d Clark gain the friendship of the forty tribes in the Northwest
country.

CHAPTER XVIII. "AN' YE HAD BEEN WHERE I HAD BEEN"

We went back to Kaskaskia, Colonel Clark, Tom, and myself, and a great
weight was lifted from our hearts.

A peaceful autumn passed, and we were happy save when we thought of
those we had left at home. There is no space here to tell of many
incidents. Great chiefs who had not been to the council came hundreds of
leagues across wide rivers that they might see with their own eyes this
man who had made peace without gold, and these had to be amused and
entertained.

The apples ripened, and were shaken to the ground by the winds. The good
Father Gibault, true to his promise, strove to teach me French. Indeed,
I picked up much of that language in my intercourse with the inhabitants
of Kaskaskia. How well I recall that simple life,--its dances, its
songs, and the games with the laughing boys and girls on the common!
And the good people were very kind to the orphan that dwelt with Colonel
Clark, the drummer boy of his regiment.

But winter brought forebodings. When the garden patches grew bare and
brown, and the bleak winds from across the Mississippi swept over the
common, untoward tidings came like water dripping from a roof, bit by
bit. And day by day Colonel Clark looked graver. The messengers he had
sent to Vincennes came not back, and the coureurs and traders from time
to time brought rumors of a British force gathering like a thundercloud
in the northeast. Monsieur Vigo himself, who had gone to Vincennes on
his own business, did not return. As for the inhabitants, some of them
who had once bowed to us with a smile now passed with faces averted.

The cold set the miry roads like cement, in ruts and ridges. A flurry of
snow came and powdered the roofs even as the French loaves are powdered.

It was January. There was Colonel Clark on a runt of an Indian pony; Tom
McChesney on another, riding ahead, several French gentlemen seated on
stools in a two-wheeled cart, and myself. We were going to Cahokia,
and it was very cold, and when the tireless wheels bumped from ridge to
gully, the gentlemen grabbed each other as they slid about, and laughed.

All at once the merriment ceased, and looking forward we saw that Tom
had leaped from his saddle and was bending over something in the snow.
These chanced to be the footprints of some twenty men.

The immediate result of this alarming discovery wa