The Scouts of the Valley Part 19

Henry and Tom dropped farther to the rear. They could see ahead of them the long dark line, coiling farther into the woods, but they could also see to right and left towers of smoke rising in the clear morning sunlight. These, they knew, came from burning houses, and they knew, also, that the valley would be ravaged from end to end and from side to side. After the surrender of the fort the Indians would divide into small bands, going everywhere, and nothing could escape them.

The sun rose higher, gilding the earth with glowing light, as if the black tragedy had never happened, but the frontiersmen recognized their greatest danger in this brilliant morning. Objects could be seen at a great distance, and they could be seen vividly.

Keen of sight and trained to know what it was they saw, Henry, Sol, and Tom searched the country with their eyes, on all sides. They caught a distant glimpse of the Susquehanna, a silver spot among some trees, and they saw the sunlight glancing off the opposite mountains, but for the present they saw nothing that seemed hostile.

They allowed the distance between them and the retreating file to grow until it was five or six hundred yards, and they might have let it grow farther, but Henry made a signal, and the three lay down in the gra.s.s.

"You see 'em, don't you!" the youth whispered to his comrade.

"Yes, down thar at the foot o' that hillock," replied Shif'less Sol; "two o' em, an' Senecas, I take it."

"They've seen that crowd of women and children," said Henry.

It was obvious that the flying column was discovered. The two Indians stepped upon the hillock and gazed under their hands. It was too far away for the three to see their faces, but they knew the joy that would be shown there. The two could return with a few warriors and ma.s.sacre them all.

"They must never get back to the other Indians with their news,"

whispered Henry. "I hate to shoot men from ambush, but it's got to be done. Wait, they're coming a little closer."

The two Senecas advanced about thirty yards, and stopped again.

"S'pose you fire at the one on the right, Henry," said Tom, "an' me an'

Sol will take the one to the left."

"All right," said Henry. "Fire!"

They wasted no time, but pulled trigger. The one at whom Henry had aimed fell, but the other, uttering a cry, made off, wounded, but evidently with plenty of strength left.

"We mustn't let him escape! We mustn't let him carry a warning!" cried Henry.

But Shif'less Sol and Tom Ross were already in pursuit, covering the ground with long strides, and reloading as they ran. Under ordinary circ.u.mstances no one of the three would have fired at a man running for his life, but here the necessity was vital. If he lived, carrying the tale that he had to tell, a hundred innocent ones might perish. Henry followed his comrades, reloading his own rifle, also, but he stayed behind. The Indian had a good lead, and he was gaining, as the others were compelled to check speed somewhat as they put the powder and bullets in their rifles. But Henry was near enough to Shif'less Sol and Silent Tom to hear them exchange a few words.

"How far away is that savage?" asked Shif'less Sol.

"Hundred and eighty yards," said Tom Ross.

"Well, you take him in the head, and I'll take him in the body."

Henry saw the two rifle barrels go up and two flashes of flame leap from the muzzles. The Indian fell forward and lay still. They went up to him, and found that he was shot through the head and also through the body.

"We may miss once, but we don't twice," said Tom Ross.

The human mind can be influenced so powerfully by events that the three felt no compunction at all at the shooting of this fleeing Indian. It was but a trifle compared with what they had seen the day and night before.

"We'd better take the weapons an' ammunition o' both uv 'em," said Sol.

"They may be needed, an' some o' the women in that crowd kin shoot."

They gathered up the arms, powder, and ball, and waited a little to see whether the shots had been heard by any other Indians, but there was no indication of the presence of more warriors, and the rejoined the fugitives. Long Jim had dropped back to the end of the line, and when he saw that his comrades carried two extra rifles, he understood.

"They didn't give no alarm, did they?" he asked in a tone so low that none of the fugitives could hear.

"They didn't have any chance," replied Henry. "We've brought away all their weapons and ammunition, but just say to the women that we found them in an abandoned house."

The rifles and the other arms were given to the boldest and most stalwart of the women, and they promised to use them if the need came.

Meanwhile the flight went on, and the farther it went the sadder it became. Children became exhausted, and had to be carried by people so tired that they could scarcely walk themselves. There was n.o.body in the line who had not lost some beloved one on that fatal river bank, killed in battle, or tortured to death. As they slowly ascended the green slope of the mountain that inclosed a side of the valley, they looked back upon ruin and desolation. The whole black tragedy was being consummated.

They could see the houses in flames, and they knew that the Indian war parties were killing and scalping everywhere. They knew, too, that other bodies of fugitives, as stricken as their own, were fleeing into the mountains, they scarcely knew whither.

As they paused a few moments and looked back, a great cry burst from the weakest of the women and children. Then it became a sad and terrible wail, and it was a long time before it ceased. It was an awful sound, so compounded of despair and woe and of longing for what they had lost that Henry choked, and the tears stood in Paul's eyes. But neither the five nor Carpenter made any attempt to check the wailing. They thought it best for them to weep it out, but they hurried the column as much as they could, often carrying some of the smaller children themselves. Paul and Long Jim were the best as comforters. The two knew how, each in his own way, to soothe and encourage. Carpenter, who knew the way to Fort Penn, led doggedly on, scarcely saying a word. Henry, Shif'less Sol, and Tom were the rear guard, which was, in this case, the one of greatest danger and responsibility.

Henry was thankful that it was only early summer the Fourth of July, the second anniversary of the Declaration of Independence-and that the foliage was heavy and green on the slopes of the mountain. In this ma.s.s of greenery the desolate column was now completely hidden from any observer in the valley, and he believed that other crowds of fugitives would be hidden in the same manner. He felt sure that no living human being would be left in the valley, that it would be ravaged from end to end and then left to desolation, until new people, protected by American bayonets, should come in and settle it again.

At last they pa.s.sed the crest of the ridge, and the fires in the valley, those emblems of destruction, were hidden. Between them and Fort Penn, sixty miles away, stretched a wilderness of mountain, forest, and swamp.

But the five welcomed the forest. A foe might lie there in ambush, but they could not see the fugitives at a distance. What the latter needed now was obscurity, the green blanket of the forest to hide them.

Carpenter led on over a narrow trail; the others followed almost in single file now, while the five scouted in the woods on either flank and at the rear. Henry and Shif'less Sol generally kept together, and they fully realized the overwhelming danger should an Indian band, even as small as ten or a dozen warriors, appear. Should the latter scatter, it would be impossible to protect all the women and children from their tomahawks.

The day was warm, but the forest gave them coolness as well as shelter.

Henry and Sol were seldom so far back that they could not see the end of the melancholy line, now moving slowly, overborne by weariness. The shiftless one shook his head sadly.

"No matter what happens, some uv 'em will never get out o' these woods."

His words came true all too soon. Before the afternoon closed, two women, ill before the flight, died of terror and exhaustion, and were buried in shallow graves under the trees. Before dark a halt was made at the suggestion of Henry, and all except Carpenter and the scouts sat in a close, drooping group. Many of the children cried, though the women had all ceased to weep. They had some food with them, taken in the hurried flight, and now the men asked them to eat. Few could do it, and others insisted on saving what little they had for the children. Long Jim found a spring near by, and all drank at it.

The six men decided that, although night had not yet come, it would be best to remain there until the morning. Evidently the fugitives were in no condition, either mental or physical, to go farther that day, and the rest was worth more than the risk.

When this decision was announced to them, most of the women took it apathetically. Soon they lay down upon a blanket, if one was to be had; otherwise, on leaves and branches. Again Henry thanked G.o.d that it was summer, and that these were people of the frontier, who could sleep in the open. No fire was needed, and, outside of human enemies, only rain was to be dreaded.

And yet this band, desperate though its case, was more fortunate than some of the others that fled from the Wyoming Valley. It had now to protect it six men Henry and Paul, though boys in years, were men in strength and ability--five of whom were the equals of any frontiersmen on the whole border. Another crowd of women was escorted by a single man throughout its entire flight.

Henry and his comrades distributed themselves in a circle about the group. At times they helped gather whortleberries as food for the others, but they looked for Indians or game, intending to shoot in either case. When Paul and Henry were together they once heard a light sound in a thicket, which at first they were afraid was made by an Indian scout, but it was a deer, and it bounded away too soon for either to get a shot. They could not find other game of any kind, and they came back toward the camp-if a mere stop in the woods, without shelter of any kind, could be called a camp.

The sun was now setting, blood red. It tinged the forest with a fiery mist, reminding the unhappy group of all that they had seen. But the mist was gone in a few moments, and then the blackness of night came with a weird moaning wind that told of desolation. Most of the children, having pa.s.sed through every phase of exhaustion and terror, had fallen asleep. Some of the women slept, also, and others wept. But the terrible wailing note, which the nerves of no man could stand, was heard no longer.

The five gathered again at a point near by, and Carpenter came to them.

"Men," he said simply, "don't know much about you, though I know you fought well in the battle that we lost, but for what you're doin' now n.o.body can ever repay you. I knew that I never could get across the mountains with all these weak ones."

The five merely said that any man who was a man would help at such a time. Then they resumed their march in a perpetual circle about the camp.

Some women did not sleep at all that night. It is not easy to conceive what the frontier women of America endured so many thousands of times.

They had seen their husbands, brothers, and sons killed in the battle, and they knew that the worst of torture had been practiced in the Indian camp. Many of them really did not want to live any longer. They merely struggled automatically for life. The darkness settled down thicker and thicker; the blackness in the forest was intense, and they could see the faces of one another only at a little distance. The desolate moan of the wind came through the leaves, and, although it was July, the night grew cold. The women crept closer together, trying to cover up and protect the children. The wind, with its inexpressibly mournful note, was exactly fitted to their feelings. Many of them wondered why a Supreme Being had permitted such things. But they ceased to talk. No sound at all came from the group, and any one fifty yards away, not forewarned, could not have told that they were there.

Henry and Paul met again about midnight, and sat a long time on a little hillock. Theirs had been the most dangerous of lives on the most dangerous of frontiers, but they had never been stirred as they were tonight. Even Paul, the mildest of the five, felt something burning within him, a fire that only one thing could quench.

"Henry," said he, "we're trying to get these people to Fort Penn, and we may get some of them there, but I don't think our work will be ended them. I don't think I could ever be happy again if we went straight from Fort Penn to Kentucky."

Henry understood him perfectly.

"No, Paul," he said, "I don't want to go, either, and I know the others don't. Maybe you are not willing to tell why we want to stay, but it is vengeance. I know it's Christian to forgive your enemies, but I can't see what I have seen, and hear what I have heard, and do it."