either one of his pistols.





CHAPTER IV

THE FIRST MAYOR OF VINCENNES


Governor Abbott probably never so much as heard of the dame jeanne
of French brandy sent to him by his creole friend in New Orleans.
He had been gone from Vincennes several months when the batteau
arrived, having been recalled to Detroit by the British
authorities; and he never returned. Meantime the little post with
its quaint cabins and its dilapidated block-house, called Fort
Sackville, lay sunning drowsily by the river in a blissful state
of helplessness from the military point of view. There was no
garrison; the two or three pieces of artillery, abandoned and
exposed, gathered rust and cobwebs, while the pickets of the
stockade, decaying and loosened in the ground by winter freezes
and summer rains, leaned in all directions, a picture of decay and
inefficiency.

The inhabitants of the town, numbering about six hundred, lived
very much as pleased them, without any regular municipal
government, each family its own tribe, each man a law unto
himself; yet for mutual protection, they all kept in touch and had
certain common rights which were religiously respected and