Part 4 (1/2)
She had bled for the things she had brought through the wilderness She had wept for others that she had left And if for such gear Sandy had corief--”I wonder--I wonder if I could find a pretext to care for the effort to control her attention, ”And for men, too”
”Men must needs follohen duty leads the way,” said Captain De to see her eyes, ”And what do women follow?”
If Captain Deht, he would have answered:--
”Folly! their own and that of their husbands!”
He had had close observation of the fact that the pioneers gave heavy hostages to fate in their wives and children, and a terrible advantage to a savage foe, and the very bravery of so many of these noble helpmeets only proved the value of all they risked He could not elaborate, however, any scheme by which a new country should be entered first by the settlers aided by a strong occupancy of soldiery, and only when the lands should be cleared and the savages expelled the women and children venture forth So he said:--
”They follow their destiny”
He had a s to her cle a humblertalk and spoke froers to non-coht should be exee, were of a color between gray and brown--darker than the one and lighter than the other His hair was brown and smooth; he was slender and tall; his aquiline nose and finely cut lips gave a certain cast of distinction to his face, although the tehtly sunken and the thinness of his cheek revealed the outline of the jaw and chin which showed determination and force, despite his mild expression at present Josephine fixed an as, never having seen any ear save a buskin of deer hide
”The ested Odalie, forlornly, seeking to be responsive to his conversational efforts
”Warfare!” exclaimed Captain Dees is not warfare! It cannot be conducted on a single recognized military principle” He went on to say that all ht; thebodies of troops were unavailable Discipline, the dexterities of strategy, an enlightened courage, and the tremendous force of _esprit de corps_ were alike nullified
The problereater than it has been since the scene has shi+fted to the plains, the densely wooded character of the tangled wilderness affording peculiar advantage to the skulking individualinconceivably thebefore Captain Deular scientific tactics to the alert wiles of the savage native in his own difficult country has been commented upon by observers of nized in the hard knocks of experience by those whose fate it has been to try again the experiment[6]
”As to military ethics,” he added, ”to induce the Indian to accept and abide by the principles governing civilized warfare seee of honor to forego an advantage He will not respect his parole He continually violates and sets at naught the provisions of his solemn treaty”
Odalie would not ask if the white man never broke faith with the red--if the Indian had not been taught by example near at hand of what brittle stuff a treaty was ically with a mere man, she said to herself, with a little secret sentiloom of her mental atmosphere, and since she could not eat and little backwoods Fifine's eyes had absorbed her appetite, it was just as well that Ha shown over the fort by the jolly Corporal O'Flynn, appeared at the door with the intelligence that their quarters were assigned them The courteous Captain Demere handed her to the door, and she stepped out froht, with the stars showing a chill scintillation as of the approach of winter in their white glitter high in the sky, and the loo bastion close at hand The barracks were silent; ”tattoo” had just sounded; the great gates were closed, and the high walls shut off the world froht save thehis beat, and further away, see an echo, the step of another sentinel, while out in the wilderness the scream of a wildcat came shrilly on the wind froe beasts and still e men far from the sweet security so trebly protected here
Not even the flare of another big honed to her could efface the impression of the bleak and dark loneliness outside the walls of the fort, and when the three were together, untrae their grief and their awful terror for husband and brother and father They could not speak of it, but they sat down on a buffalo rug spread before the fire, and all three wept for the unuttered thought The suspense, the separation of the little party, seeht better have endured anything had they been together Perhaps it ell for the elder two that their attention was diverted now and again by the effort to console Fifine in a minor distress, for with the ill-adjusted sense of proportion peculiar to childhood she had begun to clanonne_, her _douce fillette_ that she had brought so far in her arms or on her back
Alas, poor Fifine! to learn thus early how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child! For indeed Kittymerely ”played baby” in order to secure free transportation At all events, she was a cat now, the only one in the fort, and for all she knew in the settle the palisades, now peeping in at a loop-hole in the upper story of one of the block-houses where a sentinel was regularly on guard, being able to scan fro outlook not only the exterior of the fort on two sides, but a vast extent of darkling country In his hted only by the gliht without, he suddenly saw a flicker at the loop-hole he was approaching, caught a transient glileam of a fiery eye, and he nearly dropped his loaded firelock in aht that was a blarsted cat!”
He had not seen one since he left Charlestown a year before
He walked to the loop-hole and looked far down fro the parapet of the curtain and the scarp to the opposite bastion with its tower-like block-house
Nothing--all quiet as the grave or the desert He could hear the river sing; he could see in the light of the stars, and a round below,--naught else For the _douce nonne_, with her back all handso aside and fled down the interior slope of the rahboring the kitchen She nosed gleefully about a very e of luxury; she pried stealthily, every inch a cat, into the arrangements for to-morrow's breakfast, with a noiseless step and a breathless purr, until suddenly a tin pan containing beans was tu within the line of an active spring
For the _douce fillette_ had caught a ;--a regular do which the _douce fillette_ had not seen incabin did not affright Kitty, and when the officers' cook, a veritable African negro, suddenly appeared with an ebony face and the rolling whites of astonished eyes, she exhibited her capture and was rewarded by a word of coh it was as outlandish as the gutturals of Willinawaugh
When the night was nearly spent, a great star, splendidly blazing in the sorceries of a roseate haze, seeht above the high, bleak, serrated su here and there white blank intervals, that presently were revealed as stark snowy do into the wintry silence of a new day The resonant bugle suddenly sounded the reveille along the far winding curves of the river, rousing greetings of , and before the responsive echoes of the forest were once more mute the parade was full of the co of the dru in line, and the brisk authoritative ringing voice of the first sergeant was calling the roll in each company
And on the doorstep of Odalie's cabin, when Josephine opened the door, sat the _douce nonne_ with hernoiselessly, going through thedown in infantile style ild babbling cries of endearade cat