CHAPTER XII.

MRS. EASTLICK AND FAMILY.

The note of alarm sounded throughout the neighborhood and without a moment's warning hurried preparations were made for the exodus. Women and children and a few household goods were loaded into wagons and a start made for a place of safety. Indians suddenly appeared and commenced an indiscriminate fire upon the terror-stricken refugees.

The individual cases of woman's heroism, daring, bravery, cunning and strong-willed self-sacrifice, could be recounted by the score, and in some instances are past belief. Their achievements would be considered as pure fiction but for our own personal knowledge. Many of the real occurrences would seem like legends, when the father had been murdered and the mother left with two, three and even five and six children to care for, and if possible save them from the ferocity of the painted red devils, whose thirst for blood could seemingly not be satiated. One noted case was the Eastlick family, and this was only one of a hundred. Eleven men of the party had already been killed, and Mr. Eastlick among the number. The women with their children were scattered in all directions in the brush, to escape if possible the inevitable fate in store for them if caught. The Indians shouted to them to come out from their hiding places and surrender and they should be spared. The remaining men, thinking perhaps their lives might be saved if they surrendered, urged their wives to do so, and the men would, if possible, escape and give the alarm. Thus, without a word or a look lest they should betray the remaining husbands, were these women driven from their natural protectors and obliged to submit to the tender mercies of their hated red captors. The supposed dead husbands watched the receding forms of their devoted wives, whom in all likelihood they never would see again. Burton Eastlick, the fifteen-year-old boy, could not endure the thought of leaving his mother to this uncertain fate, and he followed her, but she persuaded him, for the sake of his fifteen-months-old baby brother, to leave her and try and make his escape, carrying the little one with him. And how well did he execute his mission.

The Indians fired upon the little group and Mrs. Eastlick fell, wounded in three places, and the boy ran away, supposing his mother dead; but she revived, and crawled to where her wounded husband and six-year-old boy were, to find both dead. Can you picture such a scene or imagine what the feelings of this poor mother must be under these awful circumstances? Sublime silence reigning over earth and sky, and she alone with her dead!

What a parting must that have been from husband and child--death and desolation complete. Could she look to her God? A heart of faith so sorely tried, and yet she said: "I am in His hands; surely I must trust Him, for I am yet alive, and two precious children, Burton and little baby, are fleeing to a place of safety."

This heroic boy, Burton, seeing his mother shot, and supposed to be dead, and watching the life flicker and the spirit of his six-year-old brother pass away, placed the dear little body beside that of his father, and with a bravery born of an heroic nature he accepted his charge, and with the injunction of his precious, dying mother still ringing in his ears, made preparations to start. It seemed an herculean effort, but the brave boy said: "We may yet be saved!" So, pressing his baby brother close to his heart, he took a last look upon the faces of his dear father, mother and six-year-old brother and started.

Ninety miles, thick with dangers, lay before our young hero; but he faltered not. When tired carrying his little brother in his arms he took him on his back. The first day he made sixteen miles, and in ten consecutive days covered sixty miles. He lived on corn and such food as he could find in deserted houses. At night his bed was the earth, his pillow a stone, and the sky his only covering, the bright stars acting as nightly sentinels over him, as weary, he and his little baby charge slept. If angels have a duty to perform, surely troops of them must have hovered around. He fed the little brother as best he could to appease his hunger and covered him as with angel wings to protect the little trembling body from the chilly night air. Brave boy! The pages of history furnish nothing more noble than this deed, and if you yet live, what a consolation, what a proud reflection, to know that there never before was witnessed a deed more deserving of immortal fame.

"Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flyeth by day." The resolute mother, badly wounded and left for dead, revived. She looked upon the face of her dead husband and little boy, and with sublime courage started for a place of safety. At the risk of being discovered and murdered--hungry, tired, with wounds undressed and a heavy, aching heart and deathly sick, she was obliged to lie by for some time, after which she again started, and for ten days and nights this poor sorrow-stricken woman traveled on her weary way.

Providence led her in the path of a mail carrier on a route from Sioux Falls City, in Dakota, to New Ulm, Minnesota. He had formerly known her, but in her emaciated, jaded, pitiful condition the change was so great he did not recognize her.

At New Ulm she found her children, where they were being kindly cared for, having been found in the tall grass nearly dead from exposure and starvation. Thus the remaining portion of the family were reunited on earth, and it is proper to here draw the curtain and allow them a few moments for communion, that the fountain of the heart which had been dried up by the awful occurrences of the previous few days might unbidden flow. The mother's heart was nearly crushed with the thought of husband and child--victims of the ferocious Indians, killed and yet unburied on the prairie nearly one hundred miles away; but, mother-like, she rejoiced in finding the two children who had wandered so far and through a kind Providence escaped so many dangers.