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 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
clo