The Man with the Iron Hand

by John Carl Parish

Between these two Illinois towns the young braves no doubt often passed during the summer of 1673; and as they sat by the fires of their Kaskaskia brothers and smoked the long calumets, the Peorias told of the coming of the whites to the village beyond the Mississippi and of their departure with the Indian boy to journey down the length of the mysterious river to the great salt sea of the south.

CHAPTER III

DOWN THE GREAT RIVER

A black-robed priest, a young fur trader, five Frenchmen, and a young Indian boy sat in two birch-bark canoes on the broad current of the Mississippi River one summer evening. Having eaten a hurried supper beside a camp-fire on the bank, they paddled on down the darkening river so that the fire might not betray them to Indian enemies. Night overtook them and they anchored their canoes in midstream. Leaving one man on guard, the rest of the party made themselves as comfortable as possible in the narrow boats and tried to get some sleep.

The sentinel sat silent in his canoe, but with every sense alert. Through the long hours of night he watched with keen eye for unnatural shadows in the dim light of moon or stars and listened for sound of paddle or stir of wild animals. The adventurers were in a strange country and they knew not what dangers might lurk beside them while they slept.

The Indian boy, into whose valley the strangers had come, knew the ways of the night upon river and shore, but he was now in strange company. It may be that he, too, was awake, thinking over in his childish heart the curious ways of these white men. The Peoria village where he had so lately made his home was many leagues up the river. What lands were they coming to? When would the monsters of the river, of whom his people had told him, swallow them, canoes and all, into a terrible death?

When a certain constellation crossed the zenith the sentinel reached over and waked one of his comrades, then joined the others in sleep. At length the darkness began to lift, as to the left the faint light of dawn crept up over the rocky bank of the river. Soon the Frenchmen awoke, took to their paddles, and began another day’s journey.

Each stroke of the paddles carried the Indian boy farther from his home and nearer the monsters of the great river. By training a keen observer, he looked up at a steep wall of rock and caught sight of two strange and fearsome figures. Terror possessed him, for he knew he was in the presence of the dread beings of which his people had warned him. There, painted on the rocks in red, black, and green colors, were two monsters as large as buffalo calves. They had faces like men, but with horrible red eyes, and beards like those of bull buffalo; and on their heads were horns like the horns of deer. Scales covered their bodies; and their tails were so long that they wound about the body and over the head and, going back between their legs, ended in the tail of a fish.

It was as if the Indian boy were alone with an evil spirit, for no Indian was near him. He could ask the white men no questions. They, too, now saw the dread animals; and with much pointing and excitement began to talk among themselves, but in a tongue the Indian boy could not understand. Not daring to look long at the pictured rock, he turned his face away and sat in his narrow seat uncomforted and filled with that mystic awe which only people of his own race could feel. The white men talked on as the canoes swept smoothly downstream.

Suddenly as they talked a dull roar met their ears, growing louder as they descended the river until they saw a great opening in the bank at the right and a broad river pour in from the northwest to join them. It was the Missouri coming down from the mountains a thousand miles away and hurling into the Mississippi a mass of mud and debris, huge branches, and even whole trees. The two canoes dodged here and there, while the men at the paddles, alert now and forgetful of painted dragons, drove their craft now to the right, now to the left, swerved to avoid a great tree, or paddled for their lives to outrace a mass of brush. Vigorous work alone saved them.