第26章 THE CHIEF SOLDIER(4)

At evening Tawasuota saw that there would be a long war with the whites, and that the In- dians must remove their families out of danger. The feeling against all Indians was great. Night had brought him no relief of mind, but it promised to shield him in a hazardous under- taking. He consulted no one, but set out for the distant village of Faribault.

He kept to the flats back of the Minnesota, away from the well- traveled roads, and moved on at a good gait, for he realized that he had to cover a hundred miles in as few hours as possible. Every day that passedwould make it more difficult for him to rejoin his family.

Although he kept as far as he could from the settlements, he would come now and then upon a solitary frame house, razed to the ground by the war-parties of the day before. The mem- bers of the ill-fated family were to be seen scat- tered in and about the place; and their white, upturned faces told him that his race must pay for the deed.

The dog that howled pitifully over the dead was often the only survivor of the farmer's household.

Occasionally Tawasuota heard at a distance the wagons of the fugitives, loaded with women and children, while armed men walked before and behind. These caravans were usually drawn by oxen and moved slowly toward some large town.

When the dawn appeared in the east, the chief soldier was compelled to conceal himself in a secluded place. He rolled up in his blanket, lay down in a dry creek-bed among the red willows and immediately fell asleep.

With the next evening he resumed his jour- ney, and reached Faribault toward midnight. Even here every approach was guarded against the possibility of an Indian attack. But there was much forest, and he knew the country well. He reconnoitred, and soon found the Indian community, but dared not approach and enter, for these Indians had allied themselves with the whites; they would be charged with treach- ery if it were known that they had received a hostile Sioux, and none were so hated by the white people as Little Crow and his war-chief.

He chose a concealed position from which he might watch the movements of his wife, if she were indeed there, and had not been way- laid and slain on the journey hither.

That night was the hardest one that the war- rior had ever known. If he slept, it was only to dream of the war-whoop and attack; but at last he found himself broad awake, the sun well up, and yes! there were his two little sons, play- ing outside their teepee as of old. The next moment he heard the voice of his wife from the deep woods wailing for her husband!

"Oh, take us, husband, take us with you! let us all die together!" she pleaded as she clung to him whom she had regarded as already dead; forshe knew of the price that had been put upon his head, and that some of the half- breeds loved money better than the blood of their Indian mothers.

Tawasuota stood for a minute without speak- ing, while his huge frame trembled like a mighty pine beneath the thunderbolt.

"No," he said at last. "I shall go, but you must remain. You are a woman, and the white people need not know that your little boys are mine. Bring them here to me this evening that I may kiss them farewell."The sun was hovering among the treetops when they met again.

"Atay! atay!" ("Papa, papa!") the little fellows cried out in spite of her cautions; but the mother put her finger to her lips, and they became silent. Tawasuota took each boy in his arms, and held him close for a few moments; he smiled to them, but large tears rolled down his cheeks. Then he disappeared in the shad- ows, and they never saw him again.

The chief soldier lived and died a warrior and an enemy to the white man; but one of his two sons became in after-years a minister of the Christian gospel, under the "Long-Haired Praying Man," Bishop Whipple, of Minnesota.