The Conquest. Eva Emery Dye
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and his men continued to garrison the tower. The Governor cowered in the Government House with doors shut and barricaded. Women and children hid in the houses, telling their beads.
It was about noon when the quick ear of Clark, over in Cahokia, heard the cannonading and small arms in St. Louis. He sent an express.
"Here, Murray and Jaynes, go over the river and inquire the cause."
Slipping through the cottonwood trees, the express met an old negro woman on a keen run for Cahokia. She screamed, "Run, Boston, run! A great many salvages!"
All together ran back, just in time to meet Colonel Clark marching out of the east gate. In the thick woods of Cahokia Creek he caught a view of the foe. "Boom!" rang his brass six-pounder—tree-tops and Indians fell together.
Amazed at this rear fire the Indians turned in confusion. One terrified look—"It is the Long Knife! We have been deceived. We will not fight the Long Knife!" With one wild whoop they scurried to their boats. The handful of traders, deserted, raised the siege and retired.
It was the period of the spring rise of the powerful and turbulent Mississippi, which, undermining its shores, dumped cottonwood trees into the river.
"The whole British army is coming on rafts!" In terror seeing the supposed foe advancing, Cartabona's soldiers began firing at the white-glancing trees on the midnight waters. On, on came the ghostly flotilla.
"Cease firing!" demanded De Leyba emerging from his retreat.
"De cowardly, skulking old Goffner! hide heself! abandon de people!" In wrath they tore toward him, sticks and stones flying. The Governor fled, and the daft Spaniards, watching the river, spiked the cannon, preparing to fly the moment the British landed.
Cahokia trembled all night long. There were noises and howls of wolves, but no Indians. Clark himself in the darkness made the rounds of his sentinels. Even through the shadows they guessed who walked at night.
"Pass, grand round, keep clear of my arms and all's well," was the successive cry from post to post in the picket gardens of old Cahokia.
With the first pale streak of dawn the sleepless habitants looked out. All was still. The Indians were gone, but over at St. Louis seven men were found dead, scalped by the retreating foe. Many more were being carried off prisoners, but Clark's pursuing party rescued thirty.
The prisoners, dragged away to the north by their captors, suffered hardships until restored at the end of the war, in 1783.
When Clark heard of the incompetence of De Leyba he was furious. On his way to the Government House, he saw the lovely Donna at her casement. Her hair was dishevelled, her eyes wet with tears. She extended her hand. Clark took one step toward her, and then pride triumphed.
"Never will I become the father of a race of cowards," and turning on his heel he left St. Louis forever.
In one month De Leyba was dead, some said by his own hand. He knew that Auguste Chouteau had gone to complain of him at New Orleans—the people believed he had been bribed by Great Britain; he knew that only disgrace awaited him, and he succumbed to his many disasters and the universal obloquy in which he was held. He was buried in the little log chapel, beneath the altar, by the side of his wife, where his tomb is pointed out to this day.
And the beautiful Donna De Leyba? She waited and wept but Clark came not. Then, taking with her the two little orphan nieces, Rita and Perdita, she went down to New Orleans. Here for a time she lingered among friends, and at last, giving up all hope, retired to the Ursuline convent and became a nun.
Presently Auguste Chouteau returned from New Orleans with the new Governor, Don Francisco de Cruzat, who pacified fears and fortified the town with half-a-dozen circular stone turrets, twenty feet high, connected by a stout stockade of cedar posts pierced with loopholes for artillery. On the river bank a stone tower called the Half Moon, and west of it a square log tower called the Bastion, still stood within the memory of living men.
"Next year a thousand Sioux will be in the field under Wabasha," wrote Sinclair to Haldimand, his chief in Canada.
But the Sioux had no more desire to go back to "the high walled house of thunder," where the cannon sounded not "Hail to great Wabashaw!"
Their own losses were considerable, for Clark ordered an immediate pursuit. Some of the Spaniards, grateful for the succour of the Americans, crossed the river and joined Montgomery's troops in his chase after the retreating red men.
"The Americans are coming," was the scare-word at Prairie du Chien. "Better get up your furs."
With Wabasha's help the traders hastily bundled three hundred packs of their best furs into canoes, and setting fire to the remaining sixty packs, burned them, together with the fort, while they hurried away to Michilimackinac. Matchekewis went by the Lakes. "Two hundred Illinois cavalry arrived at Chicago five days after the vessels left," is the record of the Haldimand papers.
The watchfulness and energy of Clark alone saved Illinois; nevertheless, De Peyster felt satisfied, for he thought that diversion kept Clark from Detroit.
After the terror was all over, long in the annals of the fireside, the French of St. Louis related the feats of "l'année du coup."
"Auguste Chouteau, he led te defence, he and he brother."
"No, Madame Rigauche, te school-meestress, she herself touch te cannon."
"Well, at any rate, we hid in te Chouteau garden, behind te stone wall."
XVI
OLD CHILLICOTHE
With a wrench at his hot heart stifled only by wrath and determination, Clark strode from St. Louis. At Cahokia French deserters were talking to Montgomery.
"A tousand British and Indians on te march to Kentucky with cannon."
"When did they start?" thundered Clark. The Frenchman dodged as if shot.
"Dey start same time dis. Colonel Bird to keep Clark busy in Kentucky so Sinclair get San Loui' an' brak up te fur trade."
For once in his life Clark showed alarm. "I know the situation of that country. I shall attempt to get there before Bird does."
Drawing Montgomery aside, he said, "And you, Colonel, chase these retreating Indians. Chase them to Michilimackinac if possible. Destroy their towns and crops, distress them, convince them that we will retaliate and thus deter them from joining the British again."
Without pausing to breathe after the fatigue of the last few days, with a small escort Clark launched a boat and went flying down to Chickasaw Bluffs. Disguised as Indians, feathered and painted, he and a few others left Fort Jefferson.
Clark's army the year before had carried glowing news of Illinois. Already emigration had set in. On the way now he met forty families actually starving because they could not kill buffaloes.
A gun?—it was a part of Clark. He used his rifle-barrelled firelock as he used his hands, his feet, his eyes, instantly, surely, involuntarily. He showed them how to strike the buffalo in a vital part, killed fourteen, and hurried on, thirty miles a day, fording stream and swamp and tangled forest to save Kentucky.
Kentucky was watching for her deliverer. Into his ear was poured the startling tale. With Simon Girty, the renegade, and six hundred Indians, down the high waters of the Miami and up the Licking, Bird came to Ruddle's station and fired his cannon. Down went the wooden palisades like a toy blockhouse before his six-pounders.
"Surrender!" came the summons from Colonel Bird.
"Yes, if we can be prisoners to the British and not to the Indians."
Bird assented. The gates were thrown open. Indians flew like dogs upon the helpless people.
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