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.