CHAPTER XXVIN A FOREST FIRE
Thisperiod has well been called the “dark and bloody” years of life in Kentucky. Raids by the Indians occurred frequently, not only at Boonesborough, but also at the other settlements, until more than one pioneer became so disheartened that he gave up the contest and returned to the East.
The war with England was at its height and the red men knew that it was impossible for the colonists to send any troops to the West to subdue them. More than this, the English were only too glad to give the Indians a hand against the settlers at every opportunity.
Daniel Boone felt that a stand must be taken, and the Indians must be taught a lesson they would not readily forget. He was very silent on the march, but his head was busy with his plans.
“I reckon he means business this trip,” observed Joe to one of the others.
“That he does, lad,” answered the pioneer. “And can you blame him?”
“Blame him? No, indeed, Mr. Pembly. We have good cause to bring the redskins to terms.”
“To my mind we have a hard fight afore us,” went on Andrew Pembly. “The Injuns must know we are after ’em.”
“Perhaps not.”
The way was rough, and more than once the party had to make a détour, to avoid some great fallen monarch of the forest, or get out of the way of some sharp rocks next to impossible to climb over.
The pioneers did not keep very close together, and presently Joe found himself in the company of three others on the side of a little cliff fronting a small gully thick with brushwood and weeds.
Joe had dropped a little behind, and was on the point of starting to catch up when he heard a faint sound in the gully.
“What was that?” was the question he asked himself.
Instantly he thought of but two things, a wild animal or an Indian. The sound must have come from one or the other.
“I’ll have to investigate,” he reasoned.
He would have called to his companions, butthey had gone ahead, and were out of sight around the end of the little cliff.
“If I call out loud it may serve as a warning to some enemy,” he thought.
Gun in hand, he stepped nearer to the gully, and peered searchingly among the brushwood and weeds.
At first he could see nothing, but at last he made out a dark object lying in the midst of a clump of bushes.
“A man, or I am greatly mistaken,” he told himself. “But if he is a white man, what is he doing there?”
Not to be taken by surprise, Joe dropped into the bushes himself, expecting to crawl away and tell his friends of his discovery.
But just as he was on the point of leaving the spot he heard the man below give a prolonged groan.
“Help! help!” he murmured feebly. “For the sake of Heaven, help me!”
“What is the matter with you?” called out the youth.
“An English voice! Heaven be praised. Help me, please!”
“I say, what is the matter with you?” repeated the young pioneer.
“I am badly wounded in the leg. I have beenin this dismal hole three days, and I am half starved. Help me!”
“I certainly will,” answered Joe, and went forward boldly, although with his gun ready for use, in case of possible treachery.
As he got closer to the sufferer he recognized the man as a hunter named Brinker, one who had spent considerable time at Boonesborough the year before. The hunter was indeed in a sad plight, and with him walking was entirely out of the question. All that had passed his lips for three days was a biscuit he had happened to have in his game bag, and some water he had found in a nearby hollow.
“Well, you certainly are in a bad fix,” said Joe kindly. “Wait until I tell some of the others, and then we’ll try and do what we can for you.”
“Please don’t go away too far,” pleaded Brinker.
“I shall not.”
Joe ran forward with all speed, and soon caught up to those who had gone ahead. He reported what he had discovered, and four men went back with him to Brinker’s assistance.
When they reached the sufferer they found he had fainted from exhaustion, and it took tender nursing to bring him around. His wound waswashed and bound up, and he was given some liquor.
“I’m downright glad you came,” he said, when he could speak again. “I don’t reckon as how I could have held out another day.”
“How came you there, Brinker?” asked Daniel Boone, who had come up to interview the man.
“It’s a long story, Colonel. I was out hunting deer when I ran into a party of eighteen or twenty redskins. They were encamped in a hollow, and I came on ’em before I knew what was up.”
“And they started to capture you?”
“Three of ’em did capture me, but I knocked one of ’em over and broke away. They fired on me, and one shot passed through my hair.” The hunter pointed to where several locks had been cut away. “It was a close hair-cut, Colonel.”
“But how did you get hit in the leg?”
“That came later. I got away, as I said, and hid in a hollow log. But the redskins followed my trail, and I had to leave the log and take to the woods. When I came out on the cliff one of ’em took a long shot at me with a rifle, and hit me as you see. I fell off the cliff, and nearly broke my other leg doing it. Then I crawled into the bushes and laid low. They tramped all around the spot, but good luck was with me, and theypassed me by. They might have remained around here only, I reckon, they knew you were on the trail,” concluded Brinker.
“We’ll have to send you back to the fort,” said Colonel Boone. “You are not fit to go forward with us.”
“Can you send me back?”
“I think so. There are two others going back. They can take you.”
Brinker was then questioned concerning the Indians he had encountered. He said they were part of Long Knife’s warriors, but that the chief had not been with them.
“They had two captives with them,” he continued.
“Two captives!” exclaimed Joe. “Who were they?”
“I didn’t git a good look at ’em, lad. They were a man and a woman.”
“Perhaps the woman was my mother.”
“Is your mother missing?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I didn’t see the woman very closely. Fact is, I had all I could do to get away. They wanted to either kill or capture me the worst way,” added Brinker.
“Then you can’t describe the prisoners at all?”
“The man was tall, and looked rather old.The woman was sitting down, and had her back to me, so I can’t tell how tall she was, or how she looked.”
This was all Brinker could tell, and he was so weak that to make him talk more would have been cruel. He was placed in charge of a pioneer who had once served as a nurse in an army hospital, and later on returned to Boonesborough with the others Colonel Boone had mentioned.
“He can be thankful he escaped with his life,” said Joe to Andrew Pembly.
“He can thank you for finding him,” answered the pioneer. “Had you passed him by he would most likely have died in the hollow.”
“I wish he had seen that woman who was a captive.”
“I don’t think it was your mother, Joe. She is probably miles and miles away from here.”
“That is true. But she might have heard something of my mother—through the Indians.”
“’Taint likely—the redskins won’t tell much about their prisoners. They are too afraid of having their captives followed up by friends.”
The march was once more forward, over a stretch of ground thick with thorny underbrush where more than one hunting garb became badly torn. Here Joe took two tumbles, and scratched both his hands and his face. But he did not complain,knowing that many of his companions were in a similar plight.
At the end of the day the hunters found themselves on the bank of a stream that flowed into the main river a dozen miles away. It was an ideal spot for resting, and a long and careful search revealed no Indians in the immediate vicinity.
Nothing came to disturb the camp that night, although a strict watch was kept, and by daybreak the hunters were again on the march. Soon they struck the trail of the Indians, and Daniel Boone calculated that the enemy were not less than two hundred in number. Only a few were on horseback.
As the hunters advanced scouts were sent out ahead, and presently two of these came running back with the information that the Indians were making for a long valley straight ahead.
“That is Bear Valley,” said Daniel Boone. “I know it well. Beyond is a heavy forest. If they reach that they will surely get away. We must try to come up to them before the end of the valley is reached.”
It was a hot, dry day, but a lively breeze was blowing, which made the air seem somewhat cooler than it really was. The breeze had been on the hunters’ backs, but now it began toswerve around until it came almost from their front.
More than half the valley had been traveled when the hunters came to a somewhat narrow pass, hemmed in with hemlocks and cedars, and large quantities of small brush. As they entered this pass Boone suddenly called a halt.
“Stop, men!” came in a loud voice, and then he continued, “What do you smell?”
“Smoke!” came promptly from a dozen of the party.
“It’s coming from the left, colonel.”
“It’s coming from dead ahead.”
“I believe they have set the forest on fire,” went on Daniel Boone.
“That is just what they have,” cried one old frontiersman. “And set it on fire in half a dozen places, too!”
The hunters could now see the smoke plainly. It came from ahead and from both sides of the valley. The brisk breeze was fanning the flames, which spread with marvelous rapidity.
“They want to hem us in,” said Colonel Boone. “Well, we’ll see if they are able to do it.”
The Indians were shouting defiance to their enemies. They had withdrawn to the sides of the valley, and now they sent in a dozen or more shots from the few rifles they possessed.
With fire ahead and on both sides, there was nothing to do but retreat, and, much as he hated to give the order, Boone told his men to fall back.
“We can circle the hill on our left,” he said. “I know a deer trail running to the river ahead.”
The whole party turned and began to retrace their steps. The smoke was thick about them, and the breeze began to send the burning embers flying in all directions.
“I wonder if we’ll be able to get out of this alive,” said Joe.
“We’ll be all right unless the redskins have set fire to the brush behind us,” answered one of the hunters.
None of the party lost time in turning back. The breeze was increasing, and soon the thick smoke swept downward, filling the narrow valley from end to end.
“Oh, but this is awful!” gasped Joe, and then began to cough.
“Don’t stop, men!” shouted Daniel Boone. “Don’t stop, or it may be the death of you!”
With so many men crowding the narrow trail, progress was not near as rapid as it might otherwise have been, and long before the back end of the valley was gained more than one settler was ready to drop from the effects of the smoke.
Joe went on half blindly, the tears running from his eyes. He knew that the fire was sweeping down from the other end of the valley, and that the breeze would soon carry it in their very midst unless they made a rapid escape.
He was almost ready to drop, when the wind shifted, and for a minute gave him and the others a draught of fresh air. This revived all of the hunters, and they pushed onward with renewed energy.
“If we ever git out o’ this air trap, them redskins shall pay dearly fer the trick,” announced one old frontiersman, and many of the party agreed with him.
The wind was shifting to the other end of the valley, and now came a cry from ahead that caused every heart in the party to jump with renewed fear.
“They have set fire to this end of the valley, too! We are hemmed in by the flames!”
The report was true. Some of the Indians had secreted themselves in the bushes, and they had not been discovered by the guards sent out by Boone. As soon as the whites had passed, they had set fire to some bushes in the vicinity, and then ran around to the front by means of a narrow trail which was well known to them leading over one of the hills.
“We’ll have to make a dash right through the fire, I am afraid,” said Daniel Boone.
“Unless we can find some spot where the bushes haven’t caught yet,” said another old hunter.
“Here is a small brook!” cried a third. “I’m going to souse myself in that.”
This last suggestion was considered good, and in a twinkling all of the party had leaped into the brook and wet themselves from head to feet.
It was well that they did this, for the burning embers were now blowing about more thickly than ever. Joe caught some of the fire on his neck and some on his left hand, and his eyebrows were singed.
It was now a mad rush, each man for himself. The crowd had scattered to the right and the left of two patches of brushwood that were blazing fiercely.
At last Joe found himself face to face with the belt of fire. It stretched far to the left and the right.
“No loophole there,” he thought grimly, but a moment later saw a spot where the brushwood had already burnt to the ground. The spot was a hundred feet wide and still hot and smoking, yet he did not hesitate, but leaped over itwith the best rate of speed that he could command.
With his eyes half filled with smoke, the young pioneer could see but little, and consequently he did not notice a sink-hole in the very center of the burnt-over tract. Down he went into this morass up to his waist, and there he stuck as firmly as if in so much glue.
It was a moment of peril, and it must be admitted that Joe’s heart sank within him. The smoke was rolling all around him, and he expected to be smothered in short order. In vain he tugged to get of the sink-hole. The more he tried the deeper he appeared to sink.
“Help! help!” he cried, with all the vigor that he could command. “Help! I am fast in a sink-hole!”
Again and again he cried out, but nobody appeared to hear him, and through the drifting and swirling smoke he could see next to nothing.
In the meantime the hunters were rushing in half a dozen directions. The majority were following the watercourse, and by bending low in this they managed to pass the belt of fire. The Indians had piled some brushwood over the stream and set it on fire, but this was kicked away by the running settlers.
Joe felt his senses leaving him, when he fanciedhe saw a man running close to where he was held a prisoner.
“Help!” he called feebly. “Please help me!”
“Who calls?” came back, in a thick voice, as though the speaker himself could scarcely use his voice.
“It is I, Joe Winship. I am fast in a sink-hole. Help me!”
“Where are you, Joe?” and now the lad recognized the voice of Daniel Boone.
“Here! Oh, Colonel Boone, save me!”
The form came closer, and presently Joe saw Boone. The young pioneer stretched out his arms eagerly.
“Hullo, this is a bad fix,” murmured Boone, as he took in the situation at a glance.
Coming to the edge of the sink-hole he placed his feet on the firmest spot to be found, and then caught Joe under the arms. A long, hard pull, that made the lad think he was going to be disjointed, followed, and then up he came.
“Can you stand?” asked Daniel Boone, and then as he saw the boy falter, he caught up the body, slung it over his shoulder, and made off amid the smoke and the flying embers.
In another five minutes both Boone and Joe were out of danger. They had reached a spot a fair distance from the burning forest, and eachsquatted in the brook up to their armpits and washed their flushed and scorched faces and hands in the cool liquid. About half of the party that had gone out after the Indians were doing the same. What had become of the other hunters nobody knew.
It was not until nightfall that Daniel Boone was able to get his men together again. It was found that one had been burnt up by the fire, and half a dozen seriously injured. Three Indians had been shot, but the others had departed for parts unknown.
The body of the dead man had to be taken back to the settlement, and the wounded cared for, so that immediate pursuit of the Indians was out of the question—and, indeed, nobody of the party just then felt like moving. The smoke in the valley was as thick as ever, and this now covered both hills.
“We will go into camp here,” said Colonel Boone, and this was done, and the pioneers rested for the best part of a week. During those days the injured returned home, and ten other settlers came from another settlement to take their places.
On the eighth day the men under Boone prepared to move forward once again. A heavy rain had drowned out the forest fire, and thetrail over one of the hills was found to be perfectly safe to travel.
The order to march had just been given when one of the sharpshooters who was in advance came running back with news of importance.
“A body of white men are approaching!” he cried. “And unless I am greatly mistaken they are the men who left the fort last fall to see if they couldn’t rescue the captives the Indians took at that time.”