“We shall have a grand ride. I wish nobody need make the journey on foot; and I’m glad, for once, I’m just a boy, and not a grown-up man.”
“Even a boy may have to do a man’s work, this day, Gaspar Keith. I wish that you were strong enough to hold a gun; but you have been taught how to use an arrow. Is your quiver well supplied?”
That his captain should speak to him, a child, so seriously, impressed the lad profoundly. His ruddy cheek paled, and a fit of trembling seized him. A sombre memory rose to frighten him, and he caught his breath as he asked:
“Do you think there will be any trouble, Captain Heald? I thought I heard the soldiers saying that the Pottawatomies would take care of us.”
“Who trusts to an Indian’s care leans on a broken reed. You know that from your own experience. Surely, you must remember your earlier childhood, even though you have been forbidden to talk of it here.”
“Oh! I do, I do! Not often in the daytime, but in the long, long nights. The other children sleep. They have never seen what I did, or heard the dreadful yells that come in my dreams and wake me up. Then I seem to see the flames, the blood, the dead white faces. Oh, sir, don’t tell me that must come again: don’t, don’t! I cannot bear it. I would rather die right now and here—safe in our Fort.”
Instantly the soldier regretted his own words. But the lad was one of the larger children at the garrison and should be incited, he thought, to take some share in the matter of defence, should defence be necessary. He had not known that under Gaspar’s quiet, almost sullen demeanor, had lain such hidden experiences. Else he would have talked them over with the boy, and have tried to make him forget instead of remember his early wrongs.
For Gaspar Keith was the son of an Indian trader, and had been born in an isolated cabin far to the northwest of his present home. The little cabin had been overflowing with young life and gayety, even in that wilderness. His mother was a Frenchwoman of the happiest possible temperament and, because no other society was available, had made comrades of her children. “What we did in Montreal” was the type of what she attempted to do under her more restricted conditions. So, for a long season of peace, the Keiths sang and made merry over every trifling incident. Did the father bring home an extra load of game, at once there was a feast prepared and all the friendly Indians, the only neighbors, were invited to come and partake.
On one such occasion, when a red-skinned guest had brought with him a bottle of the forbidden “fire-water,” a quarrel ensued. The trader was of sterner sort than his light-hearted wife, and of violent temper. In his own house his word was law, and he remonstrated with the Indian for his action. To little Gaspar, in his memories, it seemed but a moment’s transition from a laughing group about a well-spread table to a scene of horror. He saw—but he could never afterward speak in any definite way of what he saw. Only he knew that almost before he had pushed back from his place he had been caught up on the shoulder of the chief Winnemeg, also a guest; and in another moment was riding behind that warrior at breakneck speed toward the little garrison, in pursuit of shelter for himself and aid for his defenceless family.