gentlemen wore the costume of coureurs
du bois, others had odd regimental coats and hats which had seen much
service. Besides the military was a sober deputation of citizens, and
hovering behind the whole a horde of curious, blanketed braves, come to
get a first glimpse of the great white captain. So escorted, we crossed
at the mill, came to a shady street that faced the little river, and
stopped at the stone house where Colonel Clark was to abide.

On that day, and for many days more, that street was thronged with
warriors. Chiefs in gala dress strutted up and down, feathered
and plumed and blanketed, smeared with paint, bedecked with rude
jewellery,--earrings and bracelets. From the remote forests of the north
they had come, where the cold winds blow off the blue lakes; from
the prairies to the east; from the upper running waters, where the
Mississippi flows clear and undefiled by the muddy flood; from the
villages and wigwams of the sluggish Wabash; and from the sandy, piny
country between the great northern seas where Michilimackinac stands
guard alone,--Sacs and Foxes, Chippeways and Maumies and Missesogies,
Puans and Pottawattomies, chiefs and medicine men.

Well might the sleep of the good citizens be disturbed, and the women
fear to venture to the creek with their linen and their paddles!

The lives of these people hung in truth upon a slender thing--the
bearing of one man. All day long the great chiefs sought an audience
with him, but he sent them word that matters would be settled in the
council that was to come. All day long the warriors lined the picket
fence in front of the house, and more than once Tom McChesney roughly
shouldered a lane through them that timid visitors might pass. Like a
pack of wolves, they watched narrowly for any sign of weakness. As for
Tom, they were to him as so many dogs.

"Ye varmints!" he cried, "I'll take a blizz'rd at ye if ye don't keep
the way clear."

At that they would give back grudgingly with a chorus of grunts, only to
close in again as tightly as before. But they came to have a wholesome
regard for the sun-browned man with the red hair who guarded the
Colonel's privacy. The boy who sat on the door-step, the son of the
great Pale Face Chief (as they called me), was a never ending source
of comment among them. Once Colonel Clark sent for me. The little front
room of this house was not unlike the one we had occupied at Kaskaskia.
It had bare walls, a plain table and c