Having with unsoldierly dispatch cleared his red skirts of the disputed territory, grown at least too hot for comfort, this Proctor--a fat poltroon--was now in hurried retreat through the forest-wilds of Canada West, at the head, not the rear, of an army composed of about nine hundred British regulars and two thousand Indian allies under the leadership of Tecumseh. On, in swift pursuit, with a stretch of about a half day's march between, came General Harrison--a gaunt hero--at the head, not the rear, of an army consisting of two companies of United States regulars and about three thousand volunteers, nearly all of whom were tall, stalwart Kentuckians, under the leadership of General Shelby, the venerable Governor of Kentucky. No Indian allies. In the van of the pursuing army, at the head of his regiment of mounted riflemen, one thousand strong, the very flower of green Kentucky's chivalry, rode Colonel Richard M. Johnson, afterward made Vice-president of the United States by his grateful countrymen, because--rumpsey-dumpsey--Dick had killed Tecumseh.
And there in the van, at the head of his company of mounted riflemen, mounted on a splendid Kentucky bay, and rigged out in his dashing backwoods uniform, rode Captain Bushrod Reynolds, whom we left twenty-four years ago in the Paradise a sturdy urchin of nine, and still a candidate for breeches and boots. Yes, there he rode, a tall, athletic man, in the prime of his days, frank-faced, clear-eyed, bold-browed, and with a nose that had gradually ripened from the pug into the Roman, as he had ripened in years and experience, just as we predicted when drawing his portrait where he sat on the topmost rail of a scraggy worm-fence, watching the squirrels and crows. Nor was it true that he had become a married man and a man of family, and a captain too--all pretty much as the far-seeing Burl had prophesied at the same early period.
At present, however, having been married but a year, his family was small. For, since reaching the stature and years of manhood, Bushrod Reynolds had spent many years in the great North-west, where as an Indian-trader he had pushed his fortunes with great energy and success, yet with clean hands, never in all the time selling or bartering a single gallon of whisky to the Indians--a virtue quite rare, we fear, in Indian-traders, and one for which he was highly commended by Tecumseh himself, who never drank any thing but water. The address, prudence, and integrity he displayed in this vocation had attracted the notice of General Harrison, then Governor of the North-west Territory, through whose influence the young Kentuckian received the appointment of United States Indian Agent in that quarter. Here again he had acquitted himself in the same clean-handed manner, never touching a dollar of the money intrusted to him, saving so far as officially authorized.