“Father should have been here ere this. He said he would return at sunset. I wonder what keeps him. Surely no danger has befallen him. No, I know he can not be far away, and I will run toward the creek and meet him.”
The speaker was a beautiful girl about eighteen years of age, and, as she uttered the last word, she bounded across the threshold of a low-browed cottage, and hurried toward the south.
She trailed a light rifle at her side, which, with her long, dark hair, and demi-Indian habiliments, gave her a decidedly romantic appearance. A few moments served to bring her to the stream, the Cahokia creek, which debouches into the lordly Mississippi a few miles above the ancient hamlet of like name. Pausing at the water’s edge, she gazed far beyond the ford with anxious eyes.
The evening was a balmy one, in the early part of May, 1769, and the country of the Illinois wore robes of surpassing beauty. While not insensible to the delights of the landscape spread about her, Kate Blount continued to look for her father, who had taken a large bundle of furs to Cahokia, and had promised to return that evening.
Kate was not really fearful for her father’s personal safety, but she knew his failing, and feared that an indulgence might detain him at the frontier station, and compel her to remain in their solitary cabin through a long night alone.
Of late, rumors of an approaching Indian war had reached the settlers in the Illinois, and many had already sought shelter in Cahokia and Fort Chartres. But, Oliver Blount had derided the stories of conflict, and declared that the avenging Indians would strike no one save the Illinois, and their fellow clansmen.
“They’re going to extirpate the Illinois, root and branch,” he would say, “but what have they to do with us? We didn’t kill Pontiac!”
“But, father, English rum drove the tomahawk to the chief’s brain,” Kate had often replied, “and I tell you that more than one British scalp will hang at an Indian’s belt when the carnage begins.”
“Pooh! girl, that’s all talk. You ain’t as old as your father, who has no wish to show the white feather and hide behind Fort Chartres. No! we’ll meet the war here!”
Poor, deluded Oliver Blount! He soon paid dearly for his stubbornness.