The bistre-colored waters of French Creek seep sluggishly out of the ancient peat beds far away in the country back of the dunes. Countless tiny rivulets of transparent golden brown creep through the low land among the underbrush and mingle with the gentle current that whispers in the deep grasses, ripples against decayed branches and fallen trunks, hides under masses of gnarled roots and projecting banks, and enters the long sinuous ravine that winds through the woods and sand-hills. The ravine ends abruptly at the broad shore of the lake. The stream spreads out over the beach and tints the incoming surf with wondrous hues.

In the daytime occasional gleams of light from the gliding water can be seen through the small openings in the labyrinths of undergrowth and between the tall tree trunks that crowd the shadowy defile. At night there are tremulous reflections of the moon among the thick foliage. Strange ghostly beams touch the boles of the solemn pines and sycamores and filter into the sombre recesses.

The dramas of human life leave romance behind them. Its halo hovers over these darkened woods, for it was here that the beautiful Indian girl, Omemee, was brought by her dusky Pottawattomie lover, in the moon of falling leaves, and it was here that the threads of their fate were woven nearly a hundred years ago.

Red Owl first saw her among the wild blackberry bushes near the village of her people. She had responded to his entreaties with shy glances, and after many visits and much negotiation, her father, a wrinkled old chief, had consented to their union. Omemee’s savage charms had brought many suitors to her father’s wigwam. Her graceful willowy figure, long raven hair, musical voice, dark luminous eyes and gentle ways had made her a favorite of her village. She was called the dove in the language of her tribe. There was sorrow when she went away.

Red Owl’s prowess as a hunter, his skill in the rude athletic sports of the village, displayed on his frequent visits during the wooing, had won the admiration of the old warrior. Among the many bundles of valuable pelts that were borne along the Great Sauk Trail to the traders’ posts, the largest were usually those of Red Owl. The fire-water of the white man did not lure him to disaster as it did many of his red brothers. He always transacted his business quickly and returned from the posts with the ammunition, traps and other supplies for which he had exchanged his furs.

For a year he quietly accumulated a secret hoard of selected skins, which he laid before the door of the fond father as the marriage offering. The lovers disappeared on the trail that was to lead them to their home. For five days they travelled through the dunes and primeval forests. They came down the trail that crossed French Creek, climbed out of the ravine, and entered the village of Red Owl’s people. The wigwams were scattered along the stretch of higher ground among the trees. Omemee was cordially welcomed and soon grew accustomed to her new environment.

For many years the young men of the tribe had trapped muskrats, beaver and mink along the creek and in the swamps beyond its headwaters. Small furred animals were abundant for many miles around, and, during the fur season, the trappers were dispersed over a wide extent of territory.

When “Peg Leg” Carr came into the dune country the only human trails he found were those of the red men. He came alone and built a cabin on the creek not far from the Indian Village. Peg Leg may have still cherished a secret longing for human society which he was not willing to admit, even to himself. He had abandoned his last habitat for the ostensible reason that “thar was too many people ’round.” He came from about a hundred miles back on the Sauk Trail. After a family disagreement he had left his wife and two sons to their own devices in the wilderness, and was not heard of for nearly ten years. He suddenly appeared one morning, stumping along the trail, with his left knee fitted to the top of a hickory support. The lower part of the leg was gone, and he explained its absence by declaring that it had been “bit off.” The time-worn pleasantry seemed to amuse him, and no amount of coaxing would elicit further details. There was a deep ugly scar in the left side of his neck. His vocal chords had been injured and he could talk only in hoarse whispers. He said that his throat had been “gouged out.” Somebody or something had nearly wrecked Peg Leg physically, but the story, whatever it was, remained locked in his bosom. He admitted that he had “been to sea,” but beyond that no facts were obtainable.

After a brief sojourn at his old home he shouldered his pack and started west. When he arrived at French Creek he spent several days in looking the country over before deciding on the location of his cabin. He was a good-natured old fellow and the Indians did not particularly resent his intrusion, even when he began to set a line of traps along the creek. The small animals were so numerous that one trapper more or less made little difference, and he got on very well with his red neighbors. They rather pitied his infirmities and were disposed to make allowances. He was over seventy and apparently harmless.

When the old man had accumulated a small stock of pelts it was his custom to carry them to a trading post located about forty miles back on the trail and exchange them for supplies for his simple housekeeping and other necessities. These trips often consumed ten days, as his loads were heavy and he was compelled to travel slowly. On his return, when he came to the rude log bridge over which the trail crossed the creek in the ravine, he would sometimes wearily lay his pack down and pound on the timbers with his hickory stump as a signal to those above. He was unable to reach them with his impaired voice. Somebody in the wigwams usually heard him and came down to help the exhausted old trapper carry his burden up the steep incline. After resting awhile he would trudge on to his cabin.

A few years after the advent of Peg Leg a troop of soldiers arrived and built a fort. For strategic reasons the commander of the government post at Detroit decided to keep a small garrison at the end of the lake. A spot was cleared on the bluff and two small brass cannon were mounted in the block-house inside the log stockade. The tops of the surrounding trees were cut away so that the guns would command the trail from where it entered the north side of the ravine to the point at which it disappeared around a low hill south of the fort.

The French Creek Trail was a branch of the Great Sauk Trail, which was the main thoroughfare from the Detroit post to the mouth of Chicago river. It was joined near the headwaters of the St. Joseph and Kankakee rivers, in what is now northeastern Indiana, by another trail that followed the north banks of the Kankakee from the Illinois country. The sinuous routes had been used from time immemorable. They were the established highways of the red men and the arteries of their simple commerce. Thousands of moccasined feet traversed them on peaceful errands, and grim war parties sometimes moved swiftly along the numberless forest paths that connected with the main trails. There was a net-work of these all through the Indian country. Trees twisted and bent in a peculiar way, which we now often see in the woods, were landmarks left by the makers of various small trails that were travelled infrequently.

Soon after the fort was built at French Creek, Pierre Chenault came and established a trading post near the village. He was followed by a number of settlers who built log houses along the edge of the bluff. The red man’s fatherland was invaded. The civilization of the white man—or the lack of it—had come, with its attending evils of strong waters and organized rapacity. The waves of an alien race, with strange tongues and new weapons of steel, had broken over him. His means of subsistence dwindled. His heritage was passing to the sway of the despoiler.

The Indians loitered around Pierre Chenault’s trading post, bartered their few valuables for fire-water, and neglected the pursuits that had made them happy and prosperous. Chenault was a half-breed. His father belonged to that hardy race of French-Canadian voyageurs who had broken the paths of the wilderness in the north country, and penetrated the fastnesses of the territory of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. His mother was an Ojibwa on the south shore of Lake Superior. He was about forty, with a lean and hardened frame. His straight black hair was beginning to be streaked with gray, and fell to his shoulders. Piercing eyes looked out from under the heavy brows with an expression of low cunning, and his face carried the stamp of villainy. He was a mongrel, and in his case the mixture was a failure. He inherited the evil traits of both races and none of the virtues of either.

The creek was now practically abandoned as a trapping ground by the Indians. With the exception of Red Owl and Peg Leg, who divided the few miles of the stream, the trappers had sought other regions that were less disturbed. The dwellers in the wigwams contemplated a general removal to a more congenial habitat. Their neighbors were getting too numerous for comfort, and their ways of life were meeting with too much interference. They did not object to Peg Leg, but he was all of their white brothers that they felt they needed.

As the fur grew scarcer Red Owl rather resented the rivalry of the old man’s interests, and occasionally appropriated an otter or mink, when he passed Peg Leg’s traps, and had found nothing in his own. He probably lulled his conscience with the idea that the animals naturally belonged to the Indians, and that Peg Leg’s privileges were a form of charity that need not be extended to the point of his own self-denial.

Many times the half-breed had looked longingly on the quiet-eyed Omemee when she came to his post. He coveted Red Owl’s savage jewel. Wickedness fermented in his depraved mind, but he was too wise to make advances. He knew of Red Owl’s surreptitious visits to Peg Leg’s traps and laid his plans with far-seeing craft. One still February morning he saw him go into the ravine and start up the creek on the ice. He seized his rifle and crept through the thick timber and undergrowth, away from the creek, paralleling the course taken by the unsuspecting Indian. After going a mile or so Red Owl stopped near the projecting roots of a large elm. One of Peg Leg’s traps was there and his rival was soon engaged in killing and extracting a mink from the steel jaws of the trap. The half-breed stole up to within a hundred yards. A report rang in the crisp air and a bullet crashed into the back of the Indian’s head. The murderer left no trail near the frozen creek. He made a wide detour, returned to his post, after hiding his rifle in the snow, and awaited results.

A couple of hours later Peg Leg hobbled along the white water course to inspect his traps. He followed Red Owl’s trail and came upon the still form lying in the blood-stained snow on the ice. He speculated for some time over the mystery and went to the settlement to report what he had found.

The broken-hearted Omemee went with those who departed for the scene of the tragedy. No trail was visible except those of Red Owl and Peg Leg. The old man’s tracks were easily recognized. His denial of any guilty knowledge of the killing was met by silence and dark looks. Circumstantial evidence was against him. The motive was obvious and the story was on the snow. The partial justice of the retribution that had mysteriously fallen upon the thief did not lessen the innocent old trapper’s sorrow and fear, for he knew that justice, age, or infirmity would be no bar to Indian revenge. He would never have killed Red Owl for interfering with his traps. A high wind and a snow storm came up in the afternoon that effectually baffled any further investigation. The despondent old man kept the seclusion of his cabin and brooded over his trouble for several weeks.

Red Owl was laid away after the customs of his people. Omemee departed into the wilderness to mourn for her dead. After many days she returned with the light in her eyes that gleams from those of the she-panther when her young have been killed before her—a light that an enemy sees but once.

In the spring Peg Leg left with his pack of winter pelts. He had once been cheated by Chenault and preferred to do his trading where he had gone before the half-breed came. His journey consumed nearly two weeks. One evening at dusk he laboriously picked his way down the steep path into the ravine, laid his load of supplies on the rude bridge, and then signalled for help by pounding the bridge timbers with his hickory stump. He was worn out and could not carry his burden up the steep incline alone.

Like a snake from its covert, a beautiful wild thing darted from the deep shadows of the pines. The moccasined feet made no sound on the logs. There was a gleam of steel, a lightning-like movement, and Omemee glided on out of the ravine into the gathering gloom. The silence was broken by a heavy splash below the side of the bridge, and when they found poor old Peg Leg the hilt of a knife protruded from between his shoulders.

There was a hidden observer of the tragedy. Pierre Chenault had watched long and anxiously for the stroke of Omemee’s revenge. The white man’s law now gave him a coveted advantage. He broke cover and pursued the fast retreating figure. He would offer to conduct her to a place of safety, protect her and declare his love.

Omemee ran with the speed of a deer in the direction of the home of her childhood. She fled out over the dunes to the shore of the lake. For miles along the wild wave-washed coast the two dim figures sped in the darkness. Omemee finally dropped from exhaustion. The half-breed carried her in his arms to the foot of the bluff where he built a small fire behind a mass of drift-wood, and sat beside her until the gray of the morning came over the sand-hills. They were now about twelve miles from the settlement. They walked along the beach together for several hours and turned into the dunes.

After the April rains tender leaves unfolded in the trees around the bark wigwam where Omemee was born. The old chief had died two years before, but a faint wreath of smoke ascended softly to the overhanging branches. Fastened above the door was a grisly and uncanny thing that moved fitfully to and fro when the winds blew from the lake. It was the scalp of Pierre Chenault.

With the failure to obtain a government appropriation for a harbor at City West, the name of the new settlement, the embryo town vanished utterly and became a dream of the past. Its ambitions and crushed hopes are entombed in obscure history. No vestiges of its buildings remain. There are traces of a crude mill race near the place where the now obliterated trail crossed the creek. Around the site of the old fort the trees, whose tops were cut away to clear the range for the six-pounders, have covered their wounds with new limbs that have grown from the mutilated trunks.

Near the roots of a gnarled oak at a bend in the stream Peg Leg’s dust has mingled with the black loam, where his spirit may be lulled by the passing waters. When we seem to hear the tapping of the woodpecker on a hidden hollow tree in the depths of the dark ravine, it may be the echoes through the mists of the years of the strokes of the poor old trapper on the timbers of the bridge.

The red man has gone. The currents of human passion that rose and fell along the banks of the little stream have passed into silence. The bistre-colored waters still flow out on the wide expanse of sand and spread their web of romance in the moon-light.