the little beast. Leaping from the saddle, he seized me in his arms, set
me down, and bade me tell Colonel Clark of his arrival.

It was a sultry August morning. Within the hour Colonel Clark and Tom
and myself were riding over the dusty trace that wound westward across
the common lands of the village, which was known as the Fort Chartres
road. The heat-haze shimmered in the distance, and there was no sound in
plain or village save the tinkle of a cowbell from the clumps of shade.
Colonel Clark rode twenty paces in front, alone, his head bowed with
thinking.

"They're coming into Cahokia as thick as bees out'n a gum, Davy," said
Tom; "seems like there's thousands of 'em. Nothin' will do 'em but they
must see the Colonel,--the varmints. And they've got patience, they'll
wait thar till the b'ars git fat. I reckon they 'low Clark's got the
armies of Congress behind him. If they knowed," said Tom, with a
chuckle, "if they knowed that we'd only got seventy of the boys and some
hundred Frenchies in the army! I reckon the 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