They arrived at their valley and prepared for the second winter there, returning to the place for several reasons, chief among them being the right of prescription, to which the other tribes yielded tacit consent. The Indian recks little of the future, but in his reversion to primitive type Henry had taken with him much of the acquired and modern knowledge of education. He looked ahead, and, under his constant suggestion, advice and pressure they stored so much food for the winter that there was no chance of another famine, whatever might happen to the game.
Before they went into winter quarters Henry clearly perceived one thing—he was first in the little tribe; even Black Cloud, the chief, willingly took second place to him. He was first alike in strength and wisdom and it was patent to all. He was now, although only a boy in years, nearly at his full height, almost a head above an ordinary warrior, with wonderfully keen eyes, set wide apart, and a square projecting chin, so firm that it seemed to be carved of brown marble. His shoulders were of great breadth, but his lean figure had all the graceful strength and ease of some wild animal native to the forest. He was scrupulous in his attire, and wore only the finest skins and furs that the village could furnish.
Henry felt the deference of the tribe and it pleased him. He glided naturally into the place of leader, feeling the responsibility and liking it. He was tactful, too, he would not push Black Cloud from his old position, but merely remained at his right hand and ruled through him. The chief was soothed and flattered, and the arrangement worked to the pleasure of both, and to the great good of the village which now enjoyed a winter of prosperity hitherto unknown to such natives of the woods. Nobody had to go hungry, there was abundant provision against the cold. Henry, though not saying it, knew that with him the credit lay, and just now the world seemed very full. As human beings go he was thoroughly happy; the life fitted him, satisfied all his wants, and the memory of his own people became paler and more distant; they could do very well without him; they were so many, one could be spared, and when the chance came he would send word to them that he was alive and well, but that he would not come back.
When the buds began to burst they traveled eastward, until they came to the Mississippi. The sight of its stream brought back to Henry a thought of those with whom he had first seen it and he felt a pang of remorse. But the pang was fleeting, and the memory too he resolutely put aside.
They crossed the Mississippi and advanced into the land of little prairies, a green, rich region, pleasant to the eye and full of game. They wandered and hunted here, drifting slowly to the eastward, until they came upon a great encampment of the fierce and warlike nation, known as the Shawnees. The Shawnees were in their war paint and were singing warlike songs. It was evident to the most casual visitor that they were going forth to do battle.
It was late in the afternoon when Henry, Black Cloud and two others came upon this encampment. His own band had pitched its lodges some miles behind, but the kinship of the forest and the peace between them, made the four the guests of the Shawnees as long as they chose to stay.
At least a thousand warriors were in all the hideous varieties of war paint, and the scene, in the waning light, was weird and ominous even to Henry. The war songs in their very monotony were chilling, and full of ferocity, and in all the thousand faces there was not one that shone with the light of kindness and mercy.
Long glances were cast at Henry, but even their keen eyes failed to notice that he was not an Indian, and he stood watching them, his face impassive, but his interest aroused. A dozen warriors naked to the waist and hideously painted were singing a war song, while they capered and jumped to its unrhythmic tune. Suddenly one of them snatched something from his girdle and waved it aloft in triumph. Henry knew that it was a scalp, many of which he had seen, and he paid little attention, but the Indian came closer, still singing and dancing, and waving his hideous trophy.
The scalp flashed before Henry's eyes, and it displayed not the coarse black locks of the savage, but hair long, fine and yellow like silk. He knew that it was the scalp of a white girl, and a sudden, shuddering horror seized him. It had belonged to one of his own kind, to the race into which he had been born and with which he had passed his boyhood. His heart filled with hatred of these Shawnees, but the warriors of his own little tribe would take scalps, and if occasion came, the scalps of white people, yes, of white women and white girls! He tried to dismiss the thought or rather to crush it down, but it would not yield to his will; always it rose up again.
He walked back to the edge of the encampment, where some of the warriors were yet singing the war songs that with all of their monotony were so weird and chilling. Twilight was over the forest, save in the west, where a blood-red tint from the sunken sun lingered on trunk and bough, and gleamed across the faces of the dancing warriors. In this lurid light Henry suddenly saw them savage, inhuman, implacable. They were truly creatures of the wilderness, the lust of blood was upon them, and they would shed it for the pleasure of seeing it flow. Henry's primeval world darkened as he looked upon them.
He was about to leave with Black Cloud and his friends when it occurred to him to ask which way the war party was going and who were the destined victims. He spoke to two or three warriors until he came to one who understood the tongue of his little tribe.
The man waved his hand toward the south.
"Off there; far away," he said. "Beyond the great river."
Henry knew that in this case "great river" meant the Ohio and he was somewhat surprised; it was still a long journey from the Ohio to the land of the Cherokees, Chickasaws and Choctaws with whom the Northern tribes sometimes fought, and he spoke of it to the warrior, but the man shook his head, and said they were going against the white people; there was a village of them in a sheltered valley beside a little river, they had been there three or four years and had flourished in peace; freedom so long from danger had made them careless, but the Shawnee scouts had looked from the woods upon the settlement, and the war band would slay or take them all with ease.
The man had not spoken a half dozen words before Henry knew that Wareville was the place, upon which the doom was so soon to fall. The chill of horror that had seized him at sight of the yellow-haired scalp passed over him again, deeper, stronger and longer than before. And the colony would fall! There could be no doubt of it! Nothing could save it! The hideous band, raging with tomahawk and knife, would dash without a word of warning, like a bolt from the sky upon Wareville so long sheltered and peaceful in its valley. And he could see all the phases of the savage triumph, the surprise, the triumphant and ferocious yells, the rapid volleys of the rifles, the flashing of the blades, the burning buildings, the shouts, the cries, and men, women and children in one red slaughter. In another year the forest would be springing up where Wareville had been, and the wolf and the fox would prowl among the charred timbers. And among the bleaching bones would be those of his own mother and sister and Lucy Upton—if they were not taken away for a worse fate.
He endured the keenest thrill of agony that life had yet held for him. All his old life, the dear familiar ties surged up, and were hot upon his brain. His place was there! with them! not here! He had yielded too easily to the spell of the woods and the call of the old primeval nature. He might have escaped long ago, there had been many opportunities, but he could not see them. His blindness had been willful, the child of his own desires. He knew it too well now. He saw himself guilty and guilty he was.
But in that moment of agony and fear for his own he was paying the price of his guilt. The sense of helplessness was crushing. In two hours the war party would start and it would flit southward like the wind, as silent but far more deadly. No, nothing could save the innocent people at Wareville; they were as surely doomed as if their destruction had already taken place.
But not one of these emotions, so tense and so deep, was written on the face of him whom even the Shawnees did not know to be white. Not a feature changed, the Indian stoicism and calm, the product alike of his nature and cultivation, clung to him. His eyes were veiled and his movements had their habitual gravity and dignity.
He walked with Black Cloud to the edge of the encampment, said farewell to the Shawnees, and then, with a great surge of joy, his resolution came to him. It was so sudden, so transforming that the whole world changed at once. The blood-red tint, thrown by the sunken sun, was gone from the forest, but instead the silver sickle of the moon was rising and shed a radiant light of hope.
He said nothing until they had gone a mile or so and then, drawing Black Cloud aside, spoke to him words full of firmness, but not without feeling. He made no secret of his purpose, and he said that if Black Cloud and the others sought to stay him with force with force he would reply. He must go, and he would go at once.
Black Cloud was silent for a while, and Henry saw the faintest quiver in his eyes. He knew that he held a certain place in the affections of the chief, not the place that he might hold in the regard of a white man, it was more limited and qualified, but it was there, nevertheless.
"I am the captive of the tribe I know," said Henry. "It has made me its son, but my white blood is not changed and I must save my people. The Shawnees march south to-night against them and I go to give warning. It is better that I go in peace."
He spoke simply, but with dignity, and looked straight into the eyes of the chief, where he saw that slight pathetic quiver come again.
"I cannot keep you now if you would go," said Black Cloud, "but it may be when you are far away that the forest and we with whom you have lived and hunted so many seasons will call to you again, in a voice to which you must listen."
Henry was moved; perhaps the chief was telling the truth. He saw the hardships and bareness of the wilderness but the life there appealed to him and satisfied the stronger wants of his nature; he seemed to be the reincarnation of some old forest dweller, belonging to a time thousands of years ago, yet the voice of duty, which was in this case also the voice of love, called to him, too, and now with the louder voice. He would go, and there must be no delay in his going.
"Farewell, Black Cloud," he said with the same simplicity. "I will think often of you who have been good to me."
The chief called the other warriors and told them their comrade was going far to the south, and they might never see him again. Their faces expressed nothing, whatever they may have felt. Henry repeated the farewell, hesitated no longer and plunged into the forest. But he stopped when he was thirty or forty yards away and looked back. The chief and the warriors stood side by side as he had left them, motionless and gazing after him. It was night now and to eyes less keen than Henry's their forms would have melted into the dusk, but he saw every outline distinctly, the lean brown features and the black shining eyes. He waved his hands to them—a white man's action—and resumed his flight, not looking back again.
It was a dark night and the forest stretched on, black and endless, the trunks of the trees standing in rows like phantoms of the dusk. Henry looked up at the moon and the few stars, and reckoned his course. Wareville lay many hundred miles away, chiefly to the south, and he had a general idea of the direction, but the war party would know exactly, and its advantage there would perhaps be compensation for the superior speed of one man. But Henry, for the present, would not think of such a disaster as failure; on the contrary he reckoned with nothing but success, and he felt a marvelous elation.
The decision once taken the rebound had come with great force, and he felt that he was now about to make atonement for his long neglect, and more than neglect. Perhaps it had been ordained long ago that he should be there at the critical moment, see the danger and bring them the warning that would save. There was consolation in the thought.
He increased his pace and sped southward in the easy trot that he had learned from his red friends, a gait that he could maintain indefinitely, and with which he could put ground behind him at a remarkable rate. His rifle he carried at the trail, his head was bent slightly forward, and he listened intently to every sound of the forest as he passed; nothing escaped his ear, whether it was a raccoon stirring among the branches, a deer startled from its covert, or merely the wind rustling the leaves. Instinct also told him that the forest was at peace.
To the ordinary man the night with its dusk, the wilderness with its ghostly tree trunks, and the silence would have been full of weirdness and awe, black with omens and presages. Few would not have chilled to the marrow to be alone there, but to Henry it brought only hope and the thrill of exultation. He had no sense of loneliness, the forest hid no secrets for him; this was home and he merely passed through it on a great quest.
He looked up at the moon and stars, and confirmed himself in his course, though he never slackened speed as he looked. He came out of the forest upon a prairie, and here the moonlight was brighter, touching the crests of the swells with silver spear-points. A dozen buffaloes rose up and snorted as he flitted by, but he scarcely bestowed a passing glance upon the black bulk of the animals. The prairie was only two or three miles across, and at the far edge flowed a shallow creek which he crossed at full speed, and entered the forest again. Now he came to rough country, steep little hills, and a dense undergrowth of interlacing bushes, and twining thorny vines. But he made his way through them in a manner that only one forest-bred could compass, and pressed on with speed but little slackened.
When the night became darkest, in the forest just before morning he lay down in the deepest shadow of a thicket, his hand upon his rifle, and in a few minutes was sleeping soundly. It was a matter of training with him to sleep whenever sleep was needed and he had no nerves. He knew, too, despite his haste that he must save his strength, and he did not hesitate to follow the counsels of prudence.
It was his will that he should sleep about four hours, and, his system obeying the wish, he awoke at the appointed time. The sun was rising over the vast, green wilderness, lighting up a world seemingly as lonely and deserted as it had been the night before. The unbroken forest, touched with the tender tints of young spring and bathed in the pure light of the first dawn, bent gently to a west wind that breathed only of peace.
Henry stood up and inhaled the odorous air. He was a striking figure, yet a few yards away he would have been visible only to the trained eye; his half-savage garb of tanned deerskin, stained green and trimmed at the edges with green beads and little green feathers, blended with the colors of the forest and merely made a harmonious note in the whole. His figure compact, powerful and always poised as if ready for a spring swayed slightly, while his eyes that missed nothing searched every nook in the circling woods. He was then neither the savage nor the civilized man, but he had many of the qualities of both.
The slight swaying motion of his body ceased suddenly and he remained as still as a rock. He seemed to be a part of the green bushes that grew around him, yet he was never more watchful, never more alert. The indefinable sixth sense, developed in him by the wilderness, had taken alarm; there was a presence in the forest, foreign in its nature; it was not sight nor hearing nor yet smell that told him so, but a feeling or rather a sort of prescience. Then an extraordinary thrill ran through him; it was an emotion partaking in its nature of joy and anticipation; he was about to be confronted by some danger, perhaps a crisis, and the physical faculties, handed down by a far-off ancestor, expanded to meet it. He knew that he would conquer, and he felt already the glow of triumph.
Presently he sank down in the undergrowth so gently that not a bush rustled; there was no displacement of nature, the grass and the foliage were just as they had been, but the figure, visible before to the trained eye at a dozen paces, could not have been seen now at all. Then he began to creep through the grass with a swift easy gliding motion like that of a serpent, moving at a speed remarkable in such a position and quite soundless. He went a full half mile before he stopped and rose to his knees, and then his face was hidden by the bushes, although the eyes still searched every part of the forest.
His look was now wholly changed. He might be the hunted, but he bore himself as the hunter. All vestige of the civilized man, trained to humanity and mercy, was gone. Those who wished to kill were seeking him and he would kill in return. The thin lips were slightly drawn back, showing the line of white teeth, the eyes were narrowed and in them was the cold glitter of expected conflict. Brown hands, lean but big-boned and powerful, clasped a rifle having a long slender barrel and a beautifully carved stock. It was a figure, terrible alike in its manifestation of physical power and readiness, and in the fierce eye that told what quality of mind lay behind it.
He sank down again and moved in a small circle to the right. His original thrill of joy was now a permanent emotion; he was like some one playing an exciting game into which no thought of danger entered. He stopped behind a large tree, and sheltering himself riveted his eyes on a spot in the forest about fifty yards away. No one else could have found there anything suspicious, anything to tell of an alien presence, but he no longer doubted.
At the detected point a leaf moved, but not in the way it should have swayed before the gentle wind, and there was a passing spot of brown in the green of the bushes. It was visible only for a moment, but it was sufficient for the attuned mind and body of Henry Ware. Every part of him responded to the call. The rifle sprang to his shoulder and before the passing spot of brown was gone, a stream of fire spurted from its slender muzzle, and its sharp cracking report like the lashing of a whip was blended with the long-drawn howl, so terrible in its note, that is the death cry of a savage.
The bullet had scarcely left his gun before he fell back almost flat, and the answering shot sped over his head. It was for this that he sank down, and before the second shot died he sprang to his feet and rushed forward, drawing his tomahawk and uttering a shout that rolled away in fierce echoes through the forest.
He knew that his enemies were but two; in his eccentric course through the forest he had passed directly over their trail, and he had read the signs with an infallible eye. Now one was dead and the other like himself had an unloaded gun. The rest of his deed would be a mere matter of detail.
The second savage uttered his war cry and sprang forward from the bushes. He might well have recoiled at the terrible figure that rushed to meet him; in all his wild life of risks he had never before been confronted by anything so instinct with terror, so ominous of death. But he did not have time to take thought before he was overwhelmed by his resistless enemy.
It was an affair of but a few moments. The Indian threw his tomahawk but Henry parried the blade upon the barrel of his rifle which he still carried in his left hand, and his own tomahawk was whirled in a glittering curve about his head. Now it was launched with mighty force and the savage, cloven to the chin, sank soundless to the earth; he had been smitten down by a force so sudden and absolute that he died instantly.
The victor, elate though he was, paused, and quickly reloaded his rifle—wilderness caution would allow nothing else—and afterwards advancing looked first at the savage whom he had slain in the open and then at the other in the bushes. There was no pity in him, his only emotion was a great sense of power; they had hunted him, two to one, and they born in the woods, but he had outwitted and slain them both. He could have escaped, he could have easily left them far behind when he first discovered that they were stalking him, but he had felt that they should be punished and now the event justified his faith.
It was not his first taking of human life, and while he would have shuddered at the deed a year ago he felt no such sensation now; they were merely dangerous wild animals that had crossed his path, and he had put them out of it in the proper way; his feeling was that of the hunter who slays a grizzly bear or a lion, only he had slain two.
He stood looking at them, and save for the rustling of the young grass under the gentle western wind the wilderness was silent and at peace. The sun was shooting up higher and higher and a vast golden light hung over the forest, gilding every leaf and twig. Henry Ware turned at last and sped swiftly and silently to the south, still thrilling with exultation over his deed, and the sequel that he knew would quickly come. But in the few brief minutes his nature had reverted another and further step toward the primitive.
When he had gone a half mile in his noiseless flight he stopped, and, listening intently, heard the faint echo of a long-drawn, whining cry. After that came silence, heavy and ominous. But Henry only laughed in noiseless mirth. All this he had expected. He knew that the larger party to which the two warriors belonged would find the bodies, with hasty pursuit to follow after the single cry. That was why he lingered. He wanted them to pursue, to hang upon his trail in the vain hope that they could catch him; he would play with them, he would enjoy the game leading them on until they were exhausted, and then, laughing, he would go on to the south at his utmost speed.
A new impulse drove him to another step in the daring play, and, raising his head, he uttered his own war cry, a long piercing shout that died in distant echoes; it was at once a defiance, and an intimation to them where they might find him, and then, mirth in his eyes, he resumed his flight, although, for the present, he chose to keep an unchanging distance between his pursuers and himself.
That party of warriors may have pursued many a man before and may have caught most of them, but the greatest veteran of them all had never hung on the trail of such another annoying fugitive. All day he led them in swift flight toward the south, and at no time was he more than a little beyond their reach; often they thought their hands were about to close down upon him, that soon they would enjoy the sight of his writhings under the fagot and the stake, but always he slipped away at the fatal moment, and their savage hearts were filled with bitterness that a lone fugitive should taunt them so. His footsteps were those of the white man, but his wile and cunning were those of the red, and curiosity was added to the other motives that drew them on.
At the coming of the twilight one of their best warriors who pursued at some distance from the main band was slain by a rifle shot from the bushes, then came that defiant war cry again, faint, but full of irony and challenge, and then the trail grew cold before them. He whom they pursued was going now with a speed that none of them could equal, and the darkness itself, thick and heavy, soon covered all sign of his flight.
Henry Ware's expectations of joy had been fulfilled and more; it was the keenest delight that had yet come into his life. At all times he had been master of the situation, and as he drew them southward, he fulfilled his duty at the same time and enjoyed his sport. Everything had fallen out as he planned, and now, with the night at hand, he shook them off.
Through the day he had eaten dried venison from his pouch, as he ran, and he felt no need to stop for food. So, he did not cease the flight until after midnight when he lay down again in a thicket and slept soundly until daylight. He rose again, refreshed, and faster than ever sped on his swift way toward Wareville.
Wareville lay in its pleasant valley, rejoicing in the young spring, so kind with its warm rains that the men of the village foresaw a great season for crops. The little river flowed in a silver current, smoke rose from many chimneys, and now and then the red homemade linsey dress of a girl gleamed in the sunlight like the feathers of the scarlet tanager. To the left were the fields cleared for Indian corn, and to the right were the gardens. Beyond both were the hills and the unbroken forest.
Now and then a man, carrying on his shoulder the inevitable Kentucky rifle, long and slender-barreled, passed through the palisade, but the cardinal note of the scene was peace and cheerfulness. The town was prospering, its future no longer belonged to chance; there would be plenty, of the kind that they liked.
In the Ware house was a silent sadness, silent because these were stern people, living in a stern time, and it was the custom to hide one's griefs. The oldest son was gone; whether he had perished nobody knew, nor, if he had perished, how.
John Ware was not an emotional man, feelings rarely showed on his face, and his wife alone knew how hard the blow had been to him—she knew because she had suffered from the same stroke. But the children, the younger brother Charles and the sister Mary could not always remember, and with them the impression of the one who was gone would grow dimmer in time. The border too always expected a certain percentage of loss in human life, it was one of the facts with which the people must reckon, and thus the name of Henry Ware was rarely spoken.
To-day was without a cloud. New emigrants had come across the mountains, adding welcome strength to the colony, and extending the limits of the village. But danger had passed them by, they had heard once or twice more of the great war in the far-away East, but it was so distant and vague that most of them forgot it; the Indians across the Ohio had never come this way, and so far Henry Ware was the only toll that they had paid to the wilderness. There was cause for happiness, as human happiness goes.
A slim girl bearing in her hand a wooden pail came through the gate of the palisade. She was bare-headed, but her wonderful dark-brown hair coiled in a shining mass was touched here and there with golden gleams where the sunshine fell upon it. Her face, browned somewhat, was yet very white on the forehead, and the cheeks had the crimson flush of health. She wore a dress of homemade linsey dyed red, and its close fit suggested the curves of her supple, splendid young figure. She walked with strong elastic step toward the spring that gushed from a hillside, and which after a short course fell into the little river.
It was Lucy Upton, grown much taller now, as youth develops rapidly on the border, a creature nourished into physical perfection first by the good blood that was in her, then developed in the open air, and by work, neither too little nor too much.
She reached the spring, and setting the pail by its side looked down at the cool, gushing stream. It invited her and she ran her white rounded arm through it, making curves and oblongs that were gone before they were finished. She was in a thoughtful mood. Once or twice she looked at the forest, and each time that she looked she shivered because the shadow of the wilderness was then very heavy upon her.
Silas Pennypacker, the schoolmaster, came to the spring while she was there, and they spoke together, because they were great friends, these two. He was unchanged, the same strong gray man, with the ruddy face. He was not unhappy here despite the seeming incongruity of his presence. The wilderness appealed to him too in a way, he was the intellectual leader of the colony and almost everything that his nature called for met with a response.
"The spring is here, Lucy," he said, "and it has been an easy winter. We should be thankful that we have fared so well."
"I think that most of us are," she replied. "We'll soon be a big town."
She glanced at the spreading settlement, and this launched Mr. Pennypacker upon a favorite theme of his. He liked to predict how the colony would grow, sowing new seed, and already he saw great cities to be. He found a ready listener in Lucy. This too appealed to her imagination at times, and if at other times interest was lacking, she was too fond of the old man to let him know it. Presently when she had finished she filled the pail and stood up, straight and strong.
"I will carry it for you," said the schoolmaster.
She laughed.
"Why should I let you?" she asked. "I am more able than you."
Most men would have taken it ill to have heard such words from a girl, but she was one among many, above the usual height for her years; she created at once the impression of great strength, both physical and mental; the heavy pail of water hung in her hand, as if it were a trifle that she did not notice. The master smiled and looked at her with eyes of fatherly admiration.
"I must admit that you tell the truth," he said. "This West of ours seems to suit you."
"It is my country now," she said, "and I do not care for any other."
"Since you will not let me carry the water you will at least let me walk with you?" he said.
She did not reply, and he was startled by the sudden change that came over her.
First a look of wonder showed on her face, then she turned white, every particle of color leaving her cheeks. The master could not tell what her expression meant, and he followed her eyes which were turned toward the wilderness.
From the forest came a figure very strange to Silas Pennypacker, a figure of barbaric splendor. It was a youth of great height and powerful frame, his face so brown that it might belong to either the white or the red race, but with fine clean features like those of a Greek god. He was clad in deerskins, ornamented with little colored beads and fringes of brilliant dyes. He carried a slender-barreled rifle over his shoulder, and he came forward with swift, soundless steps.
The master recoiled in alarm at the strange and ominous figure, but as the red flooded back into the girl's cheeks she put her hand upon his arm.
"It is he! I knew that he was not dead!" she said in an intense tremulous whisper. The words were indefinite, but the master knew whom she meant, and there was a surge of joy in his heart, to be followed the next moment by doubt and astonishment. It was Henry Ware who had come back, but not the same Henry Ware.
Henry was beside them in a moment and he seized their hands, first the hands of one and then of the other, calling them by name.
The master recovering from his momentary diffidence threw his arms around his former pupil, welcomed him with many words, and wanted to know where he had been so long.
"I shall tell you, but not now," replied Henry, "because there is no time to spare; you are threatened by a great danger. The Shawnees are coming with a thousand warriors and I have hastened ahead to warn you."
He hurried them inside the palisade, his manner tense, masterful and convincing, and there he met his mother, whose joy, deep and grateful, was expressed in few words after the stern Puritan code. The father and the brother and sister came next, but the younger people like Lucy felt a little fear of him, and his old comrade Paul Cotter scarcely knew him.
He told in a few words of his escape from a far Northwestern tribe, of the coming of the Shawnees, and of the need to take every precaution for defense.
"There is no time to spare," he said. "All must be called in at once."
A man with powerful lungs blew long on a cow's horn, those who were at work in the fields and the forest hastened in, the gates were barred, the best marksmen were sent to watch in the upper story of the blockhouses and at the palisade, and the women began to mold bullets.
Henry Ware was the pervading spirit through all the preparations. He knew everything and thought of everything, he told them the mode of Indian attack and how they could best meet it, he compelled them to strengthen the weak spots in the palisade, and he encouraged all those who were faint of heart and apprehensive.
Lucy's slight fear of him remained, but with it now came admiration. She saw that his was a soul fit to lead and command, the work that he was about to do he loved, his eyes were alight with the fire of battle; a certain joy was shining there, and all, feeling the strength of his spirit, obeyed him without asking why.
Only Braxton Wyatt uttered doubts with words and sneered with looks. He too had become a hunter of skill, and hence what he said might have some merit.
"It seems strange that Henry Ware should come so suddenly when he might have come before," he remarked with apparent carelessness to Lucy Upton.
She looked at him with sharp interest. The same thought had entered her mind, but she did not like to hear Braxton Wyatt utter it.
"At all events he is about to save us from a great danger," she said.
Wyatt laughed and his thin long features contracted in an ugly manner.
"It is a tale to impress us and perhaps to cover up something else," he replied. "There is not an Indian within two hundred miles of us. I know, I have been through the woods and there is no sign."
She turned away, liking his words little and his manner less. She stopped presently by a corner of one of the houses on a slight elevation whence she could see a long distance beyond the palisade. So far as seeming went Braxton Wyatt was certainly right. The spring day was full of golden sunshine, the fresh new green of the forest was unsullied, and it was hard to conjure up even the shadow of danger.
Wyatt might have ground for his suspicion, but why should Henry Ware sound a false alarm? The words "perhaps to cover up something else" returned to her mind, but she dismissed them angrily.
She went to the Ware house and rejoiced with Mrs. Ware, to whom a son had come back from the dead, and in whose joy there was no flaw. According to her mother's heart a wonder had been performed, and it had been done for her special benefit.
The village was in full posture of defense, all were inside the walls and every man had gone to his post. They now awaited the attack, and yet there was some distrust of Henry Ware. Braxton Wyatt, a clever youth, had insidiously sowed the seeds of suspicion, and already there was a crop of unbelief. By indirection he had called attention to the strange appearance of the returned wanderer, the Indianlike air that he had acquired, his new ways unlike their own, and his indifference to many things that he had formerly liked. He noticed the change in Henry Ware's nature and he brought it also to the notice of others.
It seemed as the brilliant day passed peacefully that Wyatt was right and Henry, for some hidden purpose of his own, perhaps to hide the secret of his long absence, had brought to them this sounding alarm. There was the sun beyond the zenith in the heavens, the shadows of afternoon were falling, and the yellow light over the forest softened into gray, but no sign of an enemy appeared.
If Henry Ware saw the discontent he did not show his knowledge; the light of the expected conflict was still in his eyes and his thoughts were chiefly of the great event to come; yet in an interval of waiting he went back to the house and told his mother of much that had befallen him during his long absence; he sought to persuade himself now that he could not have escaped earlier, and perhaps without intending it he created in her mind the impression that he sought to engrave upon his own; so she was fully satisfied, thankful for the great mercy of his return that had been given to her.
"Now mother!" he said at last, "I am going outside."
"Outside!" she cried aghast, "but you are safe here! Why not stay?"
He smiled and shook his head.
"I shall be safe out there, too," he said, "and it is best for us all that I go. Oh, I know the wilderness, mother, as you know the rooms of this house!"
He kissed her quickly and turned away. John Ware, who stood by, said nothing. He felt a certain fear of his son and did not yet know how to command him.
As Henry passed from the house into the little square Lucy Upton overtook him.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"I think I can be of more help out there than in here," he replied pointing toward the forest.
"It would be better for you to stay," she said.
"I shall be in no danger."
"It is not that; do you know what some of them here are saying of you—that you are estranged from us, that there is some purpose in this, that no attack is coming! Your going now will confirm them in the belief."
His dark eyes flashed with a fierceness that startled her, and his whole frame seemed to draw up as if he were about to spring. But the emotion passed in a moment, and his face was a brown mask, saying nothing. He seemed indifferent to the public opinion of his little world.
"I am needed out there," he said, pointing again toward the dark line of the forest, "and I shall go. Whether I tell the truth or not will soon be known; they will have to wait only a little. But you believe me now, don't you?"
She looked deep into his calm eyes, and she read there only truth. But she knew even before she looked that Henry Ware was not one who would ever be guilty of falsehood or treachery.
"Oh yes I know it," she replied, "but I wish others to know it as well."
"They will," he said, and then taking her hand in his for one brief moment he was gone. His disappearance was so sudden and soundless that he seemed to her to melt away from her sight like a mist before the wind. She did not even know how he had passed through the palisade, but he was certainly outside and away. There was something weird about it and she felt a little fear, as if an event almost supernatural had occurred.
The sudden departure of Henry Ware to the forest started the slanderous tongues to wagging again, and they said it was a trap of some kind, though no one could tell how. A sly report was started that he had become that worst of all creatures in his time, a renegade, a white man who allied himself with the red to make war upon his own people. It came to the ears of Paul Cotter, and the heart of the loyal youth grew hot within him. Paul was not fond of war and strife, but he had an abounding courage, and he and Henry Ware had been through danger together.
"He is changed, I will admit," he said, "but if he says we are going to be attacked, we shall be. I wish that all of us were as true as he."
He touched his gun lock in a threatening manner, and Braxton Wyatt and the others who stood by said no more in his presence. Yet the course of the day was against Henry's assertion. The afternoon waned, the sun, a ball of copper, swung down into the west, long shadows fell and nothing happened.
The people moved and talked impatiently inside their wooden walls. They spoke of going about their regular pursuits, there was work that could be done on the outside in the twilight, and enough time had been lost already through a false alarm. But some of the older men, with cautious blood, advised them to wait and their counsel was taken. Night came, thick and black, and to the more timid full of omens and presages.
The forest sank away in the darkness, nothing was visible fifty yards from the palisade and in the log houses few lights burned. The little colony, but a pin point of light, was alone in the vast and circling wilderness. One of the greatest tests of courage to which the human race has ever been subjected was at hand. In all directions the forest curved away, hundreds of miles. It would be a journey of days to find any other of their own kind, they were hemmed in everywhere by silence and loneliness, whatever happened they must depend upon themselves, because there was none to bring help. They might perish, one and all, and the rest of the world not hear of it until long afterwards.
A moaning wind came up and sighed over the log houses, the younger children—and few were too young not to guess what was expected—fell asleep at last, but the older, those who had reached their thinking years could not find such solace. In this black darkness their fears became real; there was no false alarm, the forest around them hid their enemy, but only for the time.
There was little noise in the station. By the low fires in the houses the women steadily molded bullets, and seldom spoke to each other, as they poured the melted lead into the molds. By the walls the men too, rifle in hand, were silent, as they sought with intent eyes to mark what was passing in the forest.
Lucy Upton was molding bullets in her father's house and they were melting the lead at a bed of coals in the wide fireplace. None was steadier of hand or more expert than she. Her face was flushed as she bent over the fire and her sleeves were rolled back, showing her strong white arms. Her lips were compressed, but as the bullets shining like silver dropped from the mold they would part now and then in a slight smile. She too had in her the spirit of warlike ancestors and it was aroused now. Girl, though she was, she felt in her own veins a little of the thrill of coming conflict.
But her thoughts were not wholly of attack and defense; they followed as well him who had come back so suddenly and who was now gone again into the wilderness from which he had emerged. His appearance and manner had impressed her deeply. She wished to hear more from him of the strange wild life that he had led; she too felt, although in a more modified form, the spell of the primeval.
Her task finished she went to the door, and then drawn by curiosity she continued until her walk brought her near the palisade where she watched the men on guard, their dusky figures touched by the wan light that came from the slender crescent of a moon, and seeming altogether weird and unreal. Paul Cotter in one of his errands found her there.
"You had better go back," he said. "We may be attacked at any time, and a bullet or arrow could reach you here."
"So you believe with me that an attack will be made as he said!"
"Of course I do," replied Paul with emphasis. "Don't I know Henry Ware? Weren't he and I lost together? Wasn't he the truest of comrades?"
Several men, talking in low tones, approached them. Braxton Wyatt was with them and Lucy saw at once that it was a group of malcontents.
"It is nothing," said Seth Lowndes, a loud, arrogant man, the boaster of the colony. "There are no Indians in these parts and I'm going out there to prove it."
He stood in the center of a ray of moonlight, as he spoke, and it lighted up his red sneering face. Lucy and Paul could see him plainly and each felt a little shiver of aversion. But neither said anything and, in truth, standing in the dark by themselves they were not noticed by the others.
"I'm going outside," repeated Lowndes in a yet more noisy tone, "and if I run across anything more than a deer I'll be mighty badly fooled!"
One or two uttered words of protest, but it seemed to Lucy that Braxton Wyatt incited him to go on, joining him in words of contempt for the alleged danger.
Lowndes reached the palisade and climbed upon it by means of the cross pieces binding it together, and then he stood upon the topmost bar, where his head and all his body, above the knees, rose clear of the bulwark. He was outlined there sharply, a stout, puffy man, his face redder than ever from the effect of climbing, and his eyes gleaming triumphantly as, from his high perch, he looked toward the forest.
"I tell you there is not—" But the words were cut short, the gleam died from his eyes, the red fled from his face, and he whitened suddenly with terror. From the forest came a sharp report, echoing in the still night, and the puffy man, throwing up his arms, fell from the palisade back into the inclosure, dead before he touched the ground.
A fierce yell, the long ominous note of the war whoop burst from the forest, and its sound, so full of menace and fury, was more terrible than that of the rifle. Then came other shots, a rapid pattering volley, and bullets struck with a low sighing sound against the upper walls of the blockhouse. The long quavering cry, the Indian yell rose and died again and in the black forest, still for aught else, it was weird and unearthly.
Lucy stood like stone when the lifeless body of the boaster fell almost at her feet, and all the color was gone from her face. The terrible cry of the savages without was ringing in her ears, and it seemed to her, for a few moments, that she could not move. But Paul grasped her by the arm and drew her back.
"Go into your house!" he cried. "A bullet might reach you here!"
Obedient to his duty he hastened to the palisade to bear a valiant hand in the defense, and she, retreating a little, remained in the shadow of the houses that she might see how events would go. After the first shock of horror and surprise she was not greatly afraid, and she was conscious too of a certain feeling of relief. Henry Ware had told the truth, he knew of what he spoke when he brought his warning, and he had greatly served his own.
It was not Lucy Upton alone who felt relief when the attack upon the stockade came, hideous and terrifying though it might be; the suspense so destructive of nerves and so hard to endure was at an end, and the men rushed gladly to meet the attack, while the women with almost equal joy reloaded empty rifles with the precious powder made from the cave dust and passed them to the brave defenders. The children, too small to take a part, cowered in the houses and listened to the sounds of battle, the lashing of the rifle fire, the fierce cry of the savages in the forest, and the answering defiance of the white men. Amid such scenes a great state was founded and who can wonder that its defenders learned to prize bravery first of all things?
The attack was in accordance with the savage nature, a dash, irregular volleys, shots from ambush, an endeavor to pick off the settlers, whenever a head was shown, but no direct attempt to storm the palisade, for which the Indian is unfitted. A bullet would not reach from the forest, but from little hillocks and slight ridges in the open where a brown breast was pressed close to the earth came the flash of rifles, some hidden by the dusk, but the flame showing in little points of fire that quickly went out. The light of the moon failed somewhat, and the savages in ambush were able to come nearer, but now and then a sharpshooter behind the wall, firing at the flash of the concealed rifle, would hear an answering death cry.
Lucy Upton behind the barricade with other girls and women was reloading rifles and passing them to her father and Paul Cotter who stood in a little wooden embrasure like a sally port. For a time the fire of battle burned as fiercely in her veins as in those of any man, but after a while she began to wonder what had become of Henry Ware, and presently from some who passed she heard comments upon him again; they found fault with his absence; he should have been there to take a part in the defense, and while she admitted that their criticisms bore the color of truth, she yet believed him to be away for some good purpose.
For two hours the wild battle in the dark went on, to the chorus of shouts from white man and red, the savages often coming close to the walls, and seeking to find a shelter under them in the dark, but always driven back. Then it ceased so suddenly that the intense silence was more pregnant with terror than all the noise that had gone before. Paul Cotter, looking over the palisade, could see nothing. The forest rose up like a solid dark wall, and in the opening not a blade of grass stirred; the battle, the savage army, all seemed to have gone like smoke melting into the air, and Paul was appalled, feeling that a magic hand had abruptly swept everything out of existence.
"What do you see?" asked Lucy, upon whose ears the silence too was heavy and painful.
"Nothing but darkness, and what it hides I cannot guess."
A report ran through the village that the savage army, beaten, had gone, and the women, and the men with little experience, gave it currency, but the veterans rebuked such premature rejoicing; it was their part, they said, to watch with more vigilance than ever, and in nowise to relax their readiness.
Then the long hours began and those who could, slept. Braxton Wyatt and his friends again impeached the credit of Henry Ware, insinuating with sly smiles that he must be a renegade, as he had taken no part in the defense and must now be with his savage friends. To the slur Paul Cotter fiercely replied that he had warned them of the attack; without him the station would have been taken by surprise, and that surely proved him to be no traitor.
The hours between midnight and day not only grew in length, but seemed to increase in number as well, doubling and tripling, as if they would never end for the watchers in the station. The men behind the wooden walls and some of the women, too, intently searched the forest, seeking to discover movements there, but nothing appeared upon its solid black screen. Nor did any sound come from it, save the occasional gentle moan of the wind; there was no crackling of branches, no noise of footsteps, no rattle of arms, but always the heavy silence which seemed so deadly, and which, by its monotony, was so painful to their ears.
Lucy Upton went into her father's house, ate a little and then spreading over herself a buffalo robe tried to sleep. Slumber was long in coming, for the disturbed nerves refused to settle into peace, and the excited brain brought back to her eyes distorted and overcolored visions of the night's events. But youth and weariness had their way and she slept at last, to find when she awakened that the dawn was coming in at the window, and the east was ablaze with the splendid red and yellow light of the sun.
"Are they still there?" was her first question when she went forth from her father's house, and the reply was uncertain; they might or might not be there; the leaders had not allowed anyone to go out to see, but the number who believed that the savages were gone was growing; and also grew the number who believed that Henry Ware was gone with them.
Even in the brilliant daylight that sharpened and defined everything as with the etcher's point, they could see nothing save what had been before the savages came. Their eyes reached now into the forest, but as far as they ranged it was empty, there was no encampment, not a single warrior passed through the undergrowth. It seemed that the grumblers were right when they said the besieging army was gone.
Lucy Upton was walking toward the palisade where she saw Paul Cotter, when she heard a distant report and Paul's fur cap, pierced by a bullet, flew from his head to the earth. Paul himself stood in amaze, as if he did not know what had happened, and he did not move until Lucy shouted to him to drop to the ground. Then he crawled quickly away from the exposed spot, although two or three more bullets struck about him.
The station thrilled once more with excitement, but the new danger was of a kind that they did not know how to meet. It was evident that the firing came from a high point, one commanding a view inside the walls, and from marksmen located in such a manner the palisade offered no shelter. Bullets were pattering among the houses, and in the open spaces inclosed by the walls, two men were wounded already, and the threat had become formidable.
Ross and Shif'less Sol, the best of the woodsmen, soon decided that the shots came from a large tree at the edge of the forest northeast from the stockade, and they were sure that at least a half-dozen warriors were lying sheltered among its giant boughs, while they sent searching bullets into the inclosure. There had been some discussion about the tree at the time the settlement was built, but expert opinion held that the Indian weapons could not reach from so great a distance, and as the task of cutting so huge a trunk when time was needed, seemed too much they had left it, and now they saw their grievous and perhaps mortal error.
The side of the palisade facing the tree was untenable so long as the warriors held their position, and it was even dangerous to pass from one house to another. The terrors of the night, weighty because unknown, were gone, but the day had brought with it a more certain menace that all could see.
The leaders held a conference on the sheltered side of one of the houses, and their faces and their talk were full of gloom. The schoolmaster, Ross and Sol were there, and so were John Ware and Lucy's father. The schoolmaster, by nature and training a man of peace, was perhaps the most courageous of them all.
"It is evident that those savages have procured in some manner a number of our long-range Kentucky rifles," he said, "but they are no better than ours. Nor is it any farther from us to that tree than it is from that tree to us. Why can't our best marksmen pick them off?"
He looked with inquiry at Ross and Sol, who shook their heads and abated not a whit of their gloomy looks.
"They are too well sheltered there," replied Ross, "while we would not be if we should try to answer them. Our side would get killed while they wouldn't be hurt and we can't spare the men."
"But we must find a way out! We must get rid of them somehow!" exclaimed Mr. Ware.
"That's true," said Upton, and as he spoke they heard a bullet thud against the wall of the house. From the forest came a wild quavering yell of triumph, full of the most merciless menace. Mr. Ware and Mr. Upton shuddered. Each had a young daughter, and it was in the minds of each to slay her in the last resort if there should be no other way.
"If those fellows in the tree keep on driving us from the palisade," said Ross, setting his face in the grim manner of one who forces himself to tell the truth, "there's nothin' to prevent the main band from makin' an attack, and while the other fellows rain bullets on us they'll be inside the palisade."
They stared at each other in silent despair, and Ross going to the corner of the house, but keeping himself protected well, looked at the fatal tree. No one was firing, then, and he could see nothing among its branches. In the fresh green of its young foliage it looked like a huge cone set upon a giant stem, and Ross shook his fist at it in futile anger. Nor was a foe visible elsewhere. The entire savage army lay hidden in the forest and nothing fluttered or moved but the leaves and the grass.
The others, led by the same interest, followed Ross, and keeping to the safety of the walls, stole glances at the tree. As they looked they heard the faint report of a shot and a cry of death, and saw a brown body shoot down from the green cone of the tree to the ground, where it lay still.
"There is a marksman among us who can beat them at their own trick," cried the schoolmaster in exultation. "Who did it? Who fired that shot, Tom?"
Ross did not answer. First a look of wonder came upon his face, and then he began to study the forest, where all but nature was yet lifeless. The faint sound of a second shot came and what followed was a duplicate of the sequel to the first. Another brown body shot downward, and lay lifeless beside its fellow on the grass.
The master cried out once more in exultation, and wished to know why others within the palisade did not imitate the skillful sharpshooter. But Ross shook his head slowly and spoke these slow words:
"A great piece of luck has happened to us, Mr. Pennypacker, an' how it's happened I don't know, at least not yet. Them shots never come from any of our men. We've got a friend outside an' he's pickin' off them ambushed murderers one by one. The savages think we're doin' it, but they'll soon find out the difference."
There was a third shot and the tree ejected a third body.
"What wonderful shootin'!" exclaimed Ross in a tone of amazement. "Them shots come from a long distance, but all three of 'em plugged the mark to the center. Them savages was dead before they touched the ground. I never saw the like."
The others waited expectantly, as if he could give them an explanation, but if he had a thought in his mind he kept it to himself.
"There, they've found it out," he said, when a terrific yell full of anger came from the forest, "but they haven't got him, whoever he is. They'd shout in a different way if they had."
"Why do you say him?" asked Mr. Pennypacker. "Surely a single man has not been doing such daring and deadly work!"
"It's one man, because there are not two in all this wilderness who can shoot like that. I'd hate to be in the place of the savages left in that tree."
The wonder of the new and unknown ally soon spread through Wareville, and reached Lucy Upton as it reached others. A thought came to her and she was about to speak of it, but she stopped, fearing ridicule, and merely listened to the excited talk going on all about her.
An hour later a fourth Indian was shot from the tree, and less than fifteen minutes afterwards a fifth fell a victim to the terrible rifle. Then two, the only survivors, dropped from the boughs and ran for the forest. Ross, Sol and Paul Cotter were watching together and saw the flight.
"One of them brown rascals will never reach the woods," said Ross with the intuition of the borderer.
The foremost savage fell just at the edge of the forest, shot through the heart, and the other, the sole survivor of the tree, escaped behind the sheltering trunks.
The cry of the angry savages swelled into a terrible chorus and bullets beat upon the stockade, but the attack was quickly repulsed, and again quiet and treacherous peace settled down upon this little spot, this pin point in the mighty wilderness, whose struggle must be carried on unaided, and, in truth, unknown to all the rest of the world.
When the savages were driven back they melted again into the forest, and the old silence and peace laid hold of everything, the brilliant sunshine gilding every house, and dyeing into deeper colors the glowing tints of the wilderness. The huge tree, so fatal to those who had sought to use it, stood up, a great green cone, its branches waving softly before the wind.
In the little fortress the wonder and excitement yet prevailed, but mingled with it was a devout gratitude for this help from an unknown quarter which had been so timely and so effective. The spirits of the garrison, from the boldest ranger down to the most timid woman, took a sudden upward heave and they felt that they should surely repel every attack by the savage army.
The remainder of the day passed in silence and with the foe invisible, but the guard at the palisade, now safe from ambushed marksmen, relaxed its vigilance not at all. These men knew that they dealt with an enemy whose uncertainty made him all the more terrible, and they would not leave the issue to shifting chance.
The day waned, the night came, heavy and dark again, and full, as it was bound to be, of threats and omens for the beleaguered people. Lucy Upton with Mary Ware slipped to the little wooden embrasure where Paul Cotter was on watch.
They found Paul in the sheltered nook, watching the forest and the open, through the holes pierced for rifles, and he did not seek to hide his pleasure at seeing them. Two other men were there, but they were middle-aged and married, the fathers of increasing families, and they were not offended when Paul received a major share of attention.
He told them that all was quiet, his own eyes were keen, but they failed to mark anything unusual, and he believed that the savages, profiting by their costly experience, would make no new attempt yet a while. Then he spoke of the mysterious help that had come to them, and the same thought was in his mind and Lucy's, though neither spoke of it. They stood there a while, talking in low tones and looking for excuses to linger, when one of the older men moved a little and held up a warning hand. He had just taken his eyes from a loophole, and he whispered that he thought he had seen something pass in the shadow of the wall.
All in the embrasure became silent at once, and Lucy, brave as she was, could hear her heart beating. There was a slight noise on the outside of the wall, so faint that only keen ears could hear it, and then as they looked up they saw a hideous, painted face raised above the palisade.
One of the older men threw his rifle to his shoulder, but, quick as a flash, Paul struck his hand away from the trigger. He knew who had come, when he looked into the eyes that looked down at him, though he felt fear, too—he could not deny it—as he met their gaze, so fierce, so wild, so full of the primitive man.
"Don't you see?" he said, "it is Henry! Henry Ware!"
Even then Lucy Upton, intimate friend though she had been, scarcely saw, but laughing a low soft laugh of intense satisfaction, Henry dropped lightly among them. Good excuse had these men for not knowing him as his transformation was complete! He stood before them not a white man, but an Indian warrior, a prince of savages. His hair was drawn up in the defiant scalp lock, his face bore the war paint in all its variations and violent contrast of colors, the dark-green hunting shirt and leggings with their beaded decorations were gone, and in their place a red Indian blanket was wrapped around him, drooping in its graceful folds like a Roman toga.
His figure, erect in the moonlight, nearly a head above the others, had a certain savage majesty, and they gazed upon him in silence. He seemed to know what they felt and his eyes gleamed with pride out of his darkly painted face. He laughed again a low laugh, not like that of the white man, but the almost inaudible chuckle of the Indian.
"It had to be," he said, glancing down at his garb though not with shame. "To do what I wished to do, it was necessary to pass as an Indian, at least between times, and, as all the Shawnees do not know each other, this helped."
"It was you who shot the Indians in the tree; I knew it from the first," said the voice of the guide, Ross, over their shoulders. He had come so softly that they did not notice him before.
Henry did not reply, but laughed again the dry chuckle that made Lucy tremble she scarcely knew why, and ran his hand lovingly along the slender barrel of his rifle.
"At least you do not complain of it," he said presently.
"No, we do not," replied Ross, "an' I guess we won't. You saved us, that's sure. I've lived on the border all my life, but I never saw such shootin' before."
Then Henry gave some details of his work and Lucy Upton, watching him closely, saw how he had been engrossed by it. Paul Cotter too noticed, and feeling constraint, at least, demanded that Henry doff his savage disguise, put on white men's clothes and get something to eat.
He consented, though scarce seeing the necessity of it, but kept the Indian blanket close to hand, saying that he would soon need it again. But he was very gentle with his mother telling her that she need have no fear for him, that he knew all the wiles of the savage and more; they could never catch him and the outside was his place, as then he could be of far more service than if he were merely one of the garrison.
The news of Henry Ware's return was throughout the village in five minutes, and with it came the knowledge of his great deed. In the face of such a solid and valuable fact the vague charge that he was a renegade died. Even Braxton Wyatt did not dare to lift his voice to that effect again, but, with sly insinuation, he spoke of savages herding with savages, and of what might happen some day.
When night came Henry resuming his Indian garb and paint slipped out again, and so skillful was he that he seemed to melt away like a mist in the darkness.
The savage army beleaguering the colony now found that it was assailed by a mysterious enemy, one whom all their vigilance and skill could not catch. They lost warrior after warrior and many of them began to think Manitou hostile to them, but the leaders persisted with the siege. They wished to destroy utterly this white vanguard, and they would not return to their villages, far across the Ohio, until it was done.
They no longer made a direct attack upon the walls, but, forming a complete circle around, hung about at a convenient distance, waiting and hoping for thirst and famine to help them. The people believed themselves to have taken good precautions against these twin evils, but now a terrible misfortune befell them. No rain fell and the well inside the palisade ran dry. It was John Ware himself who first saw the coming of the danger and he tried to hide it, but it could not, from its very nature, be kept a secret long. The supply for each person was cut down one half and then one fourth, and that too would soon go, unless the welcome rains came; and the sky was without a cloud. Men who feared no physical danger saw those whom they loved growing pale and weak before their eyes, and they knew not what to do. It seemed that the place must fall without a blow from the enemy.