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With Dodge’s Rangers
WHEN Colonel Dodge had examined the dispatches brought up from General Atkinson at Dixon’s Ferry by the four scouts, he at once sent out fast riders far and wide, throughout the surrounding lead district, summoning his frontier rangers to rendezvous at Hamilton’s Diggings within forty-eight hours.
These men, gathered from the mines and fields, and numbering slightly more than two hundred, were a free-and-easy set of dare-devils, imbued with the spirit of adventure and an intense hatred of the Indian race. While disciplined to the extent of always obeying orders when sent into the teeth of danger, they swung through the country with little regard to the rules of the military manual, and presented a striking contrast to the habits and appearance of the regulars.
“Yes, they look like a rough lot,” observed Dodge, “but they’ll fight like demons, and that’s what counts. You should have seen them at our first rendezvous, early in May. They came in all manner of form. Some with hats and some without; some had shirts on, and some hadn’t; and armed with all sorts of weapons from sticks upward. As to maneuvers and lines of battle, they knew nothing.”
By the evening of the 29th of June, the rendezvous of the Wisconsin rangers was complete. Also, much to Dodge’s satisfaction, Alec Posey, a famous frontier fighter, had come up from Kellogg’s Grove with thirty men; while Captain Jack Stephenson had raced into camp that afternoon with his company of fifty hardy lead-miners, from the renowned Galena Diggings to the southwest. All told, Dodge’s squadron now numbered about three hundred.
On the morning of the thirtieth, the gallant little detachment set off to the northeast. Travel the first day was slow, as they met with two deep streams. Horses had to be swum across and baggage rafted over, all of which took a deal of time and hard labor. It was, therefore, the evening of the second day before the horsemen reached the celebrated Blue Mounds, two heavily wooded peaks of great beauty, which were a landmark for travelers for miles around. Camp was made in an open grove at the foot of these lofty hills.
“We are now only twenty miles from the Four Lakes,” stated Dodge.[B]
“’Bout four years ago, on a trappin’ trip,” declared Bill Brown, “I camped on high ground betwixt two o’ them lakes. Purtiest bodies o’ water I ever clapped eyes on.”
“They are, indeed, unrivaled for beauty,” nodded the Colonel.
“There was an Injun village nearby, on the lake bank, as I recall it,” went on Brown.
“It’s still there,” asserted Dodge. “Winnebago village of the noted chief, White Crow.”
“That’s it, Colonel. I ’member the White Crow real plain. He’d lost one eye in a brawl. Fer that reason he bore the Injun name of Kaukishkaka (The Blind).”
“The Crow has a checkered history in this present Sac war,” averred Dodge, with a dubious shake of the head.
“I thought he was a friend of the whites,” interposed Tom Gordon. “Wasn’t he the chief who got Black Hawk to ransom the two white girls taken captive at Davis Farm?”
“Yes,” admitted the officer, “it is true that the Crow was the go-between in recovering the two Hall sisters from the Sacs. He played a splendid role in that affair. But since that time, his actions and words have been increasingly suspicious. Our spies now report that he is trying his level best to deliver the Winnebagoes into an alliance with Black Hawk.”
“Thunderation!” said Brown, “let’s hope that the Winnebagoes don’t take up the bloody hatchet.”
“It would present us with a terrible problem,” shuddered Dodge. “I think that the Crow and the other Winnebago chiefs could put at least three hundred hard-riding braves in the saddle.”
The route now led due east from the Blue Mounds, over a rolling prairie country. The grassy hollows were wet from the recent rains, offering slippery footing for the horses. Loud guffaws arose, as several awkward riders were pitched off their mounts. Sometimes the elevations were covered with thickets, in which the dogs that followed the detachment would now and then rouse up one or more deer. The first long bound of the startled animal was the signal for a hot chase. Several times the dogs caught up with the fleeing beasts, but were never strong enough to pull them down.
Camp, at late afternoon, was pitched in a glade that ran down to the shore of the most southerly of the Four Lakes, known to the whites as the First Lake. The Winnebagoes called it Ke-gon-sa.
“I think,” declared Colonel Dodge worriedly, “that I will make a visit to the village of White Crow. The matter of the Crow and his nervous Winnebagoes has been on my mind all day. Perhaps a solemn talk with the chief will make him more firm in keeping his peace pact with us.”
“The Crow’s village is at the head of Fourth Lake, isn’t it?” queried Captain Hamilton.
“Yes, only an hour’s trip. There’s a well-beaten Indian trail connecting all the lakes.”
To accompany him on the mission, Dodge named Bill Brown, Tom and Ben Gordon, Bright Star, the Pottawattomee, who knew some Winnebago tongue, and six of the stoutest and strongest of his own rangers. After three-quarters of an hour of easy travel—for the trail was fully as good as the Colonel had prophesied—the party of horsemen reached the foot of the Fourth Lake. Up its timbered western bank they made their way, skirting several patches of bog that rimmed the water at various inlets.
After passing the last of these bogs, they came to a place where the trail followed the high, sheer bank very closely for an interval. A short distance ahead, on a point known as Fox’s Head, they could see the village of the famed White Crow. Suddenly, Bright Star, who was riding at the rear of the column with the other scouts, drew rein on his pony and pointed out into the lake. A canoe, with three paddlers, was shooting down the surface, heading south, a long quarter of a mile away.
“Prairie Wolf!” asserted the keen-eyed young brave.
“No?” barked Tom Gordon incredulously.
“By golly, it looks like the Wolf,” nodded Bill, after a swift, but searching, look.
“Wonder who’s with him?” spoke up Ben, voicing the silent thoughts of the others.
“One pale-face, one redman,” Bright Star declared, gazing lakeward with renewed intensity, as the bark-canoe sped away down the shimmering water.
“That scoundrel of a Fagan, I’ll bet a million!” burst out Tom.
Before the surprised scouts had much further chance to talk over this unexpected glimpse of the burly Sac chief and the white renegade, the party came to the edge of the Winnebago village. And a striking sight it was, in the soft rays of the setting sun! The matted lodges, with the blue smoke curling from their tops—the trees and shrubs a radiant green—the lake, at the very door, glinting and sparkling—the savages, in their wild, colorful raiment, all added up to make a picture that Tom and Ben Gordon never forgot.
As the horsemen came in among the lodges, a number of squaws and half-naked, coppery urchins ran out to greet them, shouting:
“Hee-nee-karray-kay-noo?” (how do you do?)
Several braves now made their appearance, and, after some brisk palaver on the part of Bright Star, showed the visitors to the habitation of the White Crow, the largest and finest lodge in the village, as befitted his rank of head Chieftain. The Colonel, Captain Hamilton, and the four scouts bent low and went into the shelter, while the six rangers remained outside, more or less as a guard; although they made a studied effort not to give the Winnebagoes the least idea that they were suspicious of them.
“Ho! ho!” the White Crow said, in his guttural voice.
“Ho, Kaukishkaka!” responded Dodge affably.
“What brings you to my village, chief of the Big Knives?” the Crow queried, as Bright Star translated for the benefit of the whites.
“Am I not welcome?”
“Yes, yes! the Crow loves the chief of the Big Knives as a brother.”
Colonel Dodge was silent for a half-moment. The effusive words of the Winnebago raised a slight doubt in his mind. Likewise, he thought that he noted a fleeting, sardonic gleam in the Crow’s one, gleaming eye.
“That is good,” he at length replied, brushing away his suspicions. “It is my hope that it will always be so. But there is one misguided chief who has taken the warpath against the whites. He is the Sac, Black-Hawk.”
“Ugh!” grunted the Grow. “The Hawk is a madman and a fool.”
“Aye, that he is. He cannot withstand the might of the pale-face soldiers, who are as many as the sands of the lake-shore, and bold as panthers.”
“Will the pale-face soldiers fight?”
“Of course the pale-face soldiers will fight, Kaukishkaka,” rejoined Dodge sternly. “Why should you ask that?”
“The whites did not fight on the banks of the Sycamore. They ran like rabbits. The Sacs say that the whites will not fight. They are a soft-shelled breed. When the spear is put to them, they will quack like ducks.”
“I will soon show Black Hawk,” responded Dodge testily, “that my rangers are not of the soft-shelled breed.”
“Your words are good to my ears. The Black Hawk is an evil one. I spurn him.”
“Will you help us?” invited the officer.
“Your party of horsemen is small,” said the Crow, evading the question by looking out the lodge door at the six waiting rangers.
“No, no, chief. I have three hundred others at Ke-gon-sa.”
“Ho, ho!” exclaimed the Winnebago, simulating surprise; although, in truth, his scouts had that very morning brought him word of the march of the rangers from Blue Mounds.
“Do you know the hiding-place of the Hawk?” asked the Colonel, taking a different tack.
“My spies tell, oh Big Knife, that the Sac is lurking in the Koshkonong Swamp.”
“I had heard so. But the swamps of the Koshkonong are very big. It is like hunting for an arrow-head in yonder forest. Can you lead us to the place?”
“The place is known to me, oh Big Knife.”
“But will you take us there, Kaukishkaka? The hour of darkness grows near. I must have your answer.”
“Oh chief of the Big Knives,” responded the Crow, rising majestically to his feet, “your fair words have won my heart. Our friendship will endure forever. When the sun comes again, I will be at your camp, together with two others of my trusted braves. We will lead you to the hiding-place of the accursed Sac.”
“Good!” cried Dodge, his tone one of utmost elation; for his earlier suspicions had vanished from his mind. He was now convinced that the White Crow would be a faithful ally.
As the little band of whites headed back for the camp by the First Lake, there was silence for some miles. Colonel Dodge rode at the head of the column, evidently rapt in thought. But his face was serene, and it was clear to all that he was well pleased with the parting words of the Winnebago, White Crow.
“Colonel,” spoke up Bill Brown, abruptly spurring his horse to the officer’s side, “I kin see that you set great store on the Crow’s promise.”
“I do, Brown; and why not?”
“I think he’s lyin’.”
“Pshaw, man! His words had the ring of truth.”
“I still maintain that he’s lyin’, sir.”
“Advance your reasons,” demanded Dodge fretfully, “that is, if you have any.”
“It’s this-a-way, Colonel. Jest afore we reached the Crow’s village, we passed a bark-canoe, headin’ south down the lake.”
“Hm! I did notice it. But what about it? Canoes are a common sight in the Indian country.”
“Mebbe so, but that canoe didn’t have no common paddlers in it.”
“What do you mean, Brown? Speak up! who were they?”
“One of ’em was a white renegade, Fagan by name, a deserter from Fort Dearborn, and—”
“A renegade deserter! Tarnation! Let me get hands on the dirty traitor and I’ll introduce him posthaste to a noose and a tree limb.”
“’Nother one, Colonel, was the important Sac chief, Prairie Wolf. The third, from his looks, was a Sac, too.”
“Hm!” mused Dodge, wrinkling his brow perplexedly, “that is, indeed, a strange circumstance. You think, I suppose, that the Sacs had just left the Winnebago village?”
“Looked a heap like it.”
“What was their purpose?”
“I figger they was bearin’ a message from Black Hawk to White Crow. The two chiefs is in cahoots, sure as anythin’.”
“But how do you explain the Crow’s friendly offer to lead us to the Hawk’s hiding-place?” broke in Captain Hamilton. “That makes your suspicions look rather silly.”
“The ol’ Crow’s jest tryin’ to pull the wool over our eyes,” warned Brown ominously. “Wait an’ see! He’s got some sly trick up his sleeve.”
“Well, it could be,” admitted Dodge ruefully. “If so, we’ll give the treacherous rascal plenty of rope, and let him hang himself.”