The Big Brother

G >> George Cary Eggleston >> The Big Brother

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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
Glass, or Fort Madison, as it was properly named, though the people
still used its original name Fort Glass 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 Glass. 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 Glass, 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 pass through a country infested with savages, but on his
return brought, instead of assistance, 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 Glass 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 entitling him to bear the name of the great Roman
warrior.

The expedition left Fort Glass 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 Glass, 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 shore 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. Pushing 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 shore, 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 shore, 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 shore, 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 assist 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 shore 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 embarrass 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 snatching 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 friendship, 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 shore, and taking their hard pressed comrades on board,
crossed under fire to the other side, whence they marched to Fort Glass,
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 passage 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."

"Yes, of course," said Tom. "What of it?"

"Nothin', only I wish I could go wid 'em, and tell 'em Mas' Sam's here
sick."

"So do I, Joe, but we can't go with them, and it's no use wishing."

"I reckon 'tain't no use, but I can't help wishin' for all dat. When
folk's got der own way dey don't wish for it. It's when you can't git
your way dat you wish, ain't it?"

Tom was forced to admit that Joe was right, and that in wishing to be
with the retreating party he was not altogether unreasonable.

The two boys sat there, looking and longing. The savages had disappeared
almost as suddenly as they had come, and presently Joe sprang up,
saying.

"Dar's de little canoe lodged in the bushes, an' I'se gwine to fasten
her to the bank anyhow, so's we'll have her if we want her."

What possible use they could make of the canoe, it had not entered
Joe's head to ask perhaps, but he tied the boat in the bushes
nevertheless and secreted the paddle in the drift pile. He then visited
the place where Dale's men had been surprised at breakfast, and brought
off the pack of provisions which Dale had captured that morning from the
savages and had himself abandoned in his turn. The pack was a
well-stored one, and its possession was a matter of no little moment to
the boys, whose bill of fare had hitherto embraced no bread, of which
there was here an abundance in the shape of ash cake.

"Mas' Tom," said Joe that evening, "do you know my master?"

"Mr. Butler? Yes, certainly."

"Well, if anything happens to poor Joe, and if you ever gits to de fort
an' if Joe don't, an' if you sees my master dar you'll tell him Joe
never runned away anyhow, won't you."

"Yes, I'll tell him that Joe."

"Even if the Ingins ketches me an' you dunno whar' I'se gone to, you'll
tell him anyhow dat Joe never runned away from him or from you nuther,
won't you, Mas' Tom?"

"Of course, Joe. But there won't be any chance to tell him anything
about it unless we all get back to the fort, and then you can tell him
for yourself. He thinks you are dead, of course, and doesn't dream that
you ever ran away. You'll get back safely if the Indians don't catch
you, and if they catch you they'll catch all of us, so I won't be there
to tell your master about you."

"Dun no 'bout dat," replied Joe. "Dey mought catch Joe 'thout catchin'
anybody else, an' 'thout you nor nobody knowin' nothin' 'bout it, and
Joe wants you to promise anyway dat you'll stick to it to de las' dat
poor Joe was no runaway nigger, nohow at all. Kin you do dat for me,
Mas' Tom?"

"Certainly, Joe," said Tom laughing, "I promise you."

"Will you git mad if Joe axes you to shake han's on dat, Mas' Tom? I
wants to make sartain sure on it."

Tom laughed, but held out his hand, convinced that the poor black boy
was out of spirits at least, if not out of his mind.

CHAPTER XV.

THE BOYS ARE DRIVEN OUT OF THE ROOT FORTRESS.

Sam was only partially conscious during the battle around his
habitation. The fever, which now rose and fell at intervals, was usually
highest during the forenoon, abating somewhat later in the day. When it
was highest he was always in either an unconscious stupor, or a wild
delirium. When the fever abated, however, his consciousness returned,
and he was capable of talking and of understanding all that was said. In
these lucid intervals, he insisted upon knowing all that had happened,
so that he might tell the boys what was best to do. On this day Tom had
a story of more than ordinary interest to tell him, about the battle and
the chance of rescue which had so narrowly passed them. Sam was
interested in it all as a matter of course, but he was still more
deeply interested, it seemed, in the condition of the sand near the
place where he was lying. He had dug a little hole with his hand, and
feeling of the sand found it decidedly wet. Turning to Tom, he said:

"The river is rising rapidly, isn't it?"

"Yes; but how did you find it out?"

"By the sand. I've been watching it a good deal since the fall rains set
in, as I'm afraid the river will drive us out of here. You see, the
water works easily through the sand, and you can always tell what the
level of the river is, if its banks are sandy, by digging down to where
the sand is wet."

"Yes," said Tom, "but the river isn't within a hundred feet of us yet."

"You are mistaken. It is within six inches of us," said Sam.

"How's that?"

"Well, this bank is almost exactly level, and when the river gets above
its edge it spreads at once all over it. Now the sand is wet within six
inches of the top, and the river is within six inches of the edge of the
bank. When it rises six or eight inches more, it'll be in here, and I'm
afraid it will rise that much before morning. At any rate we must be
ready for it."

"What can we do?" asked Tom in alarm. "There's no place to hide on the
upper bank."

"We mustn't quit this bank, and we mustn't quit the drift-pile either,"
replied Sam. "You must find a good place, high up in the drift where, by
pulling out sticks, you and Joe can make a place for us to stay in."

"But, Sam, what if the water gets to us there?"

"It won't get to us there."

"How do you know?"

"Because the biggest freshets always come in the spring, and the top of
this drift-pile was put where it is by the biggest freshets, so the
river won't go near the top in November. You see, as the drift _floated_
on top of the water to its present place, the top of the pile must be
the highest point, or very nearly the highest, that the water ever
reaches. If you can find a good place therefore in the upper part of the
drift-pile, we shall be safe there. But you'd better see about it at
once, as the water may be in here before morning, and at any rate we
mustn't allow ourselves to be taken by surprise. You'd better go to the
river and set a stake first so you can tell how fast the water rises and
know when to move into the new place."

Tom set his stake at the water's edge and then selected the most
available place he could find for the new abode. He and Joe went
diligently to work, rearranging the loose sticks of drift-wood and even
carrying many of them clear out of the pile, so as to enlarge the hole
they had found and make it as habitable as possible.

"The trouble is," said Tom when they had nearly completed their task,
"that we can't make a smooth floor, and it's going to be rather
uncomfortable lying on loose logs and big round sticks that run every
which way."

"That's my business," said Judie looking in at the entrance. "I'm the
housekeeper, you know, and I've thought of all that."

And sure enough the little woman had brought a great pile of small,
leafy, tree branches and bush tops, with which she speedily filled up
the low places between the timbers, and covered the timbers themselves
to a depth of three or four inches, making a soft as well as a level
floor. She had foreseen the difficulty, and borrowing Sam's knife, had
worked with all her might to provide in advance against it. But the
bushes and leaves were not all that she had brought. She had collected
also a large quantity of gray moss with which to make a carpet for the
springy floor.

"Now please don't tell brother Sam," she said when the boys praised her
thoughtfulness and ingenuity. "I want to surprise him when he comes."

Tom and Joe promised, and Tom said they would have to call her their
"little housekeeper" hereafter.

The river was still rising, but more slowly, it appeared, than it had
done before. By Tom's calculations it was coming up at the rate of an
inch in three hours, wherefore Sam thought they might safely remain
where they were until morning at least, while if the water should come
to a stand during the night, they would have no occasion to move at all,
as a fall would rapidly follow, if the weather should remain clear.

Joe had worked faithfully at the task of preparing the new place of
refuge, but he was not at all satisfied with the arrangement.

"I tell you, Mas' Tom," he said, "wood'll float, 'thout 'tis live oak,
an' dis here drif'-pile 'll jest raise up an' float away, you'll see if
it don't."

"Why hasn't it floated away long ago, then, Joe?" asked Tom.

"May be it has. How you know dis drif' didn't all on it come here las'
time de river was up?"

"Well, there's too much of it for that, and besides, Sam says this place
is safe, and you know he is always right about things when he speaks
positively about them."

"Mas' Tom, don' you know Mas' Sam done been a-talkin' nonsense for two
weeks now?"

"Yes; but that's only when he's out of his head."

"How you know when he's outen his head an' when he ain't?"

"We know he's out of his head when he talks nonsense."

"Well, maybe dis here 's nonsense. I jest knows it is, and dat's how I
know Mas' Sam was outen his head when he said it."

Tom saw that Joe was not to be convinced, and so he contented himself
with saying,

"Well, we'll see."

"Yes, dat's jest it. We _will_ see, and feel too, when we all gets
drownded in de water."

The water came to a stand about midnight, and was falling slowly the
next morning. But when morning came it was raining hard, and the rain
was evidently not a local but a general one, wherefore, Tom feared that
the fall would shortly be changed into a rise, and that the bank would
soon be covered. He watched his stake carefully, visiting it every half
hour. At nine o'clock the river had fallen three inches, and was about
eight inches below the bank. From nine to ten it fell only about half an
inch. Between ten and eleven the fall was not more than a quarter of an
inch. Between eleven and twelve no fall at all was perceptible. From
twelve to one there was a slight rise. Between one and two it rose
nearly an inch. The next hour brought with it a rise of two inches. By
five o'clock the level of the water was barely two inches below the
edge of the bank, and as it was rising at the rate of two or three
inches an hour, Sam thought it time to remove from their old to their
new quarters. The change was of advantage to the sick boy, who was now
getting somewhat better at any rate, and when he found himself in the
new place the interest he showed in examining all the details of its
arrangements, was the best possible evidence of improvement.

"Come here, little woman," he said to Judie, "and give an account of
yourself. You borrowed my knife yesterday, and somebody has been using
it in cutting bush tops to make a smooth floor with, and the idea was a
very good one. Can you tell me who it was?"

"Maybe it was Tom," she replied mischievously.

"No, it was not Tom," Sam answered. "He's too much of a great awkward
boy to think of anything so comfortable. You must guess again."

"Joe, then," she said.

"No, it wasn't Joe, either," said Sam. "Joe can sleep on the edge of a
fence rail as well as anywhere else, and he never would have thought of
making our floor soft and smooth. Guess again."

"Maybe it was brother Sam," said Judie.

"Oh, certainly. It must have been I," replied Sam. "I must have done it.
I'm so strong and active now-a-days. Yes, on reflection, I presume I did
it, and the man in the moon helped me. Now I think it was a very
thoughtful and helpful thing for anybody to do, so you ought to kiss me
for doing it, and when the weather gets clear you must throw a kiss to
the man in the moon, too, for his share." And with that he kissed the
little housekeeper, and she felt herself abundantly repaid for her work
and for the thoughtfulness she had shown. She was never so happy as when
Sam praised her, "because he's such a splendid big brother," she would
explain.

Tom, seeing that Sam was getting better at last, began to hope for his
complete recovery, and the hope made him buoyant of spirit again. Judie,
too, who watched and weighed every symptom in Sam's case, discovered to
her delight that he was decidedly better, and the discovery made her as
happy as a healthy girl well can be. Poor Joe seemed to be the only
miserable one in the party. He said almost nothing, answering questions
with a simple "yes" or "no," and sitting moodily in his corner, when he
stayed inside the "drift cavern"--which was Sam's name for the new
abode--at all. He spent most of his time, however, on top of the pile,
where he watched the water and the clouds. The rain had ceased, but the
river, which was now creeping over the broad bank, continued to rise.

"What is the matter with Joe?" asked Sam after the boy had gone out for
the twentieth time.

"I think he's afraid we're all going to be drowned," said Tom.

"Drowned? How?"

"Well, he says wood will float, and so he thinks when the water comes up
under the drift-pile, it will all float away."

"What nonsense!" exclaimed Sam. "Why didn't you tell him better, Tom?"

"I did; but he sticks to it, and--"

"Well, couldn't you explain it so that he would understand it and not
have to trust to your judgment for it?"

"No, I couldn't. The fact is, I don't quite understand it myself. There
isn't a stick in this whole pile that won't float, and I don't quite
understand why the pile won't. But I don't doubt you're right about it,
Sam. You always are right whether I understand how things are or not."

"Let me explain it to you, then. Do you know why some things float and
others don't?"

"Yes, of course. Because the things that float are lighter than the
things that sink."

"Not exactly. That log there is too heavy for you to lift, while you can
carry a bullet between your thumb and finger. The log is many hundred
times heavier than a bullet, but the log will float while the bullet
will sink always."

"That's so," said Tom, "and I don't know what does make some things
float and other things sink."

"Did you ever set a teacup in the water and see it float?"

"Yes, many a time."

"But if you fill it with water it will sink, won't it?"

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