CHAPTER VII.

WAITING AND WATCHING.

The result of the battle had one salutary effect upon the settlement: it gave every one a true sense of the danger in which they all stood. Thus far they had relied too much upon the good-heartedness of the Indians. They now saw their mistake, and remedied it before it was too late. Most of the men set to work, and in a short time a double row of firm pickets enclosed the settlement. Although buried deeply and firmly into the earth, of course they were not impregnable; but they were a protection which few settlements on the frontier were willing to do without. They enclosed the settlement in the shape of a square, with a block-house, well manned, at each corner.

A scout, whose principal duty was to skirt along the Ohio and watch the movements of the hostile tribes, came in a short time after the battle and reported that a flat-boat, with some thirty persons on board, bound for this settlement, had been enticed into shore by a white man, not more than a dozen miles up the river, and every one tomahawked!

The scout believed that the renegade was no other than the notorious Pete Johnson, who figured in our account of the battle of Chillicothe. Girty was at the bottom of the affair and had given strict and positive orders that no white man, woman, or child who fell into their hands should be spared!

This scout’s present duty was to visit the settlements along the frontier and warn them to make preparations for the worst. The Indians were evidently concentrating to strike some decisive blow against civilization, and woe to the villages whose sentinels slumbered and who were found unprepared.

There could no longer be any doubt of the intentions of the tribes through the whole territory.

“A war, and a long and bloody one, I fear, is unavoidable,” remarked Edwards, in conversation with the scout.

“It must come to that, sooner or later,” replied the latter, “and I don’t see the need of putting the thing off. Them Injins have got to lose about half their number, and get most eternally lammed before they’ll holler ‘enough.’ I go in for giving them particular fits when we undertake to do it.”

“There have been rumors that Colonel Clark is to march against them with his Kentucky Rangers. Do you know whether such is the case?”

“I think he will—since this battle he will be compelled to. I hope the colonel will do it, for he ain’t the man to order his men to retreat when they get the upper hand of the red cowards.”

“Provided they do get the upper hand,” smiled the minister.

“Oh, no danger about that. The colonel understands Indian fighting, and he’ll show some of it, too, when he undertakes it.”

“Something better than their last colonel, I hope. Umph!—couldn’t be any worse,” remarked Captain Parks, who had just come.

“Wal, mistakes will sometimes happen,” said the scout in extenuation; “and I s’pose that Colonel Sandford’s was one of them; but that don’t shift the blame, for all that. He made the blunder, and would, like as not, do it again, and consequently he ain’t fit to go into Injin ground.”

“The Wetzel brothers render great service to the settlement, I understand,” observed the minister.

“They are regular teams. If they’ll let Lew Wetzel manage matters, there’ll be no mistake made; he knows all about Injin ways.”

“The Shawnees, I believe, are causing the most trouble?”

“Them imps are at the bottom of the whole trouble we’ve had. They have always been mean and ugly enough to do anything, and since Simon Girty has got among them, they’re nothing but a set of devils let loose upon airth. It’s the fact,” added the scout, as he noticed a look of displeasure upon the minister’s face. “It’s the fact, I say; them Shawnees are the biggest set of villains that ever walked on two legs or four either, for that matter.”

“I suppose that this renegade has a great influence over them?”

“A great influence? Well, there?” repeated the scout, gesticulating very emphatically, “There ain’t a Injin chief west of Pennsylvania that can do more with his tribe than he can, and there ain’t a single chief among the Shawnees who dare persist in opposing him. No, sir.”

“Girty I knew when a boy,” said the minister, “and I have prayed many a time for him since. Although a dark and guilty man, he is a brave one, and was led to forswear his race on account of the brutal treatment he received from them. I have often wondered whether it were possible to win him back again.”

“_Win him back again?_” repeated the scout, recoiling a step or two, in perfect amazement. “No, sir; _never_. A greater monster never breathed, and as long as he lives his whole aim will be to revenge himself upon us; and what is worse, he isn’t alone. There’s that Pete Johnson, as big a devil, and a bigger coward, and a half dozen others, among the Injins, who are ever setting them on.”

“Umph! they’ll get paid for it yet.”

“But I see the day is well along,” remarked the scout, “and I must be on my way to the other settlements.”

The ranger, after a few minutes further conversation, left our friends, and departed. The words recorded took place the next day after the battle described in a preceding chapter, and up to this time nothing had been heard of Moffat and Kingman. During the interval Pompey had come in, who of course knew nothing. Their prolonged absence occasioned the most painful apprehension. All but Captain Parks were extremely doubtful of their return and Kingman’s parents were compelled to believe that their promising “George” was lost forever to them. The sad uncertainty of their fate cast a gloom over all the settlement.

But there was one upon whom the blow fell, as the minister remarked, with double weight. The gentle, blue-eyed Irene Stuart and the daring George Kingman had long been plighted—plighted in hearts, but not in words. All had seen and understood the claim which he had upon her, and although there was many an admiring eye cast upon the lithe and graceful form, yet none pretended to dispute his right. All gave way, and pronounced the handsome twain “a fine match.”

Irene watched with a straining eye for the form of her beloved to appear among the returned. None other than she who has experienced it can understand the painful doubt, the distressing uncertainty of a heart in such a situation: and when the fatal knowledge, like a blow of death, strikes all at once, then it is that the soul feels its great agony. As the good minister communicated gently, and with an air of hopefulness, the tidings that Moffat and Kingman had not returned, she felt her heart sink within her. The minster noticed her sudden paleness and faintness, and hastened to remark.

“Oh, my child! you must not take it thus. There is good reason to believe that your friend is living, and will yet return.”

“Did any one see them fall?” she asked, in a voice so calm that it was frightful.

“Not at all. Gavoon, who was killed, was seen when shot, as were most of the others; but no one noticed our friend.”

“Then there is hope!”

“To be sure—to be sure. Moffat is very skillful, they say, in savage ways, and has been delivered from so many dreadful dangers that it can hardly be supposed with reason that he has not escaped from this.”

“But why do they remain so long away?”

“Many reasons might detain them of which we know nothing, child. I have by no means given up hope, and I think it is not wrong for me to encourage you in hoping for the best.”

“I will try,” she remarked, faintly, as she arose and went to her room, where she might indulge her sorrow in secret.

The good minister had arisen to depart, when Mrs. Stuart hurried into the apartment.

“Ah! how do you do, sister?” he exclaimed, extending his hand.

“Pretty well in body, but wretched in spirit. O dear! few know the horrors and sufferings we nervous women go through for the men’s sake.”

“What is the trouble now?” he asked, with an air of solicitude.

“What is the trouble, do you ask? Why, isn’t these awful times now, with these savage Indians murdering and hacking people. I expect, just as like as not, they’ll murder us all in our homes. There’s no telling what they won’t do in this heathen country. Lord of massy! I should think they had done enough now.”

“Ah! my good sister, you must be more hopeful. The Lord will deliver us from our peril. Remember there are strong and willing hearts around you.”

“Yes, that’s a slight consolation; but then them Injins will do almost anything. Only think how they run off with George Kingman.”

“But that is not certain yet, by any means. Many others, including myself, have not given up our hopes of him yet.”

“Oh, he’s gone, you may be sure of that. I’ve been up to see Mrs. Kingman. She felt a little propped up, I believe, by what the people had said; but I told her there was no use in hoping, for he’d got into the hands of them heathens, and they hacked him all to pieces.”

“And what did she say to that, my good sister?”

“Oh, she burst out a cryin’ like, and wrung her hands saying as how she feared so all the time. It’s always so; we women do suffer nearly everything for the unfeeling men. Yes, oh, yes!”

A sort of hysterical sob and whimper followed this, but in a moment she revived again.

“I have one consolation, at any rate—we won’t see any of them nasty Indians in heaven, when we get there.”

“Don’t say that, sister, for I hope and expect to meet a great many there.”