This much Jack knew and told. He could not know, what the world has since learned, that Winchester, waking to the yells of the foe as they hurled themselves upon his defenseless camp, tried too late to join his sleeping soldiers and was captured by the Indians and taken before General Proctor. He could not know that Winchester, overborne by Proctor’s threat that he feared he would not be able to restrain the fury of his savages if the Americans continued to resist, thrice sent an order of surrender to Major Madison and the men who were bravely holding out behind a barricade of garden pickets. He could not know that at the third order Madison had surrendered on pledges of protection from Proctor himself—pledges that the British general promptly forgot, abandoning the wounded and the dying to the vengeance of his savage allies—abandoning more than three hundred men, unarmed and defenseless, to be tomahawked in cold blood or to be burned alive in the building that had been hurriedly transformed into a hospital. He could not know that six hundred more had been carried away as prisoners, and that of the thousand jubilant men who had thought to march on Amherstburg and Detroit on the morrow only thirty-three escaped.
CHAPTER XXII
BEFORE Jack again approached Fort Malden six months had passed away—six months of winter, of budding spring, of golden summer. When General Winchester’s army perished winter was nearing its end; when at last the tide of war changed and began to flow northward summer had died on a bed of scarlet and gold and autumn winds were driving the rustling leaves through the whispering woods.
During those six months even Jack, desperate as he was, had not dared to run the cordon of foes that lay between him and his desires. Not till Perry had swept the British from Lake Erie and Harrison sailed with five thousand men for Canada could he once more set about his quest.
First of all Americans Jack sprang upon the Canadian shore at almost the very spot where he had landed from the ice so many months before. But he was too late. Fort Malden was in ruins; British and savages had together fled; and Alagwa had gone. Half-mad with anxiety, he sought and gained permission to scout in front of the army, which was advancing swiftly, driving the foe before it. Now or never he must find his bride.
His chance came when, advancing up the Thames River with some of Perry’s sailors, he captured a bateau manned by a captain and half a dozen Canadian dragoons. Half an hour later, clad in the captain’s uniform, he went forward into the darkening night, determined to ascertain the position and defenses of the enemy, to learn whether they meant to fight or fly, and to find Alagwa.
He went alone; Rogers was lying wounded at the encampment at the mouth of the Portage River, where he was being nursed by Fantine. Cato he refused to take.
The night was made for scouting. Close to the ground a light breeze whispered, and high overhead a wrack of clouds drove furiously across the sky. Through the gaps in the flying scud huge stars blazed down, casting an intermittent light that enabled Jack to keep his course without revealing his movements to possible enemies. Hour after hour he went on, slowly, not knowing where he would chance upon the foe. He did not intend to try to creep upon them unseen. He intended to walk in upon them boldly, as one who had a right to be present, trusting for safety to his disguise and to the inevitable confusion of the retreat that would make it good. But he wished to choose his own time for appearing and not to blunder on the enemy’s camp unawares.
The path that he was following was broad and soggy. It had been driven straight through crushed bushes that were slowly straightening themselves and over broken and torn brambles. Spruce and hemlock overhung the path, brushing his face with long spicy needles. Beyond, on either side, rattled the bare canes of the underbrush, rubbing together their thousand branches, bark against bark. Far away an owl called, and once, high overhead, Jack heard the honk, honk of wild geese speeding southward through the upper reaches of the air.
Well he knew that his errand was desperate, more desperate than had been his venture into Amherstburg six months before. If detected he could expect no mercy. From time immemorial even civilized foes had punished spies with death. What doom then could he expect from savages who had been beaten and broken, whose ranks had been depleted, whose villages had been burned, whose allies (on whom they had relied to protect them from the consequences of their rebellion) were in full retreat? Jack knew well the fiery death he faced. But he knew, too, that if he did not find Alagwa that night he would probably never find her.