“Hold, Mr. Frank. Better that she should hide any amount of papers, than that a gentleman should insult a lady. Governor, you’re a close prisoner till I see those papers. Gentlemen, clear the room. To our other duties.”
CHAPTER XV.
THE ALGONQUIN VENUS.
At a late hour next day Kaskaskia presented a strange sight. Not a single house was open, every window and door was closely fastened, the very beasts remained bolted in their stables, and a grim-looking patrol of mounted borderers rode up and down the echoing streets, with cocked rifles.
A town of fifteen hundred inhabitants was trembling with abject terror before a force of some two hundred resolute men, who had captured it without shedding a drop of blood, by the pure moral influence of fear.
The main body of the invaders lay at the edge of the town, by their bivouac fires, which burned brightly at the expense of all the neighboring fences. There was bluff Simon Kenton, who had left his old friend Boone in Kentucky, to share the perils and glories of the Kaskaskia expedition, and who was lolling on his back, laughing over the night’s adventures to a group of borderers.
“Golly, Bill,” said he, to Harrod, who was devouring a huge chunk of corn-bread with great relish, “how them French Britishers do skeer, to be sure! I b’lieve ef we’d axed them fur all thar money last night, instead of their shootin’-irons, they’d ’a’ guv it jest as easy.”
“Don’t you b’lieve it, Sime,” said Harrod, dryly. “It takes a powerful skeer to git a feller’s money. But, Gosh, boys, that thar little cuss of a adjutant of ours, he did fly round amazin’ last night. Jest like a bug on a hot griddle, he war. And ef it hadn’t b’en fur him, Lord knows ef we’d ’a’ tuk the fort at all.”
“Who is that adjutant?” inquired Major Bowman, who was sitting close by them, in republican simplicity, guiltless of military etiquette when off duty. “I never saw him in Kentucky; but he seems to be a great favorite with Clark.”