Colonel's too cute for 'em."

The savages in Cahokia were as the leaves of the forest. Curiosity,
that mainspring of the Indian character, had brought the chiefs, big and
little, to see with their own eyes the great Captain of the Long Knives.
In vain had the faithful Bowman put them off. They would wait. Clark
must come. And Clark was coming, for he was not the man to quail at such
a crisis. For the crux of the whole matter was here. And if he failed to
impress them with his power, with the might of the Congress for which he
fought, no man of his would ever see Kentucky again.

As we rode through the bottom under the pecan trees we talked of Polly
Ann, Tom and I, and of our little home by the Salt River far to the
southward, where we would live in peace when the campaign was over. Tom
had written her, painfully enough, an affectionate scrawl, which he sent
by one of Captain Linn's men. And I, too, had written. My letter had
been about Tom, and how he had become a sergeant, and what a favorite
he was with Bowman and the Colonel. Poor Polly Ann! She could not write,
but a runner from Harrodstown who was a friend of Tom's had carried
all the way to Cahokia, in the pocket with his despatches, a fold of
nettle-bark linen. Tom pulled it from the bosom of his hunting shirt to
show me, and in it was a little ring of hair like unto the finest spun
red-gold. This was the message Polly Ann had sent,--a message from
little Tom as well.

At Prairie du Rocher, at St. Philippe, the inhabitants lined the streets
to do homage to this man of strange power who rode, unattended and
unafraid, to the council of the savage tribes which had terrorized his
people of Kentucky. From the ramparts of Fort Chartres (once one of the
mighty chain of strongholds to protect a new France, and now deserted
like Massacre), I gazed for the first time in awe at the turgid flood of
the Mississippi, and at the lands of the Spanish king beyond. With never
ceasing fury the river tore at his clay banks and worried the green
islands that braved his charge. And my boyish fancy pictured to itself
the monsters which might lie hidden in his muddy depths.

We lay that night in the open at a spring on the bluffs, and the next
morning beheld the church tower of Cahokia. A little way from the town
we perceived an odd gathering on the road, the yellowed and weathered
hunting shirts of Bowman's company mixed with the motley dress of the
Creole volunteers. Some of these