The Scouts of the Valley

THE SCOUTS OF THE VALLEY

by Joseph A. Altsheler

CHAPTER I. THE LONE CANOE

A light canoe of bark, containing a single human figure, moved swiftly

up one of the twin streams that form the Ohio. The water, clear and

deep, coming through rocky soil, babbled gently at the edges, where it

lapped the land, but in the center the full current flowed steadily and

without noise.

The thin shadows of early dusk were falling, casting a pallid tint over

the world, a tint touched here and there with living fire from the sun,

which was gone, though leaving burning embers behind. One glowing shaft,

piercing straight through the heavy forest that clothed either bank,

fell directly upon the figure in the boat, as a hidden light illuminates

a great picture, while the rest is left in shadow. It was no common

forest runner who sat in the middle of the red beam. Yet a boy, in

nothing but years, he swung the great paddle with an ease and vigor that

the strongest man in the West might have envied. His rifle, with the

stock carved beautifully, and the long, slender blue barrel of the

border, lay by his side. He could bring the paddle into the boat,

grasp the rifle, and carry it to his shoulder with a single, continuous

movement.

His most remarkable aspect, one that the casual observer even would have

noticed, was an extraordinary vitality. He created in the minds of those

who saw him a feeling that he lived intensely every moment of his life.

Born and-bred in the forest, he was essentially its child, a perfect

physical being, trained by the utmost hardship and danger, and with

every faculty, mental and physical, in complete coordination. It is only

by a singular combination of time and place, and only once in millions

of chances, that Nature produces such a being.

The canoe remained a few moments in the center of the red light, and its

occupant, with a slight swaying motion of the paddle, held it steady in

the current, while he listened. Every feature stood out in the glow, the

firm chin, the straight strong nose, the blue eyes, and the thick yellow

hair. The red blue, and yellow beads on his dress of beautifully tanned

deerskin flashed in the brilliant rays. He was the great picture of

fact, not of fancy, a human being animated by a living, dauntless soul.

He gave the paddle a single sweep and shot from the light into the

shadow. His canoe did not stop until it grazed the northern shore, where

bushes and overhanging boughs made a deep shadow. It would have taken

a keen eye now to have seen either the canoe or its occupant, and

Henry Ware paddled slowly and without noise in the darkest heart of the

shadow.

The sunlight lingered a little longer in the center of the stream. Then

the red changed to pink. The pink, in its turn, faded, and the whole

surface of the river was somber gray, flowing between two lines of black

forest.

The coming of the darkness did not stop the boy. He swung a little

farther out into the stream, where the bushes and hanging boughs would

not get in his way, and continued his course with some increase of

speed.

The great paddle swung swiftly through the water, and the length of

stroke was amazing, but the boy's breath did not come faster, and the

muscles on his arms and shoulders rippled as if it were the play of

a child. Henry was in waters unknown to him. He had nothing more than

hearsay upon which to rely, and he used all the wilderness caution that

he had acquired through nature and training. He called into use every

faculty of his perfect physical being. His trained eyes continually

pierced the darkness. At times, he stopped and listened with ears that

could hear the footfall of the rabbit, but neither eye nor ear brought

report of anything unusual. The river flowed with a soft, sighing sound.

Now and then a wild creature stirred in the forest, and once a deer

came down to the margin to drink, but this was the ordinary life of the

woods, and he passed it by.

He went on, hour after hour. The river narrowed. The banks grew higher

and rockier, and the water, deep and silvery under the moon, flowed in

a somewhat swifter current. Henry gave a little stronger sweep to the

paddle, and the speed of the canoe was maintained. He still kept within

the shadow of the northern bank.

He noticed after a while that fleecy vapor was floating before the moon.

The night seemed to be darkening, and a rising wind came out of the

southwest. The touch of the air on, his face was damp. It was the token

of rain, and he felt that it would not be delayed long.

It was no part of his plan to be caught in a storm on the Monongahela.

Besides the discomfort, heavy rain and wind might sink his frail canoe,

and he looked for a refuge. The river was widening again, and the banks

sank down until they were but little above the water. Presently he saw

a place that he knew would be suitable, a stretch of thick bushes and

weeds growing into the very edge of the water, and extending a hundred

yards or more along the shore.

He pushed his canoe far into the undergrowth, and then stopped it in

shelter so close that, keen as his own eyes were, he could scarcely see

the main stream of the river. The water where he came to rest was not

more than a foot deep, but he remained in the canoe, half reclining and

wrapping closely around himself and his rifle a beautiful blanket woven

of the tightest fiber.

His position, with his head resting on the edge of the canoe and his

shoulder pressed against the side, was full of comfort to him, and he

awaited calmly whatever might come. Here and there were little spaces

among the leaves overhead, and through them he saw a moon, now almost

hidden by thick and rolling vapors, and a sky that had grown dark and

somber. The last timid star had ceased to twinkle, and the rising wind

was wet and cold. He was glad of the blanket, and, skilled forest runner

that he was, he never traveled without it. Henry remained perfectly

still. The light canoe did not move beneath his weight the fraction

of an inch. His upturned eyes saw the little cubes of sky that showed

through the leaves grow darker and darker. The bushes about him were

now bending before the wind, which blew steadily from the south, and

presently drops of rain began to fall lightly on the water.

The boy, alone in the midst of all that vast wilderness, surrounded by

danger in its most cruel forms, and with a black midnight sky above him,

felt neither fear nor awe. Being what nature and circumstance had made

him, he was conscious, instead, of a deep sense of peace and comfort.

He was at ease, in a nest for the night, and there was only the remotest

possibility that the prying eye of an enemy would see him. The leaves

directly over his head were so thick that they formed a canopy, and, as

he heard the drops fall upon them, it was like the rain on a roof, that

soothes the one beneath its shelter.

Distant lightning flared once or twice, and low thunder rolled along the

southern horizon, but both soon ceased, and then a rain, not hard, but

cold and persistent, began to fall, coming straight down. Henry saw that

it might last all night, but he merely eased himself a little in the

canoe, drew the edges of the blanket around his chin, and let his

eyelids droop.

The rain was now seeping through the leafy canopy of green, but he did

not care. It could not penetrate the close fiber of the blanket, and the

fur cap drawn far down on his head met the blanket. Only his face was

uncovered, and when a cold drop fell upon it, it was to him, hardened by

forest life, cool and pleasant to the touch.

Although the eyelids still drooped, he did not yet feel the tendency to

sleep. It was merely a deep, luxurious rest, with the body completely

relaxed, but with the senses alert. The wind ceased to blow, and the

rain came down straight with an even beat that was not unmusical. No

other sound was heard in the forest, as the ripple of the river at the

edges was merged into it. Henry began to feel the desire for sleep by

and by, and, laying the paddle across the boat in such a way that it

sheltered his face, he closed his eyes. In five minutes he would have

been sleeping as soundly as a man in a warm bed under a roof, but with

a quick motion he suddenly put the paddle aside and raised himself a

little in the canoe, while one hand slipped down under the folds of the

blanket to the hammer of his rifle.

His ear had told him in time that there was a new sound on the river. He

heard it faintly above the even beat of the rain, a soft sound, long and

sighing, but regular. He listened, and then he knew it. It was made by

oars, many of them swung in unison, keeping admirable time.

Henry did not yet feel fear, although it must be a long boat full of

Indian warriors, as it was not likely, that anybody else would be abroad

upon these waters at such a time. He made no attempt to move. Where he

lay it was black as the darkest cave, and his cool judgment told him

that there was no need of flight.

The regular rhythmic beat of the oars came nearer, and presently as he

looked through the covert of leaves the dusky outline of a great war

canoe came into view. It contained at least twenty warriors, of what

tribe he could not tell, but they were wet, and they looked cold and

miserable. Soon they were opposite him, and he saw the outline of every

figure. Scalp locks drooped in the rain, and he knew that the warriors,

hardy as they might be, were suffering.

Henry expected to see the long boat pass on, but it was turned toward

a shelving bank fifty or sixty yards below, and they beached it there.

Then all sprang out, drew it up on the land, and, after turning it over,

propped it up at an angle. When this was done they sat under it in a

close group, sheltered from the rain. They were using their great canoe

as a roof, after the habit of Shawnees and Wyandots.

The boy watched them for a long time through one of the little openings

in the bushes, and he believed that they would remain as they were all

night, but presently he saw a movement among them, and a little flash

of light. He understood it. They were trying to kindle a fire-with flint

and steel, under the shelter of the boat. He continued to watch them

'lazily and without alarm.

Their fire, if they succeeded in making it, would cast no light upon him

in the dense covert, but they would be outlined against the flame, and

he could see them better, well enough, perhaps, to tell to what tribe

they belonged.

He watched under his lowered eyelids while the warriors, gathered in

a close group to make a shelter from stray puffs of wind, strove with

flint and steel. Sparks sprang up and went out, but Henry at last saw a

little blaze rise and cling to life. Then, fed with tinder and bark, it

grew under the roof made by the boat until it was ruddy and strong. The

boat was tilted farther back, and the fire, continuing to grow, crackled

cheerfully, while the flames leaped higher.

By a curious transfer of the senses, Henry, as he lay in the thick

blackness felt the influence of the fire, also. Its warmth was upon his

face, and it was pleasing to see the red and yellow light victorious

against the sodden background of the rain and dripping forest. The

figures of the warriors passed and repassed before the fire, and the boy

in the boat moved suddenly. His body was not shifted more than an inch,

but his surprise was great.

A warrior stood between him and the fire, outlined perfectly against

the red light. It was a splendid figure, young, much beyond the average

height, the erect and noble head crowned with the defiant scalplock, the

strong, slightly curved nose and the massive chin cut as clearly as if

they had been carved in copper. The man who had laid aside a wet blanket

was bare now to the waist, and Henry could see the powerful muscles play

on chest and shoulders as he moved.

The boy knew him. It was Timmendiquas, the great White Lightning of the

Wyandots, the youngest, but the boldest and ablest of all the Western

chiefs. Henry's pulses leaped a little at the sight of his old foe and

almost friend. As always, he felt admiration at the sight of the

young chief. It was not likely that he would ever behold such another

magnificent specimen of savage manhood.

The presence of Timmendiquas so far east was also full of significance.

The great fleet under Adam Colfax, and with Henry and his comrades in

the van, had reached Pittsburgh at last. Thence the arms, ammunition,

and other supplies were started on the overland journey for the American

army, but the five lingered before beginning the return to Kentucky.

A rumor came that the Indian alliance was spreading along the entire

frontier, both west and north. It was said that Timmendiquas, stung to

fiery energy by his defeats, was coming east to form a league with the

Iroquois, the famous Six Nations. These warlike tribes were friendly

with the Wyandots, and the league would be a formidable danger to the

Colonies, the full strength of which was absorbed already in the great

war.

But the report was a new call of battle to Henry, Shif'less Sol, and the

others. The return to Kentucky was postponed. They could be of greater

service here, and they plunged into the great woods to the north and,

east to see what might be stirring among the warriors.

Now Henry, as he looked at Timmendiquas, knew that report had told

the truth. The great chief would not be on the fringe of the Iroquois

country, if he did not have such a plan, and he had the energy and

ability to carry it through. Henry shuddered at the thought of the

tomahawk flashing along every mile of a frontier so vast, and defended

so thinly. He was glad in every fiber that he and his comrades had

remained to hang upon the Indian hordes, and be heralds of their

marches. In the forest a warning usually meant the saving of life.

The rain ceased after a while, although water dripped from the trees

everywhere. But the big fire made an area of dry earth about it, and the

warriors replaced the long boat in the water. Then all but four or five

of them lay beside the coals and went to sleep. Timmendiquas was one of

those who remained awake, and Henry saw that he was in deep thought. He

walked back and forth much like a white man, and now and then he folded

his hands behind his back, looking toward the earth, but not seeing it.

Henry could guess what was in his mind. He would draw forth the full

power of the Six Nations, league them with the Indians of the great

valley, and hurl them all in one mass upon the frontier. He was planning

now the means to the end.

The chief, in his little walks back and forth, came close to the edge of

the bushes in which Henry lay, It was not at all probable that he

would conclude to search among them, but some accident, a chance, might

happen, and Henry began to feel a little alarm. Certainly, the coming

of the day would make his refuge insecure, and he resolved to slip away

while it was yet light.

The boy rose a little in the boat, slowly and with the utmost caution,

because the slightest sound out of the common might arouse Timmendiquas

to the knowledge of a hostile presence. The canoe must make no plash in

the water. Gradually he unwrapped the blanket and tied it in a folded

square at his back. Then he took thought a few moments. The forest was

so silent now that he did not believe he could push the canoe through

the bushes without being heard. He would leave it there for use another

day and go on foot through the woods to his comrades.

Slowly he put one foot down the side until it rested on the bottom, and

then he remained still. The chief had paused in his restless walk back

and forth. Could it be possible that he had heard so slight a sound as

that of a human foot sinking softly into the water? Henry waited with

his rifle ready. If necessary he would fire, and then dart away among

the bushes.

Five or six intense moments passed, and the chief resumed his restless

pacing. If he had heard, he had passed it by as nothing, and Henry

raised the other foot out of the canoe. He was as delicate in his

movement as a surgeon mending the human eye, and he had full cause, as

not eye alone, but life as well, depended upon his success. Both feet

now rested upon the muddy bottom, and he stood there clear of the boat.

The chief did not stop again, and as the fire had burned higher, his

features were disclosed more plainly in his restless walk back and

forth before the flames. Henry took a final look at the lofty features,

contracted now into a frown, then began to wade among the bushes,

pushing his way softly. This was the most delicate and difficult task of

all. The water must not be allowed to plash around him nor the bushes

to rustle as he passed. Forward he went a yard, then two, five, ten, and

his feet were about to rest upon solid earth, when a stick submerged

in the mud broke under his moccasin with a snap singularly loud in the

silence of the night.

Henry sprang at once upon dry land, whence he cast back a single swift

glance. He saw the chief standing rigid and gazing in the direction from

which the sound had come. Other warriors were just behind him, following

his look, aware that there was an unexpected presence in the forest, and

resolved to know its nature.

Henry ran northward. So confident was he in his powers and the

protecting darkness of the night that he sent back a sharp cry, piercing

and defiant, a cry of a quality that could come only from a white

throat. The warriors would know it, and he intended for them to know it.

Then, holding his rifle almost parallel with his body, he darted swiftly

away through the black spaces of the forest. But an answering cry came

to his, the Indian yell taking up his challenge, and saying that the

night would not check pursuit.

Henry maintained his swift pace for a long time, choosing the more open

places that he might make no noise among the bushes and leaves. Now and

then water dripped in his face, and his moccasins were wet from the long

grass, but his body was warm and dry, and he felt little weariness. The

clouds were now all gone, and the stars sprang out, dancing in a sky of

dusky blue. Trained eyes could see far in the forest despite the night,

and Henry felt that he must be wary. He recalled the skill and tenacity

of Timmendiquas. A fugitive could scarcely be trailed in the darkness,

but the great chief would spread out his forces like a fan and follow.

He had been running perhaps three hours when he concluded to stop in a

thicket, where he lay down on the damp grass, and rested with his head

under his arm.

His breath had been coming a little faster, but his heart now resumed

its regular beat. Then he heard a soft sound, that of footsteps. He

thought at first that some wild animal was prowling near, but second

thought convinced him that human beings had come. Gazing through the

thicket, he saw an Indian warrior walking among the trees, looking

searchingly about him as if he were a scout. Another, coming from a

different direction, approached him, and Henry felt sure that they were

of the party of Timmendiquas. They had followed him in some manner,

perhaps by chance, and it behooved Mm now to lie close.

A third warrior joined them and they began to examine the ground. Henry

realized that it was much lighter. Keen eyes under such a starry sky

could see much, and they might strike his trail. The fear quickly became

fact. One of the warriors, uttering a short cry, raised his head and

beckoned to the others. He had seen broken twigs or trampled grass, and

Henry, knowing that it was no time to hesitate, sprang from his covert.

Two of the warriors caught a glimpse of his dusky figure and fired, the

bullets cutting the leaves close to his head, but Henry ran so fast that

he was lost to view in an instant.

The boy was conscious that his position contained many elements of

danger. He was about to have another example of the tenacity and

resource of the great young chief of the Wyandots, and he felt a certain

anger. He, did not wish to be disturbed in his plans, he wished to

rejoin his comrades and move farther east toward the chosen lands of

the Six Nations; instead, he must spend precious moments running for his

life.

Henry did not now flee toward the camp of his friends. He was too wise,

too unselfish, to bring a horde down upon them, and he curved away in a

course that would take him to the south of them. He glanced up and saw

that the heavens were lightening yet more. A thin gray color like a mist

was appearing in the east. It was the herald of day, and now the Indians

would be able to find his trail. But Henry was not afraid. His anger

over the loss of time quickly passed, and he ran swiftly on, the fall of

his moccasins making scarcely any noise as he passed.

It was no unusual incident. Thousands of such pursuits occurred in

the border life of our country, and were lost to the chronicler. For

generations they were almost a part of the daily life of the frontier,

but the present, while not out of the common in itself, had, uncommon

phases. It was the most splendid type of white life in all the

wilderness that fled, and the finest type of red life that followed.

It was impossible for Henry to feel anger or hate toward Timmendiquas.

In his place he would have done what he was doing. It was hard to give

up these great woods and beautiful lakes and rivers, and the wild life

that wild men lived and loved. There was so much chivalry in the boy's

nature that he could think of all these things while he fled to escape

the tomahawk or the stake.

Up came the sun. The gray light turned to silver, and then to red and

blazing gold. A long, swelling note, the triumphant cry of the pursuing

warriors, rose behind him. Henry turned his head for one look. He saw

a group of them poised for a moment on the crest of a low hill and

outlined against the broad flame in the east. He saw their scalp locks,

the rifles in their hands, and their bare chests shining bronze in the

glow. Once more he sent back his defiant cry, now in answer to theirs,

and then, calling upon his reserves of strength and endurance, fled with

a speed that none of the warriors had ever seen surpassed.

Henry's flight lasted all that day, and he used every device to evade

the pursuit, swinging by vines, walking along fallen logs, and wading in

brooks. He did not see the warriors again, but instinct warned him that

they were yet following. At long intervals he would rest for a quarter

of an hour or so among the bushes, and at noon he ate a little of the

venison that he always carried. Three hours later he came to the river

again, and swimming it he turned on his course, but kept to the southern

side. When the twilight was falling once more he sat still in dense

covert for a long time. He neither saw nor heard a sign of human

presence, and he was sure now that the pursuit had failed. Without an

effort he dismissed it from his mind, ate a little more of the venison,

and made his bed for the night.

The whole day had been bright, with a light wind blowing, and the forest

was dry once more. As far as Henry could see it circled away on every

side, a solid dark green, the leaves of oak and beech, maple and elm

making a soft, sighing sound as they waved gently in the wind. It told

Henry of nothing but peace. He had eluded the pursuit, hence it was no

more. This was a great, friendly forest, ready to shelter him, to soothe

him, and to receive him into its arms for peaceful sleep.

He found a place among thick trees where the leaves of last year lay

deep upon the ground. He drew up enough of them for a soft bed, because

now and for the moment he was a forest sybarite. He was wise enough to

take his ease when he found it, knowing that it would pay his body to

relax.

He lay down upon the leaves, placed the rifle by his side, and spread

the blanket over himself and the weapon. The twilight was gone, and the

night, dark and without stars, as he wished to see it, rolled up, fold

after fold, covering and hiding everything. He looked a little while at

a breadth of inky sky showing through the leaves, and then, free from

trouble or fear, he fell asleep.

CHAPTER II. THE MYSTERIOUS HAND

Henry slept until a rosy light, filtering through the leaves, fell upon

his face. Then he sprang up, folded the blanket once more upon his back,

and looked about him. Nothing had come in the night to disturb him,

no enemy was near, and the morning sun was bright and beautiful. The

venison was exhausted, but he bathed his face in the brook and resumed

his journey, traveling with a long, swift stride that carried him at

great speed.

The boy was making for a definite point, one that he knew well, although

nearly all the rest of this wilderness was strange to him. The country

here was rougher than it usually is in the great valley to the west, and

as he advanced it became yet more broken, range after range of steep,

stony hills, with fertile but narrow little valleys between. He went

on without hesitation for at least two hours, and then stopping under a

great oak he uttered a long, whining cry, much like the howl of a wolf.

It was not a loud note, but it was singularly penetrating, carrying far

through the forest. A sound like an echo came back, but Henry knew that

instead of an echo it was a reply to his own signal. Then he advanced

boldly and swiftly and came to the edge of a snug little valley set deep

among rocks and trees like a bowl. He stopped behind the great trunk of

a beech, and looked into the valley with a smile of approval.

Four human figures were seated around a fire of smoldering coals that

gave forth no smoke. They appeared to be absorbed in some very pleasant

task, and a faint odor that came to Henry's nostrils filled him with

agreeable anticipations. He stepped forward boldly and called:

“Jim, save that piece for me!”

Long Jim Hart halted in mid-air the large slice of venison that he had

toasted on a stick. Paul Cotter sprang joyfully to his feet, Silent Tom

Ross merely looked up, but Shif'less Sol said:

“Thought Henry would be here in time for breakfast.”

Henry walked down in the valley, and the shiftless one regarded him

keenly.

“I should judge, Henry Ware, that you've been hevin' a foot race,” he

drawled.

“And why do you think that?” asked Henry.

“I kin see where the briars hev been rakin' across your leggins. Reckon

that wouldn't happen, 'less you was in a pow'ful hurry.”

“You're right,” said Henry. “Now, Jim, you've been holding that venison

in the air long enough. Give it to me, and after I've eaten it I'll tell

you all that I've been doing, and all that's been done to me.”

Long Jim handed him the slice. Henry took a comfortable seat in the

circle before the coals, and ate with all the appetite of a powerful

human creature whose food had been more than scanty for at least two

days.

“Take another piece,” said Long Jim, observing him with approval. “Take

two pieces, take three, take the whole deer. I always like to see a

hungry man eat. It gives him sech satisfaction that I git a kind uv

taste uv it myself.”

Henry did not offer a word 'of explanation until his breakfast was over.

Then lie leaned back, sighing twice with deep content, and said:

“Boys, I've got a lot to tell.”

Shif'less Sol moved into an easier position on the leaves.

“I guess it has somethin' to do with them scratches on your leggins.”

“It has,” continued Henry with emphasis, “and I want to say to you boys

that I've seen Timmendiquas, the great White Lightning of the Wyandots.”

“Timmendiquas!” exclaimed the others together.

“No less a man than he,” resumed Henry. “I've looked upon his very face,

I've seen him in camp with warriors, and I've had the honor of being

pursued by him and his men more hours than I can tell. That's why you

see those briar scratches on my leggins, Sol.”

“Then we cannot doubt that he is here to stir the Six Nations to

continued war,” said Paul Cotter, “and he will succeed. He is a mighty

chief, and his fire and eloquence will make them take up the hatchet.

I'm glad that we've come. We delayed a league once between the Shawnees

and the Miamis; I don't think we can stop this one, but we may get some

people out of the way before the blow falls.”

“Who are these Six Nations, whose name sounds so pow'ful big up here?”

asked Long Jim.

“Their name is as big as it sounds,” replied Henry. “They are the

Onondagas, the Mohawks, Oneidas, Senecas, Cayugas, and Tuscaroras. They

used to be the Five Nations, but the Tuscaroras came up from the south

and fought against them so bravely that they were adopted into the

league, as a new and friendly tribe. The Onondagas, so I've heard,

formed the league a long, long time ago, and their head chief is the

grand sachem or high priest of them all, but the head chief of the

Mohawks is the leading war chief.”

“I've heard,” said Paul, “that the Wyandots are kinsmen of all

these tribes, and on that account they will listen with all the more

friendliness to Timmendiquas.”

“Seems to me,” said Tom Ross, “that we've got a most tre-men-je-ous big

job ahead.”

“Then,” said Henry, “we must make a most tremendous big effort.”

“That's so,” agreed all.

After that they spoke little. The last coals were covered up, and the

remainder of the food was put in their pouches. Then they sat on

the leaves, and every one meditated until such time as he might have

something worth saying. Henry's thoughts traveled on a wide course, but

they always came back to one point. They had heard much at Pittsburgh of

a famous Mohawk chief called Thayendanegea, but most often known to

the Americans as Brant. He was young, able, and filled with intense

animosity against the white people, who encroached, every year, more and

more upon the Indian hunting grounds. His was a soul full kin to that of

Timmendiquas, and if the two met it meant a great council and a greater

endeavor for the undoing of the white man. What more likely than that

they intended to meet?

“All of you have heard of Thayendanegea, the Mohawk?” said Henry.

They nodded.

“It's my opinion that Timmendiquas is on the way to meet him. I remember

hearing a hunter say at Pittsburgh that about a hundred miles to the

east of this point was a Long House or Council House of the Six Nations.

Timmendiquas is sure to go there, and we must go, too. We must find out

where they intend to strike. What do you say?”

“We go there!” exclaimed four voices together.

Seldom has a council of war been followed by action so promptly.

As Henry spoke the last word he rose, and the others rose with him.

Saying no more, he led toward the east, and the others followed him,

also saying no more. Separately every one of them was strong, brave, and

resourceful, but when the five were together they felt that they had the

skill and strength of twenty. The long rest at Pittsburgh had restored

them after the dangers and hardship of their great voyage from New

Orleans.

They carried in horn and pouch ample supplies of powder and bullet, and

they did not fear any task.

Their journey continued through hilly country, clothed in heavy forest,

but often without undergrowth. They avoided the open spaces, preferring

to be seen of men, who were sure to be red men, as little as possible.

Their caution was well taken. They saw Indian signs, once a feather that

had fallen from a scalp lock, once footprints, and once the bone of a

deer recently thrown away by him who had eaten the meat from it. The

country seemed to be as wild as that of Kentucky. Small settlements, so

they had heard, were scattered at great distances through the forest,

but they saw none. There was no cabin smoke, no trail of the plow, just

the woods and the hills and the clear streams. Buffalo had never reached

this region, but deer were abundant, and they risked a shot to replenish

their supplies.

They camped the second night of their march on a little peninsula at the

confluence of two creeks, with the deep woods everywhere. Henry judged

that they were well within the western range of the Six Nations, and

they cooked their deer meat over a smothered fire, nothing more than

a few coals among the leaves. When supper was over they arranged soft

places for themselves and their blankets, all except Long Jim, whose

turn it was to scout among the woods for a possible foe.

“Don't be gone long, Jim,” said Henry as he composed himself in a

comfortable position. “A circle of a half mile about us will do.”

“I'll not be gone more'n an hour,” said Long Jim, picking up his rifle

confidently, and flitting away among the woods.

“Not likely he'll see anything,” said Shif'less Sol, “but I'd shorely

like to know what White Lightning is about. He must be terrible stirred

up by them beatin's he got down on the Ohio, an' they say that Mohawk,

Thayendanegea is a whoppin' big chief, too. They'll shorely make a heap

of trouble.”

“But both of them are far from here just now,” said Henry, “and we won't

bother about either.”

He was lying on some leaves at the foot of a tree with his arm under

his head and his blanket over his body. He had a remarkable capacity for

dismissing trouble or apprehension, and just then he was enjoying great

physical and mental peace. He looked through half closed eyes at his

comrades, who also were enjoying repose, and his fancy could reproduce

Long Jim in the forest, slipping from tree to tree and bush to bush, and

finding no menace.

“Feels good, doesn't it, Henry?” said the shiftless one. “I like a

clean, bold country like this. No more plowin' around in swamps for me.”

“Yes,” said Henry sleepily, “it's a good country.”

The hour slipped smoothly by, and Paul said:

“Time for Long Jim to be back.”

“Jim don't do things by halves,” said the shiftless one. “Guess he's

beatin' up every squar' inch o' the bushes. He'll be here soon.”

A quarter of an hour passed, and Long Jim did not return; a half hour,

and no sign of him. Henry cast off the blanket and stood up. The night

was not very dark and he could see some distance, but he did not see

their comrade.

“I wonder why he's so slow,” he said with a faint trace of anxiety.

“He'll be 'long directly,” said Tom Ross with confidence.

Another quarter of an hour, and no Long Jim. Henry sent forth the low

penetrating cry of the wolf that they used so often as a signal.

“He cannot fail to hear that,” he said, “and he'll answer.”

No answer came. The four looked at one another in alarm. Long Jim had

been gone nearly two hours, and he was long overdue. His failure to

reply to the signal indicated either that something ominous had happened

or that--he had gone much farther than they meant for him to go.

The others had risen to their feet, also, and they stood a little while

in silence.

“What do you think it means?” asked Paul.

“It must be all right,” said Shif'less Sol. “Mebbe Jim has lost the

camp.”

Henry shook his head.

“It isn't that,” he said. “Jim is too good a woodsman for such a

mistake. I don't want to look on the black side, boys, but I think

something has happened to Jim.”

“Suppose you an' me go an' look for him,” said Shif'less Sol, “while

Paul and Tom stay here an' keep house.”

“We'd better do it,” said Henry. “Come, Sol.”

The two, rifles in the hollows of their arms, disappeared in the

darkness, while Tom and Paul withdrew into the deepest shadow of the

trees and waited.

Henry and the shiftless one pursued an anxious quest, going about the

camp in a great circle and then in another yet greater. They did not

find Jim, and the dusk was so great that they saw no evidences of his

trail. Long Jim had disappeared as completely as if he had left the

earth for another planet. When they felt that they must abandon the

search for the time, Henry and Shif'less Sol looked at each other in a

dismay that the dusk could not hide.

“Mebbe be saw some kind uv a sign, an' has followed it,” said the

shiftless one hopefully. “If anything looked mysterious an' troublesome,

Jim would want to hunt it down.”

“I hope so,” said Henry, “but we've got to go back to the camp now and

report failure. Perhaps he'll show up to-morrow, but I don't like it,

Sol, I don't like it!”

“No more do I,” said Shif'less Sol. “'Tain't like Jim not to come back,

ef he could. Mebbe he'll drop in afore day, anyhow.”

They returned to the camp, and two inquiring figures rose up out of the

darkness.

“You ain't seen him?” said Tom, noting that but two figures had

returned.

“Not a trace,” replied Henry. “It's a singular thing.”

The four talked together a little while, and they were far from

cheerful. Then three sought sleep, while Henry stayed on watch, sitting

with his back against a tree and his rifle on his knees. All the peace

and content that he had felt earlier in the evening were gone. He was

oppressed by a sense of danger, mysterious and powerful. It did not seem

possible that Long Jim could have gone away in such a noiseless manner,

leaving no trace behind. But it was true.

He watched with both ear and eye as much for Long Jim as for an enemy.

He was still hopeful that he would see the long, thin figure coming

among the bushes, and then hear the old pleasant drawl. But he did not

see the figure, nor did he hear the drawl.

Time passed with the usual slow step when one watches. Paul, Sol, and

Tom were asleep, but Henry was never wider awake in his life. He tried

to put away the feeling of mystery and danger. He assured himself that

Long Jim would soon come, delayed by some trail that he had sought to

solve. Nothing could have happened to a man so brave and skillful. His

nerves must be growing weak when he allowed himself to be troubled so

much by a delayed return.

But the new hours came, one by one, and Long Jim came with none of them.

The night remained fairly light, with a good moon, but the light that it

threw over the forest was gray and uncanny. Henry's feeling of mystery

and danger deepened. Once he thought he heard a rustling in the thicket

and, finger on the trigger of his rifle, he stole among the bushes to

discover what caused it. He found nothing and, returning to his lonely

watch, saw that Paul, Sol, and Tom were still sleeping soundly. But

Henry was annoyed greatly by the noise, and yet more by his failure to

trace its origin. After an hour's watching he looked a second time. The

result was once more in vain, and he resumed his seat upon the leaves,

with his back reclining against an oak. Here, despite the fact that the

night was growing darker, nothing within range of a rifle shot could

escape his eyes.

Nothing stirred. The noise did not come a second time from the thicket.

The very silence was oppressive. There was no wind, not even a stray

puff, and the bushes never rustled. Henry longed for a noise of some

kind to break that terrible, oppressive silence. What he really wished

to hear was the soft crunch of Long Jim's moccasins on the grass and

leaves.

The night passed, the day came, and Henry awakened his comrades. Long

Jim was still missing and their alarm was justified. Whatever trail lie

might have struck, he would have returned in the night unless something

had happened to him. Henry had vague theories, but nothing definite, and

he kept them to himself. Yet they must make a change in their plans. To

go on and leave Long Jim to whatever fate might be his was unthinkable.

No task could interfere with the duty of the five to one another.

“We are in one of the most dangerous of all the Indian countries,” said

Henry. “We are on the fringe of the region over which the Six Nations

roam, and we know that Timmendiquas and a band of the Wyandots are here

also. Perhaps Miamis and Shawnees have come, too.”

“We've got to find Long Jim,” said Silent Tom briefly.

They went about their task in five minutes. Breakfast consisted of cold

venison and a drink from a brook. Then they began to search the forest.

They felt sure that such woodsmen as they, with the daylight to help

them, would find some trace of Long Jim, but they saw none at all,

although they constantly widened their circle, and again tried all their

signals. Half the forenoon passed in the vain search, and then they held

a council.

“I think we'd better scatter,” said Shif'less Sol, “an' meet here again

when the sun marks noon.”

It was agreed, and they took careful note of the place, a little hill

crowned with a thick cluster of black oaks, a landmark easy to remember.

Henry turned toward the south, and the forest was so dense that in two

minutes all his comrades were lost to sight. He went several miles,

and his search was most rigid. He was amazed to find that the sense of

mystery and danger that he attributed to the darkness of the night did

not disappear wholly in the bright daylight. His spirit, usually so

optimistic, was oppressed by it, and he had no belief that they would

find Long Jim.

At the set time he returned to the little hill crowned with the black

oaks, and as he approached it from one side he saw Shif'less Sol coming

from another. The shiftless one walked despondently. His gait was loose

and shambling-a rare thing with him, and Henry knew that he, too,

had failed. He realized now that he had not expected anything else.

Shif'less Sol shook his head, sat down on a root and said nothing. Henry

sat down, also, and the two exchanged a look of discouragement.

“The others will be here directly,” said Henry, “and perhaps Long Jim

will be with one of them.”

But in his heart he knew that it would not be so, and the shiftless one

knew that he had no confidence in his own words.

“If not,” said Henry, resolved to see the better side, “we'll stay

anyhow until we find him. We can't spare good old Long Jim.”

Shif'less Sol did not reply, nor did Henry speak again, until lie saw

the bushes moving slightly three or four hundred yards away.

“There comes Tom,” he said, after a single comprehensive glance, “and

he's alone.”

Tom Ross was also a dejected figure. He looked at the two on the hill,

and, seeing that the man for whom they were searching was not with them,

became more dejected than before.

“Paul's our last chance,” he said, as he joined them. “He's gen'rally a

lucky boy, an' mebbe it will be so with him to-day.”

“I hope so,” said Henry fervently. “He ought to be along in a few

minutes.”

They waited patiently, although they really had no belief that Paul

would bring in the missing man, but Paul was late. The noon hour was

well past. Henry took a glance at the sun. Noon was gone at least a half

hour, and he stirred uneasily.

“Paul couldn't get lost in broad daylight,” he said.

“No,” said Shif'less Sol, “he couldn't get lost!”

Henry noticed his emphasis on the word “lost,” and a sudden fear sprang

up in his heart. Some power had taken away Long Jim; could the same

power have seized Paul? It was a premonition, and he paled under his

brown, turning away lest the others see his face. All three now examined

the whole circle of the horizon for a sight of moving bushes that would

tell of the boy's coming.

The forest told nothing. The sun blazed brightly over everything, and

Paul, like Long Jim, did not come. He was an hour past due, and the

three, oppressed already by Long jim's disappearance, were convinced

that he would not return. But they gave him a half hour longer. Then

Henry said:

“We must hunt for him, but we must not separate. Whatever happens we

three must stay together.”

“I'm not hankerin' to roam 'roun jest now all by myself,” said the

shiftless one, with an uneasy laugh.

The three hunted all that afternoon for Paul. Once they saw trace of

footsteps, apparently his, in some soft earth, but they were quickly,

lost on hard ground, and after that there was nothing. They stopped

shortly before sunset at the edge of a narrow but deep creek.

“What do you think of it, Henry?” asked Shif'less Sol.

“I don't know what to think,” replied the youth, “but it seems to me

that whatever took away Jim has taken away Paul, also.”

“Looks like it,” said Sol, “an' I guess it follers that we're in the

same kind o' danger.”

“We three of us could put up a good fight,” said Henry, “and I propose

that we don't go back to that camp, but spend the night here.”

“Yes, an' watch good,” said Tom Ross.

Their new camp was made quickly in silence, merely the grass under the

low boughs of a tree. Their supper was a little venison, and then they

watched the coming of the darkness. It was a heavy hour for the three.

Long Jim was gone, and then Paul-Paul, the youngest, and, in a way, the

pet of the little band.

“Ef we could only know how it happened,” whispered Shif'less Sol, “then

we might rise up an' fight the danger an' git Paul an' Jim back. But you

can't shoot at somethin' you don't see or hear. In all them fights o'

ours, on the Ohio an' Mississippi we knowed what wuz ag'inst us, but

here we don't know nothin'.”

“It is true, Sol,” sighed Henry. “We were making such big plans, too,

and before we can even start our force is cut nearly in half. To-morrow

we'll begin the hunt again. We'll never desert Paul and Jim, so long as

we don't know they're dead.”

“It's my watch,” said Tom. “You two sleep. We've got to keep our

strength.”

Henry and the shiftless one acquiesced, and seeking the softest spots

under the tree sat down. Tom Ross took his place about ten feet in front

of them, sitting on the ground, with his hands clasped around his knees,

and his rifle resting on his arm. Henry watched him idly for a little

while, thinking all the time of his lost comrades. The night promised to

be dark, a good thing for them, as the need of hiding was too evident.

Shif'less Sol soon fell asleep, as Henry, only three feet away, knew by

his soft and regular breathing, but the boy himself was still wide-eyed.

The darkness seemed to sink down like a great blanket dropping slowly,

and the area of Henry's vision narrowed to a small circle. Within this

area the distinctive object was the figure of Tom Ross, sitting with

his rifle across his knees. Tom had an infinite capacity for immobility.

Henry had never seen another man, not even an Indian, who could remain

so long in one position contented and happy. He believed that the silent

one could sit as he was all night.

His surmise about Tom began to have a kind of fascination for him. Would

he remain absolutely still? He would certainly shift an arm or a leg.

Henry's interest in the question kept him awake. He turned silently

on the other side, but, no matter how intently he studied the sitting

figure of his comrade, he could not see it stir. He did not know how

long he had been awake, trying thus to decide a question that should be

of no importance at such a time. Although unable to sleep, he fell into

a dreamy condition, and continued vaguely to watch the rigid and silent

sentinel.

He suddenly saw Tom stir, and he came from his state of languor. The

exciting question was solved at last. The man would not sit all night

absolutely immovable. There could be no doubt of the fact that he had

raised an arm, and that his figure had straightened. Then he stood

up, full height, remained motionless for perhaps ten seconds, and then

suddenly glided away among the bushes.

Henry knew what this meant. Tom had heard something moving in the

thickets, and, like a good sentinel, he had gone to investigate. A

rabbit, doubtless, or perhaps a sneaking raccoon. Henry rose to a

sitting position, and drew his own rifle across his knees. He would

watch while Tom was gone, and then lie would sink quietly back, not

letting his comrade know that lie had taken his place.

The faintest of winds began to stir among the thickets. Light clouds

drifted before the moon. Henry, sitting with his rifle across his knees,

and Shif'less Sol, asleep in the shadows, were invisible, but Henry saw

beyond the circle of darkness that enveloped them into the grayish light

that fell over the bushes. He marked the particular point at which he

expected Tom Ross to appear, a slight opening that held out invitation

for the passage of a man.

He waited a long time, ten minutes, twenty, a half hour, and the

sentinel did not return. Henry came abruptly out of his dreamy state.

He felt with all the terrible thrill of certainty that what happened to

Long Jim and Paul had happened also to Silent Tom Ross. He stood erect,

a tense, tall figure, alarmed, but not afraid. His eyes searched the

thickets, but saw nothing. The slight movement of the bushes was made by

the wind, and no other sound reached his ears.

But he might be mistaken after all! The most convincing premonitions

were sometimes wrong! He would give Tom ten minutes more, and he sank

down in a crouching position, where he would offer the least target for

the eye.

The appointed time passed, and neither sight nor sound revealed any sign

of Tom Ross. Then Henry awakened Shif'less Sol, and whispered to him all

that he had seen.

“Whatever took Jim and Paul has took him,” whispered the shiftless one

at once.

Henry nodded.

“An' we're bound to look for him right now,” continued Shif'less Sol.

“Yes,” said Henry, “but we must stay together. If we follow the others,

Sol, we must follow 'em together.”

“It would be safer,” said Sol. “I've an idee that we won't find Tom, an'

I want to tell you, Henry, this thing is gittin' on my nerves.”

It was certainly on Henry's, also, but without reply he led the way into

the bushes, and they sought long and well for Silent Tom, keeping at the

same time a thorough watch for any danger that might molest themselves.

But no danger showed, nor did they find Tom or his trail. He, too,

had vanished into nothingness, and Henry and Sol, despite their mental

strength, felt cold shivers. They came back at last, far toward morning,

to the bank of the creek. It was here as elsewhere a narrow but deep

stream flowing between banks so densely wooded that they were almost

like walls.

“It will be daylight soon,” said Shif'less Sol, “an' I think we'd better

lay low in thicket an' watch. It looks ez ef we couldn't find anything,

so we'd better wait an' see what will find us.”

“It looks like the best plan to me,” said Henry, “but I think we might

first hunt a while on the other side of the creek. We haven't looked any

over there.”

“That's so,” replied Shif'less Sol, “but the water is at least seven

feet deep here, an' we don't want to make any splash swimmin'. Suppose

you go up stream, an' I go down, an' the one that finds a ford first kin

give a signal. One uv us ought to strike shallow water in three or four

hundred yards.”

Henry followed the current toward the south, while Sol moved up the

stream. The boy went cautiously through the dense foliage, and the creek

soon grew wider and shallower. At a distance of about three hundred

yards lie came to a point where it could be waded easily. Then he

uttered the low cry that was their signal, and went back to meet

Shif'less Sol. He reached the exact point at which they had parted, and

waited. The shiftless one did not come. The last of his comrades was

gone, and he was alone in the forest.

CHAPTER III. THE HUT ON THE ISLET

Henry Ware waited at least a quarter of an hour by the creek on the

exact spot at which he and Solomon Hyde, called the shiftless one, had

parted, but he knew all the while that his last comrade was not coming.

The same powerful and mysterious hand that swept the others away had

taken him, the wary and cunning Shif'less Sol, master of forest lore and

with all the five senses developed to the highest pitch. Yet his powers

had availed him nothing, and the boy again felt that cold chill running

down his spine.

Henry expected the omnipotent force to come against him, also, but his

instinctive caution made him turn and creep into the thickest of the

forest, continuing until he found a place in the bushes so thoroughly

hidden that no one could see him ten feet away. There he lay down

and rapidly ran over in his mind the events connected with the four

disappearances. They were few, and he had little on which to go, but his

duty to seek his four comrades, since he alone must do it, was all the

greater. Such a thought as deserting them and fleeing for his own

life never entered his mind. He would not only seek them, but he would

penetrate the mystery of the power that had taken them.

It was like him now to go about his work with calmness and method. To

approach an arduous task right one must possess freshness and vigor, and

one could have neither without sleep. His present place of hiding seemed

to be as secure as any that could be found. So composing himself he took

all chances and sought slumber. Yet it needed a great effort of the will

to calm his nerves, and it was a half hour before he began to feel any

of the soothing effect that precedes sleep. But fall asleep he did at

last, and, despite everything, he slept soundly until the morning.

Henry did not awake to a bright day. The sun had risen, but it was

obscured by gray clouds, and the whole heavens were somber. A cold wind

began to blow, and with it came drops of rain. He shivered despite the

enfolding blanket. The coming of the morning had invariably brought

cheerfulness and increase of spirits, but now he felt depression. He

foresaw heavy rain again, and it would destroy any but the deepest

trail. Moreover, his supplies of food were exhausted and he must

replenish them in some manner before proceeding further.

A spirit even as bold and strong as Henry's might well have despaired.

He had found his comrades, only to lose them again, and the danger that

had threatened them, and the elements as well, now threatened him, too.

An acute judge of sky and air, he knew that the rain, cold, insistent,

penetrating, would fall all day, and that he must seek shelter if he

would keep his strength. The Indians themselves always took to cover at

such times.

He wrapped the blanket around himself, covering his body well from neck

to ankle, putting his rifle just inside the fold, but with his hand

upon it, ready for instant use if it should be needed. Then he started,

walking straight ahead until he came to the crown of a little hill.

The clouds meanwhile thickened, and the rain, of the kind that he had

foreseen and as cold as ice, was blown against him. The grass and bushes

were reeking, and his moccasins became sodden. Despite the vigorous

walking, lie felt the wet cold entering his system. There come times

when the hardiest must yield, and he saw the increasing need of refuge.

He surveyed the country attentively from the low hill. All around was a

dull gray horizon from which the icy rain dripped everywhere. There was

no open country. All was forest, and the heavy rolling masses of foliage

dripped with icy water, too.

Toward the south the land seemed to dip down, and Henry surmised that in

a valley he would be more likely to find the shelter that he craved. He

needed it badly. As he stood there he shivered again and again from

head to foot, despite the folds of the blanket. So he started at once,

walking fast, and feeling little fear of a foe. It was not likely that

any would be seeking him at such a time. The rain struck him squarely

in the face now. Water came from his moccasins every time his foot was

pressed against the earth, and, no matter how closely he drew the folds

of the blanket, little streams of it, like ice to the touch, flowed down

his neck and made their way under his clothing. He could not remember a

time when he had felt more miserable.

He came in about an hour to the dip which, as he had surmised, was the

edge of a considerable valley. He ran down the slope, and looked all

about for some place of shelter, a thick windbreak in the lee of a hill,

or an outcropping of stone, but he saw neither, and, as he continued

the search, he came to marshy ground. He saw ahead among the weeds and

bushes the gleam of standing pools, and he was about to turn back, when

he noticed three or four stones, in a row and about a yard from one

another, projecting slightly above the black muck. It struck him that

the stones would not naturally be in the soft mud, and, his curiosity

aroused, he stepped lightly from one stone to another. When he came to

the last stone that he had seen from the hard ground he beheld several

more that had been hidden from him by the bushes. Sure now that he had

happened upon something not created by nature alone, he followed these

stones, leading like steps into the very depths of the swamp, which was

now deep and dark with ooze all about him. He no longer doubted that the

stones, the artificial presence of which might have escaped the keenest

eye and most logical mind, were placed there for a purpose, and he was

resolved to know its nature.

The stepping stones led him about sixty yards into the swamp, and the

last thirty yards were at an angle from the first thirty. Then he came

to a bit of hard ground, a tiny islet in the mire, upon which he could

stand without sinking at all. He looked back from there, and he could

not see his point of departure. Bushes, weeds, and saplings grew out of

the swamp to a height of a dozen or fifteen feet, and he was inclosed

completely. All the vegetation dripped with cold water, and the place

was one of the most dismal that he had ever seen. But he had no thought

of turning back.

Henry made a shrewd guess as to whither the path led, but he inferred

from the appearance of the stepping stones-chiefly from the fact that

an odd one here and there had sunk completely out of sight-that they had

not been used in a long time, perhaps for years. He found on the other

side of the islet a second line of stones, and they led across a marsh,

that was almost like a black liquid, to another and larger island.

Here the ground was quite firm, supporting a thick growth of large

trees. It seemed to Henry that this island might be seventy or eighty

yards across, and he began at once to explore it. In the center,

surrounded so closely by swamp oaks that they almost formed a living

wall, he found what he had hoped to find, and his relief was so great

that, despite his natural and trained stoicism, he gave a little cry of

pleasure when he saw it.

A small lodge, made chiefly of poles and bark after the Iroquois

fashion, stood within the circle of the trees, occupying almost the

whole of the space. It was apparently abandoned long ago, and time

and weather had done it much damage. But the bark walls, although they

leaned in places at dangerous angles, still stood. The bark roof was

pierced by holes on one side, but on the other it was still solid, and

shed all the rain from its slope.

The door was open, but a shutter made of heavy pieces of bark cunningly

joined together leaned against the wall, and Henry saw that he could

make use of it. He stepped inside. The hut had a bark floor which was

dry on one side, where the roof was solid, but dripping on the other.

Several old articles of Indian use lay about. In one corner was a basket

woven of split willow and still fit for service. There were pieces of

thread made of Indian hemp and the inner bark of the elm. There were

also a piece of pottery and a large, beautifully carved wooden spoon

such as every Iroquois carried. In the corner farthest from the door

was a rude fireplace made of large flat stones, although there was no

opening for the smoke.

Henry surveyed it all thoughtfully, and he came to the conclusion that

it was a hut for hunting, built by some warrior of an inquiring mind who

had found this secret place, and who had recognized its possibilities.

Here after an expedition for game he could lie hidden from enemies and

take his comfort without fear. Doubtless he had sat in this hut on rainy

days like the present one and smoked his pipe in the long, patient calm

of which the Indian is capable.

Yes, there was the pipe, unnoticed before, trumpet shaped and carved

beautifully, lying on a small bark shelf. Henry picked it tip and

examined the bowl. It was as dry as a bone, and not a particle of

tobacco was left there. He believed that it had not been used for at

least a year. Doubtless the Indian who had built this hunting lodge had

fallen in some foray, and the secret of it had been lost until Henry

Ware, seeking through the cold and rain, had stumbled upon it.

It was nothing but a dilapidated little lodge of poles and bark, all

a-leak, but the materials of a house were there, and Henry was strong

and skillful. He covered the holes in the roof with fallen pieces of

bark, laying heavy pieces of wood across them to hold them in place.

Then he lifted the bark shutter into position and closed the door. Some

drops of rain still came in through the roof, but they were not many,

and he would not mind them for the present. Then he opened the door and

began his hardest task.

He intended to build a fire on the flat stones, and, securing fallen

wood, he stripped off the bark and cut splinters from the inside. It was

slow work and he was very cold, his wet feet sending chills through

him, but he persevered, and the little heap of dry splinters grew to

a respectable size. Then he cut larger pieces, laying them on one side

while he worked with his flint and steel on the splinters.

Flint and steel are not easily handled even by the most skillful, and

Henry saw the spark leap up and die out many times before it finally

took hold of the end of the tiniest splinter and grew. He watched it

as it ran along the little piece of wood and ignited another and then

another, the beautiful little red and yellow flames leaping up half a

foot in height. Already he felt the grateful warmth and glow, but he

would not let himself indulge in premature joy. He fed it with larger

and larger pieces until the flames, a deeper and more beautiful red and

yellow, rose at least two feet, and big coals began to form. He left

the door open a while in order that the smoke might go out, but when the

fire had become mostly coals he closed it again, all except a crack of

about six inches, which would serve at once to let any stray smoke out,

and to let plenty of fresh air in.

Now Henry, all his preparations made, no detail neglected, proceeded to

luxuriate. He spread the soaked blanket out on the bark floor, took off

the sodden moccasins and placed them at one angle of the fire, while

he sat with his bare feet in front. What a glorious warmth it was! It

seemed to enter at his toes and proceed upward through his body, seeking

out every little nook and cranny, to dry and warm it, and fill it full

of new glow and life.

He sat there a long time, his being radiating with physical comfort. The

moccasins dried on one side, and he turned the other. Finally they dried

all over and all through, and he put them on again. Then he hung the

blanket on the bark wall near the fire, and it, too, would be dry in

another hour or so. He foresaw a warm and dry place for the night, and

sleep. Now if one only had food! But he must do without that for the

present.

He rose and tested all his bones and muscles. No stiffness or soreness

had come from the rain and cold, and he was satisfied. He was fit for

any physical emergency. He looked out through the crevice. Night was

coming, and on the little island in the swamp it looked inexpressibly

black and gloomy. His stomach complained, but he shrugged his shoulders,

acknowledging primitive necessity, and resumed his seat by the fire.

There he sat until the blanket had dried, and deep night had fully come.

In the last hour or two Henry did not move. He remained before the fire,

crouched slightly forward, while the generous heat fed the flame of life

in him. A glowing bar, penetrating the crevice at the door, fell on the

earth outside, but it did not pass beyond the close group of circling

trees. The rain still fell with uncommon steadiness and persistence,

but at times hail was mingled with it. Henry could not remember in his

experience a more desolate night. It seemed that the whole world dwelt

in perpetual darkness, and that he was the only living being on it.

Yet within the four or five feet square of the hut it was warm

and bright, and he was not unhappy.

He would forget the pangs of hunger, and, wrapping himself in the dry

blanket, he lay down before the bed of coals, having first raked ashes

over them, and he slept one of the soundest sleeps of his life. All

night long, the dull cold rain fell, and with it, at intervals, came

gusts of hail that rattled like bird shot on the bark walls of the hut.

Some of the white pellets blew in at the door, and lay for a moment or

two on the floor, then melted in the glow of the fire, and were gone.

But neither wind, rain nor hail awoke Henry. He was as safe, for the

time, in the hut on the islet, as if he were in the fort at Pittsburgh

or behind the palisades at Wareville. Dawn came, the sky still heavy and

dark with clouds, and the rain still falling.

Henry, after his first sense of refreshment and pleasure, became

conscious of a fierce hunger that no amount of the will could now keep

quiet. His was a powerful system, needing much nourishment, and he must

eat. That hunger became so great that it was acute physical pain. He

was assailed by it at all points, and it could be repelled by only one

thing, food. He must go forth, taking all risks, and seek it.

He put on fresh wood, covering it with ashes in order that it might not

blaze too high, and left the islet. The stepping stones were slippery

with water, and his moccasins soon became soaked again, but he forgot

the cold and wet in that ferocious hunger, the attacks of which became

more violent every minute. He was hopeful that he might see a deer, or

even a squirrel, but the animals themselves were likely to keep under

cover in such a rain. He expected a hard hunt, and it would be attended

also by much danger--these woods must be full of Indians--but he thought

little of the risk. His hunger was taking complete possession of his

mind. He was realizing now that one might want a thing so much that it

would drive away all other thoughts.

Rifle in hand, ready for any quick shot, he searched hour after hour

through the woods and thickets. He was wet, bedraggled, and as fierce

as a famishing panther, but neither skill nor instinct guided him to

anything. The rabbit hid in his burrow, the squirrel remained in his

hollow tree, and the deer did not leave his covert.

Henry could not well calculate the passage of time, it seemed so

fearfully long, and there was no one to tell him, but he judged that

it must be about noon, and his temper was becoming that of the famished

panther to which he likened himself. He paused and looked around the

circle of the dripping woods. He had retained his idea of direction and

he knew that he could go straight back to the hut in the swamp. But he

had no idea of returning now. A power that neither he nor anyone else

could resist was pushing him on his search.

Searching the gloomy horizon again, he saw against the dark sky a

thin and darker line that he knew to be smoke. He inferred, also, with

certainty, that it came from an Indian camp, and, without hesitation,

turned his course toward it. Indian camp though it might be, and

containing the deadliest of foes, he was glad to know something lived

beside himself in this wilderness.

He approached with great caution, and found his surmise to be correct.

Lying full length in a wet thicket he saw a party of about twenty

warriors-Mohawks he took them to be-in an oak opening. They had erected

bark shelters, they had good fires, and they were cooking. He saw them

roasting the strips over the coals-bear meat, venison, squirrel, rabbit,

bird-and the odor, so pleasant at other times, assailed his nostrils.

But it was now only a taunt and a torment. It aroused every possible

pang of hunger, and every one of them stabbed like a knife.

The warriors, so secure in their forest isolation, kept no sentinels,

and they were enjoying themselves like men who had everything they

wanted. Henry could hear them laughing and talking, and he watched them

as they ate strip after strip of the delicate, tender meat with the

wonderful appetite that the Indian has after long fasting. A fierce,

unreasoning anger and jealousy laid hold of him. He was starving, and

they rejoiced in plenty only fifty yards away. He began to form plans

for a piratical incursion upon them. Half the body of a deer lay near

the edge of the opening, he would rush upon it, seize it, and dart away.

It might be possible to escape with such spoil.

Then he recalled his prudence. Such a thing was impossible. The whole

band of warriors would be upon him in an instant. The best thing that he

could do was to shut out the sight of so much luxury in which he could

not share, and he crept away among the bushes wondering what he could

do to drive away those terrible pains. His vigorous system was crying

louder than ever for the food that would sustain it. His eyes were

burning a little too brightly, and his face was touched with fever.

Henry stopped once to catch a last glimpse of the fires and the feasting

Indians under the bark shelters. He saw a warrior raise a bone, grasping

it in both hands, and bite deep into the tender flesh that clothed it.

The sight inflamed him into an anger almost uncontrollable. He clenched

his fist and shook it at the warrior, who little suspected the proximity

of a hatred so intense. Then he bent his head down and rushed away among

the wet bushes which in rebuke at his lack of caution raked him across

the face.

Henry walked despondently back toward the islet in the swamp. The aspect

of air and sky had not changed. The heavens still dripped icy water,

and there was no ray of cheerfulness anywhere. The game remained well

hidden.

It was a long journey back, and as he felt that he was growing weak he

made no haste. He came to dense clumps of bushes, and plowing his way

through them, he saw a dark opening under some trees thrown down by an

old hurricane. Having some vague idea that it might be the lair of a

wild animal, he thrust the muzzle of his rifle into the darkness. It

touched a soft substance. There was a growl, and a black form shot out

almost into his face. Henry sprang aside, and in an instant all his

powers and faculties returned. He had stirred up a black bear, and

before the animal, frightened as much as he was enraged, could run far

the boy, careless how many Indians might hear, threw up his rifle and

fired.

His aim was good. The bear, shot through the head, fell, and was dead.

Henry, transformed, ran up to him. Bear life had been given up to

sustain man's. Here was food for many days, and he rejoiced with a great

joy. He did not now envy those warriors back there.

The bear, although small, was very fat. Evidently he had fed well on

acorns and wild honey, and he would yield up steaks which, to one with

Henry's appetite, would be beyond compare. He calculated that it was

more than a mile to the swamp, and, after a few preliminaries, he flung

the body of the bear over his shoulder. Through some power of the mind

over the body his full strength had returned to him miraculously, and

when he reached the stepping stones he crossed from one to another

lightly and firmly, despite the weight that he carried.

He came to the little bark hut which he now considered his own. The

night had fallen again, but some coals still glowed under the ashes, and

there was plenty of dry wood. He did everything decently and in order.

He took the pelt from the bear, carved the body properly, and then, just

as the Indians had done, he broiled strips over the coals. He ate them

one after another, slowly, and tasting all the savor, and, intense as

was the mere physical pleasure, it was mingled with a deep thankfulness.

Not only was the life nourished anew in him, but he would now regain the

strength to seek his comrades.

When he had eaten enough he fastened the body of the bear, now in

several portions, on hooks high upon the walls, hooks which evidently

had been placed there by the former owner of the hut for this very

purpose. Then, sure that the savor of the food would draw other wild

animals, he brought one of the stepping stones and placed it on the

inside of the door. The door could not be pushed aside without arousing

him, and, secure in the knowledge, he went to sleep before the coals.

CHAPTER IV. THE RED CHIEFS

Henry awoke only once, and that was about half way between midnight and

morning, when his senses, never still entirely, even in sleep, warned

him that something was at the door. He rose cautiously upon his arm, saw

a dark muzzle at the crevice, and behind it a pair of yellow, gleaming

eyes. He knew at once that it was a panther, probably living in the

swamp and drawn by the food. It must be very hungry to dare thus the

smell of man. Henry's hand moved slowly to the end of a stick, the

other end of which was a glowing coal. Then he seized it and hurled it

directly at the inquisitive head.

The hot end of the stick struck squarely between the yellow eyes. There

was a yelp of pain, and the boy heard the rapid pad of the big cat's

feet as it fled into the swamp. Then he turned over on his side, and

laughed in genuine pleasure at what was to him a true forest joke. He

knew the panther would not come, at least not while he was in the hut,

and he calmly closed his eyes once more. The old Henry was himself

again.

He awoke in the morning to find that the cold rain was still falling. It

seemed to him that it had prepared to rain forever, but he was resolved,

nevertheless, now that he had food and the strength that food brings, to

begin the search for his comrades. The islet in the swamp would serve as

his base-nothing could be better-and he would never cease until he found

them or discovered what had become of them.

A little spring of cold water flowed from the edge of the islet to lose

itself quickly in the swamp. Henry drank there after his breakfast, and

then felt as strong and active as ever. As he knew, the mind may triumph

over the body, but the mind cannot save the body without food. Then

he made his precious bear meat secure against the prowling panther or

others of his kind, tying it on hanging boughs too high for a jump and

too slender to support the weight of a large animal. This task finished

quickly, he left the swamp and returned toward the spot where lie had

seen the Mohawks.

The falling rain and the somber clouds helped Henry, in a way, as the

whole forest was enveloped in a sort of gloom, and he was less likely to

be seen. But when he had gone about half the distance he heard Indians

signaling to one another, and, burying himself as usual in the wet

bushes, he saw two small groups of warriors meet and talk. Presently

they separated, one party going toward the east and the other toward the

west. Henry thought they were out hunting, as the Indians usually took

little care of the morrow, eating all their food in a few days, no

matter how great the supply might be.

When he drew near the place he saw three more Indians, and these were

traveling directly south. He was quite sure now that his theory was

correct. They were sending out hunters in every direction, in order that

they might beat up the woods thoroughly for game, and his own position

anywhere except on the islet was becoming exceedingly precarious.

Nevertheless, using all his wonderful skill, he continued the hunt. He

had an abiding faith that his four comrades were yet alive, and he meant

to prove it.

In the afternoon the clouds moved away a little, and the rain decreased,

though it did not cease. The Indian signs multiplied, and Henry felt

sure that the forest within a radius of twenty miles of his islet

contained more than one camp. Some great gathering must be in progress

and the hunters were out to supply it with food. Four times he heard

the sound of shots, and thrice more he saw warriors passing through

the forest. Once a wounded deer darted past him, and, lying down in the

bushes, he saw the Indians following the fleeing animal. As the day grew

older the trails multiplied. Certainly a formidable gathering of bands

was in progress, and, feeling that he might at any time be caught in a

net, he returned to the islet, which had now become a veritable fort for

him.

It was not quite dark when he arrived, and he found all as it had been

except the tracks of two panthers under the boughs to which he

had fastened the big pieces of bear meat. Henry felt a malicious

satisfaction at the disappointment of the panthers.

“Come again, and have the same bad luck,” he murmured.

At dusk the rain ceased entirely, and he prepared for a journey in the

night. He examined his powder carefully to see that no particle of it

was wet, counted the bullets in his pouch, and then examined the skies.

There was a little moon, not too much, enough to show him the way, but

not enough to disclose him to an enemy unless very near. Then he left

the islet and went swiftly through the forest, laying his course a third

time toward the Indian camp. He was sure now that all the hunters had

returned, and he did not expect the necessity of making any stops for

the purpose of hiding. His hopes were justified, and as he drew near the

camp he became aware that its population had increased greatly. It was

proved by many signs. New trails converged upon it, and some of them

were very broad, indicating that many warriors had passed. They

had passed, too, in perfect confidence, as there was no effort at

concealment, and Henry surmised that no white force of any size could

be within many days' march of this place. But the very security of the

Indians helped his own design. They would not dream that any one of the

hated race was daring to come almost within the light of their fires.

Henry had but one fear just now, and that was dogs. If the Indians had

any of their mongrel curs with them, they would quickly scent him

out and give the alarm with their barking. But he believed that the

probabilities were against it. This, so he thought then, was a war or

hunting camp, and it was likely that the Indians would leave the dogs

at their permanent villages. At any rate he would take the risk, and

he drew slowly toward the oak opening, where some Indians stood about.

Beyond them, in another dip of the valley, was a wider opening which

he had not seen on his first trip, and this contained not only bark

shelters, but buildings that indicated a permanent village. The second

and larger opening was filled with a great concourse of warriors.

Fortunately the foliage around the opening was very dense, many trees

and thickets everywhere. Henry crept to the very rim, where, lying in

the blackest of the shadows, and well hidden himself, he could yet see

nearly everything in the camp. The men were not eating now, although it

was obvious that the hunters had done well. The dressed bodies of deer

and bear hung in the bark shelters. Most of the Indians sat about the

fires, and it seemed to Henry that they had an air of expectancy. At

least two hundred were present, and all of them were in war paint,

although there were several styles of paint. There was a difference

in appearance, too, in the warriors, and Henry surmised that

representatives of all the tribes of the Iroquois were there, coming to

the extreme western boundary or fringe of their country.

While Henry watched them a half dozen who seemed by their bearing and

manner to be chiefs drew together at a point not far from him and talked

together earnestly. Now and then they looked toward the forest, and

he was quite sure that they were expecting somebody, a person of

importance. He became deeply interested. He was lying in a dense clump

of hazel bushes, flat upon his stomach, his face raised but little above

the ground. He would have been hidden from the keenest eye only ten feet

away, but the faces of the chiefs outlined against the blazing firelight

were so clearly visible to him that he could see every change of

expression. They were fine-looking men, all of middle age, tall, lean,

their noses hooked, features cut clean and strong, and their heads

shaved, all except the defiant scalp lock, into which the feather of

an eagle was twisted. Their bodies were draped in fine red or blue

blankets, and they wore leggins and moccasins of beautifully tanned

deerskin.

They ceased talking presently, and Henry heard a distant wailing note

from the west. Some one in the camp replied with a cry in kind, and then

a silence fell upon them all. The chiefs stood erect, looking toward the

west. Henry knew that he whom they expected was at hand.

The cry was repeated, but much nearer, and a warrior leaped into the

opening, in the full blaze of the firelight. He was entirely naked save

for a breech cloth and moccasins, and he was a wild and savage figure.

He stood for a moment or two, then faced the chiefs, and, bowing before

them, spoke a few words in the Wyandot tongue-Henry knew already by his

paint that he was a Wyandot.

The chiefs inclined their heads gravely, and the herald, turning, leaped

back into the forest. In two or three minutes six men, including the

herald, emerged from the woods, and Henry moved a little when he saw the

first of the six, all of whom were Wyandots. It was Timmendiquas, head

chief of the Wyandots, and Henry had never seen him more splendid in

manner and bearing than he was as he thus met the representatives of the

famous Six Nations. Small though the Wyandot tribe might be, mighty was

its valor and fame, and White Lightning met the great Iroquois only as

an equal, in his heart a superior.

It was an extraordinary thing, but Henry, at this very moment, burrowing

in the earth that he might not lose his life at the hands of either, was

an ardent partisan of Timmendiquas. It was the young Wyandot chief

whom he wished to be first, to make the greatest impression, and he was

pleased when he heard the low hum of admiration go round the circle of

two hundred savage warriors. It was seldom, indeed, perhaps never, that

the Iroquois had looked upon such a man as Timmendiquas.

Timmendiquas and his companions advanced slowly toward the chiefs, and

the Wyandot overtopped all the Iroquois. Henry could tell by the manner

of the chiefs that the reputation of the famous White Lightning had

preceded him, and that they had already found fact equal to report.

The chiefs, Timmendiquas among them, sat down on logs before the fire,

and all the warriors withdrew to a respectful distance, where they stood

and watched in silence. The oldest chief took his long pipe, beautifully

carved and shaped like a trumpet, and filled it with tobacco which he

lighted with a coal from the fire. Then he took two or three whiffs and

passed the pipe to Timmendiquas, who did the same. Every chief smoked

the pipe, and then they sat still, waiting in silence.

Henry was so much absorbed in this scene, which was at once a spectacle

and a drama, that he almost forgot where he was, and that he was an

enemy. He wondered now at their silence. If this was a council surely

they would discuss whatever question had brought them there! But he was

soon enlightened. That low far cry came again, but from the east. It

was answered, as before, from the camp, and in three or four minutes a

warrior sprang from the forest into the opening. Like the first, he was

naked except for the breech cloth and moccasins. The chiefs rose at his

coming, received his salute gravely, and returned it as gravely. Then

he returned to the forest, and all waited in the splendid calm of the

Indian.

Curiosity pricked Henry like a nettle. Who was coming now? It must be

some man of great importance, or they would not wait so silently.

There was the same air of expectancy that had preceded the arrival of

Timmendiquas. All the warriors looked toward the eastern wall of the

forest, and Henry looked the same way. Presently the black foliage

parted, and a man stepped forth, followed at a little distance by seven

or eight others. The stranger, although tall, was not equal in height to

Timmendiquas, but he, too, had a lofty and splendid presence, and it

was evident to anyone versed at all in forest lore that here was a great

chief. He was lean but sinewy, and he moved with great ease and grace.

He reminded Henry of a powerful panther. He was dressed, after the

manner of famous chiefs, with the utmost care. His short military coat

of fine blue cloth bore a silver epaulet on either shoulder. His

head was not bare, disclosing the scalp lock, like those of the other

Indians; it was covered instead with a small hat of felt, round and

laced. Hanging carelessly over one shoulder was a blanket of blue cloth

with a red border. At his side, from a belt of blue leather swung a

silver-mounted small sword. His leggins were of superfine blue cloth and

his moccasins of deerskin. Both were trimmed with small beads of many

colors.

The new chief advanced into the opening amid the dead silence that still

held all, and Timmendiquas stepped forward to meet him. These two held

the gaze of everyone, and what they and they alone did had become of

surpassing interest. Each was haughty, fully aware of his own dignity

and importance, but they met half way, looked intently for a moment or

two into the eyes of each other, and then saluted gravely.

All at once Henry knew the stranger. He had never seen him before, but

his impressive reception, and the mixture of military and savage attire

revealed him. This could be none other than the great Mohawk war chief,

Thayendanegea, the Brant of the white men, terrible name on the border.

Henry gazed at him eagerly from his covert, etching his features forever

on his memory. His face, lean and strong, was molded much like that of

Timmendiquas, and like the Wyandot he was young, under thirty.

Timmendiquas and Thayendanegea-it was truly he-returned to the fire,

and once again the trumpet-shaped pipe was smoked by all. The two young

chiefs received the seats of favor, and others sat about them. But they

were not the only great chiefs present, though all yielded first place

to them because of their character and exploits.

Henry was not mistaken in his guess that this was an important council,

although its extent exceeded even his surmise. Delegates and head chiefs

of all the Six Nations were present to confer with the warlike Wyandots

of the west who had come so far east to meet them. Thayendanegea was the

great war chief of the Mohawks, but not their titular chief. The latter

was an older man, Te-kie-ho-ke (Two Voices), who sat beside the younger.

The other chiefs were the Onondaga, Tahtoo-ta-hoo (The Entangled); the

Oneida, O-tat-sheh-te (Bearing a Quiver); the Cayuga, Te-ka-ha-hoonk (He

Who Looks Both Ways); the Seneca, Kan-ya-tai-jo (Beautiful Lake); and

the Tuscarora, Ta-ha-en-te-yahwak-hon (Encircling and Holding Up a

Tree). The names were hereditary, and because in a dim past they had

formed the great confederacy, the Onondagas were first in the council,

and were also the high priests and titular head of the Six Nations. But

the Mohawks were first on-the war path.

All the Six Nations were divided into clans, and every clan, camping in

its proper place, was represented at this meeting.

Henry had heard much at Pittsburgh of the Six Nations, their wonderful

league, and their wonderful history. He knew that according to the

legend the league had been formed by Hiawatha, an Onondaga. He was

opposed in this plan by Tododaho, then head chief of the Onondagas,

but he went to the Mohawks and gained the support of their great

chief, Dekanawidah. With his aid the league was formed, and the solemn

agreement, never broken, was made at the Onondaga Lake. Now they were a

perfect little state, with fifty chiefs, or, including the head chiefs,

fifty-six.

Some of these details Henry was to learn later. He was also to learn

many of the words that the chiefs said through a source of which he

little dreamed at the present. Yet he divined much of it from the

meeting of the fiery Wyandots with the highly developed and warlike

power of the Six Nations.

Thayendanegea was talking now, and Timmendiquas, silent and grave, was

listening. The Mohawk approached his subject indirectly through the

trope, allegory, and simile that the Indian loved. He talked of the

unseen deities that ruled the life of the Iroquois through mystic

dreams. He spoke of the trees, the rocks, and the animals, all of which

to the Iroquois had souls. He called on the name of the Great Spirit,

which was Aieroski before it became Manitou, the Great Spirit who, in

the Iroquois belief, had only the size of a dwarf because his soul was

so mighty that he did not need body.

“This land is ours, the land of your people and mine, oh, chief of the

brave Wyandots,” he said to Timmendiquas. “Once there was no land, only

the waters, but Aieroski raised the land of Konspioni above the foam.

Then he sowed five handfuls of red seed in it, and from those handfuls

grew the Five Nations. Later grew up the Tuscaroras, who have joined

us and other tribes of our race, like yours, great chief of the brave

Wyandots.”

Timmendiquas still said nothing. He did not allow an eyelid to flicker

at this assumption of superiority for the Six Nations over all other

tribes. A great warrior he was, a great politician also, and he wished

to unite the Iroquois in a firm league with the tribes of the Ohio

valley. The coals from the great fire glowed and threw out an intense

heat. Thayendanegea unbuttoned his military coat and threw it back,

revealing a bare bronze chest, upon which was painted the device of

the Mohawks, a flint and steel. The chests of the Onondaga, Cayuga, and

Seneca head chiefs were also bared to the glow. The device on the chest

of the Onondaga was a cabin on top of a hill, the Caytiga's was a great

pipe, and the figure of a mountain adorned the Seneca bronze.

“We have had the messages that you have sent to us, Timmendiquas,”

said Thayendanegea, “and they are good in the eyes of our people, the

Rotinonsionni (the Mohawks). They please, too, the ancient tribe, the

Kannoseone (the Onondagas), the valiant Hotinonsionni (the Senecas), and

all our brethren of the Six Nations. All the land from the salt water to

the setting sun was given to the red men by Aieroski, but if we do not

defend it we cannot keep it.”

“It is so,” said Timmendiquas, speaking for the first time. “We have

fought them on the Ohio and in Kaintuck-ee, where they come with their

rifles and axes. The whole might of the Wyandots, the Shawnees, the

Miamis, the Illinois, the Delawares, and the Ottawas has gone forth

against them. We have slain many of them, but we have failed to drive

them back. Now we have come to ask the Six Nations to press down upon

them in the east with all your power, while we do the same in the west.

Surely then your Aieroski and our Manitou, who are the same, will not

refuse us success.”

The eyes of Thayendanegea glistened.

“You speak well, Timmendiquas,” he said. “All the red men must unite to

fight for the land of Konspioni which Aieroski raised above the sea, and

we be two, you and I, Timmendiquas, fit to lead them to battle.”

“It is so,” said Timmendiquas gravely.

CHAPTER V. THE IROQUOIS TOWN

Henry lay fully an hour in the bushes. He had forgotten about the dogs

that he dreaded, but evidently he was right in his surmise that the

camp contained none. Nothing disturbed him while he stared at what was

passing by the firelight. There could be no doubt that the meeting of

Timmendiquas and Thayendanegea portended great things, but he would not

be stirred from his task of rescuing his comrades or discovering their

fate.

They two, great chiefs, sat long in close converse. Others-older men,

chiefs, also-came at times and talked with them. But these two, proud,

dominating, both singularly handsome men of the Indian type, were always

there. Henry was almost ready to steal away when he saw a new figure

approaching the two chiefs. The walk and bearing of the stranger were

familiar, and HENRY knew him even before his face was lighted tip by

the fire. It was Braxton Wyatt, the renegade, who had escaped the great

battles on both the Ohio and the Mississippi, and who was here with the

Iroquois, ready to do to his own race all the evil that he could. Henry

felt a shudder of repulsion, deeper than any Indian could inspire in

him. They fought for their own land and their own people, but Braxton

Wyatt had violated everything that an honest man should hold sacred.

Henry, on the whole, was not surprised to see him. Such a chance was

sure to draw Braxton Wyatt. Moreover, the war, so far as it pertained to

the border, seemed to be sweeping toward the northeast, and it bore many

stormy petrels upon its crest.

He watched Wyatt as he walked toward one of the fires. There the

renegade sat down and talked with the warriors, apparently on the best

of terms. He was presently joined by two more renegades, whom Henry

recognized as Blackstaffe and Quarles. Timmendiquas and Thayendanegea

rose after a while, and walked toward the center of the camp, where

several of the bark shelters had been enclosed entirely. Henry judged

that one had been set apart for each, but they were lost from his view

when they passed within the circling ring of warriors.

Henry believed that the Iroquois and Wyandots would form a fortified

camp here, a place from which they would make sudden and terrible forays

upon the settlements. He based his opinion upon the good location and

the great number of saplings that had been cut down already. They would

build strong lodges and then a palisade around them with the saplings.

He was speedily confirmed in this opinion when he saw warriors come to

the forest with hatchets and begin to cut down more saplings. He knew

then that it was time to go, as a wood chopper might blunder upon him at

any time.

He slipped from his covert and was quickly gone in the forest. His limbs

were somewhat stiff from lying so long in one position, but that soon

wore away, and he was comparatively fresh when he came once more to the

islet in the swamp. A good moon was now shining, tipping the forest with

a fine silvery gray, and Henry purveyed with the greatest satisfaction

the simple little shelter that he had found so opportunely. It was a

good house, too, good to such a son of the deepest forest as was Henry.

It was made of nothing but bark and poles, but it had kept out all

that long, penetrating rain of the last three or four days, and when he

lifted the big stone aside and opened the door it seemed as snug a place

as he could have wished.

He left the door open a little, lighted a small fire on the flat stones,

having no fear that it would be seen through the dense curtain that shut

him in, and broiled big bear steaks on the coals. When he had eaten

and the fire had died he went out and sat beside the hut. He was well

satisfied with the day's work, and he wished now to think with all

the concentration that one must put upon a great task if he expects to

achieve it. He intended to invade the Indian camp, and he knew full well

that it was the most perilous enterprise that he had ever attempted.

Yet scouts and hunters had done such things and had escaped with their

lives. He must not shrink from the path that others had trodden.

He made up his mind firmly, and partly thought out his plan of

operations. Then he rested, and so sanguine was his temperament that he

began to regard the deed itself as almost achieved. Decision is always

soothing after doubt, and he fell into a pleasant dreamy state. A gentle

wind was blowing, the forest was dry and the leaves rustled with the low

note that is like the softest chord of a violin. It became penetrating,

thrillingly sweet, and hark! it spoke to him in a voice that he knew.

It was the same voice that he had heard on the Ohio, mystic, but telling

him to be of heart and courage. He would triumph over hardships and

dangers, and he would see his friends again.

Henry started up from his vision. The song was gone, and he heard only

the wind softly moving the leaves. It had been vague and shadowy as

gossamer, light as the substance of a dream, but it was real to him,

nevertheless, and the deep glow of certain triumph permeated his being,

body and mind. It was not strange that he had in his nature something

of the Indian mysticism that personified the winds and the trees

and everything about him. The Manitou of the red man and the ancient

Aieroski of the Iroquois were the same as his own God. He could not

doubt that he had a message. Down on the Ohio he had had the same

message more than once, and it had always come true.

He heard a slight rustling among the bushes, and, sitting perfectly

still, he saw a black bear emerge into the open. It had gained the islet

in some manner, probably floundering through the black mire, and the

thought occurred to him that it was the mate of the one he had slain,

drawn perhaps by instinct on the trail of a lost comrade. He could

have shot the bear as he sat-and he would need fresh supplies of food

soon-but he did not have the heart to do it.

The bear sniffed a little at the wind, which was blowing the human odor

away from him, and sat back on his haunches. Henry did not believe that

the animal had seen him or was yet aware of his presence, although he

might suspect. There was something humorous and also pathetic in the

visitor, who cocked his head on one side and looked about him. He made

a distinct appeal to Henry, who sat absolutely still, so still that

the little bear could not be sure at first that he was a human being.

A minute passed, and the red eye of the bear rested upon the boy. Henry

felt pleasant and sociable, but he knew that he could retain friendly

relations only by remaining quiet.

“If I have eaten your comrade, my friend,” he said to himself, “it is

only because of hard necessity.” The bear, little, comic, and yet with

that touch of pathos about him, cocked his head a little further over on

one side, and as a silver shaft of moonlight fell upon him Henry could

see one red eye gleaming. It was a singular fact, but the boy, alone

in the wilderness, and the loser of his comrades, felt for the moment a

sense of comradeship with the bear, which was also alone, and doubtless

the loser of a comrade, also. He uttered a soft growling sound like the

satisfied purr of a bear eating its food.

The comical bear rose a little higher on his hind paws, and looked in

astonishment at the motionless figure that uttered sounds so familiar.

Yet the figure was not familiar. He had never seen a human being before,

and the shape and outline were very strange to him. It might be some new

kind of animal, and he was disposed to be inquiring, because there was

nothing in these forests which the black bear was afraid of until man

came.

He advanced a step or two and growled gently. Then he reared up again

on his hind paws, and cocked his held to one side in his amusing manner.

Henry, still motionless, smiled at him. Here, for an instant at least,

was a cheery visitor and companionship. He at least would not break the

spell.

“You look almost as if you could talk, old fellow,” he said to himself,

“and if I knew your language I'd ask you a lot of questions.”

The bear, too, was motionless now, torn by doubt and curiosity. It

certainly was a singular figure that sat there, fifteen or twenty yards

before him, and he had the most intense curiosity to solve the mystery

of this creature. But caution held him back.

There was a sudden flaw in the light breeze. It shifted about and

brought the dreadful man odor to the nostrils of the honest black bear.

It was something entirely new to him, but it contained the quality of

fear. That still strange figure was his deadliest foe. Dropping down

upon his four paws, he fled among the trees, and then scrambled somehow

through the swamp to the mainland.

Henry sighed. Despite his own friendly feeling, the bear, warned by

instinct, was afraid of him, and, as he was bound to acknowledge to

himself, the bear's instinct was doubtless right. He rose, went into

the hut, and slept heavily through the night. In the morning he left

the islet once more to scout in the direction of the Indian camp, but he

found it a most dangerous task. The woods were full of warriors hunting.

As he had judged, the game was abundant, and he heard rifles cracking

in several directions. He loitered, therefore, in the thickest of the

thickets, willing to wait until night came for his enterprise. It was

advisable, moreover, to wait, because he did not see yet just how he was

going to succeed. He spent nearly the whole day shifting here and there

through the forest, but late in the afternoon, as the Indians yet seemed

so numerous in the woods, he concluded to go back toward the islet.

He was about two miles from the swamp when he heard a cry, sharp but

distant. It was that of the savages, and Henry instinctively divined the

cause. A party of the warriors had come somehow upon his trail, and they

would surely follow it. It was a mischance that he had not expected.

He waited a minute or two, and then heard the cry again, but nearer.

He knew that it would come no more, but it confirmed him in his first

opinion.

Henry had little fear of being caught, as the islet was so securely

hidden, but he did not wish to take even a remote chance of its

discovery. Hence he ran to the eastward of it, intending as the darkness

came, hiding his trail, to double back and regain the hut.

He proceeded at a long, easy gait, his mind not troubled by the pursuit.

It was to him merely an incident that should be ended as soon as

possible, annoying perhaps, but easily cured. So he swung lightly along,

stopping at intervals among the bushes to see if any of the warriors had

drawn near, but he detected nothing. Now and then he looked up to the

sky, willing that night should end this matter quickly and peacefully.

His wish seemed near fulfillment. An uncommonly brilliant sun was

setting. The whole west was a sea of red and yellow fire, but in the

east the forest was already sinking into the dark. He turned now, and

went back toward the west on a line parallel with the pursuit, but much

closer to the swamp. The dusk thickened rapidly. The sun dropped over

the curve of the world, and the vast complex maze of trunks and boughs

melted into a solid black wall. The incident of the pursuit was over and

with it its petty annoyances. He directed his course boldly now for the

stepping stones, and traveled fast. Soon the first of them would be less

than a hundred yards away.

But the incident was not over. Wary and skillful though the young forest

runner might be, he had made one miscalculation, and it led to great

consequences. As he skirted the edge of the swamp in the darkness, now

fully come, a dusky figure suddenly appeared. It was a stray warrior

from some small band, wandering about at will. The meeting was probably

as little expected by him as it was by Henry, and they were so close

together when they saw each other that neither had time to raise his

rifle. The warrior, a tall, powerful man, dropping his gun and snatching

out a knife, sprang at once upon his enemy.

Henry was borne back by the weight and impact, but, making an immense

effort, he recovered himself and, seizing the wrist of the Indian's

knife hand, exerted all his great strength. The warrior wished to change

the weapon from his right band, but he dared not let go with the other

lest he be thrown down at once, and with great violence. His first

rush having failed, he was now at a disadvantage, as the Indian is not

generally a wrestler. Henry pushed him back, and his hand closed tighter

and tighter around the red wrist. He wished to tear the knife from it,

but he, too, was afraid to let go with the other hand, and so the two

remained locked fast. Neither uttered a cry after the first contact, and

the only sounds in the dark were their hard breathing, which turned to a

gasp now and then, and the shuffle of their feet over the earth.

Henry felt that it must end soon. One or the other must give way. Their

sinews were already strained to the cracking point, and making a supreme

effort he bore all his weight upon the warrior, who, unable to sustain

himself, went down with the youth upon him. The Indian uttered a groan,

and Henry, leaping instantly to his feet, looked down upon his fallen

antagonist, who did not stir. He knew the cause. As they fell the point

of the knife bad been turned upward, and it had entered the Indian's

heart.

Although he had been in peril at his hands, Henry looked at the slain

man in a sort of pity. He had not wished to take anyone's life, and, in

reality, he had not been the direct cause of it. But it was a stern time

and the feeling soon passed. The Wyandot, for such he was by his paint,

would never have felt a particle of remorse had the victory been his.

The moon was now coming out, and Henry looked down thoughtfully at the

still face. Then the idea came to him, in fact leaped up in his brain,

with such an impulse that it carried conviction. He would take this

warrior's place and go to the Indian camp. So eager was he, and so

full of his plan, that he did not feel any repulsion as he opened the

warrior's deerskin shirt and took his totem from a place near his heart.

It was a little deerskin bag containing a bunch of red feathers. This

was his charm, his magic spell, his bringer of good luck, which had

failed him so woefully this time. Henry, not without a touch of the

forest belief, put it inside his own hunting shirt, wishing, although

he laughed at himself, that if the red man's medicine had any potency it

should be on his own side.

Then he found also the little bag in which the Indian carried his war

paint and the feather brush with which he put it on. The next hour

witnessed a singular transformation. A white youth was turned into a red

warrior. He cut his own hair closely, all except a tuft in the center,

with his sharp hunting knife. The tuft and the close crop he stained

black with the Indian's paint. It was a poor black, but he hoped that

it would pass in the night. He drew the tuft into a scalplock, and

intertwined it with a feather from the Indian's own tuft. Then he

stained his face, neck, hands, and arms with the red paint, and stood

forth a powerful young warrior of a western nation.

He hid the Indian's weapons and his own raccoon-skin cap in the brush.

Then he took the body of the fallen warrior to the edge of the swamp and

dropped it in. His object was not alone concealment, but burial as well.

He still felt sorry for the unfortunate Wyandot, and he watched him

until he sank completely from sight in the mire. Then he turned away and

traveled a straight course toward the great Indian camp.

He stopped once on the way at a clear pool irradiated by the bright

moonlight, and looked attentively at his reflection. By night, at least,

it was certainly that of an Indian, and, summoning all his confidence,

he continued upon his chosen and desperate task.

Henry knew that the chances were against him, even with his disguise,

but he was bound to enter the Indian camp, and he was prepared to incur

all risks and to endure all penalties. He even felt a certain lightness

of heart as he hurried on his way, and at length saw through the forest

the flare of light from the Indian camp.

He approached cautiously at first in order that he might take a good

look into the camp, and he was surprised at what he saw. In a single

day the village had been enlarged much more. It seemed to him that it

contained at least twice as many warriors. Women and children, too, had

come, and he heard a stray dog barking here and there. Many more fires

than usual were burning, and there was a great murmur of voices.

Henry was much taken aback at first. It seemed that he was about to

plunge into the midst of the whole Iroquois nation, and at a time,

too, when something of extreme importance was going on, but a little

reflection showed that he was fortunate. Amid so many people, and so

much ferment it was not at all likely that he would be noticed closely.

It was his intention, if the necessity came, to pass himself off as a

warrior of the Shawnee tribe who had wandered far eastward, but he meant

to avoid sedulously the eye of Timmendiquas, who might, through his size

and stature, divine his identity.

As Henry lingered at the edge of the camp, in indecision whether to wait

a little or plunge boldly into the light of the fires, he became aware

that all sounds in the village-for such it was instead of a camp-had

ceased suddenly, except the light tread of feet and the sound of many

people talking low. He saw through the bushes that all the Iroquois, and

with them the detachment of Wyandots under White Lightning, were going

toward a large structure in the center, which he surmised to be the

Council House. He knew from his experience with the Indians farther west

that the Iroquois built such structures.

He could no longer doubt that some ceremony of the greatest importance

was about to begin, and, dismissing indecision, he left the bushes

and entered the village, going with the crowd toward the great pole

building, which was, indeed, the Council House.

But little attention was paid to Henry. He would have drawn none at all,

had it not been for his height, and when a warrior or two glanced at him

he uttered some words in Shawnee, saying that he had wandered far,

and was glad to come to the hospitable Iroquois. One who could speak

a little Shawnee bade him welcome, and they went on, satisfied, their

minds more intent upon the ceremony than upon a visitor.

The Council House, built of light poles and covered with poles and

thatch, was at least sixty feet long and about thirty feet wide, with a

large door on the eastern side, and one or two smaller ones on the other

sides. As Henry arrived, the great chiefs and sub-chiefs of the Iroquois

were entering the building, and about it were grouped many warriors and

women, and even children. But all preserved a decorous solemnity, and,

knowing the customs of the forest people so well, he was sure that the

ceremony, whatever it might be, must be of a highly sacred nature. He

himself drew to one side, keeping as much as possible in the shadow,

but he was using to its utmost power every faculty of observation that

Nature had given him.

Many of the fires were still burning, but the moon had come out with

great brightness, throwing a silver light over the whole village, and

investing with attributes that savored of the mystic and impressive

this ceremony, held by a savage but great race here in the depths of the

primeval forest. Henry was about to witness a Condoling Council, which

was at once a mourning for chiefs who had fallen in battle farther east

with his own people and the election and welcome of their successors.

The chiefs presently came forth from the Council House or, as it was

more generally called, the Long House, and, despite the greatness of

Thayendanegea, those of the Onondaga tribe, in virtue of their ancient

and undisputed place as the political leaders and high priests of

the Six Nations, led the way. Among the stately Onondaga chiefs were:

Atotarho (The Entangled), Skanawati (Beyond the River), Tehatkahtons

(Looking Both Ways), Tehayatkwarayen (Red Wings), and Hahiron (The

Scattered). They were men of stature and fine countenance, proud of

the titular primacy that belonged to them because it was the Onondaga,

Hiawatha, who had formed the great confederacy more than four hundred

years before our day, or just about the time Columbus was landing on the

shores of the New World.

Next to the Onondagas came the fierce and warlike Mohawks, who lived

nearest to Albany, who were called Keepers of the Eastern Gate, and who

were fully worthy of their trust. They were content that the Onondagas

should lead in council, so long as they were first in battle, and there

was no jealousy between them. Among their chiefs were Koswensiroutha

(Broad Shoulders) and Satekariwate (Two Things Equal).

Third in rank were the Senecas, and among their chiefs were Kanokarih

(The Threatened) and Kanyadariyo (Beautiful Lake).

These three, the Onondagas, Mohawks, and Senecas, were esteemed the

three senior nations. After them, in order of precedence, came

the chiefs of the three junior nations, the Oneidas, Cayugas, and

Tuscaroras. All of the great chiefs had assistant chiefs, usually

relatives, who, in case of death, often succeeded to their places. But

these assistants now remained in the crowd with other minor chiefs and

the mass of the warriors. A little apart stood Timmendiquas and his

Wyandots. He, too, was absorbed in the ceremony so sacred to him, an

Indian, and he did not notice the tall figure of the strange Shawnee

lingering in the deepest of the shadows.

The head chiefs, walking solemnly and never speaking, marched across the

clearing, and then through the woods to a glen, where two young warriors

had kindled a little fire of sticks as a signal of welcome. The chiefs

gathered around the fire and spoke together in low tones. This was

Deyuhnyon Kwarakda, which means “The Reception at the Edge of the Wood.”

Henry and some others followed, as it was not forbidden to see, and his

interest increased. He shared the spiritual feeling which was impressed

upon the red faces about him. The bright moonlight, too, added to the

effect, giving it the tinge of an old Druidical ceremony.

The chiefs relapsed into silence and sat thus about ten minutes. Then

rose the sound of a chant, distant and measured, and a procession of

young and inferior chiefs, led by Oneidas, appeared, slowly approaching

the fire. Behind them were warriors, and behind the warriors were many

women and children. All the women were in their brightest attire, gay

with feather headdresses and red, blue, or green blankets from the

British posts.

The procession stopped at a distance of about a dozen yards from the

chiefs about the council fire, and the Oneida, Kathlahon, formed the men

in a line facing the head chiefs, with the women and children grouped

in an irregular mass behind them. The singing meanwhile had stopped. The

two groups stood facing each other, attentive and listening.

Then Hahiron, the oldest of the Onondagas, walked back and forth in the

space between the two groups, chanting a welcome. Like all Indian songs

it was monotonous. Every line he uttered with emphasis and a rising

inflection, the phrase “Haih-haih” which may be translated “Hail to

thee!” or better, “All hail!” Nevertheless, under the moonlight in the

wilderness and with rapt faces about him, it was deeply impressive.

Henry found it so.

Hahiron finished his round and went back to his place by the fire.

Atotarho, head chief of the Onondagas, holding in his hands beautifully

beaded strings of Iroquois wampum, came forward and made a speech of

condolence, to which Kathlahon responded. Then the head chiefs and

the minor chiefs smoked pipes together, after which the head chiefs,

followed by the minor chiefs, and these in turn by the crowd, led the

way back to the village.

Many hundreds of persons were in this procession, which was still very

grave and solemn, every one in it impressed by the sacred nature of

this ancient rite. The chief entered the great door of the Long House,

and all who could find places not reserved followed. Henry went in with

the others, and sat in a corner, making himself as small as possible.

Many women, the place of whom was high among the Iroquois, were also in

the Long House.

The head chiefs sat on raised seats at the north end of the great room.

In front of them, on lower seats, were the minor chiefs of the three

older nations on the left, and of the three younger nations on the

right. In front of these, but sitting on the bark floor, was a group of

warriors. At the east end, on both high and low seats, were warriors,

and facing them on the western side were women, also on both high

and low seats. The southern side facing the chiefs was divided into

sections, each with high and low seats. The one on the left was occupied

by men, and the one on the right by women. Two small fires burned in the

center of the Long House about fifteen feet apart.

It was the most singular and one of the most impressive scenes that

Henry had ever beheld. When all had found their seats there was a deep

silence. Henry could hear the slight crackling made by the two fires as

they burned, and the light fell faintly across the multitude of dark,

eager faces. Not less than five hundred people were in the Long House,

and here was the red man at his best, the first of the wild, not the

second or third of the civilized, a drop of whose blood in his veins

brings to the white man now a sense of pride, and not of shame, as it

does when that blood belongs to some other races.

The effect upon Henry was singular. He almost forgot that he was a foe

among them on a mission. For the moment he shared in their feelings, and

he waited with eagerness for whatever might come.

Thayendanegea, the Mohawk, stood up in his place among the great chiefs.

The role he was about to assume belonged to Atotarho, the Onondaga,

but the old Onondaga assigned it for the occasion to Thayendanegea, and

there was no objection. Thayendanegea was an educated man, he had been

in England, he was a member of a Christian church, and he had translated

a part of the Bible from English into his own tongue, but now he was all

a Mohawk, a son of the forest.

He spoke to the listening crowd of the glories of the Six Nations, how

Hah-gweh-di-yu (The Spirit of Good) had inspired Hiawatha to form the

Great Confederacy of the Five Nations, afterwards the Six; how they had

held their hunting grounds for nearly two centuries against both English

and French; and how they would hold them against the Americans. He

stopped at moments, and deep murmurs of approval went through the Long

House. The eyes of both men and women flashed as the orator spoke of

their glory and greatness. Timmendiquas, in a place of honor, nodded

approval. If he could he would form such another league in the west.

The air in the Long House, breathed by so many, became heated. It seemed

to have in it a touch of fire. The orator's words burned. Swift and deep

impressions were left upon the excited brain. The tall figure of the

Mohawk towered, gigantic, in the half light, and the spell that he threw

over all was complete.

He spoke about half an hour, but when he stopped he did not sit down.

Henry knew by the deep breath that ran through the Long House that

something more was coming from Thayendanegea. Suddenly the red chief

began to sing in a deep, vibrant voice, and this was the song that he

sung:

This was the roll of you,

All hail! All hail! All hail!

You that joined in the work,

All hail! All hail! All hail!

You that finished the task,

All hail! All hail! All hail!

The Great League,

All hail! All hail! All hail!

There was the same incessant repetition of “Haih haih!” that Henry had

noticed in the chant at the edge of the woods, but it seemed to give a

cumulative effect, like the roll of thunder, and at every slight pause

that deep breath of approval ran through the crowd in the Long House.

The effect of the song was indescribable. Fire ran in the veins of all,

men, women, and children. The great pulses in their throats leaped up.

They were the mighty nation, the ever-victorious, the League of the

Ho-de-no-sau-nee, that had held at bay both the French and the English

since first a white man was seen in the land, and that would keep back

the Americans now.

Henry glanced at Timmendiquas. The nostrils of the great White Lightning

were twitching. The song reached to the very roots of his being, and

aroused all his powers. Like Thayendanegea, he was a statesman, and he

saw that the Americans were far more formidable to his race than

English or French had ever been. The Americans were upon the ground, and

incessantly pressed upon the red man, eye to eye. Only powerful leagues

like those of the Iroquois could withstand them.

Thayendanegea sat down, and then there was another silence, a period

lasting about two minutes. These silences seemed to be a necessary part

of all Iroquois rites. When it closed two young warriors stretched an

elm bark rope across the room from east to west and near the ceiling,

but between the high chiefs and the minor chiefs. Then they hung dressed

skins all along it, until the two grades of chiefs were hidden from the

view of each other. This was the sign of mourning, and was followed by a

silence. The fires in the Long House had died down somewhat, and little

was to be seen but the eyes and general outline of the people. Then a

slender man of middle years, the best singer in all the Iroquois nation,

arose and sang:

To the great chiefs bring we greeting,

All hail! All hail! All hail!

To the dead chiefs, kindred greeting,

All hail! All hail! All hail!

To the strong men 'round him greeting,

All hail! All hail! All hail!

To the mourning women greeting,

All hail! All hail! All hail!

There our grandsires' words repeating,

All hail! All hail! All hail!

Graciously, Oh, grandsires, hear,

All hail! All hail! All hail!

The singing voice was sweet, penetrating, and thrilling, and the song

was sad. At the pauses deep murmurs of sorrow ran through the crowd

in the Long House. Grief for the dead held them all. When he finished,

Satekariwate, the Mohawk, holding in his hands three belts of wampum,

uttered a long historical chant telling of their glorious deeds, to

which they listened patiently. The chant over, he handed the belts to

an attendant, who took them to Thayendanegea, who held them for a few

moments and looked at them gravely.

One of the wampum belts was black, the sign of mourning; another was

purple, the sign of war; and the third was white, the sign of peace.

They were beautiful pieces of workmanship, very old.

When Hiawatha left the Onondagas and fled to the Mohawks he crossed a

lake supposed to be the Oneida. While paddling along he noticed that man

tiny black, purple, and white shells clung to his paddle. Reaching the

shore he found such shells in long rows upon the beach, and it occurred

to him to use them for the depiction of thought according to color. He

strung them on threads of elm bark, and afterward, when the great league

was formed, the shells were made to represent five clasped hands. For

four hundred years the wampum belts have been sacred among the Iroquois.

Now Thayendanegea gave the wampum belts back to the attendant, who

returned them to Satekariwate, the Mohawk. There was a silence once

more, and then the chosen singer began the Consoling Song again, but now

he did not sing it alone. Two hundred male voices joined him, and

the time became faster. Its tone changed from mourning and sorrow

to exultation and menace. Everyone thought of war, the tomahawk, and

victory. The song sung as it was now became a genuine battle song,

rousing and thrilling. The Long House trembled with the mighty chorus,

and its volume poured forth into the encircling dark woods.

All the time the song was going on, Satekariwate, the Mohawk, stood

holding the belts in his hand, but when it was over he gave them to an

attendant, who carried them to another head chief. Thayendanegea now

went to the center of the room and, standing between the two fires,

asked who were the candidates for the places of the dead chiefs.

The dead chiefs were three, and three tall men, already chosen among

their own tribes, came forward to succeed them. Then a fourth came, and

Henry was startled. It was Timmendiquas, who, as the bravest chief of

the brave Wyandots, was about to become, as a signal tribute, and as

a great sign of friendship, an adopted son and honorary chief of the

Mohawks, Keepers of the Western Gate, and most warlike of all the

Iroquois tribes.

As Timmendiquas stood before Thayendanegea, a murmur of approval deeper

than any that had gone before ran through all the crowd in the Long

House, and it was deepest on the women's benches, where sat many matrons

of the Iroquois, some of whom were chiefs-a woman could be a chief among

the Iroquois.

The candidates were adjudged acceptable by the other chiefs, and

Thayendanegea addressed them on their duties, while they listened

in grave silence. With his address the sacred part of the rite was

concluded. Nothing remained now but the great banquet outside--although

that was much--and they poured forth to it joyously, Thayendanegea, the

Mohawk, and Timmendiquas, the Wyandot, walking side by side, the finest

two red chiefs on all the American continent.

CHAPTER VI. THE EVIL SPIRIT'S WORK

Henry slipped forth with the crowd from the Long House, stooping

somewhat and shrinking into the smallest possible dimensions. But there

was little danger now that any one would notice him, as long as he

behaved with prudence, because all grief and solemnity were thrown

aside, and a thousand red souls intended to rejoice. A vast banquet was

arranged. Great fires leaped up all through the village. At every fire

the Indian women, both young and old, were already far forward with the

cooking. Deer, bear, squirrel, rabbit, fish, and every other variety

of game with which the woods and rivers of western New York and

Pennsylvania swarmed were frying or roasting over the coals, and the air

was permeated with savory odors. There was a great hum of voices and

an incessant chattering. Here in the forest, among themselves, and in

complete security, the Indian stoicism was relaxed. According to their

customs everybody fell to eating at a prodigious rate, as if they had

not tasted anything for a month, and as if they intended to eat enough

now to last another month.

It was far into the night, because the ceremonies had lasted a long

time, but a brilliant moon shone down upon the feasting crowd, and the

flames of the great fires, yellow and blue, leaped and danced. This was

an oasis of light and life. Timmendiquas and Thayendanegea sat together

before the largest fire, and they ate with more restraint than the

others. Even at the banquet they would not relax their dignity as

great chiefs. Old Skanawati, the Onondaga, old Atotarho, Onondaga, too,

Satekariwate, the Mohawk, Kanokarih, the Seneca, and others, head chiefs

though they were of the three senior tribes, did not hesitate to eat as

the rich Romans of the Empire ate, swallowing immense quantities of all

kinds of meat, and drinking a sort of cider that the women made. Several

warriors ate and drank until they fell down in a stupor by the fires.

The same warriors on the hunt or the war path would go for days without

food, enduring every manner of hardship. Now and then a warrior would

leap up and begin a chant telling of some glorious deed of his. Those at

his own fire would listen, but elsewhere they took no notice.

In the largest open space a middle-aged Onondaga with a fine face

suddenly uttered a sharp cry: “Hehmio!” which he rapidly repeated twice.

Two score voices instantly replied, “Heh!” and a rush was made for him.

At least a hundred gathered around him, but they stood in a respectful

circle, no one nearer than ten feet. He waved his hand, and all sat down

on the ground. Then, he, too, sat down, all gazing at him intently and

with expectancy.

He was a professional story-teller, an institution great and honored

among the tribes of the Iroquois farther back even than Hiawatha. He

began at once the story of the warrior who learned to talk with the

deer and the bear, carrying it on through many chapters. Now and then a

delighted listener would cry “Hah!” but if anyone became bored and fell

asleep it was considered an omen of misfortune to the sleeper, and he

was chased ignominiously to his tepee. The Iroquois romancer was better

protected than the white one is. He could finish some of his stories in

one evening, but others were serials. When he arrived at the end of the

night's installment he would cry, “Si-ga!” which was equivalent to our

“To be continued in our next.” Then all would rise, and if tired would

seek sleep, but if not they would catch the closing part of some other

story-teller's romance.

At three fires Senecas were playing a peculiar little wooden flute of

their own invention, that emitted wailing sounds not without a certain

sweetness. In a corner a half dozen warriors hurt in battle were bathing

their wounds with a soothing lotion made from the sap of the bass wood.

Henry lingered a while in the darkest corners, witnessing the feasting,

hearing the flutes and the chants, listening for a space to the

story-tellers and the enthusiastic “Hahs!” They were so full of feasting

and merrymaking now that one could almost do as he pleased, and he stole

toward the southern end of the village, where he had noticed several

huts, much more strongly built than the others. Despite all his natural

skill and experience his heart beat very fast when he came to the first.

He was about to achieve the great exploration upon which he had ventured

so much. Whether he would find anything at the end of the risk he ran,

he was soon to see.

The hut, about seven feet square and as many feet in height, was built

strongly of poles, with a small entrance closed by a clapboard door

fastened stoutly on the outside with withes. The hut was well in the

shadow of tepees, and all were still at the feasting and merrymaking.

He cut the withes with two sweeps of his sharp hunting knife, opened the

door, bent his head, stepped in and then closed the door behind him, in

order that no Iroquois might see what had happened.

It was not wholly dark in the hut, as there were cracks between the

poles, and bars of moonlight entered, falling upon a floor of bark. They

revealed also a figure lying full length on one side of the hut. A great

pulse of joy leaped up in Henry's throat, and with it was a deep pity,

also. The figure was that of Shif'less Sol, but he was pale and thin,

and his arms and legs were securely bound with thongs of deerskin.

Leaning over, Henry cut the thongs of the shiftless one, but he did not

stir. Great forester that Shif'less Sol was, and usually so sensitive to

the lightest movement, he perceived nothing now, and, had he not found

him bound, Henry would have been afraid that he was looking upon his

dead comrade. The hands of the shiftless one, when the hands were cut,

had fallen limply by his side, and his face looked all the more pallid

by contrast with the yellow hair which fell in length about it. But it

was his old-time friend, the dauntless Shif'less Sol, the last of the

five to vanish so mysteriously.

Henry bent down and pulled him by the shoulder. The captive yawned,

stretched himself a little, and lay still again with closed eyes.

Henry shook him a second time and more violently. Shif'less Sol sat up

quickly, and Henry knew that indignation prompted the movement. Sol held

his arms and legs stiffly and seemed to be totally unconscious that they

were unbound. He cast one glance upward, and in the dim light saw the

tall warrior bending over him.

“I'll never do it, Timmendiquas or White Lightning, whichever name you

like better!” he exclaimed. “I won't show you how to surprise the white

settlements. You can burn me at the stake or tear me in pieces first.

Now go away and let me sleep.”

He sank back on the bark, and started to close his eyes again. It was

then that he noticed for the first time that his hands were unbound.

He held them up before his face, as if they were strange objects wholly

unattached to himself, and gazed at them in amazement. He moved his legs

and saw that they, too, were unbound. Then he turned his startled gaze

upward at the face of the tall warrior who was looking down at him.

Shif'less Sol was wholly awake now. Every faculty in him was alive, and

he pierced through the Shawnee disguise. He knew who it was. He knew

who had come to save him, and he sprang to his feet, exclaiming the one

word:

“Henry!”

The hands of the comrades met in the clasp of friendship which only many

dangers endured together can give.

“How did you get here?” asked the shiftless one in a whisper.

“I met an Indian in the forest,” replied Henry, “and well I am now he.”

Shif'less Sol laughed under his breath.

“I see,” said he, “but how did you get through the camp? It's a big

one, and the Iroquois are watchful. Timmendiquas is here, too, with his

Wyandots.”

“They are having a great feast,” replied Henry, “and I could go about

almost unnoticed. Where are the others, Sol?”

“In the cabins close by.”

“Then we'll get out of this place. Quick! Tie up your hair! In the

darkness you can easily pass for an Indian.”

The shiftless one drew his hair into a scalp lock, and the two slipped

from the cabin, closing the door behind them and deftly retying the

thongs, in order that the discovery of the escape might occur as late

as possible. Then they stood a few moments in the shadow of the hut and

listened to the sounds of revelry, the monotone of the story-tellers,

and the chant of the singers.

“You don't know which huts they are in, do you?” asked Henry, anxiously.

“No, I don't,” replied the shiftless one.

“Get back!” exclaimed Henry softly. “Don't you see who's passing out

there?”

“Braxton Wyatt,” said Sol. “I'd like to get my hands on that scoundrel.

I've had to stand a lot from him.”

“The score must wait. But first we'll provide you with weapons. See,

the Iroquois have stacked some of their rifles here while they're at the

feast.”

A dozen good rifles had been left leaning against a hut near by, and

Henry, still watching lest he be observed, chose the best, with its

ammunition, for his comrade, who, owing to his semi-civilized attire,

still remained in the shadow of the other hut.

“Why not take four?” whispered the shiftless one. “We'll need them for

the other boys.”

Henry took four, giving two to his comrade, and then they hastily

slipped back to the other side of the hut. A Wyandot and a Mohawk were

passing, and they had eyes of hawks. Henry and Sol waited until the

formidable pair were gone, and then began to examine the huts, trying to

surmise in which their comrades lay.

“I haven't seen 'em a-tall, a-tall,” said Sol, “but I reckon from the

talk that they are here. I was s'prised in the woods, Henry. A half

dozen reds jumped on me so quick I didn't have time to draw a weepin.

Timmendiquas was at the head uv 'em an' he just grinned. Well, he is a

great chief, if he did truss me up like a fowl. I reckon the same thing

happened to the others.”

“Come closer, Sol! Come closer!” whispered Henry. “More warriors are

walking this way. The feast is breaking up, and they'll spread all

through the camp.”

A terrible problem was presented to the two. They could no longer search

among the strong huts, for their comrades. The opportunity to save had

lasted long enough for one only. But border training is stern, and these

two had uncommon courage and decision.

“We must go now, Sol,” said Henry, “but we'll come back.”

“Yes,” said the shiftless one, “we'll come back.”

Darting between the huts, they gained the southern edge of the forest

before the satiated banqueters could suspect the presence of an enemy.

Here they felt themselves safe, but they did not pause. Henry led the

way, and Shif'less Sol followed at a fair degree of speed.

“You'll have to be patient with me for a little while, Henry,” said

Sol in a tone of humility. “When I wuz layin' thar in the lodge with my

hands an' feet tied I wuz about eighty years old, jest ez stiff ez could

be from the long tyin'. When I reached the edge o' the woods the blood

wuz flowin' lively enough to make me 'bout sixty. Now I reckon I'm

fifty, an' ef things go well I'll be back to my own nateral age in two

or three hours.”

“You shall have rest before morning,” said Henry, “and it will be in a

good place, too. I can promise that.”

Shif'less Sol looked at him inquiringly, but he did not say anything.

Like the rest of the five, Sol had acquired the most implicit confidence

in their bold young leader. He had every reason to feel good. That

painful soreness was disappearing from his ankles. As they advanced

through the woods, weeks dropped from him one by one. Then the months

began to roll away, and at last time fell year by year. As they

approached the deeps of the forest where the swamp lay, Solomon Hyde,

the so called shiftless one, and wholly undeserving of the name, was

young again.

“I've got a fine little home for us, Sol,” said Henry. “Best we've had

since that time we spent a winter on the island in the lake. This is

littler, but it's harder to find. It'll be a fine thing to know you're

sleeping safe and sound with five hundred Iroquois warriors only a few

miles away.”

“Then it'll suit me mighty well,” said Shif'less Sol, grinning broadly.

“That's jest the place fur a lazy man like your humble servant, which is

me.”

They reached the stepping stones, and Henry paused a moment.

“Do you feel steady enough, Sol, to jump from stone to stone?” he asked.

“I'm feelin' so good I could fly ef I had to,” he replied. “Jest you

jump on, Henry, an' fur every jump you take you'll find me only one jump

behind you!”

Henry, without further ado, sprang from one stone to another, and behind

him, stone for stone, came the shiftless one. It was now past midnight,

and the moon was obscured. The keenest eyes twenty yards away could

not have seen the two dusky figures as they went by leaps into the very

heart of the great, black swamp. They reached the solid ground, and then

the hut.

“Here, Sol,” said Henry, “is my house, and yours, also, and soon, I

hope, to be that of Paul, Tom, and Jim, too.”

“Henry,” said Shif'less Sol, “I'm shorely glad to come.”

They went inside, stacked their captured rifles against the wall, and

soon were sound asleep.

Meanwhile sleep was laying hold of the Iroquois village, also. They had

eaten mightily and they had drunk mightily. Many times had they told the

glories of Hode-no-sau-nee, the Great League, and many times had they

gladly acknowledged the valor and worth of Timmendiquas and the brave

little Wyandot nation. Timmendiquas and Thayendanegea had sat side

by side throughout the feast, but often other great chiefs were with

them-Skanawati, Atotarho, and Hahiron, the Onondagas; Satekariwate, the

Mohawk; Kanokarih and Kanyadoriyo, the Senecas; and many others.

Toward midnight the women and the children left for the lodges, and soon

the warriors began to go also, or fell asleep on the ground, wrapped

in their blankets. The fires were allowed to sink low, and at last the

older chiefs withdrew, leaving only Timmendiquas and Thayendanegea.

“You have seen the power and spirit of the Iroquois,” said

Thayendanegea. “We can bring many more warriors than are here into the

field, and we will strike the white settlements with you.”

“The Wyandots are not so many as the warriors of the Great League,” said

Timmendiquas proudly, “but no one has ever been before them in battle.”

“You speak truth, as I have often heard it,” said Thayendanegea

thoughtfully. Then he showed Timmendiquas to a lodge of honor, the

finest in the village, and retired to his own.

The great feast was over, but the chiefs had come to a momentous

decision. Still chafing over their defeat at Oriskany, they would make

a new and formidable attack upon the white settlements, and Timmendiquas

and his fierce Wyandots would help them. All of them, from the oldest

to the youngest, rejoiced in the decision, and, not least, the famous

Thayendanegea. He hated the Americans most because they were upon

the soil, and were always pressing forward against the Indian. The

Englishmen were far away, and if they prevailed in the great war, the

march of the American would be less rapid. He would strike once more

with the Englishmen, and the Iroquois could deliver mighty blows on the

American rearguard. He and his Mohawks, proud Keepers of the Western

Gate, would lead in the onset. Thayendanegea considered it a good

night's work, and he slept peacefully.

The great camp relapsed into silence. The warriors on the ground

breathed perhaps a little heavily after so much feasting, and the fires

were permitted to smolder down to coals. Wolves and panthers drawn by

the scent of food crept through the thickets toward the faint firelight,

but they were afraid to draw near. Morning came, and food and drink

were taken to the lodges in which four prisoners were held, prisoners

of great value, taken by Timmendiquas and the Wyandots, and held at his

urgent insistence as hostages.

Three were found as they had been left, and when their bonds were

loosened they ate and drank, but the fourth hut was empty. The one who

spoke in a slow, drawling way, and the one who seemed to be the most

dangerous of them all, was gone. Henry and Sol had taken the severed

thongs with them, and there was nothing to show how the prisoner had

disappeared, except that the withes fastening the door had been cut.

The news spread through the village, and there was much excitement.

Thayendanegea and Timmendiquas came and looked at the empty hut.

Timmendiquas may have suspected how Shif'less Sol had gone, but he said

nothing. Others believed that it was the work of Hahgweh-da-et-gah (The

Spirit of Evil), or perhaps Ga-oh (The Spirit of the Winds) had taken

him away.

“It is well to keep a good watch on the others,” said Timmendiquas, and

Thayendanegea nodded.

That day the chiefs entered the Long House again, and held a great war

council. A string of white wampum about a foot in length was passed

to every chief, who held it a moment or two before handing it to his

neighbors. It was then laid on a table in the center of the room, the

ends touching. This signified harmony among the Six Nations. All the

chiefs had been summoned to this place by belts of wampum sent to the

different tribes by runners appointed by the Onondagas, to whom this

honor belonged. All treaties had to be ratified by the exchange of

belts, and now this was done by the assembled chiefs.

Timmendiquas, as an honorary chief of the Mohawks, and as the real head

of a brave and allied nation, was present throughout the council. His

advice was asked often, and when he gave it the others listened with

gravity and deference. The next day the village played a great game of

lacrosse, which was invented by the Indians, and which had been played

by them for centuries before the arrival of the white man. In this case

the match was on a grand scale, Mohawks and Cayugas against Onondagas

and Senecas.

The game began about nine o'clock in the morning in a great natural

meadow surrounded by forest. The rival sides assembled opposite each

other and bet heavily. All the stakes, under the law of the game, were

laid upon the ground in heaps here, and they consisted of the articles

most precious to the Iroquois. In these heaps were rifles, tomahawks,

scalping knives, wampum, strips of colored beads, blankets, swords,

belts, moccasins, leggins, and a great many things taken as spoil in

forays on the white settlements, such is small mirrors, brushes of

various kinds, boots, shoes, and other things, the whole making a vast

assortment.

These heaps represented great wealth to the Iroquois, and the older

chiefs sat beside them in the capacity of stakeholders and judges.

The combatants, ranged in two long rows, numbered at least five hundred

on each side, and already they began to show an excitement approaching

that which animated them when they would go into battle. Their eyes

glowed, and the muscles on their naked backs and chests were tense for

the spring. In order to leave their limbs perfectly free for effort they

wore no clothing at all, except a little apron reaching from the waist

to the knee.

The extent of the playground was marked off by two pair of “byes” like

those used in cricket, planted about thirty rods apart. But the goals of

each side were only about thirty feet apart.

At a signal from the oldest of the chiefs the contestants arranged

themselves in two parallel lines facing each other, inside the area and

about ten rods apart. Every man was armed with a strong stick three and

a half to four feet in length, and curving toward the end. Upon

this curved end was tightly fastened a network of thongs of untanned

deerskin, drawn until they were rigid and taut. The ball with which they

were to play was made of closely wrapped elastic skins, and was about

the size of an ordinary apple.

At the end of the lines, but about midway between them, sat the chiefs,

who, besides being judges and stakeholders, were also score keepers.

They kept tally of the game by cutting notches upon sticks. Every time

one side put the ball through the other's goal it counted one, but there

was an unusual power exercised by the chiefs, practically unknown to

the games of white men. If one side got too far ahead, its score was

cut down at the discretion of the chiefs in order to keep the game more

even, and also to protract it sometimes over three or four days. The

warriors of the leading side might grumble among one another at the

amount of cutting the chiefs did, but they would not dare to make any

protest. However, the chiefs would never cut the leading side down to an

absolute parity with the other. It was always allowed to retain a margin

of the superiority it had won.

The game was now about to begin, and the excitement became intense. Even

the old judges leaned forward in their eagerness, while the brown bodies

of the warriors shone in the sun, and the taut muscles leaped up under

the skin. Fifty players on each side, sticks in hand, advanced to the

center of the ground, and arranged themselves somewhat after the fashion

of football players, to intercept the passage of the ball toward their

goals. Now they awaited the coming of the ball.

There were several young girls, the daughters of chiefs. The most

beautiful of these appeared. She was not more than sixteen or seventeen

years of age, as slender and graceful as a young deer, and she was

dressed in the finest and most richly embroidered deerskin. Her head was

crowned with a red coronet, crested with plumes, made of the feathers of

the eagle and heron. She wore silver bracelets and a silver necklace.

The girl, bearing in her hand the ball, sprang into the very center of

the arena, where, amid shouts from all the warriors, she placed it upon

the ground. Then she sprang back and joined the throng of spectators.

Two of the players, one from each side, chosen for strength and

dexterity, advanced. They hooked the ball together in their united bats

and thus raised it aloft, until the bats were absolutely perpendicular.

Then with a quick, jerking motion they shot it upward. Much might

be gained by this first shot or stroke, but on this occasion the two

players were equal, and it shot almost absolutely straight into the air.

The nearest groups made a rush for it, and the fray began.

Not all played at once, as the crowd was so great, but usually twenty or

thirty on each side struck for the ball, and when they became exhausted

or disabled were relieved by similar groups. All eventually came into

action.

The game was played with the greatest fire and intensity, assuming

sometimes the aspect of a battle. Blows with the formidable sticks were

given and received. Brown skins were streaked with blood, heads were

cracked, and a Cayuga was killed. Such killings were not unusual in

these games, and it was always considered the fault of the man who fell,

due to his own awkwardness or unwariness. The body of the dead Cayuga

was taken away in disgrace.

All day long the contest was waged with undiminished courage and zeal,

party relieving party. The meadow and the surrounding forest resounded

with the shouts and yells of combatants and spectators. The old squaws

were in a perfect frenzy of excitement, and their shrill screams of

applause or condemnation rose above every other sound.

On this occasion, as the contest did not last longer than one day, the

chiefs never cut down the score of the leading side. The game closed

at sunset, with the Senecas and Onondagas triumphant, and richer by far

than they were in the morning. The Mohawks and Cayugas retired, stripped

of their goods and crestfallen.

Timmendiquas and Thayendanegea, acting as umpires watched the game

closely to its finish, but not so the renegades Braxton Wyatt and

Blackstaffe. They and Quarles had wandered eastward with some Delawares,

and had afterward joined the band of Wyandots, though Timmendiquas gave

them no very warm welcome. Quarles had left on some errand a few days

before. They had rejoiced greatly at the trapping of the four, one by

one, in the deep bush. But they had felt anger and disappointment when

the fifth was not taken, also. Now both were concerned and alarmed over

the escape of Shif'less Sol in the night, and they drew apart from the

Indians to discuss it.

“I think,” said Wyatt, “that Hyde did not manage it himself, all alone.

How could he? He was bound both hand and foot; and I've learned, too,

Blackstaffe, that four of the best Iroquois rifles have been taken. That

means one apiece for Hyde and the three prisoners that are left.”

The two exchanged looks of meaning and understanding.

“It must have been the boy Ware who helped Hyde to get away,” said

Blackstaffe, “and their taking of the rifles means that he and Hyde

expect to rescue the other three in the same way. You think so, too?”

“Of course,” replied Wyatt. “What makes the Indians, who are so

wonderfully alert and watchful most of the time, become so careless when

they have a great feast?”

Blackstaffe shrugged his shoulders.

“It is their way,” he replied. “You cannot change it. Ware must have

noticed what they were about, and he took advantage of it. But I don't

think any of the others will go that way.”

“The boy Cotter is in here,” said Braxton Wyatt, tapping the side of a

small hut. “Let's go in and see him.”

“Good enough,” said Blackstaffe. “But we mustn't let him know that Hyde

has escaped.”

Paul, also bound hand and foot, was lying on an old wolfskin. He, too,

was pale and thin-the strict confinement had told upon him heavily-but

Paul's spirit could never be daunted. He looked at the two renegades

with hatred and contempt.

“Well, you're in a fine fix,” said Wyatt sneeringly. “We just came in to

tell you that we took Henry Ware last night.”

Paul looked him straight and long in the eye, and he knew that the

renegade was lying.

“I know better,” he said.

“Then we will get him,” said Wyatt, abandoning the lie, “and all of you

will die at the stake.”

“You, will not get him,” said Paul defiantly, “and as for the rest of

us dying at the stake, that's to be seen. I know this: Timmendiquas

considers us of value, to be traded or exchanged, and he's too smart

a man to destroy what he regards as his own property. Besides, we may

escape. I don't want to boast, Braxton Wyatt, but you know that we're

hard to hold.”

Then Paul managed to turn over with his face to the wall, as if he were

through with them. They went out, and Braxton Wyatt said sulkily:

“Nothing to be got out of him.”

“No,” said Blackstaffe, “but we must urge that the strictest kind of

guard be kept over the others.”

The Iroquois were to remain some time at the village, because all their

forces were not yet gathered for the great foray they had in mind. The

Onondaga runners were still carrying the wampum belts of purple shells,

sign of war, to distant villages of the tribes, and parties of warriors

were still coming in. A band of Cayugas arrived that night, and with

them they brought a half starved and sick, Lenni-Lenape, whom they had

picked up near the camp. The Lenni-Lenape, who looked as if he might

have been when in health a strong and agile warrior, said that news had

reached him through the Wyandots of the great war to be waged by the

Iroquois on the white settlements, and the spirits would not let him

rest unless he bore his part in it. He prayed therefore to be accepted

among them.

Much food was given to the brave Lenni-Lenape, and he was sent to a

lodge to rest. To-morrow he would be well, and he would be welcomed to

the ranks of the Cayugas, a Younger nation. But when the morning came,

the lodge was empty. The sick Lenni-Lenape was gone, and with him the

boy, Paul, the youngest of the prisoners. Guards bad been posted all

around the camp, but evidently the two had slipped between. Brave

and advanced as were the Iroquois, superstition seized upon them.

Hah-gweli-da-et-gah was at work among them, coming in the form of the

famished Lenni-Lenape. He had steeped them in a deep sleep, and then

he had vanished with the prisoner in Se-oh (The Night). Perhaps lie had

taken away the boy, who was one of a hated race, for some sacrifice or

mystery of his own. The fears of the Iroquois rose. If the Spirit of

Evil was among them, greater harm could be expected.

But the two renegades, Blackstaffe and Wyatt, raged. They did not

believe in the interference of either good spirits or bad spirits, and

just now their special hatred was a famished Lenni-Lenape warrior.

“Why on earth didn't I think of it?” exclaimed Wyatt. “I'm sure now by

his size that it was the fellow Hyde. Of Course he slipped to the lodge,

let Cotter out, and they dodged about in the darkness until they escaped

in the forest. I'll complain to Timmendiquas.”

He was as good as his word, speaking of the laxness of both Iroquois and

Wyandots. The great White Lightning regarded him with an icy stare.

“You say that the boy, Cotter, escaped through carelessness?” he asked.

“I do,” exclaimed Wyatt.

“Then why did you not prevent it?”

Wyatt trembled a little before the stern gaze of the chief.

“Since when,” continued Timmendiquas, “have you, a deserter front your

own people, had the right to hold to account the head chief of the

Wyandots?” Braxton Wyatt, brave though he undoubtedly was, trembled yet

more. He knew that Timmendiquas did not like him, and that the Wyandot

chieftain could make his position among the Indians precarious.

“I did not mean to say that it was the fault of anybody in particular,”

he exclaimed hastily, “but I've been hearing so much talk about the

Spirit of Evil having a hand in this that I couldn't keep front saying

something. Of course, it was Henry Ware and Hyde who did it!”

“It may be,” said Timmendiquas icily, “but neither the Manitou of the

Wyandots, nor the Aieroski of the Iroquois has given to me the eyes to

see everything that happens in the dark.”

Wyatt withdrew still in a rage, but afraid to say more. He and

Blackstaffe held many conferences through the day, and they longed for

the presence of Simon Girty, who was farther west.

That night an Onondaga runner arrived from one of the farthest villages

of the Mohawks, far east toward Albany. He had been sent from a farther

village, and was not known personally to the warriors in the great camp,

but he bore a wampum belt of purple shells, the sign of war, and he

reported directly to Thayendanegea, to whom he brought stirring and

satisfactory words. After ample feasting, as became one who had come

so far, he lay upon soft deerskins in one of the bark huts and sought

sleep.

But Braxton Wyatt, the renegade, could not sleep. His evil spirit warned

him to rise and go to the huts, where the two remaining prisoners were

kept. It was then about one o'clock in the morning, and as he passed he

saw the Onondaga runner at the door of one of the prison lodges. He was

about to cry out, but the Onondaga turned and struck him such a violent

blow with the butt of a pistol, snatched from under his deerskin tunic,

that he fell senseless. When a Mohawk sentinel found and revived him

an hour later, the door of the hut was open, and the oldest of the

prisoners, the one called Ross, was gone.

Now, indeed, were the Iroquois certain that the Spirit of Evil was

among them. When great chiefs like Timmendiquas and Thayendanegea

were deceived, how could a common warrior hope to escape its wicked

influence!

But Braxton Wyatt, with a sore and aching head, lay all day on a bed of

skins, and his friend, Moses Blackstaffe, could give him no comfort.

The following night the camp was swept by a sudden and tremendous storm

of thunder and lightning, wind and rain. Many of the lodges were thrown

down, and when the storm finally whirled itself away, it was found that

the last of the prisoners, he of the long arms and long legs, had gone

on the edge of the blast.

Truly the Evil Spirit had been hovering over the Iroquois village.

CHAPTER VII. CATHARINE MONTOUR

The five lay deep in the swamp, reunited once more, and full of content.

The great storm in which Long Jim, with the aid of his comrades, had

disappeared, was whirling off to the eastward. The lightning was flaring

its last on the distant horizon, but the rain still pattered in the

great woods.

It was a small hut, but the five could squeeze in it. They were

dry, warm, and well armed, and they had no fear of the storm and the

wilderness. The four after their imprisonment and privations were

recovering their weight and color. Paul, who had suffered the most,

had, on the other hand, made the quickest recovery, and their present

situation, so fortunate in contrast with their threatened fate a few

days before, made a great appeal to his imagination. The door was

allowed to stand open six inches, and through the crevice he watched the

rain pattering on the dark earth. He felt an immense sense of security

and comfort. Paul was hopeful by nature and full of courage, but when he

lay bound and alone in a hut in the Iroquois camp it seemed to him that

no chance was left. The comrades had been kept separate, and he had

supposed the others to be dead. But here he was snatched from the very

pit of death, and all the others had been saved from a like fate.

“If I'd known that you were alive and uncaptured, Henry,” he said, “I'd

never have given up hope. It was a wonderful thing you did to start the

chain that drew us all away.”

“It's no more than Sol or Tom or any of you would have done,” said

Henry.

“We might have tried it,” said Long Jim Hart, “but I ain't sure that

we'd have done it. Likely ez not, ef it had been left to me my scalp

would be dryin' somewhat in the breeze that fans a Mohawk village. Say,

Sol, how wuz it that you talked Onondaga when you played the part uv

that Onondaga runner. Didn't know you knowed that kind uv Injun lingo.”

Shif'less Sol drew himself up proudly, and then passed a thoughtful hand

once or twice across his forehead.

“Jim,” he said, “I've told you often that Paul an' me hez the instincts

uv the eddicated. Learnin' always takes a mighty strong hold on me.

Ef I'd had the chance, I might be a purfessor, or mebbe I'd be writin'

poetry. I ain't told you about it, but when I wuz a young boy, afore I

moved with the settlers, I wuz up in these parts an' I learned to talk

Iroquois a heap. I never thought it would be the use to me it hez been

now. Ain't it funny that sometimes when you put a thing away an' it gits

all covered with rust and mold, the time comes when that same forgot

little thing is the most vallyble article in the world to you.”

“Weren't you scared, Sol,” persisted Paul, “to face a man like Brant,

an' pass yourself off as an Onondaga?”

“No, I wuzn't,” replied the shiftless one thoughtfully, “I've been wuss

scared over little things. I guess that when your life depends on jest

a motion o' your hand or the turnin' o' a word, Natur' somehow comes to

your help an' holds you up. I didn't get good an' skeered till it wuz

all over, an' then I had one fit right after another.”

“I've been skeered fur a week without stoppin',” said Tom Ross; “jest

beginnin' to git over it. I tell you, Henry, it wuz pow'ful lucky fur

us you found them steppin' stones, an' this solid little place in the

middle uv all that black mud.”

“Makes me think uv the time we spent the winter on that island in

the lake,” said Long Jim. “That waz shorely a nice place an' pow'ful

comf'table we wuz thar. But we're a long way from it now. That island uv

ours must be seven or eight hundred miles from here, an' I reckon it's

nigh to fifteen hundred to New Orleans, whar we wuz once.”

“Shet up,” said Tom Ross suddenly. “Time fur all uv you to go to sleep,

an' I'm goin' to watch.”

“I'll watch,” said Henry.

“I'm the oldest, an' I'm goin' to have my way this time,” said Tom.

“Needn't quarrel with me about it,” said Shif'less Sol. “A lazy man like

me is always willin' to go to sleep. You kin hev my watch, Tom, every

night fur the next five years.”

He ranged himself against the wall, and in three minutes was sound

asleep. Henry and Paul found room in the line, and they, too, soon

slept. Tom sat at the door, one of the captured rifles across his knees,

and watched the forest and the swamp. He saw the last flare of the

distant lightning, and he listened to the falling of the rain drops

until they vanished with the vanishing wind, leaving the forest still

and without noise.

Tom was several years older than any of the others, and, although

powerful in action, he was singularly chary of speech. Henry was the

leader, but somehow Tom looked upon himself as a watcher over the other

four, a sort of elder brother. As the moon came out a little in the wake

of the retreating clouds, he regarded them affectionately.

“One, two, three, four, five,” he murmured to himself. “We're all here,

an' Henry come fur us. That is shorely the greatest boy the world hez

ever seed. Them fellers Alexander an' Hannibal that Paul talks about

couldn't hev been knee high to Henry. Besides, ef them old Greeks an'

Romans hed hed to fight Wyandots an' Shawnees an' Iroquois ez we've

done, whar'd they hev been?”

Tom Ross uttered a contemptuous little sniff, and on the edge of that

sniff Alexander and Hannibal were wafted into oblivion. Then he went

outside and walked about the islet, appreciating for the tenth time what

a wonderful little refuge it was. He was about to return to the hut when

he saw a dozen dark blots along the high bough of a tree. He knew them.

They were welcome blots. They were wild turkeys that had found what had

seemed to be a secure roosting place in the swamp.

Tom knew that the meat of the little bear was nearly exhausted, and here

was more food come to their hand. “We're five pow'ful feeders, an' we'll

need you,” he murmured, looking up at the turkeys, “but you kin rest

thar till nearly mornin'.”

He knew that the turkeys would not stir, and he went back to the hut to

resume his watch. Just before the first dawn he awoke Henry.

“Henry,” he said, “a lot uv foolish wild turkeys hev gone to rest on the

limb of a tree not twenty yards from this grand manshun uv ourn. 'Pears

to me that wild turkeys wuz made fur hungry fellers like us to eat. Kin

we risk a shot or two at 'em, or is it too dangerous?”

“I think we can risk the shots,” said Henry, rising and taking his

rifle. “We're bound to risk something, and it's not likely that Indians

are anywhere near.”

They slipped from the cabin, leaving the other three still sound asleep,

and stepped noiselessly among the trees. The first pale gray bar that

heralded the dawn was just showing in the cast.

“Thar they are,” said Tom Ross, pointing at the dozen dark blots on the

high bough.

“We'll take good aim, and when I say 'fire!' we'll both pull trigger,”

said Henry.

He picked out a huge bird near the end of the line, but he noticed when

he drew the bead that a second turkey just behind the first was directly

in his line of fire. The fact aroused his ambition to kill both with

one bullet. It was not a mere desire to slaughter or to display

marksmanship, but they needed the extra turkey for food.

“Are you ready, Tom?” he asked. “Then fire.”

They pulled triggers, there were two sharp reports terribly loud to both

under the circumstances, and three of the biggest and fattest of the

turkeys fell heavily to the ground, while the rest flapped their wings,

and with frightened gobbles flew away.

Henry was about to rush forward, but Silent Tom held him back.

“Don't show yourself, Henry! Don't show yourself!” he cried in tense

tones.

“Why, what's the matter?” asked the boy in surprise.

“Don't you see that three turkeys fell, and we are only two to shoot?

An Injun is layin' 'roun' here some whar, an' he drawed a bead on one uv

them turkeys at the same time we did.”

Henry laughed and put away Tom's detaining hand.

“There's no Indian about,” he said. “I killed two turkeys with one shot,

and I'm mighty proud of it, too. I saw that they were directly in the

line of the bullet, and it went through both.”

Silent Tom heaved a mighty sigh of relief, drawn up from great depths.

“I'm tre-men-jeous-ly glad uv that, Henry,” he said. “Now when I saw

that third turkey come tumblin' down I wuz shore that one Injun or mebbe

more had got on this snug little place uv ourn in the swamp, an' that

we'd hev to go to fightin' ag'in. Thar come times, Henry, when my mind

just natchally rises up an' rebels ag'in fightin', 'specially when I

want to eat or sleep. Ain't thar anythin' else but fight, fight, fight,

'though I 'low a feller hez got to expect a lot uv it out here in the

woods?”

They picked up the three turkeys, two gobblers and a hen, and found

them large and fat as butter. More than once the wild turkey had come to

their relief, and, in fact, this bird played a great part in the life

of the frontier, wherever that frontier might be, as it shifted steadily

westward. As they walked back toward the hut they faced three figures,

all three with leveled rifles.

“All right, boys,” sang out Henry. “It's nobody but Tom and myself,

bringing in our breakfast.”

The three dropped their rifles.

“That's good,” said Shif'less Sol. “When them shots roused us out o'

our beauty sleep we thought the whole Iroquois nation, horse, foot,

artillery an' baggage wagons, wuz comin' down upon us. So we reckoned

we'd better go out an' lick 'em afore it wuz too late.

“But it's you, an' you've got turkeys, nothin' but turkeys. Sho' I

reckoned from the peart way Long Jim spoke up that you wuz loaded down

with hummin' birds' tongues, ortylans, an' all them other Roman and

Rooshian delicacies Paul talks about in a way to make your mouth water.

But turkeys! jest turkeys! Nothin' but turkeys!”

“You jest wait till you see me cookin' 'em, Sol Hyde,” said Long Jim.

“Then your mouth'll water, an' it'll take Henry and Tom both to hold you

back.”

But Shif'less Sol's mouth was watering already, and his eyes were glued

on the turkeys.

“I'm a pow'ful lazy man, ez you know, Saplin',” he said, “but I'm goin'

to help you pick them turkeys an' get 'em ready for the coals. The

quicker they are cooked the better it'll suit me.”

While they were cooking the turkeys, Henry, a little anxious lest the

sound of the shots had been heard, crossed on the stepping stones and

scouted a bit in the woods. But there was no sign of Indian presence,

and, relieved, he returned to the islet just as breakfast was ready.

Long Jim had exerted all his surpassing skill, and it was a contented

five that worked on one of the turkeys--the other two being saved for

further needs.

“What's goin' to be the next thing in the line of our duty, Henry?”

asked Long Jim as they ate.

“We'll have plenty to do, from all that Sol tells us,” replied the boy.

“It seems that they felt so sure of you, while you were prisoners, that

they often talked about their plans where you could hear them. Sol has

told me of two or three talks between Timmendiquas and Thayendanegea,

and from the last one he gathered that they're intending a raid with a

big army against a place called Wyoming, in the valley of a river named

the Susquehanna. It's a big settlement, scattered all along the river,

and they expect to take a lot of scalps. They're going to be helped by

British from Canada and Tories. Boys, we're a long way from home, but

shall we go and tell them in Wyoming what's coming?”

“Of course,” said the four together.

“Our bein' a long way from home don't make any difference,” said

Shif'less Sol. “We're generally a long way from home, an' you know we

sent word back from Pittsburgh to Wareville that we wuz stayin' a while

here in the east on mighty important business.”

“Then we go to the Wyoming Valley as straight and as fast as we can,”

said Henry. “That's settled. What else did you bear about their plans,

Sol?”

“They're to break up the village here soon and then they'll march to

a place called Tioga. The white men an' I hear that's to be a lot uv

'em-will join 'em thar or sooner. They've sent chiefs all the way to our

Congress at Philydelphy, pretendin' peace, an' then, when they git our

people to thinkin' peace, they'll jump on our settlements, the whole

ragin' army uv 'em, with tomahawk an' knife. A white man named John

Butler is to command 'em.”

Paul shuddered.

“I've heard of him,” he said. “They called him 'Indian' Butler at

Pittsburgh. He helped lead the Indians in that terrible battle of the

Oriskany last year. And they say he's got a son, Walter Butler, who is

as bad as he is, and there are other white leaders of the Indians, the

Johnsons and Claus.”

“'Pears ez ef we would be needed,” said Tom Ross.

“I don't think we ought to hurry,” said Henry. “The more we know about

the Indian plans the better it will be for the Wyoming people. We've a

safe and comfortable hiding place here, and we can stay and watch the

Indian movements.”

“Suits me,” drawled Shif'less Sol. “My legs an' arms are still stiff

from them deerskin thongs an' ez Long Jim is here now to wait on me I

guess I'll take a rest from travelin.”

“You'll do all your own waitin' on yourself,” rejoined Long Jim; “an' I'm

afraid you won't be waited on so Pow'ful well, either, but a good deal

better than you deserve.”

They lay on the islet several days, meanwhile keeping a close watch

on the Indian camp. They really had little to fear except from hunting

parties, as the region was far from any settled portion of the country,

and the Indians were not likely to suspect their continued presence.

But the hunters were numerous, and all the squaws in the camp were busy

jerking meat. It was obvious that the Indians were preparing for a great

campaign, but that they would take their own time. Most of the scouting

was done by Henry and Sol, and several times they lay in the thick

brushwood and watched, by the light of the fires, what was passing in

the Indian camp.

On the fifth night after the rescue of Long Jim, Henry and Shif'less Sol

lay in the covert. It was nearly midnight, but the fires still burned

in the Indian camp, warriors were polishing their weapons, and the women

were cutting up or jerking meat. While they were watching they heard

from a point to the north the sound of a voice rising and failing in a

kind of chant.

“Another war party comin',” whispered Shif'less Sol, “an' singin' about

the victories that they're goin' to win.”

“But did you notice that voice?” Henry whispered back. “It's not a

man's, it's a woman's.”

“Now that you speak of it, you're right,” said Shif'less Sol. “It's

funny to hear an Injun woman chantin' about battles as she comes into

camp. That's the business o' warriors.”

“Then this is no ordinary woman,” said Henry.

“They'll pass along that trail there within twenty yards of us, Sol, and

we want to see her.”

“So we do,” said Sol, “but I ain't breathin' while they pass.”

They flattened themselves against the earth until the keenest eye could

not see them in the darkness. All the time the singing was growing

louder, and both remained, quite sure that it was the voice of a woman.

The trail was but a short distance away, and the moon was bright. The

fierce Indian chant swelled, and presently the most singular figure that

either had ever seen came into view.

The figure was that of an Indian woman, but lighter in color than most

of her kind. She was middle-aged, tall, heavily built, and arrayed in a

strange mixture of civilized and barbaric finery, deerskin leggins and

moccasins gorgeously ornamented with heads, a red dress of European

cloth with a red shawl over it, and her head bare except for bright

feathers, thrust in her long black hair, which hung loosely down her

back. She held in one hand a large sharp tomahawk, which she swung

fiercely in time to her song. Her face had the rapt, terrible expression

of one who had taken some fiery and powerful drug, and she looked

neither to right nor to left as she strode on, chanting a song of blood,

and swinging the keen blade.

Henry and Shif'less Sol shuddered. They had looked upon terrible human

figures, but nothing so frightful as this, a woman with the strength

of a man and twice his rage and cruelty. There was something weird and

awful in the look of that set, savage face, and the tone of that Indian

chant. Brave as they were, Henry and the shiftless one felt fear, as

perhaps they had never felt it before in their lives. Well they might!

They were destined to behold this woman again, under conditions the

most awful of which the human mind can conceive, and to witness savagery

almost unbelievable in either man or woman. The two did not yet know

it, but they were looking upon Catharine Montour, daughter of a French

Governor General of Canada and an Indian woman, a chieftainess of the

Iroquois, and of a memory infamous forever on the border, where she was

known as “Queen Esther.”

Shif'less Sol shuddered again, and whispered to Henry:

“I didn't think such women ever lived, even among the Indians.”

A dozen warriors followed Queen Esther, stepping in single file, and

their manner showed that they acknowledged her their leader in every

sense. She was truly an extraordinary woman. Not even the great

Thayendanegea himself wielded a stronger influence among the Iroquois.

In her youth she had been treated as a white woman, educated and dressed

as a white woman, and she had played a part in colonial society at

Albany, New York, and Philadelphia. But of her own accord she had turned

toward the savage half of herself, had become wholly a savage, had

married a savage chief, bad been the mother of savage children, and here

she was, at midnight, striding into an Iroquois camp in the wilderness,

her head aflame with visions of blood, death, and scalps.

The procession passed with the terrifying female figure still leading,

still singing her chant, and the curiosity of Henry and Shif'less Sol

was so intense that, taking all risks, they slipped along in the rear to

see her entry.

Queen Esther strode into the lighted area of the camp, ceased her chant,

and looked around, as if a queen had truly come and was waiting to be

welcomed by her subjects. Thayendanegea, who evidently expected her,

stepped forward and gave her the Indian salute. It may be that he

received her with mild enthusiasm. Timmendiquas, a Wyandot and a guest,

though an ally, would not dispute with him his place as real head of the

Six Nations, but this terrible woman was his match, and could inflame

the Iroquois to almost anything that she wished.

After the arrival of Queen Esther the lights in the Iroquois village

died down. It was evident to both Henry and the shiftless one that they

had been kept burning solely in the expectation of the coming of this

formidable woman and her escort. It was obvious that nothing more was to

be seen that night, and they withdrew swiftly through the forest toward

their islet. They stopped once in an oak opening, and Shif'less Sol

shivered slightly.

“Henry,” he said, “I feel all through me that somethin' terrible is

comin'. That woman back thar has clean give me the shivers. I'm more

afraid of her than I am of Timmendiquas or Thayendanegea. Do you think

she is a witch?”

“There are no such things as witches, but she was uncanny. I'm afraid,

Sol, that your feeling about something terrible going to happen is

right.”

It was about two o'clock in the morning when they reached the islet. Tom

Ross was awake, but the other two slumbered peacefully on. They told Tom

what they had seen, and he told them the identity of the terrible woman.

“I heard about her at Pittsburgh, an' I've heard tell, too, about her

afore I went to Kentucky to live. She's got a tre-men-jeous power over

the Iroquois. They think she ken throw spells, an' all that sort of

thing-an' mebbe she kin.”

Two nights later it was Henry and Tom who lay in the thickets, and then

they saw other formidable arrivals in the Indian camp. Now they were

white men, an entire company in green uniforms, Sir John Johnson's Royal

Greens, as Henry afterward learned; and with them was the infamous John

Butler, or “Indian” Butler, as he was generally known on the New York

and Pennsylvania frontier, middle-aged, short and fat, and insignificant

of appearance, but energetic, savage and cruel in nature. He was a

descendant of the Duke of Ormond, and had commanded the Indians at the

terrible battle of the Oriskany, preceding Burgoyne's capture the year

before.

Henry and Tom were distant spectators at an extraordinary council around

one of the fires. In this group were Timmendiquas, Thayendanegea, Queen

Esther, high chiefs of the distant nations, and the white men, John

Butler, Moses Blackstaffe, and the boy, Braxton Wyatt. It seemed to

Henry that Timmendiquas, King of the Wyandots, was superior to all the

other chiefs present, even to Thayendanegea. His expression was nobler

than that of the great Mohawk, and it had less of the Indian cruelty.

Henry and Tom could not hear 'anything that was said, but they felt sure

the Iroquois were about to break up their village and march on the great

campaign they had planned. The two and their comrades could render no

greater service than to watch their march, and then warn those upon whom

the blow was to fall.

The five left their hut on the islet early the next morning, well

equipped with provisions, and that day they saw the Iroquois dismantle

their village, all except the Long House and two or three other of the

more solid structures, and begin the march. Henry and his comrades went

parallel with them, watching their movements as closely as possible.

CHAPTER VIII. A CHANGE OF TENANTS

The five were engaged upon one of their most dangerous tasks, to keep

with the Indian army, and yet to keep out of its hands, to observe what

was going on, and to divine what was intended from what they observed.

Fortunately it, was early summer, and the weather being very beautiful

they could sleep without shelter. Hence they found it convenient to

sleep sometimes by daylight, posting a watch always, and to spy upon the

Indian camp at night. They saw other reinforcements come for the Indian

army, particularly a strong division of Senecas, under two great war

chiefs of theirs, Sangerachte and Hiokatoo, and also a body of Tories.

Then they saw them go into their last great camp at Tioga, preparatory

to their swift descent upon the Wyoming Valley. About four hundred

white men, English Canadians and Tories, were present, and eight hundred

picked warriors of the Six Nations under Thayendanegea, besides the

little band of Wyandots led by the resolute Timmendiquas. “Indian”

Butler was in general command of the whole, and Queen Esther was the

high priestess of the Indians, continually making fiery speeches and

chanting songs that made the warriors see red. Upon the rear of this

extraordinary army hung a band of fierce old squaws, from whom every

remnant of mercy and Gentleness had departed.

From a high rock overlooking a valley the five saw “Indian” Butler's

force start for its final march upon Wyoming. It was composed of many

diverse elements, and perhaps none more bloodthirsty ever trod the soil

of America. In some preliminary skirmish a son of Queen Esther had been

slain, and now her fury knew no limits. She took her place at the

very head of the army, whirling her great tomahawk about her head, and

neither “Indian” Butler nor Thayendanegea dared to interfere with her in

anything great or small.

Henry and his comrades, as they left their rock and hastened toward the

valley of Wyoming, felt that now they were coming into contact with the

great war itself. They had looked upon a uniformed enemy for the first

time, and they might soon see the colonial buff and blue of the eastern

army. Their hearts thrilled high at new scenes and new dangers.

They had gathered at Pittsburgh, and, through the captivity of the four

in the Iroquois camp, they had some general idea of the Wyoming Valley

and the direction in which it lay, and, taking one last look at the

savage army, they sped toward it. The time was the close, of June, and

the foliage was still dark green. It was a land of low mountain, hill,

rich valley, and clear stream, and it was beautiful to every one of the

five. Much of their course lay along the Susquehanna, and soon they

saw signs of a more extended cultivation than any that was yet to be

witnessed in Kentucky. From the brow of a little hill they beheld a

field of green, and in another field a man plowing.

“That's wheat,” said Tom Ross.

“But we can't leave the man to plow,” said Henry, “or he'll never

harvest that wheat. We'll warn him.”

The man uttered a cry of alarm as five wild figures burst into his

field. He stopped abruptly, and snatched up a rifle that lay across

the plow handles. Neither Henry nor his companions realized that their

forest garb and long life in the wilderness made them look more like

Indians than white men. But Henry threw up a hand as a sign of peace.

“We're white like yourselves,” he cried, “and we've come to warn you!

The Iroquois and the Tories are marching into the valley!”

The man's face blanched, and he cast a hasty look toward a little wood,

where stood a cabin from which smoke was rising. He could not doubt on a

near view that these were white like himself, and the words rang true.

“My house is strong,” he said, “and I can beat them off. Maybe you will

help me.”

“We'd help you willingly enough,” said Henry, “if this were any ordinary

raiding band, but 'Indian' Butler, Brant, and Queen Esther are coming at

the head of twelve or fifteen hundred men. How could we hold a house, no

matter how thick its walls, against such an army as that? Don't hesitate

a moment! Get up what you can and gallop.”

The man, a Connecticut settler-Jennings was his name-left his plow in

the furrow, galloped on his horse to his house, mounted his wife and

children on other horses, and, taking only food and clothing, fled to

Stroudsburg, where there was a strong fort. At a later day he gave Henry

heartfelt thanks for his warning, as six hours afterward the vanguard

of the horde burned his home and raged because its owner and his family

were gone with their scalps on their own heads.

The five were now well into the Wyoming Valley, where the Lenni-Lenape,

until they were pushed westward by other tribes, had had their village

Wy-wa-mieh, which means in their language Wyoming. It was a beautiful

valley running twenty miles or more along the Susquehanna, and about

three miles broad. On either side rose mountain walls a thousand feet in

height, and further away were peaks with mists and vapors around their

crests. The valley itself blazed in the summer sunshine, and the river

sparkled, now in gold, now in silver, as the light changed and fell.

More cultivated fields, more houses, generally of stout logs, appeared,

and to all that they saw the five bore the fiery beacon. Simon Jennings

was not the only man who lived to thank them for the warning. Others

were incredulous, and soon paid the terrible price of unbelief.

The five hastened on, and as they went they looked about them with

wondering eyes-there were so many houses, so many cultivated fields, and

so many signs of a numerous population. They had emerged almost for the

first time from the wilderness, excepting their memorable visit to New

Orleans, although this was a very different region. Long Jim spoke of

it.

“I think I like it better here than at New Or-leeyuns,” he said. “We

found some nice Frenchmen an' Spaniards down thar, but the ground feels

firmer under my feet here.”

“The ground feels firmer,” said Paul, who had some of the prescience of

the seer, “but the skies are no brighter. They look red to me sometimes,

Jim.”

Tom Ross glanced at Paul and shook his head ominously. A woodsman, he

had his superstitions, and Paul's words weighed upon his mind. He began

to fear a great disaster, and his experienced eye perceived at once the

defenseless state of the valley. He remembered the council of the great

Indian force in the deep woods, and the terrible face of Queen Esther

was again before him.

“These people ought to be in blockhouses, every one uv 'em,” he said.

“It ain't no time to be plowin' land.”

Yet peace seemed to brood still over the valley. It was a fine river,

beautiful with changing colors. The soil on either side was as deep and

fertile as that of Kentucky, and the line of the mountains cut the sky

sharp and clear. Hills and slopes were dark green with foliage.

“It must have been a gran' huntin' ground once,” said Shif'less Sol.

The alarm that the five gave spread fast, and other hunters and scouts

came in, confirming it. Panic seized the settlers, and they began to

crowd toward Forty Fort on the west side of the river. Henry and his

comrades themselves arrived there toward the close of evening, just as

the sun had set, blood red, behind the mountains. Some report of them

had preceded their coming, and as soon as they had eaten they were

summoned to the presence of Colonel Zebulon Butler, who commanded the

military force in the valley. Singularly enough, he was a cousin of

“Indian” Butler, who led the invading army.

The five, dressed in deerskin hunting shirts, leggins, and moccasins,

and everyone carrying a rifle, hatchet, and knife, entered a large low

room, dimly lighted by some wicks burning in tallow. A man of middle

years, with a keen New England face, sat at a little table, and several

others of varying ages stood near.

The five knew instinctively that the man at the table was Colonel

Butler, and they bowed, but they did not show the faintest trace of

subservience. They had caught suspicious glances from some of the

officers who stood about the commander, and they stiffened at once.

Colonel Butler looked involuntarily at Henry-everybody always took him,

without the telling, for leader of the group.

“We have had report of you,” he said in cool noncommittal tones, “and

you have been telling of great Indian councils that you have seen in the

woods. May I ask your name and where you belong?”

“My name,” replied Henry with dignity, “is Henry Ware, and I come from

Kentucky. My friends here are Paul Cotter, Solomon Hyde, Tom Ross, and

Jim Hart. They, too, come from Kentucky.”

Several of the men gave the five suspicious glances. Certainly they

were wild enough in appearance, and Kentucky was far away. It would

seem strange that new settlers in that far land should be here in

Pennsylvania. Henry saw clearly that his story was doubted.

“Kentucky, you tell me?” said Colonel Butler. “Do you mean to say

you have come all that tremendous distance to warn us of an attack by

Indians and Tories?”

Several of the others murmured approval, and Henry flushed a little, but

he saw that the commander was not unreasonable. It was a time when

men might well question the words of strangers. Remembering this, he

replied:

“No, we did not come from Kentucky just to warn you. In fact, we

came from a point much farther than that. We came from New Orleans to

Pittsburgh with a fleet loaded with supplies for the Continental armies,

and commanded by Adam Colfax of New Hampshire.”

The face of Colonel Butler brightened.

“What!” he exclaimed, “you were on that expedition? It seems to me that

I recall hearing of great services rendered to it by some independent

scouts.”

“When we reached Pittsburgh,” continued Henry, “it was our first

intention to go back to Kentucky, but we heard that a great war movement

was in progress to the eastward, and we thought that we would see what

was going on. Four of us have been captives among the Iroquois. We know

much of their plans, and we know, too, that Timmendiquas, the great

chief of the Wyandots, whom we fought along the Ohio, has joined them

with a hand of his best warriors. We have also seen Thayendanegea, every

one of us.”

“You have seen Brant?” exclaimed Colonel Butler, calling the great

Mohawk by his white name.

“Yes,” replied Henry. “We have seen him, and we have also seen the woman

they call Queen Esther. She is continually urging the Indians on.”

Colonel Butler seemed convinced, and invited them to sit down. He also

introduced the officers who were with him, Colonel John Durkee, Colonel

Nathan Dennison, Lieutenant Colonel George Dorrance, Major John Garrett,

Captain Samuel Ransom, Captain Dethrie Hewitt, and some others.

“Now, gentlemen, tell us all that you saw,” continued Colonel Butler

courteously. “You will pardon so many questions, but we must be careful.

You will see that yourselves. But I am a New England man myself, from

Connecticut, and I have met Adam Colfax. I recall now that we have heard

of you, also, and we are grateful for your coming. Will you and your

comrades tell us all that you have seen and heard?”

The five felt a decided change in the atmosphere. They were no longer

possible Tories or renegades, bringing an alarm at one point when it

should be dreaded at another. The men drew closely around them, and

listened as the tallow wicks sputtered in the dim room. Henry spoke

first, and the others in their turn. Every one of them spoke tersely but

vividly in the language of the forest. They felt deeply what they had

seen, and they drew the same picture for their listeners. Gradually the

faces of the Wyoming men became shadowed. This was a formidable tale

that they were hearing, and they could not doubt its truth.

“It is worse than I thought it could be,” said Colonel Butler at last.

“How many men do you say they have, Mr. Ware?”

“Close to fifteen hundred.”

“All trained warriors and soldiers. And at the best we cannot raise more

than three hundreds including old men and boys, and our men, too, are

farmers.”

“But we can beat them. Only give us a chance, Colonel!” exclaimed

Captain Ransom.

“I'm afraid the chance will come too soon,” said Colonel Butler, and

then turning to the five: “Help us all you can. We need scouts and

riflemen. Come to the fort for any food and ammunition you may need.”

The five gave their most earnest assurances that they would stay, and

do all in their power. In fact, they had come for that very purpose.

Satisfied now that Colonel Butler and his officers had implicit faith in

them they went forth to find that, despite the night and the darkness,

fugitives were already crossing the river to seek refuge in Forty Fort,

bringing with them tales of death and devastation, some of which were

exaggerated, but too many true in all their hideous details. Men had

been shot and scalped in the fields, houses were burning, women and

children were captives for a fate that no one could foretell. Red ruin

was already stalking down the valley.

The farmers were bringing their wives and children in canoes and dugouts

across the river. Here and there a torch light flickered on the surface

of the stream, showing the pale faces of the women and children, too

frightened to cry. They had fled in haste, bringing with them only the

clothes they wore and maybe a blanket or two. The borderers knew too

well what Indian war was, with all its accompaniments of fire and the

stake.

Henry and his comrades helped nearly all that night. They secured a

large boat and crossed the river again and again, guarding the fugitives

with their rifles, and bringing comfort to many a timid heart. Indian

bands had penetrated far into the Wyoming Valley, but they felt sure

that none were yet in the neighborhood of Forty Fort.

It was about three o'clock in the morning when the last of the fugitives

who had yet come was inside Forty Fort, and the labors of the five, had

they so chosen, were over for the time. But their nerves were tuned to

so high a pitch, and they felt so powerfully the presence of danger,

that they could not rest, nor did they have any desire for sleep.

The boat in which they sat was a good one, with two pairs of oars. It

had been detailed for their service, and they decided to pull up the

river. They thought it possible that they might see the advance of the

enemy and bring news worth the telling. Long Jim and Tom Ross took the

oars, and their powerful arms sent the boat swiftly along in the shadow

of the western bank. Henry and Paul looked back and saw dim lights at

the fort and a few on either shore. The valley, the high mountain wall,

and everything else were merged in obscurity.

Both the youths were oppressed heavily by the sense of danger, not for

themselves, but for others. In that Kentucky of theirs, yet so new,

few people lived beyond the palisades, but here were rich and scattered

settlements; and men, even in the face of great peril, are always loth

to abandon the homes that they have built with so much toil.

Tom Ross and Long Jim continued to pull steadily with the long strokes

that did not tire them, and the lights of the fort and houses sank out

of sight. Before them lay the somber surface of the rippling river, the

shadowy hills, and silence. The world seemed given over to the night

save for themselves, but they knew too well to trust to such apparent

desertion. At such hours the Indian scouts come, and Henry did not doubt

that they were already near, gathering news of their victims for the

Indian and Tory horde. Therefore, it was the part of his comrades and

himself to use the utmost caution as they passed up the river.

They bugged the western shore, where they were shadowed by banks and

bushes, and now they went slowly, Long Jim and Tom Ross drawing their

oars so carefully through the water that there was never a plash to

tell of their passing. Henry was in the prow of the boat, bent forward

a little, eyes searching the surface of the river, and ears intent upon

any sound that might pass on the bank. Suddenly he gave a little signal

to the rowers and they let their oars rest.

“Bring the boat in closer to the bank,” he whispered. “Push it gently

among those bushes where we cannot be seen from above.”

Tom and Jim obeyed. The boat slid softly among tall bushes that shadowed

the water, and was hidden completely. Then Henry stepped out, crept

cautiously nearly up the bank, which was here very low, and lay pressed

closely against the earth, but supported by the exposed root of a tree.

He had heard voices, those of Indians, he believed, and he wished to

see. Peering through a fringe of bushes that lined the bank he saw seven

warriors and one white face sitting under the boughs of a great oak.

The face was that of Braxton Wyatt, who was now in his element, with a

better prospect of success than any that he had ever known before. Henry

shuddered, and for a moment he regretted that he had spared Wyatt's life

when he might have taken it.

But Henry was lying against the bank to hear what these men might be

saying, not to slay. Two of the warriors, as he saw by their paint, were

Wyandots, and he understood the Wyandot tongue. Moreover, his slight

knowledge of Iroquois came into service, and gradually he gathered the

drift of their talk. Two miles nearer Forty Fort was a farmhouse one of

the Wyandots had seen it-not yet abandoned by its owner, who believed

that his proximity to Forty Fort assured his safety. He lived there with

his wife and five children, and Wyatt and the Indians planned to raid

the place before daylight and kill them all. Henry had heard enough. He

slid back from the bank to the water and crept into the boat.

“Pull back down the river as gently as you can,” he whispered, “and then

I'll tell you.”

The skilled oarsmen carried the boat without a splash several hundred

yards down the stream, and then Henry told the others of the fiendish

plan that he had heard.

“I know that man,” said Shif'less Sol. “His name is Standish. I was

there nine or ten hours ago, an' I told him it wuz time to take his

family an' run. But he knowed more'n I did. Said he'd stay, he wuzn't

afraid, an' now he's got to pay the price.”

“No, he mustn't do that,” said Henry. “It's too much to pay for just

being foolish, when everybody is foolish sometimes. Boys, we can yet

save that man an' his wife and children. Aren't you willing to do it?”

“Why, course,” said Long Jim. “Like ez not Standish will shoot at us

when we knock on his door, but let's try it.”

The others nodded assent.

“How far back from the river is the Standish house, Sol?” asked Henry.

“'Bout three hundred yards, I reckon, and' it ain't more'n a mile down.”

“Then if we pull with all our might, we won't be too late. Tom, you and

Jim give Sol and me the oars now.”

Henry and the shiftless one were fresh, and they sent the boat shooting

down stream, until they stopped at a point indicated by Sol. They leaped

ashore, drew the boat down the bank, and hastened toward a log house

that they saw standing in a clump of trees. The enemy had not yet come,

but as they swiftly approached the house a dog ran barking at them. The

shiftless one swung his rifle butt, and the dog fell unconscious.

“I hated to do it, but I had to,” he murmured. The next moment Henry was

knocking at the door.

“Up! Up!” he cried, “the Indians are at hand, and you must run for your

lives!”

How many a time has that terrible cry been heard on the American border!

The sound of a man's voice, startled and angry, came to their ears, and

then they heard him at the door.

“Who are you?” he cried. “Why are you beating on my door at such a

time?”

“We are friends, Mr. Standish,” cried Henry, “and if you would save your

wife and children you must go at once! Open the door! Open, I say!”

The man inside was in a terrible quandary. It was thus that renegades

or Indians, speaking the white man's tongue, sometimes bade a door to be

opened, in order that they might find an easy path to slaughter. But the

voice outside was powerfully insistent, it had the note of truth; his

wife and children, roused, too, were crying out, in alarm. Henry knocked

again on the door and shouted to him in a voice, always increasing in

earnestness, to open and flee. Standish could resist no longer. He took

down the bar and flung open the door, springing back, startled at the

five figures that stood before him. In the dusk he did not remember

Shif'less Sol.

“Mr. Standish,” Henry said, speaking rapidly, “we are, as you can see,

white. You will be attacked here by Indians and renegades within half

an hour. We know that, because we heard them talking from the bushes.

We have a boat in the river; you can reach it in five minutes. Take your

wife and children, and pull for Forty Fort.”

Standish was bewildered.

“How do I know that you are not enemies, renegades, yourselves?” he

asked.

“If we had been that you'd be a dead man already,” said Shif'less Sol.

It was a grim reply, but it was unanswerable, and Standish recognized

the fact. His wife had felt the truth in the tones of the strangers,

and was begging him to go. Their children were crying at visions of the

tomahawk and scalping knife now so near.

“We'll go,” said Standish. “At any rate, it can't do any harm. We'll get

a few things together.”

“Do not wait for anything!” exclaimed Henry. “You haven't a minute to

spare! Here are more blankets! Take them and run for the boat! Sol and

Jim, see them on board, and then come back!”

Carried away by such fire and earnestness, Standish and his family ran

for the boat. Jim and the shiftless one almost threw them on board,

thrust a pair of oars into the bands of Standish, another into the hands

of his wife, and then told them to pull with all their might for the

fort.

“And you,” cried Standish, “what becomes of you?”

Then a singular expression passed over his face-he had guessed Henry's

plan.

“Don't you trouble about us,” said the shiftless one. “We will come

later. Now pull! pull!”

Standish and his wife swung on the oars, and in two minutes the boat and

its occupants were lost in the darkness. Tom Ross and Sol did not pause

to watch them, but ran swiftly back to the house. Henry was at the door.

“Come in,” he said briefly, and they entered. Then he closed the door

and dropped the bar into place. Shif'less Sol and Paul were already

inside, one sitting on the chair and the other on the edge of the bed.

Some coals, almost hidden under ashes, smoldered and cast a faint light

in the room, the only one that the house had, although it was divided

into two parts by a rough homespun curtain. Henry opened one of the

window shutters a little and looked out. The dawn had not yet come, but

it was not a dark night, and he looked over across the little clearing

to the trees beyond. On that side was a tiny garden, and near the wall

of the house some roses were blooming. He could see the glow of pink and

red. But no enemy bad yet approached. Searching the clearing carefully

with those eyes of his, almost preternaturally keen, he was confident

that the Indians were still in the woods. He felt an intense thrill of

satisfaction at the success of his plan so far.

He was not cruel, he never rejoiced in bloodshed, but the borderer alone

knew what the border suffered, and only those who never saw or felt the

torture could turn the other cheek to be smitten. The Standish house had

made a sudden and ominous change of tenants.

“It will soon be day,” said Henry, “and farmers are early risers. Kindle

up that fire a little, will you, Sol? I want some smoke to come out of

the chimney.”

The shiftless one raked away the ashes, and put on two or three pieces

of wood that lay on the hearth. Little flames and smoke arose. Henry

looked curiously about the house. It was the usual cabin of the

frontier, although somewhat larger. The bed on which Shif'less Sol sat

was evidently that of the father and mother, while two large ones behind

the curtain were used by the children. On the shelf stood a pail half

full of drinking water, and by the side of it a tin cup. Dried herbs

hung over the fireplace, and two or three chests stood in the corners.

The clothing of the children was scattered about. Unprepared food for

breakfast stood on a table. Everything told of a hasty flight and its

terrible need. Henry was already resolved, but his heart hardened within

him as he saw.

He took the hatchet from his belt and cut one of the hooks for the

door bar nearly in two. The others said not a word. They had no need

to speak. They understood everything that he did. He opened the window

again and looked out. Nothing yet appeared. “The dawn will come in three

quarters of an hour,” he said, “and we shall not have to wait long for

what we want to do.”

He sat down facing the door. All the others were sitting, and they, too,

faced the door. Everyone had his rifle across his knees, with one hand

upon the hammer. The wood on the hearth sputtered as the fire spread,

and the flames grew. Beyond a doubt a thin spire of smoke was rising

from the chimney, and a watching eye would see this sign of a peaceful

and unsuspecting mind.

“I hope Braxton Wyatt will be the first to knock at our door,” said

Shif'less Sol.

“I wouldn't be sorry,” said Henry.

Paul was sitting in a chair near the fire, and he said nothing. He hoped

the waiting would be very short. The light was sufficient for him to see

the faces of his comrades, and he noticed that they were all very tense.

This was no common watch that they kept. Shif'less Sol remained on the

bed, Henry sat on another of the chairs, Tom Ross was on one of the

chests with his back to the wall. Long Jim was near the curtain. Close

by Paul was a home-made cradle. He put down his hand and touched it. He

was glad that it was empty now, but the sight of it steeled his heart

anew for the task that lay before them.

Ten silent minutes passed, and Henry went to the window again. He did

not open it, but there was a crack through which he could see. The

others said nothing, but watched his face. When he turned away they knew

that the moment was at hand.

“They've just come from the woods,” he said, “and in a minute they'll be

at the door. Now, boys, take one last look at your rifles.”

A minute later there was a sudden sharp knock at the door, but no answer

came from within. The knock was repeated, sharper and louder, and Henry,

altering his voice as much as possible, exclaimed like one suddenly

awakened from sleep:

“Who is it? What do you want?”

Back came a voice which Henry knew to be that of Braxton Wyatt:

“We've come from farther up the valley. We're scouts, we've been up to

the Indian country. We're half starved. Open and give us food!”

“I don't believe you,” replied Henry. “Honest people don't come to my

door at this time in the morning.”

Then ensued a few moments of silence, although Paul, with his vivid

fancy, thought he heard whispering on the other side of the door.

“Open!” cried Wyatt, “or we'll break your door down!” Henry said

nothing, nor did any of the others. They did not stir. The fire crackled

a little, but there was no other sound in the Standish house. Presently

they heard a slight noise outside, that of light feet.

“They are going for a log with which to break the door in,” whispered

Henry. “They won't have to look far. The wood pile isn't fifty feet

away.”

“An' then,” said Shif'less Sol, “they won't have much left to do but to

take the scalps of women an' little children.”

Every figure in the Standish house stiffened at the shiftless one's

significant words, and the light in the eyes grew sterner. Henry went

to the door, put his ear to the line where it joined the wall, and

listened.

“They've got their log,” he said, “and in half a minute they'll rush it

against the door.”

He came back to his old position. Paul's heart began to thump, and his

thumb fitted itself over the trigger of his cocked rifle. Then they

heard rapid feet, a smash, a crash, and the door flew open. A half dozen

Iroquois and a log that they held between them were hurled into the

middle of the room. The door had given away so easily and unexpectedly

that the warriors could not check themselves, and two or three fell

with the log. But they sprang like cats to their feet, and with their

comrades uttered a cry that filled the whole cabin with its terrible

sound and import.

The Iroquois, keen of eyes and quick of mind, saw the trap at once.

The five grim figures, rifle in hand and finger on trigger, all waiting

silent and motionless were far different from what they expected. Here

could be no scalps, with the long, silky hair of women and children.

There was a moment's pause, and then the Indians rushed at their foes.

Five fingers pulled triggers, flame leaped from five muzzles, and in an

instant the cabin was filled with smoke and war shouts, but the warriors

never had a chance. They could only strike blindly with their tomahawks,

and in a half minute three of them, two wounded, rushed through the door

and fled to the woods. They had been preceded already by Braxton Wyatt,

who had hung back craftily while the Iroquois broke down the door.

CHAPTER IX. WYOMING

The five made no attempt to pursue. In fact, they did not leave the

cabin, but stood there a while, looking down at the fallen, hideous with

war paint, but now at the end of their last trail. Their tomahawks lay

upon the floor, and glittered when the light from the fire fell upon

them. Smoke, heavy with the odor of burned gunpowder, drifted about the

room.

Henry threw open the two shuttered windows, and fresh currents of air

poured into the room. Over the mountains in the east came the first

shaft of day. The surface of the river was lightening.

“What shall we do with them?” asked Paul, pointing to the silent forms

on the floor.

“Leave them,” said Henry. “Butler's army is burning everything before

it, and this house and all in it is bound to go. You notice, however,

that Braxton Wyatt is not here.”

“Trust him to escape every time,” said Shif'less Sol. “Of course he

stood back while the Indians rushed the house. But ez shore ez we live

somebody will get him some day. People like that can't escape always.”

They slipped from the house, turning toward the river bank, and not long

after it was full daylight they were at Forty Fort again, where they

found Standish and his family. Henry replied briefly to the man's

questions, but two hours later a scout came in and reported the grim

sight that he had seen in the Standish home. No one could ask for

further proof of the fealty of the five, who sought a little sleep, but

before noon were off again.

They met more fugitives, and it was now too dangerous to go farther up

the valley. But not willing to turn back, they ascended the mountains

that hem it in, and from the loftiest point that they could find sought

a sight of the enemy.

It was an absolutely brilliant day in summer. The blue of the heavens

showed no break but the shifting bits of white cloud, and the hills and

mountains rolled away, solid masses of rich, dark green. The river, a

beautiful river at any time, seemed from this height a great current of

quicksilver. Henry pointed to a place far up the stream where black dots

appeared on its surface. These dots were moving, and they came on in

four lines.

“Boys,” he said, “you know what those lines of black dots are?”

“Yes,” replied Shif'less Sol, “it's Butler's army of Indians, Tories,

Canadians, an' English. They've come from Tioga Point on the river, an'

our Colonel Butler kin expect 'em soon.”

The sunlight became dazzling, and showed the boats, despite the

distance, with startling clearness. The five, watching from their peak,

saw them turn in toward the land, where they poured forth a motley

stream of red men and white, a stream that was quickly swallowed up in

the forest.

“They are coming down through the woods on the fort, said Tom Ross.

“And they're coming fast,” said Henry. “It's for us to carry the

warning.”

They sped back to the Wyoming fort, spreading the alarm as they passed,

and once more they were in the council room with Colonel Zebulon Butler

and his officers around him.

“So they are at hand, and you have seen them?” said the colonel.

“Yes,” replied Henry, the spokesman, “they came down from Tioga Point

in boats, but have disembarked and are advancing through the woods. They

will be here today.”

There was a little silence in the room. The older men understood the

danger perhaps better than the younger, who were eager for battle.

“Why should we stay here and wait for them?” exclaimed one of the

younger captains at length-some of these captains were mere boys. “Why

not go out, meet them, and beat them?”

“They outnumber us about five to one,” said Henry. “Brant, if he is

still with them, though he may have gone to some other place from Tioga

Point, is a great captain. So is Timmendiquas, the Wyandot, and they say

that the Tory leader is energetic and capable.”

“It is all true!” exclaimed Colonel Butler. “We must stay in the fort!

We must not go out to meet them! We are not strong enough!”

A murmur of protest and indignation came from the younger officers.

“And leave the valley to be ravaged! Women and children to be scalped,

while we stay behind log walls!” said one of them boldly.

The men in the Wyoming fort were not regular troops, merely militia,

farmers gathered hastily for their own defense.

Colonel Butler flushed.

“We have induced as many as we could to seek refuge,” he said. “It hurts

me as much as you to have the valley ravaged while we sit quiet here.

But I know that we have no chance against so large a force, and if we

fall what is to become of the hundreds whom we now protect?”

But the murmur of protest grew. All the younger men were indignant. They

would not seek shelter for themselves while others were suffering. A

young lieutenant saw from a window two fires spring up and burn like

torch lights against the sky. They were houses blazing before the Indian

brand.

“Look at that!” he cried, pointing with an accusing finger, “and we are

here, under cover, doing nothing!”

A deep angry mutter went about the room, but Colonel Butler, although

the flush remained on his face, still shook his head. He glanced at Tom

Ross, the oldest of the five.

“You know about the Indian force,” he exclaimed. “What should we do?”

The face of Tom Ross was very grave, and he spoke slowly, as was his

wont.

“It's a hard thing to set here,” he exclaimed, “but it will be harder to

go out an' meet 'em on their own ground, an' them four or five to one.”

“We must not go out,” repeated the Colonel, glad of such backing.

The door was thrust open, and an officer entered.

“A rumor has just arrived, saying that the entire Davidson family has

been killed and scalped,” he said.

A deep, angry cry went up. Colonel Butler and the few who stood with

him were overborne. Such things as these could not be endured, and

reluctantly the commander gave his consent. They would go out and

fight. The fort and its enclosures were soon filled with the sounds of

preparation, and the little army was formed rapidly.

“We will fight by your side, of course,” said Henry, “but we wish to

serve on the flank as an independent band. We can be of more service in

that manner.”

The colonel thanked them gratefully.

“Act as you think best,” he said.

The five stood near one of the gates, while the little force formed

in ranks. Almost for the first time they were gloomy upon going into

battle. They had seen the strength of that army of Indians, renegades,

Tories, Canadians, and English advancing under the banner of England,

and they knew the power and fanaticism of the Indian leaders. They

believed that the terrible Queen Esther, tomahawk in hand, had

continually chanted to them her songs of blood as they came down the

river. It was now the third of July, and valley and river were beautiful

in the golden sunlight. The foliage showed vivid and deep green on

either line of high hills. The summer sun had never shown more kindly

over the lovely valley.

The time was now three o'clock. The gates of the fort were thrown open,

and the little army marched out, only three hundred, of whom seventy

were old men, or boys so young that in our day they would be called

children. Yet they marched bravely against the picked warriors of the

Iroquois, trained from infancy to the forest and war, and a formidable

body of white rovers who wished to destroy the little colony of

“rebels,” as they called them.

Small though it might be, it was a gallant army. Young and old held

their heads high. A banner was flying, and a boy beat a steady insistent

roll upon a drum. Henry and his comrades were on the left flank, the

river was on the right. The great gates had closed behind them, shutting

in the women and the children. The sun blazed down, throwing everything

into relief with its intense, vivid light playing upon the brown faces

of the borderers, their rifles and their homespun clothes. Colonel

Butler and two or three of his officers were on horseback, leading the

van. Now that the decision was to fight, the older officers, who had

opposed it, were in the very front. Forward they went, and spread out

a little, but with the right flank still resting on the river, and the

left extended on the plain.

The five were on the edge of the plain, a little detached from the

others, searching the forest for a sign of the enemy, who was already so

near. Their gloom did not decrease. Neither the rolling of the drum nor

the flaunting of the banner had any effect. Brave though the men might

be, this was not the way in which they should meet an Indian foe who

outnumbered them four or five to one.

“I don't like it,” muttered Tom Ross.

“Nor do I,” said Henry, “but remember that whatever happens we all stand

together.”

“We remember!” said the others.

On-they went, and the five moving faster were now ahead of the main

force some hundred yards. They swung in a little toward the river. The

banks here were highland off to the left was a large swamp. The five now

checked speed and moved with great wariness. They saw nothing, and they

heard nothing, either, until they went forty or fifty yards farther.

Then a low droning sound came to their ears. It was the voice of one yet

far away, but they knew it. It was the terrible chant of Queen Esther,

in this moment the most ruthless of all the savages, and inflaming them

continuously for the combat.

The five threw themselves flat on their faces, and waited a little. The

chant grew louder, and then through the foliage they saw the ominous

figure approaching. She was much as she had been on that night when they

first beheld her. She wore the same dress of barbaric colors, she swung

the same great tomahawk about her head, and sang all the time of fire

and blood and death.

They saw behind her the figures of chiefs, naked to the breech cloth for

battle, their bronze bodies glistening with the war paint, and bright

feathers gleaming in their hair. Henry recognized the tall form of

Timmendiquas, notable by his height, and around him his little band of

Wyandots, ready to prove themselves mighty warriors to their eastern

friends the Iroquois. Back of these was a long line of Indians and their

white allies, Sir John Johnson's Royal Greens and Butler's Rangers

in the center, bearing the flag of England. The warriors, of whom the

Senecas were most numerous, were gathered in greatest numbers on their

right flank, facing the left flank of the Americans. Sangerachte and

Hiokatoo, who had taken two English prisoners at Braddock's defeat, and

who had afterwards burned them both alive with his own hand, were the

principal leaders of the Senecas. Henry caught a glimpse of “Indian”

Butler in the center, with a great blood-red handkerchief tied around

his head, and, despite the forest, he noticed with a great sinking of

the heart how far the hostile line extended. It could wrap itself like a

python around the defense.

“It's a tale that will soon be told,” said Paul.

They went back swiftly, and warned Colonel Butler that the enemy was

at band. Even as they spoke they heard the loud wailing chant of Queen

Esther, and then came the war whoop, pouring from a thousand throats,

swelling defiant and fierce like the cry of a wounded beast. The

farmers, the boys, and the old men, most of whom had never been in

battle, might well tremble at this ominous sound, so great in volume

and extending so far into the forest. But they stood firm, drawing

themselves into a somewhat more compact body, and still advancing with

their banners flying, and the boy beating out that steady roll on the

drum.

The enemy now came into full sight, and Colonel Butler deployed his

force in line of battle, his right resting on the high bank of the river

and his left against the swamp. Forward pressed the motley army of the

other Butler, he of sanguinary and cruel fame, and the bulk of his

force came into view, the sun shining down on the green uniforms of the

English and the naked brown bodies of the Iroquois.

The American commander gave the order to fire. Eager fingers were

already on the trigger, and a blaze of light ran along the entire rank.

The Royal Greens and Rangers, although replying with their own fire,

gave back before the storm of bullets, and the Wyoming men, with a shout

of triumph, sprang forward. It was always a characteristic of the border

settler, despite many disasters and a knowledge of Indian craft and

cunning, to rush straight at his foe whenever he saw him. His, unless

a trained forest warrior himself, was a headlong bravery, and now this

gallant little force asked for nothing but to come to close grips with

the enemy.

The men in the center with “Indian” Butler gave back still more. With

cries of victory the Wyoming men pressed forward, firing rapidly, and

continuing to drive the mongrel white force. The rifles were cracking

rapidly, and smoke arose over the two lines. The wind caught wisps of it

and carried them off down the river.

“It goes better than I thought,” said Paul as he reloaded his rifle.

“Not yet,” said Henry, “we are fighting the white men only. Where are

all the Indians, who alone outnumber our men more than two to one?”

“Here they come,” said Shif'less Sol, pointing to the depths of the

swamp, which was supposed to protect the left flank of the Wyoming

force.

The five saw in the spaces, amid the briars and vines, scores of dark

figures leaping over the mud, naked to the breech cloth, armed with

rifle and tomahawk, and rushing down upon the unprotected side of their

foe. The swamp had been but little obstacle to them.

Henry and his comrades gave the alarm at once. As many as possible were

called off immediately from the main body, but they were not numerous

enough to have any effect. The Indians came through the swamp in

hundreds and hundreds, and, as they uttered their triumphant yell,

poured a terrible fire into the Wyoming left flank. The defenders were

forced to give ground, and the English and Tories came on again.

The fire was now deadly and of great volume. The air was filled with

the flashing of the rifles. The cloud of smoke grew heavier, and faces,

either from heat or excitement, showed red through it. The air was

filled with bullets, and the Wyoming force was being cut down fast, as

the fire of more than a thousand rifles converged upon it.

The five at the fringe of the swamp loaded and fired as fast as they

could at the Indian horde, but they saw that it was creeping closer and

closer, and that the hail of bullets it sent in was cutting away

the whole left flank of the defenders. They saw the tall figure of

Timmendiquas, a very god of war, leading on the Indians, with his

fearless Wyandots in a close cluster around him. Colonel John Durkee,

gathering up a force of fifty or sixty, charged straight at the

warriors, but he was killed by a withering volley, which drove his men

back.

Now occurred a fatal thing, one of those misconceptions which often

decide the fate of a battle. The company of Captain Whittlesey, on the

extreme left, which was suffering most severely, was ordered to fall

back. The entire little army, which was being pressed hard now, seeing

the movement of Whittlesey, began to retreat. Even without the mistake

it is likely they would have lost in the face of such numbers.

The entire horde of Indians, Tories, Canadians, English, and renegades,

uttering a tremendous yell, rushed forward. Colonel Zebulon Butler,

seeing the crisis, rode up and down in front of his men, shouting:

“Don't leave me, my children! the victory is ours!” Bravely his officers

strove to stop the retreat. Every captain who led a company into action

was killed. Some of these captains were but boys. The men were falling

by dozens.

All the Indians, by far the most formidable part of the invading force,

were through the swamp now, and, dashing down their unloaded rifles,

threw themselves, tomahawk in hand, upon the defense. Not more than two

hundred of the Wyoming men were left standing, and the impact of seven

or eight hundred savage warriors was so great that they were hurled back

in confusion. A wail of grief and terror came from the other side of

the river, where a great body of women and children were watching the

fighting.

“The battle's lost,” said Shif'less Sol.

“Beyond hope of saving it,” said Henry, “but, boys, we five are alive

yet, and we'll do our best to help the others protect the retreat.”

They kept under cover, fighting as calmly as they could amid such a

terrible scene, picking off warrior after warrior, saving more than one

soldier ere the tomahawk fell. Shif'less Sol took a shot at “Indian”

Butler, but he was too far away, and the bullet missed him.

“I'd give five years of my life if he were fifty yards nearer,”

exclaimed the shiftless one.

But the invading force came in between and he did not get another shot.

There was now a terrible medley, a continuous uproar, the crashing fire

of hundreds of rifles, the shouts of the Indians, and the cries of the

wounded. Over them all hovered smoke and dust, and the air was heavy,

too, with the odor of burnt gunpowder. The division of old men and very

young boys stood next, and the Indians were upon them, tomahawk in hand,

but in the face of terrible odds all bore themselves with a valor worthy

of the best of soldiers. Three fourths of them died that day, before

they were driven back on the fort.

The Wyoming force was pushed away from the edge of the swamp, which had

been some protection to the left, and they were now assailed from all

sides except that of the river. “Indian” Butler raged at the head of his

men, who had been driven back at first, and who had been saved by the

Indians. Timmendiquas, in the absence of Brant, who was not seen upon

this field, became by valor and power of intellect the leader of all the

Indians for this moment. The Iroquois, although their own fierce chiefs,

I-Tiokatoo, Sangerachte, and the others fought with them, unconsciously

obeyed him. Nor did the fierce woman, Queen Esther, shirk the battle.

Waving her great tomahawk, she was continually among the warriors,

singing her song of war and death.

They were driven steadily back toward the fort, and the little band

crumbled away beneath the deadly fire. Soon none would be left unless

they ran for their lives. The five drew away toward the forest. They

saw that the fort itself could not hold out against such a numerous and

victorious foe, and they had no mind to be trapped. But their retreat

was slow, and as they went they sent bullet after bullet into the Indian

flank. Only a small percentage of the Wyoming force was left, and it now

broke. Colonel Butler and Colonel Dennison, who were mounted, reached

the fort. Some of the men jumped into the river, swam to the other shore

and escaped. Some swam to a little island called Monocacy, and hid, but

the Tories and Indians hunted them out and slew them. One Tory found his

brother there, and killed him with his own hand, a deed of unspeakable

horror that is yet mentioned by the people of that region. A few fled

into the forest and entered the fort at night.

CHAPTER X. THE BLOODY ROCK

Seeing that all was lost, the five drew farther away into the woods.

They were not wounded, yet their faces were white despite the tan. They

had never before looked upon so terrible a scene. The Indians, wild with

the excitement of a great triumph and thirsting for blood, were running

over the field scalping the dead, killing some of the wounded, and

saving others for the worst of tortures. Nor were their white allies one

whit behind them. They bore a full part in the merciless war upon the

conquered. Timmendiquas, the great Wyandot, was the only one to show

nobility. Several of the wounded he saved from immediate death, and he

tried to hold back the frenzied swarm of old squaws who rushed forward

and began to practice cruelties at which even the most veteran warrior

might shudder. But Queen Esther urged them on, and “Indian” Butler

himself and the chiefs were afraid of her.

Henry, despite himself, despite all his experience and powers of

self-control, shuddered from head to foot at the cries that came from

the lost field, and he was sure that the others were doing the same. The

sun was setting, but its dying light, brilliant and intense, tinged the

field as if with blood, showing all the yelling horde as the warriors

rushed about for scalps, or danced in triumph, whirling their hideous

trophies about their heads. Others were firing at men who were escaping

to the far bank of the Susquehanna, and others were already seeking the

fugitives in their vain hiding places on the little islet.

The five moved farther into the forest, retreating slowly, and sending

in a shot now and then to protect the retreat of some fugitive who was

seeking the shelter of the woods. The retreat had become a rout and then

a massacre. The savages raged up and down in the greatest killing they

had known since Braddock's defeat. The lodges of the Iroquois would be

full of the scalps of white men.

All the five felt the full horror of the scene, but it made its deepest

impress, perhaps, upon Paul. He had taken part in border battles before,

but this was the first great defeat. He was not blind to the valor and

good qualities of the Indian and his claim upon the wilderness, but he

saw the incredible cruelties that he could commit, and he felt a horror

of those who used him as an ally, a horror that he could never dismiss

from his mind as long as he lived.

“Look!” he exclaimed, “look at that!”

A man of seventy and a boy of fourteen were running for the forest. They

might have been grandfather and grandson. Undoubtedly they had fought

in the Battalion of the Very Old and the Very Young, and now, when

everything else was lost, they were seeking to save their lives in the

friendly shelter of the woods. But they were pursued by two groups of

Iroquois, four warriors in one, and three in the other, and the Indians

were gaining fast.

“I reckon we ought to save them,” said Shif'less Sol.

“No doubt of it,” said Henry. “Paul, you and Sol move off to the right

a little, and take the three, while the rest of us will look out for the

four.”

The little band separated according to the directions, Paul and Sol

having the lighter task, as the others were to meet the group of four

Indians at closer range. Paul and Sol were behind some trees, and,

turning at an angle, they ran forward to intercept the three Indians. It

would have seemed to anyone who was not aware of the presence of friends

in the forest that the old man and the boy would surely be overtaken and

be tomahawked, but three rifles suddenly flashed among the foliage. Two

of the warriors in the group of four fell, and a third uttered a yell

of pain. Paul and Shif'less Sol fired at the same time at the group of

three. One fell before the deadly rifle of Shif'less Sol, but Paul only

grazed his man. Nevertheless, the whole pursuit stopped, and the boy

and the old man escaped to the forest, and subsequently to safety at the

Moravian towns.

Paul, watching the happy effect of the shots, was about to say something

to Shif'less Sol, when an immense force was hurled upon him, and he was

thrown to the ground. His comrade was served in the same way, but the

shiftless one was uncommonly strong and agile. He managed to writhe half

way to his knees, and he shouted in a tremendous voice:

“Run, Henry, run! You can't do anything for us now!”

Braxton Wyatt struck him fiercely across the mouth. The blood came,

but the shiftless one merely spat it out, and looked curiously at the

renegade.

“I've often wondered about you, Braxton,” he said calmly. “I used to

think that anybody, no matter how bad, had some good in him, but I

reckon you ain't got none.”

Wyatt did not answer, but rushed forward in search of the others.

But Henry, Silent Tom, and Long Jim had vanished. A powerful party

of warriors had stolen upon Shif'less Sol and Paul, while they were

absorbed in the chase of the old man and the boy, and now they were

prisoners, bound securely. Braxton Wyatt came back from the fruitless

search for the three, but his face was full of savage joy as he looked

down at the captured two.

“We could have killed you just as easily,” he said, “but we didn't

want to do that. Our friends here are going to have their fun with you

first.”

Paul's cheeks whitened a little at the horrible suggestion, but

Shif'less Sol faced them boldly. Several white men in uniform had come

up, and among them was an elderly one, short and squat, and with a great

flame colored handkerchief tied around his bead.

“You may burn us alive, or you may do other things jest ez bad to us,

all under the English flag,” said Shif'less Sol, “but I'm thinkin' that

a lot o' people in England will be ashamed uv it when they hear the

news.”

“Indian” Butler and his uniformed soldiers turned away, leaving

Shif'less Sol and Paul in the hands of the renegade and the Iroquois.

The two prisoners were jerked to their feet and told to march.

“Come on, Paul,” said Shif'less Sol. “'Tain't wuth while fur us to

resist. But don't you quit hopin', Paul. We've escaped from many a tight

corner, an' mebbe we're goin' to do it ag'in.”

“Shut up!” said Braxton Wyatt savagely. “If you say another word I'll

gag you in a way that will make you squirm.”

Shif'less Sol looked him squarely in the eye. Solomon Hyde, who was not

shiftless at all, had a dauntless soul, and he was not afraid now in the

face of death preceded by long torture.

“I had a dog once, Braxton Wyatt,” he said, “an' I reckon he wuz the

meanest, ornierest cur that ever lived. He liked to live on dirt, the

dirtier the place he could find the better; he'd rather steal his food

than get it honestly; he wuz sech a coward that he wuz afeard o' a

rabbit, but ef your back wuz turned to him he'd nip you in the ankle.

But bad ez that dog wuz, Braxton, he wuz a gentleman 'longside o' you.”

Some of the Indians understood English, and Wyatt knew it. He snatched

a pistol from his belt, and was about to strike Sol with the butt of it,

but a tall figure suddenly appeared before him, and made a commanding

gesture. The gesture said plainly: “Do not strike; put that pistol

back!” Braxton Wyatt, whose soul was afraid within him, did not strike,

and he put the pistol back.

It was Timmendiquas, the great White Lightning of the Wyandots, who

with his little detachment had proved that day how mighty the Wyandot

warriors were, full equals of Thayendanegea's Mohawks, the Keepers of

the Western Gate. He was bare to the waist. One shoulder was streaked

with blood from a slight wound, but his countenance was not on fire with

passion for torture and slaughter like those of the others.

“There is no need to strike prisoners,” he said in English. “Their fate

will be decided later.”

Paul thought that he caught a look of pity from the eyes of the great

Wyandot, and Shif'less Sol said:

“I'm sorry, Timmendiquas, since I had to be captured, that you didn't

capture me yourself. I'm glad to say that you're a great warrior.”

Wyatt growled under his breath, but he was still afraid to speak out,

although he knew that Timmendiquas was merely a distant and casual ally,

and had little authority in that army. Yet he was overawed, and so were

the Indians with him.

“We were merely taking the prisoners to Colonel Butler,” he said. “That

is all.”

Timmendiquas stared at him, and the renegade's face fell. But he and the

Indians went on with the prisoners, and Timmendiquas looked after them

until they were out of sight.

“I believe White Lightning was sorry that we'd been captured,” whispered

Shif'less Sol.

“I think so, too,” Paul whispered back.

They had no chance for further conversation, as they were driven rapidly

now to that point of the battlefield which lay nearest to the fort,

and here they were thrust into the midst of a gloomy company, fellow

captives, all bound tightly, and many wounded. No help, no treatment of

any kind was offered for hurts. The Indians and renegades stood about

and yelled with delight when the agony of some man's wound wrung from

him a groan. The scene was hideous in every respect. The setting sun

shone blood red over forest, field, and river. Far off burning houses

still smoked like torches. But the mountain wall in the east, was

growing dusky with the coming twilight. From the island, where they were

massacring the fugitives in their vain hiding places, came the sound

of shots and cries, but elsewhere the firing had ceased. All who could

escape had done so already, and of the others, those who were dead were

fortunate.

The sun sank like a red ball behind the mountains, and darkness swept

down over the earth. Fires began to blaze up here and there, some for

terrible purpose. The victorious Iroquois; stripped to the waist and

painted in glaring colors, joined in a savage dance that would remain

forever photographed on the eye of Paul Cotter. As they jumped to and

fro, hundreds of them, waving aloft tomahawks and scalping knives, both

of which dripped red, they sang their wild chant of war and triumph.

White men, too, as savage as they, joined them. Paul shuddered again

and again from head to foot at this sight of an orgy such as the mass of

mankind escapes, even in dreams.

The darkness thickened, the dance grew wilder. It was like a carnival

of demons, but it was to be incited to a yet wilder pitch. A singular

figure, one of extraordinary ferocity, was suddenly projected into the

midst of the whirling crowd, and a chant, shriller and fiercer, rose

above all the others. The figure was that of Queen Esther, like some

monstrous creature out of a dim past, her great tomahawk stained with

blood, her eyes bloodshot, and stains upon her shoulders. Paul would

have covered his eyes had his hands not been tied instead, he turned his

head away. He could not bear to see more. But the horrible chant came to

his ears, nevertheless, and it was reinforced presently by other sounds

still more terrible. Fires sprang up in the forest, and cries came from

these fires. The victorious army of “Indian” Butler was beginning to

burn the prisoners alive. But at this point we must stop. The details

of what happened around those fires that night are not for the ordinary

reader. It suffices to say that the darkest deed ever done on the soil

of what is now the United States was being enacted.

Shif'less Sol himself, iron of body and soul, was shaken. He could not

close his ears, if he would, to the cries that came from the fires, but

he shut his eyes to keep out the demon dance. Nevertheless, he opened

them again in a moment. The horrible fascination was too great. He saw

Queen Esther still shaking her tomahawk, but as he looked she suddenly

darted through the circle, warriors willingly giving way before her, and

disappeared in the darkness. The scalp dance went on, but it had lost

some of its fire and vigor.

Shif'less Sol felt relieved.

“She's gone,” he whispered to Paul, and the boy, too, then opened his

eyes. The rest of it, the mad whirlings and jumpings of the warriors,

was becoming a blur before him, confused and without meaning.

Neither he nor Shif'less Sol knew how long they had been sitting there

on the ground, although it had grown yet darker, when Braxton Wyatt

thrust a violent foot against the shiftless one and cried:

“Get up! You're wanted!”

A half dozen Seneca warriors were with him, and there was no chance of

resistance. The two rose slowly to their feet, and walked where Braxton

Wyatt led. The Senecas came on either side, and close behind them,

tomahawks in their hands. Paul, the sensitive, who so often felt the

impression of coming events from the conditions around him, was sure

that they were marching to their fate. Death he did not fear so greatly,

although he did not want to die, but when a shriek came to him from one

of the fires that convulsive shudder shook him again from head to foot.

Unconsciously he strained at his bound arms, not for freedom, but that

he might thrust his fingers in his ears and shut out the awful sounds.

Shif'less Sol, because he could not use his hands, touched his shoulder

gently against Paul's.

“Paul,” he whispered, “I ain't sure that we're goin' to die, leastways,

I still have hope; but ef we do, remember that we don't have to die but

oncet.”

“I'll remember, Sol,” Paul whispered back.

“Silence, there!” exclaimed Braxton Wyatt. But the two had said all they

wanted to say, and fortunately their senses were somewhat dulled. They

had passed through so much that they were like those who are under the

influence of opiates. The path was now dark, although both torches and

fires burned in the distance. Presently they heard that chant with which

they had become familiar, the dreadful notes of the hyena woman, and

they knew that they were being taken into her presence, for what purpose

they could not tell, although they were sure that it was a bitter one.

As they approached, the woman's chant rose to an uncommon pitch of

frenzy, and Paul felt the blood slowly chilling within him.

“Get up there!” exclaimed Braxton Wyatt, and the Senecas gave them both

a push. Other warriors who were standing at the edge of an open space

seized them and threw them forward with much violence. When they

struggled into a sitting position, they saw Queen Esther standing upon a

broad flat rock and whirling in a ghastly dance that had in it something

Oriental. She still swung the great war hatchet that seemed always to be

in her hand. Her long black hair flew wildly about her head, and her red

dress gleamed in the dusk. Surely no more terrible image ever appeared

in the American wilderness! In front of her, lying upon the ground, were

twenty bound Americans, and back of them were Iroquois in dozens, with a

sprinkling of their white allies.

What it all meant, what was about to come to pass, nether Paul nor

Shif'less Sol could guess, but Queen Esther sang:

We have found them, the Yengees

Who built their houses in the valley,

They came forth to meet us in battle,

Our rifles and tomahawks cut them down,

As the Yengees lay low the forest.

Victory and glory Aieroski gives to his children,

The Mighty Six Nations, greatest of men.

There will be feasting in the lodges of the Iroquois,

And scalps will hang on the high ridge pole,

But wolves will roam where the Yengees dwelt

And will gnaw the bones of them all,

Of the man, the woman, and the child.

Victory and glory Aieroski gives to his children,

The Mighty Six Nations, greatest of men.

Such it sounded to Shif'less Sol, who knew the tongue of the Iroquois,

and so it went on, verse after verse, and at the end of each verse came

the refrain, in which the warriors joined:

“Victory and glory Aieroski gives to his children. The mighty Six

Nations, greatest of men.”

“What under the sun is she about?” whispered Shif'less Sol.

“It is a fearful face,” was Paul's only reply.

Suddenly the woman, without stopping her chant, made a gesture to

the warriors. Two powerful Senecas seized one of the bound prisoners,

dragged him to his feet, and held him up before her. She uttered a

shout, whirled the great tomahawk about her head, its blade glittering

in the moonlight, and struck with all her might. The skull of the

prisoner was cleft to the chin, and without a cry he fell at the feet of

the woman who had killed him. Paul uttered a shout of horror, but it

was lost in the joyful yells of the Iroquois, who, at the command of the

woman, offered a second victim. Again the tomahawk descended, and again

a man fell dead without a sound.

Shif'less Sol and Paul wrenched at their thongs, but they could not move

them. Braxton Wyatt laughed aloud. It was strange to see how fast one

with a bad nature could fall when the opportunities were spread before

him. Now he was as cruel as the Indians themselves. Wilder and shriller

grew the chant of the savage queen. She was intoxicated with blood. She

saw it everywhere. Her tomahawk clove a third skull, a fourth, a fifth,

a sixth, a seventh, and eighth. As fast as they fell the warriors at her

command brought up new victims for her weapon. Paul shut his eyes, but

he knew by the sounds what was passing. Suddenly a stern voice cried:

“Hold, woman! Enough of this! Will your tomahawk never be satisfied?”

Paul understood it, the meaning, but not the words. He opened his eyes

and saw the great figure of Timmendiquas striding forward, his hand

upraised in protest.

The woman turned her fierce gaze upon the young chief. “Timmendiquas,”

she said, “we are the Iroquois, and we are the masters. You are far from

your own land, a guest in our lodges, and you cannot tell those who have

won the victory how they shall use it. Stand back!”

A loud laugh came from the Iroquois. The fierce old chiefs, Hiokatoo and

Sangerachte, and a dozen warriors thrust themselves before Timmendiquas.

The woman resumed her chant, and a hundred throats pealed out with her

the chorus:

Victory and glory Aieroski gives to his children The mighty Six Nations,

greatest of men.

She gave the signal anew. The ninth victim stood before her, and then

fell, cloven to the chin; then the tenth, and the eleventh, and the

twelfth, and the thirteenth, and the fourteenth, and the fifteenth, and

the sixteenth-sixteen bound men killed by one woman in less than fifteen

minutes. The four in that group who were left had all the while been

straining fearfully at their bonds. Now they had slipped or broken

them, and, springing to their feet, driven on by the mightiest of human

impulses, they dashed through the ring of Iroquois and into the forest.

Two were hunted down by the warriors and killed, but the other two,

Joseph Elliott and Lebbeus Hammond, escaped and lived to be old men,

feeling that life could never again hold for them anything so dreadful

as that scene at “The Bloody Rock.”

A great turmoil and confusion arose as the prisoners fled and the

Indians pursued. Paul and Shif'less Sol; full of sympathy and pity for

the fugitives and having felt all the time that their turn, too, would

come under that dreadful tomahawk, struggled to their feet. They did

not see a form slip noiselessly behind them, but a sharp knife descended

once, then twice, and the bands of both fell free.

“Run! run!” exclaimed the voice of Timmendiquas, low but penetrating. “I

would save you from this!”

Amid the darkness and confusion the act of the great Wyandot was not

seen by the other Indians and the renegades. Paul flashed him one look

of gratitude, and then he and Shif'less Sol darted away, choosing a

course that led them from the crowd in pursuit of the other flying

fugitives.

At such a time they might have secured a long lead without being

noticed, had it not been for the fierce swarm of old squaws who were

first in cruelty that night. A shrill wild howl arose, and the pointing

fingers of the old women showed to the warriors the two in flight. At

the same time several of the squaws darted forward to intercept the

fugitives.

“I hate to hit a woman,” breathed Shif'less Sol to Paul, “but I'm goin'

to do it now.”

A hideous figure sprang before them. Sol struck her face with his open

hand, and with a shriek she went down. He leaped over her, although

she clawed at his feet as he passed, and ran on, with Paul at his side.

Shots were now fired at him, but they went wild, but Paul, casting a

look backward out of the corner of his eye, saw that a real pursuit,

silent and deadly, had begun. Five Mohawk warriors, running swiftly,

were only a few hundred yards away. They carried rifle, tomahawk, and

knife, and Paul and Shif'less Sol were unarmed. Moreover, they were

coming fast, spreading out slightly, and the shiftless one, able even

at such a time to weigh the case coolly, saw that the odds were against

them. Yet he would not despair. Anything might happen. It was night.

There was little organization in the army of the Indians and of their

white allies, which was giving itself up to the enjoyment of scalps and

torture. Moreover, he and Paul were, animated by the love of life, which

is always stronger than the desire to give death.

Their flight led them in a diagonal line toward the mountains. Only once

did the pursuers give tongue. Paul tripped over a root, and a triumphant

yell came from the Mohawks. But it merely gave him new life. He

recovered himself in an instant and ran faster. But it was terribly hard

work. He could hear Shif'less Sol's sobbing breath by his side, and he

was sure that his own must have the same sound for his comrade.

“At any rate one uv 'em is beat,” gasped Shif'less Sol. “Only four are

ban-in' on now.”

The ground rose a little and became rougher. The lights from the Indian

fires had sunk almost out of sight behind them, and a dense thicket lay

before them. Something stirred in the thicket, and the eyes of Shif'less

Sol caught a glimpse of a human shoulder. His heart sank like a plummet

in a pool. The Indians were ahead of them. They would be caught, and

would be carried back to become the victims of the terrible tomahawk.

The figure in the bushes rose a little higher, the muzzle of a rifle was

projected, and flame leaped from the steel tube.

But it was neither Shif'less Sol nor Paul who fell. They heard a cry

behind them, and when Shif'less Sol took a hasty glance backward he saw

one of the Mohawks fall. The three who were left hesitated and stopped.

When a second shot was fired from the bushes and another Mohawk went

down, the remaining two fled.

Shif'less Sol understood now, and he rushed into the bushes, dragging

Paul after him. Henry, Tom, and Long Jim rose up to receive them.

“So you wuz watchin' over us!” exclaimed the shiftless one joyously. “It

wuz you that clipped off the first Mohawk, an' we didn't even notice the

shot.”

“Thank God, you were here!” exclaimed Paul. “You don't know what Sol and

I have seen!”

Overwrought, he fell forward, but his comrades caught him.

CHAPTER XI. THE MELANCHOLY FLIGHT

Paul revived in a few minutes. They were still lying in the bushes,

and when he was able to stand up again, they moved at an angle several

hundred yards before they stopped. One pistol was thrust into Paul's

hand and another into that of Shif'less Sol.

“Keep those until we can get rifles for you,” said Henry. “You may need

'em to-night.”

They crouched down in the thicket and looked back toward the Indian

camp. The warriors whom they had repulsed were not returning with help,

and, for the moment, they seemed to have no enemy to fear, yet they

could still see through the woods the faint lights of the Indian camps,

and to Paul, at least, came the echoes of distant cries that told of

things not to be written.

“We saw you captured, and we heard Sol's warning cry,” said Henry.

“There was nothing to do but run. Then we hid and waited a chance for

rescue.”

“It would never have come if it had not been for Timmendiquas,” said

Paul.

“Timmendiquas!” exclaimed Henry.

“Yes, Timmendiquas,” said Paul, and then he told the story of “The

Bloody Rock,” and how, in the turmoil and excitement attending the

flight of the last four, Timmendiquas had cut the bonds of Shif'less Sol

and himself.

“I think the mind o' White Lightnin', Injun ez he is,” said Shif'less

Sol, “jest naterally turned aginst so much slaughter an' torture o'

prisoners.”

“I'm sure you're right,” said Henry.

“'Pears strange to me,” said Long Jim Hart, “that Timmendiquas was made

an Injun. He's jest the kind uv man who ought to be white, an' he'd be

pow'ful useful, too. I don't jest eggzactly understan' it.”

“He has certainly saved the lives of at least three of us,” said Henry.

“I hope we will get a chance to pay him back in full.”

“But he's the only one,” said Shif'less Sol, thinking of all that he had

seen that night. “The Iroquois an' the white men that's allied with 'em

won't ever get any mercy from me, ef any uv 'em happen to come under

my thumb. I don't think the like o' this day an' night wuz ever done on

this continent afore. I'm for revenge, I am, like that place where the

Bible says, 'an eye for an eye, an' a tooth for a tooth,' an' I'm goin'

to stay in this part o' the country till we git it!”

It was seldom that Shif'less Sol spoke with so much passion and energy.

“We're all going to stay with you, Sol,” said Henry. “We're needed here.

I think we ought to circle about the fort, slip in if we can, and fight

with the defense.”

“Yes, we'll do that,” said Shif'less Sol, “but the Wyoming fort can't

ever hold out. Thar ain't a hundred men left in it fit to fight, an'

thar are more than than a thousand howlin' devils outside ready to

attack it. Thar may be worse to come than anything we've yet seen.”

“Still, we'll go in an' help,” said Henry. “Sol, when you an' Paul have

rested a little longer we'll make a big loop around in the woods, and

come up to the fort on the other side.”

They were in full accord, and after an hour in the bushes, where they

lay completely hidden, recovering their vitality and energy, they

undertook to reach the fort and cabins inclosed by the palisades.

Paul was still weak from shock, but Shif'less Sol had fully recovered.

Neither bad weapons, but they were sure that the want could be supplied

soon. They curved around toward the west, intending to approach the fort

from the other side, but they did not wholly lose sight of the fires,

and they heard now and then the triumphant war whoop. The victors were

still engaged in the pleasant task of burning the prisoners to death.

Little did the five, seeing and feeling only their part of it there in

the dark woods, dream that the deeds of this day and night would soon

shock the whole civilized world, and remain, for generations, a crowning

act of infamy. But they certainly felt it deeply enough, and in each

heart burned a fierce desire for revenge upon the Iroquois.

It was almost midnight when they secured entrance into the fort, which

was filled with grief and wailing. That afternoon more than one hundred

and fifty women within those walls had been made widows, and six hundred

children had been made orphans. But few men fit to bear arms were left

for its defense, and it was certain that the allied British and Indian

army would easily take it on the morrow. A demand for its surrender

in the name of King George III of England had already been made, and,

sitting at a little rough table in the cabin of Thomas Bennett, the

room lighted only by a single tallow wick, Colonel Butler and Colonel

Dennison were writing an agreement that the fort be surrendered the next

day, with what it should contain. But Colonel Butler put his wife on a

horse and escaped with her over the mountains.

Stragglers, evading the tomahawk in the darkness, were coming in, only

to be surrendered the next day; others were pouring forth in a stream,

seeking the shelter of the mountains and the forest, preferring any

dangers that might be found there to the mercies of the victors.

When Shif'less Sol learned that the fort was to be given up, he said:

“It looks ez ef we had escaped from the Iroquois jest in time to beg 'em

to take us back.”

“I reckon I ain't goin' to stay 'roun' here while things are bein'

surrendered,” said Long Jim Hart.

“I'll do my surrenderin' to Iroquois when they've got my hands an' feet

tied, an' six or seven uv 'em are settin' on my back,” said Tom Ross.

“We'll leave as soon as we can get arms for Sol and Paul,” said Henry.

“Of course it would be foolish of us to stay here and be captured again.

Besides, we'll be needed badly enough by the women and children that are

going.”

Good weapons were easily obtained in the fort. It was far better to let

Sol and Paul have them than to leave them for the Indians. They were

able to select two fine rifles of the Kentucky pattern, long and

slender barreled, a tomahawk and knife for each, and also excellent

double-barreled pistols. The other three now had double-barreled

pistols, too. In addition they resupplied themselves with as much

ammunition as scouts and hunters could conveniently carry, and toward

morning left the fort.

Sunrise found them some distance from the palisades, and upon the flank

of a frightened crowd of fugitives. It was composed of one hundred women

and children and a single man, James Carpenter, who was doing his best

to guide and protect them. They were intending to flee through the

wilderness to the Delaware and Lehigh settlements, chiefly Fort Penn,

built by Jacob Stroud, where Stroudsburg now is.

When the five, darkened by weather and looking almost like Indians

themselves, approached, Carpenter stepped forward and raised his rifle.

A cry of dismay rose from the melancholy line, a cry so intensely bitter

that it cut Henry to the very heart. He threw up his hand, and exclaimed

in a loud voice:

“We are friends, not Indians or Tories! We fought with you yesterday,

and we are ready to fight for you now!”

Carpenter dropped the muzzle of the rifle. He had fought in the battle,

too, and he recognized the great youth and his comrades who had been

there with him.

“What do you want of us?” asked he.

“Nothing,” replied Henry, “except to help you.”

Carpenter looked at them with a kind of sad pathos.

“You don't belong here in Wyoming,” he said, “and there's nothing to

make you stick to us. What are you meaning to do?”

“We will go with you wherever you intend to go,” replied Henry; “do

fighting for you if you need it, and hunt game for you, which you are

certain to need.”

The weather-beaten face of the farmer worked.

“I thought God had clean deserted us,” he said, “but I'm ready to take

it back. I reckon that he has sent you five to help me with all these

women and little ones.”

It occurred to Henry that perhaps God, indeed, had sent them for this

very purpose, but he replied simply:

“You lead on, and we'll stay in the rear and on the sides to watch for

the Indians. Draw into the woods, where we'll be hidden.”

Carpenter, obscure hero, shouldered his rifle again, and led on toward

the woods. The long line of women and children followed. Some of the

women carried in their arms children too small to walk. Yet they were

more hopeful now when they saw that the five were friends. These lithe,

active frontiersmen, so quick, so skillful, and so helpful, raised their

courage. Yet it was a most doleful flight. Most of these women had

been made widows the day before, some of them had been made widows and

childless at the same time, and wondered why they should seek to live

longer. But the very mental stupor of many of them was an aid. They

ceased to cry out, and some even ceased to be afraid.

Henry, Shif'less Sol, and Tom dropped to the rear. Paul and Long

Jim were on either flank, while Carpenter led slowly on toward the

mountains.

“'Pears to me,” said Tom, “that the thing fur us to do is to hurry 'em

up ez much ez possible.”

“So the Indians won't see 'em crossing the plain,” said Henry. “We

couldn't defend them against a large force, and it would merely be a

massacre. We must persuade them to walk faster.”

Shif'less Sol was invaluable in this crisis. He could talk forever in

his-placid way, and, with his gentle encouragement, mild sarcasm, and

anecdotes of great feminine walkers that he had known, he soon had them

moving faster.

Henry and Tom dropped farther to the rear. They could see ahead of them

the long dark line, coiling farther into the woods, but they could

also see to right and left towers of smoke rising in the clear morning

sunlight. These, they knew, came from burning houses, and they knew,

also, that the valley would be ravaged from end to end and from side

to side. After the surrender of the fort the Indians would divide into

small bands, going everywhere, and nothing could escape them.

The sun rose higher, gilding the earth with glowing light, as if the

black tragedy had never happened, but the frontiersmen recognized their

greatest danger in this brilliant morning. Objects could be seen at a

great distance, and they could be seen vividly.

Keen of sight and trained to know what it was they saw, Henry, Sol, and

Tom searched the country with their eyes, on all sides. They caught a

distant glimpse of the Susquehanna, a silver spot among some trees, and

they saw the sunlight glancing off the opposite mountains, but for the

present they saw nothing that seemed hostile.

They allowed the distance between them and the retreating file to grow

until it was five or six hundred yards, and they might have let it grow

farther, but Henry made a signal, and the three lay down in the grass.

“You see 'em, don't you!” the youth whispered to his comrade.

“Yes, down thar at the foot o' that hillock,” replied Shif'less Sol;

“two o' em, an' Senecas, I take it.”

“They've seen that crowd of women and children,” said Henry.

It was obvious that the flying column was discovered. The two Indians

stepped upon the hillock and gazed under their hands. It was too far

away for the three to see their faces, but they knew the joy that would

be shown there. The two could return with a few warriors and massacre

them all.

“They must never get back to the other Indians with their news,”

whispered Henry. “I hate to shoot men from ambush, but it's got to be

done. Wait, they're coming a little closer.”

The two Senecas advanced about thirty yards, and stopped again.

“S'pose you fire at the one on the right, Henry,” said Tom, “an' me an'

Sol will take the one to the left.”

“All right,” said Henry. “Fire!”

They wasted no time, but pulled trigger. The one at whom Henry had aimed

fell, but the other, uttering a cry, made off, wounded, but evidently

with plenty of strength left.

“We mustn't let him escape! We mustn't let him carry a warning!” cried

Henry.

But Shif'less Sol and Tom Ross were already in pursuit, covering the

ground with long strides, and reloading as they ran. Under ordinary

circumstances no one of the three would have fired at a man running for

his life, but here the necessity was vital. If he lived, carrying the

tale that he had to tell, a hundred innocent ones might perish. Henry

followed his comrades, reloading his own rifle, also, but he stayed

behind. The Indian had a good lead, and he was gaining, as the others

were compelled to check speed somewhat as they put the powder and

bullets in their rifles. But Henry was near enough to Shif'less Sol and

Silent Tom to hear them exchange a few words.

“How far away is that savage?” asked Shif'less Sol.

“Hundred and eighty yards,” said Tom Ross.

“Well, you take him in the head, and I'll take him in the body.”

Henry saw the two rifle barrels go up and two flashes of flame leap from

the muzzles. The Indian fell forward and lay still. They went up to him,

and found that he was shot through the head and also through the body.

“We may miss once, but we don't twice,” said Tom Ross.

The human mind can be influenced so powerfully by events that the three

felt no compunction at all at the shooting of this fleeing Indian. It

was but a trifle compared with what they had seen the day and night

before.

“We'd better take the weapons an' ammunition o' both uv 'em,” said Sol.

“They may be needed, an' some o' the women in that crowd kin shoot.”

They gathered up the arms, powder, and ball, and waited a little to see

whether the shots had been heard by any other Indians, but there was

no indication of the presence of more warriors, and the rejoined the

fugitives. Long Jim had dropped back to the end of the line, and when he

saw that his comrades carried two extra rifles, he understood.

“They didn't give no alarm, did they?” he asked in a tone so low that

none of the fugitives could hear.

“They didn't have any chance,” replied Henry. “We've brought away all

their weapons and ammunition, but just say to the women that we found

them in an abandoned house.”

The rifles and the other arms were given to the boldest and most

stalwart of the women, and they promised to use them if the need came.

Meanwhile the flight went on, and the farther it went the sadder it

became. Children became exhausted, and had to be carried by people so

tired that they could scarcely walk themselves. There was nobody in the

line who had not lost some beloved one on that fatal river bank, killed

in battle, or tortured to death. As they slowly ascended the green slope

of the mountain that inclosed a side of the valley, they looked back

upon ruin and desolation. The whole black tragedy was being consummated.

They could see the houses in flames, and they knew that the Indian war

parties were killing and scalping everywhere. They knew, too, that other

bodies of fugitives, as stricken as their own, were fleeing into the

mountains, they scarcely knew whither.

As they paused a few moments and looked back, a great cry burst from

the weakest of the women and children. Then it became a sad and terrible

wail, and it was a long time before it ceased. It was an awful sound, so

compounded of despair and woe and of longing for what they had lost that

Henry choked, and the tears stood in Paul's eyes. But neither the five

nor Carpenter made any attempt to check the wailing. They thought it

best for them to weep it out, but they hurried the column as much as

they could, often carrying some of the smaller children themselves. Paul

and Long Jim were the best as comforters. The two knew how, each in his

own way, to soothe and encourage. Carpenter, who knew the way to Fort

Penn, led doggedly on, scarcely saying a word. Henry, Shif'less Sol, and

Tom were the rear guard, which was, in this case, the one of greatest

danger and responsibility.

Henry was thankful that it was only early summer the Fourth of July,

the second anniversary of the Declaration of Independence-and that the

foliage was heavy and green on the slopes of the mountain. In this

mass of greenery the desolate column was now completely hidden from any

observer in the valley, and he believed that other crowds of fugitives

would be hidden in the same manner. He felt sure that no living human

being would be left in the valley, that it would be ravaged from end to

end and then left to desolation, until new people, protected by American

bayonets, should come in and settle it again.

At last they passed the crest of the ridge, and the fires in the valley,

those emblems of destruction, were hidden. Between them and Fort Penn,

sixty miles away, stretched a wilderness of mountain, forest, and swamp.

But the five welcomed the forest. A foe might lie there in ambush, but

they could not see the fugitives at a distance. What the latter needed

now was obscurity, the green blanket of the forest to hide them.

Carpenter led on over a narrow trail; the others followed almost in

single file now, while the five scouted in the woods on either flank and

at the rear. Henry and Shif'less Sol generally kept together, and they

fully realized the overwhelming danger should an Indian band, even as

small as ten or a dozen warriors, appear. Should the latter scatter,

it would be impossible to protect all the women and children from their

tomahawks.

The day was warm, but the forest gave them coolness as well as shelter.

Henry and Sol were seldom so far back that they could not see the end

of the melancholy line, now moving slowly, overborne by weariness. The

shiftless one shook his head sadly.

“No matter what happens, some uv 'em will never get out o' these woods.”

His words came true all too soon. Before the afternoon closed, two

women, ill before the flight, died of terror and exhaustion, and were

buried in shallow graves under the trees. Before dark a halt was made at

the suggestion of Henry, and all except Carpenter and the scouts sat in

a close, drooping group. Many of the children cried, though the women

had all ceased to weep. They had some food with them, taken in the

hurried flight, and now the men asked them to eat. Few could do it, and

others insisted on saving what little they had for the children. Long

Jim found a spring near by, and all drank at it.

The six men decided that, although night had not yet come, it would be

best to remain there until the morning. Evidently the fugitives were in

no condition, either mental or physical, to go farther that day, and the

rest was worth more than the risk.

When this decision was announced to them, most of the women took it

apathetically. Soon they lay down upon a blanket, if one was to be had;

otherwise, on leaves and branches. Again Henry thanked God that it was

summer, and that these were people of the frontier, who could sleep in

the open. No fire was needed, and, outside of human enemies, only rain

was to be dreaded.

And yet this band, desperate though its case, was more fortunate than

some of the others that fled from the Wyoming Valley. It had now to

protect it six men Henry and Paul, though boys in years, were men in

strength and ability--five of whom were the equals of any frontiersmen

on the whole border. Another crowd of women was escorted by a single man

throughout its entire flight.

Henry and his comrades distributed themselves in a circle about the

group. At times they helped gather whortleberries as food for the

others, but they looked for Indians or game, intending to shoot in

either case. When Paul and Henry were together they once heard a light

sound in a thicket, which at first they were afraid was made by an

Indian scout, but it was a deer, and it bounded away too soon for either

to get a shot. They could not find other game of any kind, and they came

back toward the camp-if a mere stop in the woods, without shelter of any

kind, could be called a camp.

The sun was now setting, blood red. It tinged the forest with a fiery

mist, reminding the unhappy group of all that they had seen. But the

mist was gone in a few moments, and then the blackness of night came

with a weird moaning wind that told of desolation. Most of the children,

having passed through every phase of exhaustion and terror, had fallen

asleep. Some of the women slept, also, and others wept. But the terrible

wailing note, which the nerves of no man could stand, was heard no

longer.

The five gathered again at a point near by, and Carpenter came to them.

“Men,” he said simply, “don't know much about you, though I know you

fought well in the battle that we lost, but for what you're doin' now

nobody can ever repay you. I knew that I never could get across the

mountains with all these weak ones.”

The five merely said that any man who was a man would help at such a

time. Then they resumed their march in a perpetual circle about the

camp.

Some women did not sleep at all that night. It is not easy to conceive

what the frontier women of America endured so many thousands of times.

They had seen their husbands, brothers, and sons killed in the battle,

and they knew that the worst of torture had been practiced in the Indian

camp. Many of them really did not want to live any longer. They merely

struggled automatically for life. The darkness settled down thicker and

thicker; the blackness in the forest was intense, and they could see the

faces of one another only at a little distance. The desolate moan of the

wind came through the leaves, and, although it was July, the night grew

cold. The women crept closer together, trying to cover up and protect

the children. The wind, with its inexpressibly mournful note, was

exactly fitted to their feelings. Many of them wondered why a Supreme

Being had permitted such things. But they ceased to talk. No sound at

all came from the group, and any one fifty yards away, not forewarned,

could not have told that they were there.

Henry and Paul met again about midnight, and sat a long time on a

little hillock. Theirs had been the most dangerous of lives on the most

dangerous of frontiers, but they had never been stirred as they were

tonight. Even Paul, the mildest of the five, felt something burning

within him, a fire that only one thing could quench.

“Henry,” said he, “we're trying to get these people to Fort Penn, and

we may get some of them there, but I don't think our work will be ended

them. I don't think I could ever be happy again if we went straight from

Fort Penn to Kentucky.”

Henry understood him perfectly.

“No, Paul,” he said, “I don't want to go, either, and I know the others

don't. Maybe you are not willing to tell why we want to stay, but it is

vengeance. I know it's Christian to forgive your enemies, but I can't

see what I have seen, and hear what I have heard, and do it.”

“When the news of these things spreads,” said Paul, “they'll send an

army from the east. Sooner or later they'll just have to do it to punish

the Iroquois and their white allies, and we've got to be here to join

that army.”

“I feel that way, too, Paul,” said Henry.

They were joined later by the other three, who stayed a little while,

and they were in accord with Henry and Paul.

Then they began their circles about the camp again, always looking and

always listening. About two o'clock in the morning they heard a scream,

but it was only the cry of a panther. Before day there were clouds, a

low rumble of distant thunder, and faint far flashes of lightning. Henry

was in dread of rain, but the lightning and thunder ceased, and the

clouds went away. Then dawn came, rosy and bright, and all but three

rose from the earth. The three-one woman and two children-had died in

silence in the night, and they were buried, like the others, in shallow

graves in the woods. But there was little weeping or external mourning

over them. All were now heavy and apathetic, capable of but little more

emotion.

Carpenter resumed his position at the head of the column, which now

moved slowly over the mountain through a thick forest matted with

vines and bushes and without a path. The march was now so painful

and difficult that they did not make more than two miles an hour. The

stronger of them helped the men to gather more whortleberries, as it was

easy to see that the food they had with them would never last until they

reached Fort Penn, should they ever reach it.

The condition of the country into which they had entered steadily grew

worse. They were well into the mountains, a region exceedingly wild and

rough, but little known to the settlers, who had gone around it to build

homes in the fertile and beautiful valley of Wyoming. The heavy forest

was made all the more difficult by the presence everywhere of almost

impassable undergrowth. Now and then a woman lay down under the bushes,

and in two cases they died there because the power to live was no longer

in them. They grew weaker and weaker. The food that they had brought

from the Wyoming fort was almost exhausted, and the wild whortleberries

were far from sustaining. Fortunately there was plenty of water

flowing tinder the dark woods and along the mountainside. But they were

compelled to stop at intervals of an hour or two to rest, and the more

timid continually expected Indian ambush.

The five met shortly after noon and took another reckoning of the

situation. They still realized to the full the dangers of Indian

pursuit, which in this case might be a mere matter of accident. Anybody

could follow the broad trail left by the fugitives, but the Iroquois,

busy with destruction in the valley, might not follow, even if they

saw it. No one could tell. The danger of starvation or of death from

exhaustion was more imminent, more pressing, and the five resolved to

let scouting alone for the rest of the day and seek game.

“There's bound to be a lot of it in these woods,” said Shif'less Sol,

“though it's frightened out of the path by our big crowd, but we ought

to find it.”

Henry and Shif'less Sol went in one direction, and Paul, Tom, and Long

Jim in another. But with all their hunting they succeeded in finding

only one little deer, which fell to the rifle of Silent Tom. It made

small enough portions for the supper and breakfast of nearly a hundred

people, but it helped wonderfully, and so did the fires which Henry and

his comrades would now have built, even had they not been needed for the

cooking. They saw that light and warmth, the light and warmth of glowing

coals, would alone rouse life in this desolate band.

They slept the second night on the ground among the trees, and the next

morning they entered that gloomy region of terrible memory, the Great

Dismal Swamp of the North, known sometimes, to this day, as “The Shades

of Death.”

CHAPTER XII. THE SHADES OF DEATH

“The Shades of Death” is a marsh on a mountain top, the great, wet, and

soggy plain of the Pocono and Broad mountains. When the fugitives from

Wyoming entered it, it was covered with a dense growth of pines, growing

mostly out of dark, murky water, which in its turn was thick with a

growth of moss and aquatic plants. Snakes and all kinds of creeping

things swarmed in the ooze. Bear and panther were numerous.

Carpenter did not know any way around this terrible region, and they

were compelled to enter it. Henry was again devoutly thankful that

it was summer. In such a situation with winter on top of it only the

hardiest of men could survive.

But they entered the swamp, Carpenter silent and dogged, still leading.

Henry and his comrades kept close to the crowd. One could not scout in

such a morass, and it proved to be worse than they had feared. The day

turned gray, and it was dark among the trees. The whole place was filled

with gloomy shadows. It was often impossible to judge whether fairly

solid soil or oozy murk lay before them. Often they went down to their

waists. Sometimes the children fell and were dragged up again by the

stronger. Now and then rattle snakes coiled and hissed, and the women

killed them with sticks. Other serpents slipped away in the slime.

Everybody was plastered with mud, and they became mere images of human

beings.

In the afternoon they reached a sort of oasis in the terrible swamp,

and there they buried two more of their number who had perished from

exhaustion. The rest, save a few, lay upon the ground as if dead. On all

sides of them stretched the pines and the soft black earth. It looked to

the fugitives like a region into which no human beings had ever come,

or ever would come again, and, alas! to most of them like a region from

which no human being would ever emerge.

Henry sat upon a piece of fallen brushwood near the edge of the morass,

and looked at the fugitives, and his heart sank within him. They were

hardly in the likeness of his own kind, and they seemed practically

lifeless now. Everything was dull, heavy, and dead. The note of the wind

among the leaves was somber. A long black snake slipped from the marshy

grass near his feet and disappeared soundlessly in the water. He was

sick, sick to death at the sight of so much suffering, and the desire

for vengeance, slow, cold, and far more lasting than any hot outburst,

grew within him. A slight noise, and Shif'less Sol stood beside him.

“Did you hear?” asked the shiftless one, in a significant tone.

“Hear what?” asked Henry, who had been deep in thought.

“The wolf howl, just a very little cry, very far away an' under the

horizon, but thar all the same. Listen, thar she goes ag'in!”

Henry bent his ear and distinctly heard the faint, whining note, and

then it came a third time.

He looked tip at Shif'less Sol, and his face grew white--but not for

himself.

“Yes,” said Shif'less Sol. He understood the look. “We are pursued. Them

wolves howlin' are the Iroquois. What do you reckon we're goin' to do,

Henry?”

“Fight!” replied the youth, with fierce energy. “Beat 'em off!”

“How?”

Henry circled the little oasis with the eye of a general, and his plan

came.

“You'll stand here, where the earth gives a footing,” he said, “you,

Solomon Hyde, as brave a man as I ever saw, and with you will be Paul

Cotter, Tom Ross, Jim Hart, and Henry Ware, old friends of yours.

Carpenter will at once lead the women and children on ahead, and perhaps

they will not hear the battle that is going to be fought here.”

A smile of approval, slow, but deep and comprehensive, stole over the

face of Solomon Hyde, surnamed, wholly without fitness, the shiftless

one. “It seems to me,” he said, “that I've heard o' them four fellers

you're talkin' about, an' ef I wuz to hunt all over this planet an' them

other planets that Paul tells of, I couldn't find four other fellers

that I'd ez soon have with me.”

“We've got to stand here to the death,” said Henry.

“You're shorely right,” said Shif'less Sol.

The hands of the two comrades met in a grip of steel.

The other three were called and were told of the plan, which met with

their full approval. Then the news was carried to Carpenter, who quickly

agreed that their course was the wisest. He urged all the fugitives to

their feet, telling them that they must reach another dry place

before night, but they were past asking questions now, and, heavy and

apathetic, they passed on into the swamp.

Paul watched the last of them disappear among the black bushes and

weeds, and turned back to his friends on the oasis. The five lay down

behind a big fallen pine, and gave their weapons a last look. They

had never been armed better. Their rifles were good, and the fine

double-barreled pistols, formidable weapons, would be a great aid,

especially at close quarters.

“I take it,” said Tom Ross, “that the Iroquois can't get through at all

unless they come along this way, an' it's the same ez ef we wuz settin'

on solid earth, poppin' em over, while they come sloshin' up to us.”

“That's exactly it,” said Henry. “We've a natural defense which we can

hold against much greater numbers, and the longer we hold 'em off, the

nearer our people will be to Fort Penn.”

“I never felt more like fightin' in my life,” said Tom Ross.

It was a grim utterance, true of them all, although not one among them

was bloodthirsty.

“Can any of you hear anything?” asked Henry. “Nothin',” replied

Shif'less Sol, after a little wait, “nothin' from the women goin', an'

nothin' from the Iroquois comin'.”

“We'll just lie close,” said Henry. “This hard spot of ground isn't more

than thirty or forty feet each way, and nobody can get on it without our

knowing it.”

The others did not reply. All lay motionless upon their sides, with

their shoulders raised a little, in order that they might take instant

aim when the time came. Some rays of the sun penetrated the canopy of

pines, and fell across the brown, determined faces and the lean brown

hands that grasped the long, slender-barreled Kentucky rifles. Another

snake slipped from the ground into the black water and swam away. Some

water animal made a light splash as he, too, swam from the presence of

these strange intruders. Then they beard a sighing sound, as of a

foot drawn from mud, and they knew that the Iroquois were approaching,

savages in war, whatever they might be otherwise, and expecting an easy

prey. Five brown thumbs cocked their rifles, and five brown forefingers

rested upon the triggers. The eyes of woodsmen who seldom missed looked

down the sights.

The sound of feet in the mud came many times. The enemy was evidently

drawing near.

“How many do you think are out thar?” whispered Shif'less Sol to Henry.

“Twenty, at least, it seems to me by the sounds.” “I s'pose the best

thing for us to do is to shoot at the first head we see.”

“Yes, but we mustn't all fire at the same man.”

It was suggested that Henry call off the turns of the marksmen, and he

agreed to do so. Shif'less Sol was to fire first. The sounds now ceased.

The Iroquois evidently had some feeling or instinct that they were

approaching an enemy who was to be feared, not weak and unarmed women

and children.

The five were absolutely motionless, finger on trigger. The American

wilderness had heroes without number. It was Horatius Cocles five times

over, ready to defend the bridge with life. Over the marsh rose the

weird cry of an owl, and some water birds called in lonely fashion.

Henry judged that the fugitives were now three quarters of a mile away,

out of the sound of rifle shot. He had urged Carpenter to marshal them

on as far as he could. But the silence endured yet a while longer. In

the dull gray light of the somber day and the waning afternoon the marsh

was increasingly dreary and mournful. It seemed that it must always be

the abode of dead or dying things.

The wet grass, forty yards away, moved a little, and between the boughs

appeared the segment of a hideous dark face, the painted brow, the

savage black eyes, and the hooked nose of the Mohawk. Only Henry saw

it, but with fierce joy-the tortures at Wyoming leaped up before him-he

fired at the painted brow. The Mohawk uttered his death cry and fell

back with a splash into the mud and water of the swamp. A half dozen

bullets were instantly fired at the base of the smoke that came from

Henry's rifle, but the youth and his comrades lay close and were

unharmed. Shif'less Sol and Tom were quick enough to catch glimpses of

brown forms, at which they fired, and the cries coming back told that

they had hit.

“That's something,” said Henry. “One or two Iroquois at least will not

wear the scalp of white woman or child at their belts.”

“Wish they'd try to rush us,” said Shif'less Sol. “I never felt so full

of fight in my life before.”

“They may try it,” said Henry. “I understand that at the big battle of

the Oriskany, farther up in the North, the Iroquois would wait until a

white man behind a tree would fire, then they would rush up and tomahawk

him before he could reload.”

“They don't know how fast we kin reload,” said Long Jim, “an' they don't

know that we've got these double-barreled pistols, either.”

“No, they don't,” said Henry, “and it's a great thing for us to have

them. Suppose we spread out a little. So long as we keep them

from getting a lodging on the solid earth we hold them at a great

disadvantage.”

Henry and Paul moved off a little toward the right, and the others

toward the left. They still had good cover, as fallen timber was

scattered all over the oasis, and they were quite sure that another

attack would be made soon. It came in about fifteen minutes. The

Iroquois suddenly fired a volley at the logs and brush, and when the

five returned the fire, but with more deadly effect, they leaped forward

in the mud and attempted to rush the oasis, tomahawk in hand.

But the five reloaded so quickly that they were able to send in a second

volley before the foremost of the Iroquois could touch foot on solid

earth. Then the double barreled pistols came into play. The bullets

sent from short range drove back the savages, who were amazed at such

a deadly and continued fire. Henry caught sight of a white face among

these assailants, and he knew it to be that of Braxton Wyatt. Singularly

enough he was not amazed to see it there. Wyatt, sinking deeper and

deeper into savagery and cruelty, was just the one to lead the Iroquois

in such a pursuit. He was a fit match for Walter Butler, the infamous

son of the Indian leader, who was soon to prove himself worse than the

worst of the savages, as Thayendanegea himself has written.

Henry drew a bead once on Braxton Wyatt-he had no scruples now about

shooting him-but just as he was about to pull the trigger Wyatt darted

behind a bush, and a Seneca instead received the bullet. He also saw

the renegade, Blackstaffe, but he was not able to secure a shot at him,

either. Nevertheless, the Iroquois attack was beaten back. It was a

foregone conclusion that the result would be so, unless the force was

in great numbers. It is likely, also, that the Iroquois at first had

thought only a single man was with the fugitives, not knowing that the

five had joined them later.

Two of the Iroquois were slain at the very edge of the solid ground, but

their bodies fell back in the slime, and the others, retreating fast for

their lives, could not carry them off. Paul, with a kind of fascinated

horror, watched the dead painted bodies sink deeper. Then one was

entirely gone. The hand of the other alone was left, and then it, too,

was gone. But the five had held the island, and Carpenter was leading

the fugitives on toward Fort Penn. They had not only held it, but they

believed that they could continue to hold it against anything, and their

hearts became exultant. Something, too, to balance against the long

score, lay out there in the swamp, and all the five, bitter over

Wyoming, were sorry that Braxton Wyatt was not among them.

The stillness came again. The sun did not break through the heavy gray

sky, and the somber shadows brooded over “The Shades of Death.” They

heard again the splash of water animals, and a swimming snake passed on

the murky surface. Then they heard the wolf's long cry, and the long cry

of wolf replying.

“More Iroquois coming,” said Shif'less Sol. “Well, we gave them a pretty

warm how d'ye do, an' with our rifles and double-barreled pistols I'm

thinkin' that we kin do it ag'in.”

“We can, except in one case,” said Henry, “if the new party brings their

numbers up to fifty or sixty, and they wait for night, they can surround

us in the darkness. Perhaps it would be better for us to slip away when

twilight comes. Carpenter and the train have a long lead now.”

“Yes,” said Shif'less Sol, “Now, what in tarnation is that?”

“A white flag,” said Paul. A piece of cloth that had once been white had

been hoisted on the barrel of a rifle at a point about sixty yards away.

“They want a talk with us,” said Henry.

“If it's Braxton Wyatt,” said Long Jim, “I'd like to take a shot at him,

talk or no talk, an' ef I missed, then take another.”

“We'll see what they have to say,” said Henry, and he called aloud:

“What do you want with us?”

“To talk with you,” replied a clear, full voice, not that of Braxton

Wyatt.

“Very well,” replied Henry, “show yourself and we will not fire upon

you.”

A tall figure was upraised upon a grassy hummock, and the hands were

held aloft in sign of peace. It was a splendid figure, at least six feet

four inches in height. At that moment some rays of the setting sun broke

through the gray clouds and shone full upon it, lighting up the defiant

scalp lock interwoven with the brilliant red feather, the eagle face

with the curved Roman beak, and the mighty shoulders and chest of red

bronze. It was a genuine king of the wilderness, none other than the

mighty Timmendiquas himself, the great White Lightning of the Wyandots.

“Ware,” he said, “I would speak with you. Let us talk as one chief to

another.”

The five were amazed. Timmendiquas there! They were quite sure that he

had come up with the second force, and he was certain to prove a far

more formidable leader than either Braxton Wyatt or Moses Blackstaffe.

But his demand to speak with Henry Ware might mean something.

“Are you going to answer him?” said Shif'less Sol.

“Of course,” replied Henry.

“The others, especially Wyatt and Blackstaffe, might shoot.”

“Not while Timmendiquas holds the flag of truce; they would not dare.”

Henry stood up, raising himself to his full height. The same ruddy

sunlight piercing the somber gray of the clouds fell upon another

splendid figure, a boy only in years, but far beyond the average height

of man, his hair yellow, his eyes a deep, clear blue, his body clothed

in buckskin, and his whole attitude that of one without fear. The two,

the white and the red, kings of their kind, confronted each other across

the marsh.

“What do you wish with me, Timmendiquas?” asked Henry. In the presence

of the great Wyandot chief the feeling of hate and revenge that had held

his heart vanished. He knew that Paul and Shif'less Sol would have sunk

under the ruthless tomahawk of Queen Esther, if it had not been for

White Lightning. He himself had owed him his life on another and more

distant occasion, and he was not ungrateful. So there was warmth in his

tone when he spoke.

“Let us meet at the edge of the solid ground,” said Timmendiquas, “I

have things to say that are important and that you will be glad to

hear.”

Henry walked without hesitation to the edge of the swamp, and the

young chief, coming forward, met him. Henry held out his hand in white

fashion, and the young chief took it. There was no sound either from the

swamp or from those who lay behind the logs on the island, but some of

the eyes of those hidden in the swamps watched both with burning hatred.

“I wish to tell you, Ware,” said Timmendiquas, speaking with the dignity

becoming a great chief, “that it was not I who led the pursuit of the

white men's women and children. I, and the Wyandots who came with me,

fought as best we could in the great battle, and I will slay my enemies

when I can. We are warriors, and we are ready to face each other in

battle, but we do not seek to kill the squaw in the tepee or the papoose

in its birch-bark cradle.”

The face of the great chief seemed stirred by some deep emotion, which

impressed Henry all the more because the countenance of Timmendiquas was

usually a mask.

“I believe that you tell the truth,” said Henry gravely.

“I and my Wyandots,” continued the chief, “followed a trail through

the woods. We found that others, Senecas and Mohawks, led by Wyatt and

Blackstaffe, who are of your race, had gone before, and when we came up

there had just been a battle. The Mohawks and Senecas had been driven

back. It was then we learned that the trail was made by women and little

children, save you and your comrades who stayed to fight and protect

them.”

“You speak true words, Timmendiquas,” said Henry.

“The Wyandots have remained in the East to fight men, not to kill squaws

and papooses,” continued Timmendiquas. “So I say to you, go on with

those who flee across the mountains. Our warriors shall not pursue you

any longer. We will turn back to the valley from which we come, and

those of your race, Blackstaffe and Wyatt, shall go with us.”

The great chief spoke quietly, but there was an edge to his tone that

told that every word was meant. Henry felt a glow of admiration. The

true greatness of Timmendiquas spoke.

“And the Iroquois?” he said, “will they go back with you?”

“They will. They have killed too much. Today all the white people in the

valley are killed or driven away. Many scalps have been taken, those

of women and children, too, and men have died at the stake. I have

felt shame for their deeds, Ware, and it will bring punishment upon my

brethren, the Iroquois. It will make so great a noise in the world that

many soldiers will come, and the villages of the Iroquois will cease to

be.”

“I think it is so, Timmendiquas,” said Henry. “But you will be far away

then in your own land.”

The chief drew himself up a little.

“I shall remain with the Iroquois,” he said. “I have promised to help

them, and I must do so.”

“I can't blame you for that,” said Henry, “but I am glad that you do

not seek the scalps of women and children. We are at once enemies and

friends, Timmendiquas.”

White Lightning bowed gravely. He and Henry touched hands again, and

each withdrew, the chief into the morass, while Henry walked back toward

his comrades, holding himself erect, as if no enemy were near.

The four rose up to greet him. They had heard part of what was said, and

Henry quickly told them the rest.

“He's shorely a great chief,” said Shif'less Sol. “He'll keep his word,

too. Them people on ahead ain't got anything more to fear from pursuit.”

“He's a statesman, too,” said Henry. “He sees what damage the deeds of

Wyoming Valley will do to those who have done them. He thinks our people

will now send a great army against the Iroquois, and I think so, too.”

“No nation can stand a thing like that,” said Paul, “and I didn't dream

it could happen.”

They now left the oasis, and went swiftly along the trail left by the

fugitives. All of them had confidence in the word of Timmendiquas. There

was a remote chance that some other band had entered the swamp at a

different point, but it was remote, indeed, and it did not trouble them

much.

Night was now over the great swamp. The sun no longer came through the

gray clouds, but here and there were little flashes of flame made by

fireflies. Had not the trail been so broad and deep it could easily have

been lost, but, being what it was, the skilled eyes of the frontiersmen

followed it without trouble.

“Some uv 'em are gittin' pow'ful tired,” said Tom Ross, looking at

the tracks in the mud. Then he suddenly added: “Here's whar one's quit

forever.”

A shallow grave, not an hour old, had been made under some bushes,

and its length indicated that a woman lay there. They passed it by

in silence. Henry now appreciated more fully than ever the mercy of

Timmendiquas. The five and Carpenter could not possibly have protected

the miserable fugitives against the great chief, with fifty Wyandots and

Iroquois at his back. Timmendiquas knew this, and he had done what none

of the Indians or white allies around him would have done.

In another hour they saw a man standing among some vines, but watchful,

and with his rifle in the hollow of his arm. It was Carpenter, a man

whose task was not less than that of the five. They were in the thick

of it and could see what was done, but he had to lead on and wait. He

counted the dusk figures as they approached him, one, two, three, four,

five, and perhaps no man ever felt greater relief. He advanced toward

them and said huskily:

“There was no fight! They did not attack!”

“There was a fight,” said Henry, “and we beat them back; then a second

and a larger force came up, but it was composed chiefly of Wyandots, led

by their great chief, Timmendiquas. He came forward and said that they

would not pursue women and children, and that we could go in safety.”

Carpenter looked incredulous.

“It is true,” said Henry, “every word of it.”

“It is more than Brant would have done,” said Carpenter, “and it saves

us, with your help.”

“You were first, and the first credit is yours, Mr. Carpenter,” said

Henry sincerely.

They did not tell the women and children of the fight at the oasis,

but they spread the news that there would be no more pursuit, and many

drooping spirits revived. They spent another day in the Great Dismal

Swamp, where more lives were lost. On the day after their emergence

from the marsh, Henry and his comrades killed two deer, which furnished

greatly needed food, and on the day after that, excepting those who had

died by the way, they reached Fort Penn, where they were received into

shelter and safety.

The night before the fugitives reached Fort Penn, the Iroquois began the

celebration of the Thanksgiving Dance for their great victory and the

many scalps taken at Wyoming. They could not recall another time when

they had secured so many of these hideous trophies, and they were drunk

with the joy of victory. Many of the Tories, some in their own clothes,

and some painted and dressed like Indians, took part in it.

According to their ancient and honored custom they held a grand council

to prepare for it. All the leading chiefs were present, Sangerachte,

Hiokatoo, and the others. Braxton Wyatt, Blackstaffe, and other white

men were admitted. After their deliberations a great fire was built in

the center of the camp, the squaws who had followed the army feeding

it with brushwood until it leaped and roared and formed a great red

pyramid. Then the chiefs sat down in a solemn circle at some distance,

and waited.

Presently the sound of a loud chant was heard, and from the farthest

point of the camp emerged a long line of warriors, hundreds and hundreds

of them, all painted in red and black with horrible designs. They were

naked except the breechcloth and moccasins, and everyone waved aloft a

tomahawk as he sang.

Still singing and brandishing the tomahawks, which gleamed in the

red light, the long procession entered the open space, and danced and

wheeled about the great fire, the flames casting a lurid light upon

faces hideous with paint or the intoxication of triumph. The glare of

their black eyes was like those of Eastern eaters of hasheesh or opium,

and they bounded to and fro as if their muscles were springs of steel.

They sang:

We have met the Bostonians [*] in battle,

We slew them with our rifles and tomahawks.

Few there are who escaped our warriors.

Ever-victorious is the League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee.

[* Note: All the Americans were often called Bostonians by

the Indians as late as the Revolutionary War.]

Mighty has been our taking of scalps,

They will fill all the lodges of the Iroquois.

We have burned the houses of the Bostonians.

Ever-victorious is the League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee.

The wolf will prowl in their corn-fields,

The grass will grow where their blood has soaked;

Their bones will lie for the buzzard to pick.

Ever-victorious is the League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee.

We came upon them by river and forest;

As we smote Wyoming we will smite the others,

We will drive the Bostonians back to the sea.

Ever-victorious is the League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee.

The monotonous chant with the refrain, “Ever-victorious is the League of

the Ho-de-no-sau-nee,” went on for many verses. Meanwhile the old squaws

never ceased to feed the bonfire, and the flames roared, casting a

deeper and more vivid light over the distorted faces of the dancers and

those of the chiefs, who sat gravely beyond.

Higher and higher leaped the warriors. They seemed unconscious of

fatigue, and the glare in their eyes became that of maniacs. Their whole

souls were possessed by the orgy. Beads of sweat, not of exhaustion, but

of emotional excitement, appeared upon their faces and naked bodies, and

the red and black paint streaked together horribly.

For a long time this went on, and then the warriors ceased suddenly to

sing, although they continued their dance. A moment later a cry which

thrilled every nerve came from a far point in the dark background.

It was the scalp yell, the most terrible of all Indian cries, long,

high-pitched, and quavering, having in it something of the barking howl

of the wolf and the fiendish shriek of a murderous maniac. The warriors

instantly took it up, and gave it back in a gigantic chorus.

A ghastly figure bounded into the circle of the firelight. It was that

of a woman, middle-aged, tall and powerful, naked to the waist, her body

covered with red and black paint, her long black hair hanging in a loose

cloud down her back. She held a fresh scalp, taken from a white head,

aloft in either band. It was Catharine Montour, and it was she who had

first emitted the scalp yell. After her came more warriors, all bearing

scalps. The scalp yell was supposed to be uttered for every scalp taken,

and, as they had taken more than three hundred, it did not cease for

hours, penetrating every part of the forest. All the time Catharine

Montour led the dance. None bounded higher than she. None grimaced more

horribly.

While they danced, six men, with their hands tied behind them and black

caps on their heads, were brought forth and paraded around amid hoots

and yells and brandishing of tomahawks in their faces. They were the

surviving prisoners, and the black caps meant that they were to be

killed and scalped on the morrow. Stupefied by all through which they

had gone, they were scarcely conscious now.

Midnight came. The Iroquois still danced and sang, and the calm stars

looked down upon the savage and awful scene. Now the dancers began to

weary. Many dropped unconscious, and the others danced about them where

they lay. After a while all ceased. Then the chiefs brought forth a

white dog, which Hiokatoo killed and threw on the embers of the fire.

When it was thoroughly roasted, the chiefs cut it in pieces and ate it.

Thus closed the Festival of Thanksgiving for the victory of Wyoming.

CHAPTER XIII. A FOREST PAGE

When the survivors of the band of Wyoming fugitives that the five had

helped were behind the walls of Fort Penn, securing the food and rest

they needed so greatly, Henry Ware and his comrades felt themselves

relieved of a great responsibility. They were also aware how much they

owed to Timmendiquas, because few of the Indians and renegades would

have been so forbearing. Thayendanegea seemed to them inferior to

the great Wyandot. Often when Brant could prevent the torture of the

prisoners and the slaughter of women and children, he did not do it.

The five could never forget these things in after life, when Brant was

glorified as a great warrior and leader. Their minds always turned to

Timmendiquas as the highest and finest of Indian types.

While they were at Fort Penn two other parties came, in a fearful state

of exhaustion, and also having paid the usual toll of death on the way.

Other groups reached the Moravian towns, where they were received with

all kindness by the German settlers. The five were able to give some

help to several of these parties, but the beautiful Wyoming Valley lay

utterly in ruins. The ruthless fury of the savages and of many of the

Tories, Canadians, and Englishmen, can scarcely be told. Everything was

slaughtered or burned. As a habitation of human beings or of anything

pertaining to human beings, the valley for a time ceased to be. An

entire population was either annihilated or driven out, and finally

Butler's army, finding that nothing more was left to be destroyed,

gathered in its war parties and marched northward with a vast store

of spoils, in which scalps were conspicuous. When they repassed Tioga

Point, Timmendiquas and his Wyandots were still with them. Thayendanegea

was also with them here, and so was Walter Butler, who was destined

shortly to make a reputation equaling that of his father, “Indian”

Butler. Nor had the terrible Queen Esther ever left them. She marched

at the head of the army, singing, horrid chants of victory, and swinging

the great war tomahawk, which did not often leave her hand.

The whole force was re-embarked upon the Susquehanna, and it was still

full of the impulse of savage triumph. Wild Indian songs floated along

the stream or through the meadows, which were quiet now. They advanced

at their ease, knowing that there was nobody to attack them, but they

were watched by five woodsmen, two of whom were boys. Meanwhile the

story of Wyoming, to an extent that neither Indians nor woodsmen

themselves suspected, was spreading from town to town in the East, to

invade thence the whole civilized world, and to stir up an indignation

and horror that would make the name Wyoming long memorable. Wyoming

had been a victory for the flag under which the invaders fought, but it

sadly tarnished the cause of that flag, and the consequences were to be

seen soon.

Henry Ware, Paul Cotter, Sol Hyde, Tom Ross, and Jim Hart were thinking

little of distant consequences, but they were eager for the present

punishment of these men who had committed so much cruelty. From the

bushes they could easily follow the canoes, and could recognize some of

their occupants. In one of the rear boats sat Braxton Wyatt and a young

man whom they knew to be Walter Butler, a pallid young man, animated by

the most savage ferocity against the patriots. He and Wyatt seemed to

be on the best of terms, and faint echoes of their laughter came to the

five who were watching among the bushes on the river bank. Certainly

Braxton Wyatt and he were a pair well met.

“Henry,” said Shif'less Sol longingly, “I think I could jest about reach

Braxton Wyatt with a bullet from here. I ain't over fond o' shootin'

from ambush, but I done got over all scruples so fur ez he's concerned.

Jest one bullet, one little bullet, Henry, an' ef I miss I won't ask fur

a second chance.”

“No, Sol, it won't do,” said Henry. “They'd get off to hunt us. The

whole fleet would be stopped, and we want 'em to go on as fast as

possible.”

“I s'pose you're right, Henry,” said the shiftless one sadly, “but

I'd jest like to try it once. I'd give a month's good huntin' for that

single trial.”

After watching the British-Indian fleet passing up the river, they

turned back to the site of the Wyoming fort and the houses near it. Here

everything had been destroyed. It was about dusk when they approached

the battlefield, and they heard a dreadful howling, chiefly that of

wolves.

“I think we'd better turn away,” said Henry. “We couldn't do anything

with so many.”

They agreed with him, and, going back, followed the Indians up the

Susquehanna. A light rain fell that night, but they slept under a little

shed, once attached to a house which had been destroyed by fire. In some

way the shed had escaped the flames, and it now came into timely use.

The five, cunning in forest practice, drew up brush on the sides, and

half-burned timber also, and, spreading their blankets on ashes which

had not long been cold, lay well sheltered from the drizzling rain,

although they did not sleep for a long time.

It was the hottest period of the year in America, but the night had come

on cool, and the rain made it cooler. The five, profiting by experience,

often carried with them two light blankets instead of one heavy one.

With one blanket beneath the body they could keep warmer in case the

weather was cold.

Now they lay in a row against the standing wall of the old outhouse,

protected by a six- or seven-foot slant of board roof. They had eaten

of a deer that they had shot in the morning, and they had a sense

of comfort and rest that none of them had known before in many days.

Henry's feelings were much like those that he had experienced when he

lay in the bushes in the little canoe, wrapped up from the storm and

hidden from the Iroquois. But here there was an important increase

of pleasure, the pattering of the rain on the board roof, a pleasant,

soothing sound to which millions of boys, many of them afterwards great

men, have listened in America.

It grew very dark about them, and the pleasant patter, almost musical

in its rhythm, kept up. Not much wind was blowing, and it, too, was

melodious. Henry lay with his head on a little heap of ashes, which

was covered by his under blanket, and, for the first time since he had

brought the warning to Wyoming, he was free from all feeling of danger.

The picture itself of the battle, the defeat, the massacre, the torture,

and of the savage Queen Esther cleaving the heads of the captives, was

at times as vivid as ever, and perhaps would always return now and then

in its original true colors, but the periods between, when youth, hope,

and strength had their way, grew longer and longer.

Now Henry's eyelids sank lower and lower. Physical comfort and the

presence of his comrades caused a deep satisfaction that permeated his

whole being. The light wind mingled pleasantly with the soft summer

rain. The sound of the two grew strangely melodious, almost piercingly

sweet, and then it seemed to be human. They sang together, the wind and

rain, among the leaves, and the note that reached his heart, rather than

his ear, thrilled him with courage and hope. Once more the invisible

voice that had upborne him in the great valley of the Ohio told him,

even here in the ruined valley of Wyoming, that what was lost would be

regained. The chords ended, and the echoes, amazingly clear, floated far

away in the darkness and rain. Henry roused himself, and came from the

imaginative borderland. He stirred a little, and said in a quiet voice

to Shif'less Sol:

“Did you hear anything, Sol?”

“Nothin' but the wind an' the rain.”

Henry knew that such would be the answer.

“I guess you didn't hear anything either, Henry,” continued the

shiftless one, “'cause it looked to me that you wuz 'bout ez near sleep

ez a feller could be without bein' ackshooally so.”

“I was drifting away,” said Henry.

He was beginning to realize that he had a great power, or rather gift.

Paul was the sensitive, imaginative boy, seeing everything in brilliant

colors, a great builder of castles, not all of air, but Henry's gift

went deeper. It was the power to evoke the actual living picture of

the event that bad not yet occurred, something akin in its nature

to prophecy, based perhaps upon the wonderful power of observation,

inherited doubtless, from countless primitive ancestors. The finest

product of the wilderness, he saw in that wilderness many things that

others did not see, and unconsciously he drew his conclusions from

superior knowledge.

The song had ceased a full ten minutes, and then came another note, a

howl almost plaintive, but, nevertheless, weird and full of ferocity.

All knew it at once. They had heard the cry of wolves too often in their

lives, but this had an uncommon note like the yell of the Indian in

victory. Again the cry arose, nearer, haunting, and powerful. The five,

used to the darkness, could see one another's faces, and the look that

all gave was the same, full of understanding and repulsion.

“It has been a great day for the wolf in this valley,” whispered Paul,

“and striking our trail they think they are going to find what they have

been finding in such plenty before.”

“Yes,” nodded Henry, “but do you remember that time when in the house

we took the place of the man, his wife and children, just before the

Indians came?”

“Yes,” said Paul.

“We'll treat them wolves the same way,” said Shif'less Sol.

“I'm glad of the chance,” said Long Jim.

“Me, too,” said Tom Ross.

The five rose up to sitting positions against the board wall, and

everyone held across his knees a long, slender barreled rifle, with the

muzzle pointing toward the forest. All accomplished marksmen, it would

only be a matter of a moment for the stock to leap to the shoulder, the

eye to glance down the barrel, the finger to pull the trigger, and the

unerring bullet to leap forth.

“Henry, you give the word as usual,” said Shif'less Sol.

Henry nodded.

Presently in the darkness they heard the pattering of light feet, and

they saw many gleaming eyes draw near. There must have been at least

thirty of the wolves, and the five figures that they saw reclining,

silent and motionless, against the unburned portion of the house might

well have been those of the dead and scalped, whom they had found in

such numbers everywhere. They drew near in a semicircular group, its

concave front extended toward the fire, the greatest wolves at the

center. Despite many feastings, the wolves were hungry again. Nothing

had opposed them before, but caution was instinctive. The big gray

leaders did not mind the night or the wind or the rain, which they

had known all their lives, and which they counted as nothing, but they

always had involuntary suspicion of human figures, whether living or

not, and they approached slowly, wrinkling back their noses and sniffing

the wind which blew from them instead of the five figures. But their

confidence increased as they advanced. They had found many such burned

houses as this, but they had found nothing among the ruins except what

they wished.

The big leaders advanced more boldly, glaring straight at the human

figures, a slight froth on their lips, the lips themselves curling

back farther from the strong white teeth. The outer ends of the concave

semicircle also drew in. The whole pack was about to spring upon its

unresisting prey, and it is, no doubt, true that many a wolfish pulse

beat a little higher in anticipation. With a suddenness as startling

figures raised themselves, five long, dark tubes leaped to their

shoulders, and with a suddenness that was yet more terrifying, a gush

of flame shot from five muzzles. Five of the wolves-and they were the

biggest and the boldest, the leaders-fell dead upon the ashes of the

charred timbers, and the others, howling their terror to the dark,

skies, fled deep into the forest.

Henry strode over and pushed the body of the largest wolf with his foot.

“I suppose we only gratified a kind of sentiment in shooting those

wolves,” he said, “but I for one am glad we did it.”

“So am I,” said Paul.

“Me, too,” said the other three together.

They went back to their positions near the wall, and one by one fell

asleep. No more wolves howled that night anywhere near them.

When the five awakened the next morning the rain had ceased, and a

splendid sun was tinting a blue sky with gold. Jim Hart built a fire

among the blackened logs, and cooked venison. They had also brought from

Fort Penn a little coffee, which Long Jim carried with a small coffee

pot in his camp kit, and everyone had a small tin cup. He made coffee

for them, an uncommon wilderness luxury, in which they could rarely

indulge, and they were heartened and strengthened by it.

Then they went again up the valley, as beautiful as ever, with its

silver river in the center, and its green mountain walls on either side.

But the beauty was for the eye only. It did not reach the hearts of

those who had seen it before. All of the five loved the wilderness, but

they felt now how tragic silence and desolation could be where human

life and all the daily ways of human life had been.

It was mid-summer, but the wilderness was already reclaiming its own.

The game knew that man was gone, and it had come back into the valley.

Deer ate what had grown in the fields and gardens, and the wolves were

everywhere. The whole black tragedy was written for miles. They were

never out of sight of some trace of it, and their anger grew again as

they advanced in the blackened path of the victorious Indians.

It was their purpose now to hang on the Indian flank as scouts and

skirmishers, until an American army was formed for a campaign against

the Iroquois, which they were sure must be conducted sooner or later.

Meanwhile they could be of great aid, gathering news of the Indian

plans, and, when that army of which they dreamed should finally march,

they could help it most of all by warning it of ambush, the Indian's

deadliest weapon.

Everyone of the five had already perceived a fact which was manifest in

all wars with the Indians along the whole border from North to South,

as it steadily shifted farther West. The practical hunter and scout was

always more than a match for the Indian, man for man, but, when the raw

levies of settlers were hastily gathered to stem invasion, they were

invariably at a great disadvantage. They were likely to be caught in

ambush by overwhelming numbers, and to be cut down, as had just happened

at Wyoming. The same fate might attend an invasion of the Iroquois

country, even by a large army of regular troops, and Henry and his

comrades resolved upon doing their utmost to prevent it. An army needed

eyes, and it could have none better than those five pairs. So they went

swiftly up the valley and northward and eastward, into the country of

the Iroquois. They had a plan of approaching the upper Mohawk village

of Canajoharie, where one account says that Thayendanegea was born,

although another credits his birthplace to the upper banks of the Ohio.

They turned now from the valley to the deep woods. The trail showed

that the great Indian force, after disembarking again, split into large

parties, everyone loaded with spoil and bound for its home village. The

five noted several of the trails, but one of them consumed the whole

attention of Silent Tom Ross.

He saw in the soft soil near a creek bank the footsteps of about eight

Indians, and, mingled with them, other footsteps, which he took to be

those of a white woman and of several children, captives, as even a

tyro would infer. The soul of Tom, the good, honest, and inarticulate

frontiersman, stirred within him. A white woman and her children being

carried off to savagery, to be lost forevermore to their kind! Tom,

still inarticulate, felt his heart pierced with sadness at the tale that

the tracks in the soft mud told so plainly. But despair was not the only

emotion in his heart. The silent and brave man meant to act.

“Henry,” he said, “see these tracks here in the soft spot by the creek.”

The young leader read the forest page, and it told him exactly the same

tale that it had told Tom Ross.

“About a day old, I think,” he said.

“Just about,” said Tom; “an' I reckon, Henry, you know what's in my

mind.”

“I think I do,” said Henry, “and we ought to overtake them by to-morrow

night. You tell the others, Tom.”

Tom informed Shif'less Sol, Paul, and Long Jim in a few words, receiving

from everyone a glad assent, and then the five followed fast on the

trail. They knew that the Indians could not go very fast, as their speed

must be that of the slowest, namely, that of the children, and it seemed

likely that Henry's prediction of overtaking them on the following night

would come true.

It was an easy trail. Here and there were tiny fragments of cloth,

caught by a bush from the dress of a captive. In one place they saw a

fragment of a child's shoe that had been dropped off and abandoned. Paul

picked up the worn piece of leather and examined it.

“I think it was worn by a girl,” he said, “and, judging from its size,

she could not have been more than eight years old. Think of a child like

that being made to walk five or six hundred miles through these woods!”

“Younger ones still have had to do it,” said Shif'less Sol gravely, “an'

them that couldn't-well, the tomahawk.”

The trail was leading them toward the Seneca country, and they had no

doubt that the Indians were Senecas, who had been more numerous than

any others of the Six Nations at the Wyoming battle. They came that

afternoon to a camp fire beside which the warriors and captives had

slept the night before.

“They ate bar meat an' wild turkey,” said Long Jim, looking at some

bones on the ground.

“An' here,” said Tom Ross, “on this pile uv bushes is whar the women an'

children slept, an' on the other side uv the fire is whar the warriors

lay anywhars. You can still see how the bodies uv some uv 'cm crushed

down the grass an' little bushes.”

“An' I'm thinkin',” said Shif'less Sol, as he looked at the trail that

led away from the camp fire, “that some o' them little ones wuz gittin'

pow'ful tired. Look how these here little trails are wobblin' about.”

“Hope we kin come up afore the Injuns begin to draw thar tomahawks,”

said Tom Ross.

The others were silent, but they knew the dreadful significance of Tom's

remark, and Henry glanced at them all, one by one.

“It's the greatest danger to be feared,” he said, “and we must overtake

them in the night when they are not suspecting. If we attack by day they

will tomahawk the captives the very first thing.”

“Shorely,', said the shiftless one.

“Then,” said Henry, “we don't need to hurry. We'll go on until about

midnight, and then sleep until sunrise.”

They continued at a fair pace along a trail that frontiersmen far less

skillful than they could have followed. But a silent dread was in the

heart of every one of them. As they saw the path of the small feet

staggering more and more they feared to behold some terrible object

beside the path.

“The trail of the littlest child is gone,” suddenly announced Paul.

“Yes,” said Henry, “but the mother has picked it up and is carrying it.

See how her trail has suddenly grown more uneven.”

“Poor woman,” said Paul. “Henry, we're just bound to overtake that

band.”

“We'll do it,” said Henry.

At the appointed time they sank down among the thickest bushes that they

could find, and slept until the first upshot of dawn. Then they resumed

the trail, haunted always by that fear of finding something terrible

beside it. But it was a trail that continually grew slower. The Indians

themselves were tired, or, feeling safe from pursuit, saw no need of

hurry. By and by the trail of the smallest child reappeared.

“It feels a lot better now,” said Tom Ross. “So do I.”

They came to another camp fire, at which the ashes were not yet cold.

Feathers were scattered about, indicating that the Indians had taken

time for a little side hunt, and had shot some birds.

“They can't be more than two or three hours ahead,” said Henry, “and

we'll have to go on now very cautiously.”

They were in a country of high hills, well covered with forests, a

region suited to an ambush, which they feared but little on their own

account; but, for the sake of extreme caution, they now advanced slowly.

The afternoon was long and warm, but an hour before sunset they looked

over a hill into a glade, and saw the warriors making camp for the

night.

The sight they beheld made the pulses of the five throb heavily. The

Indians had already built their fire, and two of them were cooking

venison upon it. Others were lying on the grass, apparently resting,

but a little to one side sat a woman, still young and of large, strong

figure, though now apparently in the last stages of exhaustion, with her

feet showing through the fragments of shoes that she wore. Her head was

bare, and her dress was in strips. Four children lay beside her' the

youngest two with their heads in her lap. The other two, who might be

eleven and thirteen each, had pillowed their heads on their arms, and

lay in the dull apathy that comes from the finish of both strength

and hope. The woman's face was pitiful. She had more to fear than the

children, and she knew it. She was so worn that the skin hung loosely on

her face, and her eyes showed despair only. The sad spectacle was almost

more than Paul could stand.

“I don't like to shoot from ambush,” he said, “but we could cut down

half of those warriors at our firs fire and rush in on the rest.”

“And those we didn't cut down at our first volley would tomahawk the

woman and children in an instant,” replied Henry. “We agreed, you know,

that it would be sure to happen. We can't do anything until night comes,

and then we've got to be mighty cautious.”

Paul could not dispute the truth of his words, and they withdrew

carefully to the crest of a hill, where they lay in the undergrowth,

watching the Indians complete their fire and their preparations for the

night. It was evident to Henry that they considered themselves perfectly

safe. Certainly they had every reason for thinking so. It was not likely

that white enemies were within a hundred miles of them, and, if so, it

could only be a wandering hunter or two, who would flee from this fierce

band of Senecas who bad taken revenge for the great losses that they'

had suffered the year before at the Oriskany.

They kept very little watch and built only a small fire, just enough

for broiling deer meat which they carried. They drank at a little spring

which ran from under a ledge near them, and gave portions of the meat to

the woman and children. After the woman had eaten, they bound her hands,

and she lay back on the grass, about twenty feet from the camp fire. Two

children lay on either side of her, and they were soon sound asleep. The

warriors, as Indians will do when they are free from danger and care,

talked a good deal, and showed all the signs of having what was to them

a luxurious time. They ate plentifully, lolled on the grass, and looked

at some hideous trophies, the scalps that they carried at their belts.

The woman could not keep from seeing these, too, but her face did not

change from its stony aspect of despair. Then the light of the fire went

out, the sun sank behind the mountains, and the five could no longer see

the little group of captives and captors.

They still waited, although eagerness and impatience were tugging at the

hearts of every one of them. But they must give the Indians time to

fall asleep if they would secure rescue, and not merely revenge. They

remained in the bushes, saying but little and eating of venison that

they carried in their knapsacks.

They let a full three hours pass, and the night remained dark, but

with a faint moon showing. Then they descended slowly into the valley,

approaching by cautious degrees the spot where they knew the Indian camp

lay. This work required at least three quarters of an hour, and they

reached a point where they could see the embers of the fire and the dark

figures lying about it. The Indians, their suspicions lulled, had put

out no sentinels, and all were asleep. But the five knew that, at the

first shot, they would be as wide awake as if they had never slept, and

as formidable as tigers. Their problem seemed as great as ever. So they

lay in the bushes and held a whispered conference.

“It's this,” said Henry. “We want to save the woman and the children

from the tomahawks, and to do so we must get them out of range of the

blade before the battle begins.” “How?” said Tom Ross.

“I've got to slip up, release the woman, arm her, tell her to run for

the woods with the children, and then you four must do the most of the

rest.”

“Do you think you can do it, Henry?” asked Shif'less Sol.

“I can, as I will soon show you. I'm going to steal forward to the woman,

but the moment you four hear an alarm open with your rifles and pistols.

You can come a little nearer without being heard.”

All of them moved up close to the Indian camp, and lay hidden in the

last fringe of bushes except Henry. He lay almost flat upon the ground,

carrying his rifle parallel with his side, and in his right hand. He

was undertaking one of the severest and most dangerous tests known to

a frontiersman. He meant to crawl into the very midst of a camp of the

Iroquois, composed of the most alert woodsmen in the world, men who

would spring up at the slightest crackle in the brush. Woodmen who,

warned by some sixth sense, would awaken at the mere fact of a strange

presence.

The four who remained behind in the bushes could not keep their hearts

from beating louder and faster. They knew the tremendous risk undertaken

by their comrade, but there was not one of them who would have shirked

it, had not all yielded it to the one whom they knew to be the best

fitted for the task.

Henry crept forward silently, bringing to his aid all the years of skill

that he had acquired in his life in the wilds. His body was like that

of a serpent, going forward, coil by coil. He was near enough now to see

the embers of the fire not yet quite dead, the dark figures scattered

about it, sleeping upon the grass with the long ease of custom, and then

the outline of the woman apart from the others with the children about

her. Henry now lay entirely flat, and his motions were genuinely those

of a serpent. It was by a sort of contraction and relaxation of the body

that he moved himself, and his progress was absolutely soundless.

The object of his advance was the woman. He saw by the faint light of

the moon that she was not yet asleep. Her face, worn and weather beaten,

was upturned to the skies, and the stony look of despair seemed to have

settled there forever. She lay upon some pine boughs, and her hands were

tied behind her for the night with deerskin.

Henry contorted himself on, inch by inch, for all the world like a great

snake. Now he passed the sleeping Senecas, hideous with war paint, and

came closer to the woman. She was not paying attention to anything about

her, but was merely looking up at the pale, cold stars, as if everything

in the world had ceased for her.

Henry crept a little nearer. He made a slight noise, as of a lizard

running through the grass, but the woman took no notice. He crept

closer, and there he lay flat upon the grass within six feet of her,

his figure merely a slightly darker blur against the dark blur of the

earth. Then, trusting to the woman's courage and strength of mind, he

emitted a hiss very soft and low, like the warning of a serpent, half in

fear and half in anger.

The woman moved a little, and looked toward the point from which the

sound had come. It might have been the formidable hiss of a coiling

rattlesnake that she heard, but she felt no fear. She was too much

stunned, too near exhaustion to be alarmed by anything, and she did

not look a second time. She merely settled back on the pine boughs, and

again looked dully up at the pale, cold stars that cared so little for

her or hers.

Henry crept another yard nearer, and then he uttered that low noise,

sibilant and warning, which the woman, the product of the border, knew

to be made by a human being. She raised herself a little, although it

was difficult with her bound hands to sit upright, and saw a dark shadow

approaching her. That dark shadow she knew to be the figure of a man. An

Indian would not be approaching in such a manner, and she looked again,

startled into a sudden acute attention, and into a belief that the

incredible, the impossible, was about to happen. A voice came from the

figure, and its quality was that of the white voice, not the red.

“Do not move,” said that incredible voice out of the unknown. “I have

come for your rescue, and others who have come for the same purpose are

near. Turn on one side, and I will cut the bonds that hold your arms.”

The voice, the white voice, was like the touch of fire to Mary Newton.

A sudden fierce desire for life and for the lives of her four children

awoke within her just when hope had gone the call to life came. She

had never heard before a voice so full of cheer and encouragement. It

penetrated her whole being. Exhaustion and despair fled away.

“Turn a little on your side,” said the voice.

She turned obediently, and then felt the sharp edge of cold steel as it

swept between her wrists and cut the thongs that held them together. Her

arms fell apart, and strength permeated every vein of her being.

“We shall attack in a few moments,” said the voice, “but at the first

shots the Senecas will try to tomahawk you and your children. Hold out

your hands.”

She held out both hands obediently. The handle of a tomahawk was pressed

into one, and the muzzle of a double-barreled pistol into the other.

Strength flowed down each hand into her body.

“If the time comes, use them; you are strong, and you know how,” said

the voice. Then she saw the dark figure creeping away.

CHAPTER XIV. THE PURSUIT ON THE RIVER

The story of the frontier is filled with heroines, from the far days

of Hannah Dustin down to the present, and Mary Newton, whom the unknown

figure in the dark had just aroused, is one of them. It had seemed to

her that God himself had deserted her, but at the last moment he had

sent some one. She did not doubt, she could not doubt, because the bonds

had been severed, and there she lay with a deadly weapon in either hand.

The friendly stranger who had come so silently was gone as he had come,

but she was not helpless now. Like many another frontier woman, she

was naturally lithe and powerful, and, stirred by a great hope, all her

strength had returned for the present.

Nobody who lives in the wilderness can wholly escape superstition,

and Mary Newton began to believe that some supernatural creature had

intervened in her behalf. She raised herself just a little on one elbow

and surveyed the surrounding thicket. She saw only the dead embers of

the fire, and the dark forms of the Indians lying upon the bare ground.

Had it not been for the knife and pistol in her hand, she could have

believed that the voice was only a dream.

There was a slight rustling in the thicket, and a Seneca rose quickly

to his knees, grasping his rifle in both hands. The woman's fingers

clutched the knife and pistol more tightly, and her whole gaunt figure

trembled. The Seneca listened only a moment. Then he gave a sharp cry,

and all the other warriors sprang up. But three of them rose only

to fall again, as the rifles cracked in the bushes, while two others

staggered from wounds.

The triumphant shout of the frontiersmen came from the thicket, and then

they rushed upon the camp. Quick as a flash two of the Senecas started

toward the woman and children with their tomahawks, but Mary Newton was

ready. Her heart had leaped at the shots when the Senecas fell, and

she kept her courage. Now she sprang to her full height, and, with the

children screaming at her feet, fired one barrel of the pistol directly

into the face of the first warrior, and served the second in the same

way with the other barrel when he was less than four feet away. Then,

tomahawk in hand, she rushed forward. In judging Mary Newton, one must

consider time and place.

But happily there was no need for her to use her tomahawk. As the five

rushed in, four of them emptied their double-barreled pistols, while

Henry swung his clubbed rifle with terrible effect. It was too much

for the Senecas. The apparition of the armed woman, whom they had left

bound, and the deadly fire from the five figures that sprang upon them,

was like a blow from the hand of Aieroski. The unhurt and wounded fled

deep into the forest, leaving their dead behind. Mary Newton, her great

deed done, collapsed from emotion and weakness. The screams of the

children sank in a few moments to frightened whimpers. But the oldest,

when they saw the white faces, knew that rescue had come.

Paul brought water from the brook in his cap, and Mary Newton was

revived; Jim was reassuring the children, and the other three were in

the thickets, watching lest the surviving Senecas return for attack.

“I don't know who you are, but I think the good God himself must have

sent you to our rescue,” said Mary Newton reverently.

“We don't know,” said Paul, “but we are doing the best we can. Do you

think you can walk now?”

“Away from the savages? Yes!” she said passionately. She looked down at

the dead figures of the Senecas, and she did not feel a single trace of

pity for them. Again it is necessary to consider time and place.

“Some of my strength came back while I was lying here,” she said, “and

much more of it when you drove away the Indians.”

“Very well,” said Henry, who had returned to the dead camp fire with

his comrades, “we must start on the back trail at once. The surviving

Senecas, joined by other Iroquois, will certainly pursue, and we need

all the start that we can get.”

Long Jim picked up one of the two younger children and flung him over

his shoulder; Tom Ross did as much for the other, but the older two

scorned help. They were full of admiration for the great woodsmen,

mighty heroes who had suddenly appeared out of the air, as it were,

and who had swept like a tornado over the Seneca band. It did not seem

possible now that they, could be retaken.

But Mary Newton, with her strength and courage, had also recovered her

forethought.

“Maybe it will not be better to go on the back trail,” she said. “One

of the Senecas told me to-day that six or seven miles farther on was a

river flowing into the Susquehanna, and that they would cross this river

on a boat now concealed among bushes on the bank. The crossing was at a

sudden drop between high banks. Might not we go on, find the boat, and

come back in it down the river and into the Susquehanna?”

“That sounds mighty close to wisdom to me,” said Shif'less Sol.

“Besides, it's likely to have the advantage o' throwin' the Iroquois off

our track. They'll think, o' course, that we've gone straight back, an'

we'll pass 'em ez we're going forward.”

“It's certainly the best plan,” said Henry, “and it's worth our while

to try for that hidden boat of the Iroquois. Do you know the general

direction?”

“Almost due north.”

“Then we'll make a curve to the right, in order to avoid any Iroquois

who may be returning to this camp, and push for it.”

Henry led the way over hilly, rough ground, and the others followed in a

silent file, Long Jim and Tom still carrying the two smallest children,

who soon fell asleep on their shoulders. Henry did not believe that the

returning Iroquois could follow their trail on such a dark night, and

the others agreed with him.

After a while they saw the gleam of water. Henry knew that it must be

very near, or it would have been wholly invisible on such a dark night.

“I think, Mrs. Newton,” he said, “that this is the river of which you

spoke, and the cliffs seem to drop down just as you said they would.”

The woman smiled.

“Yes,” she said, “you've done well with my poor guess, and the boat must

be hidden somewhere near here.”

Then she sank down with exhaustion, and the two older children, unable

to walk farther, sank down beside her. But the two who slept soundly on

the shoulders of Long Jim and Tom Ross did not awaken. Henry motioned

to Jim and Tom to remain there, and Shif'less Sol bent upon them a

quizzical and approving look.

“Didn't think it was in you, Jim Hart, you old horny-handed galoot,” he

said, “carryin' a baby that tender. Knew Jim could sling a little black

bar 'roun' by the tail, but I didn't think you'd take to nussin' so

easy.”

“I'd luv you to know, Sol Hyde,” said Jim Hart in a tone of high

condescension, “that Tom Ross an' me are civilized human bein's. In face

uv danger we are ez brave ez forty thousand lions, but with the little

an' the weak we're as easy an' kind an' soft ez human bein's are ever

made to be.”

“You're right, old hoss,” said Tom Ross.

“Well,” said the shiftless one, “I can't argify with you now, ez the

general hez called on his colonel, which is me, an' his major, which is

Paul, to find him a nice new boat like one o' them barges o' Clepatry

that Paul tells about, all solid silver, with red silk sails an' gold

oars, an' we're meanin' to do it.”

Fortune was with them, and in a quarter of an hour they discovered, deep

among bushes growing in the shallow water, a large, well-made boat with

two pairs of oars and with small supplies of parched corn and venison

hidden in it.

“Good luck an' bad luck come mixed,” said the shift-less one, “an' this

is shorely one o' our pieces o' good luck. The woman an' the children

are clean tuckered out, an' without this boat we could never hev got

them back. Now it's jest a question o' rowin' an' fightin'.”

“Paul and I will pull her out to the edge of the clear water,” said

Henry, “while you can go back and tell the others, Sol.”

“That just suits a lazy man,” said Sol, and he walked away jauntily.

Under his apparent frivolity he concealed his joy at the find, which he

knew to be of such vast importance. He approached the dusky group, and

his really tender heart was stirred with pity for the rescued captives.

Long Jim and Silent Tom held the smaller two on their shoulders, but

the older ones and the woman, also, had fallen asleep. Sol, in order to

conceal his emotion, strode up rather roughly. Mary Newton awoke.

“Did you find anything?” she asked.

“Find anything?” repeated Shif'less Sol. “Well, Long Jim an' Tom

here might never hev found anything, but Henry an' Paul an' me, three

eddicated men, scholars, I might say, wuz jest natcherally bound to find

it whether it wuz thar or not. Yes, we've unearthed what Paul would call

an argosy, the grandest craft that ever floated on this here creek,

that I never saw before, an' that I don't know the name uv. She's bein'

floated out now, an' I, the Gran' Hidalgo an' Majordomo, hev come to

tell the princes and princesses, an' the dukes and dukesses, an' all the

other gran' an' mighty passengers, that the barge o' the Dog o' Venice

is in the stream, an' the Dog, which is Henry Ware, is waitin', settin'

on the Pup to welcome ye.”

“Sol,” said Long Jim, “you do talk a power uv foolishness, with your

Dogs an' Pups.”

“It ain't foolishness,” rejoined the shiftless one. “I heard Paul read

it out o' a book oncet, plain ez day. They've been ruled by Dogs at

Venice for more than a thousand years, an' on big 'casions the Dog comes

down a canal in a golden barge, settin' on the Pup. I'll admit it 'pears

strange to me, too, but who are you an' me, Jim Hart, to question the

ways of foreign countries, thousands o' miles on the other side o' the

sea?”

“They've found the boat,” said Tom Ross, “an' that's enough!”

“Is it really true?” asked Mrs. Newton.

“It is,” replied Shif'less Sol, “an' Henry an' Paul are in it, waitin'

fur us. We're thinkin', Mrs. Newton, that the roughest part of your trip

is over.”

In another five minutes all were in the boat, which was a really fine

one, and they were delighted. Mary Newton for the first time broke down

and wept, and no one disturbed her. The five spread the blankets on the

bottom of the boat, where the children soon went to sleep once more, and

Tom Ross and Shif'less Sol took the oars.

“Back in a boat ag'in,” said the shiftless one exultantly. “Makes me

feel like old times. My fav'rite mode o' travelin' when Jim Hart, 'stead

o' me, is at the oars.”

“Which is most o' the time,” said Long Jim.

It was indeed a wonderful change to these people worn by the wilderness.

They lay at ease now, while two pairs of powerful arms, with scarcely an

effort, propelled the boat along the stream. The woman herself lay down

on the blankets and fell asleep with the children. Henry at the prow,

Tom Ross at the stern, and Paul amidships watched in silence, but with

their rifles across their knees. They knew that the danger was far from

over. Other Indians were likely to use this stream, unknown to them, as

a highway, and those who survived of their original captors could pick

up their trail by daylight. And the Senecas, being mad for revenge,

would surely get help and follow. Henry believed that the theory of

returning toward the Wyoming Valley was sound. That region had been so

thoroughly ravaged now that all the Indians would be going northward.

If they could float down a day or so without molestation, they would

probably be safe. The creek, or, rather, little river, broadened,

flowing with a smooth, fairly swift current. The forest on either side

was dense with oak, hickory, maple, and other splendid trees, often

with a growth of underbrush. The three riflemen never ceased to watch

intently. Henry always looked ahead. It would have been difficult for

any ambushed marksman to have escaped his notice. But nothing occurred

to disturb them. Once a deer came down to drink, and fled away at sight

of the phantom boat gliding almost without noise on the still waters.

Once the far scream of a panther came from the woods, but Mary Newton

and her children, sleeping soundly, did not hear it. The five themselves

knew the nature of the sound, and paid no attention. The boat went

steadily on, the three riflemen never changing their position, and soon

the day began to come. Little arrows of golden light pierced through the

foliage of the trees, and sparkled on the surface of the water. In the

cast the red sun was coming from his nightly trip. Henry looked down at

the sleepers. They were overpowered by exhaustion, and would not awake

of their own accord for a long time.

Shif'less Sol caught his look.

“Why not let 'em sleep on?” he said.

Then he and Jim Hart took the oars, and the shiftless one and Tom Ross

resumed their rifles. The day was coming fast, and the whole forest was

soon transfused with light.

No one of the five had slept during the night. They did not feel the

need of sleep, and they were upborne, too, by a great exaltation. They

had saved the prisoners thus far from a horrible fate, and they were

firmly resolved to reach, with them, some strong settlement and safety.

They felt, too, a sense of exultation over Brant, Sangerachte, Hiokatoo,

the Butlers, the Johnsons, Wyatt, and all the crew that had committed

such terrible devastation in the Wyoming Valley and elsewhere.

The full day clothed the earth in a light that turned from silver to

gold, and the woman and the children still slept. The five chewed some

strips of venison, and looked rather lugubriously at the pieces they

were saving for Mary Newton and the children.

“We ought to hev more'n that,” said Shif'less Sol. “Ef the worst comes to

the worst, we've got to land somewhar an' shoot a deer.”

“But not yet,” said Henry in a whisper, lest he wake the sleepers. “I

think we'll come into the Susquehanna pretty soon, and its width will be

a good thing for us. I wish we were there now. I don't like this narrow

stream. Its narrowness affords too good an ambush.”

“Anyway, the creek is broadenin' out fast,” said the shiftless one,

“an' that is a good sign. What's that you see ahead, Henry--ain't it a

river?”

“It surely is,” replied Henry, who caught sight of a broad expanse of

water, “and it's the Susquehanna. Pull hard, Sol! In five more minutes

we'll be in the river.”

It was less than five when they turned into the current of the

Susquehanna, and less than five more when they heard a shout behind

them, and saw at least a dozen canoes following. The canoes were filled

with Indians and Tories, and they had spied the fugitives.

“Keep the women and the children down, Paul,” cried Henry.

All knew that Henry and Shif'less Sol were the best shots, and, without

a word, Long Jim and Tom, both powerful and skilled watermen, swung

heavily on the oars, while Henry and Shif'less Sol sat in the rear with

their rifles ready. Mary Newton awoke with a cry at the sound of the

shots, and started to rise, but Paul pushed her down.

“We're on the Susquehanna now, Mrs. Newton,” he said, “and we are

pursued. The Indians and Tories have just seen us, but don't be afraid.

The two who are watching there are the best shots in the world.”

He looked significantly at Henry and Shif'less Sol, crouching in the

stern of the boat like great warriors from some mighty past, kings of

the forest whom no one could overcome, and her courage came back. The

children, too, had awakened with frightened cries, but she and Paul

quickly soothed them, and, obedient to commands, the four, and Mary

Newton with them, lay flat upon the bottom of the boat, which was now

being sent forward rapidly by Jim Hart and Tom. Paul took up his rifle

and sat in a waiting attitude, either to relieve one of the men at the

oars or to shoot if necessary.

The clear sun made forest and river vivid in its light. The Indians,

after their first cry, made no sound, but so powerful were Long Jim

and Tom that they were gaining but little, although some of the boats

contained six or eight rowers.

As the light grew more intense Henry made out the two white faces in the

first boat. One was that of Braxton Wyatt, and the other, he was quite

sure, belonged to the infamous Walter Butler. Hot anger swept through

all his veins, and the little pulses in his temples began to beat like

trip hammers. Now the picture of Wyoming, the battle, the massacre,

the torture, and Queen Esther wielding her great tomahawk on the bound

captives, grew astonishingly vivid, and it was printed blood red on his

brain. The spirit of anger and defiance, of a desire to taunt those who

had done such things, leaped up in his heart.

“Are you there, Braxton Wyatt?” he called clearly across the intervening

water. “Yes, I see that it is you, murderer of women and children,

champion of the fire and stake, as savage as any of the savages. And

it is you, too, Walter Butler, wickeder son of a wicked father. Come a

little closer, won't you? We've messengers here for both of you!”

He tapped lightly the barrel of his own rifle and that of Shif'less Sol,

and repeated his request that they come a little closer.

They understood his words, and they understood, also, the significant

gesture when he patted the barrel of the rifles. The hearts of both

Butler and Wyatt were for the moment afraid, and their boat dropped back

to third place. Henry laughed aloud when he saw. The Viking rage was

still upon him. This was the primeval wilderness, and these were no

common foes.

“I see that you don't want to receive our little messengers,” he cried.

“Why have you dropped back to third place in the line, Braxton Wyatt and

Walter Butler, when you were first only a moment ago? Are you cowards as

well as murderers of women and children?”

“That's pow'ful good talk,” said Shif'less Sol admiringly. “Henry,

you're a real orator. Give it to 'em, an' mebbe I'll get a chance at one

o' them renegades.”

It seemed that Henry's words had an effect, because the boat of the

renegades pulled up somewhat, although it did not regain first place.

Thus the chase proceeded down the Susquehanna.

The Indian fleet was gaining a little, and Shif'less Sol called Henry's

attention to it.

“Don't you think I'd better take a shot at one o' them rowers in the

first boat?” he said to Henry. “Wyatt an' Butler are a leetle too fur

away.”

“I think it would give them a good hint, Sol!” said Henry. “Take that

fellow on the right who is pulling so hard.”

The shiftless one raised his rifle, lingered but a little over his aim,

and pulled the trigger. The rower whom Henry had pointed out fell back

in the boat, his hands slipping from the handles of his oars. The boat

was thrown into confusion, and dropped back in the race. Scattering

shots were fired in return, but all fell short, the water spurting up in

little jets where they struck.

Henry, who had caught something of the Indian nature in his long stay

among them in the northwest, laughed in loud irony.

“That was one of our little messengers, and it found a listener!”

he shouted. “And I see that you are afraid, Braxton Wyatt and Walter

Butler, murderers of women and children! Why don't you keep your proper

places in the front?”

“That's the way to talk to 'em,” whispered Shif'less Sol, as he

reloaded. “Keep it up, an' mebbe we kin git a chance at Braxton Wyatt

hisself. Since Wyoming I'd never think o' missin' sech a chance.”

“Nor I, either,” said Henry, and he resumed in his powerful tones: “The

place of a leader is in front, isn't it? Then why don't you come up?”

Braxton Wyatt and Walter Butler did not come up. They were not lacking

in courage, but Wyatt knew what deadly marksmen the fugitive boat

contained, and he had also told Butler. So they still hung back,

although they raged at Henry Ware's taunts, and permitted the Mohawks

and Senecas to take the lead in the chase.

“They're not going to give us a chance,” said Henry. “I'm satisfied

of that. They'll let redskins receive our bullets, though just now

I'd rather it were the two white ones. What do you think, Sol, of that

leading boat? Shouldn't we give another hint?”

“I agree with you, Henry,” said the shiftless one. “They're comin'

much too close fur people that ain't properly interduced to us. This

promiskus way o' meetin' up with strangers an' lettin' 'em talk to you

jest ez ef they'd knowed you all their lives hez got to be stopped. It's

your time, Henry, to give 'em a polite hint, an' I jest suggest that you

take the big fellow in the front o' the boat who looks like a Mohawk.”

Henry raised his rifle, fired, and the Mohawk would row no more. Again

confusion prevailed in the pursuing fleet, and there was a decline of

enthusiasm. Braxton Wyatt and Walter Butler raged and swore, but, as

they showed no great zeal for the lead themselves, the Iroquois did not

gain on the fugitive boat. They, too, were fast learning that the two

who crouched there with their rifles ready were among the deadliest

marksmen in existence. They fired a dozen shots, perhaps, but their

rifles did not have the long range of the Kentucky weapons, and again

the bullets fell short, causing little jets of water to spring up.

“They won't come any nearer, at least not for the present,” said Henry,

“but will hang back just out of rifle range, waiting for some chance to

help them.”

Shif'less Sol looked the other way, down the Susquehanna, and announced

that he could see no danger. There was probably no Indian fleet farther

down the river than the one now pursuing them, and the danger was behind

them, not before.

Throughout the firing, Silent Tom Ross and Long Jim Hart had not said a

word, but they rowed with a steadiness and power that would have carried

oarsmen of our day to many a victory. Moreover, they had the inducement

not merely of a prize, but of life itself, to row and to row hard. They

had rolled up their sleeves, and the mighty muscles on those arms of

woven steel rose and fell as they sent the boat swiftly with the silver

current of the Susquehanna.

Mary Newton still lay on the bottom of the boat. The children had cried

out in fright once or twice at the sound of the firing, but she and

Paul bad soothed them and kept them down. Somehow Mary Newton had become

possessed of a great faith. She noticed the skill, speed, and success

with which the five always worked, and, so long given up to despair,

she now went to the other extreme. With such friends as these coming

suddenly out of the void, everything must succeed. She had no doubt of

it, but lay peacefully on the bottom of the boat, not at all disturbed

by the sound of the shots.

Paul and Sol after a while relieved Long Jim and Tom at the oars. The

Iroquois thought it a chance to creep up again, but they were driven

back by a third bullet, and once more kept their distance. Shif'less

Sol, while he pulled as powerfully as Tom Ross, whose place he had

taken, nevertheless was not silent.

“I'd like to know the feelin's o' Braxton Wyatt an' that feller Butler,”

he said. “Must be powerful tantalizin' to them to see us here, almost

where they could stretch out their hands an' put 'em on us. Like reachn'

fur ripe, rich fruit, an' failin' to git it by half a finger's length.”

“They are certainly not pleased,” said Henry, “but this must end some

way or other, you know.”

“I say so, too, now that I'm a-rowin',” rejoined the shiftless one,

“but when my turn at the oars is finished I wouldn't care. Ez I've said

more'n once before, floatin' down a river with somebody else pullin' at

the oars is the life jest suited to me.”

Henry looked up. “A summer thunderstorm is coming,” he said, “and from

the look of things it's going to be pretty black. Then's when we must

dodge 'em.”

He was a good weather prophet. In a half hour the sky began to darken

rapidly. There was a great deal of thunder and lightning, but when

the rain came the air was almost as dark as night. Mary Newton and her

children were covered as much as possible with the blankets, and then

they swung the boat rapidly toward the eastern shore. They had already

lost sight of their pursuers in the darkness, and as they coasted along

the shore they found a large creek flowing into the river from the east.

They ran up the creek, and were a full mile from its mouth when the

rain ceased. Then the sun came out bright and warm, quickly drying

everything.

They pulled about ten miles farther, until the creek grew too shallow

for them, when they hid the boat among bushes and took to the land.

Two days later they arrived at a strong fort and settlement, where Mary

Newton and her four children, safe and well, were welcomed by relatives

who had mourned them as dead.

CHAPTER XV. “THE ALCOVE”

They arrived at the fort as evening was coming on, and as soon as food

was served to them the five sought sleep. The frontiersmen usually slept

soundly and for a long time after prodigious exertions, and Henry and

his comrades were too wise to make an exception. They secured a single

room inside the fort, one given to them gladly, because Mary Newton

had already spread the fame of their exploits, and, laying aside their

hunting shirts and leggins, prepared for rest.

“Jim,” said Shif'less Sol, pointing to a low piece of furniture, flat

and broad, in one corner of the room, “that's a bed. Mebbe you don't

think it, but people lay on top o' that an' sleep thar.”

Long Jim grinned.

“Mebbe you're right, Sol,” he said. “I hev seen sech things ez that, an'

mebbe I've slep' on 'em, but in all them gran' old tales Paul tells

us about I never heard uv no big heroes sleepin' in beds. I guess the

ground wuz good 'nough for A-killus, Hector, Richard-Kur-de-Leong,

an' all the rest uv that fightin' crowd, an' ez I'm that sort uv a man

myself I'll jest roll down here on the floor. Bein' as you're tender,

Sol Hyde, an' not used to hard life in the woods, you kin take that bed

yourself, an' in the mornin' your wally will be here with hot water in

a silver mug an' a razor to shave you, an' he'll dress you in a ruffled

red silk shirt an' a blue satin waistcoat, an' green satin breeches jest

comin' to the knee, where they meet yellow silk stockin's risin' out

uv purple satin slippers, an' then he'll clap on your head a big wig

uv snow-white hair, fallin' all about your shoulders an' he'll buckle a

silver sword to your side, an' he'll say: 'Gentlemen, him that hez long

been known ez Shif'less Sol, an' desarvin' the name, but who in reality

is the King o' France, is now before you. Down on your knees an' say

your prayers!'”

Shif'less Sol stared in astonishment.

“You say a wally will do all that fur me, Jim? Now, what under the sun

is a wally?”

“I heard all about 'em from Paul,” replied Long Jim in a tone of intense

satisfaction. “A wally is a man what does fur you what you ought to do

fur yourself.”

“Then I want one,” said Shif'less Sol emphatically. “He'd jest suit a

lazy man like me. An' ez fur your makin' me the King o' France, mebbe

you're more'n half right about that without knowin' it. I hev all the

instincts uv a king. I like to be waited on, I like to eat when I'm

hungry, I like to drink when I'm thirsty, I like to rest when I'm tired,

an' I like to sleep when I'm sleepy. You've heard o' children changed at

birth by fairies an' sech like. Mebbe I'm the real King o' France,

after all, an' my instincts are handed down to me from a thousand royal

ancestors.”

“Mebbe it's so,” rejoined Long Jim. “I've heard that thar hev been a

pow'ful lot uv foolish kings.”

With that he put his two blankets upon the floor, lay down upon them,

and was sound asleep in five minutes. But Shif'less Sol beat him to

slumberland by at least a minute, and the others were not more than two

minutes behind Sol.

Henry was the first up the next morning. A strong voice shouted in

his ear: “Henry Ware, by all that's glorious,” and a hand pressed his

fingers together in an iron grasp. Henry beheld the tall, thin figure

and smiling brown face of Adam Colfax, with whom he had made that

adventurous journey up the Mississippi and Ohio.

“And the others?” was the first question of Adam Colfax.

“They're all here asleep inside. We've been through a lot of things, but

we're as sound as ever.”

“That's always a safe prediction to make,” said Adam Colfax, smiling. “I

never saw five other human beings with such a capacity for getting out

of danger.”

“We were all at Wyoming, and we all still live.”

The face of the New Englander darkened.

“Wyoming!” he exclaimed. “I cannot hear of it without every vein growing

hot within me.”

“We saw things done there,” said Henry gravely, “the telling of which few

men can bear to hear.”

“I know! I know!” exclaimed Adam Colfax. “The news of it has spread

everywhere!”

“What we want,” said Henry, “is revenge. It is a case in which we must

strike back, and strike hard. If this thing goes on, not a white

life will be safe on the whole border from the St. Lawrence to the

Mississippi.”

“It is true,” said Adam Colfax, “and we would send an army now against

the Iroquois and their allies, but, Henry, my lad, our fortunes are at

their lowest there in the East, where the big armies are fighting. That

is the reason why nobody has been sent to protect our rear guard, which

has suffered so terribly. You may be sure, too, that the Iroquois will

strike in this region again as often and as hard as they can. I make

more than half a guess that you and your comrades are here because you

know this.”

He looked shrewdly at the boy.

“Yes,” said Henry, “that is so. Somehow we were drawn into it, but being

here we are glad to stay. Timmendiquas, the great chief who fought us

so fiercely on the Ohio, is with the Iroquois, with a detachment of his

Wyandots, and while he, as I know, frowns on the Wyoming massacre, he

means to help Thayendanegea to the end.”

Adam Colfax looked graver than ever.

“That is bad,” he said. “Timmendiquas is a mighty warrior and leader,

but there is also another way of looking at it. His presence here will

relieve somewhat the pressure on Kentucky. I ought to tell you, Henry,

that we got through safely with our supplies to the Continental army,

and they could not possibly have been more welcome. They arrived just in

time.”

The others came forth presently and were greeted with the same warmth by

Adam Colfax.

“It is shore mighty good for the eyes to see you, Mr. Colfax,” said

Shif'less Sol, “an' it's a good sign. Our people won when you were on

the Mississippi an' the Ohio'--an' now that you're here, they're goin'

to win again.”

“I think we are going to win here and everywhere,” said Adam Colfax,

“but it is not because there is any omen in my presence. It is because

our people will not give up, and because our quarrel is just.”

The stanch New Englander left on the following day for points farther

east, planning and carrying out some new scheme to aid the patriot

cause, and the five, on the day after that, received a message written

on a piece of paper which was found fastened to a tree on the outskirts

of the settlement. It was addressed to “Henry Ware and Those with Him,”

and it read:

“You need not think because you escaped us at Wyoming and on

the Susquehanna that you will ever get back to Kentucky.

There is amighty league now on the whole border between the

Indians and the soldiers of the king. You have seen at

Wyoming what we can do, and you will see at other places and

on a greater scale what we will do.

“I find my own position perfect. It is true that

Timmendiquas does not like me, but he is not king here. I

am the friend of the great Brant; and Hiokatoo, Sangerachte,

Hahiron, and the other chiefs esteem me. I am thick with

Colonel John Butler, the victor of Wyoming; his son, the

valiant and worthy Walter Butler; Sir John Johnson, Colonel

Guy Johnson, Colonel Daniel Claus, and many other eminent

men and brave soldiers.

“I write these words, Henry Ware, both to you and your

comrades, to tell you that our cause will prevail over

yours. I do not doubt that when you read this you will try

to escape to Kentucky, but when we have destroyed everything

along the eastern border, as we have at Wyoming, we shall

come to Kentucky, and not a rebel face will be left there.

“I am sending this to tell you that there is no hole in

which you can hide where we cannot reach you. With my

respects, BRAXTON WYATT.”

Henry regarded the letter with contempt.

“A renegade catches something of the Indian nature,” he said, “and

always likes to threaten and boast.”

But Shif'less Sol was highly indignant.

“Sometimes I think,” he said, “that the invention o' writin' wuz a

mistake. You kin send a man a letter an' call him names an' talk mighty

big when he's a hundred miles away, but when you've got to stan' up

to him face to face an' say it, wa'al, you change your tune an' sing a

pow'ful sight milder. You ain't gen'ally any roarin' lion then.”

“I think I'll keep this letter,” said Henry, “an' we five will give an

answer to it later on.”

He tapped the muzzle of his rifle, and every one of the four gravely

tapped the muzzle of his own rifle after him. It was a significant

action. Nothing more was needed.

The next morning they bade farewell to the grateful Mary Newton and

her children, and with fresh supplies of food and ammunition, chiefly

ammunition, left the fort, plunging once more into the deep forest. It

was their intention to do as much damage as they could to the Iroquois,

until some great force, capable of dealing with the whole Six Nations,

was assembled. Meanwhile, five redoubtable and determined borderers

could achieve something.

It was about the first of August, and they were in the midst of the

great heats. But it was a period favoring Indian activity, which was now

at its highest pitch. Since Wyoming, loaded with scalps, flushed with

victory, and aided by the king's men, they felt equal to anything.

Only the strongest of the border settlements could hold them back. The

colonists here were so much reduced, and so little help could be

sent them from the East, that the Iroquois were able to divide into

innumerable small parties and rake the country as with a fine tooth

comb. They never missed a lone farmhouse, and rarely was any fugitive

in the woods able to evade them. And they were constantly fed from the

North with arms, ammunition, rewards for scalps, bounties, and great

promises.

But toward the close of August the Iroquois began to hear of a silent

and invisible foe, an evil spirit that struck them, and that struck

hard. There were battles of small forces in which sometimes not a single

Iroquois escaped. Captives were retaken in a half-dozen instances, and

the warriors who escaped reported that their assailants were of uncommon

size and power. They had all the cunning of the Indian and more, and

they carried rifles that slew at a range double that of those served to

them at the British posts. It was a certainty that they were guided by

the evil spirit, because every attempt to capture them failed miserably.

No one could find where they slept, unless it was those who never came

back again.

The Iroquois raged, and so did the Butlers and the Johnsons and Braxton

Wyatt. This was a flaw in their triumph, and the British and Tories saw,

also, that it was beginning to affect the superstitions of their red

allies. Braxton Wyatt made a shrewd guess as to the identity of the

raiders, but he kept quiet. It is likely, also, that Timmendiquas knew,

but be, too, said nothing. So the influence of the raiders grew. While

their acts were great, superstition exaggerated them and their powers

manifold. And it is true that their deeds were extraordinary. They were

heard of on the Susquehanna, then on the Delaware and its branches, on

the Chemung and the Chenango, as far south as Lackawaxen Creek, and as

far north as Oneida Lake. It is likely that nobody ever accomplished

more for a defense than did those five in the waning months of the

summer. Late in September the most significant of all these events

occurred. A party of eight Tories, who had borne a terrible part in

the Wyoming affair, was attacked on the shores of Otsego Lake with such

deadly fierceness that only two escaped alive to the camp of Sir John

Johnson. Brant sent out six war parties, composed of not less than

twenty warriors apiece, to seek revenge, but they found nothing.

Henry and his comrades had found a remarkable camp at the edge of one of

the beautiful small lakes in which the region abounds. The cliff at that

point was high, but a creek entered into it through a ravine. At the

entrance of the creek into the river they found a deep alcove, or,

rather, cave in the rock. It ran so far back that it afforded ample

shelter from the rain, and that was all they wanted. It was about

halfway between the top and bottom of the cliff, and was difficult of

approach both from below and above. Unless completely surprised-a very

unlikely thing with them-the five could hold it against any force as

long as their provisions lasted. They also built a boat large enough for

five, which they hid among the bushes at the lake's edge. They were thus

provided with a possible means of escape across the water in case of the

last emergency.

Jim and Paul, who, as usual, filled the role of housekeepers, took great

delight in fitting up this forest home, which the fittingly called “The

Alcove.” The floor of solid stone was almost smooth, and with the aid of

other heavy stones they broke off all projections, until one could walk

over it in the dark in perfect comfort. They hung the walls with

skins of deer which they killed in the adjacent woods, and these walls

furnished many nooks and crannies for the storing of necessities. They

also, with much hard effort, brought many loads of firewood, which Long

Jim was to use for his cooking. He built his little fireplace of stones

so near the mouth of “The Alcove” that the smoke would pass out and be

lost in the thick forest all about. If the wind happened to be blowing

toward the inside of the cave, the smoke, of course, would come in on

them all, but Jim would not be cooking then.

Nor did their operations cease until they had supplied “The Alcove”

plentifully with food, chiefly jerked deer meat, although there was no

way in which they could store water, and for that they had to take

their chances. But their success, the product of skill and everlasting

caution, was really remarkable. Three times they were trapped within a

few miles of “The Alcove,” but the pursuers invariably went astray on

the hard, rocky ground, and the pursued would also take the precaution

to swim down the creek before climbing up to “The Alcove.” Nobody could

follow a trail in the face of such difficulties.

It was Henry and Shif'less Sol who were followed the second time, but

they easily shook off their pursuers as the twilight was coming, half

waded, half swam down the creek, and climbed up to “The Alcove,” where

the others were waiting for them with cooked food and clear cold water.

When they had eaten and were refreshed, Shif'less Sol sat at the mouth

of “The Alcove,” where a pleasant breeze entered, despite the foliage

that hid the entrance. The shiftless one was in an especially happy

mood.

“It's a pow'ful comf'table feelin',” he said, “to set up in a nice safe

place like this, an' feel that the woods is full o' ragin' heathen,

seekin' to devour you, and wonderin' whar you've gone to. Thar's a heap

in knowin' how to pick your home. I've thought more than once 'bout that

old town, Troy, that Paul tells us 'bout, an' I've 'bout made up my mind

that it wuzn't destroyed 'cause Helen eat too many golden apples, but

'cause old King Prime, or whoever built the place, put it down in a

plain. That wuz shore a pow'ful foolish thing. Now, ef he'd built it on

a mountain, with a steep fall-off on every side, thar wouldn't hev been

enough Greeks in all the earth to take it, considerin' the miserable

weepins they used in them times. Why, Hector could hev set tight on the

walls, laughin' at 'em, 'stead o' goin' out in the plain an' gittin'

killed by A-killus, fur which I've always been sorry.”

“It's 'cause people nowadays have more sense than they did in them

ancient times that Paul tells about,” said Long Jim. “Now, thar wuz

'Lyssus, ten or twelve years gittin' home from Troy. Allus runnin'

his ship on the rocks, hoppin' into trouble with four-legged giants,

one-eyed women, an' sech like. Why didn't he walk home through the

woods, killin' game on the way, an' hevin' the best time he ever knowed?

Then thar wuz the keerlessness of A-killus' ma, dippin' him in that

river so no arrow could enter him, but holdin' him by the heel an'

keepin' it out o' the water, which caused his death the very first time

Paris shot it off with his little bow an' arrer. Why didn't she hev

sense enough to let the heel go under, too. She could hev dragged it out

in two seconds an' no harm done 'ceptin', perhaps, a little more yellin'

on the part of A-killus.”

“I've always thought Paul hez got mixed 'bout that Paris story,” said

Tom Ross. “I used to think Paris was the name uv a town, not a man, an'

I'm beginnin' to think so ag'in, sence I've been in the East, 'cause I

know now that's whar the French come from.”

“But Paris was the name of a man,” persisted Paul. “Maybe the French

named their capital after the Paris of the Trojan wars.”

“Then they showed mighty poor jedgment,” said Shif'less Sol. “Ef I'd

named my capital after any them old fellers, I'd have called it Hector.”

“You can have danger enough when you're on the tops of hills,” said

Henry, who was sitting near the mouth of the cave. “Come here, you

fellows, and see what's passing down the lake.”

They looked out, and in the moonlight saw six large war canoes being

rowed slowly down the lake, which, though narrow, was quite long. Each

canoe held about a dozen warriors, and Henry believed that one of them

contained two white faces, evidently those of Braxton Wyatt and Walter

Butler.

“Like ez not they've been lookin' fur us,” said Tom Ross.

“Quite likely,” said Henry, “and at the same time they may be engaged in

some general movement. See, they will pass within fifty feet of the base

of the cliff.”

The five lay on the cave floor, looking through the vines and foliage,

and they felt quite sure that they were in absolute security. The six

long war canoes moved slowly. The moonlight came out more brightly, and

flooded all the bronze faces of the Iroquois. Henry now saw that he was

not mistaken, and that Braxton Wyatt and Walter Butler were really in

the first boat. From the cover of the cliff he could have picked off

either with a rifle bullet, and the temptation was powerful. But he

knew that it would lead to an immediate siege, from which they might not

escape, and which at least would check their activities and plans for a

long time. Similar impulses flitted through the minds of the other four,

but all kept still, although fingers flitted noiselessly along rifle

stocks until they touched triggers.

The Iroquois war fleet moved slowly on, the two renegades never dreaming

of the danger that had threatened them. An unusually bright ray of

moonshine fell full upon Braxton Wyatt's face as he paused, and Henry's

finger played with the trigger of his rifle. It was hard, very hard, to

let such an opportunity go by, but it must be done.

The fleet moved steadily down the lake, the canoes keeping close

together. They turned into mere dots upon the water, became smaller and

smaller still, until they vanished in the darkness.

“I'm thinkin',” said Shif'less Sol, “that thar's some kind uv a movement

on foot. While they may hev been lookin' fur us, it ain't likely that

they'd send sixty warriors or so fur sech a purpose. I heard something

three or four days ago from a hunter about an attack upon the Iroquois

town of Oghwaga.”

“It's most likely true,” said Henry, “and it seems to me that it's our

business to join that expedition. What do you fellows think?”

“Just as you do,” they replied with unanimity.

“Then we leave this place and start in the morning,” said Henry.

CHAPTER XVI. THE FIRST BLOW

Summer was now waning, the foliage was taking on its autumn hues, and

Indian war parties still surged over the hills and mountains, but the

five avoided them all. On one or two occasions they would have been

willing to stop and fight, but they had bigger work on hand. They had

received from others confirmation of the report that Long Jim had heard

from the hunters, and they were quite sure that a strong force was

advancing to strike the first blow in revenge for Wyoming. Curiously

enough, this body was commanded by a fourth Butler, Colonel William

Butler, and according to report it was large and its leaders capable.

When the avenging force lay at the Johnstown settlement on the Delaware,

it was joined by the five. They were introduced to the colonel by the

celebrated scout and hunter, Tini Murphy, whom they had met several

times in the woods, and they were received warmly.

“I've heard of you,” said Colonel Butler with much warmth, “both from

hunters and scouts, and also from Adam Colfax. Two of you were to have

been tomahawked by Queen Esther at Wyoming.”

Henry indicated the two.

“What you saw at Wyoming is not likely to decrease your zeal against the

Indians and their white allies,” continued Colonel Butler.

“Anyone who was there,” said Henry, “would feel all his life, the desire

to punish those who did it.”

“I think so, too, from all that I have heard,” continued Colonel Butler.

“It is the business of you young men to keep ahead of our column and

warn us of what lies before us. I believe you have volunteered for that

duty.”

The five looked over Colonel Butler's little army, which numbered only

two hundred and fifty men, but they were all strong and brave, and it

was the best force that could yet be sent to the harassed border.

It might, after all, strike a blow for Wyoming if it marched into no

ambush, and Henry and his comrades were resolved to guard it from that

greatest of all dangers.

When the little column moved from the Johnstown settlement, the five

were far ahead, passing through the woods, up the Susquehanna, toward

the Indian villages that lay on its banks, though a great distance above

Wyoming. The chief of these was Oghwaga, and, knowing that it was the

destination of the little army, they were resolved to visit it, or at

least come so near it that they could see what manner of place it was.

“If it's a big village,” said Colonel Butler, “it will be too strong

to attack, but it may be that most of the warriors are absent on

expeditions.”

They had obtained before starting very careful descriptions of the

approaches to the village, and toward the close of an October evening

they knew that they were near Oghwaga, the great base of the Iroquois

supplies. They considered it very risky and unwise to approach in the

daytime, and accordingly they lay in the woods until the dark should

come.

The appearance of the wilderness had changed greatly in the three

months since Wyoming. All the green was now gone, and it was tinted

red and yellow and brown. The skies were a mellow blue, and there was a

slight haze over the forest, but the air had the wonderful crispness and

freshness of the American autumn. It inspired every one of the five with

fresh zeal and energy, because they believed the first blow was about to

be struck.

About ten o'clock at night they approached Oghwaga, and the reports

of its importance were confirmed. They had not before seen an Indian

village with so many signs of permanence. They passed two or three

orchards of apple and peach trees, and they saw other indications of

cultivation like that of the white farmer.

“It ain't a bad-lookin' town,” said Long Jim Hart. “But it'll look

wuss,” said Shif'less Sol, “onless they've laid an ambush somewhar.

I don't like to see houses an' sech like go up in fire an' smoke, but

after what wuz done at Wyomin' an' all through that valley, burnin' is a

light thing.”

“We're bound to strike back with all our might,” said Paul, who had the

softest heart of them all.

“Now, I wonder who's in this here town,” said Tom Ross. “Mebbe

Timmendiquas an' Brant an' all them renegades.”

“It may be so,” said Henry. “This is their base and store of supplies.

Oh, if Colonel Butler were only here with all his men, what a rush we

could make!”

So great was their eagerness that they crept closer to the village,

passing among some thick clusters of grapevines. Henry was in the lead,

and he heard a sudden snarl. A large cur of the kind that infest Indian

villages leaped straight at him.

The very suddenness of the attack saved Henry and his comrades from the

consequences of an alarm. He dropped his rifle instinctively, and seized

the dog by the throat with both hands. A bark following the snarl had

risen to the animal's throat, but it was cut short there. The hands of

the great youth pressed tighter and tighter, and the dog was lifted from

the earth. The four stood quietly beside their comrade, knowing that no

alarm would be made now.

The dog kicked convulsively, then hung without motion or noise. Henry

cast the dead body aside, picked up his rifle, and then all five of them

sank softly down in the shelter of the grapevines. About fifteen yards

away an Indian warrior was walking cautiously along and looking among

the vines. Evidently he had heard the snarl of the dog, and was seeking

the cause. But it had been only a single sound, and he would not look

far. Yet the hearts of the five beat a little faster as he prowled among

the vines, and their nerves were tense for action should the need for it

come.

The Indian, a Mohawk, came within ten yards of them, but he did not see

the five figures among the vines, blending darkly with the dark

growth, and presently, satisfied that the sound he had heard was of no

importance, he walked in another direction, and passed out of sight.

The five, not daunted at all by this living proof of risk, crept to the

very edge of the clusters of grapevines, and looked upon an open space,

beyond which stood some houses made of wood; but their attention was

centered upon a figure that stood in the open.

Although the distance was too great and the light too poor to disclose

the features, every one of the scouts recognized the figure. It could be

none other than that of Timmendiquas, the great White Lightning of the

Wyandots. He was pacing back and forth, somewhat in the fashion of the

white man, and his manner implied thought.

“I could bring him down from here with a bullet,” said Shif'less Sol,

“but I ain't ever goin' to shoot at the chief, Henry.”

“No,” said Henry, “nor will I. But look, there's another.”

A second figure came out of the dark and joined the first. It was also

that of a chief, powerful and tall, though not as tall as Timmendiquas.

It was Thayendanegea. Then three white figures appeared. One was that of

Braxton Wyatt, and the others they took to be those of “Indian” Butler

and his son, Walter Butler. After a talk of a minute or two they entered

one of the wooden houses.

“It's to be a conference of some kind,” whispered Henry. “I wish I could

look in on it.”

“And I,” said the others together.

“Well, we know this much,” continued Henry. “No great force of the

Iroquois is present, and if Colonel Butler's men come up quickly, we can

take the town.”

“It's a chance not to be lost,” said Paul.

They crept slowly away from the village, not stopping until they reached

the crest of a hill, from which they could see the roofs of two or three

of the Indian houses.

“I've a feeling in me,” said Paul, “that the place is doomed. We'll

strike the first blow for Wyoming.”

They neither slept nor rested that night, but retraced their trail with

the utmost speed toward the marching American force, going in Indian

file through the wilderness. Henry, as usual, led; Shif'less Sol

followed, then came Paul, and then Long Jim, while Silent Tom was the

rear guard. They traveled at great speed, and, some time after daylight,

met the advance of the colonial force under Captain William Gray.

William Gray was a gallant young officer, but he was startled a little

when five figures as silent as phantoms appeared. But he uttered an

exclamation of delight when he recognized the leader, Henry.

“What have you found?” he asked eagerly.

“We've been to Oghwaga,” replied the youth, “and we went all about the

town. They do not suspect our coming. At least, they did not know when

we left. We saw Brant, Timmendiquas, the Butlers, and Wyatt enter the

house for a conference.”

“And now is our chance,” said eager young William Gray. “What if we

should take the town, and with it these men, at one blow.”

“We can scarcely hope for as much as that,” said Henry, who knew

that men like Timmendiquas and Thayendanegea were not likely to allow

themselves to be seized by so small a force, “but we can hope for a good

victory.”

The young captain rode quickly back to his comrades with the news, and,

led by the five, the whole force pushed forward with all possible haste.

William Gray was still sanguine of a surprise, but the young riflemen

did not expect it. Indian sentinels were sure to be in the forest

between them and Oghwaga. Yet they said nothing to dash this hope. Henry

had already seen enough to know the immense value of enthusiasm, and

the little army full of zeal would accomplish much if the chance came.

Besides the young captain, William Gray, there was a lieutenant named

Taylor, who had been in the battle at Wyoming, but who had escaped the

massacre. The five had not met him there, but the common share in so

great a tragedy proved a tie between them. Taylor's name was Robert,

but all the other officers, and some of the men for that matter, who

had known him in childhood called him Bob. He was but little older than

Henry, and his earlier youth, before removal to Wyoming, had been passed

in Connecticut, a country that was to the colonials thickly populated

and containing great towns, such as Hartford and New Haven.

A third close friend whom they soon found was a man unlike any other

that they had ever seen. His name was Cornelius Heemskerk. Holland was

his birthplace, but America was his nation. He was short and extremely

fat, but he had an agility that amazed the five when they first saw it

displayed. He talked much, and his words sounded like grumbles, but

the unctuous tone and the smile that accompanied them indicated to the

contrary. He formed for Shif'less Sol an inexhaustible and entertaining

study in character.

“I ain't quite seen his like afore,” said the shiftless one to Paul.

“First time I run acrost him I thought he would tumble down among the

first bushes he met. 'Stead o' that, he sailed right through 'em, makin'

never a trip an' no noise at all, same ez Long Jim's teeth sinkin' into

a juicy venison steak.”

“I've heard tell,” said Long Jim, who also contemplated the prodigy,

“that big, chunky, awkward-lookin' things are sometimes ez spry ez you.

They say that the Hipperpotamus kin outrun the giraffe across the sands

uv Afriky, an' I know from pussonal experience that the bigger an'

clumsier a b'ar is the faster he kin make you scoot fur your life. But

he's the real Dutch, ain't he, Paul, one uv them fellers that licked the

Spanish under the Duke uv Alivy an' Belisarry?”

“Undoubtedly,” replied Paul, who did not consider it necessary to

correct Long Jim's history, “and I'm willing to predict to you, Jim

Hart, that Heemskerk will be a mighty good man in any fight that we may

have.”

Heemskerk rolled up to them. He seemed to have a sort of circular

motion like that of a revolving tube, but he kept pace with the others,

nevertheless, and he showed no signs of exertion.

“Don't you think it a funny thing that I, Cornelius Heemskerk, am here?”

he said to Paul.

“Why so, Mr. Heemskerk?” replied Paul politely. “Because I am a

Dutchman. I have the soul of an artist and the gentleness of a baby. I,

Cornelius Heemskerk, should be in the goot leetle country of Holland

in a goot leetle house, by the side of a goot leetle canal, painting

beautiful blue china, dishes, plates, cups, saucers, all most beautiful,

and here I am running through the woods of this vast America, carrying

on my shoulder a rifle that is longer than I am, hunting the red Indian

and hunted by him. Is it not most rediculous, Mynheer Paul?”

“I think you are here because you are a brave man, Mr. Heemskerk,”

replied Paul, “and wish to see punishment inflicted upon those who have

committed great crimes.”

“Not so! Not so!” replied the Dutchman with energy. “It is because I am

one big fool. I am not really a big enough man to be as big a fool as I

am, but so it is! so it is!” Shif'less Sol regarded him critically, and

then spoke gravely and with deliberation: “It ain't that, Mr. Heemskerk,

an' Paul ain't told quite all the truth, either. I've heard that the

Dutch was the most powerfullest fightin' leetle nation on the globe;

that all you had to do wuz to step on the toe uv a Dutchman's wooden

shoe, an' all the men, women, an' children in Holland would jump right

on top o' you all at once. Lookin' you up an' lookin' you down, an'

sizin' you up, an' sizin you down, all purty careful, an' examinin' the

corners O' your eyes oncommon close, an' also lookin' at the way you set

your feet when you walk, I'm concludin' that you just natcherally love a

fight, an' that you are lookin' fur one.”

But Cornelius Heemskerk sighed, and shook his head.

“It is flattery that you give me, and you are trying to make me brave

when I am not,” he said. “I only say once more that I ought to be in

Holland painting blue plates, and not here in the great woods holding on

to my scalp, first with one hand and then with the other.”

He sighed deeply, but Solomon Hyde, reader of the hearts of men, only

laughed.

Colonel Butler's force stopped about three o'clock for food and a little

rest, and the five, who had not slept since the night before, caught

a few winks. But in less than an hour they were up and away again. The

five riflemen were once more well in advance, and with them were Taylor

and Heemskerk, the Dutchman, grumbling over their speed, but revolving

along, nevertheless, with astonishing ease and without any sign of

fatigue. They discovered no indications of Indian scouts or trails, and

as the village now was not many miles away, it confirmed Henry in his

belief that the Iroquois, with their friends, the Wyandots, would not

stay to give battle. If Thayendanegea and Timmendiquas were prepared

for a strong resistance, the bullets of the skirmishers would already be

whistling through the woods.

The waning evening grew colder, twilight came, and the autumn leaves

fell fast before the rising wind. The promise of the night was dark,

which was not bad for their design, and once more the five-now the seven

approached Oghwaga. From the crest of the very same hill they looked

down once more upon the Indian houses.

“It is a great base for the Iroquois,” said Henry to Heemskerk, “and

whether the Indians have laid an ambush or not, Colonel Butler must

attack.”

“Ah,” said Heemskerk, silently moving his round body to a little higher

point for a better view, “now I feel in all its fullness the truth that

I should be back in Holland, painting blue plates.”

Nevertheless, Cornelius Heemskerk made a very accurate survey of the

Iroquois village, considering the distance and the brevity of the time,

and when the party went back to Colonel Butler to tell him the way was

open, he revolved along as swiftly as any of them. There were also many

serious thoughts in the back of his head.

At nine o'clock the little colonial force was within half a mile of

Oghwaga, and nothing had yet occurred to disclose whether the Iroquois

knew of their advance. Henry and his comrades, well in front, looked

down upon the town, but saw nothing. No light came from an Indian

chimney, nor did any dog howl. Just behind them were the troops in loose

order, Colonel Butler impatiently striking his booted leg with a switch,

and William Gray seeking to restrain his ardor, that he might set a good

example to the men.

“What do you think, Mr. Ware?” asked Colonel Butler.

“I think we ought to rush the town at once.”

“It is so!” exclaimed Heemskerk, forgetting all about painting blue

plates.

“The signal is the trumpet; you blow it, Captain Gray, and then we'll

charge.”

William Gray took the trumpet from one of the men and blew a long,

thrilling note. Before its last echo was ended, the little army rushed

upon the town. Three or four shots came from the houses, and the

soldiers fired a few at random in return, but that was all. Indian

scouts had brought warning of the white advance, and the great chiefs,

gathering up all the people who were in the village, had fled. A

retreating warrior or two had fired the shots, but when the white men

entered this important Iroquois stronghold they did not find a single

human being. Timmendiquas, the White Lightning of the Wyandots, was

gone; Thayendanegea, the real head of the Six Nations, had slipped away;

and with them had vanished the renegades. But they had gone in haste.

All around them were the evidences. The houses, built of wood, were

scores in number, and many of them contained furniture such as a

prosperous white man of the border would buy for himself. There were

gardens and shade trees about these, and back of them, barns, many of

them filled with Indian corn. Farther on were clusters of bark lodges,

which had been inhabited by the less progressive of the Iroquois.

Henry stood in the center of the town and looked at the houses misty

in the moonlight. The army had not yet made much noise, but he was

beginning to hear behind him the ominous word, “Wyoming,” repeated more

than once. Cornelius Heemskerk had stopped revolving, and, standing

beside Henry, wiped his perspiring, red face.

“Now that I am here, I think again of the blue plates of Holland,

Mr. Ware,” he said. “It is a dark and sanguinary time. The men whose

brethren were scalped or burned alive at Wyoming will not now spare the

town of those who did it. In this wilderness they give blow for blow, or

perish.”

Henry knew that it was true, but he felt a certain sadness. His heart

had been inflamed against the Iroquois, he could never forget Wyoming or

its horrors; but in the destruction of an ancient town the long labor

of man perished, and it seemed waste. Doubtless a dozen generations of

Iroquois children had played here on the grass. He walked toward the

northern end of the village, and saw fields there from which recent corn

had been taken, but behind him the cry, “Wyoming!” was repeated louder

and oftener now. Then he saw men running here and there with torches,

and presently smoke and flame burst from the houses. He examined the

fields and forest for a little distance to see if any ambushed foe might

still lie among them, but all the while the flame and smoke behind him

were rising higher.

Henry turned back and joined his comrades. Oghwaga was perishing. The

flames leaped from house to house, and then from lodge to lodge. There

was no need to use torches any more. The whole village was wrapped in

a mass of fire that grew and swelled until the flames rose above the

forest, and were visible in the clear night miles away.

So great was the heat that Colonel Butler and the soldiers and scouts

were compelled to withdraw to the edge of the forest. The wind rose and

the flames soared. Sparks flew in myriads, and ashes fell dustily on the

dry leaves of the trees. Bob Taylor, with his hands clenched tightly,

muttered under his breath, “Wyoming! Wyoming!”

“It is the Iroquois who suffer now,” said Heemskerk, as he revolved

slowly away from a heated point.

Crashes came presently as the houses fell in, and then the sparks would

leap higher and the flames roar louder. The barns, too, were falling

down, and the grain was destroyed. The grapevines were trampled under

foot, and the gardens were ruined. Oghwaga, a great central base of the

Six Nations, was vanishing forever. For four hundred years, ever since

the days of Hiawatha, the Iroquois had waxed in power. They had ruled

over lands larger than great empires. They had built up political and

social systems that are the wonder of students. They were invincible in

war, because every man had been trained from birth to be a warrior, and

now they were receiving their first great blow.

From a point far in the forest, miles away, Thayendanegea, Timmendiquas,

Hiokatoo, Sangerachte, “Indian” Butler, Walter Butler, Braxton Wyatt,

a low, heavybrowed Tory named Coleman, with whom Wyatt had become very

friendly, and about sixty Iroquois and twenty Tories were watching a

tower of light to the south that had just appeared above the trees. It

was of an intense, fiery color, and every Indian in that gloomy band

knew that it was Oghwaga, the great, the inviolate, the sacred, that was

burning, and that the men who were doing it were the white frontiersmen,

who, his red-coated allies had told him, would soon be swept forever

from these woods. And they were forced to stand and see it, not daring

to attack so strong and alert a force.

They sat there in the darkness among the trees, and watched the column

of fire grow and grow until it seemed to pierce the skies. Timmendiquas

never said a word. In his heart, Indian though he was, he felt that

the Iroquois had gone too far. In him was the spirit of the farseeing

Hiawatha. He could perceive that great cruelty always brought

retaliation; but it was not for him, almost an alien, to say these

things to Thayendanegea, the mighty war chief of the Mohawks and the

living spirit of the Iroquois nation.

Thayendanegea sat on the stump of a tree blown down by winter storms.

His arms were folded across his breast, and he looked steadily toward

that red threatening light off there in the south. Some such idea as

that in the mind of Timmendiquas may have been passing in his own. He

was an uncommon Indian, and he had had uncommon advantages. He had not

believed that the colonists could make head against so great a kingdom

as England, aided by the allied tribes, the Canadians, and the large

body of Tories among their own people. But he saw with his own eyes the

famous Oghwaga of the Iroquois going down under their torch.

“Tell me, Colonel John Butler,” he said bitterly, “where is your great

king now? Is his arm long enough to reach from London to save our town

of Oghwaga, which is perhaps as much to us as his great city of London

is to him?”

The thickset figure of “Indian” Butler moved, and his swart face flushed

as much as it could.

“You know as much about the king as I do, Joe Brant,” he replied. “We

are fighting here for your country as well as his, and you cannot say

that Johnson's Greens and Butler's Rangers and the British and Canadians

have not done their part.”

“It is true,” said Thayendanegea, “but it is true, also, that one must

fight with wisdom. Perhaps there was too much burning of living men at

Wyoming. The pain of the wounded bear makes him fight the harder, and

it, is because of Wyoming that Oghwaga yonder burns. Say, is it not so,

Colonel John Butler?”

“Indian” Butler made no reply, but sat, sullen and lowering. The Tory,

Coleman, whispered to Braxton Wyatt, but Timmendiquas was the only one

who spoke aloud.

“Thayendanegea,” he said, “I, and the Wyandots who are with me, have

come far. We expected to return long ago to the lands on the Ohio, but

we were with you in your village, and now, when Manitou has turned his

face from you for the time, we will not leave you. We stay and fight by

your side.”

Thayendanegea stood up, and Timmendiquas stood up, also.

“You are a great chief, White Lightning of the Wyandots,” he said, “and

you and I are brothers. I shall be proud and happy to have such a mighty

leader fighting with me. We will have vengeance for this. The power of

the Iroquois is as great as ever.”

He raised himself to his full height, pointing to the fire, and the

flames of hate and resolve burned in his eyes. Old Hiokatoo, the most

savage of all the chiefs, shook his tomahawk, and a murmur passed

through the group of Indians.

Braxton Wyatt still talked in whispers to his new friend, Coleman,

the Tory, who was more to his liking than the morose and savage Walter

Butler, whom he somewhat feared. Wyatt was perhaps the least troubled

of all those present. Caring for himself only, the burning of Oghwaga

caused him no grief. He suffered neither from the misfortune of friend

nor foe. He was able to contemplate the glowing tower of light with

curiosity only. Braxton Wyatt knew that the Iroquois and their allies

would attempt revenge for the burning of Oghwaga, and he saw profit for

himself in such adventures. His horizon had broadened somewhat of late.

The renegade, Blackstaffe, had returned to rejoin Simon Girty, but he

had found a new friend in Coleman. He was coming now more into touch

with the larger forces in the East, nearer to the seat of the great war,

and he hoped to profit by it.

“This is a terrible blow to Brant,” Coleman whispered to him. “The

Iroquois have been able to ravage the whole frontier, while the rebels,

occupied with the king's troops, have not been able to send help to

their own. But they have managed to strike at last, as you see.”

“I do see,” said Wyatt, “and on the whole, Coleman, I'm not sorry.

Perhaps these chiefs won't be so haughty now, and they'll soon realize

that they need likely chaps such as you and me, eh, Coleman.”

“You're not far from the truth,” said Coleman, laughing a little, and

pleased at the penetration of his new friend. They did not talk further,

although the agreement between them was well established. Neither did

the Indian chiefs or the Tory leaders say any more. They watched the

tower of fire a long time, past midnight, until it reached its zenith

and then began to sink. They saw its crest go down behind the trees,

and they saw the luminous cloud in the south fade and go out entirely,

leaving there only the darkness that reined everywhere else.

Then the Indian and Tory leaders rose and silently marched northward. It

was nearly dawn when Henry and his comrades lay down for the rest that

they needed badly. They spread their blankets at the edge of the open,

but well back from the burned area, which was now one great mass of

coals and charred timbers, sending up little flame but much smoke. Many

of the troops were already asleep, but Henry, before lying down, begged

William Gray to keep a strict watch lest the Iroquois attack from

ambush. He knew that the rashness and confidence of the borderers,

especially when drawn together in masses, had often caused them great

losses, and he was resolved to prevent a recurrence at the present

time if he could. He had made these urgent requests of Gray, instead of

Colonel Butler, because of the latter's youth and willingness to take

advice.

“I'll have the forest beat up continually all about the town,” he said.

“We must not have our triumph spoiled by any afterclap.”

Henry and his comrades, wrapped in their blankets, lay in a row almost

at the edge of the forest. The heat from the fire was still great, but

it would die down after a while, and the October air was nipping. Henry

usually fell asleep in a very few minutes, but this time, despite his

long exertions and lack of rest, he remained awake when his comrades

were sound asleep. Then he fell into a drowsy state, in which he saw

the fire rising in great black coils that united far above. It seemed to

Henry, half dreaming and forecasting the future, that the Indian spirit

was passing in the smoke.

When he fell asleep it was nearly daylight, and in three or four hours

he was up again, as the little army intended to march at once upon

another Indian town. The hours while he slept had passed in silence, and

no Indians had come near. William Gray had seen to that, and his best

scout had been one Cornelius Heemskerk, a short, stout man of Dutch

birth.

“It was one long, long tramp for me, Mynheer Henry,” said Heemskerk,

as he revolved slowly up to the camp fire where Henry was eating his

breakfast, “and I am now very tired. It was like walking four or five

times around Holland, which is such a fine little country, with the

canals and the flowers along them, and no great, dark woods filled with

the fierce Iroquois.”

“Still, I've a notion, Mynheer Heemskerk, that you'd rather be here, and

perhaps before the day is over you will get some fighting hot enough to

please even you.”

Mynheer Heemskerk threw up his hands in dismay, but a half hour later

he was eagerly discussing with Henry the possibility of overtaking some

large band of retreating Iroquois.

Urged on by all the scouts and by those who had suffered at Wyoming,

Colonel Butler gathered his forces and marched swiftly that very morning

up the river against another Indian town, Cunahunta. Fortunately for

him, a band of riflemen and scouts unsurpassed in skill led the way, and

saw to it that the road was safe. In this band were the five, of course,

and after them Heemskerk, young Taylor, and several others.

“If the Iroquois do not get in our way, we'll strike Cunahunta before

night,” said Heemskerk, who knew the way.

“It seems to me that they will certainly try to save their towns,” said

Henry. “Surely Brant and the Tories will not let us strike so great a

blow without a fight.”

“Most of their warriors are elsewhere, Mynheer Henry,” said Heemskerk,

“or they would certainly give us a big battle. We've been lucky in the

time of our advance. As it is, I think we'll have something to do.”

It was now about noon, the noon of a beautiful October day of the North,

the air like life itself, the foliage burning red on the hills, the

leaves falling softly from the trees as the wind blew, but bringing with

them no hint of decay. None of the vanguard felt fatigue, but when they

crossed a low range of hills and saw before them a creek flowing down

to the Susquehanna, Henry, who was in the lead, stopped suddenly and

dropped down in the grass. The others, knowing without question the

significance of the action, also sank down.

“What is it, Henry?” asked Shif'less Sol.

“You see how thick the trees are on the other side of that bank. Look

a little to the left of a big oak, and you will see the feathers in the

headdress of an Iroquois. Farther on I think I can catch a glimpse of

a green coat, and if I am right that coat is worn by one of Johnson's

Royal Greens. It's an ambush, Sol, an ambush meant for us.”

“But it's not an ambush intended for our main force, Mynheer Henry,”

said Heemskerk, whose red face began to grow redder with the desire for

action. “I, too, see the feather of the Iroquois.”

“As good scouts and skirmishers it's our duty, then, to clear this force

out of the way, and not wait for the main body to come up, is it not?”

asked Henry, with a suggestive look at the Dutchman.

“What a goot head you have, Mynheer Henry!” exclaimed Heemskerk. “Of

course we will fight, and fight now!”

“How about them blue plates?” said Shif'less Sol softly. But Heemskerk

did not hear him.

They swiftly developed their plan of action. There could be no earthly

doubt of the fact that the Iroquois and some Tories were ambushed on

the far side of the creek. Possibly Thayendanegea himself, stung by the

burning of Oghwaga and the advance on Cunahunta, was there. But they

were sure that it was not a large band.

The party of Henry and Heemskerk numbered fourteen, but every one was a

veteran, full of courage, tenacity, and all the skill of the woods.

They had supreme confidence in their ability to beat the best of the

Iroquois, man for man, and they carried the very finest arms known to

the time.

It was decided that four of the men should remain on the hill. The

others, including the five, Heemskerk, and Taylor, would make a circuit,

cross the creek a full mile above, and come down on the flank of the

ambushing party. Theirs would be the main attack, but it would be

preceded by sharpshooting from the four, intended to absorb the

attention of the Iroquois. The chosen ten slipped back down the hill,

and as soon as they were sheltered from any possible glimpse by the

warriors, they rose and ran rapidly westward. Before they had gone far

they heard the crack of a rifle shot, then another, then several from

another point, as if in reply.

“It's our sharpshooters,” said Henry. “They've begun to disturb the

Iroquois, and they'll keep them busy.”

“Until we break in on their sport and keep them still busier,” exclaimed

Heemskerk, revolving swiftly through the bushes, his face blazing red.

It did not take long for such as they to go the mile or so that they

intended, and then they crossed the creek, wading in the water breast

high, but careful to keep their ammunition dry. Then they turned and

rapidly descended the stream on its northern bank. In a few minutes they

heard the sound of a rifle shot, and then of another as if replying.

“The Iroquois have been fooled,” exclaimed Heemskerk. “Our four good

riflemen have made them think that a great force is there, and they have

not dared to cross the creek themselves and make an attack.”

In a few minutes more, as they ran noiselessly through the forest, they

saw a little drifting smoke, and now and then the faint flash of rifles.

They were coming somewhere near to the Iroquois band, and they practiced

exceeding caution. Presently they caught sight of Indian faces, and now

and then one of Johnson's Greens or Butler's Rangers. They stopped and

held a council that lasted scarcely more than half a minute. They all

agreed there was but one thing to do, and that was to attack in the

Indian's own way-that is, by ambush and sharpshooting.

Henry fired the first shot, and an Iroquois, aiming at a foe on the

other side of the creek, fell. Heemskerk quickly followed with a shot as

good, and the surprised Iroquois turned to face this new foe. But they

and the Tories were a strong band, and they retreated only a little.

Then they stood firm, and the forest battle began. The Indians numbered

not less than thirty, and both Braxton Wyatt and Coleman were with them,

but the value of skill was here shown by the smaller party, the one

that attacked. The frontiersmen, trained to every trick and wile of

the forest, and marksmen such as the Indians were never able to become,

continually pressed in and drove the Iroquois from tree to tree. Once or

twice the warriors started a rush, but they were quickly driven back by

sharpshooting such as they had never faced before. They soon realized

that this was no band of border farmers, armed hastily for an emergency,

but a foe who knew everything that they knew, and more.

Braxton Wyatt and his friend Coleman fought with the Iroquois, and Wyatt

in particular was hot with rage. He suspected that the five who had

defeated him so often were among these marksmen, and there might be a

chance now to destroy them all. He crept to the side of the fierce old

Seneca chief, Hiokatoo, and suggested that a part of their band slip

around and enfold the enemy.

Old Hiokatoo, in the thick of battle now, presented his most terrifying

aspect. He was naked save the waist cloth, his great body was covered

with scars, and, as he bent a little forward, he held cocked and ready

in his hands a fine rifle that had been presented to him by his good

friend, the king. The Senecas, it may be repeated, had suffered terribly

at the Battle of the Oriskany in the preceding year, and throughout

these years of border were the most cruel of all the Iroquois. In this

respect Hiokatoo led all the Senecas, and now Braxton Wyatt used as he

was to savage scenes, was compelled to admit to himself that this was

the most terrifying human being whom he had ever beheld. He was old, but

age in him seemed merely to add to his strength and ferocity. The path

of a deep cut, healed long since, but which the paint even did not hide,

lay across his forehead. Others almost as deep adorned his right cheek,

his chin, and his neck. He was crouched much like a panther, with his

rifle in his hands and the ready tomahawk at his belt. But it was the

extraordinary expression of his eyes that made Braxton Wyatt shudder. He

read there no mercy for anything, not even for himself, Braxton Wyatt,

if he should stand in the way, and it was this last fact that brought

the shudder.

Hiokatoo thought it a good plan. Twenty warriors, mostly Senecas and

Cayugas, were detailed to execute it at once, and they stole off toward

the right. Henry had suspected some such diversion, and, as he had been

joined now by the four men from the other side of the creek, he disposed

his little force to meet it. Both Shif'less Sol and Heemskerk had caught

sight of figures slipping away among the trees, and Henry craftily drew

back a little. While two or three men maintained the sharpshooting

in the front, he waited for the attack. It came in half an hour, the

flanking force making a savage and open rush, but the fire of the white

riflemen was so swift and deadly that they were driven back again. But

they had come very near, and a Tory rushed directly at young Taylor.

The Tory, like Taylor, had come from Wyoming, and he had been one of

the most ruthless on that terrible day. When they were less than a dozen

feet apart they recognized each other. Henry saw the look that passed

between them, and, although he held a loaded rifle in his hand, for some

reason he did not use it. The Tory fired a pistol at Taylor, but the

bullet missed, and the Wyoming youth, leaping forth, swung his unloaded

rifle and brought the stock down with all his force upon the head of his

enemy. The man, uttering a single sound, a sort of gasp, fell dead, and

Taylor stood over him, still trembling with rage. In an instant Henry

seized him and dragged him down, and then a Seneca bullet whistled where

he had been.

“He was one of the worst at Wyoming-I saw him!” exclaimed young Taylor,

still trembling all over with passion.

“He'll never massacre anybody else. You've seen to that,” said Henry,

and in a minute or two Taylor was quiet. The sharpshooting continued,

but here as elsewhere, the Iroquois had the worst of it. Despite their

numbers, they could not pass nor flank that line of deadly marksmen who

lay behind trees almost in security, and who never missed. Another Tory

and a chief, also, were killed, and Braxton Wyatt was daunted. Nor did

he feel any better when old Hiokatoo crept to his side.

“We have failed here,” he said. “They shoot too well for us to rush

them. We have lost good men.” Hiokatoo frowned, and the scars on his

face stood out in livid red lines.

“It is so,” he said. “These who fight us now are of their best, and