CHAPTER IV.

CAUGHT.

Wolf-Cap entertained several good reasons for suggesting Strong’s fort as a place of refuge for the Armstrong family. Throop’s block-house was nearer the settler’s cabin than Strong’s; but the latter was better adapted for defense. It was the strongest post in the “fire-lands,” and the trapper assured himself that Zebulon Strong would receive the fugitives with open arms, and hail the settler’s presence with joy.

Left to his own choice, Levi Armstrong would have sought shelter at Throop’s, which post his hands had helped to rear, and consequently he could well claim protection there. The Logans, too, belonged to Throop’s; but fearful lest the little block-house, illy-defended, would soon succumb to the red tomahawk, they resolved to seek Strong’s. As the sequel will show, they would have fared better at the first-named fort.

The band of six fugitives, after leaving the Armstrong cabin, traveled fast. Levi counseled a delay till the arrival of Wolf-Cap; but John Logan and his sisters would listen to no such counsel, and the settler therefore broke his promise to the trapper.

The mouth of Eel Creek was reached, and the Huron crossed in safety, and the fears of the fugitives began to subside.

Strong’s fort would soon be reached, and then they could bid defiance to the fiends of the fire-lands.

But suddenly, while pushing down the left bank of the Huron, the report of a rifle saluted their ears, and John Logan fell to rise no more. Instantly the settler turned to combat his foes, when three more shots were poured into their little ranks by the hidden enemies, and then the fugitives, knowing themselves near Strong’s and ahead of the slayers, turned and fled.

Fortunately, the little party escaped injury by the second volley; but Levi lifted his daughter from the ground, and bore her, shielded by his body, to the frontier fort.

The Indians kept near the fugitives, but did not attempt to make a capture. They seemed bent on the success of some stratagem, which was seen by the whites at the eleventh hour. The fort was already invested by a powerful force of savages fresh from the victory at Detroit, and certain signals told the settlers’ pursuers of well-laid plans. But the bravery of the fort’s defenders had defeated the stratagem, as the reader has seen; but not without the loss of valuable men.

“Stop, chief! In the name of Heaven, listen to that.”

The speaker was Card Belt, and it was the volley fired by the stump-sheltered savages at the opening of Strong’s gates, that called forth his words.

“Indians attack fort,” said the Wyandot, in his native tongue. “White people get to gates, and when they open, Indians shoot.”

“But a real battle is raging. Hark! I hear the yells of the Indians. Come! we’ll go and help the boys!”

But the chief slowly shook his head.

“No use go there,” he said. “We can’t help pale-faces,” and standing in the shadows of several giant trees, the couple listened to the sound of battle.

The trapper, while he listened, acknowledged the strength of Silver Hand’s counsel. He believed that Fort Strong was invested, and knew that, for the present, they could render no assistance to its inmates. In the future, they might be able to help them.

At last the couple heard the yells of the beaten savages, and exchanged looks of satisfaction.

“I’d like to know whether Levi and his girl got into Strong’s or not,” said Wolf-Cap, with an anxious expression of countenance. “Silver Hand, they’d better not touch one o’ Huldah Armstrong’s hairs. I say I’ll kill the first fellar what does—there! I should judge that its pretty near midnight now,” he continued, after a pause, during which the Indian made no attempt to speak. “We’d better be movin’ somewhere. The fellars what we fooled down on Eel Creek haven’t passed yet; but mebbe they’ve joined their red brethren by another route. They could do that, you know. The troubles of Strong’s fort has begun now, and we’ve got to help ’em, somehow or other. But first, let’s go down to my hut and stir up a few eatables. Besides, I want to see if every thing’s right thar, and to liberate Yellow Dick.”

The Wyandot acquiesced in the trapper’s proposition, and a moment later the spot was deserted.

Silver Hand belonged to the same nation that besieged Fort Strong with malicious intent. During the Revolutionary war the Wyandots divided; a faction headed by the celebrated Captain Pipe aided the British, while the minor division, under the leadership of White Eyes, sided with the colonies. The factions refused to come together after the war, so when the second trouble with English oppression sought the combat of lead and steel, the unreconciled Indians resumed their old relations. The English Wyandots, led by Splitlog and Roundhead joined Proctor’s forces, while the friends of the United States opposed them. To the latter party Silver Hand belonged.

He was present at the encounter of Hull, but effected his escape after that catastrophe, and hastened to his old hunting-grounds—the fire-lands.

The white trapper and his staunch red ally reached the vicinity of the proscribed cabin during that period of darkness preceding dawn.

The skies were darkened overhead, for the moon had disappeared, and the scene was made quite dismal by the ominous hootings of a great owl perched upon the cone of the hut.

“Things are too still here for me, Silver Hand,” whispered the trapper, in his cautious tone, when they had halted near the solitary hut. “I’ve come home at all times o’ nights and mornin’s, but never afore hev I see’d an owl on the roof. Jest listen to ’im. Why I kin hear ’im say ‘go away’ as plainly as I hear his voice. No, chief, I don’t rush into the old hut jist now. We’re on the edge of a trap!”

Silver Hand did not appear to hear the trapper’s words.

His body was bent forward, and he was trying to discern the minutiæ of the cabin and its immediate vicinity. But the darkness baffled him.

For the period of an hour the twain crouched, like bowlders, in their place of concealment, and then Wolf-Cap moved forward, leaving the Indian to await his return.

He approached the cabin until the owl suddenly vacated his perch, and hied away to the forest. Quickly but noiselessly, then, the trapper returned to his ally.

“Owl gone,” said Silver Hand, before the white man could find a tongue. “Who scared ’im?”

“That’s jest what I’m goin’ to tell you, chief. My cabin is inhabited. I know it, and somebody from the inside frightened that owl. I know that the bird didn’t leave of his own accord, and he didn’t see a mouse, either. Now, I’m going to find out who’s taken possession of the hut.”

Thereupon a series of snake-like movements were inaugurated by the couple, who succeeded in passing around the cabin without discovering a foe.

Whoever was in the hut kept very quiet, and the mystery deepened with each succeeding moment.

His dog’s silence increased Wolf-Cap’s suspicion of foul-play. Yellow Dick had always greeted his return with a peculiar cry; but now the death of silence reigned, and the trapper had touched the wall of his old home without eliciting any noise from the dog.

A second inspection of the clearing and adjacent forest followed the first, and then Wolf-Cap turned suddenly upon the Indian, with compressed lips.

“I won’t stand it any longer,” he said, sternly. “The rascal’s got to show himself now. Watch everywhere, chief, while I oust ’im. If I don’t do it, the Night-Hawks will.”

The last sentence was spoken in an undertone; and with a quantity of light brushwood the trapper moved toward the cabin.

By the help of steps cut in the logs he ascended to the roof, and deposited his burden between the dry clapboards. Then he sprinkled a quantity of powder among the combustible stuff, and ignited the whole with his flints.

“Now!” he exclaimed, springing to the ground and glancing up at the fire taking firm hold on the clapboards. “Now, I fancy as how the fellow will show himself.”

His surmises proved correct.

The tenants of his cabin did show themselves. The roof of the cabin was soon in a blaze, and the twain watched the door with ready rifles. A lurid light overspread the clearing, and bathed the bosom of the river in romantic beauty.

By and by the trapper began to think that, after all, he had surmised incorrectly, for the howls of a dog emanated from the burning building. Silver Hand listened to the cries, the suspicious part of his nature fully aroused, and himself undecided how to act.

Wolf-Cap wanted to save his dog, and the Indian noted the working of his face in the firelight that stole to their retreat.

“Silver Hand, I’ve been taken in,” said Belt, suddenly. “I can’t hear Dick howl that way. By Huron! he shan’t cry for mercy when _I_ am about!”

“But why he keep still so long?” retorted Silver Hand, quickly. “Trapper answer that if he kin!”

It is doubtful whether Wolf-Cap caught the gist of the Wyandot’s sentences, for he jerked his arm from the red fingers that encircled it, and rushed in to the firelight.

The thought of his noble dog—the guardian of his life and home for many years—cooped up within a blazing building, blinded him to the arguments of caution, and the Indian muttered an oath and leaped to his feet when he saw that Wolf-Cap was gone!

The daring trapper had reached the path that led from his door to a spring near the river, when he suddenly paused.

A strange and suspicious voice beyond the logs had startled him.

It sounded like a man’s voice, and his acute senses had already shaped it into the words, “All ready?”

He had not time to turn to join Silver Hand nor to signal him. He was within six feet of the cabin door, and was looking to his rifle, when the ponderous oaken portal swung wide, and five stalwart fellows threw themselves upon him.

They—the Night-Hawks—were the tenants of his cabin!

He retreated a step, and delivered a shot that stretched one man upon the ground, and then, after a desperate struggle, he was secured and his weapons taken from him.

Silver Hand lent no assistance to his friend; and his assistance would have availed the trapper nothing. Therefore the chief’s disappearance was not a sign of cowardice; on the contrary it was a sign of good judgment, big with assurances of future help.

“So, cabin-burner, you have bid defiance to the Night-Hawks,” said the spokesman of the outlaws, pointing to the paper still visible on the cabin door: “No block-house shall shelter me. I spare not, and no mercy ask.”

A wild laugh greeted this quotation from the trapper’s defiance, and the outlaws crowded near him.

“Men, I mean every word I have written on my door,” he said, calmly. “There war nine of ye; there ar’ but eight now,” and here his glance fell upon the man whom he had shot dead. “I war willin’ to take the odds ag’in’ me for I am no illegal squatter, and I hate outlaws. Royal Funk, I am free to confess that you’ve got the upper hand now.”

“And I’m going to keep it, Card Belt,” replied the desperado, with a smile. “I posted a fair warning on your door last night. ‘Fly or die,’ it said. You would not fly, so—”

“I must die, eh?”

“Just so.”

“When—now?”

“No. We’re going to take you down to the Indians at Fort Strong, and I guess the Night-Hawks will treat the settlers to a public execution. You and Silver Hand played it on us to-night. We were following the Armstrongs when you called us back.”

“So you came down here and hid in the old cabin?”

“Yes.”

“Whar’s my dog?”

“In the house.”

A twitch of pain followed by an angry pallor, came to the trapper’s lips, and the light of vengeance flashed in his eyes.

“Come, Frank, let’s be goin’,” said one of the outlaws at this juncture. “’Tis gettin’ day, an’ Splitlog may need us at Strong’s. We want to be there at the death.”

“For that moment you must wait a long time,” said Wolf-Cap, addressing the leader of the Night-Hawks. “Strong’s is prepared to stand a desperate siege.”

“True; but its fate is inevitable. Card Belt, so sure as the sun rises this day, Strong’s fort shall be given to the flames, and its inmates, all save one, to the tomahawk. We are determined to depopulate ‘the fire-lands.’ Why man, four hundred Indians invest the fort at this hour. How can it escape?”

“It can! it shall!” cried the trapper. “But,” and his tone softened, “but you say that one person in Strong’s shall not die. Pray, Royal Funk, who is to be thus favored?”

“A certain woman—my lady-love,” said the outlaw, striking a ridiculous attitude, with his head thrown back, and his thumbs inserted into the sides of his hunting-frock just below the armpits. “What! didn’t you know I was in love, Wolf-Cap?”

“No.”

“Why, all these brave fellows know it. They’ve patted me on the back and said, ‘Go it, Roy.’ But the mirth of the whole matter is, Belt, that I’ve never told my love to her. She’s ignorant of my passion, and you see I must get her out of Strong’s so as to breathe it softly into her ears. Old Levi might object; but _I generally marry orphans_!”

Despite his anticipations, Wolf-Cap started when the identity of the outlaw’s love was declared.

What! should Royal Funk, the Night-Hawk captain, possess Huldah Armstrong?

Not, thought Wolf-Cap, if he could prevent him. But he was under sentence of death, and stood in the shadow of the Terror’s wing.

Half an hour after the capture of Wolf-Cap, the Night-Hawks started to join the besiegers of Strong’s fort.