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The horses were sent back to the waggon line and the drivers told to bring them up again at 6 A.M.; and I was arranging the relief of the orderly stationed on the roadside to look out for the major when the major's special war-whoop broke cheerily through the darkness.
Nearly every book which deals with the early planting and progress of the American colonists and pioneers, contains full, and frequently glowing, descriptions of exploits in the forest; strifes of the hunter; fights with the savages; fearful and terrible surprises of lurking warriors, as they arouse the brave settler and his family from their midnight dreams by the wild, death-announcing war-whoop; hair-breadth escapes from the larger kinds of game, boldly bearded in their lair; the manly courage which never yields, but surmounts every obstacle presented by the unbroken and boundless forest; all these are subjects and facts which have already so many counterparts in book-thought, accessible to the general reader, that their details may be safely omitted during the boyhood days of young Carson.
They then fired off the gun of the Creek who was killed, and one of them uttered the war-whoop which was heard by the rest of the party. These two savages drew their scalping-knives and cut off the heads of both their victims. As the whole body came rushing up, they found the gory corpses of the slain, with their dissevered heads near by. Each Indian had a war-club.
The first close was solemn, and intended to convey the idea of veneration; the second descriptive, bordering on the alarming; and the third was the well-known and terrific war-whoop, which burst from the lips of the young warrior, like a combination of all the frightful sounds of battle. The last was like the first, humble and imploring.
"If it was not for your white flag, I would treat you as you deserve." The tone of voice in which this was said convinced the Indian that Uncle Jeff was in earnest; and in no very dignified fashion he scampered off to rejoin his companions. The whole of the band now united in giving utterance to a terrific war-whoop, and came rushing up to the house.
John used to fancy at times, as he sat there, that he could see that red specter gliding among the trees on the hill; and if the tombstone suggested to him the trump of judgment, he could not separate it from the war-whoop that had been the last sound in the ear of Phineas Arms.
Their joy was quickly quenched; for when the long column of eighteen boats was in full view, and the rejoicing was at its height, dark, naked figures suddenly leaped up, with brandished weapons and exulting yells, in every boat. The fierce war-whoop came quavering over the water, and in a moment the dreadful truth was known. The entire convoy had been captured, and was in the enemy's hands.
The taking the chief conspirators prisoners did not prevent the negroes upon Jefferies' plantation from insurrection. The moment they heard the war-whoop, the signal agreed upon, they rose in a body; and, before they could be prevented, either by the whites on the estate, or by Mr. Edwards' adherents, they had set fire to the overseer's house, and to the canes.
No better still, he would join the Indians, and hunt buffaloes and go on the warpath in the mountain ranges and the trackless great plains of the Far West, and away in the future come back a great chief, bristling with feathers, hideous with paint, and prance into Sunday-school, some drowsy summer morning, with a bloodcurdling war-whoop, and sear the eyeballs of all his companions with unappeasable envy.
Andy jumped into the air, let out a war-whoop, and flung himself into the midst, scattering them right and left, and knocking one boy over and over. "I'm Billy Buck!" he cried. "I'm a hull regiment o' Rangers. Let th' Cherokees mind me!" "Way for Sandy Andy!" cried the boys. "Where'd you get the new boy, Sandy?" "His name's Davy," said Andy, "and his Pa's goin' to fight the Cherokees.
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