All that day and all the next the three rode beneath great trees that rose fifty feet from the ground without branch or leaf, and that stood so close together that no ray of sun came through their arching branches. It was nearly sunset on the second day when they came to the fort built by General Anthony Wayne nearly twenty years before at the junction of the Maumee and the Auglaize—the fort which he had named Defiance, because he declared that he defied “all English, all Indians, and all the devils in hell to take it.” From it he and his army had sallied out to meet and crush the Miamis at the battle of the Fallen Timbers.
The ruins of the fort stood ten feet above the water, on the high point between the Maumee and the Auglaize. Mounting the gentle slope that led upward from the west the travellers descended into a wide half-filled ditch and then climbed a steep glacis of sloping earth that had encircled the ancient palisades. The logs and fascines that had held the ramparts in place had long since rotted away and most of the inner lines of palisades had disappeared. Within their former bounds a few scorched and blackened logs marked where the four blockhouses had stood. The narrow ditch that cut the eastern wall and ran down to the edge of the river—the ditch dug to enable Wayne’s soldiers to get water unseen by lurking foes—was half filled by sliding earth. Mounting the crumbling ramparts Jack and Alagwa stood and stared, striving to picture the scene as it was in the days already ancient when the United States flag had flown for the first time in the valley of the Maumee.
For two or three hundred yards on all sides the forest trees had been cut away and their places had been taken by a light growth of maple and scrub oak. On the south, on the west bank of the Auglaize, a single mighty oak towered heavenward—the council tree of all the northern tribes, the tree beneath which fifty years before Pontiac had mustered the greatest Indian council known in all America and had welded the tribes together for his desperate but vain assault upon the growing power of the white men—an assault which Tecumseh was even then striving to emulate.
Beyond the council oak, southward along the Auglaize, stretched an apple orchard planted years before by the indefatigable “Appleseed Johnny.” To the north, beyond the Maumee, stood a single apple tree, a mammoth of its kind, ancient already and destined to live and bear for eighty years to come. To the west, along the road down which the three had come, black spots showed where George Ironside’s store had stood, where Perault, the baker, had baked and traded, where McKenzie, the Scot, had made silver ornaments at a stiff price for the aborigines, where Henry Ball and his wife, taken prisoners at St. Claire’s defeat, had won their captors’ good will and saved their lives by working, he as a boatman and she by washing and sewing. Near at hand, but out of sight from the fort, was the house of James Girty, brother of Simon, where British agents from Canada had continually come to fan the discontent of the Indians against the Americans. Up and down the rivers stretches of weeds and underbrush choked the ground where Wayne had found vast fields of enormous corn. Alagwa’s heart burned hotly as she remembered that her people and those of kindred tribes had tilled those fields for centuries before the white man had come into the Ohio country. The fortunes of war had laid them waste. Silently she prayed that the fortunes of war might yet restore them!
Camp was rapidly pitched, the horses fed and picketed for the night, and supper prepared and eaten. By the time it was finished darkness had closed in. The moon was not yet up, though promise of it was silvering the unquiet tops of the eastern forest. But on the exposed point the glimmer of the blazing stars gave light enough to see.
Jack stood up. “The first watch is yours, Cato,” he said. “Call me about midnight.” “Bob,” he turned to the girl, “as you want to watch so badly, I’ll call you about two o’clock. I needn’t caution you both to be careful.”
Alagwa was tired and she slept deeply and dreamlessly. She did not share Jack’s fears. Even though she knew her message could not yet have reached Tecumseh, she felt secure under the aegis of his protection. Nevertheless, when Jack waked her and she saw the low moon staring at her along the western water, she went to her post at the edge of the rampart determined to keep good watch and make sure that no wanderer of the night should creep upon the camp unawares.
From where she sat she could see along both rivers—down the Maumee to the east and up the Auglaize to the south. Up the latter, lay her home at Wapakoneta, a scant twenty miles away. All her travels for the past few days had been west and east again, westward out one leg of a triangle, and then eastward down the other leg, and the net gain of one hundred and fifty miles march, west and east, had been only a score of miles north.
Toward Wapakoneta she strained her eyes, not solely because it was her home, but because if danger came at all it would come from its direction. Tecumseh and his braves had come down the Auglaize less than a week before and laggards might follow him at any time. Or, perhaps, Captain Brito might come north; Alagwa knew that Jack doubted his having left the country.
The dawn was beginning to break. The boles of the trees began to stand separately out; the leaves took on a tinge of green. Over all reigned silence. No faintest sound gave warning of approaching enemies. But the girl well knew that silence did not mean safety. Too often had she heard the Shawnee braves boast of how they crept on their sleeping enemies in the dawn. With renewed determination she thrust forward her heavy rifle and strained her eyes and ears anew. Jack had trusted her; she must not fail him.