Chapter XIII. A Forest Page

The Scouts of the Valley

by Joseph A. Altsheler

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 as it was terrifying the five 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 he 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.