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Updated: May 16, 2025
The warriors did not intend to be surprised by another dash from the fort. Henry indulged himself in silent laughter. His comrades and he had certainly put a spoke in the savage wheel. He watched the boats a few moments and in one of them he saw two white faces that he recognized. They belonged to Braxton Wyatt and Blackstaffe. Again Henry laughed silently.
Perhaps they had seen the trail of the five somewhere, and were going south to close up the broken segment of the circle there. "They've probably had a hint from Blackstaffe," said Henry. "Next to Simon Girty he's the shrewdest and most cunning of all the renegades. He has reasoning power, and knowing that we'll take the bolder method, he's probably concluded that we've followed Wyatt's band."
Henry meanwhile was racing through the forest and toward the north, always toward the north, and as he ran he shook with laughter. He had seen the look of dismay on the faces of the Indians and he rejoiced. He was sorry that he had not seen Braxton Wyatt and Blackstaffe too.
But the Indians, who do not despise comfort when there is no danger in it, gathered in a cup in the side of the hill, beyond rifle shot from the hollow, and built a fire. Henry, from his lair in the bushes, saw them distinctly, about thirty warriors, mostly of the Shawnee tribe, with their head chief, Red Eagle himself, present as a leader, and the two renegades Braxton Wyatt and Blackstaffe.
"It seems strange," said Blackstaffe, thoughtfully, "that we have not been able to take him, when more than a thousand warriors were in the hunt, carried on without stopping, except during the big snow and the big freeze. And the warriors are the best in the west, men who can come pretty near seeing a trail through the air, men without fear.
He stirred the grass and weeds too much, and a bullet, fired by calculation of his movements, and not by any sight of his figure, slew him where he lay. Then a great and terrible fear seized upon the Indians as well as Blackstaffe. Such deadly shooting as this was beyond their comprehension. The bullets from the rifles of the unseen marksmen were guided by the hand of Manitou.
The irritable red of Alloway's face turned to a deeper tint, but he controlled himself. "Doubtless you are right, Blackstaffe," he said, "but we are here at last." Wyatt had been speaking in a low tone to the chiefs, and it inflamed a choleric man like Alloway to hear anyone saying words that he could not understand. He was not able to restrain himself wholly a second time. "What is it, man?
"Red Eagle and Yellow Panther are shrewd and thoughtful chiefs, and Braxton Wyatt and Blackstaffe are full of cunning. They are all able to put two and two together, and they know that it was we who destroyed their cannon when they attempted the big attack on the settlements. They'll look upon us as the scouts and sentinels who see everything they do." "The eyes of the woods," said Paul.
He was just a little too stout for wilderness work, that is for the marching part of it, and he was hurt cruelly in both body and spirit. As his general weakness grew, the cry of the owl directly in their path and not far away was like fire touched to an open wound. "Can't some of the warriors go forward, ambush and shoot that fiend?" he exclaimed in desperation to Blackstaffe.
The renegades, Blackstaffe and Wyatt, stood near, each leaning against a tree trunk, following closely all that Red Eagle said. They, too, wished the destruction of the great youth, but their enmity to him was baser than that of the Indians, since it was an innate jealousy and hatred, and not a hostility based upon difference of race and interest.
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