Part 10

Greatly alarmed, I looked about for a place of safety, and providentially discovered a large tree which had fallen, into the top of which I crept. The darkness greatly assisted me and prevented detection. The savage who followed me had heard the cry of the child and came to the very spot where it had cried, and there he halted, put down his gun, and was at this time so near that I heard the wiping stick strike against his gun distinctly. My getting in under the tree and sheltering myself from the rain, and pressing my boy to my bosom, got him warm, and, most providentially, he fell asleep, and lay very still during that time of extreme danger. All was still and quiet; the savage was listening to hear again the cry. My own heart was the only thing I feared, and that beat so loud that I was apprehensive it would betray me. It is almost impossible to conceive the wonderful effect my situation produced upon my whole system.

After the savage had stood and listened with nearly the stillness of death for two hours, the sound of a bell and a cry like that of a night owl, signals which were given to him by his companions, induced him to answer, and after he had given a most horrid yell, which was calculated to harrow up my soul, he started and went off to join them. After his retreat, I concluded it unsafe to remain there till morning.

But by this time nature was so nearly exhausted that I found some difficulty in moving; yet, compelled by necessity, I threw my coat about my child and placed the end between my teeth, and with one arm and my teeth I carried him, and with the other groped my way between the trees and travelled on, as I supposed, a mile or two, and there sat down at the root of a tree till morning. The night was cold and wet, and thus terminated the fourth day-and-night's difficulties, trials, and dangers!

The fifth day, wet, exhausted, hungry, and wretched, I started from my resting-place as soon as I could see my way, and on that morning struck the head-waters of Pine Creek, which falls into the Alleghany about four miles above Pittsburgh; though I knew not then what waters they were; I crossed them, and on the opposite bank I found a path, and on it two moccason tracks, fresh indented. This alarmed me; but as they were before me, and travelling in the same direction as I was, I concluded I could see them as soon as they could see me, and, therefore, I pressed on in that path for about three miles, when I came to where another branch emptied into the creek, where was a hunter's camp, where the two men, whose tracks I had before discovered and followed, had breakfasted and left the fire burning.

I became more alarmed, and determined to leave the path. I then crossed a ridge towards Squaw Run, and came upon a trail. Here I stopped and meditated what to do; and while I was thus musing I saw three deer coming towards me at full speed; they turned to look at their pursuers; I looked too, with all attention, and saw the flash and heard the report of a gun. I saw some dogs start after them, and began to look about for shelter, and immediately made for a large log to hide myself. Providentially I did not go clear to the log; for as I put my hand to the ground, to raise myself so that I might see who and where the hunters were, I saw a large heap of rattlesnakes, the top one being very large, and coiled up very near my face, and quite ready to bite me.

I again left my course, bearing to the left, and came upon the head-waters of Squaw Run, and kept down the run the remainder of that day. It rained, and I was in a very deplorable situation; so cold and shivering were my limbs, that frequently, in opposition to all my struggles, I gave an involuntary groan. I suffered intensely from hunger, though my jaws were so far recovered that, wherever I could, I procured grape-vines, and chewed them for a little sustenance. In the evening I came within one mile of the Alleghany River, though I was ignorant of it at the time; and there, at the root of a tree, through a most tremendous rain, I took up my fifth night's lodgings. In order to shelter my infant as much as possible, I placed him in my lap, and then leaned my head against the tree, and thus let the rain fall upon me.

On the sixth (that was the Sabbath) morning from my captivity, I found myself unable, for a very considerable time, to raise myself from the ground; and when I had once more, by hard struggling, got myself upon my feet and started, nature was so nearly exhausted and my spirits were so completely depressed that my progress was amazingly slow and discouraging. In this almost helpless condition I had not gone far before I came to a path where there had been cattle travelling; I took it, under the impression that it would lead me to the abode of some white people, and in about a mile I came to an uninhabited cabin, and though I was in a river bottom, yet I knew not where I was nor yet on what river bank I had come.

Here I was seized with feelings of despair, went to the threshold of the cabin and concluded that I would enter and lie down and die, since death would have been an angel of mercy to me in such a miserable situation. Had it not been for the sufferings which my infant, who would survive me some time, must endure, I would have carried my determination into execution. Here I heard the sound of a cow-bell, which imparted a gleam of hope to my desponding mind. I followed the sound till I came opposite the fort at the Six Mile Island, where I saw three men on the opposite bank of the river.

My feelings then can be better imagined than described. I called to them, but they seemed unwilling to risk the danger of coming after me, and asked who I was. I told them, and they requested me to walk up the bank awhile that they might see if Indians were making a decoy of me; but I replied my feet were so sore I could not walk. Then one of them, James Closier, got into a canoe to fetch me over, while the other two stood with cocked rifles ready to fire on the Indians, provided they were using me as a decoy. When Mr. Closier came near and saw my haggard and dejected appearance, he exclaimed, "Who in the name of God are you?" This man was one of my nearest neighbors, yet in six days I was so much altered that he did not know me, either by my voice or countenance.

When I landed on the inhabited side of the river the people from the fort came running out to see me. They took the child from me, and now that I felt safe from all danger, I found myself unable to move or to assist myself in any degree, whereupon the people took me and carried me out of the boat to the house of Mr. Cortus.

Now that I felt secure from the cruelties of the barbarians, for the first time since my captivity, my feelings returned in all their poignancy and the tears flowed freely, imparting a happiness beyond what I ever experienced. When I was taken into the house the heat of the fire and the smell of victuals, of both of which I had so long been deprived, caused me to faint. Some of the people attempted to restore me and some to put clothes on me, but their kindness would have killed me had it not been for the arrival of Major McCully, who then commanded along the river. When he understood my situation, and saw the provisions they were preparing for me, he was greatly alarmed; ordered me out of the house, away from the heat and smell; prohibited me from taking anything but a very little whey of buttermilk, which he administered with his own hands. Through this judicious management I was mercifully restored to my senses and gradually to health and strength.

Two of the females, Sarah Carter and Mary Ann Crozier, then began to take out the thorns from my feet and legs, which Mr. Felix Negley stood by and counted to the number of one hundred and fifty, though they were not all extracted at that time, for the next evening, at Pittsburgh, there were many more taken out. The flesh was mangled dreadfully, and the skin and flesh were hanging in pieces on my feet and legs. The wounds were not healed for a considerable time. Some of the thorns went through my feet and came out at the top. For two weeks I was unable to put my feet to the ground to walk. The next morning a young man employed by the magistrates of Pittsburgh came for me to go immediately to town to give in my deposition, that it might be published to the American people. Some of the men carried me into a canoe, and when I arrived I gave my deposition. As the intelligence spread, Pittsburgh, and the country for twenty miles around, was all in a state of commotion. The same evening my husband came to see me, and soon after I was taken back to Coe's Station. In the evening I gave an account of the murder of my boy on the island, and the next morning a scout went out and found the body and buried it, nine days after the murder.

THE END

OUTING ADVENTURE LIBRARY

_Edited by Horace Kephart_

¶ Here are brought together for the first time the great stories of adventure of all ages and countries. These are the personal records of the men who climbed the mountains and penetrated the jungles; who explored the seas and crossed the deserts; who knew the chances and took them, and lived to write their own tales of hardship and endurance and achievement. The series will consist of an indeterminate number of volumes--for the stories are myriad. The whole will be edited by Horace Kephart. Each volume answers the test of these two questions: Is it true? Is it interesting?

¶ The entire series is uniform in style and binding. Among the titles now ready or in preparation are those described on the following pages.

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1. IN THE OLD WEST, by George Frederick Ruxton. The men who blazed the trail across the Rockies to the Pacific were the independent trappers and hunters in the days before the Mexican war. They left no records of their adventures and most of them linger now only as shadowy names. But a young Englishman lived among them for a time, saw life from their point of view, trapped with them and fought with them against the Indians. That was George Frederick Ruxton. His story is our only complete picture of the Old West in the days of the real Pioneers, of Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, Bill Williams, the Sublettes, and all the rest of that glorious company of the forgotten who opened the West.

2. CASTAWAYS AND CRUSOES. Since the beginnings of navigation men have faced the dangers of shipwreck and starvation. Scattered through the annals of the sea are the stories of those to whom disaster came and the personal records of the way they met it. Some of them are given in this volume, narratives of men who lived by their hands among savages and on forlorn coasts, or drifted helpless in open boats. They range from the South Seas to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, from the iron coast of Patagonia to the shores of Cuba. They are echoes from the days when the best that could be hoped by the man who went to sea was hardship and man's-sized work.

3. CAPTIVES AMONG THE INDIANS. First of all is the story of Captain James Smith, who was captured by the Delawares at the time of Braddock's defeat, was adopted into the tribe, and for four years lived as an Indian, hunting with them, studying their habits, and learning their point of view. Then there is the story of Father Bressani who felt the tortures of the Iroquois, of Mary Rowlandson who was among the human spoils of King Philip's war, and of Mercy Harbison who suffered in the red flood that followed St. Clair's defeat. All are personal records made by the actors themselves in those days when the Indian was constantly at our forefathers's doors.

4. FIRST THROUGH THE GRAND CANYON, by Major John Wesley Powell. Major Powell was an officer in the Union Army who lost an arm at Shiloh. In spite of this four years after the war he organized an expedition which explored the Grand Canyon of the Colorado in boats--the first to make this journey. His story has been lost for years in the oblivion of a scientific report. It is here rescued and presented as a record of one of the great personal exploring feats, fitted to rank with the exploits of Pike, Lewis and Clark, and Mackenzie.

5. ADRIFT IN THE ARCTIC ICE-PACK, By Elisha Kent Kane, M.D. Out of the many expeditions that went north in search of Sir John Franklin over fifty years ago, it fell to the lot of one, financed by a New York merchant, to spend an Arctic winter drifting aimlessly in the grip of the Polar ice in Lancaster Sound. The surgeon of the expedition kept a careful diary and out of that record told the first complete story of a Far Northern winter. That story is here presented, shorn of the purely scientific data and stripped to the personal exploits and adventures of the author and the other members of the crew.