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Updated: June 17, 2025
Our provisions had run low, and there seemed little enough for two hungry men who had all day been striving with salt winds. So, knowing that this was a neighbourhood studded with great manors, and remembering the hospitality I had so often found, I left Shalah by the fire with such food as remained, and set out with our lantern through the woods to look for a human habitation.
They call it the Shenandoah." I remembered that smiling Eden I had seen from that hill-top, and how Shalah had spoken that very name. "We dwelt there," he continued, "while I grew to manhood, living happily in peace, hunting the buffalo and deer, and tilling our cornlands. Then the time came when the Great Spirit called for my father, and I was left with the kingship of the tribe.
A party of Indians were passing. They were young men with the fantastic markings of young braves. All were mounted on the little Indian horses. They moved at leisure, scanning the distance with hands shading eyes. We wormed our way back to the darkness of the covert. "The advance guard of the second party," Shalah whispered.
The big man Donaldson looked puzzled and sombre. Only Shalah stood impassive and aloof, with no trace of feeling on the bronze of his countenance. "This is the place for an oath," I said. "We are six men against an army, but we fight for a holy cause. Let us swear to wipe out this deed of blood in the blood of its perpetrators.
I saw an Indian in every patch of shadow, and looked pretty often to my pistols before I reached the security of Aird's house. Four days later Shalah appeared at James Town. "They were three," he said simply. "They came from the hills a moon ago, and have been making bad trouble on the Rappahannock. I found them at the place above the beaver traps of the Ooniche.
Who were you thinking of?" "You for one," I said, "and Shalah for a second." He nodded. "I want two men from the Rappahannock a hunter of the name of Donaldson and the Frenchman Bertrand." "That makes five. Would you like to even the number?" "Yes," I said. "There's a gentleman of the Tidewater, Mr. Charles Grey, that I've bidden to the venture." Ringan whistled. "Are you sure that's wise?
Our plan was to make this stockade the centre for exploring the hills and ascertaining the strength and purposes of the Indian army. We hoped, and so did Shalah, that our enemies would have no leisure to follow us to the high ridges; that what risk there was would be run by the men on their spying journeys; but that the stockade would be reasonably safe.
Ringan signalled to me, and we put our coats over the horses' heads to prevent their whinnying. He stamped out the last few ashes of the fire, and Shalah motioned us all flat on our faces. Then I crawled to the edge of the ridge, and looked down through a tangle of vines on the little valley.
Weak as I was, I had the fierce satisfaction that our errand had not been idle. I replied with the password, and a big fellow strode out from a stockade. "Mr. Garvald!" he said, staring. "What brings you here? Where are the rest of you?" He looked at Shalah and then at me, and finally took my arm and drew me inside.
The others were only weary and dishevelled and ill at ease, but on me seemed to have fallen the burden of the cares of the whole earth. Shalah had disappeared for a little, and came back with the word that the near forests were empty. So I summoned a council, and talked as we breakfasted. I had looked into the matter of the food, and found that we had sufficient for three days.
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