Part 7 (1/2)
”Now dar' it is, Mas' Tom,” said Joe. ”Dat's always the way. Mas' Sam never makes no blunder, 'cause he thinks it all out careful fust. Poor Joe's head gets things all mixed up. I ain't no count anyhow, an' I jest wish I was dead or somethin'.”
Poor Joe! The disappointment was a sore one to him. He had been thinking all along of the glory he should reap as the saviour of the little party, and now his whole plan was found to be worthless. He slept little that night, and once Tom heard him quietly sobbing in his corner.
Creeping over to him Tom said:
”Don't cry, Joe. You did your best anyhow, and it isn't your fault that you don't know the way to the fort,” and pa.s.sing his arm around the poor black boy's neck he gently drew his head to his shoulder, where it rested while the two slept.
The next morning Judie was the first to wake, and she quietly waked Tom and Joe.
”Boys, boys,” she cried in a whisper, ”the Indians are all around us, there is a fight going on. Get up quick, but don't make any noise.”
The little girl was right. Rifles were cracking and Indians yelling all around their little habitation. It at once occurred to Tom that here was hope as well as danger. If the Indians should be driven back by the whites, he could communicate with the latter and the little garrison of the root fortress would be rescued. At present, however, it was the savages and not the whites who surrounded the trees and the drift pile.
Tom determined lose no chance, however, and cautioning the others to keep still, he went to the look-out to watch for an opportunity to communicate with the white men whom these Indians were evidently fighting.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE CANOE FIGHT.
Before going further with the story of what happened around the root fortress on that morning, it is necessary to explain how it came about that a battle was fought there. I gather the facts from authentic history.
During all the time spent by the Hardwickes in their wanderings and in the root fortress, the war had been going on vigorously. The occupants of Fort Sinquefield, when they abandoned that fort as described in the early chapters of this story, succeeded in making their way to Fort Gla.s.s, or Fort Madison, as it was properly named, though the people still used its original name Fort Gla.s.s in speaking of it, for which reason I have so called the place throughout this story. In July General Floyd, who was in command of all the United States forces in the south-west, sent General Claiborne, with his twelve months' Mississippi volunteers to Fort Stoddart, with instructions to render such aid as he could to the forts in the surrounding country. His force consisted of seven hundred men, and of them he took five hundred to Fort Stoddart, sending the remaining two hundred, under Col. Joseph E. Carson, a volunteer officer, to Fort Gla.s.s. The two hundred soldiers added greatly to the strength of the place, and with the settlers who had taken refuge inside, rendered it reasonably secure against attack. The refugees were under command of Captain Evan Austill, himself a planter of the neighborhood.
Shortly after the storming of Fort Sinquefield, and almost immediately after the garrison of that place had reached Fort Gla.s.s, the Indians appeared in great numbers in that neighborhood, burning houses, killing everybody who strayed even a few hundred yards outside the picket gates, and seriously threatening the fort itself. In view of these facts Col.
Carson sent a young man of nineteen years of age named Jerry Austill, the son of Capt. Evan Austill to General Claiborne's head-quarters, with dispatches describing the situation and asking for reinforcements.
Young Austill made the journey alone and at night, at terrible risk, as he had to pa.s.s through a country infested with savages, but on his return brought, instead of a.s.sistance, an order for Col. Carson to evacuate the fort and retire to Fort Stephens. When he did so, however, Captain Austill and about fifty other planters, with their families, determined to remain and defend Fort Gla.s.s at all hazards. Among those who remained was Mr. Hardwicke, who, now that the Indians had murdered his children, as he supposed, had little to live for, and was disposed to serve the common cause at the most dangerous posts, where every available man was needed.
After a time Col. Carson was sent back to the fort with his Mississippi volunteers, and this freed the daring spirits inside the fort from the necessity of remaining there. They went at once on scouting parties, Tandy Walker, the guide, being almost always one of the number going out on these perilous expeditions. They scoured the country far and near, in bodies ranging from two or three to twenty or thirty men, and fought the Indians in many places, losing some valuable men but making the Indians suffer in their turn.
Finally it was determined to send out a party larger than any that had yet gone, to operate against the savages on the south-east side of the river. This expedition numbered seventy-two men, thirty of whom were Mississippi Yauger men, under a Captain Jones, while the others were volunteers from private life. The expedition was under the command of Sam Dale, already celebrated as an Indian fighter, and known among the Creeks, with whom he had lived, as Sam Thlueco, or Big Sam, on account of his enormous size and strength. During this Creek war he had performed some feats of strength, skill and daring, the memory of which is still preserved in history, together with that of the celebrated canoe fight, which we are now coming to. To tell of these deeds of prowess would lead us away from our proper business, namely, the telling of the present story; but the canoe fight comes properly into the story, being in fact one of its incidents. Three only of Dale's companions figured with him in the canoe fight, and they alone need mentioning by name. These were, first Jerry Austill, the young man already spoken of, who was six feet two inches high, slender but strong, and active as a cat; second, James Smith, a man of firm frame and dauntless spirit; and third Caesar, a negro man, who conducted himself with a courage and coolness fairly ent.i.tling him to bear the name of the great Roman warrior.
The expedition left Fort Gla.s.s on the 11th of November, 1823. Tandy Walker was its guide, and every man in the party knew that Tandy was not likely to be long in leading them to a place where Indians were plentiful. He knew every inch of country round about, and nothing pleased him so well as a battle in any shape. The day after they left Fort Gla.s.s, Dale's men reached the river at a point eighteen miles below the present town of Clairborne, and about fifteen miles below the root fortress. Here they crossed, in two canoes, to the eastern sh.o.r.e of the river, and spent the night without sleep. The next morning Austill, with six men, ascended the river in the canoes, while Dale, with the rest of the party, marched up the bank. About a mile below the root fortress, Dale who was marching some distance ahead of his men, came upon some Indians at breakfast, and without waiting for his men to come up, shot their chief. The rest fled precipitately, leaving their provisions behind. Pus.h.i.+ng on, Dale reached a point about two hundred yards below the root fortress, and there determined to recross the river. The canoes transported the men as rapidly as possible, but when all were over except Dale and eight or nine men (among whom were Smith, Austill and Caesar), and only one canoe remained at the eastern side of the stream, a large party of Indians, numbering, as was afterwards ascertained, nearly three hundred, attacked the handful of whites still remaining. These retreated from the field, where they were breakfasting, and keeping the Indians in check by careful and well-aimed firing, were about to get into the canoe and escape to the opposite bank, about four hundred yards away, when they discovered that their retreat was cut off by a large canoe full of Indians, eleven in all, which had come out of the mouth of the creek just above. The savages tried to approach the sh.o.r.e, but, in spite of the fact that by careening the canoe to one side and lying down they were able to conceal themselves, they were prevented from landing by Austill and one or two other men. Two of the Indians jumped into the water and tried to swim to the sh.o.r.e, while the others, firing over the gunwale of the boat, were sorely annoying the whites. Austill shot one of the swimmers but the other escaped to the sh.o.r.e, and joined the savages there, informing them, as Dale supposed, of the weakness of his force, which they had not yet discovered. Dale called to the men on the other side of the river to cross and a.s.sist him, but they, after making an abortive attempt to send a canoe load across, remained idle spectators of the terribly unequal conflict. Dale, seeing that no help was to come from them, and knowing that the Indians would shortly overcome him by sheer force of numbers, resolved upon a recklessly daring manoeuvre, namely, an attempt to capture the Indian canoe! He called out to his comrades.
”I'm going to fight the canoe with a canoe. Who will go with me?”
Austill, Smith and Caesar volunteered at once, and Caesar took his post as steersman, while the three stalwart soldiers were leaping into the canoe for the purpose of fighting hand to hand the nine Indians opposed to them. As they shot out from the sh.o.r.e the savages on the bank delivered a fierce fire upon them, but fortunately without effect. The savages in the canoe had exhausted their powder, and Dale's party would have had an advantage in this but for the fact that their own powder had become wet as they were getting into their canoe. The fight must be hand to hand, but they were not the men to shrink from it. When the boats struck, the Indians leaped up and began using their rifles as clubs.
Austill, who was in the bow of Dale's boat, received the first shock of the battle, but Caesar promptly swung his boat around, and grappling the other canoe held the two side by side during the whole fight. Dale's boat was a very small one, and he to relieve it sprang into the Indian canoe, thereby giving his comrades more room and crowding the Indians so closely together as to embarra.s.s their movements. The blows now fell thick and fast. Austill was knocked down into the Indian boat, and an Indian was about to put him to death when Smith saved him by braining the savage. Austill then rose, and s.n.a.t.c.hing a war club from one of the Indians used that instead of his rifle. Eight of the savages were slain, and Dale found himself face to face with the solitary survivor, whom he recognized as a young Muscogee with whom he had been for years on terms of the most intimate friends.h.i.+p, and whom he loved, as he declared, almost as a brother. He lowered his up-raised rifle to spare his friend, but the savage would not accept quarter. He cried out in the Creek language, which Dale understood as well as he did English.
”Big Sam, you are a man, and I am another! Now for it!” and with that the two joined in a struggle for life. A blow from Dale's gun ended at once the canoe fight and the life of the young brave, who, even from his friend, would not accept the mercy which his nation was not ready to show to the whites. It is said that to the day of his death Dale could not speak of this incident without shedding tears.
Dale and his comrades had still a duty to do and some danger yet to encounter. The party remaining on the bank was in imminent peril, and must be rescued at all hazards. The little canoe was not large enough to carry them all, and so the big one must be cleared of the dead Indians in it, and the heroes of the canoe fight accomplished this under a severe fire from the bank. Then jumping into the captured boat, they paddled to the sh.o.r.e, and taking their hard pressed comrades on board, crossed under fire to the other side, whence they marched to Fort Gla.s.s, twelve miles away, having dealt the savages a severe blow without losing a man. Austill was hurt pretty badly on the head, and a permanent dent in his skull attested the narrowness of his escape.
This battle was waged within sight of the root fortress, the drift pile being indeed the cover from which the Indians fought. Tom, as we know, went to the look-out at the beginning of the fight, and he remained there to the end in the hope that the fortune of battle might possibly bring the whites within call, and thus afford the little refugee band a chance of escape. No such chance came, however, and sadly enough the two boys, for Joe was also in the look-out, watched the pa.s.sage of the last of Dale's men across the stream, half a mile below.
”Mas' Tom,” said Joe, ”dem folks gwine right straight to de fort.”