Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 October 1875 — A NARROW ESCAPE A TRUE STORY. [ARTICLE]

A NARROW ESCAPE A TRUE STORY.

BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.

So lupg ago as it takes for little boys to grow great men it was not so easy to live -in Nebraska as it ia now, when the great Land Commissioner of the great railroads bangs a buffalo’s head in every depot in Boston to show the world how- much more delightful is the society of buffaloes than the society of Bostonians. When John, and Susan, and Titus, and Tam o’ Slianter, and Betty, and the''new baby came from England to Nebraska that plucky young State was, for the most part, an ugly, howling wilderness. In the thick of the wilderness Mr. and Mrs. John Jacobs dug out for themselves a home. Literally, they dug it out with their own hands. Susan was a tough little woman, with stout hands and a stout heart, and she dug too. I think, if the truth must l»c told, she rattier enjoyed leaving Titus and Tam with the other babies—there’s no guessing how much care one baby will take of another till you’ve tried—and taking an ax to help her husband fell trees and cut underbrush, or taking a hoe to lioe her row in the darling little garden, out of which they meant to make a living, if they died for it. It was only because they meant to so very hard, I fancy, that they made the living without dying for it. It was almost worse, at first, than coachman’s wages in Mother England. There was the newness, and there was the homesickness, and there was the distance from the market, and there was the bitter cold, and there was the blighting heat, and always there wefe the babies, and, besides, there were the Indians. : Yes, an Indian story. “Truly, honestly,” as my little friend Trotty would sav, a live Indian story ; and though it isn’t a very long one it is every word a true one. Most true things are not yery long in this world unless you except the moral law or the multiplication table or a few such things as that. John and Susan and Tam and Titus and Betty and the new baby and the newest new baby (when it came) got along pretty well with everything else; but it wasn’t pleasant to see an Indian walking by with a tomahawk just as you were quietly sitting down to supper; and they got a little tired of sleeping with one ear open, listening for the awful, echoing sound of the cruel Indian war-cry; and whatever may be urged against life as a coachman in England, at least it was a life in which one’s attention wasn’t called so frequently to the top of one’s head. “ Mine is lairly sore,’’ laughed Susan, “with thinking how it will feel 1 to be scalped." But Susan was such a brave little woman! And if there is anything very much needed in this world it ia brave women. “I’ll have a gun,” she said. So she had a gun. .“I’ll be a good shot,” she said. And quickly she became as good a shot as John. And when John was at work in the woods or the garden Susan gathered the brood about her in the house, and, lynx-eyed as a sentry and fine-eared as a mother, mounted guard. Now there came a time when nobody had seen any Indians for so long a while that even the wise heart of the mother forgot to feel keenly about anything in this world. If we do not see it—an absent duty or an absent friend or an absent terror —all alike, they grow a trifle dim or dull. And one day, when Titus and Tam said : “Just one gallop on the prairie, mother, with old Jerusalem,” their mother said: “ Well, I don’t know,” and their father said: “I guess I’d let ’em,” and the lynxeyes, and the keen ears, and the wise head of the mother said her not nay—and so it happened. Old Jerusalem was the big white horse; the faithful, ugly, grand old horse, that took steps almost as long as a kangaroo’s, and was more afraid of an Indian than Titus and Tam.

So Susan kissed Titus good-by tenderly —for he was the good boy of those remarkable twins—and that was why they called him Titus; and kissed Tam a little more tenderly still, because he wasn’t so good as Titus, and so had got called Tam, and she said; “ Hold on tight! ” and John came out and said: “ Come home pretty sppn;” and Tam got on first, and Titus got on behind him, and Jerusalem gave one great bound, and away they shot, clinging with shining, bare feet to Jerusalem’s white, bare back—for they were magnificent little riders, seven years old now, and brave as cubs. * Susan stood watching them after John had gone back to his work—stood watching long after they had swept away into the great, green, beautiful sea of the treacherous prairie grass. Uneasy? Not. exactly. Sony-she had let them go? Hardly "that. She was a sensible little woman, and, haring done what she thought was right, had no idea of being troubled by it till the time came. But still she stood watching, her hand above her eyes—this way—and she did not go into the house till the newest new baby had cried at least five minutes at the top of its flew little lungs, Titus and Tam and J erusalem gbt pretty far out on the beautiful, terrible prairie. How beautiful it was! It did not seem as if it ever could be terrible if it tried. The green waves of the soft grass rolled madly. The wind was high. The sun was so bright they could not look at it. The strong horse bounded with mighty leaps. The boys could feel the muscles quivering

and drawn tense in his soft, warm body, as they clung. It was like being a horse yourself. They d(d not know which, was horse and which was boy. They laughed because they could not help it and shouted because they did not know it. Hi! Hi! Oh, the sun, and the mad grass, and the wild wind! Hi! Hi! Yi-i-i! Wliocould l»e two boys on such a prairie, on such a day, on such a horse, and not jjrell like little wild-cats? “It’s pretty,” said little Titus, softly, when they had got tired of yelling. “You bet!’’ said Tam, loudly. “Hi! Hi! Hi! YY-i-ee-ee!” “I guess we ought to go back,” said Titus, pretty soon; Titus "was so- much more likely to remember to be good. “ Oh, no,” said Tam, who was generally a little bad when there was-a chance. “ Father said to come home pretty soon,” said Titus. “But,” urged Tam with a bright air, “ mother said to hold on tight. Hi! Yi! Yi!” Ah! what was that? What was it? Could Jerusalem answer? Can the wild winds talk? Will the mad prairie speak? The sunshine is tongue-tied and the great sky is dumb. But something answered Tam O'Shanter’s shout. Kill, there! O Titus! Quick, quick, quick! Turn him round, Tam! Turn Jerusalem round! Injuns! Injuns! Oh, I wish we hadn’t come! What shall we do, what shall -we do ? Oh, Tam, what shall we do ? Oh, Tam, they’ve all got horses, and they’re coming straight! Get up! Get up! Oh, Jerusalem, do hurry! Old fellow, do get us hornet Good boy! Good old fellow! O Tain! they’ve got arrows, and they’re going—to—shoot! Pretty little Mrs. Jacobs had got the newest baby to sleep, and got the baby that wasn’t quite so new to sleep, and given . Betty her patchwork, and sent her husband out lijs beer, and swept the kitchen, and built the fire, and started supper on the way, and I don’t know what else besides, when that fine mother’s ears of hers detected, through the sound of the wind upon the prairie, a sharp, uneven, and, to her notion, rather ugly sound. Betty was sitting in the door, but she heard nothing. The sleeping babies did not stir from their baby dreams. John was in the garden, but John heard never a sound.

Only the mother heard it. Only the mother grew lynx-eyed in an instant, and in an instant was out with hand upraised —just so, again—bareheaded, stern - moutlied, anxious- hearted, watching as those watch who have lived much face to face with death—without -a word. She did not even call her husband. The time had not come to speak. It might have been three minutes; it might have been less or more; who could tell? when John Jacobs, digging heavily over an obstinate potato, felt a hand laid lightly upon his shoulder. His wife stood beside him. She was aspale as one many hours dead; hut she-stood quite still. “ John,” she said, in alow voice, “come into the house a minute.” He obeyed her in wonder and in silence. He just dropped his hoe and went. “ Now, shut,(he door,” said Susan. He shut it. “ Shut the windows.” —What’s the matter, Susan ? Anything wrong? Ain’t tlie boys in? What? You —don’t —mean ” “Hush-sh! Before the clftldren! Don’t, John! I’ll tell you in a minute. Bolt the front door!” He bolted it. “ Lock everything. Draw the shutters. Fasten them with case-knives besides the buttons. Is the cellar-door tight? Is everything tight? Betty, take care t)f the babies a minute for mother. John, come here!” She led him to the little attic, and from the narrow, three-cornered window pointed to (lie prairie, still without a word. And still, how beautiful it was! How the wind played like one gone crazy for joy with the tender tops of the unbruken, unbounded grass. And soft, as if the world had gone Jo sleep for very safety, fell the magnificent western sun. Beautiful, terrible, treacherous thing ! Cutting through thp soft horizon jjhe,~ sharp as the knife through shrinking flesh, six dark figures loomed against the sky. Wildly before them, with the gigantic strides of a long-stepped roadster, fled a big, gaunt, homely, grand old horse. And clinging with little, bright, bare feet to his white sides, and clinging with little despairing arms to one another “My God! They are our boys!” John Jacobs threw up his arms and ran.

Quick as woman’s thought ran his wife was before him and had bolted the attic door. ■ “ Where are you going, John ?” She spoke, he thought, in her natural tones, though she trembled horribly. Where was he going? Why, tc meet them, save them —get his gun—blow these devils’ brains out—what did she mean? Wiry did she keep him? Quick, quick! Open the door! “Mv husband,” said Susan, still in those strangely-quiet tones, “we cannot save our boys. Look for yourself and see. They will be shot before they reach the house. We have three children left. You must save them, and for their sakes yourself, John. Keep the door locked. Keep the windows barfed. Keep the shutters drawn. Give me the old pistol and my gun. Take your own and guards the door. There’s a chance that they’ll live to get here and be let in. But not one step outside that door, John Jacobs, as you’re the father of three living children! O John, John, John! My poor little boys!” He thought she would have broken down at that. He thought he could never get her from the attic floor, where she lay trembling in that horrid way, with her chin on the window-sill and her eyes set upon the six dark figures, and the grand, old, ugly horse upon which the slipping, reeling, hopeless, precious burden dung. But all he could hear her say was “Mother’s poor little boys!” Mother’s poor little boys indeed and indeed ! Leap your mighty leaps, Jerusalem; they’re none too large; your great legs that Tam and Titus h%ie so often made lun of are none too long for their business now. How the splendid muscles throbbed beneath the terrified bare feet! No wondering which was horse and which was boy this time. It was all horse now. There was no will, no muscle, no nerve, no soul, but the brave 1 soul of old Jerusalem. Will he get us home? Can he ever, ever keep ahead so long? Oh, how the arrows fly by! We shall be hit, we shall be, hit! O mother, mother, mother! “ Tam, why don’t father come to meet us ? Why don’t they do something for us, Tam ? Has mother forgotten us?” That, I think, must have been the crudest minute in all the cruel story. And yet, perhaps, not so cruel as the minute when the mother, at the attic window, gave one long, low, echoing cry, and came, staggering from her post, downstairs to say—‘still in that strange voice that mothers such as she will have at such

a minute: “ John, they are hit; the arrqw‘ struck them both. Leftne to the kitchenwindow. You stay at the door. There’s just a moment now.” There was but a moment, and like a wild dream the whole dreadful sight came sweeping up over the garden into the yard/ Now John could not see anything but the mighty form of the horse Jerusalem. To this day he says that the saddle, Jo his eyes, as the magnificent creature leaped by, was empty as air. He only saw the horse—and the horse made straight for the barn. But why did the savages pursue a riderless horse ? And whooping and shouting cruelly after it, into the barn they plunged. “ The boys are on the horse,” in a hoarse whisper said the mother; “I saw them both. They are bleeding and falling. The arrow has pinned them together, John, but they’ve kept their seat.” “My boys are pretty good riders,” said John, turning his whole face round with a grim, father’s pride, even then; “but even my boys can’t, keep a horse after they’re shot through the body. Fright has turned your brain, Susan.”

I tell the story just as it was told to me; and the way of that was this: How Jerusalem leaped into the barn with the boys, or so the mother thought, bleeding upon his back; how the savages scoured the barn, the yard, the garden, plundered a little here and there, and fitfully attacked at intervals the barricaded' house; how John, brave and white at one door, and Susan, white and brave at the other, abundance of powder and unflinching hearts, and the love of three helpless babes drove them, by and by, sullenly away; how,“when they had been a safe hour gone, the parents, shivering and sad, crept out with white lips, little by little, as they dared to hunt for the bodies of their murdered boys. “They ain’t in the barn,” said the father, bringing his hand heavily across his eyes. “ I’ll go to the woods. I suppose they scalped the little fellows, and left them there.” But tlie mother, when he was gone, went around and around_, stealthily as a cat, about the barn. All, blessings lorever on the mother’s ear, and blessings on the mother’s eye!, . From a pile orfresli earth thrown up in the barnyard a little stream of blood came trickling down—and she saw it. Deep from the middle of tlie mound a little cry came, faint, terror-stricken, smothered—but she lieai’d it. To be sureT When Jerusalem—bless him!—went leaping through the barn door, just an arrow’s length ahead of his pursuers, off tumbled Tam and Titus, and out into the barnyard, and down into the pile of mud ana gravely deep and safe. And about and about, and here and there, the Indians had searched and scoured and grumbled—and gone; and there they were. Pinned together with the arrow V Truly, yes. Just under the shoulder (and Titus had the worst hurt, as will sometimes happen with the good boys); and how they ever did it ana lived, I don’t .know. I’m sure they never would have, buffer their brave, black-eyed little mother, who picked them up and washed them off, and carried them in (but she pulled out the arrow first), and put them to bed, and bandaged, and contrived, anct cared, and kissed, and cried, and prayed—and they got well. Probably if she had lived in the city of Boston, where there are two medical schools, or in Philadelphia, where there are three more, or in New York, where there are five, to say nothing of nobody knows how many full-fledged doctors, the boys would have died. But as she lived in a howling wilderness, and they had nothing but clean water, and sofl bandages, and mother’s eyes and hands and love to get well upon, they lived. They lived to be six feet high, and, as they are living now, I presume they measure six feet still. It is a pretty long story, I know, hut it is a true one, for I’ve seen the arrow. John gave the arrow to a gentleman; and the gentleman gave it to his daughter—no, she wouldn’t give it to me; but I held it for five minutes in the very hand with which I write these few words. And if that doesn’t prove the story is true, what could? And Jerusalem? Oh, Jerusalem lived to a good old age and was buried in the barnyard with great honors. And Tam and Titus cried, and John and Susan cried, and Betty, and the new, and the newest, and the very newest, and the very, very newest, and all the babies cried, and it would have been very sad if it hadn’t been a little funny. But, I think, take it altogether, it was an Arrow Escape.— Wide-Awake Magazine.