Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters Part 23

"All right, Betty. G.o.d bless you for a brave la.s.s. You're a true Zane," Colonel Zane uttered chokingly. "Have them pour a keg of powder into this tablecloth. We'll signal them you're coming. We'll do our best to cover you. No red devil shall get near you. Tell the fort we've got to have powder, or my house will fall and the fort'll be hard pressed from the new vantage."

Betty nodded. Her eyes were snapping, her cheeks were red. The cabin was protected in front and on the flanks by a little stockade. Her brother himself opened the gate, in the side, for her. With a bound she was out, her slim ankles twinkling as she ran.

The Indians stared, puzzled. They laughed and jeered.

"Ho! Squaw! Heap run! Squaw heap run!"

And Betty darted in through the gateway of the fort. Five minutes pa.s.sed, while the cabin garrison waited nervously. Here she came, out again, the table-cloth tied around her waist and baggy with the precious powder.

The enemy guessed. They laughed no longer--they opened fire, the fort and cabin replied rapidly. Betty! Betty! Was she down? Had she been hit? No; not yet. Open the gate! The gate! Let her in--keep those Injuns off! Here she was, plunging breathless, panting, laughing, into the extended arms. Not a ball had touched her.

Now the cabin would hold out. It had to hold out, after a deed like that, by a girl. Shame on it if it yielded!

The Indians, urged by the white chiefs and by the British Rangers, raged. Twenty times they reached the stockades with bundles of hemp, and tried to fire the pickets. The hemp was damp and refused to burn.

They tried with wood. They did not succeed. Under the hail of bullets a portion of the rotted pickets gave way, in a corner; but by great good fortune several peach-trees there concealed the hole.

All this day the hot attacks continued. They lessened only slightly during the night. Toward morning a figure was espied craftily slinking for the fort's sally gate. A rifle bullet stopped it. There were groans and pleadings for water; a weak voice kept asking to be taken in. Two of the men bolted out, grabbed the figure and hustled him inside. He was a negro--claimed that he had just deserted from the Indians.

They hand-cuffed him, and stationed Lydia Boggs, aged seventeen, over him with a tomahawk, to kill him if he tried any tricks. She would have done it, too.

The day dawned; the sun rose. The scene without was fearful. The Indians were shooting the cattle; the settlement cabins were burning.

Was it to be another day of stress? Where were the reinforcements?

Had Captain Boggs really been captured? If so, he had been killed, or else the enemy would have displayed him, to show the fort that it could not hope for help.

The sun was an hour high, when--listen! An Indian whoop sounded, in the distance; a long, quavering, peculiar whoop. In fort and cabin the men cheered.

"The alarm whoop, boys! Hurrah! Their spies have sighted something!"

And--

"Yes! There they go! There the b.l.o.o.d.y rascals go, hoof and foot!

Boggs got through and he's coming back!"

With astonishing speed the enemy had decamped--were streaming for the river. The siege had been lifted. The two garrisons might take breath, and relax, while keenly alert. Were they actually saved? Had the enemy gone in earnest--or might it be a feint, an ambush?

But not an Indian was in sight when, in less than an hour more, st.u.r.dy old Captain Boggs, Colonel Andrew Swearingen and Major David Williamson trotted up the hill, leading seventy mounted men.

CHAPTER XI

THE FIVE BOY CAPTIVES (1785)

ADVENTURES OF "LITTLE FAT BEAR" AND ALL

When in 1778 the energetic Colonel George Rogers Clark marched northwest out of Virginia and descended the Ohio River, to seize the Illinois country bordering the Mississippi, on his way he camped at the Falls of the Ohio, drilled his men upon Corn Island, built a block-house and left thirteen families to form a settlement.

The little settlement crossed to the mainland on the Kentucky side, and the present city of Louisville was founded.

By 1785 it numbered about 150 persons, on Corn Island, and on the mainland, living in log cabins upon clearings amidst the forest.

Among the settlers whose cabins were the farthest out from the village was Colonel Pope. He and several other men formed a small settlement of their own. They lived scarcely within shouting distance of one another, and were independent, like all pioneers.

This winter of 1784-1785 Colonel Pope engaged a tutor for his two boys, to teach them the three R's--Reading, 'Riting and 'Rithmetic. He did not wish them to grow up numbskulls. He invited his neighbors to send their boys over and be tutored at the same time. It was a backwoods school.

Of course, on Sat.u.r.day the school had vacation. And on a Sat.u.r.day morning of February, 1785, the two Linn boys (whose father, Colonel William Linn, had been killed by Indians), young Brashear, young William Wells, and a fifth who perhaps was one of the Pope boys, started out duck-hunting.

The War of the Revolution had ceased by treaty of peace almost a year and a half before, but the Indians had not quit. They still were of the belief that the British had not given up their lands "across the Ohio," and that the king their father was "only resting." So they continued their forays along the Ohio River. They killed many more Long Knives.[1]

After having been kept at school for most of the week, frontier boys were not the kind to stay at home on Sat.u.r.day for fear of Indians. Not when there was good hunting, and they could borrow their fathers' or brothers' guns and skip the ch.o.r.es. A successful hunter made a successful Indian-fighter. It was the right training. A fellow who did not know how to shoot was useless as a soldier, and a fellow who could not take care of himself in the forest and prairies was useless as a scout. Besides, the settler had to depend on his rifle for his meat.

In those days there was wonderful hunting along the Ohio. The boys knew exactly where to go. For turkeys, squirrels and deer they need not go far at all. But the prime place for ducks and geese lay about three miles out, at some swampy ponds near the river. With a couple of fowling-pieces and the ammunition they trudged away. William Wells and the older Linn were fourteen. Boy Brashear was twelve. The other Linn and the fifth boy were nine or ten.

They hunted around the ponds until dusk. Then they decided to stay out all night--which was no trick at all. They made camp like regular scouts, cooked some ducks, and slept in a bough hut that they built.

During the night the snow fell, sifting down through the trees, but they did not care a whit.

They had planned to find more ducks in the ponds, in the morning; but the storm interfered.

"Aw, let's go home," said Wells.

"All right. Let's."

After breakfast they gathered their stuff, and were just starting, when with a dash and a whoop the Indians were upon them--likely enough had been watching them since daylight.

"Injuns! Run, boys!"

It was sharp work, but soon over. William Wells, the littler Linn and the fifth boy were grabbed; the larger Linn had a goose and several ducks slung over his shoulder and did not mean to give them up; but he was one of those pudgy, plum-pudding, over-grown boys, and stumbled on his own feet. He was nabbed by a big Indian who patted him on the back and called him "Little Fat Bear."

Brashear, though, nearly got away. He was the best runner at school, and gave the Indians a pretty chase among the trees before they caught him at last. They seemed to think all the more of him for his try, and called him "Buck Elk."

Well, this was a nice how-de-do! Five boys, all captured. Still, the same had happened to other boys, and to trained scouts. n.o.body could blame them, but they felt rather sore.

The Indians now began to question them in broken English.

"Where from?"

"Louisville."

"You lie. No from Louisville. Where live?"

"Louisville."

"You lie. Get beatin'. Mebbe get killed. Where live, fat boy?"

"Louisville."

One and all they stuck to the story. They had no notion of betraying the cabins of Colonel Pope and his neighbors.