Indianapolis Times, Volume 35, Number 256, Indianapolis, Marion County, 6 March 1923 — Page 8

8

Alice of Old Vincennes By Maurice Thompson COPYRIGHT, 1 SOS, BY ALICE LEE THOMPSON

BEGIN HERE CAPTAIN LEONARD HELM and LIEUT. FITZHI'GH BEVERLT wera sent from Kaskasiua by GEORGE ROGERS CLARK, an officer of the American Army during tho Revolutionary War. to take the place of GASPARD ROUSSILLON and RENE DE RONVILLE who had. been in charge of Vincennes temporarily. ALICE, the foster daughter oi Roussillon, learned that LONG HAIR, a desperate Indian, was displeased on seeing the new Hag of freedom which she had placed over the blockhouse. Lieutenant Beverley was Instructed to call on Gaspard Roussillon, who - was away when the new officers took charge of Ft. Sackville. GO ON WITH THE STORY TOTHING unpleasant, I asI sure Madame,” said BevX erley. ‘•Well, he’s not at home, Mo’sieu; he’s up the river for a few days. She relaxed her state, united her eyebrows, and even let fall her hands from her shelf-like hips. “Taank you, Madame,” said Beverley, bowing again, *‘l am sorry not to have seen him.” As he was turning to go a shimmer of brown hair streaked with gold struck upon his vision from just within the door. He paused, as if in response to a military command, while a nair of ’•rav eyes met his with a fiafh. The cabin room was ill lighted; but the crepuscular dimness did not seem to hinder his sight. Beyond the gir figure, a pair of slender swords hua r crossed aslant on the wall opposite the low door. Beverley had seen, in the old world galleries, pictures in which the shadowy and somewhat uncertain background thus forced Into strongest projection the main figure, yet without clearly defining it. The rough frame of the doorway gave Just the rustic setting suited to Alice's costume, the most striking part of which was a grayish short gown ending just above her fringed buckskin moccasins. Around her head she had bound a blue kerchief, a wide corner o? which lay over her crown like a loose cap. Her bright hair hung free upon her shoulders in tumbled half curls. As a picture, the figure and its entourage might have been artistically effective; but as Beverley saw it in actual life the first impression was rather embarrassing. Somehow he felt almost irresistibly invited to laugh, though he had never been much given to risibility. The blending, or rather the juxtaposition, of extremes—a face, a form immediately witching, and a costume odd to grotesquery—had made an assault upon his comprehension at once so sudden and so direct that his dignity came near being disastrously broken up. A splendidly beautiful child comically clad would have made much the same half delightful, half pleasing impression. Beverley could not stare at the girl, and no sooner had he turned his back upon her charm than the picture in his mind changed like a scene in a kaleidoscope. He now saw a tall, finely developed figure and a face delicately oval, with a low, wide forehead. arched brows, a straight, slightly tlp-tllted nose, a mouth sweet and full, dimpled cheeks, and a strong chin set above a faultless throat. His Imagination, In casting off its first impression, was inclined to exaggerate Alice’s beauty and to dwell upon Its picturesqueness. He smiled as he walked back to the fort, and even found himself whistling gayly a snatch from a rollicking fiddle-tune that he had heard when a boy. CHAPTER VI A HEW days after Helm’s arrival, M. Roussillon returned tc Vincennes, and if he was sorely touched in his amour propre by seeing his suddenly acquired military rank and title drop away, he did not let it be known to his fellow citizens. He promptly called upon the new commander and made acquaintaince with Lieutenant Fitzhugh Beverley who Just then was superintending the work of cleaning up an old cannon in the fort and mending some breaks In the stockade. Helm formed a great liking for the big Frenchman, whose breezy freedom of manner and expansive good humor struck him favorably from the be ginning. M. Roussillon’s ability to speak English with considerable ease helped the friendship along, no doubt; at all events their first interview end<*d withs hearty show of good fellowship, and as time passed they became almost inseparable companions during M. Roussillon’s periods of rest from his trading excursions among the Indians. They played cards and brewed hot drinks over Lift Off with Fingers \\ W PI J l w/X. * Doesn’t hurt a bit? Drop a little "Freezone” on an aching corn. Instantly that corn stops hurting, then shortly you lift it right off with fingers. Truly! Your druggist sells a tiny bottle of “Freezone” for a few cents, sufficient to remove every bard corn, soft corn, or com between the toes, and the callus*-#, without soreness or irritation. — Advertisement.

which they told marvelous stories, the latest one invariably surpassing all Its predecessors. Helm had an eye to business, and turned M. Roussillon's knowledge of the Indians to valuable account, so that he soon had very pleasant relations with most of the tribe within reach of his agents. This gave a feeling of great security to the people of Vincennes. They pursued their narrow agricultural activities with excellent results and redoubled th< se social gayeties which, even in hut and cabin under all the adverse conditions of extreme frontier life, were dear to the volatile and genial French temperament. IJeuteant Beverley found much to Interest him in the quaint town; but the piece de resistance was Oncle Jazon, who proved to be both fascinating and unmanageable; a hard nut to crack, yet possessing a kernel absolutely original in flavor. Beverley visited him one evening in his hut—it might better be called den—a curiously built thing, with walls of vertical poles set in a quadrangular trench dug in the ground, and roofed with grass. Inside and out it was plastered with clay, and the floor of dried mud was os mooth and hard as concrete paving. In one end there was a wide fireplace grimy with soot, in the other a mere peep-hole for a window; a wooden bench, a bed of skins and two or three stools were barely visible in the gloom. In the doorway Oncle Jazon sat whittling a slender billet of hickory into a ramrod for his long flint-lock American rifle. “Maybe ye know Simon Kenton,” said the old man, after he and Beverley had conversed for a while, "seeing that you are from Kentucky—eh?” “Yes, I do know him well; he’s a warm personal friend of mine,” said Beverley with quick interest, for it surprised him that Oncle Jazon should know anything about Kenton. "Do you know him. Monsieur Jazfm?” Oncle Jazon winked conceitedly and sighted along his rudimentary ramrod to see if it was straight; then puckering his lips, as if on the point of whistling, made an affirmative noise quite impossible to spell. "Well. I’m glad you are acquainted with Kenton.” said Beverley. “Where did you and he come together?” Oncdle Jazon chuckled reminiscently and scratched the skinless, cicatrized spot where his scalp had once flourished. "Oh, several places." he answered. “Ye see thet hair a hangin’ there on the wall?” He pointed at a dry wisp dangling under a peg in a log barely visible by the bad light. “Well, tliet’s my scalp, he! he! he!” He snickered ns If the fact were a most enjoyable joke. “Simon Kenton can tell ye about thet little affair! The Indians thought I was dead, and they took my hair; but I wasn’t dead; I was just a givin’ ’em a 'possum act. When they was gone I got up from where 1 was a layin’ and trotted of?. My head was sore and ventrebleu! but I was mad, he! he! he!” All this time he spoke In French, and the English, but poorly paraphrases his odd turns of expression. Hisgrimaoes and grunts cannot be hinted. It was a long story, as Beverley received It, told scrappily, but with certain rude art. In the end Oncle Jazon said with unctuous self satisfaction: "Accidents will happen. I got my chance at that damned Indian who skinned my head, and I jes took a bead on ’im with my old rifle. I can't shoot much, never could, but I happened to hit 'im s ;uaro in the left eye, what I shot at. and It was a hundred yards. Down he tumbles, and I runs to ’im and finds my same old scalp a bangin' to his belt. Well, I lifted off his hair with my knife, and untied mine from tho belt, and then I had both scalps, he! he! ho! You ask Simon Kenton when ye see im. He was along at the same time, and they made 'im run the gantlet and pretty nigh beat the life out o’ ’im. Ventrebleu!” Beverley now recollected hearing Kenton tell the same grim ptory by a camp-fire in the hills of Kentucky. Somehow it had caught anew spirit In the French rendering, which linked it with tho old tales of adventure that he had read in his boyhood, and it suddenly endeared Oncle Jazon to him. The rough old scrap of a men and the powerful youth chatted together until sundown, srnokl ig their pipes, each feeling for what was best in the other, half aware that in the future they would le tested together in the Are of wild adventure. Every man is more or less a prophet at certain points in his life. Twilight and moonlight were blending softly when Beverley, on his way back to the fort, departing from a direct course, went along the river's side southward to have a few momenta of reflective strolling within reach of the water’s pleasant murmur and the town's Indefinite evening air. Rich sweetness, the gift of early autumn. was on the air blowing softly out of a lilac west and singing in the willow fringe that hung here and there over the bank. On the farther side of the river’s wide flow, swollen by recent heavy rains, Beverley saw a pirogue, in one end of which a dark figure swayed to the strokes of a paddle. The slender and shallow little craft was bobbing on the choppy waves and taking a zig-zag course among floating logs and masses of lighter driftwood, while making slow but certain headway toward the hither bank. Beverley took a bit of punk and a flint and steel from his pocket, relit his pipe and stood watching the skilful boatman conduct his somewhat dangerous voyage diagonally against the rolling current. It was a shifting. hide-and-seek scene, its features appearing and disappearing with the action of the waves and the doubtful light reflected from fading clouds and Sky. Now and again tho man stood up in his skittish pirogue, balancing himself with care to use a short pole In shoving driftwood out of his way; and more than once he looked to Beverley as if he had plunged headlong into the dark water. The spot, as nearly as it can he fixed, was about two hundred yards below where the public road-bridge at present spans the Wabash. The bluff was {hen far different from what it is now, steeper and higher, with less silt and sand between it and the water’s

' DOINGS OF THE DUFFS—

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edge. Indeed, swollen as the current was, a man could stand on the top of the bank and easily leap into tho deep water. At a point near the middle of the river a great mass of driftlogs and sand had long ago formed a barrier Which split the stream so that one current c;une heavily shoreward on the side next the town and swashed with its muddy foam, making a swirl and eddy just below where Beverley stood.

OUT OUR WAY—By WILLIAMS

THE OLD HOME TOWN—By STANLEY

Tho pirogue rounded the upper angle of this obstruction, not without difficulty to its crew of one, and swung into the rapid shoreward rush, as was evidently planned for by the steersman, who now paddled against the tide with all his might to keep from being borne too far down stream for a safe landing place. Beverley stood at ease Idiy and half-dreamily Rooking on, when suddenly something caused a catastro-

TIIE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

phe, which for a moment he did not comprehend. In fact, the man in tho pirogue came to grief, as a man in a pirogue is very apt to do, and fairly somersaulted overboard into tho water. Nothing serious would have threatened (for the man could swim like an otter) had not a floating, half-submerged log thrust up some short, stiff stumps of boughs, upon the points of which the man struck heavily and was not only hurt, but

A Call by Wireless

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had his clothes Impaled securely by one of the ugly spears, so that he hung in a helpless position, while tho water’s motion alternately lifted and submerged him, his arms beating about wildly. When Beverley heard a strangling cry for help, he pulled himself promptly together, flung off his coat, as if by a single motion, and leaped down the bank into the water. He was a swimmer whose strokes counted for all

FPECKLES AND HIS FRIENDS—By BLOSSER

OUR BOARDING HOUSE—By AHERN

that prodigious strength and excellent training could afford; he rushed through the water with long sweeps, making a semi circle, rounding against the current, so as to swing down upon the drowning man. Bess than a half-hour later a rumor by some means spread throughout the town that Father Beret and Lieutenant Beverley were drowned in the Wabash. But when a crowd gathered to verify the terrible news It turned

TUESDAY. MARCH 6,1923

—By ALLMAN

—By AL POSEN

out to be untrue. Gaspard Roussillon had once more distinguished himself by an exhibition of heroic nerve and -muscle. “Ventrebleui Quel homme!" exclaimed Oncle Jazon, when told that M. Roussillon had come up the bank of the Wabash with Lieutenant Beverley under one arm and Father Beret under the other, both men apparently dead. (To Be CoatftiaMJ