Indianapolis Times, Volume 35, Number 250, Indianapolis, Marion County, 27 February 1923 — Page 8

8

Alice of Old Vincennes By Maurice Thompson COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY ALICE' LEE THOMPSON

Bezin Here GASPARD ROUSSILLON, a French trader, and his wife settled in Vincennes on the Wabash In the seventies. ALICE and JEAN were the adopted children of the ROCSSILLONS. PURE BERET, a Catholic priest, takes a fatherly interest in Alice and RENE DE RONVILLE, a handsome young man, who is deeply in love with her. A bottle of fine brandy sent as a present to LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR ABBOTT Is stolen by LONG HAIR, an Indian, who escapes after being shot at several times. Go on with the story THIS Incident brought the drinking bout at the river house to sudden end; but nothing further came of It that night, and no record of it would be found In these pages, but for the fact that Long-Hair afterward became an Important character In the stirring historical drama which had old Vincennes for Its center of energy. Rene de Ronville probably felt himself In bad luck when he arrived at the river house just too late to share In the liquor or to join in chasing the bold thief. He listened with interest, however, to the story of Long-Hair's capture of the commandant’s demijohn and could not refrain from saying that if he had been present there would have been a quite different result “I would have shot him before he got to that door,” he said, drawing his heavy flint-lock pistol and going through the motions of one aiming quickly and tiring. Indeed, so vigorously in earnest was he with the pantomime, that he actually did fire, unintentionally of course —the ball burying itself in the door jamb. He was laughed at by those present for being more excited than they who witnessed the whole thing. One of them, a leathery-faced ar.d grizzled old sinner, leered at him contemptuously and said in queer French, with a curious accent caught from long use of backwoods English: “Listen how the boy brags! Te might think, to hear Rene talk, that he actually amounted to a big pile. ’ This personage was known to every soul in Vincennes as Oncle Jazon, and when Oncle Jazon spoke the whole town felt bound to listen. “An’ how well he shoots, too,” he added with an intolerable ■wink: “aimed at the door and hit the post. Certainly Long-Hair would have been in great danger! O yes he’d 'ave killed Long-Hair at the first shot, wouldn’t he though!" Oncle Jazon had the air of a large man, but the stature of a small one: in fact he was shriveled bodily to a degree which suggested comparison with a sun dried wisp of hickory bark" and when he chuckled, as he was now doing, his mouth puckered itself until it looked like a scar on his face. From cap to moccasins he had every mark significant of a desperate character; and yet there was about him something that instantly commanded the confidence of rough men—the look of self-sufficiency and superior capability always to be found in connection with immense will power. His sixty years of exposure, hardship, and danger seemed to have but toughened his physique and strengthened his vitality. Out of his small hazel eyes gleamed a light as keen as ice. “All right, Oncle Jazon,” said Rene laughing and blowing the smoke out .of his pistol; “twas you all the same who let Long-Hair trot off with the Governor's brandy, not I. If you could have hit even a door-post it might have been better.” Oncle Jazon took off his cap and Icoked down into it in a way he had when about to say something final. “Ventrebleu! I did not shoot at Long Hair at all;” he said, speaking slowly, “because the scoundrel was unarmed. He didn’t have on even a knife, and he was havin’ enough to do dodgin’ the bullets that the rest oi ’em were plumpin’ at 'im without any compliments from me to bother ’lm more.” "Well," Rene replied, turning away with a laugh, “if I’d been scalped by the Indians, as you have, I don’t think there would be any particular reason why I should wait for an Tndlan thief to go and arm himself before I accepted him as a target.” Oncle Jazon lifted a hand Involuntarily and rubbed his scalpless crown; then he with a grotesque grimace as if the recollection of having his head skinned were the funniest thing imaginable. “When you’ve killed as many of ’em as Oncle Jazon has,” remarked a bystander to Rene, “you’ll not be so hungry for blood, maybe.” "Especially after ye’ve took fiftynine scalps to pay for yer one,” added Oncle Jazon, replacing his cap over the hairless area of his crown. The men who had been chasing

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Long-Hair presently came straggling back with their stories —each had a distinct one—of how the fugitive escaped. They were wild looking fellows, most of them somewhat intoxicated, all profusely liberal with : their stock of picturesque profanity. They represented the roughest clement of the well-nigh lawless post. “I’m positive that he’s wounded,” said one. “Jacques and I shot at him together, so that our pistols sounded just as if only one had been fired — bang! that way—and he leaped sideways for all the world like a bird with a broken leg. I thought he’d fall; but ve! he ran faster’n ever, and all at once he was gone; just disappeared.” “Well, tomorrow we'll get him,” said another. “You and I and Jacques, we’ll take up his trail, the thief, and follow him till we find him. He can’t get off so easy.” “I don’t know so well about that,” said another; “it’s Long-Hair, you must remember, and Long-Hair is no common buck that just anybody can find asleep. You know what Long-Hair is. Nobody’s ever got even with 'im yet. That’s so, ain’t it? Just ask Oncle Jazon, if you don’t believe it!” The next morning Long-Hair was tracked to the river’s edge. He had been wounded, but whether seriously or not could only be conjectured. A sprinkle of blood, here and there quite a dash af it, reddened the grass and clumps of weeds he had run through, and ended close to the water Into which it looked as if he had plunged with a view to baffling pursuit. Indeed pursuit was baffled. No further trace could be found, by which to follow the cunning fugitive. Some of the men consoled themselves by raying, without believing, that LongHair was probably lying drowned at the bottom of the river. “Pas du tout,” observed Oncle Jazon, his short pipe askew far over m the corner of his mouth, “not a bit of it is that Indian drowned. He’s jcs* as live as a fat cat this minute, and as drunk as the devil. He’ll get some o’ yer scalps yet after he’s guzzled all that brandy and slep’ a week.” It finally transpired that Once Jazon was partly right and partly wrong. Long-Hair was alive, even as a fat cat. perhaps; but not drunk, for In trying to swim with the rotunda little dame jeanne under his arm he lost hold of it and it went to the hot tom of the Wabash, where it may be lying at this moment patiently waiting for somf one to fish it out of Its bed deep In the sand and mud, and break the ancient wax from its neck: Rene de Ronville. after the chase of Long-Hair had been given over, went to tell Father Beret what had happened, and finding the priest’s hut empty turned into the path leading to the Roussillon place, which was at the head of a narrow street laid out In a direction at right angles to the river’s course. He passed two or three diminutive cabins, all as much alike as bee hives. Each had its squat veranda and thatched or claphoarded roof held in place by weight-poles ranged in roughly parallel rows, and each had the face of the wall under ite veranda neatly daubed with a grayish stucco made of mud and lime. You may see such houses today in some remote parts of the creole country of Louisiana. As Rene passed along he spoke with a gay French freedom to the dames and lasses who chanced to be visible. His air would be regarded as vio.ently brigandish In our day; wo might even go so far as to think his whole appearance comical. Ills jaunty cap with a tail that wagged as lie walked, his short trousers and leggins of buckskin, and bis loose shirt-like tunb, drawn in at the waist with a broad ielt. gave his strong figure just the dash of wildness suited to the armament with which It was weighted. A heavy gun lay iti the hollow of his shoulder, under which hung an otter--kin bullet-pouch with Its clear pow-ler-horn and white bone charger. In tils belt were two huge filnt-lock pis tols and a long case-knife. “Bonjour, Ma'm'.selle Adrienne,” he cheerily caled. waving his free hand tn greeting to a small, dark lass standing on the step of a veranda and indolently swinging a broom. “Comment allez-vous aujourd'hui?” "J’m'porte tres bien, mercl, Mo’sieu Rene,” was the quick response; "et vous?” “Oh, I’m as lively as a cricket.” "Going a hunting?” “No, just up here a little way—just m business —up to Mo’sieu Roussilon’s for a moment." “Yes,” the girl responded in a tone ndlcative of something very like pleen, “yes. undoubtedly, Mo’sieu de Ronville; your business there seems quite pressing of late. I have noticed your Industrious application to that business.” “Ta-ta, little one,” he wheedled, lowering his voice; “you must’nt go to making bug-bears out of nothing.” “Bug-bears!” she retorted, "you go on about your business and I’ll attend to mine,” and she flirted into the house. Rene laughed under his breath, standing a moment as if expecting her to come out again: hut she did not, and he resumed his walk, singing softly— " Elle ales joues vermeilles, vermellles. Ma belle, mn belle petite.” But ten to one he was not thinking of Madamoiselle Adrienne Bouroier. His mind, however, must have been absorbingly occupied; for in the straight, open way he met Father Beret and did not see him until he came near bumping against the old man, who stepped aside with astonishing agility and said—“Dieu vous benlsse, mon fils; but what is your great hurry—where can you be going in such happy haste?” Rene did not stop to parley with the priest. He flung some .phrase of pleasant greeting back over his shoulder as he trudged on, his heart beginning a tattoo against his ribs when the Roussillon place came In sight, and he took hold of his mustache to pull It, as some men must do in moments of nervousness and bashfulness. If sounds ever have color, the humming in his ears was of a rosy hue: if thoughts ever exhale fragrance, hi* brain overflowed with the sweets of violet and heliotrope. He had in mind whht he was going to say when Alice an\ he should be alone speech, e thought: lrfijped a very thrilling little speech, way it

DOINGS OF THE DUFFS—

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stirred his own nerve-centers as he conned it over. Madame Roussillon met him at the door in not a very good humor. “Is Mademoiselle Alice here?” he ventured to demand. “Alioe? no, she’s not here; she’s never here just when I want her most. V’la le picbois et la grive— see the woodpecker and the robin—eating the cherries, eating every one,of thtm,

OUT OUR WAY —By WILLIAMS

THE 0L1) HOME TOWN—By STANLEY

and that girl running off somewhere instead of staying here and picking them,” she railed in answer to the young man’s polite inquiry. “I haven’t seen her these four hours, neither her nor that rascally hunchback, Jean. They’re up to some mischief, I’ll be bound!” Madame Roussillon puffed audibly between phrases; she suddenly became'very mild when relieved of her

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tirade. • “Mais entrez," she added in a pleasant tone, “come in and tell me the news.” Rene’s disappointment rushed into his face, but he managed to laugh it aside. “Father Beret has just been telling me,” said Madame Roussillon, “that, cm- friend Long-Hair made some trouble last night. How about it?"

Midnight Callers

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Rene told her what he knew and added that Long-Hair would probably never be seen again. “He was shot, no doubt of it,” ho went on, “and is now being nibbled by fish and turtles. We tracked him by his blood to where he jumped into the Wabash. He never came out.” Strangely enough it happened that, at tlje very time of this chat between Madame Roussillon and Rene, Alice

FRECKLES AND HIS FRIENDS—By BLOSSER

OUR BOARDING HOUSE—By AHERN

was bandaging Long-Eair’s wounded leg with strips of her apron. It was under some willows which overhung the bank of a narrow and shallow lagoon or slough, which in those days extended a mile or two back into the country on the farther side of the river. Alice and Jean went over in a pirogue to see if tha water lilies, haunting a pond ther* were yet beginning to bloom. They Landed aX a

TUESDxVY, FEB. 27, 1923

—By ALLMAN

—By AL POSEN

convenient spot some distance up the little lagoon, made the boat fast by dragging its prow high ashore, and were on the point of setting out across a neck of wet, grassy land to the pond, when a deep grunt, not unlike that of a self-satisfied pig, attracted them to the willows, where they discovered Long-Hair, badly wounded, weltering in some blaak mad. CEo U* Continued J