air was singing in the pine tops, the blackbirds were holding a song chorus nearby, and the open glade was brilliant with spring blossoms. The babe was making happy little noises in the sunshine, as it came through the open door. The shadow seemed for the moment to be lifted from the heart of Margaret, and she sang a hymn as she went about her work. Then suddenly she instinctively turned her eyes toward the door, with a feeling of fear. There stood three Indians silently watching. As they saw the woman notice them, one spoke a single word, “Whisk!” Margaret stood as if turned to stone. The Indian again spoke, “Give whisk quick!”
The woman saw her danger, but never would she handle the accursed stuff. The Indians crowded into the room, and stalking past Margaret, proceeded to help themselves at the bar. Then Margaret turned upon them like a fury. For their own sakes, for her sake and the baby’s, they should not get the fiery liquor. Bravely she struggled; then came the flash of a tomahawk, one shrill scream, and the lifeless form of the young mother lay upon the floor.
The Indians drank their fill; they drank until escape for themselves was impossible, and they lay sprawled upon the floor in drunken stupor.
At near sundown Jared Slater returned to his home. The baby, stained in his mother’s blood, crying upon her lifeless body, the three drunken Indians lying upon the floor, told the whole story. The brain of the man gave way. In the center of the road in front of the house he quickly dug a deep hole, and into that hole dragged the bodies of the three Indians—whether dead or alive, no one knows.
That grave in the middle of the road, and the tragic story connected with it, preached a temperance sermon more effective, perhaps, than could have been spoken by the faithful woman who gave her life in a protest against the fearful traffic.
The boys never forgot the story and its lesson, and it may be that its effect was felt when, in later life one of them put the strength of his manhood into years of successful warfare against the liquor traffic.
Jared Slater lived many years, but he never sold another drop of liquor. His crazed mind seemed to connect both whiskey and Indians with his trouble, and never did he see a bottle or shelf of liquor, but that he made an attempt to destroy it; and when, as occasionally happened, an Indian would be found in the woods mysteriously killed, it would be whispered that Jared Slater had been again taking his revenge.
God’s law is certain: “Be sure your sin will find you out.”