Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters Part 19

"I'm Slover. I am Slover. I've escaped from the Shawnees. I'll name you some of the officers who were with Crawford."

So he did. The man took him into the canoe. He was saved. In five days he had eaten only a handful of raspberries and two raw crawfish; in five nights he had not slept a wink; in four days and nights he had traveled across country, by horse and foot, naked except for the piece of blanketing, for a distance of about two hundred miles. He was the true never-say-die kind, and lived for many a year yet, to tell of his adventures and to put them upon paper.

James Paull had reached home before him, and before Doctor Knight also.

James was only twenty-two, but he was an old hand at Indian fighting and at scouting. And he was a lad of great spirit, as will now be shown.

When the Indians had fired into the party and then had called upon them to surrender, he had been the one to dodge and run. His foot was very lame from a burn. During the battle his mess had baked bread by spreading the dough upon the back of a spade, scout fashion. Somebody had tossed the hot spade aside, and he had stepped upon it with his bare foot. The burn was a bad one; during the retreat his foot got worse and he could scarcely walk on it.

But now with two Indians chasing him, he paid no attention to his foot.

He out-ran them, leaped down the steep bank of a creek, and in landing tore all the skin from his blistered sole. He paid attention to it then. Had to! A man with a flayed foot cannot do much, in the brush.

Luckily for him, the two Indians gave him up. He halted long enough to bind his raw foot with a piece of his trousers. He could not travel fast, but he used his wits. He knew all the tricks of the trail. He hobbled along fallen logs, so as to leave no marks. He back-tracked, in a circle, to cross his own trail and see if he was being followed.

He painfully shinned up trees, wormed out to the end of a branch, and dropped as far beyond his trail as he might, so as to break it. This would throw off the dogs, if dogs were used; yes, and it would fool the Indians, too.

That night he slept in a hollow log. By morning his foot had swollen to the size of a bucket. He suffered torment. He had no food with him and was afraid to fire his gun. So this day he ate only a few berries.

To-night he slept like a bear, on a bed of leaves in a crack in a rock.

In the morning he sighted a deer. What with his pain and his hunger he was desperate. He shot the deer, cut it open with his gun-flint, and chewed at the b.l.o.o.d.y flesh.

This evening he came to an old Indian camp. Several empty whiskey-kegs were lying around. That gave him an idea. He could have a fire, to cook with. By building the fire underneath a keg, after dark, there would be no light, and the smoke could not be seen. He tried that, and it worked. After he had cooked and eaten, he slept in the smoke, which kept the mosquitoes off. a.s.suredly, young James Paull knew how to take care of himself.

In two days more he reached the Ohio River above Wheeling. On account of his foot and his gun he could not swim it. No matter. He made a raft of logs tied together with vines and strips of bark, and paddled over.

There he saw some horses grazing in a bottom. He must have a horse.

He fashioned a halter from twisted bark, and hobbled about, trying to catch a mount. He limped and coaxed and sweated for two hours. The horses were frisky and suspicious. Every time he stalked one and was about to lay his hand upon its mane, it tossed its head and with a snort galloped away.

Finally he managed to grab the worst of the lot--an old mare. On her he rode on, down to Short Creek, where he found all the settlers gathered in the little fort there, under Major Sam McColloch, expecting an attack by the Indians who had defeated Colonel Crawford's column.

Other refugees from the battle-field had brought the alarming news. He was asked many questions--about Colonel Crawford, and Doctor Knight, and John Slover, and the score who were missing with them. He could tell little. All he knew, was, that he had escaped, and that he wished to get word to his mother, down in Virginia.

He did not stay. He borrowed a better horse and hastened on--got as far as the cabin of his cousins, and here he had to stay and treat his foot. At first he feared that it ought to be cut off. It was a frightful looking foot, swollen and red and poisoned. However, in about ten days it grew better. He traveled down to his mother. She was in their cabin doorway, peering up the road.

"Jim!"

"Mother!"

She welcomed him as one back from the land of the dead. News was slow, in those days. Nevertheless--

"I knew you'd come--I knew you'd come," she sobbed, gladly, as he held her in his arms. For she was a widow and he was her only boy.

It was different with Mrs. Crawford and many another wife and mother.

Mrs. Crawford waited day after day, for word from her husband, the gallant colonel. At last it arrived, with Doctor Knight, and all the border heard.

The brave and courtly Colonel William Crawford had been tortured and burned. So had his gallant young son, John--and others.

Mrs. Crawford never got over that loss. She loved her husband devotedly. Long years afterward, when she was old and wrinkled, she placed a little grandson behind her on her horse and took him far into the forest. She set him down beside a moss-covered log.

"Here is where I parted with your grandfather, when he rode against the Indians," she said. And she cried and cried.

CHAPTER IX

THE BRAVE WOMEN OF BRYANT'S STATION (1782)

AND THE DEFEAT OF THE VILLAIN GIRTY

The words of John Slover, that the British army had surrendered and that the Americans were victors in the great war, were proved to be true. Now there arose much excitement among the Indians, in their towns and villages beyond the Ohio. Their British father had been laid upon his back, and they did not know exactly what to do.

In June of this year 1782, while Scout Slover was a captive, a grand council of the Northern Confederacy and their allies had been called at the Shawnee town of Wakatomica, to talk matters over. Delegates arrived from the Ottawas, Chippewas, Delawares, the southern Cherokees, Potawatomis, Wyandot Hurons, Mingo Iroquois, and from the other Shawnee towns. They all were alarmed at the unexpected triumph of the Long Knife people, and were fearful lest they had lost their prized hunting-ground, Kentucky.

White men were here: Captain William Caldwell, a trader in the British service; Alexander McKee, George and James Girty, and Simon Girty himself, coming in with a band of the Wyandots.

He made one of the princ.i.p.al speeches. He said that the war between the king and the Long Knives was not yet over; but that, anyway, the Indians did not want a peace in which the British and the Americans should agree to quit fighting. For if they quit fighting, then the Long Knives would be free to turn, all of them, upon the Indians and crush them utterly. (Ugh! Ugh! That is so!) The Indians well knew how the white men were crowding in upon them, from Virginia--were stealing Kentucky and threatening the Ohio country. Without the help from the British father these lands would be swallowed up, the red man would have no hunting-grounds, no food, no furs, no means of getting food, rum and blankets. (Ugh! Ugh! Ugh! That is so!) A peace would be bad for the Indians. Let them join together at once, to wipe out the Americans and clean the hunting-grounds before too late. Now was the time. The American soldiers were still busy, and there were many British soldiers to keep them busy. Strike, strike harder than ever, in full force, and drive the Long Knives back, or peace might come and all Kentucky be over-run by the Long Knife soldiers. (Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!

Those are good words. Our white brother speaks well.)

There were more speeches, but none better; and the council had agreed.

Runners were sent out to carry the news and bid all Indians to rally for a great blow upon the Long Knives. The meeting-place should be at Pickaway, or Chillicothe as it was also called, after the other towns of Chillicothe. Little Chillocothe had been destroyed two years ago by the gallant General George Rogers Clark.

Two armies were formed: one of about three hundred warriors, to march against West Virginia; the other of about four hundred warriors, to march into Kentucky.

The Kentucky army contained mainly Shawnees and Wyandots, with a sprinkling of British white men from Detroit. It was commanded by Captain William Caldwell, who had for his lieutenants Alexander McKee, Matthew Elliott, and the three Girty brothers, Simon, George and James.

And there were many chiefs.

In the night of August 15 they posted themselves around Bryant's (or Bryan's) Station of north central Kentucky about five miles north of little Lexington.

This Bryant's Station was a lonely post, and well exposed to attack.

From it north and east to the Ohio River and West Virginia the country lay open and little settled.

Bryant's had been founded in 1779 by the Bryant brothers, from North Carolina. William Bryant was really its father. He had married Daniel Boone's sister, in North Carolina.

The Bryants settled here and formed Bryant's Station. Last year William himself had been killed, not far from the settlement, while he and a party were scouting. The Indians had lured him within reach, by tinkling a horse bell that they had taken. But he and a companion managed to reach home; there he died.

The killing of William Bryant, brother-in-law to Daniel Boone, and a general leader, was a sad blow to the settlement.

Forty log cabins formed Bryant's Station. They were placed in two lines facing inward, and connected by a stout picket fence or palisade.

This beautiful morning of August 16 everybody was astir unusually early. An alarm call had issued from the region of the Kentucky River, twenty miles in the south. The Boonesborough country was again being invaded. Estill's Station had been entered--in pursuing the enemy Captain Estill himself and twenty-five men had been cut to pieces by twenty-five Wyandots. From the small Hoy's Station Captain John Holder had sallied in rescue of two captured boys, and he and his party also had been badly defeated.

Hoy's Station was threatened by a siege. Help was needed. The men of Bryant's Station had prepared to march out at daylight this morning to its relief. Captain John Craig commanded.

Bryant's Station did not know that it was surrounded, itself. How could it know? There was nothing to show that death couched amidst the trees and brush close at hand. The night had been unbroken; peace seemed to smile in the sparkle of the early morning dew. But cracking never a twig, with the stealth of creeping panthers the Indian army had arrived and had been posted.

Captain Caldwell divided his force. He stationed one hundred warriors in hiding about rifle-shot from the gate in the northwest end of the fort; told them to shoot and yell and draw the Long Knives out. The three hundred others he stationed in ambush within half rifle-shot of the spring opposite the other end, the southeast end, in readiness for a charge when the Long Knives should have been decoyed.

While Bryant's Station did not know what had happened outside, the Captain Caldwell men did not know what was happening, inside. Had they only waited, they would have seen all the soldier garrison march away, leaving the women and children and a few grandfathers--and the fort would have been seized without trouble except to the defenceless families.

But even when the army had arrived, in the night, the fort seemed to be on the alert: there were lights in the cabins, there were voices, there was bustle to and fro. And before sun-up the drum had beat the a.s.sembly, the soldiers were being put under arms--