"That's Johnny Appleseed," said Skenedonk, turning in his saddle. "What is Johnny Appleseed?" "He is a man that God has touched," said Skenedonk, using the aboriginal phrase that signified a man clouded in mind. God had hidden him, too. I could see no one. The voice echo still went off among the trees. "Where is he?" "Maybe one side, maybe the other." "Does he never show himself?" "Oh, yes," Skenedonk said. "He goes to all the settlements. I have often seen him when I was hunting on these grounds. He came to our camp. He loves to sleep outdoors better than in a cabin." "Why does he shout at us like a prophet?" "To warn us that Indians are on the warpath." "He might have thought we were on the warpath ourselves." "Johnny Appleseed knows Shawanoes and Tecumseh's men." The trees, lichened on their north sides, massed rank behind rank without betraying any face in their glooms. The Ohio and Indiana forests had a nameless quality. They might have been called home-forests, such invitations issued from them to man seeking a spot of his own. Nor can I make clear what this invitation was. It produced thoughts different from those that men were conscious of in the rugged northwest. "I think myself," said Skenedonk, as we moved farther from the invisible voice, "that he is under a vow. But nobody told me that." "Why do you think so?" "He plants orchards in every fine open spot; or clears the land for planting where he thinks the soil is right." "Don't other men plant orchards?" "No. They have not time, or seed. They plant bread. He does nothing but plant orchards." "He must have a great many." "They are not for himself. The apples are for any one who may pass by when they are ripe. He wants to give apples to everybody. Animals often nibble the bark, or break down his young trees. It takes long for them to grow. But he keeps on planting." "If other men have no seeds to plant, how does he get them?" "He makes journeys to the old settlements, where many orchards have grown, and brings the seeds from ciderpresses. He carries them from Pennsylvania on his back, in leather bags, a bag for each kind of seed." "Doesn't he ever sell them?" "Not often. Johnny Appleseed cares nothing for money. I believe he is under a vow of poverty. No one laughs at him. The tribes on these grounds would not hurt a hair of his head, not only because God has touched him, but because he plants apples. I have eaten his apples myself." "Johnny Appleseed!" I repeated, and Skenedonk hastened to tell me: "He has another name, but I forget it. He is called Johnny Appleseed." The slim and scarcely perceptible tunnel, among trees, piled with fallen logs and newly sprung growths, let us into a wide clearing as suddenly as a stream finds its lake. We could not see even the usual cow tracks. A cabin shedding light from its hearth surprised us in the midst of stumps. The door stood wide. A woman walked back and forth over a puncheon floor, tending supper. Dogs rushed to meet us, and the playing of children could be heard. A man, gun in hand, stepped to his door, a sentinel. He lowered its muzzle, and made us welcome, and helped us put our horses under shelter with his own. It was not often we had a woman's handiwork in corn bread and game to feed ourselves upon, or a bed covered with homespun sheets. I slept as the children slept, until a voice rang in the clearing: "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, and He hath anointed me to blow the trumpet in the wilderness, and sound an alarm in the forest; for behold the tribes of the heathen are round about your doors, and a devouring flame followeth after them!" Every sleeper in the cabin sat upright or stirred. We said in whispered chorus: "Johnny Appleseed!" A tapping, light and regular, on the window, followed. The man was on the floor in a breath. I heard the mother groping among the children, and whispering: "Don't wake the baby!" The fire had died upon the hearth, and they lighted no candle. When Johnny Appleseed gave his warning cry in the clearing, and his cautious tap on the window, and was instantly gone to other clearings and other windows, it meant that the Indians were near. Skenedonk and I, used to the night alarm and boots and saddle in a hurry, put ourselves in readiness to help the family. I groped for clothing, and shoved small legs and arms into it. The little creatures, obedient and silent, made no whimper at being roused out of dreams, but keenly lent themselves to the march. We brought the horses, and put the woman and children upon them. The very dogs understood, and slunk around our legs without giving mouth. The cabin door was shut after us without noise, closing in what that family called home; a few pots and pans; patchwork quilts; a spinning-wheel; some benches; perhaps a child's store of acorn cups and broken yellow ware in a log corner. In a few hours it might be smoking a heap of ashes; and the world offered no other place so dear. What we suffer for is enriched by our suffering until it becomes priceless. So far on the frontier was this cabin that no community block-house stood near enough to give its inmates shelter. They were obliged to go with us to Fort Stephenson. Skenedonk pioneered the all-night struggle on an obscure trail; and he went astray sometimes, through blackness of woods that roofed out the stars. We floundered in swales sponging full of dead leaves, and drew back, scratching ourselves on low-hung foliage. By dawn the way became easier and the danger greater. Then we paused and lifted our rifles if a twig broke near by, or a fox barked, or wind rushed among leaves as a patter of moccasins might come. Skenedonk and I, sure of the northern Indians, were making a venture in the west. We knew nothing of Tecumseh's swift red warriors, except that scarcely a year had passed since his allies had tomahawked women and children of the garrison on the sand teach at Chicago. Without kindling any fire we stopped once that day to eat, and by good luck and following the river, reached that Lower Sandusky which was called Fort Stephenson, about nightfall. The place was merely a high stockade with blockhouses at the angles, and a gate opening toward the river. Within, besides the garrison of a hundred and sixty men, were various refugees, driven like our family to the fort. And there, coming heartily from the commandant's quarters to receive me, was George Croghan, still a boy in appearance, though intrusted with this dangerous post. His long face had darkened like mine. We looked each other over with the quick and critical scrutiny of men who have not met since boyhood, and laughed as we grasped hands. "You are as welcome to the inside of this bear-pen," said Major Croghan, "as you made me to the outside of the one in the wilderness." "I hope you'll not give me such another tramp after shelter for the night as I gave you," I said. "The best in Fort Stephenson is yours. But your rest depends on the enemy. A runner has just come in from the General warning me Proctor and Tecumsch are turning their attention this way. I'm ordered to evacuate, for the post is considered too weak to hold." "How soon do you march?" "I don't march at all. I stay here. I'm going to disobey orders." "If you're going to disobey orders, you have good reason for doing so." "I have. It was too late to retreat. I'm going to fight. I hear, Lazarre, you know how to handle Indians in the French way." "My dear Croghan, you insinuate the American way may be better." "It is, on the western border. It may not be on the northern." "Then you would not have advised my attempting the Indians here?" "I shouldn't have discouraged it. When I got the secret order, I said: 'Bring the French--bring the missionaries--bring anything that will cut the comb of Tecumseh!'" "The missionaries and the French like being classed with--anything," I said. "We're Americans here," Croghan laughed. "The dauphin may have to fight in the ditch with the rest of us." "The dauphin is an American too, and used to scars, as you know. Can you give me any news from Green Bay in the Wisconsin country?" "I was ordered to Green Bay last year to see if anything could be done with old Fort Edward Augustus." "Does my Holland court-lady live there?" "Not now," he answered soberly. "She's dead." "That's bad," I said, thinking of lost opportunities. "Is pretty Annabel de Chaumont ever coming back from France?" "Not now, she's married." "That's worse," he sighed. "I was very silly about her when I was a boy." We had our supper in his quarters, and he busied himself until late in the night with preparations for defense. The whole place was full of cheer and plenty of game, and swarmed like a little fair with moving figures. A camp-fire was built at dark in the center of the parade ground, heaped logs sending their glow as far as the dark pickets. Heads of families drew towards it while the women were putting their children to bed; and soldiers off duty lounged there, the front of the body in light, the back in darkness. Cool forest night air flowed over the stockade, swaying smoke this way and that. As the fire was stirred, and smoke turned to flame, it showed more and more distinctly what dimness had screened. A man rose up on the other side of it, clothed in a coffee sack, in which holes were cut for his head and arms. His hat was a tin kettle with the handle sticking out behind like a stiff queue. Indifferent to his grotesqueness, he took it off and put it on the ground beside him, standing ready to command attention. He was a small, dark, wiry man, barefooted and barelegged, whose black eyes sparkled, and whose scanty hair and beard hung down over shoulders and breast. Some pokes of leather, much scratched, hung bulging from the rope which girded his coffee sack. From one of these he took a few unbound leaves, the fragment of a book, spread them open, and began to read in a chanting, prophetic key, something about the love of the Lord and the mysteries of angels. His listeners kept their eyes on him, giving an indulgent ear to spiritual messages that made less demand on them than the violent earthly ones to which they were accustomed. "It's Johnny Appleseed," a man at my side told me, as if the name explained anything he might do. When Johnny Appleseed finished reading the leaves he put them back in his bag, and took his kettle to the well for water. He then brought some meal from the cook-house and made mush in his hat. The others, turning their minds from future mysteries, began to talk about present danger, when he stood up from his labor to inquire: "Is there plenty in the fort for the children to eat?" "Plenty, Johnny, plenty," several voices assured him. "I can go without supper if the children haven't enough." "Eat your supper, Johnny. Major Croghan will give you more if you want it," said a soldier. "And we'll give you jerked Britisher, if you'll wait for it," said another. "Johnny never eats meat," one of the refugees put in. "He thinks it's sinful to kill critters. All the things in the woods likes him. Once he got into a holler log to sleep, and some squirrels warned him to move out, they settled there first; and he done it. I don't allow he'd pick a flea off his own hide for fear he'd break its legs so it couldn't hop around and make a living." The wilderness prophet sat down quietly to his meal without appearing to notice what was said about him; and when he had eaten, carried his hat into the cook-house, where dogs could not get at his remaining porridge. "Now he'll save that for his breakfast," remarked another refugee. "There's nothing he hates like waste." "Talking about squirrels," exclaimed the man at my side, "I believe he has a pasture for old, broke-down horses somewhere east in the hills. All the bates he can find he swaps young trees for, and they go off with him leading them, but he never comes into the settlements on horseback." "Does he always go barefoot?" I asked. "Sometimes he makes bark sandals. If you give him a pair of shoes he'll give them away to the first person that can wear them and needs them. Hunters wrap dried leaves around their leggins to keep the rattlesnakes out, but Johnny never protects himself at all." "No wonder," spoke a soldier. "Any snake'd be discouraged at them shanks. A seven-year rattler'd break his fang on 'em." Johnny came out of the cook-house with an iron poker, and heated it in the coals. All the men around the fire waited, understanding what he was about to do, but my own breath drew with a hiss through my teeth as he laid the red hot iron first on one long cut and then another in his travel-worn feet. Having cauterized himself effectually, and returned the poker, he took his place in perfect serenity, without any show of pain, prepared to accommodate himself to the company. Some boys, awake with the bigness of the occasion, sat down near Johnny Appleseed, and gave him their frank attention. Each boy had his hair cut straight around below the ears, where his mother had measured it with an inverted bowl, and freshly trimmed him for life in the fort, and perhaps for the discomfiture of savages, if he came under the scalping knife. Open-mouthed or stern-jawed, according to temperament, the young pioneers listened to stories about Tecumseh, and surmises on the enemy's march, and the likelihood of a night attack. "Tippecanoe was fought at four o'clock in the morning," said a soldier. "I was there," spoke out Johnny Appleseed. No other man could say as much. All looked at him as he stood on his cauterized feet, stretching his arms, lean and sun-cured, upward in the firelight. "Angels were there. In rain and darkness I heard them speak and say, 'He hath cast the lot for them, and His hand hath divided it unto them by line; they shall possess it forever; from generation to generation shall they dwell therein. The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose!'" "Say, Johnny, what does an angel look like?" piped up one of the boys, quite in fellowship. Johnny Appleseed turned his rapt vision aside and answered: "'White robes were given unto every one of them.' There had I laid me down in peace to sleep, and the Lord made me to dwell in safety. The camp-fires burned red in the sheltered place, and they who were to possess the land watched by the campfires. I looked down from my high place, from my shelter of leaves and my log that the Lord gave me for a bed, and saw the red camp-fires blink in the darkness. "Then was I aware that the heathen crept betwixt me and the camp, surrounding it as a cloud that lies upon the ground. The rain fell upon us all, and there was not so much sound as the rustling of grasshoppers in tall grass. I said they will surprise the camp and slay the sleepers, not knowing that they who were to possess the land watched every man with his weapon. But when I would have sounded the trumpet of warning, I heard a rifle shot, and all the Indians rose up screeching and rushed at the red fires. "Then a sorcerer leaped upon my high place, rattling many deer hoofs, and calling aloud that his brethren might hear his voice. Light he promised them for themselves, and darkness for the camp, and he sang his war song, shouting and rattling the deer hoofs. Also the Indians rattled deer hoofs, and it was like a giant breathing his last, being shot with many musket flashes. "I saw steam through the darkness, for the fires were drenched and trampled by the men of the camp, and no longer shone as candles so that the Indians might see by them to shoot. The sorcerer danced and shouted, the deer hoofs rattled, and on this side and that men fought knee to knee and breast to breast. I saw through the wet dawn, and they who had crept around the camp as a cloud arose as grasshoppers and fled to the swamp. "Then did the sorcerer sit upon his heels, and I beheld he had but one eye, and he covered it from the light. "But the men in the camp shouted with a mighty shouting. And after their shouting I heard again the voices of angels saying: 'He hath cast the lot for them, and His hand hath divided it unto them by line; they shall possess it forever; from generation to generation shall they dwell therein. The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose!'" The speaker sat down, and one of the men remarked: "So that's the way the battle of Tippecanoe looked to Johnny Appleseed." But the smallest boy thoughtfully inquired: "Say, Johnny, haven't the Indians any angels?" "You'll wish they was with the angels if they ever get you by the hair," laughed one of the men. Soldiers began moving their single cannon, a six-pounder, from one blockhouse to another. All the men jumped up to help, as at the raising of a home, and put themselves in the way so ardently that they had to be ordered back. When everybody but ourselves had left the starlit open place, Johnny Appleseed lay down and stretched his heels to the blaze. A soldier added another log, and kicked into the flame those fallen away. Though it was the end of July, Lake Erie cooled the inland forests. Sentinels were posted in the blockhouses. Quiet settled on the camp; and I sat turning many things in my mind besides the impending battle. Napoleon Bonaparte had made a disastrous campaign in Russia. If I were yet in France; if the Marquis du Plessy had lived; if I had not gone to Mittau; if the self I might have been, that always haunts us, stood ready to take advantage of the turn-- Yet the thing which cannot be understood by men reared under old governments had befallen me. I must have drawn the wilderness into my blood. Its possibilities held me. If I had stayed in France at twenty, I should have been a Frenchman. The following years made me an American. The passion that binds you to a land is no more to be explained than the fact that many women are beautiful, while only one is vitally interesting. The wilderness mystic was sitting up looking at me. "I see two people in you," he said. "Only two?" "Two separate men." "What are their names?" "Their names I cannot see." "Well, suppose we call them Louis and Lazarre." His eyes sparkled. "You are a white man," he pronounced. "By that I mean you are not stained with many vile sins." "I hadn't an equal chance with other men. I lost nine years." "Mebby," hazarded Johnny Appleseed cautiously, "you are the one appointed to open and read what is sealed." "If you mean to interpret what you read, I'm afraid I am not the one. Where did you get those leaves?" "From a book that I divided up to distribute among the people." "Doesn't that destroy the sense?" "No. I carry the pages in their order from cabin to cabin." He came around the fire with the lightness of an Indian, and gave me his own fragment to examine. It proved to be from the writings of one Emanuel Swedenborg. With a smile which seemed to lessen the size of his face and concentrate its expression to a shining point, Johnny Appleseed slid his leather bags along the rope girdle, and searched them, one after the other. I thought he wanted me to notice his apple seeds, and inquired how many kinds he carried. So he showed them in handfuls, brown and glistening, or gummed with the sweet blood of cider. These produced pippins; these produced russets; these produced luscious harvest apples, that fell in August bursting with juicy ripeness. Then he showed me another bagful which were not apple seeds at all, but neutral colored specks moving with fluid swiftness as he poured them from palm to palm. "Do you know what this is?" I told him I didn't. "It's dogfennel seed." I laughed, and asked him what kind of apples it bore. Johnny Appleseed smiled at me again. "It's a flower. I'm spreading it over the whole of Ohio and Indiana! It'll come up like the stars for abundance, and fill the land with rankness, and fever and ague will flee away!" "But how about the rankness?" "Fever and ague will flee away," he repeated, continuing his search through the bags. He next brought out a parcel, wrapped up carefully in doeskin to protect it from the appleseeds; and turned foolish in the face, as bits of ribbon and calico fell out upon his knees. "This isn't the one," he said, bundling it up and thrusting it back again. "The little girls, they like to dress their doll-babies, so I carry patches for the little girls. Here's what I was looking for." It was another doeskin parcel, bound lengthwise and crosswise by thongs. These Johnny Appleseed reverently loosened, bringing forth a small book with wooden covers fastened by a padlock.