Indianapolis Times, Volume 35, Number 273, Indianapolis, Marion County, 26 March 1923 — Page 8

8

Alice of Old Vincennes By Maurice Thompson COPYRIGHT. 190 8, BY ALICE LEE THOMPSON

BEGIN IIKKL ALICE, foster daughter of GASPARD ROUSSILLON. was loved by LIEUT. FITZHUGH BEVERLEY, an Amerean Army officer, who with CAPTAIN HELM, surrendered Vincennes to the English general. GOVERNOR HAMILTON, during the Revolutionary War. Twenty picked savages headed by LONG HAIR were sent to find Beverley, who escaped. Roussillon, also a fugitive from Vincennes. stole home to see his family a few minutes when Hamilton’s patrolmen rushed in. During the turmoil Roussillon escaped. Alice succeeded in wounding one assailant before FARNSWORTH. English lieutenant arrived, but because he was madly infatuated with Alice he hesitated to surrender her to Hamilton. CHAPTER XIII BEVERLEY set out on his midwinter journey to Kaskaskia with a tempest In his heart, and It was, perhaps, the storm's energy that gave him the courage to face undaunted and undoubting what his experience must have told him lay in his path. He was young and strong; that meant a great deal; he had taken the desperate chances of Indian warfare many times before this, and the danger counted as nothing, save that it offered the possibility of preventing him from doing the one thing in life he now cared to do. What meant suffering to him, if he could but rescue Alice? And what were life should he fail to rescue her? The old, ojd song hummed in his -heart, every phrase of it distinct above the tumult of the storm. Could cold and hunger, swollen streams, ravenous wild beasts and scalp-hunting savages baffle him? No. there is no barrier that can hinder love. He said this over and over to himself after his encounter with the four Indian Scouts on the Wabash. He repeated it with every heart beat until he fell in with some friendly red men, who took him to their camp, where to his great surprise he met Roussillon. It was his song when again he strode off toward the west on his lonely way. We need not follow him step by step; the monotony of the woods and prairies, the cold rains, alternating with northerly winds and blinding snow, the constant watchfulness necessary to guard against a meeting with hostile savages, the tiresome tramping, wading and swimming, the hunger, the broken and wretched sleep in frozen and scant wraps,—why detail it all? There was but one beautiful thing about it—the beauty of Alice as she seemed to walk beside him and hover near him in his dreams. He did not know that Long-Hair and his band were fast on his track; but the knowledge could not have urged him to greater haste. He strained every muscle to its utmost, kept every nerve to the highest tension. Yonder toward the West was help for Alice; that was all he cared for. But if Long-Hair was pursuing him with relentless greed for the reward offered by Hamilton, there were friendly footsteps still nearer behind him: and one day at high noon, while he was bending over a little fire, broiUng some liberal cuts of venison, a finger tapped him on the shout der. He sprang up and grappled Oncle Jazon: at the same time, standing near by, he saw Simon Kenton, his old-time Kentucky friend. The pungled features of one and the fine, rugged face of the other swam as in a mist before Beverley’s eyes. Kenton was laughing quietly, his strong upright form shaking to the force of his pleasure. He was in the early prime of a vigorous life, not handsome, but strikingly attractive by reason of a certain glow in his face and a kindly flash in his deep-set eyes. ‘'Well, well, my boy!” he, exclaimed, laying his left hand on Beverley’s shoulder, while in the other he held a long, heavy rifle. "I’m glad to see ye, glad to see ye!” “Thought we was Injuns, eh?” said Oncle Jazon. “An’ es we, had ’a’ been we’d ’a’ been shore o’ your scalp!” The wizzened old creole cackled gleefully. “And where are ye goin’?” demanded Kenton. “Ye’re making what lacks a heap o’ bein’ a bee-line for some place or other.” Beverley was dazed and vacantminded; things seemed wavering and dim. He pushed the two men from him ’’and gazed at them without speaking. Their presence and voices did not convince him. “Yer meat's a-burnin’,” said Oncle Jazon, stooping to turn It on the cmoldering coals. "Ye must be hungry. Cookin’ enough for a regiment.” Kentoh shook Beverley with rough familiarity, as if to rouse his faculties.

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“What’s the matter? Fitz, my lad, don’t ye know Si Kenton? It’s not so •■long since we were like brothers, and now ye don’t speak to me! Ye’ve not forgot me. Fitz!” “Mebby he don’t like ye as well as ye thought he did,” drawled Oncle Jason. “I hev known o’ fellers a bein’ mistaken jes’ thet way.” Beverley got his wits together as best he could, taking in the situation by such degrees as seemed at the time unduly slow, hut which were really mere momentary falterings. “Why, Kenton! Jazon!” he presently exclaimed, a cordial gladness blending with his surprise. "How did you get here? Where did you come from?” He looked from one to the other back and forth with a wondering smile breaking over his bronzed and determined face. “We’ve been hot on yer trail for thirty hours,” said Kenton. “Roussillon put us on it back yonder. But what are ye up to? Where are ye • goin'?” “I’m going to Clark at Kaskaskia j to bring him yonder.” He waved his hand eastward. “I am going to take ! Vincennes and kill Hamilton.” “Well, ye’re taking a mighty queer | course, my boy, if ye ever expect to j find Kaskaskia. Ye’re already twenty i miles too far South.” “Carryin’ his gun on the same j shoulder all the time,” said Oncle Jazon, “has made 'im kind o’ swing in a curve like. ’Taint good luck no howto carry yer gun on yer lef shoulder. When you do it meks yer take a longer step with yer right foot than ye do with yer lef, and’ ye can't walk a straight line to save yer liver. Ventrebleu! la venaison brule encore! Look at that dasted meat burnin' agin!” He jumped back to the fire to turn the scorching cuts. Beverley wrung Kenton’s hand and locked into his eyes, as a man does when an old friend comes suddenly out of the past, so to say, and brings the • freshness and comfort of a strong, true soul to brace him in his hour of greatest need. , "Os all men in the world. Sirnon Kenton, you were the least expected, but how glad I am! How thankful! , Now I know' I shall succeed. We are ; going to capture Vincennes, Kenton. ; are we not? We shall sha’nt we j Jazon? Nothing, nothing can prevent us. can it?” Kenton heartily returned the j pressure of the young mans hand, w hile Oncle Jazon looked up quizzical ly and said. “We’re a tol’ble 'spectable lot to prevent; but then we might git per- j vented. I've seed better men an’ us j purty consid'ble prevented lots o times in my life.” In speaking the colloquial dialect of the American backwoodsmen. Oncle Jazon, despite years of practice j among them, gave to it a creole lisp t and some turns of pronunciation not to he indicated by any form of spelling. It added to his talk a ; peculiar soft drollery. When he spoke French it was mostly that of the coureura de hols, a patois which still lingers in out-of-the-way nooks of Louisiana. “For my part.” said Kenton, “I am with ye. old boy. in anything ye want to do. But now ye’ve got to tell me every thing. I see that ye’re keeping something hack. What is it?” He glanced sidewise slyly at Oncle Jazon. Beverley was frank to a fault; but somehow his heart tried to keep Alice all to itself. He hesitated; then — "I broke my parole with Governor Hamilton,” he said. "He forced me to do it. I feel altogether justified. I told him beforehand that I should certainly leave Vincennes and go get a force to capture and kill him; and I’ll do it, Simon Kenton, I'll do It!” “I see, I see.” Kenton assented, “but what was the row about? What did he do to excite ye—to make ye feel justified in breakin’ over yer parole in that high-handed way? Fitz, I know ye too well to be fooled by ye —you've got somethin’ in mind that ye don’t want to tell. Well, then don’t tell it. Oncle Jazon and I will go it blind, won’t we, Jazon?” “Blind as two mules,” said the old man; "but as for th4|t secret,” he added, winking both eyes at once, "I don’t know as it's so mighty hard to guess. It's always safe to 'magine a woman in the case. It’s mostly women ’at sends men a trottin' off ’bout nothin’, sort o’ crazy like.” Beverley looked guilty and Oncle Jazon continued: “They’s a poo'ty gal at Vincennes, an’ I see the young man a steppin’ into her house about fifteen times a day 'fore I lef’ the place. Mebbe she's tuck up wi’ one o’ them English officers. Gals is slippery an’ onsartinn’.’” x “Jazon!” cried Beverley, "stop that instantly, or I'll wring your old neck.” His anger was real and he meant what he said. He clenched his hands and glowered. Oncle Jazon, who was still squatting by the little fire, tumbled over backwards, as if Beverley had kicked him; and there he lay on the ground, with his slender legs quivering akimbo in the air, while he laughed in a strained treble that sounded like the whining of a screech-owl. The old scamp did not know all the facts in Beverley’s case, nor did he even suspect what had happened; but he was aware of the young mail’s tender feeling for Alice, and he did shrewdly conjecture that she w r as a factor in the problem. The rude jest at her expense did not seem to his withered and toughened taste in the least out of the way. Indeed, it was a delectable bit of humor from Oncle point of view. “Don’t get made at the old man.” said Kenton, plucking Beverley aside. “He’s yer friend from his heels to his old scalped crown. Let him have his fun.” Then lowering his voice almost to a whisper, he continued: “I was in Vincennes for two days and nights spyin’around. Madame Gotlere hid me in her house when there was need of it. I know how it is with ye; I got all the gossip about ye and the young lady, as well as all the information about Hamilton end his forces that Colonel Clark wants. I’m going to Kaskaskia; but I think it quite possible that Clark will l>e on his march to Vincennes before we get there:*for Yigc has taken him full particulars as to the fort and IV-i garrison, and I know that he's determined to capture tiling or die tryin'.’’ .... -i. taM

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blood leap strong in his veins at these words. "I saw ye while I was in Vincennes,” Kenton added, “but I never let ye see me. Ye were a prisoner, and I had no business with ye while your parole held. I felt that it was best not to tempt ye to give me aid, or to let ye have knowledge of me while I was a spy. I left two days beldre "UjjyjiL : nd should have been at t,lis ,irne if I hadn’t Jazon, who detained me.

OUT OUR WAY —By WILLIAMS

THE OLD HOME TOWN—By STANLEY

He wanted to go with me, and I wuited for him to repair the stock of his old gun. He tinkered at it ’tween meals and showers for half a week at the Indian village back yonder before he got It just to suit him. But I tell ye he’s wo’th waiting for any length of time, and I was glad to let him have his way.” Kenton, who was still a man in his early thirties, respected Beverley’s reticence on the subject upperrnost In his mind. Madams Godere

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

has told the whole story with flamboyant embellishments; Kenton had seen Alice, and. Inspired with the gossip and a surreptitious glimpse of her beauty, he felt perfectly familiar with Beverley’s condition. He was himself a victim of the tender passion to the extent of being an exile from his Virginia honied which he had left on account of dangerously woupding a rival. But he was well touched with the backwoodsman’s taste for joke and banter. He and Onolo Jazon.

The Outcast

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therefore, knowing the main feature of Beverley’s predicament, enjoyed making the most of their opportunity In their rude but perfectly generous and kindly way. By indirection and impersonal dptails, as regarded his feelings toward Alice, Beverley in due time made his friends understand that his whole ambition wus centered in rescuing her. Nor did the motive fail to enlist their sympathy to the utmost. If all the world loves a lover, all men having

FRECKLES AND HIS FRIENDS—By BLOSSER

OUR BOARDING HOUSE—By AHERN

the best virtile instinct will fight for a lover’s cause; Both Kenton and Oncle Jazon were enthusiastic; they ■wanted nothing better than an opportunity to aid in rescuing any girl who ’had shown so much patriotism and pluck. But Oncle Jazon was fond of Alice, and Beverley’s story affected, him peculiarly on her account. “They's one question! I’m a goin’ to put to ye, young man,? he said, after he had heard every thins: and they had

MONDAY, MARCH 26,1923

—By ALLMAN

—By AL POSEN

talked it all over, “an’ I want ye to answer it straight as a bullet f’om yer gun.” “Os course, Jazon, go ahead,” said Beverley. "I shall bo glad to answer.” But his mind was tar away with the gold-haired maiden in Hamilton's prison. He scarcely knew what he was saying. “Air ye expectin’ to marry Alice Roussillon?” ITo Bo ContinuedJ