There are not many memories of Ole Bull in the vicinity of the ruins of his castle today. Fifteen years ago, before the timber was all gone, there were quite a few old people who were living in the Black Forest at the time of his colonization venture, who remembered him well, also a couple of his original colonists, Andriesen and Oleson, but these are no more. One has to go to Renovo or to Austin or Germania to find any reminiscences now, and those have suffered through passing from “hand to mouth” and are scattered and fragmentary. They used to say that the great violinist was, like his descendants, a believer in spiritualism, and on the first snowy night that he occupied his unfinished mansion, chancing to look out he saw what seemed to him a tall, white figure standing by the ramparts.

Fearing that it was some skeld come to warn him of impending disaster to his beloved colony, he rushed out hatless, only to find that it was an old hemlock stab, snow encrusted.

Disaster did come, but as far as local tradition goes Ole Bull had no warning of it. The hemlock stab which so disturbed him has been gone these many years, but a smaller one, when encased in snow, has frightened many a superstitious wayfarer along the Kettle Creek road, and gone on feeling that he had seen “the ghost of Ole Bull.”

But unaccountable and worthy of investigation are the weird strains of music heard on wild, stormy nights, which seem to emanate from the castle. Belated hunters coming down the deep gorge of Ole Bull Run, back of the castle, or travelers along the main highway from Oleona to Cross Forks, have heard it and refused to be convinced that there is not a musician hidden away somewhere among the crumbling ruins. The “oldest inhabitants,” sturdy race of trappers, who antedated Ole Bull’s colonists, declare that the ghostly musician was playing just the same in the great virtuoso’s time, and that it is the ghost of a French fifer, ambushed and killed by Indians when his battalion was marching along the “Boone Road” from Fort Le Boeuf to the memorable and ill-starred attack on Fort Augusta at Sunbury in 1757.

At the mention of “Boone Road” another question is opened, as there is no historic record of such a military highway between Lake Erie and the West Branch of the Susquehanna River. The afore-mentioned very old people used to say that the road was still visible to them in certain places; that there could be no doubt of its existence and former utilization.

Daniel Boone, if he be the pioneer of that name who first “blazed it out,” was a very young man during the “French and Indian War,” and his presence in that part of the country is a mooted question. Perhaps it was another “Boone,” and a Norseman, for many persons named “Bonde” or “Boon” were among the first Swedish settlers on the Lanape-Wihittuck, or Delaware River, unconsciously pioneering for their famous cousin-German, Ole Borneman Bull.

In all events, the French fifer was shot and grievously wounded, and his comrades, in the rout which ensued, were forced to leave him behind. After refreshing himself at the cold spring, which nearly a century later Ole Bull named “Lyso”–the water of light–he crawled up on the hill, on which the castle was afterwards partly erected, to reconnoitre the country, but dropping from exhaustion and loss of blood, soon died. The wolves carried away his physical remains, but his spirit rested on the high knoll, to startle Ole Bull and many others, with the strains of his weird, unearthly music.

It seems a pity that these old legends are passing with the lives of the aged people, but the coming of Ira Keeney, the grizzled Civil War veteran, as caretaker for the handsome Armstrong-Quigley hunting lodge, on the site of one of the former proposed fogderier Walhalla, has awakened anew the world of romance, of dashing exploits in the war under Sheridan and Rosecrans, of lumbering days, wolves, panthers and wild pigeons, all of which memories the venerable soldier loves to recount.

Yet can these be compared with the legend that Ole Bull, seeing a Bald Eagle rise from its nest on the top of a tall oak near the banks of Freeman’s Run, named the village he planned to locate there Odin, after the supreme deitydeity of the Scandinavian mythology, who took the form of an eagle on one period of his development. His other settlements or herods he called Walhalla, Oleona and New Bergen. Planned at first by the French to be a purely military route for ingress to the West Branch country, but owing to the repulse at Fort Augusta, very infrequently traversed by them, if at all, it became principally an overland “short cut” for trappers, traders, travelers and settlers, all of whom knew its location well.

Who could have laid out such an intricate road over high mountains and through deep valleys, unless a military force, is hard to imagine, even if for some strange reason it was never written into “history.”

After the Revolutionary War there was naturally an unsettled state of affairs, and many farmers and adventurers turned their thought to the country west of the Allegheny Mountains and River, as the land of opportunity, consequently there was much desultory travel over the Boone Road. Unemployment prevailed everywhere, and hordes of penniless ex-soldiers, turned adrift by their victorious new nation, traveled backwards and forwards along all the known highways and trails, picking up a day’s work as best they could, their precarious mode of living giving them the name of “cider tramps.” A few more reckless and blood thirsty than their fellows, claimed that the country which they had freed owed them a living; if there was no work and no pensions, and they could not get it by hook they would take it by crook. In other words, certain ex-service men, became strong-arm men, road agents, or highwaymen, whichever name seems most suitable.

The Boone Road, in a remote wilderness of gloomy, untrodden forests, made an ideal haunt for footpads, and when not robbing travelers, they took their toll from the wild game, elks, deer, bears, grouse and wild pigeons which infested the region. Law and order had not penetrated into such forgotten and forbidding realms, and obscure victims could report outrages and protest to a deaf and dumb government. How long it was before these robbers were curbed is hard to say.

One story which the backwoods people about Hamesley’s Fork used to tell dates back to five years after the close of the Revolution, about 1788. Jenkin Doane, possibly a member of the same family that produced the Doane outlaws in the Welsh Mountains, was one of the notorious characters along the Boone Road. Like others, he was an ex-soldier, a hero of Brandywine and Paoli, but his plight was worse, for just before peace was declared, when a premature rumor to that effect had reached his company, lying at Fort Washington, he had assaulted and beaten up an aristocratic and brutal officer who was the terror of the line. For this he had been sentenced to death, but later his sentence was commuted, and finally, because there were no satisfactory jails for military prisoners, he was quietly released, sans h. d. and the ability to make a livelihood.

He finally became a wagoner and hired out with a party of emigrants going to Lake Erie, who traveled over the Boone Road. He saw them safely to their destination, but on his return journey tarried in the mountains, hunting and fishing, until his supplies were gone, when he turned “road agent.” He evidently had a low grade of morals at that time, for he robbed old as well as young, women as readily as men. He was fairly successful, considering the comparative lightness of travel and the poor class of victims financially.

In an up-and-down country, where feed and shelter were scarce, he kept no horse, but traveled afoot. He had no opportunity to test his heels, as he never ran away, all his attacks being followed by speedy capitulation. If a trained force of bailiffs had been sent out to apprehend him, doubtless he could have been caught, as he had his favorite retreats, where he lingered, waiting for his prey.

There were not many such places in the depths of the seemingly endless forests of giant and gloomy hemlocks and pines, places where the sun could shine and the air radiated dryness and warmth. One of his best-liked haunts was known as the Indian Garden, situated in an open glade among the mountains which divide the country of Kettle Creek from that of Drury’s Run.

“Art.” Vallon, one of the oldest hunters on Kettle Creek, who died recently, once described the spot as follows: “More than sixty years ago my father on a hunting trip showed me a clearing of perhaps half an acre, which he told me was called ‘The Indian Garden.’ I visited it many times afterwards on my trapping excursions. It impressed me as very unusual, being entirely free from undergrowth, except the furze grass one sees on poor, worked-out land.

“It“It was a perfect square of about half an acre, and was surrounded by the deep, primeval forest. There was a fine spring not very far away.”

It was there that Jenkin Doane and two other reckless characters who had served with Simon Girty and acted as his henchmen lolled for hours in the sun, waiting for victims. It was there that he usually maintained his “camp fire” and at night slept on the ground in a sleeping bag of buffalo hides.

One night in the late winter, when there were still patches of snow on the ground, Doane dreamed very vividly of a girl whom he had never seen. He could hardly realize he had been dreaming when he awoke and sat up looking about him, to where his vision was cut off by the interminable “aisles of the forest.” He seemed to be married to her, at least they were together, and he had the pleasure of saving her life from drowning in a deep torrent where she had gone, probably to bathe.

He had never seen a person of such unusual beauty. Her hair was dark and inclined to curl, complexion hectic, her eyes hazel, but the chief charm lay in the line of her nose and upper lip. The nose was slightly turned up at the end, adding, with the curve of her upper lip, a piquancy to an expression of exceptional loveliness.

All the day he kept wishing that this charming young woman might materialize into his life; he could not bring himself to believe but that such a realistic vision must have a living counterpart.

It was during the morning of the second day, when he had about given up hope, that he saw coming towards him, down a steep pitch in the Boone Road–it is part of the Standard Oil Pipe Line now–a young woman on horseback, wearing a red velvet hat and a brown cloak. She was mounted on a flea-bitten white horse of uncertain age and gait. Close behind her rode two elderly Indians, also indifferently mounted, who seemed to be her bodyguard, and between them they were leading a heavily-laden pack-horse.

He quickly turned his belt, an Indian signal of great antiquity, which indicated to his companions that they would make an attack.

Just as the white horse touched fairly level ground he commenced to stumble and run sideways, having stepped on a rusty caltrop or “crow’s foot” which the outlaws had strewn across the trail at that point for that very purpose. Seeing the animal’s plight, the young equestrienne quickly stopped him and dismounted. She had been riding astride, and Doane noticed the brown woolen stockings which covered her shapely legs, her ankle-boots of good make, as she rolled off the horse’s back.

As she stood before her quivering steed, patting his shoulder, Doane and his companions drew near, covering the three with their army muskets. It was then to his infinite surprise he noticed that the girl in brown, with the red hat, was the heroine of his dream, though in the vision she had been attired in black, but the gown was half off her shoulders and back when he drew her out of the water.

It would have been hard to tell who was most surprised, Doane or the girl. Much as he admired her loveliness, there had been the turning of the belt, which meant there could be no change of purpose; his comrades were already eyeing the well-filled packsaddles.

The frightened Indians had dismounted, being watched by one of the outlaws, while Doane politely yet firmly demanded the whereabouts of her money. Lifting her cloak and turning her belt, she disclosed two long deerskin pouches, heavy with gold. Unbuckling them, she handed them to Doane, while tears began to stream down her cheeks.

“You may take it, sir,” she sobbed, "but you are ruining my chances in life. I am partly Indian, Brant’s daughter, grand-daughter of the old Brant, and my father had arranged a marriage for me with a young officer whom I met during the war, and I love him dearly. Though I told him of my love, he would not marry me without a dowry of $3,000, and it took my father five long years to gather it together. I would not care if I did not love him so much. I was on my way to his home at the forks of Susquehanna, and now you have destroyed all my hopes."

The brigand’s steely heart was for a moment touched. “Brant’s daughter,” he said, “you Indian people know the turning of the belt, which means that what is decided on at that moment must be carried out; before I saw who you were I resolved to rob you. It must be done, for I have two partners who will demand their shares.”

"You said ‘before you knew who I was,’" broke in the girl, her tearful, piquantpiquant face filled with curiosity. “You never saw me before.”

“Oh, yes, I did,” replied Doane, “in a dream a couple of nights ago.” “she said, as a final appeal.

“I am afraid not,” he answered, as his comrade started to open one of the pouches. Then he paused, saying: “I will not take all. I’d not take anything from you except that I have these partners. I will retain half for them, and let you go on your way with the rest. Your good looks–for you are truly the prettiest thing I ever laid eyes on–will outweigh with your lover a paltry fifteen hundred dollars in gold.” “cried the girl weeping afresh. “He does not love me; he only wants the gold. I am the one that loves, and am lost and discarded without the dowry.”

Meanwhile one of the outlaws had drawn the caltrop from the horse’s frog, and having smeared it with bear’s grease, the animal was walking about in a fairly comfortable manner.

The girl stood looking at Doane. He was young, strong, and had a fairly decent face. How could he be so cruel? Then she looked at his partners, low-browed wretches, who were already muttering at the delay, and she realized there was no hope. Doane gave up his share, and tossed the other of the bags of gold to his “pals,” then ordered the girl and her escort to proceed. He said that he would accompany her to the river, to where the danger of meeting other highwaymen would be passed. The girl traveled on foot the entire distance, to ease her horse over the rough, uneven trail, walking side by side with the highwayman.

They parted with civility, and on Doane’s side with deep regret, for the dream had inflamed his soul, and the reality was so startlingly lovely that he was deeply smitten. Before he had reached the river he wished that he had shot his grasping companions, rather than endanger this beautiful creature’s future happiness.

“That was an unlucky turning of the belt,” he said to himself, as he retraced his steps towards the Indian Garden.

Brant’s daughter rode with a heavy heart the balance of the journey, for she knew her lover’s nature. The Indian bodyguards were equally downcast, for they had sworn to deliverdeliver her safe and sound at the forks of the Susquehanna.

When she reached the handsome colonial gray stone house, on a headland overlooking the “meeting of the waters,” her lover, a handsome upstanding youth, with a sports suit made of his old officer’s buff uniform, and surrounded by a pack of his hunting dogs, came out to greet her. His manner was not very cordial. With penetrating eyes he saw that she was disturbed over something, so he quickly asked if she suffered from fatigue after the long overland journey.

“No, Major,” she replied, “I am not at all tired in body, but I am in heart. I cannot postpone the evil moment. On the Boone Road we were stopped by three highwaymen, armed, who took from me half of my dowry.”

The Major’s handsome countenance darkened. “Why did you not tell them you needed it to get married?” he blurted out angrily. “A pretty wench like you could have honey-foogled them to keep it.” “replied the girl, confidently, “and for that reason the chief of the band, a very pretty man, let me keep the one-half, but he had to retain the rest for his companions.” “ “I think I came off well,” she said, hanging her pretty head, her cheeks all crimson flush. She was sitting on the horse, her feet dangling out of the stirrups, her skirts turned up revealing those shapely legs, and he had not asked her to dismount.

The Major drew nearer, with an angry gesture. “I have a mind to smack your face good and hard for your folly,” he stormed. “What do you think I have been waiting for, a paltry fifteen hundred dollars?”

Brant’s daughter turned her belt and handed him the pouch of gold, which he threw down testily. It was quickly picked up by one of his German redemptioner servants, who carried it into the house.

“Aren’t you going to ask me to come in?” pleaded the now humiliated love-sick girl. “You can slap me all you want. Punish me any way you will,” offering him her stiff riding crop, “only don’t cast me off.”off.”

“Come down if you wish; I don’t care,” he mumbled in reply. “I wouldn’t exert myself enough to whip you, but your hide ought to be tanned for your stupidity.”

Cut to the heart, yet still loving abjectly, she slid off the horse and meekly followed the imperious Major into the mansion. During the balance of the afternoon, and at supper, and until she begged to be allowed to retire, she was reviled and humbled in the presence of his redemptioners. He declared that no one man in a thousand, in his station of life, would consider marriage with a person of Indian blood; that it was worth twice three thousand dollars, the figure he had originally named. Nevertheless, he had carefully put the money bag in his strong box, even though saying nothing about setting a date for a marriage.

She was shown into an unfinished room. There was no bed, only a few chairs, and two big walnut chests. Tearful and nervously unstrung, she took off her shoes and, wrapping herself in her cloak, lay down on the cold wooden floor. She could have called for blankets, and doubtless gotten them, but her pride had rebelled and she resolved to make the best of conditions. She could not sleep, and her mind was tortured with her love for the Major, anger at his ungrateful conduct, and an ever-recurring vision of the highwayman on the Boone Road. She heard the great Irish clock in the hall below strike every hour until one.

Suddenly she got up, her face brightened with a new resolve. Tying her shoes together, she threw them them across her shoulder and tiptoed to the door, which she opened softly, and went downstairs. Her Indian bodyguards were sleeping on the stone floor in the vestibule, wrapped in their blankets.

“Exundos,” she whispered in the ear of the oldest, “get me out of this; I am going to go away.”

The trusty redskin, who always slept with one eye open, nudged his comrade, Firequill, and made their way to the door. It was locked and chained, and the key probably under the Major’s pillow.

Exundos was determined to redeem his record. He rushed upstairs to where a portly German was sleeping in the officer’s antechamber. He knocked the valet senseless with the butt of his horse pistol. Then he sprang like a panther over the prostrate body into the Major’s apartment. In a moment he had gagged him with the caltrop extracted from the horse’s foot, then bound him hand and foot.

The key was under the pillow. In five minutes the fugitives were on the front lawn, surrounded by the Major’s pack of yelping, snarling hounds. Getting by them as best they could, the trio made for the bluffs, found a dugout in which they crossed the river, and were soon in the shelter of the friendly mountains.

In the morning the Major’s other servants who slept in quarters near the stables, found the half-dazed bodyguard with a bloody head, and their gagged and helpless master. Once released, the Major decided not to send a posse after the runaways; he was heavily in debt, and needed that pouch of fifteen hundred dollars in gold.

Brant’s daughter, after her fortuitous escape, was not completely happy. She had longed for the Major for five years, and had almost gotten him as the result of severe privations. It was pretty hard to lose him now. She was going home defeated, to die unwed. Her feelings became desperate when she reached the Boone Road, with all its haunting memories.

As she clambered up the steep grades, and the Indian Garden came into view, she reached down and turned her belt, the symbol of resolution. No one was about as she passed the garden, which made her heart sink with loneliness for some strong man’s love.

When Kettle Creek was reached and crossed near the Cold Spring, she decided to rest awhile. After a meal, which she barely tasted, she told the Indians that she was going for a little walk in the woods.

“I am safe now,” she said, bitterly; “I have no gold.”

Past the Cold Spring she went, on and on up the wild, narrow gorge of what is now called Ole Bull Run, where a dark and dismal hemlock forest of colossal proportions bent over the torrent, keeping out the light of day.

While she was absent, who should appear at the Cold Spring but Doane, with his colleagues in crime.

“So he took her after all, with only half the money,” he said, almost regretfully, to the Indians.

“I don’t know,” replied one of the bodyguard. “He was very ugly when he heard it, wanted to slap her, and she ran away in the night, leaving horses, saddle-bags and gold. Oh, she felt terribly, for she truly loved the monster.” “said Doane, in surprised tones.

The Indian pointed up the dark gorge of the run. That moment the outlaw thought of his dream, of his rescuing her from an angry torrent. Motioning to her guards to follow, he made haste along the edges of the stream, slipping often on the moss-grown rocks. Half way to the top of the gigantic mountain, he heard the roar of a cascade. There was a great, dark, seething pool beneath. Just as Doane came in sight of this he beheld, to his horror, Brant’s daughter, hatless and cloakless, plunging in. It was like a Dryad’s immolation!

With superhuman effort he reached the brink and sprang after her. He caught her, as she rose the first time, by her profuse brown hair, but as he lifted her ashore a snag or branch tore her shirtwaist, so that her shoulder and back were almost completely bare, just as in the dream. Aided by the faithful Indians, he laid her tenderly among the moss and ferns, and poured some rum from a buffalo horn flask down her throat. She revived and opened her pretty hazel eyes quizzically.

“Am I at the Indian Garden?” she said.

“You are with the one who turned his belt there,” answered Doane; “only this time I don’t want anything for my comrades. I only want you for myself.” “said Brant’s daughter, having now fully recovered the power of speech. “When I came back to the Garden and you were not there, I turned my belt.” “said Doane, “for that last resolve has brought us together. I should have known from the beginning my destiny was revealed in that dream.” “said the girl.

“Of course I will, anywhere with you, and never follow the road again, or anything not strictly honorable. Wrongdoing, I see now, is caused by the preponderance of the events of life going against us. Where things come our way, and there is joy, one can never aspire to ill. Wrong is the continued disappointment. I could never molest a soul after I saw you, and have lived by hunting ever since. I made my partners return the purse of gold; it shall go to your father to buy a farm.”

Brant’s daughter now motioned to him that she felt like sitting up, and he propped her back against an old cork pine, kissing her pretty plump cheeks and shoulders many times as he did so. “And that scoundrel would have smacked you,” he thought, boiling inwardly. Then taking her cold hands in his, he said:

“Out of evil comes good. I do not regret this one robbery, for if I had not taken that gold for my comrades, some one would have robbed me of you!”