Kitabı oku: «The Scouts of the Valley», sayfa 10
Shif’less Sol himself, iron of body and soul, was shaken. He could not close his ears, if he would, to the cries that came from the fires, but he shut his eyes to keep out the demon dance. Nevertheless, he opened them again in a moment. The horrible fascination was too great. He saw Queen Esther still shaking her tomahawk, but as he looked she suddenly darted through the circle, warriors willingly giving way before her, and disappeared in the darkness. The scalp dance went on, but it had lost some of its fire and vigor.
Shif’less Sol felt relieved.
“She’s gone,” he whispered to Paul, and the boy, too, then opened his eyes. The rest of it, the mad whirlings and jumpings of the warriors, was becoming a blur before him, confused and without meaning.
Neither he nor Shif’less Sol knew how long they had been sitting there on the ground, although it had grown yet darker, when Braxton Wyatt thrust a violent foot against the shiftless one and cried:
“Get up! You’re wanted!”
A half dozen Seneca warriors were with him, and there was no chance of resistance. The two rose slowly to their feet, and walked where Braxton Wyatt led. The Senecas came on either side, and close behind them, tomahawks in their hands. Paul, the sensitive, who so often felt the impression of coming events from the conditions around him, was sure that they were marching to their fate. Death he did not fear so greatly, although he did not want to die, but when a shriek came to him from one of the fires that convulsive shudder shook him again from head to foot. Unconsciously he strained at his bound arms, not for freedom, but that he might thrust his fingers in his ears and shut out the awful sounds. Shif’less Sol, because he could not use his hands, touched his shoulder gently against Paul’s.
“Paul,” he whispered, “I ain’t sure that we’re goin’ to die, leastways, I still have hope; but ef we do, remember that we don’t have to die but oncet.”
“I’ll remember, Sol,” Paul whispered back.
“Silence, there!” exclaimed Braxton Wyatt. But the two had said all they wanted to say, and fortunately their senses were somewhat dulled. They had passed through so much that they were like those who are under the influence of opiates. The path was now dark, although both torches and fires burned in the distance. Presently they heard that chant with which they had become familiar, the dreadful notes of the hyena woman, and they knew that they were being taken into her presence, for what purpose they could not tell, although they were sure that it was a bitter one. As they approached, the woman’s chant rose to an uncommon pitch of frenzy, and Paul felt the blood slowly chilling within him.
“Get up there!” exclaimed Braxton Wyatt, and the Senecas gave them both a push. Other warriors who were standing at the edge of an open space seized them and threw them forward with much violence. When they struggled into a sitting position, they saw Queen Esther standing upon a broad flat rock and whirling in a ghastly dance that had in it something Oriental. She still swung the great war hatchet that seemed always to be in her hand. Her long black hair flew wildly about her head, and her red dress gleamed in the dusk. Surely no more terrible image ever appeared in the American wilderness! In front of her, lying upon the ground, were twenty bound Americans, and back of them were Iroquois in dozens, with a sprinkling of their white allies.
What it all meant, what was about to come to pass, nether Paul nor Shif’less Sol could guess, but Queen Esther sang:
We have found them, the Yengees
Who built their houses in the valley,
They came forth to meet us in battle,
Our rifles and tomahawks cut them down,
As the Yengees lay low the forest.
Victory and glory Aieroski gives to his children,
The Mighty Six Nations, greatest of men.
There will be feasting in the lodges of the Iroquois,
And scalps will hang on the high ridge pole,
But wolves will roam where the Yengees dwelt
And will gnaw the bones of them all,
Of the man, the woman, and the child.
Victory and glory Aieroski gives to his children,
The Mighty Six Nations, greatest of men.
Such it sounded to Shif’less Sol, who knew the tongue of the Iroquois, and so it went on, verse after verse, and at the end of each verse came the refrain, in which the warriors joined:
“Victory and glory Aieroski gives to his children. The mighty Six Nations, greatest of men.”
“What under the sun is she about?” whispered Shif’less Sol.
“It is a fearful face,” was Paul’s only reply.
Suddenly the woman, without stopping her chant, made a gesture to the warriors. Two powerful Senecas seized one of the bound prisoners, dragged him to his feet, and held him up before her. She uttered a shout, whirled the great tomahawk about her head, its blade glittering in the moonlight, and struck with all her might. The skull of the prisoner was cleft to the chin, and without a cry he fell at the feet of the woman who had killed him. Paul uttered a shout of horror, but it was lost in the joyful yells of the Iroquois, who, at the command of the woman, offered a second victim. Again the tomahawk descended, and again a man fell dead without a sound.
Shif’less Sol and Paul wrenched at their thongs, but they could not move them. Braxton Wyatt laughed aloud. It was strange to see how fast one with a bad nature could fall when the opportunities were spread before him. Now he was as cruel as the Indians themselves. Wilder and shriller grew the chant of the savage queen. She was intoxicated with blood. She saw it everywhere. Her tomahawk clove a third skull, a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, a seventh, and eighth. As fast as they fell the warriors at her command brought up new victims for her weapon. Paul shut his eyes, but he knew by the sounds what was passing. Suddenly a stern voice cried:
“Hold, woman! Enough of this! Will your tomahawk never be satisfied?”
Paul understood it, the meaning, but not the words. He opened his eyes and saw the great figure of Timmendiquas striding forward, his hand upraised in protest.
The woman turned her fierce gaze upon the young chief. “Timmendiquas,” she said, “we are the Iroquois, and we are the masters. You are far from your own land, a guest in our lodges, and you cannot tell those who have won the victory how they shall use it. Stand back!”
A loud laugh came from the Iroquois. The fierce old chiefs, Hiokatoo and Sangerachte, and a dozen warriors thrust themselves before Timmendiquas. The woman resumed her chant, and a hundred throats pealed out with her the chorus:
Victory and glory Aieroski gives to his children The mighty Six Nations, greatest of men.
She gave the signal anew. The ninth victim stood before her, and then fell, cloven to the chin; then the tenth, and the eleventh, and the twelfth, and the thirteenth, and the fourteenth, and the fifteenth, and the sixteenth-sixteen bound men killed by one woman in less than fifteen minutes. The four in that group who were left had all the while been straining fearfully at their bonds. Now they had slipped or broken them, and, springing to their feet, driven on by the mightiest of human impulses, they dashed through the ring of Iroquois and into the forest. Two were hunted down by the warriors and killed, but the other two, Joseph Elliott and Lebbeus Hammond, escaped and lived to be old men, feeling that life could never again hold for them anything so dreadful as that scene at “The Bloody Rock.”
A great turmoil and confusion arose as the prisoners fled and the Indians pursued. Paul and Shif’less Sol; full of sympathy and pity for the fugitives and having felt all the time that their turn, too, would come under that dreadful tomahawk, struggled to their feet. They did not see a form slip noiselessly behind them, but a sharp knife descended once, then twice, and the bands of both fell free.
“Run! run!” exclaimed the voice of Timmendiquas, low but penetrating. “I would save you from this!”
Amid the darkness and confusion the act of the great Wyandot was not seen by the other Indians and the renegades. Paul flashed him one look of gratitude, and then he and Shif’less Sol darted away, choosing a course that led them from the crowd in pursuit of the other flying fugitives.
At such a time they might have secured a long lead without being noticed, had it not been for the fierce swarm of old squaws who were first in cruelty that night. A shrill wild howl arose, and the pointing fingers of the old women showed to the warriors the two in flight. At the same time several of the squaws darted forward to intercept the fugitives.
“I hate to hit a woman,” breathed Shif’less Sol to Paul, “but I’m goin’ to do it now.”
A hideous figure sprang before them. Sol struck her face with his open hand, and with a shriek she went down. He leaped over her, although she clawed at his feet as he passed, and ran on, with Paul at his side. Shots were now fired at him, but they went wild, but Paul, casting a look backward out of the corner of his eye, saw that a real pursuit, silent and deadly, had begun. Five Mohawk warriors, running swiftly, were only a few hundred yards away. They carried rifle, tomahawk, and knife, and Paul and Shif’less Sol were unarmed. Moreover, they were coming fast, spreading out slightly, and the shiftless one, able even at such a time to weigh the case coolly, saw that the odds were against them. Yet he would not despair. Anything might happen. It was night. There was little organization in the army of the Indians and of their white allies, which was giving itself up to the enjoyment of scalps and torture. Moreover, he and Paul were, animated by the love of life, which is always stronger than the desire to give death.
Their flight led them in a diagonal line toward the mountains. Only once did the pursuers give tongue. Paul tripped over a root, and a triumphant yell came from the Mohawks. But it merely gave him new life. He recovered himself in an instant and ran faster. But it was terribly hard work. He could hear Shif’less Sol’s sobbing breath by his side, and he was sure that his own must have the same sound for his comrade.
“At any rate one uv ‘em is beat,” gasped Shif’less Sol. “Only four are ban-in’ on now.”
The ground rose a little and became rougher. The lights from the Indian fires had sunk almost out of sight behind them, and a dense thicket lay before them. Something stirred in the thicket, and the eyes of Shif’less Sol caught a glimpse of a human shoulder. His heart sank like a plummet in a pool. The Indians were ahead of them. They would be caught, and would be carried back to become the victims of the terrible tomahawk.
The figure in the bushes rose a little higher, the muzzle of a rifle was projected, and flame leaped from the steel tube.
But it was neither Shif’less Sol nor Paul who fell. They heard a cry behind them, and when Shif’less Sol took a hasty glance backward he saw one of the Mohawks fall. The three who were left hesitated and stopped. When a second shot was fired from the bushes and another Mohawk went down, the remaining two fled.
Shif’less Sol understood now, and he rushed into the bushes, dragging Paul after him. Henry, Tom, and Long Jim rose up to receive them.
“So you wuz watchin’ over us!” exclaimed the shiftless one joyously. “It wuz you that clipped off the first Mohawk, an’ we didn’t even notice the shot.”
“Thank God, you were here!” exclaimed Paul. “You don’t know what Sol and I have seen!”
Overwrought, he fell forward, but his comrades caught him.
CHAPTER XI. THE MELANCHOLY FLIGHT
Paul revived in a few minutes. They were still lying in the bushes, and when he was able to stand up again, they moved at an angle several hundred yards before they stopped. One pistol was thrust into Paul’s hand and another into that of Shif’less Sol.
“Keep those until we can get rifles for you,” said Henry. “You may need ‘em to-night.”
They crouched down in the thicket and looked back toward the Indian camp. The warriors whom they had repulsed were not returning with help, and, for the moment, they seemed to have no enemy to fear, yet they could still see through the woods the faint lights of the Indian camps, and to Paul, at least, came the echoes of distant cries that told of things not to be written.
“We saw you captured, and we heard Sol’s warning cry,” said Henry. “There was nothing to do but run. Then we hid and waited a chance for rescue.”
“It would never have come if it had not been for Timmendiquas,” said Paul.
“Timmendiquas!” exclaimed Henry.
“Yes, Timmendiquas,” said Paul, and then he told the story of “The Bloody Rock,” and how, in the turmoil and excitement attending the flight of the last four, Timmendiquas had cut the bonds of Shif’less Sol and himself.
“I think the mind o’ White Lightnin’, Injun ez he is,” said Shif’less Sol, “jest naterally turned aginst so much slaughter an’ torture o’ prisoners.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” said Henry.
“‘Pears strange to me,” said Long Jim Hart, “that Timmendiquas was made an Injun. He’s jest the kind uv man who ought to be white, an’ he’d be pow’ful useful, too. I don’t jest eggzactly understan’ it.”
“He has certainly saved the lives of at least three of us,” said Henry. “I hope we will get a chance to pay him back in full.”
“But he’s the only one,” said Shif’less Sol, thinking of all that he had seen that night. “The Iroquois an’ the white men that’s allied with ‘em won’t ever get any mercy from me, ef any uv ‘em happen to come under my thumb. I don’t think the like o’ this day an’ night wuz ever done on this continent afore. I’m for revenge, I am, like that place where the Bible says, ‘an eye for an eye, an’ a tooth for a tooth,’ an’ I’m goin’ to stay in this part o’ the country till we git it!”
It was seldom that Shif’less Sol spoke with so much passion and energy.
“We’re all going to stay with you, Sol,” said Henry. “We’re needed here. I think we ought to circle about the fort, slip in if we can, and fight with the defense.”
“Yes, we’ll do that,” said Shif’less Sol, “but the Wyoming fort can’t ever hold out. Thar ain’t a hundred men left in it fit to fight, an’ thar are more than than a thousand howlin’ devils outside ready to attack it. Thar may be worse to come than anything we’ve yet seen.”
“Still, we’ll go in an’ help,” said Henry. “Sol, when you an’ Paul have rested a little longer we’ll make a big loop around in the woods, and come up to the fort on the other side.”
They were in full accord, and after an hour in the bushes, where they lay completely hidden, recovering their vitality and energy, they undertook to reach the fort and cabins inclosed by the palisades. Paul was still weak from shock, but Shif’less Sol had fully recovered. Neither bad weapons, but they were sure that the want could be supplied soon. They curved around toward the west, intending to approach the fort from the other side, but they did not wholly lose sight of the fires, and they heard now and then the triumphant war whoop. The victors were still engaged in the pleasant task of burning the prisoners to death. Little did the five, seeing and feeling only their part of it there in the dark woods, dream that the deeds of this day and night would soon shock the whole civilized world, and remain, for generations, a crowning act of infamy. But they certainly felt it deeply enough, and in each heart burned a fierce desire for revenge upon the Iroquois.
It was almost midnight when they secured entrance into the fort, which was filled with grief and wailing. That afternoon more than one hundred and fifty women within those walls had been made widows, and six hundred children had been made orphans. But few men fit to bear arms were left for its defense, and it was certain that the allied British and Indian army would easily take it on the morrow. A demand for its surrender in the name of King George III of England had already been made, and, sitting at a little rough table in the cabin of Thomas Bennett, the room lighted only by a single tallow wick, Colonel Butler and Colonel Dennison were writing an agreement that the fort be surrendered the next day, with what it should contain. But Colonel Butler put his wife on a horse and escaped with her over the mountains.
Stragglers, evading the tomahawk in the darkness, were coming in, only to be surrendered the next day; others were pouring forth in a stream, seeking the shelter of the mountains and the forest, preferring any dangers that might be found there to the mercies of the victors.
When Shif’less Sol learned that the fort was to be given up, he said:
“It looks ez ef we had escaped from the Iroquois jest in time to beg ‘em to take us back.”
“I reckon I ain’t goin’ to stay ‘roun’ here while things are bein’ surrendered,” said Long Jim Hart.
“I’ll do my surrenderin’ to Iroquois when they’ve got my hands an’ feet tied, an’ six or seven uv ‘em are settin’ on my back,” said Tom Ross.
“We’ll leave as soon as we can get arms for Sol and Paul,” said Henry. “Of course it would be foolish of us to stay here and be captured again. Besides, we’ll be needed badly enough by the women and children that are going.”
Good weapons were easily obtained in the fort. It was far better to let Sol and Paul have them than to leave them for the Indians. They were able to select two fine rifles of the Kentucky pattern, long and slender barreled, a tomahawk and knife for each, and also excellent double-barreled pistols. The other three now had double-barreled pistols, too. In addition they resupplied themselves with as much ammunition as scouts and hunters could conveniently carry, and toward morning left the fort.
Sunrise found them some distance from the palisades, and upon the flank of a frightened crowd of fugitives. It was composed of one hundred women and children and a single man, James Carpenter, who was doing his best to guide and protect them. They were intending to flee through the wilderness to the Delaware and Lehigh settlements, chiefly Fort Penn, built by Jacob Stroud, where Stroudsburg now is.
When the five, darkened by weather and looking almost like Indians themselves, approached, Carpenter stepped forward and raised his rifle. A cry of dismay rose from the melancholy line, a cry so intensely bitter that it cut Henry to the very heart. He threw up his hand, and exclaimed in a loud voice:
“We are friends, not Indians or Tories! We fought with you yesterday, and we are ready to fight for you now!”
Carpenter dropped the muzzle of the rifle. He had fought in the battle, too, and he recognized the great youth and his comrades who had been there with him.
“What do you want of us?” asked he.
“Nothing,” replied Henry, “except to help you.”
Carpenter looked at them with a kind of sad pathos.
“You don’t belong here in Wyoming,” he said, “and there’s nothing to make you stick to us. What are you meaning to do?”
“We will go with you wherever you intend to go,” replied Henry; “do fighting for you if you need it, and hunt game for you, which you are certain to need.”
The weather-beaten face of the farmer worked.
“I thought God had clean deserted us,” he said, “but I’m ready to take it back. I reckon that he has sent you five to help me with all these women and little ones.”
It occurred to Henry that perhaps God, indeed, had sent them for this very purpose, but he replied simply:
“You lead on, and we’ll stay in the rear and on the sides to watch for the Indians. Draw into the woods, where we’ll be hidden.”
Carpenter, obscure hero, shouldered his rifle again, and led on toward the woods. The long line of women and children followed. Some of the women carried in their arms children too small to walk. Yet they were more hopeful now when they saw that the five were friends. These lithe, active frontiersmen, so quick, so skillful, and so helpful, raised their courage. Yet it was a most doleful flight. Most of these women had been made widows the day before, some of them had been made widows and childless at the same time, and wondered why they should seek to live longer. But the very mental stupor of many of them was an aid. They ceased to cry out, and some even ceased to be afraid.
Henry, Shif’less Sol, and Tom dropped to the rear. Paul and Long Jim were on either flank, while Carpenter led slowly on toward the mountains.
“‘Pears to me,” said Tom, “that the thing fur us to do is to hurry ‘em up ez much ez possible.”
“So the Indians won’t see ‘em crossing the plain,” said Henry. “We couldn’t defend them against a large force, and it would merely be a massacre. We must persuade them to walk faster.”
Shif’less Sol was invaluable in this crisis. He could talk forever in his-placid way, and, with his gentle encouragement, mild sarcasm, and anecdotes of great feminine walkers that he had known, he soon had them moving faster.
Henry and Tom dropped farther to the rear. They could see ahead of them the long dark line, coiling farther into the woods, but they could also see to right and left towers of smoke rising in the clear morning sunlight. These, they knew, came from burning houses, and they knew, also, that the valley would be ravaged from end to end and from side to side. After the surrender of the fort the Indians would divide into small bands, going everywhere, and nothing could escape them.
The sun rose higher, gilding the earth with glowing light, as if the black tragedy had never happened, but the frontiersmen recognized their greatest danger in this brilliant morning. Objects could be seen at a great distance, and they could be seen vividly.
Keen of sight and trained to know what it was they saw, Henry, Sol, and Tom searched the country with their eyes, on all sides. They caught a distant glimpse of the Susquehanna, a silver spot among some trees, and they saw the sunlight glancing off the opposite mountains, but for the present they saw nothing that seemed hostile.
They allowed the distance between them and the retreating file to grow until it was five or six hundred yards, and they might have let it grow farther, but Henry made a signal, and the three lay down in the grass.
“You see ‘em, don’t you!” the youth whispered to his comrade.
“Yes, down thar at the foot o’ that hillock,” replied Shif’less Sol; “two o’ em, an’ Senecas, I take it.”
“They’ve seen that crowd of women and children,” said Henry.
It was obvious that the flying column was discovered. The two Indians stepped upon the hillock and gazed under their hands. It was too far away for the three to see their faces, but they knew the joy that would be shown there. The two could return with a few warriors and massacre them all.
“They must never get back to the other Indians with their news,” whispered Henry. “I hate to shoot men from ambush, but it’s got to be done. Wait, they’re coming a little closer.”
The two Senecas advanced about thirty yards, and stopped again.
“S’pose you fire at the one on the right, Henry,” said Tom, “an’ me an’ Sol will take the one to the left.”
“All right,” said Henry. “Fire!”
They wasted no time, but pulled trigger. The one at whom Henry had aimed fell, but the other, uttering a cry, made off, wounded, but evidently with plenty of strength left.
“We mustn’t let him escape! We mustn’t let him carry a warning!” cried Henry.
But Shif’less Sol and Tom Ross were already in pursuit, covering the ground with long strides, and reloading as they ran. Under ordinary circumstances no one of the three would have fired at a man running for his life, but here the necessity was vital. If he lived, carrying the tale that he had to tell, a hundred innocent ones might perish. Henry followed his comrades, reloading his own rifle, also, but he stayed behind. The Indian had a good lead, and he was gaining, as the others were compelled to check speed somewhat as they put the powder and bullets in their rifles. But Henry was near enough to Shif’less Sol and Silent Tom to hear them exchange a few words.
“How far away is that savage?” asked Shif’less Sol.
“Hundred and eighty yards,” said Tom Ross.
“Well, you take him in the head, and I’ll take him in the body.”
Henry saw the two rifle barrels go up and two flashes of flame leap from the muzzles. The Indian fell forward and lay still. They went up to him, and found that he was shot through the head and also through the body.
“We may miss once, but we don’t twice,” said Tom Ross.
The human mind can be influenced so powerfully by events that the three felt no compunction at all at the shooting of this fleeing Indian. It was but a trifle compared with what they had seen the day and night before.
“We’d better take the weapons an’ ammunition o’ both uv ‘em,” said Sol. “They may be needed, an’ some o’ the women in that crowd kin shoot.”
They gathered up the arms, powder, and ball, and waited a little to see whether the shots had been heard by any other Indians, but there was no indication of the presence of more warriors, and the rejoined the fugitives. Long Jim had dropped back to the end of the line, and when he saw that his comrades carried two extra rifles, he understood.
“They didn’t give no alarm, did they?” he asked in a tone so low that none of the fugitives could hear.
“They didn’t have any chance,” replied Henry. “We’ve brought away all their weapons and ammunition, but just say to the women that we found them in an abandoned house.”
The rifles and the other arms were given to the boldest and most stalwart of the women, and they promised to use them if the need came. Meanwhile the flight went on, and the farther it went the sadder it became. Children became exhausted, and had to be carried by people so tired that they could scarcely walk themselves. There was nobody in the line who had not lost some beloved one on that fatal river bank, killed in battle, or tortured to death. As they slowly ascended the green slope of the mountain that inclosed a side of the valley, they looked back upon ruin and desolation. The whole black tragedy was being consummated. They could see the houses in flames, and they knew that the Indian war parties were killing and scalping everywhere. They knew, too, that other bodies of fugitives, as stricken as their own, were fleeing into the mountains, they scarcely knew whither.
As they paused a few moments and looked back, a great cry burst from the weakest of the women and children. Then it became a sad and terrible wail, and it was a long time before it ceased. It was an awful sound, so compounded of despair and woe and of longing for what they had lost that Henry choked, and the tears stood in Paul’s eyes. But neither the five nor Carpenter made any attempt to check the wailing. They thought it best for them to weep it out, but they hurried the column as much as they could, often carrying some of the smaller children themselves. Paul and Long Jim were the best as comforters. The two knew how, each in his own way, to soothe and encourage. Carpenter, who knew the way to Fort Penn, led doggedly on, scarcely saying a word. Henry, Shif’less Sol, and Tom were the rear guard, which was, in this case, the one of greatest danger and responsibility.
Henry was thankful that it was only early summer the Fourth of July, the second anniversary of the Declaration of Independence-and that the foliage was heavy and green on the slopes of the mountain. In this mass of greenery the desolate column was now completely hidden from any observer in the valley, and he believed that other crowds of fugitives would be hidden in the same manner. He felt sure that no living human being would be left in the valley, that it would be ravaged from end to end and then left to desolation, until new people, protected by American bayonets, should come in and settle it again.
At last they passed the crest of the ridge, and the fires in the valley, those emblems of destruction, were hidden. Between them and Fort Penn, sixty miles away, stretched a wilderness of mountain, forest, and swamp. But the five welcomed the forest. A foe might lie there in ambush, but they could not see the fugitives at a distance. What the latter needed now was obscurity, the green blanket of the forest to hide them. Carpenter led on over a narrow trail; the others followed almost in single file now, while the five scouted in the woods on either flank and at the rear. Henry and Shif’less Sol generally kept together, and they fully realized the overwhelming danger should an Indian band, even as small as ten or a dozen warriors, appear. Should the latter scatter, it would be impossible to protect all the women and children from their tomahawks.
The day was warm, but the forest gave them coolness as well as shelter. Henry and Sol were seldom so far back that they could not see the end of the melancholy line, now moving slowly, overborne by weariness. The shiftless one shook his head sadly.
“No matter what happens, some uv ‘em will never get out o’ these woods.”
His words came true all too soon. Before the afternoon closed, two women, ill before the flight, died of terror and exhaustion, and were buried in shallow graves under the trees. Before dark a halt was made at the suggestion of Henry, and all except Carpenter and the scouts sat in a close, drooping group. Many of the children cried, though the women had all ceased to weep. They had some food with them, taken in the hurried flight, and now the men asked them to eat. Few could do it, and others insisted on saving what little they had for the children. Long Jim found a spring near by, and all drank at it.
The six men decided that, although night had not yet come, it would be best to remain there until the morning. Evidently the fugitives were in no condition, either mental or physical, to go farther that day, and the rest was worth more than the risk.
When this decision was announced to them, most of the women took it apathetically. Soon they lay down upon a blanket, if one was to be had; otherwise, on leaves and branches. Again Henry thanked God that it was summer, and that these were people of the frontier, who could sleep in the open. No fire was needed, and, outside of human enemies, only rain was to be dreaded.
