The Scouts of the Valley

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.