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Title: Tomahawk Rights
Date of first publication: 1929
Author: Hal G. Evarts (1887-1934)
Date first posted: October 5 2013
Date last updated: October 5 2013
Faded Page eBook #20131005

This ebook was produced by: David T. Jones, Mary Meehan, Al Haines
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net




                          TOMAHAWK RIGHTS

                          By HAL G. EVARTS

    TORONTO
    McCLELLAND AND STEWART
    1929

    _Copyright, 1929,_
    By HAL G. EVARTS

    _All rights reserved_

    Published July, 1929

    PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


                                 TO
                              MY MOTHER
           _a pioneer woman of the troubled days of Kansas
               almost three quarters of a century ago,
                     this work is affectionately
                              dedicated_




TOMAHAWK RIGHTS




CHAPTER I


Rodney Buckner's first struggle toward wakefulness was occasioned by the
harsh voice of the woman bidding him rise and go after the cow. Then the
lingering remnants of sleep were dispelled by a deafening explosion as a
flintlock was discharged through the half-open door and the spreading
dawn was rent by the fiendish war whoop of savages.

Ensuing events were but a vivid nightmare of horrors. The cabin swarmed
with painted warriors. There was the sound of a blow, a shriek of mortal
hurt or terror. The bedding which sheltered him was plucked from his
trembling form, an iron hand seized his wrist and he was rudely dragged
from his bunk. His captor, brandishing before his horrified eyes a
menacing tomahawk, expelled the few English words, "Boy no talk!" in
such a fierce tone as to freeze unuttered the anguished wail that
trembled on his lips.

On the floor lay the forms of an older girl and the young man of the
household. He was dragged out through the door by his captor, almost
stumbling over the still shape of Johnny Aiken, the youngest son of the
woman, a boy two years older than himself. He was propelled towards the
spot where the woman, a tall, gaunt person, her hands pinioned behind
her, stood in the custody of two towering savages. Then he was entering
the forest while the faint light of dawn was amplified by the glare of
the blazing cabin.

A briar thorn pricked his foot and he halted to seize the injured member
with his hands. The savage just behind him thrust him forward with a
sharp grunt of impatience. Rodney could see that a half dozen warriors
led the way in single file. Next came the woman, another warrior, then
himself. Five more savages brought up the rear. The sinuous progress of
this procession along the winding path through the gloomy forest
recalled to his childish mind the gliding movement of a huge blacksnake
that had swallowed two young chickens in their garden a few days before.
His throat constricted with terror--also with thirst; and he was
fiercely hungry before they had been on the trail an hour. His feet and
legs burned from occasional briar pricks.

The tall figure of the woman strode on and on as if she could never tire
or falter. Always she had impressed him that way--indestructible,
driving, relentless. From the first he had felt little about her that
was lovable. Of his own mother, he had but a vague recollection of a
gracious, loving presence. After her premature death his bereaved father
had drifted westward with Rodney, eventually to leave him with this
pioneer woman while he accompanied her husband, Aiken, in search of a
fabled mine still deeper in the wilderness. Neither had been heard of
again and the boy had been left an unwelcome burden upon the hands of
this woman. A stern, rather harsh creature, and no doubt harassed by the
cares and anxieties of carrying on alone, she had found little time for
gentleness. But now the boy drew a measure of comfort from that very
harsh efficiency that was hers. Her presence seemed a tower of strength
to him.

His legs grew weary and each foot seemed a leaden weight. But whenever
he lagged, the fierce Wyandotte who could speak a few words of English
hissed the command, "Boy hurry!" Presently he stubbed his toe painfully.

"I am too tired to go on!" he cried out.

The woman, wise in the ways of the Indians, knew that captives usually
were treated well until such time as a council was held in some Indian
town to decide their fate. But those that were too frail or ailing to
keep up the pace on the trail were dispatched without hesitation.

"You'll have to keep up, Rod," she said without turning her head. "If
you lag, one of 'em will fetch you a clip with a hatchet."

The boy had never disobeyed that voice with impunity and he responded to
it now, trotting along manfully to close the gap. Fatigue dragged at him
but terror spurred him on to fresh exertions.

The distant sound of occasional gunshots and the faint gobbling yelps of
the war whoop reached their ears from ahead and to the right, and Rodney
knew that the savages were making an attack on the cabins of three
settlers at a spot known as Jamieson's Farm. The intermittent nature of
the sounds had conveyed to the ears of the warriors that the whites at
Jamieson's were making a stubborn resistance. They commented upon it in
their own tongue.

Presently they stopped at a spring and refreshed themselves. Another and
longer string of savages came through the forest and joined them. Two
men prisoners accompanied the new arrivals. The captives were heavily
burdened with various plunder that had been captured by the savages.

They were two bondmen, having sold themselves into bondage for a period
of years to work out the price of their passage to this new land. They
had gone outside at dawn, only to be captured by the first rush of the
savages. The others of the Jamieson settlement had succeeded in
barricading themselves in the three cabins and beating off the
assailants.

"Them as took us is Wyandottes, with a few Ottawas throwed in," said the
woman. "The ones that got you is Senecas. All the tribes must have gone
out again."

The weaker of the two captives, too frail to support his burden,
stumbled frequently. At last an exasperated savage swung a tomahawk upon
his skull, stooped to encircle his head with a knife and wrenched off
the scalp.

"God ha' mercy on his soul," the other man mumbled.

The woman made no comment. When the slain man's burden was transferred
to her shoulders she moved off with it without so much as a murmur of
protest.

Rod, at the point of exhaustion, stumbled occasionally and fell, but
remembering that bloody example of the fate that awaited laggards he
recovered his footing and spurted ahead with such manifest terror that
the savages were moved to mirth.

"You pooty good boy," the big Wyandotte said presently, and Rod found
himself riding astride a powerful back.

The party halted at nightfall on the banks of a creek. Rod was handed a
small piece of dried meat and a few grains of parched corn. The savages
fashioned small hoops out of green dogwood upon which they stretched the
reeking scalps taken in the recent raids and hung them in the smoke of
the camp fire.

When one is aged eight, it is not given to him fully to gauge the grief
of others. He did not miss Johnny Aiken, who had bullied him
shamelessly. Therefore, he could not divine what raged in the breast of
this border woman when those grisly trophies were suspended there to be
smoke-cured.

Grim and silent, apparently as emotionless and unyielding as the rock
against which she leaned, the woman sat among her captors until the
latter staked both herself and the man captive upon their backs for the
night. Rod watched them tie her ankles to stakes, tie a thong about her
neck and fasten it to a tree. A six-foot pole was placed across her
breast and to this her extended arms were securely lashed. Thus
spread-eagled on her back, she could scarcely so much as shift her
position to ease the strain.

At dawn the procession resumed its way. In the evening a great river,
the Ohio, was crossed by means of bark canoes. All west of the Ohio was
Indian country. The party floundered through swamps and waded creeks,
heading ever deeper into the unknown wilderness of the West.

On the fourth day they came to a clearing that was planted in corn. The
log-and-bark lodges on the edge of the forest beyond indicated a
fair-sized Indian town. The woman knew that they had reached some
tributary of the Upper Muskingum. An excited throng surged around the
victorious war party. A halt was made at the edge of town and a heated
discussion took place between the townspeople and the returning
warriors. All seemed to agree upon some common plan and the man prisoner
was divested of his burden and stood staring stupidly about him.

Two lines of savages were forming to fashion a lane that led to the big
log-and-bark council house two hundred yards away. From his perch on the
Wyandotte's shoulders Rod watched these sinister preparations. A burly,
bearded white man clad in buckskins stood among the savages and Rod
wondered why he did not do something to help the captive. But his
thick-lipped mouth grinned approval. Evidently he enjoyed this scene.

The man prisoner was propelled suddenly forward between the two lines
and he spurted desperately for the council house. He was slashed with
knife and tomahawk, struck with whip and clubs. All such blows, which he
believed were efforts to kill him, actually were carefully calculated to
avoid that end. He was to be reserved for a far more ghastly fate. He
reached the council house and fell exhausted.

Rod and the woman were secured in a hut under guard. The male prisoner
was brought in, stripped, his body painted black with a mixture of soot
and bear grease. He was a stupid ox of a man, new to the frontier and
unaware of the dreadful significance of this blackening process. But the
woman knew.

"God help him to endure!" Rod heard her mutter.

The white man came in. The woman knew that the French traders and
American borderers who roved the Indian country sought to purchase the
lives of captives who had been condemned to the stake.

"Kin you buy his life?" she asked the trader.

"Me? Pay my own goods for his worthless hulk?" the man demanded, turning
upon her fiercely. "What have they done for me except drive the French
out? Hah! I have help roast many the one! And will have a hot ramrod for
this fat sheep."

The woman did not answer. Well, there were men like this one too.

At nightfall, the man prisoner was led out. Presently the drowsing boy
was roused by dreadful animal screams of agony that froze the blood in
his veins. All through the night he woke in horror, as some
particularly piercing shriek assailed his ears. His exhausted body
forced blessed if intermittent sleep upon him. But the fear and horror
of it had fixed the face of the Frenchman indelibly in his mind as that
of some dreadful monster. He waked in the gray light of dawn. The sounds
outside were dying down and presently there was silence save for the
thin whine of mosquitoes in the lodge. The woman spoke from the gloom.

"Our trails fork from here, Rod. 'Tain't likely we'll meet ag'in. I got
nothing left to live for. But you're a Virginny Buckner--proud stock.
You'll have kin somewheres and maybe they'll buy you back. I'm to be
took to the Wyandotte towns and you have been sold to the Shawnees.
They'll treat you well. G'bye, Rod."

It was the same sort of parting endured by untold thousands of captives
as a land-hungry people pushed the savages foot by foot back through the
wilderness--parting thus, never to hear of one another again.




CHAPTER II


Several more days of traveling west and south with strange Indians and
Rod came to a tremendous Indian town which he was to know as
Chillicothe, the capital of the Shawnee nation. Later, he was taken a
day's march to a smaller Shawnee town and conducted to a sizable lodge
in which were a young squaw and her son, a youth of about Rod's own age.
The squaw took him to the creek, scrubbed him thoroughly and divested
him of his tattered shirt, then clothed him in leggings and jacket of
soft deerskin. His feet were incased in moccasins.

He had traveled so steadily that he believed this to be but another
overnight stop but when morning came he ate with the others and was not
summoned to take the trail again. The Indian youth, stripped of his
buckskins and playing in the sun with others of his age, made frequent
pilgrimages to the entrance of the lodge to display the captive to his
fellows. The squaw had gone to work in the cornfield. Upon her return
she took Rod by the hand and led him forth, visiting various lodges in
the village, in each of which the white captive was offered food. Then
she left him outside with the Indian boy of the household and several
other naked urchins.

They spoke to him in a strange tongue and their advances seemed
friendly. When they signed him to accompany them to the creek, he
followed, and when they took to the water he peeled his buckskins and
joined them. He was as much at home in the water as an otter. The Indian
boy took him for a precarious ride in a tiny elm-bark canoe and allowed
him to shoot two blunt arrows from his bow.

Rod slept again in the lodge and left it next morning without hesitation
at a summons from his dusky companion. A group of hunters returned
during the day, bringing a black bear, a dozen deer and several turkeys
and raccoons. One of them took up quarters in the lodge as head of the
household and seemed to accept Rod's presence there as a natural thing.
The boy afterwards learned that he had been adopted to fill the place of
a son that had died. Kill-cat, the Shawnee warrior, presented him with a
small bow and a bark quiver filled with arrows. Winnebanca, his foster
mother, lavished affections upon him. In every way he was treated with
the same consideration as that accorded his foster brother, Standing
Bear.

He accompanied the Shawnee youth on long hunting excursions in the
forest, stalking birds and small rodents and launching many shafts
without doing much execution. These hunts became almost daily affairs.
The vibrating rattle of a woodpecker, the strident shriek of a flicker,
the plaintive call of wood pewee, sprightly conversation of a chickadee
or the sneering clamor of a jay would serve to transform them into
miniature images of the wilderness hunter, stalking with utmost caution
toward the sound. The Indian lad would hold up his hand and pronounce a
strange word when the voice of some bird reached them and presently,
with the natural imitativeness of youth, the white boy repeated these
words after him. In a surprisingly short span of time he learned the
names of all the wild things, also of the various utensils and articles
of food in common use.

One day the Indian boy lifted his voice in imitation of the call of a
crow that was winging high overhead. Rod did likewise and the dusky
youth was surprised at the accuracy of the white boy's rendition. There
was admiration in his glance as he petitioned Rod to repeat the call.
For several minutes the forest rang with their alternate vocal efforts.
Rod's imitation was by far the best of the two. Expanding under the
other's approval, he suddenly gave the piercing liquid whistle of the
cardinal and received a prompt answer from a leafy thicket. The young
Shawnee was elated. From his earliest recollection, Rod had amused
himself with imitating the notes of the birds and had acquired an
astonishing degree of proficiency. Such matters were part of the
schooling among the young of the Indians and they were amazed that this
newcomer, so little skilled in their games, should excel in this
particular. He was called upon for frequent performances and so, day
after day, perfected the art for which he had been gifted with a natural
aptitude.

He rapidly picked up a smattering of the Shawnee tongue and a workable
knowledge of the sign language common to all the tribes of the Indian
Confederacy. When the snows came and the streams were frozen over, he
fished with the other youths of the village through holes cut in the ice
of lake and stream. The warriors, between protracted spells of loafing,
indulged in hunting excursions and returned burdened with meat and
hides. By spring Rod had become proficient at the various sports of the
village youths and had mastered the Shawnee tongue.

Much of their play had to do with war. One faction would slip away to
establish itself in some fancied secret stronghold. The opposing forces,
by means of their scouts, must locate such enemy stronghold, sneak upon
it and stage a surprise rush upon the foe. It was the aim of those who
were being sought to lure the attacking force into ambush and launch a
surprise assault. It was conducted much more realistically than the war
games of civilized youths. The scouts were expected to do real scouting.
There was no calling back and forth. When within sight of one another,
comrades in arms communicated only by sign language. When separated they
signalled by means of prearranged bird notes. Rod was easily the master
of this latter means of communication and he rapidly acquired
proficiency in all branches of the game. He could glide through the
forest as noiselessly as a shadow. His quick eye detected the slightest
movement in thicket or tangle of down-timber ahead. He could move from
one bit of cover to the next, writhing along on his stomach with almost
the expertness of a snake. There was no hurry in these games, the whole
day being allotted to one such raid if deemed necessary, as there were
no duties to which the Indian youths must hasten. This being the case,
they acquired a patience that could scarcely be emulated by white youths
of the settlements, whose play wars necessarily must be staged in the
brief intervals between periods of labor and brought to a termination
before the time that such duties were required of them.

Relieved of this pressure for time, such as had characterized his games
with Johnny Aiken, Rod now found himself with ample leisure in which to
cultivate the incredible patience of his companions. He learned the art
of remaining absolutely motionless behind a down log or ensconced in a
tree, concealed by a tangle of wild grapevines, or perhaps to lie flat
in the merest depression of the forest floor while his enemies of the
day prowled past almost within reach of him, then to glide after them
with utmost cunning.

From his foster brother, Rod learned that in this one small Shawnee
village no less than six of the inhabitants were white, though the
closest scrutiny would not reveal that fact. One was an ancient squaw,
another a young woman who was the wife of a sub-chief among the Shawnees
and mother of two children. One of the captives, a young warrior of
sixteen named Gray Wolf, could remember a few words of English. He had
been captured with his three brothers when he was eight years old, he
told Rod, but they had been separated and he had seen none of them
since. Rod inquired what his name had been. Gray Wolf reflected for the
space of a minute, then replied that his former name had been William
Herne.

Rod's Shawnee father, Kill-cat had bestowed upon Rod a many syllabled
name meaning Talk-with-birds from his proficiency in the art of bird
imitation. One night during his second year among the Shawnees, a war
party of Wyandottes stopped overnight in the town and Kill-cat
instructed his foster son to demonstrate his talents for the benefit of
several who had gathered outside his lodge.

The boy started off with the call of the crow, then the liquid whistle
of the cardinal. From the extreme back of his throat came the quavering
falsetto of the screech owl, then the querulous yelping of a hen turkey.
The warriors gave voice to loud "Hahs!" of approbation and signed him to
proceed. He gave a perfect imitation of the quail, both the bobwhite
note and the more difficult muster call by which scattered coveys
reassemble. From the seductive cooing of a dove he broke suddenly into
the shrilling chorus of young frogs on a spring night, the metallic
whirr of cicadas on a July afternoon, the chattering bark of a red
squirrel; the plaintive cry of the phoebe, the hoarse rasp of the bull
bat, the thunder-pumping notes of a bittern far out in the marshes, the
silvery notes of migrating plover and the surprised cry of the killdeer.

Several other Wyandottes had come up to join the group, accompanied by a
French trader. Roving Frenchmen were no novelty in the Indian towns and
the boy, engrossed in his performance, paid small heed to this one
until, standing almost at the man's feet, he glanced up into his face.
He found himself confronted by the features of Benoit, the face that was
associated in his thoughts with all that was monstrous--indelibly linked
in his mind with that ghastly occurrence on the Muskingum. The bird
notes were frozen on his lips, he sprang back as if from the strike of a
rattler, uttered a shrill yelp of terror and fled. The light was none
too good and Kill-cat, the Shawnee, believing that Benoit had struck or
pinched Talk-with-birds, leaped to confront the man with uplifted
tomahawk and angry demands for explanation.

The man fiercely denied the accusation. When the protesting youth was
hailed before him, Rod said that the man had not touched him, but in his
manifest terror of the trader his denial did not quite convince
Kill-cat. The man scowled upon Rod and declared that he had never before
set eyes on him. Doubtless he believed the truth of his own utterance,
having no recollection of the cowering little captive that had crouched
in the dim shadows of the lodge that night on the Muskingum. He came to
the Shawnee town on several occasions and was vastly annoyed at the fear
and dislike evidenced toward him by the foster son of Kill-cat.

During temporary periods of peace, American border woodsmen also came
occasionally to the Shawnee town. These woodsmen, a wild and roving
lot, led lives that were even more nomadic than those of the savages
themselves. Their lives were spent roaming alone or with a few
companions far beyond the most isolated frontier posts. In common with
the roving French traders, the restrictions of even the smaller
settlements were irksome to their wild and unrestrained natures. It was,
therefore, quite easy for them to understand why a large majority of the
white captives who had been long among the savages had become so
accustomed to the free-and-easy life in the Indian towns as to have
abandoned all thought of returning to civilized ways. Such captives as
did desire to return, however, were often able to send word of their
whereabouts to frontier posts by these men and so were ransomed
ultimately by their families.

Suddenly the Indian towns were again inflamed with war talk. To the
south lay the vast region of Kentucky, swarming with every variety of
game, a veritable hunters' paradise. The Cherokees of the South had made
a treaty with the Northern tribes of the Indian Confederacy of the Ohio
whereby it was mutually agreed that this area between their respective
habitats should be set aside forever as the common hunting ground of
them all, to be permanently occupied by none.

Now the Long-knives of Virginia, so named from their habit of fighting
with the saber, were violating this ancient hunting ground. Under the
leadership of a man named Boone, small groups of settlers were crossing
over the Cumberlands with a view to establishing themselves on the
fertile lands of Kentucky.

Runners came from other Shawnee towns and from other tribes of the
federation. Rod heard much fierce oratory round the council fires. He
was particularly impressed with the eloquence of one old Shawnee warrior
as he sketched the wrongs of his people.

"My brothers," he began. "My eyes have looked forth upon the passing of
a hundred winters and they have seen that the way of the bird who calls
the sky his own yet shares it with his fellows is not the way of the
porcupine who lives in a burrow in the ground which no other can use.
Every Indian owns much land and shares it with all. Every white man owns
a little land and shares it with none."

"Ho! We have seen it!" a warrior shouted.

"I have known the day when the red man owned all the land toward the
rising sun and shared it with the white men," the sachem continued. "Who
owns it now? The mighty Ottawas are gone save for a few. The Wyandottes
and Ojibwas are but a handful. The Senecas number but few warriors now.
The great nations of our grandfathers the Delawares no longer own the
rivers that run to the rising sun and put forth in their canoes upon the
inlets of the eastern sea. Most of those remaining now sit in their
wigwams on the Muskingum and pray from the white man's medicine book.
The once mighty nations of the Potawatamis, Eries and we Shawnees, all
are crowded here with those others beyond the Ohio. The Great Spirit has
opened my eyes to the future as they have looked upon the past. What
has been will be again."

"No!" proclaimed a warrior who was pacifically inclined. "The
Long-knives promise by their own God and by Manitou of the red men that
if we give them but a fraction of Kentucky they will never ask for more
land again."

"The white men write their promises in the sands," said the ancient.
"Then they blow the sands with wind raised by their own voices so there
is no trace of what was written."

"But this time--" the pacific one began.

"My son," the ancient interrupted, "almost a hundred years ago I heard
the seductive hooting of a grouse when I was starving--and I stalked
cautiously toward the sound. I had not yet learned that the grouse
causes its voice to rise from thickets other than that in which it
hides, so that the hungry hunter will stalk the voice and fail to find
the substance. After a hundred years, I have learned to disregard the
voice and seek out the hidden bird."

"But this time--" the other began again.

"But this time," the oldster said, "the hunter may find the echo a more
filling meal than the meat of the grouse, you think? There is that way
too. The Praying Delawares have traveled that trail. It has led them
from a mighty nation on the eastern seas to three pitiful villages on
the Muskingum since they laid down the tomahawk and picked up the prayer
book. It is for you younger men to say whether you shall set the feet of
the Shawnees upon it."

An angry murmur rose from the throng. Every warrior scorned to emulate
the example of the Praying Delawares.

"What has been will be again," the ancient intoned. "If we listen once
more to the ventriloquial hooting of the grouse and let but one
Long-knife dig his burrow in the fair lands of Kentucky, then as we have
lost the lands of the East, so shall we lose all the lands of the West,
even to the setting sun. Then shall the red man vanish from the earth. I
have seen it written. I am done."

One after another the ablest warriors rose to declare fiercely that the
Long-knives should never get foothold in Kentucky. War parties of
ferocious Senecas, Ottawas, Wyandottes and Shawnees began filing toward
the south. Kill-cat was among the first to go.

The war games of the Shawnee urchins blazed forth with fresh intensity.
Of nights they kindled council fires in the forest and harangued one
another after the fashion of grown warriors. Their youthful eloquence
was launched upon the winds. When all had been heard, a sapling was
topped to serve as a war post and they circled round it.
Talk-with-birds, foster son of Kill-cat, was first to strike the war
post with his tomahawk and so declare himself for war. His brother,
Standing Bear, was next, and stabbed his bone knife deep into the
sapling. One and all, even to the most timid, after many circles, rushed
upon the war post and smote it. The young Shawnees were unanimously for
war.

Then came days of mourning in the Shawnee town and there was wailing in
the lodge of Kill-cat. Among the first to go, he had been among the
first to fall in battle and his scalp now hung in the wigwams of the
Long-knives.

In this small Shawnee town, as among all other Indian communities, the
improvident day-and-night gorging so long as the food held out
occasioned alternate periods of feast and famine. The hunters brought in
deer and buffaloes and turkeys. Wild fowl swarmed the marshes in
unbelievable abundance at certain seasons. Bears were numerous and the
delicious fat of these animals was pressed into skin containers. The
squaws of the Shawnees were adept at making maple sugar. Raccoons were
so numerous that the boys caught them by the hundreds in dead-fall
traps. Fish were plentiful and were taken with elm-bark nets, spears,
gigs and baited hooks. Beaver meat formed a considerable item of the
menu during the trapping season. There were wild fruits for the picking
in the autumn, bee trees from which great quantities of honey were
extracted. Then there was always the staple succotash, a mixture of
boiled corn and beans. But despite the abundance and variety of the food
supply, there were several months during each winter when the
improvident feasting of former days resulted in the pinch of famine--and
Rod learned what it was to go without food for long hours at a time.

But he learned also of savage generosity. Every morsel of food was
justly apportioned. The one who had so much as a pound of meat or a
bark bowl full of succotash and yet shared it not with all would have
been degraded in his own eyes and those of his fellows. Gray Wolf, once
William Herne, had fought beside his comrade Kill-cat when the latter
had fallen in battle. Gray Wolf had been wounded while trying to carry
off the body of his friend. The young warrior now took a great interest
in the dependent family of his departed comrade and he hunted for the
widowed Winnebanca and the two boys, Talk-with-birds and Standing Bear,
as conscientiously as if he had been the head of their lodge.

During Rod's eleventh year a little white girl of perhaps six years of
age, golden-haired and blue-eyed, was brought into the Shawnee town. A
squaw proceeded to scrub the infant at the creek. Her stark terror
inspired Rod with a desire to comfort her. English words came awkwardly
to his lips when he sought to speak to her in her native tongue.

"They not hurt," he managed at last.

She stared at him wide-eyed.

"They not hurt little girl," he essayed.

She broke away from the squaw and fled to him, casting her tiny wet form
against him and clinging desperately.

"I'se so 'fraid," she sobbed frantically. "Don't let them hurt me."

Her little arms gripped his thigh convulsively as he awkwardly patted
her wet yellow head.

"They not hurt," he promised grandly.

In some childish way she attributed her subsequent good treatment
entirely to his promise. He loomed as benefactor and protector in her
infant mind. Alone of all the village, he could understand her and
answer questions--reassure her. Later, attired in her tiny suit of
buckskins, she persistently haunted the lodge of his foster mother and
dogged his footsteps at every opportunity, as faithfully adoring as a
pup. With the adaptability of the young she slipped rapidly into natural
acceptance of the life of the village. When the Indian youths engaged in
sports, her blue eyes followed the antics of her hero with serene
devotion and open pride.

Rod accepted this attention with the indifferent kindness of a youth who
is engrossed with games imitative of the pursuits of his elders. When
her persistent following threatened to interfere with his very serious
duties as a scout by revealing his position to the enemy, he firmly
insisted that she return to the village. When she followed too closely
upon his heels as he cautiously stalked some prey on his hunting
expeditions, he signalled peremptory orders for her to stand motionless.
But when he had killed a bird and roasted it over a fire kindled in the
forest, he grandly permitted her to partake of the repast. At all times,
however, his firmness was tempered with kindliness. And when engaged in
less serious pursuits, she was welcome to participate. She soon learned
to swim like a baby otter. On occasion he took her for a turn in his
little elm-bark canoe. When she complained of the vermin with which
every Indian town was infested, and knew not how to rid her clothing of
the pests, he instructed her in the art of depositing her tiny buckskin
garments, turned wrong side out, upon the lair of big red ants. The
warriors of the latter tribe promptly swarmed forth and converted all
stray occupants of the garments into rations for the ant army and
rendered them habitable again.

She told him that her name was Patty Lander.

"Patricia?" he asked, and she nodded.

She described events prior to and at the time of her capture. He
gathered that she had lived in a small Pennsylvania settlement. For a
time he thought of her as Patty Lander and addressed her thus. Then she
was given the Indian name of White Fawn and thereafter he addressed her
by that title and thought of her in the same way, the other matters
which she had related slipping gradually into the background of his
mind.

Some six months after her arrival, occasional white men again began to
put in an appearance in the Shawnee town. Boone's first ambitious
attempts to take settlers into Kentucky had been savagely repulsed.
Temporary peace had come again. Rod's Indian mother, Winnebanca, seemed
troubled, and lavished her affection upon him. Standing Bear, his
brother, was quite openly alarmed.

"They will take you away," he grieved. "The Long-knives will come for
you."

This seemed a remote possibility to Rod and he was not much concerned
about its probable fulfillment. He could think of no reason why the
Long-knives would tear him from this very satisfactory home.

Eventually, just after he had passed his twelfth birthday, though he was
not then aware of its passing, two white men appeared in the village.
One was a middle-aged border woodsman whom Rod had seen on former
occasions. The other was a large gentleman whose very air proclaimed him
a personage of importance. This latter party, he learned, was his
uncle--which meant nothing to him.

His foster mother, Winnebanca, sadly explained that a recent treaty
stipulated that all captives in the Indian country who wished to return
to the settlements must be surrendered to the whites. Rod most
emphatically expressed the opposite of any desire to return. But he had
not yet attained to the age where his own decision was accepted by his
elders and he was to be surrendered whether he would or no. The prospect
not only filled him with apprehension but also with profound grief at
parting from those he loved.

Gray Wolf, once William Herne, grieved at the boy's impending departure.

"Too much bad, you go," he said, resurrecting his imperfect English for
the benefit of the two white men who were taking the captive away. "If
they not treat you too much pooty good, you come back sometime. Injun
man, he treat Talk-with-birds better."

The little girl captive, known among the Shawnees as White Fawn, had
been concealed in the forest so that the whites would have no knowledge
of her presence. Standing Bear, unable to stand the strain of parting,
had absented himself. Winnebanca shed copious tears and voiced her soft
plaint, "Ay-ee, Ay-ee," rocking sidewise where she sat in the lodge as
her foster son was led away.

The youth planned desperately to effect his escape as soon as night
mantled the woods with darkness. An anguished wail reached his ears.
That despairing cry from the forest, expressing vocally the same depth
of anguish that seethed within himself, for the first time made the
departing youth acutely aware of the strength of the bond between
himself and the tiny captive White Fawn. She was grieving at his
departure, as he was grieving for himself.

From a tangled thicket flanking the trail came the plaintive cooing of a
mourning dove; later, from a rush-grown marsh, the startled notes of a
killdeer. Later still, from far behind, the faint cawing of a crow. Rod
knew that these were the calls of Standing Bear, flanking their route
and signalling his farewell. The woodsman also knew this, but Colonel
Buckner remained placidly unaware of it.

"Damme, sir!" he chafed to the border man. "From the lad's expression
you'd think we were dragging him away to captivity instead of rescuing
him from it."

"That's the way it goes, Colonel," said the borderer. "I've seed it many
the time."

"But I can't account for any such condition of mind on the part of one
in whose veins runs Buckner blood. He's a Buckner of Virginia."

"Right now he's a young Shawnee of the Injun country," the frontiersman
chuckled.




CHAPTER III


Standing Bear, a tall young warrior, paced thoughtfully along the forest
trail. He halted as another towering savage, taller and more powerfully
built than himself, stepped forth in his path. The face of the Shawnee
lighted with recognition.

"It is good to look upon Talk-with-birds again," he said in greeting.
"This is but the third time in five years that my brother has come to
visit in the lodge of his mother Winnebanca."

"But I am come not to visit," Buckner said. "I come with words that will
bring heaviness to my heart and to that of my brother."

"I feared it," said Standing Bear.

"It is written that Talk-with-birds must fight in the camps of the
Long-knives," Buckner stated.

"A walnut and a white birch, springing from different seeds, sprouted so
close together that as they grew their bodies became as one. No longer
than two nights ago, I placed a log of this double tree upon my
campfire. Instead of burning to an ash as one, the wood of the walnut
and the birch separated as the blaze ate into them and they burned to an
ash separately, as they had sprouted. Therefore, I am prepared," the
Shawnee stated. "But even so, the heart of Standing Bear is on the
ground to know that his brother lifts his knife against the Shawnees."

"It is because the white men now fight among themselves and the Shawnees
are about to lift the hatchet with those who seek our scalps," Buckner
explained.

"The Redcoats promised to sweep the Long-knives from the land and return
it to the Shawnees for so long as the sun shall rise in the East," the
Shawnee said.

"The Shawnees have listened to the false hooting of the grouse," Buckner
prophesied.

"It may be," Standing Bear conceded. "Our great chief, Cornstalk,
believes that the promises of all white nations are no more enduring
than marks made upon the water of the Ohio. Cornstalk says the red
peoples have exhausted themselves fighting against each other in white
man's quarrels. He now counsels the Shawnees to stand back and let the
white men fight it out among themselves. Then whoever wins, there will
be fewer to fight the Shawnees, who will meanwhile grow strong. With
that in mind, our chief, Cornstalk, with Red Hawk and others, has gone
to the Long-knives to try and arrange for peace."

"He is a wise chief," Buckner said. "Let us hope that the Great Spirit
guides the tongue of Cornstalk."

"But the Shawnees believe that even though they like the Redcoats
little, fighting is our only chance. Whether we fight or not, the
Long-knives will try to drive us into the setting sun and the Shawnees
will vanish from the earth," the Shawnee predicted.

"And if the Long-knives do not fight they will become the slaves of the
Redcoats, which is worse than vanishing from the earth," Buckner pointed
out.

"I can see it," Standing Bear said logically. "As brothers, our eyes can
follow the flight of the bird and the tracks of the bear at the same
time and know that each of them pursues the course ordained for it by
Manitou. We are warriors, Brother, and we know that sometimes these
things are written."

"It is so," Buckner agreed. "But Talk-with-birds could not find it in
his heart to lift the hatchet against the Shawnees without telling his
brother. Until the sun shall rise and set twice again, we are brothers.
Then you must tell the Shawnees that henceforth we are enemies."

"It is done," Standing Bear said sadly. "Winnebanca and the little White
Fawn will wish to see you for this last time. I will send them to you
here when the moon is an hour high. We shall meet again in the lodge of
our mother when peace shall come again and we can once more greet as
brothers, unless it is written that before that time our scalps shall
hang in the wigwams of our enemies."

       *       *       *       *       *

On the same year that Daniel Boone and a few companions first invaded
the wilderness of Kentucky, a lone adventurer, Ebenezer Zane, pressed on
into the wilds of Western Virginia, erected a cabin and remained to
hunt, trap and dodge the savages of the Ohio. Upon his return to the
settlements his tales of the country of his lone-wolf wanderings
induced his three brothers and a number of friends to return with him to
that fair region.

When the intrepid little band had arrived within a short distance of
Ebenezer Zane's trapping cabin, one of the men, looking about him,
suddenly drew his tomahawk and blazed the bark from a huge tree.

"Tomahawk Rights," he said to Ebenezer. "It's the best piece of land I
ever saw."

Thus did he announce his intention of settling there. This was the
accepted method by which settlers who penetrated unsurveyed wilderness
took possession of the land. Four corner trees were blazed and the name
or mark of the claimant carved thereon, the boundary lines blazed out
and the settler built his cabin.

The three remaining Zane brothers elected to take up adjacent land. The
other members of the party also filed tomahawk rights in the vicinity
and Ebenezer Zane took up residence in the cabin from which he had
hunted in '69 and '70. This decision was destined to result in the
founding of Wheeling, West Virginia, as Boone's wanderings beyond the
Cumberlands were to result in the ultimate settlement of Kentucky.

The Zane colony flourished from the very start. Other land-hungry souls
followed in the wake of the hardy founders of the settlement. Other
colonies sprang up for miles around. Virginia rose with her sister
colonies against the tyranny of England. News of the war drifted to
these settlements of the far frontier, together with rumors that the
British were outfitting expeditions to capture them. Then the border
woodsmen began to return from the Indian country, falling back upon the
settlements. Those hardy souls, hardly less wild than the animals they
hunted, living their lives beyond even the most isolated settlers'
cabins, knew intimately the savage and his ways. Ominous activities in
the wilderness of the Ohio, they said, presaged a widespread uprising,
though where the blow would fall none could predict.

Then two horsemen arrived at Ebenezer Zane's--a border woodsman named
Gilpin and a middle-aged Virginia gentleman, Colonel John Buckner.

"Well, Buckner," Zane greeted, wondering why his visitor should have
left the vast Buckner estates of Great Oaks and traveled to this
farthest frontier post, "aren't you a few hundred miles from your usual
haunts?"

"I am, sir," Buckner agreed. "Zane, by any chance has my nephew, Rodney
Buckner, been seen here recently?"

"Rodney? No. What would he be doing here? Isn't he at Great Oaks?"

Pacing the floor, Buckner shook his head. "Five years ago Gilpin, here,
accompanied me to a Shawnee town to ransom him. Since then he has been
schooled in the pursuits of a Virginia gentleman. He is powerful as a
young stallion, rides to hounds like a demon, sir, and his skill with a
musket, sword and duelling pistol is nothing short of uncanny."

"To say nothing of his aptitude with scalping knife and tomahawk,"
Gilpin added, "at which I've seldom laid an eye on his equal."

"That is exactly the difficulty," Buckner said. "For all the fact that
he has acquired to an amazing degree the graces that are fitting to a
Buckner of Virginia, his long years among the savages have left their
indelible mark. He still refers to some Shawnee as his brother. On two
occasions in the past he has simply disappeared, to return months later
to report that he had made a pilgrimage to the lodge of his foster
mother. I am at a loss to account for it."

"Nothing difficult to understand about that, Cunnel," Gilpin said.
"Whites take easy to redskin ways after a taste of it. I was thar with
Boquet's army at the close of the Pontiac War, when the varmints agreed
by treaty to deliver all white captives. Scores of them fled west toward
the Illinois country to avoid being delivered. Thar was upwards of three
hundred brought to camp. Many a touching reunion amongst friends took
place thar, and many a tearful parting when captives was pried loose
from redskin families. Many a one made a run for it back to the Injun
towns--men to their squaws, women to rejoin their bucks and babies,
children to the lodges of their foster parents. It seems to come
natural, Cunnel, to them as has had a taste of free an' easy life in the
redskin towns."

"No doubt," the colonel assented impatiently. "But this boy has Buckner
blood in his veins."

"It don't take but a mite of rovin' wild in the forest to l'arn the
blue-bloodedest colt that was ever foaled to jump the pasture fence
after he's been captured and confined ag'in," Gilpin pointed out. "Some
of the best blood in all the colonies has gone Injun and is living out
thar among the reds. And speaking of blood, don't forget Izaak Zane."

It was common knowledge that the fifth Zane brother, Izaak, having been
captured by Indians at an early age, thereafter had refused to return to
civilization. Married to the daughter of a famous Wyandotte chief, he
had risen to be a power in the Indian confederacy of the Ohio
wilderness.

"It would seem, Buckner, that your nephew's restlessness would have
found an outlet in taking up arms for the colonies, in common with other
young men his age from the first families of Virginia," Zane suggested.

"Just so," Colonel Buckner agreed. "He listened attentively to all of
the arguments advanced by soldiers and statesmen who gathered at Great
Oaks to discuss the wrongs of the colonies. Then came the news that the
first shot had been fired. Queer how black men know when there's
something in the wind. I noticed that every field hand, some of them
wild African blacks not five years from the jungles, threw up their
heads like startled deer and rolled their eyes till they could have been
seen at midnight. I returned to the house to see what was up and there
was Rodney out on the lawn, circling about a tree with a peculiar
dipping shuffle and voicing a low-pitched, singsong chant. Then he
struck the tree with his tomahawk."

Both Zane and Gilpin shook with laughter.

"He'd set in at all the councils, Cunnel," Gilpin chuckled. "And when it
comes to the issue he socked his tomahawk into the war post and
dedicated his feet to the bloody trail. 'Twarn't but what any Shawnee
brave might do."

"So I learned," Colonel Buckner agreed. "But when I returned to Great
Oaks with a commission for him direct from Governor Patrick Henry,
Rodney was gone. He did not intend to join the eastern armies. From the
first, he has declared that the entire Indian confederacy would rise in
support of the British and that there would be war on the western
frontier. My own idea was that the savages who had fought with the
French against the British for so many years had small love for the
Redcoats."

"So they have, but they hate the settlers of Western Pennsylvania and
Virginia worse," Gilpin said. "Laying aside prejudice, Cunnel, we must
confess they've reason enough. The Presbyterian settlers murdered the
civilized Mingoes at Connestoga and at Lancaster to the last sucking
babe, then almost went to war against the Quakers because they wouldn't
permit the massacre of the Moravian Delawares as well: and they did
succeed in exiling the Delawares west of the Ohio. Then right here on
the Ohio, Cresap's men at one point and Daniel Greathouse's at another,
set on various parties of friendly Injuns during peace times and
murdered the lot of them, including the hull family of Logan, the great
Mingo chief who'd never been anything but a fast friend to the whites.
That set Logan's feet on the warpath with all the weight of the allied
tribes behind him. The sounds of that ain't scassly died off the air yet
when we declar' war against England. Regardless of what provocation the
settlers was laborin' under, and they was great, you could hardly expect
the savages to take up the tomahawk on the side of the colonists. Rod
knowed that, Cunnel, as does Zane, here, and every woodsman on the
border."

"Yes, it is bound to come," Zane agreed. "After Pennsylvania placed a
bounty on Indian scalps, regardless of age or sex, ten years or more
ago, white scalp hunters neglected to be very particular as to what hair
they lifted. The settlers had suffered ample provocation; but when they
began to retaliate for Indian outrages by the wholesale murder of
harmless Christianized Indians, at the very best it showed damned poor
judgment and has cost the lives of five settlers for every savage that
has gone down in resulting wars. And Rodney was correct in declaring
that there would be war on the frontier."

"Probably," Buckner assented. "He left word that he had gone to the
Indian country--that he did not wish to take up arms against the
Shawnees without first informing his brother. A piece of romantic folly!
There is such a thing as carrying chivalrous practice too far! One
cannot employ the code of a Virginia gentleman in dealing with savages!
I make no doubt that his precious Indian brother has already scalped
him."

"Much as you've soldiered, Cunnel," Gilpin said, "you've learned mighty
little about the nature of the savages. About as much as the average
army officer knows about redskins," he added reflectively.

"The business of an army officer is to fight the savages, not to
understand them," Buckner retorted stiffly.

"Which is why the best of regular troops has always proved so easy for
the redskins to cut down like sheep when fighting in the Injun country,"
Gilpin insisted. "Say what you please, Cunnel, and stick up with what
false pride you will for the superiority of the white soldier, cold fact
proves that an Injun campaigning the yellow-hides is more than a match,
man for man, for the best-trained European soldiers. Because why? Well,
the idea of war is to defeat the enemy and take his life while keepin'
your own hair on your head. Correct?"

"Certainly," Buckner assented.

"Well, the redskin lives up to the principle instead of the theory. He
takes cover behind log, rock or tree, with no more than his topknot
showing, from which p'int of vantage he picks off his enemy as if he's
potting turkeys. The white soldier is trained to stand in line and fire
volleys, breast high, at the general landscape. Mighty effective, maybe,
when poured into massed troops, but as aimless as throwing sand at a
mark when used against scattering foes, each of which has no more than
an eyeball and his trigger finger showing. Meanwhile, the reds pot the
soldiers like shooting down deer at a salt lick."

"Well! Well! What would you?" the Colonel demanded testily.

"I'd larn the soldiers to take cover instead of insisting that it's
cowardly to do it. I once heered an Ottawa chief exhorting his braves.
'When the soldiers take cover,' he says, 'reload your guns and wait. The
officers will stride up and down and prod each hiding soldier with his
sword and tell him to stand in the open and fight like a man. As they
step forth to fight like men, we will shoot them down as fat turkeys
fall from the roost. Give the officers time and they will drive all the
men forth to be killed.' Yes, Cunnel, I've heared many a wily red chief
address his braves in similar fashion."

"Stuff and nonsense!" Colonel Buckner snorted scornfully.

"He is absolutely right, Buckner," Zane declared. "It has been
demonstrated often enough, before Braddock's time and since."

"Is a Virginian to skulk behind a tree?" Buckner demanded, still
unconvinced.

"Why not?" Gilpin queried. "We build forts to fight from behind their
shelter. Why, then, in the open, should a man not use a tree? After all,
a stout tree is no more than an individual fort and serves the same
purpose. After building a blockhouse, Cunnel, you sartinly wouldn't
drive your men outside to fight before the walls instead of from behind
them. Why, then, do you drive a soldier out to fight with his back to a
tree instead of with his belly pressed close behind it? 'Tis an amazing
inconsistent scheme, to my way of reasoning. But the redskins approve
of it."

"But all that is neither here nor there at the moment," Colonel Buckner
declared. "It doesn't alter the fact that my nephew is out there many
days' travel in the heart of the Indian country. And with rumors afloat
that the whole of the Ohio wilderness is aflame with war talk."

"I wouldn't fret, Cunnel," Gilpin advised. "He knows savages and their
ways down to the ground and he'll know what they're up to long before we
get word of it. He'll slip through, Cunnel, safe as a snake through a
briar patch."

A man appeared at the door.

"A lone savage paddled acrost the Ohio river five miles up, Colonel
Zane," he said. "But he give those of us that was out for him the slip
and headed this way."

There was a sudden shout and Zane left the cabin swiftly as his roving
eye noted two men, their muskets trained upon a large maple that stood
at the head of a shallow depression a hundred yards from the house.

"Zane," said one of the men as he reached them. "If thar ain't a cussed
savage behind that tree! He must have snuck up that draw on his belly
and we seed him flit behind that maple. He shouted that he's white--but
I'll take my oath he ain't."

A tall, powerfully built savage stepped from behind the tree and held up
one hand, palm outward, in token of his peaceful intentions, then
advanced at Colonel Zane's signal. He was naked from the waist up. A
tomahawk, scalping knife and bullet pouch hung at the belt of his
leggings, and a powder horn was slung by a thong across his shoulders.

"Well, Rodney!" Colonel Zane said after the warrior had announced his
identity. "No wonder you felt it best to make a sneak for it to get
here. Any settler would have shot you down on sight for a savage. I
would myself."

"Yes, Colonel Zane," Rod agreed. "While among the Shawnees I spent so
much time in the sun with nothing on but a clout that my hide was tanned
to the same shade as theirs. It never did quite fade out and it only
requires a few days in the sun to darken it again to the proper shade;
then I can pass for a savage in any Indian camp."

Colonel Zane nodded. Even the rugged features, the high and prominent
cheek bones, the powerful nose and black eyes could pass for those of
some savage chief.

"The whole Indian confederacy is rising," Rod informed him. "The
Delawares will not go out because those on the Muskingum are steadfastly
opposed to war. Cornstalk may keep the Shawnees neutral. But all the
others have gone out. Already the trails are crowded with war parties
pressing this way. The plan is to strike every frontier point at once in
a general war. I made myself known to a certain Wyandotte chief and he
urged me to hasten here to warn you. Already he had sent secret word to
Fort Pitt, requesting that all settlers be warned."

"Indian he may have become and so remained for years," Colonel Zane
said, "but thank God that Izaak Zane has never betrayed his own blood
and people. Is it true that Governor Hamilton has offered a price for
every settler's scalp?"

"So the savages declare," Rod affirmed.

The kindliness vanished from Zane's face, leaving it hard as granite as
he cursed Hamilton, the Hair-buyer.

"Are Americans considered no better than vermin by this bloody scoundrel
who sets these red wolves of the forest upon our women and children? He
places a bounty upon our heads as if we were beasts of prey!"

He led the way to the house where Colonel Buckner still paced the floor.
The latter's gaze focussed upon the features of the savage.

"By the gods!" he roared, with a mixture of anger and relief. "What the
devil do you mean by such a masquerade? Naked from the waist up and your
head shaved like a Mingo buck's! Nothing left but a scalp lock!"

"It was that or lose it all," the younger man smiled back.

"No doubt," the uncle conceded. "And I'm glad to have you back, savage
or not. I have your commission into the colonial armies in my pocket,
signed by Patrick Henry."

The young warrior shook his head.

"Thanks, Uncle John, and my regrets at the same time. I'd rather act
independently and had thought of collecting a little band of border
woodsmen to patrol the frontier for small war parties of savages. They
will fight without pay and shift for themselves."

"Well! Well! If you prefer to fight as a savage instead of as a
gentleman and an officer, I suppose it doesn't matter greatly, so long
as your arm is lifted for the colonies," Colonel Buckner conceded
gruffly. "Spare no expense. The Buckner purse strings are open to you."

Gilpin and the two Buckners rode on, warning settlers as they traveled.
Two days later they arrived at Donaldson's farm, where a blockhouse had
been erected for the protection of the three families whose cabins stood
in a big meadow. Donaldson had been warned. The dozen or so families
that had settled within a radius of eight or ten miles were arriving to
take up quarters in the blockhouse. All along the frontier, the border
woodsmen had been drawing in, falling back upon the outermost fringe of
settlements. Perhaps a score of these hardy souls had collected near
Donaldson's. Adept as panthers at prowling the wilderness alone for
years on end, accustomed since infancy to having death dog their every
footstep as persistently as a shadow, this brotherhood of the border
fringe took all such matters as a part of the day's affairs.




CHAPTER IV


It was at Donaldson's that Rod Buckner heard the news that was destined
irrevocably to align the Shawnees against the colonists. A man had
crossed to the Indian country on a scouting expedition and had been
slain by savages. In retaliation, the garrison at Fort Randolph had
mutinied against its commanding officers and had slain Cornstalk, his
son, Chief Red Hawk and the other Shawnee delegates of peace.

The frontiersmen had started out from Donaldson's to scout for Indian
sign. The savages, suspecting that there would be scouts posted on the
side toward the Indian country, had detoured widely under forced march
and had covered sixty miles in a day and a night to strike Donaldson's
from the opposite direction. But they failed to reach it before dawn.
When that dread hour, the favorite for Indian attacks, had passed, the
families of the three cabins in the meadow returned to their chores
while the outlying families that had taken up quarters in the blockhouse
remained in its vicinity.

Buckner had covered his shaven skull with a coonskin cap and borrowed a
jacket to cover his naked torso. The jacket was too tight and it cramped
him and hindered the play of the rippling muscles of his arms and
shoulders but no more suitable garment was available. An hour after dawn
he set off with Gilpin for a prowl through the adjacent forest on the
chance that a war party of savages had eluded the vigilance of the
border scouts.

"All looks innocent enough," Buckner said, as they neared the edge of
the forest. "But both you and me know that a bit of woodland can appear
devoid of all life by so much as the flirt of a squirrel's tail and yet
shelter a hundred painted braves. 'Tis the custom of the redskins, and
one which the whites would do well to emulate. When white soldiers
attempt to surprise an Indian camp, it's like stalking a wily buck deer
in an oxcart loaded with empty wine casks; and works as well. I'll veer
to the left, and do you bear off to the right."

Rod's advance was the reverse of hasty. His eyes were not those of a
civilized person, trained merely to record a given scene as a whole, but
those of a savage, alertly searching out the essential details beneath
the broad sweep of the general view--trained to detect the mottled snake
on the moldy floor of the thicket, the sunlight dappling down through
the leaves upon the spotted coat of a sleeping fawn, the nesting grouse
whose colors merged into the shed leaves and brush stalks of her chosen
habitat. Nor did it escape his mind that the heavy branches halfway up
the trunks of mighty trees afforded excellent lurking spots for redskin
scouts.

He had not progressed more than two hundred yards into the forest before
his keen eye noted that the tip of a single feather sprouted from a
down log a musket shot ahead of him. A shed feather might have floated
down that way, quill end first, and lodged there in the bark of the
prostrate trunk--or it might be woven into the scalp lock of a brave. He
halted and glanced aloft as if watching for a squirrel. Then his
leisurely survey swept the forest ahead and on either hand. The trunk of
one tree, rather small, seemed to swell almost imperceptibly on one side
from about the height of a man's belt to the bulge of his chest. Over to
the right a bush twitched sharply, yet there was no wind, and there was
no bird hopping alone in it. The woods were still--too still.

Buckner looked to the powder in his priming pan, then lined down the
long barrel of his rifle at the peculiar bulge on the tree. The roar of
his rifle was accompanied by a wild screech and a volley of French oaths
as a form tumbled from behind the tree. Even at that distance Rod
thought that he recognized the convulsed features of the burly French
trader, Benoit, whose face still haunted his thoughts as the model of
all that was monstrous. The glimpse was but fleeting, however, for
almost with the report he had whirled and fled with the speed of a deer.

Instantly, the wood that had been devoid of sound and motion but a
second past became an inferno of savage yells and almost half a hundred
dark forms sprang to motion. Every down-log, bush and tree trunk seemed
to disgorge a painted brave. Buckner leaped from side to side with the
planting of each foot, his course resembling the corkscrew flight of a
jacksnipe when first flushed from a bog. The musket balls of the
foremost of his pursuers flew wide of the mark.

As he darted from the edge of the timber he could see the settlers
tumbling from their cabins and fleeing toward the blockhouse. Women ran
with babes in their arms. Men snatched up young children. Rod did not
overtake the rearmost of them until just outside the fort. He scooped up
a six-year-old youngster in his stride and entered as ready hands
slammed the gates while the foremost savages were yet a musket shot
away.

The enraged warriors rushed up to the very walls, hoping to gain an
entrance before the defense could be organized. Some even thrust muskets
through loopholes from the outside and discharged them into the fort.
But such settlers as had come in from isolated cabins and taken up
quarters in the fort had manned the loopholes at the first alarm and now
poured a hot fire upon the assailants while those who had just arrived,
breathless, from the cabins of the clearing were stationing themselves.
For twenty minutes the battle raged fiercely and the film of powder
smoke obscured the vision of those at the loopholes. Under cover of
this, the savages retired, bearing with them their own dead and wounded.

There were but few over thirty defenders to hold the fort and prevent
the swarm of women and children from becoming a prey to the savages. But
that number would be sufficient, Rod Buckner thought, barricaded behind
log walls while the Indians must fight in the open. He was glad that it
was a blockhouse fight.

The savages, numbering not many more than the defenders, had retired to
just beyond effective musket shot and from there reviled the whites as
cowards who feared to give battle in the open. Then there occurred an
instance of the unaccountable recklessness and lack of strategy which
seemed to characterize the affrays between the savages and the settlers
of progressive frontiers for two hundred years.

There was a sudden crowding of defenders behind the gates. Others,
believing that an order to charge had been given, hastened to join them.
There was a sudden rush of cheering settlers from the gates. Rod, aghast
at the audacity of it, nevertheless followed.

Some one succeeded in retaining a mere handful of defenders within the
fort. Rod made out the form of his uncle among those ahead as the
cheering whites made their spirited charge. The warriors, firing their
muskets at the advancing whites, retreated slowly. Then the inevitable
occurred. There was a sudden tremendous yell of savage triumph. The
landscape swarmed with painted demons that appeared as if by magic on
every hand. Every rock and shrub seemed suddenly transformed into a
warrior. More than a hundred strong, they closed in upon the front and
both flanks of the charging party. The charge was transformed into a
terrible affray, in which each little group of settlers fought
desperately to regain the fort. It was now clubbed musket against
tomahawk. Here and there a saber flashed, while above all the clash of
arms rose the demoniac whoops of the infuriated savages.

Rod Buckner was near the rear of the rallying party so did not feel the
full brunt of the first desperate rush of the savages as they hurled the
foremost settlers back upon those in the rear. A brawny savage charged
down upon him from the flank. A sweeping blow of Rod's musket was
delivered with such force as to strike down the uplifted arm of the
savage and crush his skull. But the movement had caused the too-tight
jacket to hitch up and bind his bulging muscles; and as he whirled to
swing the musket back in a left-hand blow at the head of another
assailant, the binding of his muscles deflected his aim and the force of
his own swing jerked him off balance. The tomahawk of the savage would
have found his skull save for the fact that a powerful settler slashed
so viciously with a saber as to almost behead the dusky assailant.

With a single wrench, Buckner stripped off the restricting jacket and
plucked the tomahawk from his belt. His coonskin cap had fallen from his
head. His uncle, wielding a saber as if it weighed no more than a straw,
was falling back, hotly pressed by two savages. With a single leap, Rod
passed the elder Buckner and struck down the nearest warrior with his
tomahawk. Half consciously, he noted a fleeting look of horrified
surprise in the eyes of the brave just before the iron blade found his
skull. The elder Buckner, thus relieved, struck down his other
antagonist, then whirled, breathing heavily, as if about to lunge at
his nephew with the saber.

"To the fort!" Rod shouted above the turmoil of battle.

The older man stared for a split second, then turned and made off toward
the blockhouse while Rod fell in behind him. Three settlers had cleaned
up the few remaining warriors in the immediate vicinity. They, too, were
running toward the fort. Rod had taken no more than three steps when, a
dozen yards off on the flank, he observed a man, garbed in a greenish
cloth jacket, stooping above a prostrate settler as if to lift him.

He leaped to help the man and it was not until he was within two yards
that his startled gaze detected the fact that the stooping man was not
aiding the settler but was scalping him. As the man rose, knife in one
hand and the dripping scalp in the other, Rod knew him for a British
ranger. The latter, instead of preparing to defend himself, widened his
thick lips in a grin. Then sudden recognition of the fact that he was
about to be attacked showed in his eyes and he half lifted his knife.
Buckner's own surprise had been so great that, prepared to help a
friend, he was scarcely set to strike an enemy. He had time but for a
swift back-hand stroke. The pipe end of his tomahawk found the spot
where the man's nose met his forehead and he went down like a felled ox.
The whole affair had lasted less than twenty seconds. His uncle, running
between two settlers, was but a few yards away and Rod sped after him.
He overhauled the trio easily with his greater speed and was only some
six feet behind his uncle when one of the flanking settlers glanced over
his shoulder. With a wild oath, the man whirled and swung his musket at
Rod's face. Instinctively, he ducked, but the weapon struck him a
glancing upward blow high on the forehead and knocked him flat upon his
back. A flickering consciousness remained to him as feet trampled past.
Dimly, he heard the sounds of combat and the vengeful whoops of the
savages.

Then he was seized by powerful hands, his shoulders were lifted and he
felt his moccasin-shod feet trailing swiftly over the ground. At last
this peculiar style of locomotion ceased and he was deposited on the
ground. His returning sight focussed waveringly upon branches of trees
with the blue sky above. Feebly he passed a hand over his ringing head
and it came away wet and crimson. Heavy breathing from close at hand
drew his flickering eyes to a badly wounded savage sprawled near him.
There were other still dark shapes on the ground near by. Several
wounded warriors sat with their backs propped against trees. One brave
tottered about on unsteady legs and chanted his death song. One of the
prone men uttered a groan and passed a hand across his face. Rod's
fascinated gaze riveted on the bloody features of the British ranger and
a chill tingled along his spine.

The shock cleared his reeling brain. The whole picture unrolled before
his mind's eye. Once he had shed jacket and headgear, he had appeared to
all eyes alike as a warrior. That fleeting look of surprise in the eyes
of the brave he had cut down had been occasioned by the belief that he
was assailed by an ally when unprepared to defend himself. The ranger,
too, had made no move to defend himself until the last-second
realization had galvanized his knife arm in a motion that was too late.
And the settler had struck Rod down under the impression that he was a
savage in hot pursuit of the elder Buckner. Some warriors, true to the
Indian custom of carrying off their own dead and wounded, had dragged
him from the field as a stricken ally.

He rose totteringly, the blood from his forehead dripping down across
his face and chest. A wounded brave called out to him in the Wyandotte
tongue.

"Do you die, Warrior?"

Buckner grunted a negative and moved off through the forest. It behooved
him to put distance between himself and that spot before the savages,
drawing off for a conference, should discuss the events of the charge
and talk with the recovering Kemper. He must find some of those woodsmen
who were scouting towards the west and have them rally the others to
relieve the fort. But he would have to approach any of the frontiersmen
with caution or he would be shot down without warning as a savage. He
struck a loping gait that jarred his aching head; but the throbbing grew
less instead of worse. At the end of half an hour, as he loped along a
forest trail, he discerned swift motion in the forest a musket shot
ahead. Then there was not so much as a flicker. The forest was silent
and undisturbed. But he had seen enough in that one glimpse to inform
him that the men ahead were attired in buckskin. They were woodsmen, not
savages. He knew that one of their number, observing his approach, had
given a signal and all had taken cover as expertly as partridges--an
ideal ambush in case he was the foremost of a party of savages. He knew,
too, that far out on either flank, men were circling to cut off his
retreat.

He lifted his voice in a hail and stepped from behind his tree with
uplifted palm.

"'Tis Buckner," Gilpin told the woodsmen. "No doubt sent as a messenger,
since he could slip through the savages as one of themselves."

The forest ahead suddenly swarmed with moving figures as the woodsmen
left cover and advanced. They were on their way to relieve the fort and
did not so much as halt, questioning him briefly as they traveled.

"The varmints had me cut off from the fort when you stirred them out
with that first shot," Gilpin said. "So I made tracks to get help.
You're bloody as a gutted buck. Are you bad hurt?"

"Only nicked, as you'd bark a squirrel," Buckner assured him. Briefly,
he recounted the occurrence.

"Your scalp must have been ordained by Manitou to ornament your skull
instead of a redskin's girdle," Gilpin declared. "Otherwise your hair
and your head would have parted company the instant a friend was so
obliging as to knock you into the hands of the enemy. Remarkable
fortunate, I'd name it. So they was lured into making a sortie! When
will they l'arn? But these are the lads that will give the red
miscreants hell," he added, gesturing to either side.

The woodsmen had spread out to advance in skirmish formation, every man
of them ready to take cover on the instant in case of attack, and they
forged ahead with a slack-kneed lope that covered the maximum distance
with the minimum of exertion. They leaped over windfalls and across
narrow draws as nimbly as deer, taking all in their stride. Theirs was
the lithe power of agile wild beasts, not the muscle-bound strength of
the hard-toiling settler.

Back in the blockhouse the few defenders--only twelve in number after
the return of the handful who had escaped with their lives from that
reckless sortie--were waging a stanch and determined battle to prevent
the overwhelming horde of savages from storming the fort. Theirs was a
desperate plight. Pioneer women were standing to the loopholes along
with the men, but it seemed merely a matter of time.

Then suddenly there came a wild cheer, savage as any that the redskins
themselves could have uttered. From the forest there poured a score of
buckskin-clad figures. Bounding like panthers, these men bore down upon
the rear of the hostiles. The very ferocity of the charge scattered the
savages; they knew the terrible fighting qualities of these border
rangers. And though many warriors rallied to oppose the advance, they
were shot down by the unerring rifles or cut down by tomahawks, and the
borderers fought their way into the fort.

The enraged savages withdrew to beyond musket shot. With the walls
defended by that terrible little band, there would be less than no
chance to storm the fort. They hung round for another day, then
retreated toward the Ohio.

For a week, the smoke of burning cabins rose the entire length of the
frontier. But in the main, those who had once occupied them were safe
within the blockhouse walls. Chagrined attacking parties, having
surrounded cabins in the night, made their rush at dawn only to discover
that their intended prey had flown. Larger forces, commanded by British
officers and some of them accompanied by British rangers, assaulted the
larger settlements, only to find the inhabitants on guard. Not one
important post fell prey to the savages during that first great
border-long offensive.

Years later, in recognition of the invaluable services rendered by a
certain Wyandotte chief in sending out those warnings to the
settlements, the new American government granted Izaak Zane a tract of
the best land in the Ohio wilderness. On this great estate, surrounded
by his large Indian family, he resided regally throughout his life, and
the town of Zanesfield was founded on his holdings.

As the savages fell back from the Donaldson farm, there was a general
retreat all along the frontier. The border men, acting as self-appointed
scouts, clung to the wake and on the flanks of such retreating war
parties to make certain that this was not merely a ruse on the part of
the wily hostiles. But it was an actual and frontier-long retreat. The
Indians hurried on to their various towns on the Muskingum, the Scioto,
the Sandusky, the Miami and the Maumee for the winter.

The hair-buying campaign of Hamilton had not ended, had only just begun.
But it had exerted exactly the opposite of the intended effect. Instead
of rousing terror that would lead to the speedy capitulation and
surrender of the entire frontier, it roused a storm of wrath. Those who
had been too far from the scene of operations in the East to have felt
their effects or to have taken any very serious interest in the war, now
took the colonial cause to their hearts. Hard-riding planters from
isolated Virginia farms dropped their ploughs and headed toward the
frontier. Placid yeomen of quiet farming communities of Pennsylvania
shouldered their muskets and plodded stolidly toward the West to have a
look at those who would pay a price for the scalps of their women and
their children. Lukewarm adherence to the colonial cause was fanned
overnight into fanatic partisanship. These tidings drifted to the
harrassed armies of the East and they knew that the far frontier had
espoused their cause. Names began to stand forth as synonymous with
sagacious and valorous leadership, individual heroism and desperate
exploits in the western wilderness. Boone, Kenton, Zane, McCullock, and
other names became familiar words upon men's tongues. And presently the
name of Buckner was mentioned among those others.




CHAPTER V


Buckner glanced about the men who were roasting bits of venison over the
coals of the morning cook fires. A wild-looking lot, these few men that
made up Buckner's Rangers. There were no more than a dozen in camp, the
others being out in various directions scouting for Indian sign. It was
seldom that the rangers bivouacked twice in the same spot. The very
nature of their work demanded constant shifting and a wide range of
movement. Never numbering more than twenty men, Buckner's rangers
nevertheless had proved a terrible scourge to marauding parties of
savages that penetrated east of the Ohio to prey among the scattered
settlers. There was no question of commissary and supply, of bedding,
shelters and other cumbersome equipment to be transported when these men
campaigned. They moved about with the freedom of wolves, were scarcely
less wild and fierce, in fact, and rationed themselves as they traveled.
Any man among them was capable of living indefinitely off the country.

All of them had lived among the Indians during peace times and had
fought against them in many a bloody affray during war times. Some had
hunted Indians for the Pennsylvania bounty as trappers might hunt for
wolves. They thought no more of lifting a redskin's scalp than of
stripping the pelt from a mink.

Two men came swinging through the timber toward the camp. Two brothers,
Thomas and Archibald Herne, reported that a small war party of about
twenty-five savages had crossed the Ohio ten miles south during the
night and had headed eastward. Within five minutes of their arrival, the
woodsmen had broken camp and were traveling south.

A few minutes later, Gilpin and another ranger reached the deserted camp
from the north, where they had been scouting during the night. Gilpin
inspected a crude drawing hastily sketched with charcoal on a slab of
hickory bark.

"They head south for ten miles along the river, then turn east on a
trail," he said. "How long have they been gone?"

The other woodsman, inspecting the deserted camp while Gilpin deciphered
the map, pointed to a piece of half-cooked meat discarded near the
smoking embers. Flies swarmed round it but there was only one cluster of
blow-eggs upon it.

"Not more'n fifteen minutes," he said. "That meat was too sizzlin' hot
for them flies to blow it first off," and he pointed to several
creeping, disabled blow flies whose temerity in attempting to lay their
eggs upon too hot meat had been their undoing. "But it don't take but a
mighty short space for meat to cool, and ten minutes after it's cool it
would be plastered with fly-blows entire."

Lacking that indisputable evidence as to the recency of the rangers'
departure, he would have found other signs revealing what he wished to
know.

"Then we'll head straight down river and overhaul them, 'stid of angling
southeast to cut off," Gilpin said, and the other man nodded. An hour
later they overtook the main body.

Before starting east on the trail of the marauding party of Hurons,
hunting shirts and fur caps were cached and each man stood forth garbed
only in moccasins, leather leggings and breechclout. From the paints
that were an indispensable part of every warrior's equipment, each one
daubed face and torso according to his individual fancy. But the war
plumes which each attached to his scalp lock were the same, two feathers
for each, one pure white, the other bright scarlet. And each man made
some sort of white mark between his shoulder blades and another on his
chest. With these means of identification, such cool and experienced
fighters as these woodsmen would never be guilty of shooting a friend in
the course of any forest engagement when both friends and foes were
scattered and treed.

It was almost certain that the war party would post scouts in the rear
to report if militia had cut the trail and were following. The two Herne
brothers ranged far out to either flank and then moved some three
hundred yards ahead before the main body started. Two others followed
them at half that distance. Then Buckner and Gilpin took the trail, the
others following at a distance of over a hundred yards in the rear. An
Indian scout, posted to guard the back track of the war party, would be
puzzled at the approach of the two savages on the trail. Even though
suspicious, he could not be certain that they were not two allies
following along to join the marauders. And any such hesitancy would
cause his downfall when dealing with such men as these.

Buckner held to the trail without difficulty, though it would have been
invisible to untrained eyes. A few scuffed leaves here, broken moss
there, bent blades of grass and other such minor disturbances were
sufficient. When the sun was five hours high the trail no longer passed
through open glades but veered aside to skirt all such openings.

"Five hours behind 'em," Gilpin commented. "It had growed light when
they got this far and they quit showing themselves in the openings and
circled round through the timber. We'll be running up on a scout any
time now."

Buckner nodded.

"There's one man with them that's neither savage nor woodsman," he said.
"He puts his weight first on his heels, heavy, each step, after the
fashion of the whites, while as you know, both savages and woodsmen step
first on the ball of the foot and the heel track is lightest."

"So I'd observed," said Gilpin. "The man must jar his own frame to the
teeth every step, landing heel-first as solid as he apparently does.
What's a man who's no woodsman doing in moccasins on a redskin raid of
this kind? A Britisher that aims to be dropped behind over here as a
spy, think you?"

"I've been wondering. If he's disguised as an American settler, yes. If
he's wearing his uniform, no. The latter would mean no more than that
some ambitious soldier was eager to learn more of the ways of Indian
campaigning."

The trail led along the crest of a low timbered ridge. The two scouts
came presently to where the savages had broken their single-file
formation to cluster at one spot, which was marked by a giant sycamore,
its top shattered by lightning, that stood on the highest point of the
ridge. The signs indicated that the war party had remained there for a
considerable period, some of them sitting down, others sprawled flat on
the ground.

Buckner lifted his voice in the single loud note of a crow as a signal
for both the main body of rangers and the outflanking scouts to stand
fast where they were. Then he circled the spot and picked up the trail
of a single man who had ascended the slope of the ridge to join the war
party at the sycamore. He followed the back track of the man and it led
him down the ridge and out into a timbered flat. After following it for
some three hundred yards, he came out into a bottom that had been
overflowed by a creek. The land had now dried out on top and the tracks
were clearly discernible.

An outflanking scout of a war party would be expected to keep track of
the whereabouts of the main body and rejoin it while on the march. Yet
the war party had made a lengthy halt at that giant sycamore on the
ridge. Plainly, it had been a prearranged rendezvous. Settlers with
Tory leanings sometimes gave aid and information to the enemy. This
affair might prove to be such a case. Carefully, Buckner inspected each
track.

"One foot of a white, one foot of a savage--or a woodsman," Buckner
said.

The print of the right foot indicated that the man put his weight first
upon the heel of it, though but slightly. With the left, he stepped not
only with the weight on the ball and toes but the heel seemed scarcely
to touch the earth at all, even where the ground was soft and the toes
bit deep.

"Likely he has a bruise, or a thorn in his left heel, and so favors it,"
Buckner mused. "In which case, even a savage would land flat or
heel-first with his right to take the weight off all but the toes of his
left."

There was nothing further to be learned from the tracks so he rejoined
Gilpin, then uttered the notes of the crow, twice in swift succession,
an interval of three seconds, then two more swift crow calls as a signal
for all hands to resume march.

Not until the sun had passed the noon mark by some two hours did Buckner
see anything to cause another halt. Then he stooped as if to tie a
moccasin lace, accompanying the movement with a low cluck. Gilpin
promptly seated himself on a down log, at which signal every man of
those a hundred yards in rear took instantly to cover.

"Which way is the varmint?" Gilpin queried.

"Behind a big oak a hundred yards to the right and ahead," Buckner
informed without even glancing in that direction. "I saw only a slice of
his face the width of two fingers. He's not sure about us and will draw
off, keeping the tree in line with us."

Buckner raised his voice in the single piercing scream of a hawk. That
note, less frequently heard than most other bird conversation in the
forest, and hence less apt to be confusing, was the invariable signal
among Buckner's Rangers to denote the sighting of an enemy. The
outflanking scouts would not only halt but would take cover at once and
keep an eye peeled for the enemy. The savage, too, would know it for a
signal, since it rose from where the two men sat on the log, but he
would be mystified as to its meaning. To the day of his death, Buckner
seldom heard the scream of a wheeling hawk without an instinctive start
to take cover and peer about for an enemy. This system of travel and
signalling worked out by the rangers when on the track of a war party
seldom failed to account for such scouts as the savages had left to
watch on the trail.

After the space of a minute, Buckner and Gilpin rose and sauntered
toward the tree that had sheltered the savage. They separated, each
keeping a tree in line with the spot for protection, each alert for the
slightest movement of a musket barrel from behind any cover ahead.
Seeing this movement, no savage scout would doubt for an instant but
that he had been discovered and was being stalked. He would draw off,
taking advantage of all cover and keeping a watchful eye upon the
enemies in the rear. While thus engaged, it was almost inevitable that
he would draw within range of one or another of the four scouts that
traveled ahead and out in the flanks of the party. Presently a heavy
report roared through the forest, accompanied by an unearthly screech.
Buckner advanced to where Tom Herne was divesting a prostrate warrior of
his scalp.

"Huron," Herne said. "He was sliding along, looking back to see if you
was following him, and he never knowed what hit him."

Then the formation was resumed and they continued on the trail. The sun
was but two hours above the western horizon when another Huron scout was
bagged in like fashion. On this occasion it was Arch Herne that lifted
the scalp of the hostile. Toward sundown the trail turned off up a lofty
wooded ridge and the rangers called a halt for a conference.

"Thar's nothing but ridges that way for another twelve mile,"
volunteered a man who knew that section intimately. "Then thar's Pape's
Valley--three cabins full of Papes and their kinfolks built close in a
triangle. That's whar they're headed."

"Then they won't strike until morning," Buckner said. "They'll wait
over; and if we follow too close we'll run up on their scouts. Better to
rest up ourselves and then you can lead us well out around them."

This plan was adopted. Two hours before dawn the little force of rangers
drew near Pape's farm from an oblique angle and waited in silence a half
mile from the cabins. It was certain that, cover being equal, the
savages would creep up from the down-wind side on account of the dogs of
the settlers. An hour passed, then another long span of minutes. It was
beginning to show faintly gray in the east. Then a dog gave vent to an
angry bark that subsided into a growl. Several other canines chimed in.
It was evident that the dogs, even though unable to scent the
approaching savages, had heard or sensed something to rouse them.

"They're drawin' in," Gilpin whispered.

Buckner rose and the rest followed suit. The rangers separated and
glided noiselessly through the black shadows of the forest to come upon
the rear of the savages. Only a slight lessening of that velvet black
apprised Buckner of the fact that he was within twenty yards of the edge
of the clearing. A noiseless shape moved ahead of him and disappeared.
He knew that a Huron had stationed himself behind a tree at the edge of
the forest. He moved silently forward to another tree. His keen ears
detected an occasional rustle--no more. Not once was there so much as a
metallic click of arms or equipment, yet he knew that there were around
forty armed men within a few yards of him. The black pall lifted
gradually until the dark bundle of cabins and the few trees left
standing near them began to loom in the clearing. The dogs had quieted
somewhat but gave vent to occasional uneasy growls.

Both rangers and savages knew that the occupants of those dark cabins
were alert, eyes glued to loopholes, hoping that the dogs had been
roused by the passing of bear or panther and not by the stealthy
approach of hostile marauders. Buckner could now discern the back of the
Huron brave who peered from a tree fifteen feet ahead. A few feet to the
right of the first, another warrior was stationed. The ranger chief
peered closely and could discern no white mark upon the back of either
brave. Besides, a ranger would not have stationed himself behind the
outermost tree at the edge of the forest, but rather farther to the rear
to take the attacking party from behind. He knew that by now every
ranger had been stationed for a space of minutes, most of them, no
doubt, having singled out a Huron apiece. They waited now only for his
signal. The dogs again began their angry barking and one made a snarling
rush toward the timber but whirled and retreated, growling deep in his
throat. That would mean that some few of the Indians were creeping,
snakelike, through the potato patch and behind woodpiles and various
other covers, to be in readiness to shoot down the first persons who
would emerge from the cabins and to rush the first door that was opened.

Dawn was spreading more swiftly now. Buckner stepped from behind his
tree and moved in leisurely fashion toward the savage immediately ahead.
The warrior whirled at the first sound but saw only a fellow brave in
the vague half-light. He turned again to peer from behind his tree.
Buckner swung his tomahawk and the Huron went down without a struggle.

Even before Buckner could raise his voice in the prearranged signal for
the rangers to strike, some nervous occupant of one of the cabins fired
at a movement outside. On the instant, the edge of the forest resounded
with the war whoop of the Hurons. Eight or ten dark figures leaped up
out in the clearing and charged the cabins. As the Hurons, their every
faculty riveted on the scene before them, leaped from behind their trees
to charge to the aid of their fellows, the rangers struck from behind.
Many a brave's skull was split before he knew that an enemy was near
him. Other rangers, who had not yet stalked to within tomahawking
distance of their prey, shot warriors down from behind.

The red splashes from the dark bulk of the cabins revealed the loopholes
from which the occupants fired upon their assailants. Savages, their
lives made up of surprise and counter surprise, never remained at a
disadvantage for long. A dying Huron raised the alarm halloo from the
edge of the forest. On the instant, every brave in the clearing knew
that the commotion of ten seconds past had not been occasioned by the
advance of the main party of Hurons to help them but by a surprise
attack launched against them from the rear.

They scattered for cover, flitting figures in the dim light of dawn. A
voice roared out an order in the Huron tongue. It struck a familiar
chord in Buckner, and the picture of Benoit's brutal face rose for a
brief flash in his consciousness.

The settlers, amazed at the sudden cessation of the turmoil outside,
and peering down the barrels of their muskets for another glimpse of
their recent assailants, presently witnessed a strange and incredible
scene. A party of painted savages prowled all along the edge of the
forest, occupied with wrenching the scalps from prostrate members of
their own race. For a full minute, old man Pape stared silently at this
weird performance, while from behind him sounded the breathing of
terrified children. Then he straightened his tall form with a sigh of
relief.

"God be praised," he gave fervent thanks. "Buckner's Rangers. Can't
nothing else account for what's going on out thar. It must be Buckner's
men."

Arch Herne advanced from the timber with a prisoner, his hands pinioned
behind him.

"This here's likely the one as walked on his heels," he said. "I tapped
him on the head, like, and tied him."

The captive, attired in the garb of the British Rangers, save for his
moccasin-shod feet, wore the insignia of captain. There was something
vaguely familiar about the man but Buckner could not quite place where
he had seen him before. A red scar showed on the bridge of his nose and
strayed across his forehead. And suddenly Buckner knew that the face was
the same that he had looked upon for one second before a hasty back-hand
stroke of his tomahawk had felled the Britisher during the fight at
Donaldson's farm a year in the past.

Captain Kemper, the prisoner, bore his captivity with a stoical
indifference akin to that which might have characterized one of his red
associates. Upon reaching the Ohio, Buckner found his presence a
hindrance to the free movements of the rangers. However, there was no
near-by frontier fort where the captive could be delivered into the
hands of the proper authorities. The Britisher, having been taken in
uniform, was eligible for exchange or parole; and Buckner, as a matter
of expediency, decided to take his parole on the spot.

"Will he live up to it?" Gilpin queried doubtfully.

"He is a British officer and a gentleman," Buckner said. "An officer who
violates his oath loses his honor and ceases to be a man."

That was the code of gentlemen of his day. Virginians, in particular,
were extremely thin-skinned on the score of their honor. Any remark, if
construed as a reflection upon one's word, courage or propriety of
conduct, was more apt than not to result in a meeting at dawn. And in
the case of Rod Buckner, his early training having been in the hands of
fiercely proud Shawnee braves, this fire-eating code of the Virginians
had fallen upon fruitful soil. Both on the British side and the
colonial, there were many former officers who had taken the oath of
parole. Chafe against inactivity they did, violate their word of honor
they would not. Captain Kemper gladly availed himself of the privilege
of parole. Buckner himself returned the officer's arms and paddled him
across the Ohio.

Perhaps two weeks thereafter, some forty Pennsylvania militiamen,
lounging round bivouac fires, were startled by the sharp challenge of
one of their sentries from out in the night. The sentry admitted two
buckskin-clad figures when the challenged parties announced themselves
as Tom Herne and Buckner. They presented themselves before Captain
Donner, the officer commanding the detachment. Donner was an arrogant
soul of small military experience and unused to Indian campaigning,
commissioned for his services in recruiting men from among the yeomen
settlements of Pennsylvania. His new authority rested uneasily upon him
and, extremely jealous of it, he was inclined to pattern his manner
after that of the British martinets.

"Captain Donner," Buckner said. "You are camped on the trail of the
little war party that sacked Martin's cabin yesterday. Do you intend to
follow it?"

"I do," Donner stated.

"They have crossed the Ohio by now and I wouldn't follow them beyond
it," Buckner counselled.

"And why?" Donner inquired stiffly.

"There are but ten savages in that party," Buckner said. "And when ten
savages, returning from a raid, leave a trail that any but an
experienced tracker can unravel, it means but one thing--that they want
to be followed."

"Then their wish will be granted," Captain Donner declared.

"The country beyond the Ohio is swarming with warriors hoping that a
detachment of troops will follow the trail of some returning war party,"
Buckner persisted. "It is a regular part of their strategy. Their scouts
will watch your every move and decoy you into an ambush."

"Yet I hear that Buckner's Rangers cross to the Indian country
frequently," Captain Donner declared surlily. "Where you can go with
twenty men, I can go with forty."

"Thar warn't but ten reds, yet they made a squaw march of their retreat
that left a trail like a hull redskin town had gone visiting," Tom Herne
cut in. "It appears to me like a nice inviting highway to hell, and if I
was in your boots I'd never set foot on it across the Ohio."

"One might think," Donner said harshly, "that you men were commanding
this detachment, not myself."

"As scouts, we report conditions as we find them," Buckner returned, his
own manner stiffening.

"Then if you will confine yourself to reporting and dispense with your
assumption of authority," Donner snapped, "I will proceed to act upon my
own judgment as to the best course to follow."

"Very well," Buckner returned, controlling his own mounting temper. "We
were merely telling you what any border scout would tell you if there
was one attached to your outfit."

He turned on his heel to leave but was deterred as a man lounged from
among the militiamen at another fire and came forward.

"Who says there's no scout?" he demanded. "Who knows more of savages and
their ways than René Benoit?"

Buckner had heard that Benoit, in common with many French woodsmen, was
fighting on the side of the colonists. He had discarded that fleeting
impression that the man dislodged from behind the tree by his first shot
at Donaldson's farm had been Benoit. Reason told him that his dislike of
the man was occasioned merely by that childhood aversion that cropped up
out of the past. Nevertheless, some animal sense of wariness rose from
the depths to caution Buckner to rely upon his feelings rather than to
depend upon reason. Woodsmen, in common with savages and the wild
things, were quick to heed such obscure warnings, even when unsupported
by reason. Buckner could not rid himself of a wary distrust of the man.

"You're a woodsman, Benoit," he said. "None better. What is your own
verdict as to crossing into the Indian country with so small a
detachment on a trail obviously left to be followed?"

"No harm in crossing, is there?" Benoit demanded, "long as I keep 'em
from stumbling into a trap once we are on the far side?"

"No," Buckner conceded.

Benoit turned and walked back to his fire. Buckner's eyes met those of
Herne in a quick exchange of discovery. The man, almost imperceptibly,
favored his left foot in his stride. This defect did not rise from some
temporary bruise or thorn wound, as Buckner had interpreted the tracks
of the lone man who had met the Hurons at the rendezvous by the giant
sycamore on the ridge. It was some sort of permanent injury, as
evidenced by the slack, unfilled heel of Benoit's left moccasin. The
whole picture was cleared on the instant for Buckner. Benoit, while
attached as a scout with various bodies of colonial militia, was giving
aid to the enemy, conveying information to war parties and guiding them
upon unprotected settlements while supposed to be out on lone scouts of
his own. Buckner had not been mistaken in the identity of the man
dislodged from behind the tree trunk at the first shot at Donaldson's
farm. Neither had his senses misled him by flashing a picture of Benoit
into his consciousness at the sound of that roaring voice in the dim
light of dawn at Pape's clearing. That instinctive aversion had been
right where reason had been at fault.

Swiftly, he acquainted Captain Donner with his conclusions. That pompous
person, however, was completely unversed in sign reading. All that was
of vital significance to a woodsman seemed but far-fetched nonsense to
him, and he had no hesitation in declaring it so.

"Worse than absurd!" he scornfully snorted. "Suspecting a man because of
a few moccasin tracks a half-hundred miles from here weeks ago."

"A woodsman's life depends every hour on not misreading the least signs
in the forest about him," Buckner said. "The wiliest redskin alive
cannot cross through a hundred miles of wilderness and break his
trail--strive though he may to conceal it--but what another savage or a
woodsman can track him the length of it. He can leave so little sign
that his tracker falls days behind him, perhaps, but lose him entirely,
he cannot. Such obscure things mean to us what the printed page means to
you, and are as easily interpreted. When we warn you that Benoit is a
good man to watch, it is to your advantage to heed us."

He strode off into the forest with Herne and the night gave back no
sound of their movements.

"Them yokels is unlarned in fighting and not one amongst 'em could
distinguish between Injun sign and b'ar tracks, least of all that
thick-haid who leads them," Herne said after a space. "They hail from
settlements whar a musket shot ain't been heered, or a war whoop, in
going on twenty year. They're stolid and subsarvient, more like European
sojers, who from the cradle up ain't knowed nothing else but to obey
what was told them. If Benoit leads them across the Ohio, it's for the
parpose of betraying them into the hands of the savages--and they'll
plod along like sheep wherever that fool Donner orders. If they was
frontier settlers they'd see him in hell first."

Within the week, news reached the settlements that Donner's detachment
had been cut to pieces in the wilderness across the Ohio and that only
Donner and five men had made their way back. Benoit, so it was said,
traveling well in advance of the outfit, had been shot down at the first
fire of the savages.




CHAPTER VI


The vague, flickering glow of the dying fires did not serve even to
relieve the gloom of the Indian town, much less to penetrate the somber
depths of the encircling forest. The quavering falsetto of a screech owl
sounded from a short distance away, followed by the harsh squawk of a
night heron, then the silvery notes of a winging plover. After an
interval the latter two notes of this series of bird calls were
repeated.

A small figure slipped silently from a big lodge and left the village by
way of a path that led through the forest. After following it for some
two hundred yards the girl was halted by the sleepy twitter of a sparrow
disturbed upon its roost. She twittered a soft answer and a tall form
appeared on the path before her. Guided by the man's encircling arm, the
slip of a girl vanished into the dense timber and presently was seated
upon a down log by his side.

"How is it with you, White Fawn?" he asked in the Shawnee tongue.

"Well," she replied. "But the Shawnees miss Talk-with-birds from the
lodge of his mother; and Standing Bear grieves that his brother fights
in the camp of the Long-knives. White Fawn sleeps every night with her
ears awake for the signal. Her eyes open at the first note of every
screech owl in the forest and her breath comes fast in hope that it will
be followed by the voice of the heron and the plover twice repeated."

The man's powerful arm drew the slight form to his side in a comforting
gesture.

"White Fawn is in her twelfth year," he said, "and she has forgotten the
language of her people. It is well that she should return to the lodges
of the white men and learn their ways."

The girl seemed to shrink in size as she expressed her fear of going
among those whose ways she did not know. It could not be, she declared.

"Talk-with-birds could return to the Shawnees and would be welcomed in
the lodge of his brother. Who would welcome White Fawn into their lodge
among the Long-knives?"

"White Fawn would be an honored guest in the great lodge of my people,
with black servants to attend her slightest wish, until such time as her
own family could be located. Your own name comes no longer to your lips.
White Fawn has forgotten it. But somewhere among the big villages of the
white men there are those who have not forgotten. For six years their
eyes have been wet with grief that you do not return to them.
Talk-with-birds goes far to the West on an important mission, even to
the great river that is known to the red men as the Father of the
Waters. On his return, he will take White Fawn to the lodge of his
people."

But she would not have it so. He recalled his own stark terror when, at
about her present age, he had been escorted from the Shawnee town by his
uncle and Gilpin.

"But you will come again?" the girl sought. "Always the ears of White
Fawn will be awake for the signal. At the first note of a screech owl,
her heart soars aloft like the flight of an eagle. Then her heart is on
the ground like the sluggish bounds of the hop-toad when the heron and
the plover fail to speak twice in answer to the owl."

"I will come again," he promised. "The name of White Fawn is written
deep in my heart. But it may be that I cannot come until there is peace
between the Shawnees and the Long-knives. I could not have come now but
I saw big war parties of Shawnees crossing the Ohio to fight the
settlers of Kentucky and among them were the warriors from here; so it
was safe for me to come. Manitou be with you until I come again."

Some days later a canoe, drawn by the resistless drag of the current and
propelled by the rhythmic sweep of a paddle wielded by powerful arms,
fled down the bosom of the Ohio. The brawny savage, muscles rippling
beneath the bronzed hide of his naked torso, paddled with no apparent
concern other than that of driving his frail craft onward. Nevertheless,
his eyes missed no detail of the shore lines that glided past on either
hand. Tier upon tier of wooded hills presently gave way to a flat that
afforded sliding vistas of broad meadowland through gaps in the fringe
of trees. Then the forest, dark and somber, closed in again. Giant
oaks, elms, walnuts, sycamores and hickories overhung the banks. An
occasional golden or scarlet meteor flashed through the dark green field
of the forest, betraying the flight of a prothonotary warbler or a
cardinal. The brisk drumming of a woodpecker, the harsh cry of a crested
flycatcher or the bell-like song of a wood thrush at intervals relieved
the cathedral silence of the virgin forest. And always there was the
hungry gurgle of the current sucking at the frail canoe and the flashing
swoop of swallows skimming insects from the air above the shining river.

The man's roving glance contained not so much of wariness as of profound
interest in his surroundings. Never before, even in his extensive
wanderings, had he penetrated so far into the primeval wilderness. Of
caution there was little immediate need. He was below any point where
the scouts of the scattered settlements of Kentucky might be stationed
to fire upon every prowling savage. And now, with all tribal differences
buried in a general war against the Long-knives, no Indian of whatever
tribe would be apt to molest another.

Well after nightfall he put ashore and moved back into the black shadows
of the forest, then lighted a fire, which he would not have done had he
feared a visit from savages. Its light fell upon the mighty trunks of
trees that hemmed him in. This was the wilderness primeval, undisturbed
throughout the ages by the hand of man. A sense of peace so complete as
almost to resemble ecstasy descended upon his spirit. Always, alone or
with a few chosen companions, he was happiest when farthest removed from
the haunts of civilized mankind. Originally he had declined a commission
in the colonial armies for the reason that military discipline appalled
him. Every fiber of his being rebelled at the restrictions of civilized
life in the settlements. There was an old saying on the border: "You
can't make a white man out of an Injun but you can easy make an Injun
out of a white man." That saying was true. It was easier for a civilized
being to revert to the primitive than for a primitive to elevate himself
to the artificialities of civilization. Was he, himself, just another
proof of that frontier saying, Buckner wondered? Was it his tendency to
go Indian? He shrugged as if to dismiss the thought. Why concern himself
with it now? What was to be written would be written. Then it occurred
to him that the very manner in which he disposed of the matter was more
characteristic of the Indian than of the white.

In the morning he put forth again upon the river, driving his canoe ever
deeper into the unknown West. Later, he began to sleep by day and to
travel only at night. Now and then a red illumination and the howling of
Indian dogs revealed the location of some savage encampment. On such
occasions he held close to the opposite shore and allowed his canoe to
drift lest the dip of his paddle reach the sensitive ears of the
Indians. He came out at last where the waters of the Ohio flowed into
the turbulent tide of the mighty Mississippi.

He could make no headway against that resistless current so he cached
his canoe and traveled on foot up the shores of the Father of the Waters
to the Mouth of the Kaskaskia, then headed up the Indian road that led
along that stream. Now boldness became an essential part of his plans if
they were to be crowned with success.

The old French settlement of Kaskaskia was one of the wilderness posts
between Detroit and the Mississippi, permission to establish which had
been granted to the French by Chicagou, the chief of the Illinois, long
ago. Upon the cessation of the French and Indian wars in 1763, these
posts and the territorial rights of the region had been ceded to the
British. Kaskaskia was in the Illinois wilderness, so remote as to be
almost beyond the realization of the American colonists of Pennsylvania,
and Virginia.

General George Rogers Clark had conceived a scheme so bold as to border
on the fantastic. He proposed no less than to recruit a band of hardy
woodsmen, proceed secretly down the Ohio and capture the wilderness
forts of Cahohia, Kaskaskia and Vincennes, thus menacing the British
rear. Scouts had informed him that the scheme was feasible. Governor
Patrick Henry of Virginia, before lending or withholding his support,
had desired to assure himself that the thing was possible and that
Clark's confidence was not based merely upon enthusiasm which might
result in losing the lives of his followers to no purpose. It was at
Governor Henry's solicitation that Buckner had engaged upon his present
mission of reconnaissance.

He entered the old French settlement of Kaskaskia at high noon. At his
belt he wore the scalp of a white man which had been taken from the belt
of a dead warrior in the siege of Wheeling a year or more before. He
repaired immediately to the Indian camp just outside the village. The
inmates included Meadows, Kaskaskias, Cahohias, Peorias and others, all
referred to by the whites under the general title of the Illinois
Indians. They crowded round him but he could not understand their
tongues. However, he was skilled in the sign language which was commonly
understood by all tribes of the Indian Confederacy. He informed them by
signs that he was a Shawnee; that he had descended the Ohio with French
traders but had left them at the Mississippi, as they intended to
descend that stream. He had come by way of Kaskaskia in the hope that he
might find there a stray party of Shawnees and accompany them back to
his own country. The Illinois informed him by signs that there were no
Shawnees in the vicinity, which knowledge greatly reassured him.

The fort just outside the settlement of Kaskaskia was garrisoned by
British soldiers. The commandant, hearing that a strange Indian from the
Ohio region was in the Illinois camp, summoned him for questioning.

Buckner conveyed by signs the information that in addition to the
Shawnee tongue, he could converse in the Wyandotte and Delaware
languages, if there were any among the Illinois who spoke those
tongues. A Peoria who had resided for some time in the Wyandotte towns
years before was called in.

"I do not believe that you are a Shawnee," he began. "You look to me
like a Delaware."

"I am no Delaware, as you well know," Buckner retorted. "But what
concern is it of yours?"

"The Praying Delawares sit in their wigwams on the Muskingum and refuse
to join the allied tribes and take up the hatchet against the
Long-knives," the Peoria derided. "The Illinois stood by their brothers
and painted for war."

"Perhaps they painted," Buckner retorted scornfully, "but they do not
get to the wars. And even the Delawares, reading their prayer books in
their wigwams on the Muskingum, are many sleeps closer to the fighting
than I have seen you." He tapped the scalp at his belt negligently.
"Where were you when I took this in battle against the Long-knives?"

Fiercely the warrior declared that had he been there he would have
lifted not one scalp but many.

"Then return with me," the Shawnee invited. "I will lead you to where
there is much hair for the taking, if your heart is stout and your arm
is strong."

"I am not so sure that you took that pretty tuft in battle," said the
Illinois. "Perhaps you found it on the trail where fighting men had lost
it."

"Or perhaps I stole it from my baby sister," the Shawnee shrugged
carelessly. "But what matters it so long as it will bring a good price
in Detroit?"

This debate had been accompanied by a sketchy pantomime of sign
language sufficient to permit the few savages and French colonials
present to follow the drift of it. Their amused glances informed the
commandant that all was progressing nicely. Having taken one another's
gauge, the two warriors settled down to answering and interpreting the
commandant's questions. Finding that the Shawnee could tell him but
little of the affairs on the Pennsylvania frontier, the officer soon
dismissed him.

Buckner lounged round the Indian camp to secure the information for
which he had come in search. The French of Kaskaskia now espoused the
cause of the British merely from necessity. There was never any great
number of Indian allies there at any time. Of vigilance there was none.

The officers believed that the frontier was on the point of surrender.
They based this largely on the absolute lack of discipline among the
militia, and the fact that the men obeyed their officers or defied them
as they chose. They read in this a general dissatisfaction with the
colonial cause and a leaning toward the British. The rank and file of
British and other European armies were composed of men who, even in
civil life, had known nothing save subservience to others. Therefore, to
the martinet officers of the regular army, disobedience on the part of
soldiers could mean nothing but uniting against the cause for which they
fought. Buckner knew that all this was a mere surface manifestation on
the part of men who would fight to the last for the colonial cause but
who were so fiercely independent that their officers could only lead
them, never command them. The officers at Kaskaskia similarly believed
that war was imminent between Pennsylvania and Virginia over disputed
boundary lines. Buckner knew that these dissensions were more clamorous
than deadly. He heard with grave concern, however, that Daniel Boone had
been captured by savages in Kentucky and taken north into the wilderness
of the Ohio.

It was evident that the British at Kaskaskia, believing as they did, had
not the faintest suspicion that the settlers of the frontier could plan
or execute a move so bold as to dispatch a hostile force against these
remote wilderness posts. The seeming impossibility of Clark's scheme was
the very factor that rendered it brilliantly possible of achievement.

Having secured such information as he desired, Buckner planned to leave
at dawn of the third day. Every hour of his stay was fraught with peril.
The name of Buckner was well known to every allied tribe as a dangerous
enemy who had once been a captive among the Shawnees. Parties of savages
arrived and departed almost hourly. Some among them might recognize him
as the former Shawnee. Among the French of Kaskaskia, no doubt, were
many who had traded in the Shawnee town during his sojourn there or
during one of his subsequent visits and who might recognize and denounce
him.

His plans for departure were upset, however. On the evening of the
second day a party of ferocious Potawatami and Chippewa warriors arrived
in camp, followed by the arrival of a few haughty Sioux braves from the
upper Mississippi. The commanding officer promised the Indians three
kegs of rum upon the following night and they insisted that the visiting
Shawnee remain and drink with them. It was an invitation which no savage
would decline and Buckner felt obliged to accept it.

The next day was spent in loafing, feasting, gambling and conversation.
Several of the Potawatamis spoke either Shawnee or Wyandotte and all
were interested in the campaign of the allied tribes against the
settlers of Kentucky.

"It is well that the Shawnees have gone south again to fight the
Long-knives of Kentucky," one said to Buckner. "We hear that even in the
face of war they keep coming, a lodge at a time, across the passes of
the Cumberlands; and that others build their lodges on rafts, with their
horses, tame buffaloes and squealing pigs, and float down the Ohio to
make a landing in Kentucky."

"It is true," Buckner affirmed. "The waters of the upper Ohio show white
in the moonlight from the bones on its bed; also the passes of the
Cumberlands are white with the bones of those who have fallen before the
tomahawks of my brothers. But still they come."

"That is bad," said another brave. "Sometimes the grasshoppers swarm
across the country and eat the grass from the ground, but the grass
grows again another year. So do the red men wander, using the earth as a
whole and taking from it what they choose. What they take, Manitou
replenishes, so that those who come after them find all as it was
before and ready for their use. But the grubs of the tree borer, each
devouring a small section of a living trunk, destroy mighty trees so
that the leaves do not come again. And in that fashion the Long-knives,
each declaring a small piece of ground for his own, which no other can
use, will soon honeycomb all the lands so that the peoples of Manitou
will cease to exist."

"It is true," Buckner assented.

"Then why is not the scalp of every Long-knife in Kentucky curing in the
smoke of Shawnee campfires instead of being worn by these white devils
in the ancient hunting ground of the red men?" a warrior inquired
fiercely.

"The hunting parties of the Potawatamis take the skins of many panthers,
yet there are still many panthers wearing their pelts in your country,"
Buckner said. "So do the war parties of the Shawnees find things in
Kentucky."

"Ugh!" a warrior grunted assent. "I can see it."

"It is well known that the peoples of Manitou are the best warriors of
any race," said another. "When we fight, instead of listening to the
false promises of the white men, we always win. It was so against the
French. Later, fighting with the French against the Redcoats, four
hundred warriors cut Braddock's army of fifteen hundred men to shreds.
Scalps fell as the leaves of the maples turn red and flutter to earth
with the first frosts of autumn, and the survivors fled as leaves are
scattered before the winter wind. The Indian loss was less than ten. At
Fort Duquesne, we destroyed Grant's whole army of Scotch Highlanders.
They stood playing their music, huddled together like pigeons on the
roost, so that our bullets could not miss, until we killed or captured
them almost to the last man with a loss of but four braves. Under the
great Pontiac, we carried nine Redcoat forts and scores of small
settlements. We cut Cuyler's force to pieces without the loss of a
single warrior and put sixty-five of his men to the fire at one time in
Pontiac's camp. We threw Dalzell's force back in a bloody rout at
Detroit. All of these things I remember well, and I am yet a young man.
I have not matched tomahawks with the Long-knives of Kentucky. Tell me,
then, what manner of men are these few Kentuckians who have increased by
thrice in the face of war?"

"These Kentucky men of Boone's are not ordinary soldiers and settlers
such as the peoples of Manitou have found it easy to defeat," Buckner
said. "They are wild men of the woods. When they attack, it is swift as
the swoop of a hawk and unexpected as lightning from unclouded skies.
When they are attacked, they take cover like quail. When they retreat
they leave no more trail than a bird in the sky or a fish in the waters
of the Ohio. They sleep with eyes and ears open and cannot be surprised.
They can shoot the eye from a squirrel or the head off a turkey."

"The Shawnee speaks the truth," said another Potawatami. "I have heard
those things before from the lips of those who have fought them."

The drinking began at sundown. The British officers, well aware of the
frenzied nature of a drinking spree among the savages, kept their men
confined to the fort. A drunken killing between an Indian and a soldier
during the course of the spree might easily result in the loss of all
the Western tribes as allies or even in open hostilities. An Indian,
even when sober, always resorted to knife or tomahawk with deadliest
intent in any altercation. It was certain that there would be at least a
few casualties during the night. The French of Kaskaskia, however,
particularly those who had traded in the Indian towns, were by no means
so retiring, and a dozen or more resorted to the Indian camp and imbibed
their share of the raw spirits. The drinking became frenzied. Many
braves, quickly overcome, staggered away and fell prone to the ground.
Squaws and even little children screeched in drunken frenzy. Buckner
watched his opportunity to depart unobserved and could have done so save
for the fact that various of the Potawatamis persisted in engaging him
in long conversation. The night was extremely black, but a great fire
cast a circle of radiant light over the savage scene.

Three Potawatamis induced one of their number to recite to Buckner the
details of a great fight in which he had engaged in his youth. In the
full glare of the fire, they accosted him, and the warrior began the
recitation with drunken gravity. Savage etiquette decreed that his
listeners remain until he had finished. At that inopportune moment the
French greeted a group of new arrivals, several British and French
colonials who had been fighting with the Shawnees against the
Kentuckians. They brought several scalps and the Indians surged round to
view the trophies.

Buckner and his companions could not leave until the brave had finished
his recitation. A cold shock flooded Buckner from heel to crown as some
one pronounced his name from a few feet behind him. For one tense second
he believed that he had been recognized and denounced. And the voice was
Benoit's. Then Buckner realized that the men behind were merely
discussing him without the slightest suspicion that he was within
hundreds of miles of Kaskaskia.

"Buckner came near to spoiling it by warning Donner," Benoit said, and
proceeded to relate how he had led the detachment into an ambush to be
slaughtered. "I've a score to settle with Buckner. It was his ball, I
hear, that creased my chest at Donaldson's farm and came near to
finishing me. And once, as a mere squirt of a brat in the Shawnee towns,
he almost had me killed over nothing. Captain Kemper here, too, has a
score to pay off."

Buckner heard Kemper's voice relating his capture and subsequent
ill-treatment at the hands of Buckner and his men. He made the details
lurid enough. Then he related the imaginary slaying of his guards and
his daring escape, calmly receiving congratulations upon his amazing
exploit.

So Kemper had violated his parole, thus losing caste in the eyes of all
men of his class who might hear of it. Feigning interest in the words of
the Potawatami brave, Buckner kept his back to the group. One glimpse
of his face by Kemper or Benoit and his fate was sealed. The warrior
finished and Buckner voiced his approval.

"Come," said one of his companions. "We will view the scalps of these
Long-knives."

"I will join you soon," Buckner said.

He staggered toward the edge of the firelit space as if nearly overcome
by the liquor and had almost attained to the welcome blackness outside
it when a voice called out to him. Some one had reported the presence in
camp of a Shawnee and the new arrivals wished to speak to him.

"Shawnee!" the voice called out, followed by a laugh, as the men
recognized his condition. He pretended not to hear and staggered on.
Save for one circumstance, he would have attained the outer blackness
without much attention being paid him.

Kemper had detached himself from the group and started toward the fort
to report. Hearing the voices calling to the Shawnee, he turned and
looked back, then stepped into the dim half-light at the extreme outer
edge of the firelit space and accosted Buckner face to face.

"Much high wine, Shawnee," he chuckled.

Buckner gave guttural assent.

"High wine!" he repeated, voicing the words that every savage knew from
the traders as the name of the alcohol, diluted with water, that served
as trade rum. "Plenty high wine!"

He ought to lurch on past, but even in the dim half-light, Buckner saw
recognition dawn upon the face of Kemper. Instantly, the point of his
scalping knife was pressed against the pit of the man's stomach.
Buckner's back concealed the move from the throng near the fire.

"Back up!" he hissed. "A word out of you, dog, and you die in your
tracks!"

Taken by surprise, Kemper complied and two backward steps carried them
into the outer darkness. Seizing him by the shoulder, Buckner whirled
him around and placed the point of his knife against his spine.

"Step straight ahead, and carefully!" Buckner ordered.

Kemper knew that once they were beyond earshot, Buckner would kill him
with no more compunction than he would feel in crushing the head of a
snake. As his presence of mind reasserted itself, he chose chance to
certainty. Before they had penetrated more than twenty steps into the
outer blackness, he gave a mighty spring forward and lifted his voice in
a ringing cry for help. Fearing each second that he would feel the knife
in his back, Kemper leaped straight ahead in the direction in which they
had been traveling. Buckner, having anticipated just that move, flashed
off at right angles and circled completely round the fire. When the
savage throng had rushed out towards Kemper, Buckner had attained the
point where the Indian canoes were beached on the bank of the river.
Silently as possible, he launched one, thrusting it far out into the
current, then paddled swiftly for the far side of the stream and
landed, shoving the canoe into the current behind him. They would be
more apt to look for him downstream so he set off at an easy lope in the
Indian trail that led upstream along the river. For two hours he held
that pace, then struck off due north. Throughout the night, he held a
northward course. On four different occasions he entered shallow streams
and waded either up or down their beds for a considerable distance in
search of some spot on either side where he might emerge without leaving
a trail. The moon rose white and still, a material aid to him. In
leaving woodland to cross stretches of prairie he chose points where
herds of buffalo had trampled the grass in crossing.

Toward morning, using every precaution to break his trail, he turned
from his course and traveled for some five miles. Swift dawn caught him
out in a wide expanse of prairie and he dared not move on across it.
Fortunately, the grass had been thoroughly trampled by buffaloes and
other game. Making another swift turn for half a mile, he selected a
spot and sprawled flat in the ten-inch grass. Face down, he slept until
high noon. The sun scorched him and the flies bit viciously. But the
stoical patience that he had learned among the Shawnees stood him in
good stead now. He had covered over thirty miles since leaving
Kaskaskia. The savages would work out his trail eventually, but it would
take time. After determining his general direction, they had sent out
swift runners to station themselves in the tops of lofty trees that
grew on ridges or at other points that commanded a wide view. Of that,
he was quite certain. Better to remain here and take the chance that
those who clung to his trail would fail to unravel it to this point
before night came again.

He wove strands of grass into his scalp lock, some standing stiffly
erect, others straying down across his skull and face. Then, very
gradually, he elevated his head until his eyes were flush with the grass
tops round him. Hourly, he surveyed the surrounding prairies. Meanwhile
he speculated upon Kemper's having broken his parole. His charges of
mistreatment at the hands of Buckner had been for the purpose of
discrediting anything the latter might say to the contrary--the word of
a British officer against that of a band of half-wild border woodsmen.
One could expect nothing from a beast like Benoit, but Kemper--

"A skunk is an ill-smelling varmint, as ordained by nature," Buckner
murmured, "so we are able to guard against too close contact with him.
Therefore, he's less objectionable than the blooded dog who rolls in
foul carrion and returns to lie under the table."

Thus did he summarize, as an Indian might have done, the fact that
Kemper, having fallen from a higher level than that of Benoit, had
dropped to a far lower one in Buckner's estimation.

Not until two hours before sundown did his frequent surveys reveal
anything of sinister significance. Then a line of dark specks caught his
eye. A score of figures, strung out on a mile-long front, were
advancing toward him across the prairie. It was evident that they had
lost his trail and were following the general direction it had pointed.
Fortunate that he had made that last half-mile bend at right angles. The
nearest member of the line passed some two hundred yards from him. At
last he cautiously raised his head and peered after them. They were
almost a mile beyond him and the sun was swinging low over the horizon.
A dim line of forest showed faintly a couple of miles beyond the
warriors. There were two white men among them, Kemper and Benoit, no
doubt. The danger seemed over for the present.

Then suddenly a new menace appeared. High overhead a crow gave forth its
muster call and wheeled to peer down at that still dark form in the
grass. Two others joined it, circling lower. From time immemorial, crows
had been accustomed to follow parties of warriors. If such parties were
hunting, there would be scraps of meat; if bent upon war, then there
would be whole bodies upon which to feast, and the crow was too
intelligent a bird to overlook such indications of easy meat.

Buckner, while peering anxiously after the retreating line of warriors,
moved his arm sidewise to inform the questing crows that he was alive.
After discussing this in the crow language, the black pirates slanted
down to alight on the prairies. They had known of wounded men dying.
Others joined them. Occasionally one rose and flapped his way above the
prostrate form, voicing his opinion to his fellows. But the line of
warriors held on, apparently unaware of the crow conclave a mile in
their rear.

They were swallowed up in the distance. The remaining period of light
seemed long in terminating, but not until it was quite dark did Buckner
rise. Then it was to turn directly back upon his course, heading for the
last timber through which he had crossed just prior to dawn. It was not
quite two miles away. He approached it cautiously by way of a grassy
draw. The savages, no doubt, had left scouts there. When just within the
edge of the timber, he suddenly flattened against a tree trunk as the
tread of moccasined feet reached his ears, then low voices.

The party halted within a few feet of him.

"What makes you feel sure we passed him on the prairie?" Kemper's voice
inquired.

"The crows," Benoit replied. "They'd have paid no heed to sleeping game,
yet they left off following us and congregated there, but without
crowding in to feed as they would have at a carcass. It was something
they thought to be wounded and about to die. Lie down on the prairie
yourself some time after a war party has passed and see it with your own
eyes. I made no doubt it was him."

"Then why didn't we turn back and catch him while it was light?" Kemper
asked.

"He was watching them and us too, never fear," Benoit said. "The second
we'd turned back on our course, he'd have been up and away, with a mile
start on us and him fresh from resting all day while we were working out
his trail. He'd have outrun us until nightfall and give us the slip. He
must suspect that we noticed those crows and will be laying for him
ahead. So perhaps he'll turn back. If he does hold on, those we left
there will pick him up. If he turns back, we may bag him, with a warrior
stationed every two hundred yards along the forest."

The party moved on, leaving a savage stationed within ten feet of
Buckner. The tread of feet died out in the distance. Benoit and the
savages had not failed to observe the crows; also they had given Buckner
credit for knowing they must have observed them. A hard one to
outfigure--Benoit was. For half an hour there was not a sound. The
warrior might have been a shadow. To make one spring and overwhelm him
with a surprise attack might be accomplished; but to do it so swiftly
that he would be unable to let out a warning screech that would bring
the others down upon the spot would be infinitely more difficult. A
fresh evening breeze sprang up to rustle the grass and whip the leaves
of the trees. Buckner sighed with relief. With his thumb, he shot a
bullet so that it landed with a thud beyond and to the right of the
savage. The shadow shifted silently and the waiting man knew that the
warrior had turned and was peering intently in the direction of the
sound. Under cover of the next stiff gust of wind, Buckner made his
spring. The savage went down without a sound as the heavy tomahawk
crushed his skull.

Buckner removed his scalp, appropriated his musket and slipped back
through the forest. With a full night before him he covered such a
distance and broke his trail so effectively that when he laid by for the
day he was unmolested and headed on again with the first shades of
night. Later, he veered to the east, ferrying himself over the rivers on
drift logs. One morning as he was preparing to retire for the day on a
wooded ridge, he looked forth across vast Illinois prairies. On and on
they stretched to the far horizon, a rolling green sea, dotted here and
there with dark islands of trees. Herds of buffaloes grazed upon the
lush prairie grasses. Deer and turkeys were everywhere in evidence near
timbered stretches. A black she-bear and her cubs dug for roots two
hundred yards out in the open--the land of the hunter's most colorful
dreams, a region of unbelievable fertility.

And suddenly it was given to Rod Buckner to lift for a moment the veil
of the future. The actual meaning of that growing, desperate hatred
between the red men and the white was clear to him. It was in the basic
difference in which they viewed the land and the uses to which it should
be put. So long as that difference existed, there would be war, and the
differences would exist until one race or the other was conquered. The
two could not possess the land together. One would conquer, the other
would vanish from the land. Men came to the frontier to hurl their lives
away in seemingly senseless wars against the savages. But whether they
knew it or not, the great underlying motive was the same--the
irresistible urge to possess a piece of the earth and call it home. Why
did men sell themselves into bondage for a period of years in return for
their passage to this new country? So that when their tenure of labor
was ended they might stand where they had but to tomahawk the trees and
say, "This land is mine." Then they would be free men and landowners,
never again to be near serfs and mere land workers. Once Buckner had
witnessed a vast migration of squirrels through the wilderness,
countless thousands of them traveling in the same direction, over the
land and through the trees and swimming across rivers. Their natural
enemies had slain them in great numbers and the elements had taken
further toll, but the oncoming thousands had thrown their lives away
carelessly, the whole squirrel nation seemingly actuated by a blind,
unreasoning impulse to attain some land of promise. Standing there and
gazing out across the prairies, he now compared that squirrel migration
to the westward surge of the land-hungry. Thousands would throw away
their lives in vain but others would take their places in that
insatiable land mania, the desire to take root in the soil. And so long
as there was land for the taking, the land-hungry would come in an
irresistible tide to take it. And here was land, oceans of it,
unbelievably fertile. He visioned that wave of settlement creeping even
here, at present beyond the ambition, beyond the knowledge even, of the
most land-hungry of them all. But they would come and tomahawk their
rights upon the trees and drive their claim stakes in the prairie sod.
In that moment it was given him to see the Indians as a vanishing
people.

Never again was he to vision it quite so clearly as on that occasion
when he stood there in the early morning light and gazed out across the
Illinois prairies. But ever after he was to read into territorial
boundary disputes, factional quarrels, violated treaties and Indian
campaigns, under whatever guise they might be launched, the true
motivating force beneath it--the irresistible magnet of free land.




CHAPTER VII


Buckner hurled his tomahawk absently at a two-inch sapling twenty-five
feet away and walked from the fire to retrieve it.

"Not much use for that, whar you're heading," Gilpin observed.

That was true enough, Buckner reflected. It was all over now. That is,
one might say it had ended. England had capitulated to the colonies even
if the formal details had not yet been arranged. No, he would not need
that tomahawk at Great Oaks. Nevertheless, he would feel lost without
it.

"Some day," Gilpin predicted, "you'll be thinking about this or that,
absent-minded like, and will haul out a tomahawk and start hurling it at
a mark in a roomful of settlement folks and stampede the lot of them."

Such a thing might occur, Buckner conceded. Certain it was that when
preoccupied he resorted unconsciously to the habit of throwing the
tomahawk. Redskins practiced the art interminably and he had acquired it
himself.

"When do you go to fetch White Fawn?" Gilpin inquired.

"Soon as things quiet down a bit," Buckner said.

His last secret visit to White Fawn had been two years before. She had
been fourteen then--would be sixteen now. She had agreed to return with
him to the whites when he came again. But war conditions had rendered a
trip to the Shawnee town impractical.

"Whar at does she hail from?" Gilpin asked.

"Crenshaw Bottom," Buckner informed.

"Ain't been a musket shot or a war whoop heered in Crenshaw Bottom for
upwards of twenty year," Arch Herne declared. "How come she was captured
from thar?"

"It wasn't at Crenshaw. Her people were making a journey when the
savages jumped them up," Buckner explained.

"She got any kinfolks living?" Gilpin queried.

"I don't know. It doesn't matter much. I'll take her to Great Oaks if
there are no relatives," Buckner said.

Donner, now a major, passed the fire where the four rangers sat.

"Yonder goes our old friend," Tom Herne chuckled. "Donner hails from
Crenshaw Bottom. Maybe he can tell you somewhat of White Fawn's kin."

Buckner shrugged, according the major a bare word as he passed. Since
that night four years before, when he had warned Donner against crossing
the Ohio there had been no affection wasted between the militia officer
and the ranger chief. At various times their wills had clashed. Donner
had ordered Buckner to accompany the former's command with his rangers
on two different occasions and Buckner had declined. Donner, two years
before, had preferred charges against Buckner for disobedience of
military orders. The charges had been dropped without even an
investigation and Donner asserted that the reason for such dismissal of
charges rose from the fact that Buckner was a Virginian while he was a
Pennsylvanian.

"If disobeying military orders is cause for trial," Gilpin said,
recalling the incident, "then the hull male population of the frontier
is liable. Ain't scassly a man but what has told some officer or other
what was on his mind and made off for home because he didn't like the
way things was going. Out here, every human feels qualified to tell his
commanding officer how things ort to be run. If he's denied that
privilege he'll quit that outfit cold and jine out with some other."

Donner was now in command of a militia outfit encamped near where the
four rangers were bivouacked.

The struggle on the frontier had been long and desperate, and the male
population was still largely under arms. The escape of both Daniel Boone
and Simon Kenton from the savages and their return to lead the
Kentuckians had been of inestimable benefit. Hardy Virginia and Carolina
woodsmen had poured across the passes of the Cumberlands to join the few
settlers of Kentucky. Its population had more than trebled in the face
of war. And during the past year, during which the savages evidently
had decided to leave Kentucky largely unmolested, hundreds of families
other than those of woodsmen had migrated there.

The frontiers of Western Pennsylvania and Virginia, however, had not
fared so well. The settlers had suffered terribly from continuous savage
depredations. Kemper and Benoit, particularly, had been persistent in
leading successful Indian forays against the settlements. Their names
were cordially detested the entire length of the frontier. Scarcely a
border family that had not lost members, or at least relatives, during
the past years of border war. A most venomous and enduring hatred
existed between the settlers and the savages. Members of each race
hunted those of the other more relentlessly and with greater
determination than was manifested by the hunters of either race in
pursuit of four-footed quarry. The frontier had developed a breed of men
peculiar to the conditions which they must confront--the woodsmen of the
border fringe. Numbering less than a thousand all told, they were true
creatures of the wilderness, wild as wolves, ferocious as grizzlies,
cunning as panthers, recognizing no laws save the code of their own
clan. Ninety per cent. of them at one time or another had been captured
by savages and adopted into some tribe. Even the civilization of the
outermost fringe of settlements was irksome to them. To reside in a
cabin was less preferable than to bivouac wherever night overtook them
in the wilderness.

Buckner, facing the contingency of returning to Great Oaks, knew that
no matter where duty led him, in spirit he was irrevocably one of this
brotherhood of the border fringe. He was recalled from this train of
speculation by Gilpin.

"What was White Fawn's name in the settlements?"

"Patricia Lander," Buckner said. He seldom thought of her save as White
Fawn. Most of the white captives who had become thoroughly naturalized
as Indians scarcely recalled their original names after all the years
among the savages. Buckner turned suddenly to the two Herne brothers.
Odd that he had never thought of any possible connection before. But he
had never thought of the Shawnee, Gray Wolf, by any other than his
Indian name--had forgotten, in fact, that he had once heard his real
one. But it had leaped up out of the past in connection with recalling
White Fawn's civilized name.

"Did you ever have a brother named William Herne?" he asked.

The two Hernes turned to him with sudden interest.

"I reckon we did," Tom said. "He was took by the Injuns same time as
Arch and me. Also another brother, Applegate Herne, which we all styled
him App, that a way for short. We was separated and I was adopted into
the Wyandottes while Arch went to the Lake Delawares. It warn't till
five year after, when we was exchanged by treaty, that Arch and me ever
set eyes on each other again. We never did get word of William or App."

"William is a Shawnee warrior, Gray Wolf," Buckner said. "I know him
well."

"Sho!" Tom Herne exclaimed. "William must be right at thirty now, or
close to it. And he's been a Shawnee brave all these years! Arch and me
figured to make a visit to our Wyandotte and Lake Delaware families when
peace times come. After that we'll saunter down and look up William."

"Yeah--we'll do that," Arch Herne agreed. "Likely with you, when you go
to fetch White Fawn, Buckner. How long you figure to stay back in the
settlements?"

"He won't stay thar long," Gilpin prophesied. "The wilderness claims her
own. Her voice can't be gainsaid. When the ice goes out and the wild
geese clank north, his fancy will take wing and fly with them and his
spirit will chafe because his body can't follow his fancy. When the sap
runs up the trees in the spring time, his blood will pulse in tune with
it; and a roof over his head will fret him when he wants only the
budding leaves and the blue sky for his canopy. Hot summer winds will
whisper to him of cool wilderness rivers that the rest of us are
swimming across with our rifles and powder horns held high out of the
wet; and he will dislike the house of four walls that cages him. When a
cold tang comes in the fall and the bucks are horning the brush to rub
off the velvet and polish their points for the rutting moon, a soft bed
will smother him; and he'll want to scratch up a heap of fresh leaves
and bed down on the ground. The wilderness will sing to him and he'll
heed the call and come back to it."

But Buckner, while aware that the wilderness would always sing her
seductive song to him, was not so sure that he would heed it. His uncle
had married during the war and his young wife, the former Becky Harper,
had presented him with an infant son. The Buckner fortunes had faded in
the face of war. The elder man had sent urgent messages stating that his
nephew's presence was needed to help him recoup his fallen fortunes. It
was not clear to Buckner just how he could help in restoring that
vanished wealth, but if his uncle needed him it was a duty that he had
no desire to shirk. He faced the resumption of life at Great Oaks with
misgivings and the opposite of elation, but there was no other course.

He bade Gilpin and the two Hernes good-bye and started out upon his long
ride to the East. He found the spacious halls of Great Oaks swarming
with important personages discussing the details of the coming peace,
the problems of self-government for the new United States and kindred
matters. These men conferred until far into the night, then resumed
early the following day. Parties arrived and departed daily. Men made
exhaustive inquiries as to the feasibility of various colonization
projects in the wilderness of the West.

Becky Harper Buckner, his uncle's young wife, made much of him. Her
younger sister, Lucia Harper, was openly captivated by him. The ladies
of the visiting gentlemen were consciously flirtatious as their eyes
followed his erect figure, carried with the loose-hipped gait of the
savages and the border woodsmen.

His flowing muscles seemed too closely confined in the knee breeches,
tight hose, gay waistcoats, fine linen and cravats of the period. His
head, upon which the hair had been permitted to grow for the past month,
was encased in a wig which he found uncomfortably hot. With it all, he
was mildly surprised to discover that he had become widely famed. In a
day when the dashing soldier was the popular hero and savior of the
nation, Buckner's name had become almost legendary as synonymous with
desperate valor in the wild regions of the West. A host of tales were
associated in the popular mind with the exploits of Buckner's Rangers;
of beleaguered settlers' families, facing what seemed certain death at
the hands of assailing savages, delivered at the eleventh hour by the
sudden swoop of that hardy crew; of terrified prisoners taken so deep
into the Indian country by victorious war parties that all hope had been
abandoned, only to find themselves rescued by a desperate night attack
upon their savage captors by this little band of border hawks. In
addition to dozens of such tales that had accumulated during the years,
it was known that Buckner had marched with that immortal little command
of General George Rogers Clark to capture the wilderness posts of
Cahohia, Kaskaskia and Vincennes, resulting even in the capture of
Hamilton himself. Clark's exploit had fired the imagination of the
world, and has few parallels in the annals of warfare. His hardy
woodsmen, first descending the Ohio by boat, had pressed on in the face
of overwhelming odds, encountering incredible hardship, reduced almost
to starvation, at one time having been forced to wade and swim for more
than five miles over flooded ground to deliver their attack. But they
had conquered, not only taking the forts but gaining the allegiance of
the French colonials and causing the Indians of the whole Illinois
region to make a treaty of neutrality.

In the popular mind, the iron woodsmen of the frontier had become
traditional symbols of invincible prowess--men to whom the seemingly
impossible was but a challenge to be accepted casually. In the more
westerly settlements, even those too far east to fall within the actual
sphere of savage warfare, many youths had adopted the attire of the
woodsmen and swaggered about in leggings and breechclouts, picturing
themselves as young editions of those wild hawks of the border.

Buckner found the East full of spirited young men who had laid down
sword and musket to resume pen and plow in the city and on the farm at
the cessation of hostilities, many of whom found the change irksome
after years of martial enterprise. The most adventurous among them,
fired by tales of rich lands in the West and of the adventure that
awaited them there, announced their intention of heading for the
wilderness as soon as the last details of the peace had been concluded.
Many, assuming that the negotiations would go through and that their
services would no longer be required in the East, had already started.

There came a day when the elder Buckner, pacing the halls of Great Oaks,
confided to his nephew that he was a ruined man. The greater number of
his slaves and live stock had been sold and the lands pledged to New
England money lenders as security for borrowed funds. The new and
harassed government could make return to him only in the depreciated and
almost worthless colonial currency or by way of land warrants. He had
chosen the latter.

For the first time, Buckner learned what part he was to play in
retrieving his uncle's fallen fortunes. The elder man saw but one course
open--to take his remaining slaves and live stock, trek westward and
take up lands available under his warrants, thus setting up a new estate
in the West. Rod's part was merely to select the best available lands
and to aid in the removal of effects and the establishment of the new
colony.

His spirit soared with the knowledge. That was a part that he could play
with the best of them, while here in the thickly settled regions he had
felt at a loss as to how to carry on effectively. Now the heaviness that
had weighed upon his spirit was suddenly dissipated.

When the project became known, the applicants who wished to throw in
with such an expedition assumed the proportions of a small army. Buckner
declined all such offers for the present and started out at once. He
found Gilpin and the two Hernes on the Ohio and asked them to accompany
him to the Shawnee country.

"We can make it, few savages as there are prowling this time of year,"
he predicted. "I will signal White Fawn to me and she can bring Gray
Wolf, your brother, to us at some safe point."

It was late in February and the weather was extremely cold though there
was little snow on the ground. After crossing the Ohio, the four
woodsmen traveled to the towns of the Moravian Delawares on the
Muskingum. The towns stood empty and deserted, the doors of the churches
swinging open to the weather, last year's crops standing unpicked in the
fields. The unfortunate Moravian Delawares, despite their exile to the
Muskingum, had steadfastly declined to join in the war. The British at
Detroit, decreeing that if they refused to take up arms against the
colonists they must be removed to some distant point, had escorted the
entire populations of the three towns deep into the wilderness and left
them there to shift for themselves as they might.

Gilpin surveyed the scene of desertion and shook his head.

"The Injun nation that lays down the tomahawk in favor of the hymn book
is making a bad trade," he said. "Here's these eastern Delawares, once
the mightiest redskin nation of the lot, and now, without lifting a
finger in war for more than a generation, they've declined to a pitiful
few. The Lake Delawares, never so powerful, has relied on the tomahawk
and the warlike teachings of Manitou and are as strong as they ever
was. Speaking as a white man, I've less than no complaint, but I'm
gazing on it from the red skin's p'int of view. The fact remains that
the wild Injun who waves a tomahawk under the white man's nose and calls
him a dog to his face has always been able to get closter to a squar'
deal than the tame Injun who waves his pray'r book and calls the white
man brother."

They stayed the night in one of the untenanted lodges. As they started
on in the morning they met a large force of returning Delawares,
composed mostly of old men, squaws, and children. They hailed the four
woodsmen joyfully as old friends. The British, they said, had permitted
a few of them to return and pick such of last year's corn as might
remain in the fields and thus relieve the famine among their tribe.

The four frontiersmen avoided the main Indian trails and traveled
largely at night with the bare leafless branches of the forest trees
forming a tracery above them against the winter sky. Buckner left them
concealed in a patch of down timber more than a mile from the small
Shawnee town that had once been his home. He pressed on alone to within
two hundred yards of it and lifted his voice in the quavering falsetto
of a screech owl, then the harsh squawk of a night heron and the silvery
cry of the plover, thrice repeated.

He then waited tensely. It was unfortunate that he had not agreed with
White Fawn upon a set of winter signals. It was possible, though
unlikely, that a few stray plovers had returned from the winter
migration, but it was doubtful if there were any night herons so far
north at this time of year, particularly in view of the extreme cold.
And savages were quick to detect such departures from the natural. After
an interminable wait, fearing to give the signal again, he heard the
sleepy twitter of a sparrow from close at hand and answered it. A form
glided noiselessly to him in the gloom.

A strange wine of elation coursed through his veins at the contact as
the girl leaned against him. It came to him that White Fawn was taller
and heavier than on the occasion of his last visit. That was natural, of
course, as she was a growing girl, while he had been thinking of her as
the slender slip of a thing that he had seen two years before.

"White Fawn thought that you would never come," she said. "The time has
seemed long while she waited."

"I may have come too soon even now," he said. "Peace is not yet assured
between the Long-knives and the red peoples of the Ohio. It may be that
the Shawnees will not let White Fawn go with me to the lodges of the
Long-knives and that you must slip away without their knowledge."

"White Fawn goes with Talk-with-birds whenever he wills it," the girl
said simply.

Again he was conscious of that strange ecstasy that flooded him as her
soft form was pressed against him.

"Three friends lie hidden not far away," he said. "All have lived among
the red men. Two of them are blood brothers of Gray Wolf. They would
see him. Think you the Shawnees would permit us to enter the town as
friends, or is war too fresh in the past?"

He leaped back swiftly, taking the girl with him, as the least rustle of
dead leaves reached his ears. His tomahawk had flashed into his hand
even as he leaped.

"Strike not, my brother," a voice said from the night, and Standing Bear
stepped from behind a tree a dozen feet from them. "I have heard your
talk and it is good."

"The voice of the night heron and the plover brought you here!" Buckner
divined.

"But naturally," Standing Bear agreed. "The voice of a bird does not
carry for hundreds of miles, no matter how still the night."

"And there are no herons or plovers within that distance," Buckner
amplified.

"So the notes must have come from the throat of a human mocking-bird,"
pursued Standing Bear. "If we were not at peace with the Cherokees of
the South, in whose country the herons and plovers are wintering, our
warriors would have been more alert and would have waked from their
sleep at those notes, believing that the Cherokees were surrounding the
town. Has my brother lost his cunning since he has lived among the
Long-knives? Why not fire a gun as your signal, rather than rely on the
notes of birds that are not here?"

"It is true," said Buckner. "Yet I had no other signal."

"It seemed certain that such must be the case," said Standing Bear. "I
watched from my lodge to see who would answer so unnatural a call. When
I saw White Fawn slip away into the forest, I knew that the notes were a
voice out of the past and I followed."

"And my brother's toe is heavier than before," Buckner chided, "or it
would not have kicked the leaves about so noisily."

"I came as a friend so there was no need for caution," Standing Bear
excused himself. "But it is not possible for Talk-with-birds to bring
his friends among the Shawnees. Even alone, you would not be safe. The
Shawnees are not sure that peace has come between the Redcoats and the
Long-knives. The Redcoats are not sure themselves. And even if it comes
to pass, the red men may have to carry on the war. There are fresh
blazes and strange markings on certain of the trees in Muskingum
country. The Shawnees believe that, no matter what the treaty, settlers
are planning to claim land there. Our grandfathers, the Delawares, are
still for peace. Our uncles, the Six Nations, are for war to the end.
The Shawnees incline to listen to the warlike counsel of our uncles, the
Six Nations, since the peaceful ways of our grandfathers, the Delawares,
have but served to deprive them of their lands and to bring upon them
worse treatment at the hands of the Long-knives than that accorded any
nation that still carries the tomahawk.

"Already the Kentuckians are too strong and the lands of Kentucky are
lost to us. The marks on the Muskingum resemble those that the
Long-knives call Tomahawk Rights and by which they claim the land as
their own. If the settlers come beyond the Ohio we must throw them back
or fall back ourselves and depend upon the generosity of the far Western
nations to share their lands with us, as we have shared ours with our
grandfathers, the Delawares. Now our grandfathers have been pushed back
still farther into the lands of the Wyandottes and it is feared that the
Long-knives will attempt to settle the former lands of our grandfathers,
the Delawares, on the Muskingum. The Shawnees are still in a dangerous
mood."

"I feared it," Buckner said.

"And the Shawnees have not forgotten that Cornstalk, Red Hawk and other
Shawnees were slain while on a mission of peace to the Long-knife. No
Long-knife is safe among the Shawnees. We go now. We will bring Gray
Wolf to your camp when midnight comes to-morrow, so that he may see his
brothers. Then you must leave."

"It is done," Buckner agreed. "But White Fawn goes with Talk-with-birds
when he leaves."

Again there was that delightful current pulsing through his veins as the
girl pressed her soft form against him.

"That shall be as White Fawn decides," Standing Bear decreed. "Her
father is dead in the wars and her mother followed him to Manitou last
year. With you, White Fawn will have good treatment. With Kemper, the
Redcoat, even though he is an ally, I am not so sure, since it is known
to me that he has a woman among the Delawares and another among the
Cahohias of the West."

"Kemper!" Buckner exclaimed, "What has he to do with it?"

"The Redcoat desires White Fawn for himself," Standing Bear explained.
"He is by no means the first. But Kemper, since he comes no longer to
the Shawnee towns himself, being stationed in Detroit, sends Benoit in
his stead. Each time he offers an increasing price--many guns, knives,
tomahawks, blankets, much powder and lead and other things to
Tonk-a-naw."

"And why to Tonk-a-naw?" Buckner demanded. He now understood that
delightful wine that coursed through his veins at his contact with White
Fawn's clinging form. She was no longer a child, but a budding young
woman. He tried to reconstruct her in his thoughts but could visualize
her only as the slender slip of a girl he had known; and his peering
eyes could make out no details in the black shadows of the forest. It
was only in the different quality of his awareness of her that he could
credit the fact that she had budded to the point where she was desired
by men. This Kemper, the man who had violated his parole as a gentleman,
was not to have White Fawn. Of that, Buckner was suddenly positive. She
should have the best in men, not the worst.

"Tonk-a-naw is the brother of her dead father and now the head of her
lodge," Standing Bear explained. "He thinks some of accepting Kemper's
next offer when Benoit comes with it. It is Tonk-a-naw's right."

"A man who degrades his own honor is not one in whom to trust the honor
of another," Buckner declared. "This Kemper is such a man. Honor he has
none. White Fawn must not go to him. She comes with me."

"Yes," the girl said contentedly. "Where Talk-with-birds leads, White
Fawn will follow. Always it has been written on my heart."

"It is well," Standing Bear agreed. "We go now. When midnight comes
again, we will come to your camp with Gray Wolf. Then you must leave the
Shawnee country."




CHAPTER VIII


"She should have come before now," Buckner said, breaking a long
silence.

"The night is two hours old," Gilpin agreed. "And she should have
arrived an hour past."

On the previous night Standing Bear, Gray Wolf, once William Herne, and
White Fawn had come to the concealed camp of the four woodsmen and had
conversed in low tones until near dawn. It had been arranged that White
Fawn was to join them an hour after nightfall and accompany them to the
frontier.

The sounds of the Indian town reached their ears, growing in volume.

"Hum!" Gilpin grunted. "Some commotion or other has riz up thar."

The sound rose to a persistent hum, then became a chant punctuated by
the steady, monotonous tum, tum, tum, tum of the skin drums. The ears of
each of the four men who sat there in the dark read a sinister
significance into that throbbing voice of the tom-toms and the
accompanying chant.

"It's war talk them drums are sounding," Tom Herne testified.

They sat again in silence and listened to the sounds.

"Well," Gilpin said presently. "Since Gray Wolf is brother to the Hernes
and Standing Bear is foster brother to Buckner, it would ill become any
one of you to suggest what we all know must be done. Or at least, I take
it that's why you are holding back your speech. But thar's a time when
every warrior's bones must bleach in the wilderness and his hair be
forfeit to the enemy. It's one of Nature's laws and is not to be
gainsaid. If harm has come to them through us, then the least we can do
as true men is to lay down our lives with theirs, and see to it that
them lives come high. Which thar's none alive knows better how to do
that last than the four men gathered here."

The other three grunted assent. The sudden commotion, coupled with White
Fawn's failure to appear, permitted but one conclusion; that some
suspicious Shawnee had followed their three friends and had accused them
of secretly treating with the enemy. If that were true, the lives of
Standing Bear, Gray Wolf and White Fawn would not be worth a straw. The
Shawnees would kill them as a matter of justice. The four men rose as
one and had taken their first step toward the Shawnee town when Buckner
hissed a sharp warning.

"Hist! Some one comes!" he whispered.

"Running--and alone," Gilpin added under his breath. "A light tread.
Likely 'tis the girl."

The faint tap, tap of moccasined feet drew nearer, coming directly
toward their hiding place. It was evident that the runner came as a
friend, else he would have traveled with more caution. The one who
approached began to make his way across the many windfalls.

"Hold!" Buckner called softly when the lone traveler was within a few
feet.

"Tecumseh--me friend," a voice answered in English. "Standing Bear he
say you wait." A slender Shawnee lad of around twelve or thirteen years
of age came to them. "Tecumseh, me. Spik Long-naff pooty goot, me," the
boy said proudly. But he lapsed into the more familiar Shawnee tongue as
he delivered his message to Buckner.

"Standing Bear feared that his friends would believe him to be in
trouble when they heard the voices and the tom-toms and that they would
throw their lives away coming to help him," Tecumseh explained.

"Which Standing Bear is a mighty understanding redskin," Gilpin said.

"Then what does all that commotion mean, Tecumseh?" Buckner asked.

"Him mean Injun man too much go to war pooty quick to-night," Tecumseh
said. "Injun woman and chillun all get killed too much." Then he lapsed
into the easier Shawnee tongue. "A war party of Long-knives crossed the
Ohio to the deserted Delaware towns on the Muskingum. There they found
the Christian Delawares, who had returned to pick last year's corn. The
white men greeted them as friends, then locked them up, some ninety of
them, in cabins and held council as to their fate. While the Delawares
knelt in family groups and prayed to the white man's God, the
Long-knives killed and scalped them all, even to sucking babes. Then
their bodies were piled in two cabins and burned. Some, though scalped,
were not yet dead, and two escaped. Runners are taking the news to every
town in the Ohio. Our uncles, the Six Nations, have wished to go on with
the war. Now even our grandfathers, the Delawares, will take up the
tomahawk. The nations rise."

"Hell will bust into flames before sun-up," Gilpin prophesied. "Within
the week thar's many scalps, now resting safe on settlers' heads, that
will be curing in the smoke of Injun campfires. The settlers has
suffered enough to put hate in their hearts, with good reason, and
twenty year of war has degraded the natural sympathies of mankind in the
hearts of many to the p'int where taking of human life means no more
than gunning for pigeons. We four have sent enough souls harping their
way to'rds heaven so's 'twould be unbecoming to condemn the same
practice in others. Still, the hair we've handled has been that of
braves who was intent on taking ours. Such devil's business as the
butchering of them helpless Delaware squaws and children I can't find it
in me to condone."

Standing Bear, Gray Wolf and White Fawn joined them.

"Come. We go with you," said Standing Bear. "The nations rise as one.
Your lives are not worth a puff of wind if you are seen. If we meet
warriors, do not fight, which would only throw our lives away with
yours. You give me the white man's parole, word of honor, till I tell
you to go on alone?"

Wonderingly, they assured him that they did.

"Then if we are discovered, I will claim you as captives and none can
deny us the right to take you to our town to decide your fate in
council. At least, we could then pretend to become angry and kill you
painlessly on the way and save you from the ordeal of the stake."

"But see here," Gilpin remonstrated. "Throw us loose to fend for
ourselves. Four foxes like us can squirm our own way through any ruckus
that's likely to bust. And I make no doubt the girl White Fawn is
equally apt."

"My way is best," Standing Bear decreed. "Tecumseh, do you lead the way
by fifty paces. The cry of the screech owl at night and the bark of the
squirrel by day for us to halt if there is danger ahead."

The youthful Tecumseh disappeared in the black forest and presently
Standing Bear followed. Hour after hour the little procession moved
swiftly through the night in single file. Standing Bear followed none of
the regular Indian trails that led east, and he crossed those that
traversed the forest from north to south with the greatest precaution.
The moon came up. Half an hour later, Tecumseh, having crossed a
well-beaten, north-and-south pathway, Standing Bear, after halting just
before reaching it, nodded suddenly and leaped swiftly across it,
followed by the others. They had covered no more than fifty yards beyond
it when he halted and held up his hand. Each of the others glided
silently into the shadow of some tree trunk. All heard the steady tread
of many padded feet. The moonlight slanted down through the leafless
trees, shedding a ghostly radiance that lent a touch of unreality to the
long line of wild figures that passed along the trail over which
Buckner's party had just crossed. This savage procession glided along
without speech, the moonlight glinting on musket barrels, war plumes and
naked shoulders; a fascinating sight, yet one fraught with peril. Not
until long after the padding footsteps had died out in the distance did
the little party step from the shadows and resume its march. There might
be stragglers from the war party, or flanking scouts.

A half hour later the soft cry of a screech owl sounded just ahead.
Again the party halted, each one behind a tree. Again the thudding feet
and a ghostly procession of painted warriors in the moonlight, heading
into the south. Buckner counted them--something over fifty.

"So soon?" he whispered to Standing Bear, when they had passed. The
Shawnee nodded.

"Other towns had the word before ours," he said "So they are on the move
before us."

"To Kentucky," Buckner said, reading from this southern movement of the
war parties the fact that Kentucky was to be their destination. As they
stood there in the shadows of their respective trees, the four woodsmen
were visualizing the same scene; the quiet farms of Kentucky, where for
over a year the war whoop had not sounded; the older residents lulled
into a sense of false security; those hundreds of new families that had
migrated there during that last quiet year--people unschooled in war and
the ways of the frontier. Now they would wake to the dread sound of the
war whoop and to their inevitable initiation into bloodshed and rapine.

When Standing Bear motioned them to proceed, he looked back over his
shoulder. Gilpin had not followed. Gray Wolf, appearing suddenly from
the rear, grunted an angry command, and the old woodsman rose from where
he had been gliding on his face behind a down log that led off at right
angles. Standing Bear returned from his place in the lead.

"You gave me your white man's parole; not one of you must leave until I
give the word," he said sternly. "The first man that breaks his word
will have the blood of his comrades on his soul. Brother as
Talk-with-birds is to me, and brothers as these others are to Gray Wolf,
we shall strike them dead and follow the trail of the one who leaves and
take his scalp. I have spoken."

He resumed the lead and strode on through the moonlit forest, while Gray
Wolf, once William Herne, brought up the rear a dozen yards behind the
others. Buckner realized then, as did his three companions, Standing
Bear's real reason for accompanying them. It had not been through fear
that they would be unable to get through by themselves. He had known
their ability all too well. But, as he would not break faith with them,
neither would he break faith with his own people. He had known that the
four rangers, heading east toward the settlements of Western Virginia,
would discover and read correctly the march of war parties on every
trail that led to the south. They would change their course to the south
and scatter so that some would be sure to get through, heading swiftly
toward Kentucky. They would outstrip the war parties, swim the Ohio and
warn the Kentuckians. This he had determined to prevent. He would
conduct them safely to the east. Turn to the south they should not. This
was his savage idea of honor satisfied on both scores. Their lives had
been in his hand for two days. He believed them too honorable to take
his life now. If they should, there were Tecumseh ahead and Gray Wolf
behind, and their tongues would rouse the war parties to the south as
they followed the woodsmen who had broken the faith. Those war parties
would scatter out through the moonlit forest and it was doubtful if a
single one of the four would live to reach the Ohio, much less swim it
and land in Kentucky.

"Standing Bear, I'd plumb forgot that perole--not having give much
thought to your parpose in asking it," Gilpin apologized. "I've obsarved
before that you was an understanding redskin and a quick one. I now add
that you're an honest man and a smart one--damned smart. I take it that
we all travel east as before, and no rift in the party."

"Ugh," Standing Bear assented. After all, he had not underestimated
these men, either as to intelligence or integrity, and his mind was
freed of its former strain as he led the way to the east.

"After all," Arch Herne said presently. "A man don't go back on his word
to save his own life or that of others, once it's been passed among
whites. And if he looks at it right, he should do no worse by the reds."

None inquired as to Buckner's viewpoint. He was a Buckner of Virginia,
and in the code of his class, a man who violated a parole or broke his
word to an enemy, much less a friend, forfeited his honor and became an
outcast in the eyes of all right-thinking men. It was the code. The
little party strode on throughout the night. In the first ghostly light
of dawn they crouched in a thicket while twenty-odd ferocious Ojibwa
braves strode southward along a near-by trail.

Only with the light of morning did Buckner become fully conscious of why
men desired White Fawn. Most of those who had lived for any considerable
period among the savages were not to be picked out among them by even
the most searching scrutiny. Not so the girl upon whom his eyes now
rested. Her tawny hair and pansy-blue eyes stamped her instantly as of
white origin. Her skin was of such texture that the sun had darkened her
face to only a creamy tan. And her swelling, firm young breasts and
tapering hips were those of budding womanhood, not those of the slip of
a girl he remembered. She was a lovely thing to look upon. And suddenly
he knew a spasm of rage that a man without honor, a base hound like
Kemper, should lift his eyes to her and aspire to her favors. Her blue
eyes looked into Buckner's now with that same implicit confidence that
had shown in them years ago when she had been a tiny, frightened
captive in the Shawnee town. But now her regard stirred something deep
within him and occasioned a quickening of his pulse.

Her parting from the Shawnees and starting upon her journey to live
among strange people had been made vastly easier by this intermediate
stage in the company of the woodsmen and the three Shawnees. These
Long-knives spoke many Indian languages and seemed to differ but little
from the Indians. She felt quite at her ease with them.

The boy, Tecumseh, had persistently practiced speaking the English
tongue, for some reason known only to himself. Since her promise to
Buckner two years before to accompany him to the settlements on his next
visit, White Fawn had endeavored to learn her native language with
Tecumseh. Lacking formal instruction or any with whom to converse, their
only recourse had been such words as Tecumseh had picked up from the
British and the traders that came to the Shawnee country. But her
tongue, from early experience with English words, now formed them much
more readily than did Tecumseh's.

As they lay by for the day in a dense thicket, Buckner observed that the
Shawnee youth, though looking upon them with no friendliness,
nevertheless endeavored to bring his English into play whenever possible
and seemed to have an insatiable desire to ask the English word that
designated every tree, bird, object, utensil, weapon or article of
attire.

"Where you learn speak Long-knife talk so good, Tecumseh?" Buckner
inquired.

The boy made a gesture indicating that he picked it up wherever in the
whole countryside it happened to be available.

"You learn speak Long-knife because you think mebbe you be all same
white man some day?" Buckner asked. "No!" Tecumseh expelled with such
vehemence as to draw all eyes to him. "Soon I will fight the
Long-knives," the boy explained in Shawnee, "and it is well to know how
one's enemy thinks in order to outwit him. Without knowing how he
speaks, how can I know how he thinks?"

"Thar you uttered words that would do credit to mature men with wise
heads on their shoulders," Gilpin said, bending upon the lad a closer
scrutiny. "How come you like white men not too much--at your age?"

The boy shrugged as if that question needed no answer. But suddenly he
changed his mind and rose.

"Tecumseh tell um," he offered.

He elected to illustrate his point by acting out his part instead of by
exclusive use of words. He strode through an adjacent stretch of the
thicket, then pointed to the area he had just traversed.

"Nothing change--all same. Injun man go here, go there, leave all same,
come somebody else along," he said, then reverted to Shawnee the better
to illustrate his meaning. "The red man goes through the land and uses
the game, the trees, the birds and the fish as he needs them, but he
leaves the land as Manitou fashioned it, and Manitou replenishes the
things he uses. If another comes that way in one moon or a thousand
moons from now, he finds it good for his use as Manitou willed it. All
save enemies are welcome to come and make use of it. It is all mine. I
invite you to use it. Is that not like the red man's way?"

"It's the truth, Tecumseh," Buckner agreed.

"Me Long-naff now," said Tecumseh, passing over the same route as
before. He blazed four saplings to mark out a square, then planted
himself in belligerent attitude inside it.

"Long-naff walk this way-all change. Come somebody else along can't do."
He scowled at them. "Tom'awk Rights! Tom'awk Rights! Belong me! You no
come here!"

"Right you be, Tecumseh," Gilpin applauded. "The Injun leaves things as
he finds them, free for the use of all. The white man up and claims it
for the use of himself alone. Your meaning is clear as spring water and
serves to illustrate the chief outstanding difference between the red
man and the white in all matters of the land."

Already the Shawnee lad gave evidence of the clear-thinking intelligence
that was to mark his after life and lead to heights attained by but few
others in the history of his race. Already he saw, as Pontiac, the great
Ottawa, had seen before him, that the red man's only possible hope to
retain a bit of his lands was by war, never by promises and the ways of
peace. The white man would never keep a treaty unless the red men with
whom that treaty had been made were prepared to resist its violation
with tomahawk and musket. The whole history of the red peoples proved
his point. The Delawares, mightiest nation of them all, had relied on
peace and had lost their lands and perished. Those tribes who relied on
war, while sometimes sorely pressed, at least survived and still
retained a great portion of their lands. It was that intelligence, the
power to gauge the future by the past and the unwavering determination
to resist such encroachments, that was destined to carry him on until he
became the greatest leader of the red nations since the days of
Pontiac--and the last until the days of Sitting Bull. It was to lead him
to a brigadier generalship in the British army. And it was to lead him
to his death. For when, at last, Tecumseh was to see that all hope was
gone and that he could not retain even a bit of the promised territory
of Illinois for his people, after they had been pushed back and back, he
was destined to lose all love of life. With the British retreating into
Canada, he was to don his buckskins, instruct his friends as to the
disposal of his effects and march back with his braves to face the
advancing enemy, knowing that he would never see the sun rise again.

After the second night of travel, as they were now close to the frontier
of Western Virginia, they held on at dawn instead of stopping. The
Shawnees were to turn back within an hour. Tecumseh held his place in
the lead. Suddenly he imitated the chattering bark of the red squirrel,
the signal agreed upon for a daylight warning. They peered ahead and saw
him ensconced behind a mighty oak. He signalled that there were white
men concealed in the timber a musket shot ahead of him. The others moved
up to him. Peering beyond Tecumseh, they could see some little movement
a hundred and fifty yards ahead in the forest, a protruding head, an arm
or two and the barrels of several muskets.

"As I live--an ambush!" Gilpin said. "They're l'arning, even though it
wouldn't deceive the eyes of a redskin like Tecumseh. But despite the
officers with European ideas of warfare, our milishy has l'arned to take
cover, which makes them more than a match for any soldiers that march
through the forest in close order and fire breast-high at nothing."

Buckner stepped from cover and lifted his hand in the peace signal but
before he could raise his voice to announce his identity a score of men
rose with wild cheer and charged headlong.

Gilpin and the two Hernes showed themselves with him, the right hand of
each elevated.

"They think us British woodsmen with a few savages," Buckner said, and
lifted his voice again. The foremost of the charging men faltered
somewhat when within fifty yards and one of them caught Buckner's words
and repeated them.

"Buckner's Rangers!" he shouted.

The men slowed to a trot and came up to them.

"Mistook you for savages," said one, looking past Buckner. The latter,
noting the direction of his gaze, glanced over his shoulder to see
Standing Bear and Gray Wolf standing a few yards in his rear. For the
moment he had forgotten them.

"Go, my brothers," he said in Shawnee. "And may all be well with you
till we meet again."

"They are savages, damn them, and Buckner himself is telling them to go
free!" shouted a man who understood the Shawnee tongue. "They're
Shawnees!"

There was a mutter of anger among the men and they surged forward. At
that junction one of them saw Tecumseh standing unconcernedly beside the
oak. With an oath, they made a rush for the lad as if to strike him down
with the barrel of his musket. Fiercely, Buckner sprang into his path
and thrust the man back so forcibly that he tripped and fell upon his
back. Recovering himself, the fellow rose, cursing. Several others
pressed forward.

"Stand back!" Buckner ordered in tones of ice. "Am I not well enough
known so that you need not set upon those who are with me?"

He threw his piece forward and brought it to the cock. Gilpin and the
two Hernes ranged themselves near by, their pieces at the ready, their
tomahawks loosened and ready to hand.

"Those of you who are so bloodthirsty for scalps must earn the right to
take mine before you touch those Shawnees," Buckner said. "Our lives
have been in their hands for days, yet they have brought us through
safe. Think you that I'll let you take theirs without first losing
mine?"

The two Hernes murmured assent and Gilpin spat casually and remarked,
"Yes it's that way with us. Have your say."

There was not a coward in the lot of those who faced them. Those with
the least cowardly strain did not venture into Indian country as
volunteers. They might lose lives from lack of experience in the
strategy of savage warfare, but they would at least lose them bravely.
It was not fear that kept them back, but the certain knowledge that
before they could take the lives of the Shawnees they must sacrifice
four men whose names were known the length of the frontier as a boon to
all settlers and a scourge to marauding parties of savages.

"Well, whyn't you say that at fust?" one demanded surlily. "We all don't
reckon to jump friends of yourn--yaller-hides or not."

There was a murmur of assent from the crowd. A smaller detachment that
had not joined in the charge was now moving forward.

"Then turn back toward the Ohio," Buckner said. "Every second you stand
here your hair is drawing a fraction farther away from your skull. Our
lives are not worth a plugged shilling. Soon as we bid our Shawnee
friends good-by we will join you and make tracks out of here."

"One of the Shawnees is a girl--and a blue-eyed girl at that! White,
I'll stake my soul!" one of the men cried excitedly, as White Fawn
ranged herself with the Shawnees in the rear.

The half-dozen men had joined the others and one strode forward
importantly. Buckner found himself confronted by Major Donner.

"If you are not subject to obey a military command, Buckner, you
certainly are not in a position to give one," he announced stiffly. "Yet
I heard you order my men to return to the Ohio. I will give my own
orders. Also, I will take charge of your prisoners."

"They are not prisoners. One is a captive white girl that we are
bringing back. These Shawnees helped us through when our lives were in
their hands. They are now free to go."

"That is your affair," Donner said harshly. "But I must ask you not to
interfere with my affairs by talking to my men."

Buckner whirled and returned to the Shawnees. The lofty dignity of the
savages forbade that there should be any trace of haste in their
departure. Gray Wolf advanced haughtily toward the soldiers to bid his
brothers farewell.

"God's name--it's the Herne boys' own blood brother that they just found
among the Shawnees through Buckner!" said the man who understood the
Shawnee tongue. "He's returning to the savages."

Gilpin, meanwhile, conversed with Major Donner, then came back to
Buckner.

"Did you hear Donner's answer when I inquired what he was doing this
side the Ohio with twenty-five men? Says he came over on a scout to find
out what was afoot! How he's been saved from discovering what was afoot,
with a war party on every trail to the south, will always remain one of
the great unsolved mysteries. Here we've been trying our best to dodge
savages, at which game we're experts, and yet have run foul of the
varmints by the hundred. And here these milishy has been blundering
round in search of savages, with the hull forest a-swarm with them, and
by the mercy of providence they didn't run foul of one. Well, miracles
do happen, and nothing can convince me different. But nevertheless, it's
against all rules of Nature that they are still alive and wearing their
hair."

The three Shawnees stalked slowly away, not deigning to glance once
behind them. White Fawn, feeling suddenly strange and half afraid of
these Long-knives, showed it only by keeping close to Buckner. As a tiny
white captive among the Shawnees, she had dogged his every step. Now, as
a Shawnee maiden among the whites, she duplicated the performance. The
similarity came suddenly to his mind and he smiled down reassuringly
into her eyes. She was content with that. Always her thoughts had been
with him, even in his absence. And always, even when he had been with
her, his busy thoughts had seemed elsewhere. She was close by his side
as he returned to Major Donner, with whom Gilpin and Tom Herne were
reasoning.

"Better turn back while there's time, Major," Herne counselled. "The
whole country set its feet on the warpath two nights back."

"I thought the tribes were relatively quiet now," Donner argued.

"So they was, but a big party of settlers under Colonel Williamson
crossed the Ohio and murdered a swarm of Delaware women and children on
the Muskingum. Now every trail to the south echoes with the tread of war
parties headed for Kentucky. There's not a brave in any of the nations
who hasn't painted for war before now, including the Lake Delawares.
You'd best head back across the Ohio swift as your legs will pack you
thar."

"Perhaps I am the best judge of that," Donner said, with his usual
stiff-necked obstinacy. "I think I shall press on a bit and see for
myself just what the conditions are."

"You press on?" Gilpin murmured incredulously. "Are you, then, weary of
seeing the moon rise over the Ohio of nights and of hearing the birds
sing of a morning?"

Buckner, without further words, had headed for the East with the two
Hernes and White Fawn. The swiftness of their gait was convincing proof
of the urgency of the situation.

"Well, we've told you what to expect, Major," Gilpin said. "Do as your
judgment dictates." And he swung into a trail trot to overtake his
vanishing companions.

"Sergeant, lead the way with six men. We will push on to the west for a
few miles," Major Donner said.

"Not by a damn sight," declared the big settler thus addressed. "Them
four knows Injun sign that other men can't read, same as a houn' dawg
can foller a trail that a man can't smell. If it's so bad that they'll
hotfoot it out of here at the gait they took, then me, for one, is
anxious to be right at their heels."

He suited his action to his words and headed forthwith toward the point
where the woodsmen and White Fawn had disappeared in the forest. The
other men followed him, disregarding the commands of the Major, who,
red-faced with wrath, was forced to follow them. Such wholesale
insubordination on the part of men under unpopular officers was the rule
rather than the exception among the volunteer forces of the frontier.




CHAPTER IX


As the news of the murder of the Delawares spread to each isolated
settler, that settler dropped all business on the instant and rushed his
family to the relative safety of the larger settlements with all
possible dispatch. There was not the vestige of a doubt in any man's
mind as to the swift and bloody reprisals which were sure to follow.

As Buckner and his companions pressed on up the Ohio toward Fort Pitt,
they found every frontier settlement preparing hastily for war. His
party overtook a man and his wife and several children struggling up the
river with all worldly effects packed upon their live stock.

"Naw, seh--I'm not a-staying," the settler said. "I know what this yere
means. I'm takin' my fam'ly back acrost the mountings. I'll nevah live
long enough to see peace on the frontier again, so why should I stay on
yere and resk the lives of all my folks?"

"Besides being an astonishing low order of butchery," said Gilpin, "it
was a mighty short-sighted piece of work. It'll cost the lives of many a
hundred white folks that had no hand in it whatever."

"Yeah, so 'twill," the settler assented. "But I dunno as I blame 'em
overmuch. The settlers has suffered a sight from Injun raids, and the
most part of them has lost friends or kinfolk. 'Twas a murderin' mess,
beyant a doubt, and worthy of the wust of the savages themselves, but it
ain't up to me to jedge what provocation they was laborin' under."

That, Buckner found, was largely the sentiment of the frontier. Not
condoning the beastly deed, the settlers were yet sufficiently imbued
with hatred for all redskins to prevent them from active condemnation of
the perpetrators of it.

"The living truth is that many a white of the frontier, after twenty-odd
year of border war and mutual reprisals, is scassly less savage than the
savages themselves, if any," Gilpin summed it up. "The settlers don't
look on the young and squaws of redskins as humans, and they kill 'em
same as they do cub b'ars and female panthers. All a man can do is to
fight on the side that the color of his hide dictates he should."

All was excitement at Fort Pitt. An immediate campaign against the
Indians was urged. Buckner sent word to his uncle that the plans for
colonizing in Kentucky must wait for a time at least. Even as this word
was dispatched, the news came to Fort Pitt that the Shawnees had struck
at all the isolated settlements of Kentucky.

"The reds has gone south to strike in Kentucky, whar they warn't
expecting 'em," a prominent settler of Western Pennsylvania said to
Buckner. "And while their war parties is down thar is our time to march
ag'in Sandusky and destroy their towns."

Buckner and other border woodsmen were not so sure that the Indians,
having sent a few war parties to Kentucky, were not remaining in the
Ohio wilderness with their main forces in anticipation of exactly some
such move. But the demand for an expedition against the Indian towns on
the Sandusky grew in popularity. A call was made for volunteers.

While these preparations were being effected, Buckner went with White
Fawn to the little settlement of Crenshaw Bottom, where the remaining
relatives of Patricia Lander, recently White Fawn of the Shawnee nation,
resided. Crenshaw Bottom was too far removed from present frontiers to
be subjected to savage invasion and its inhabitants had prospered
moderately. This was Buckner's first acquaintance with people of this
type. Those who had always known what it was to live in affluence, such
as the landed Virginians of his uncle's class, were the souls of
generous hospitality. The hardy settlers of the frontier, devoid of all
save the bare necessities of life and frequently devoid even of those,
were open-handed to the point of improvidence. No stranger but was
welcome to share the last cupful of meal and the last pound of meat. And
with the savages among whom he had lived, generosity was a religion
before they became contaminated with the acquisitive faculties of the
whites. All those he had known. He now met a class of moderately
well-to-do land owners, only sufficiently removed from poverty and
hardship to fear generosity lest the vice of giving would guide them
back to that state, sufficiently short of affluence so that a sense of
security and its attendant virtue of generosity was beyond their ken.

Those of the Bottom, all of the same religious sect, had tended to
become narrower and more intolerant from isolation. Shrewd and grasping,
they viewed with suspicion all who would so much as ask a meal of them
without offering twice its worth. Consciously and offensively righteous,
they lived by harsh, dogmatic formulas laid down for every act of life.
Adamant in their confidence that their own colloquialisms were the oral
mainsprings of all religious and civic virtue, any person from outside
their little world who differed from them by so much as manner of
speech, was viewed as a probable disciple of the devil.

White Fawn was to be taken into the family of her father's brother. None
of the family seemed glad at her restoration to them from the heathen.
Rather, their attitude was one of pious resignation at thus shouldering
an added burden.

"Well," said the aunt. "It's to be hoped that she held steadfast to
godly ways."

Her tone indicated that she doubted greatly that such could be the case.
Lander, the uncle, had simply taken over his brother's land and
possessions at the time that the latter's family had been killed by
savages while on a journey ten years before. Shrewd and calculating, he
was uneasy as to what claim the girl might have upon her father's former
holdings.

"See here," he said to Buckner, "we mout as well git to the bottom of
this land matter fust off. Except I've worked brother James' land these
last ten years, it would have gone back to bresh and be wuthless now.
It do seem that the girl ortn't to feel no claim to ary acre of it. I'm
a righteous man and a just one. But it don't seem squar' to me that she
should have claim to any of that bottom land ahead of my own issue."

His own issue, ranging from a son and a daughter of something over White
Fawn's own age down to an infant in arms, gazed upon this new cousin
with varying degrees of curiosity and hostility. The older ones, dulled
by oxlike labor without a spice of excitement or amusement to leaven the
uninteresting, unremitting toil, stared stolidly. The younger ones, from
whom all spontaneity had not yet been crushed, were shyly friendly.

"Claim or not," Buckner said shortly. "She will not exercise it. She
will be guided by what I say in the matter. Consider the land yours for
taking her in and treating her well until I come to take her away."

"You take her away?" the woman queried suspiciously. "Well, I couldn't
say as we'd let ye. From what Major Donner says, ye're a wild and
wasteful man with a heathenish disregard for all proper Christian
authority."

"If he deems himself and his pompous officiousness the pillars of proper
Christian authority, then there can be no doubt as to my disregard of
it," Buckner declared coldly. "But what has Donner to do with it?"

"Nawthing much, exceptin' that he's a godly man and wouldn't speak ill
of ary man without jest cause and provocation," the woman said.

"But even Donner might make mistakes," Lander hastily interposed. "This
man seems just and squar', considering the reasonable view he takes as
to the girl not having no just claim to James' land."

It was evident that he feared to anger Buckner lest he should reverse
his decision. Haughty and arrogant he seemed to be, instead of
becomingly pious and conforming, so one could not easily predict how he
would act. And they had it from Donner that he was fierce, even savage,
and averse to all regulated authority.

"Very well," said Buckner. "We will leave it that way. The land is yours
for providing a temporary home for White Fawn until I can come for her.
And come for her I shall, whether with your permission or without it."

White Fawn's eyes flashed with loving pride at this declaration. When he
had asked her to go with him from among the Shawnees, she had thought of
nothing else than that she was to go to his lodge as his wife, according
to Indian custom. Then, upon discovering that she was to be left among
these strangers, whom, she gathered, were her relatives and under whose
authority she would henceforth remain, she had been sadly bewildered.
But now his purpose was clear. Then another thought roused her
apprehension.

Tonk-a-naw, her Shawnee father's brother, had succeeded that father as
head of the lodge upon her parent's death. Tonk-a-naw had been
considering the price that the Redcoat, Kemper, had offered for White
Fawn. She understood that Lander, the brother of her dead white father,
was now the head of her lodge among the whites, as Tonk-a-naw had been
among the Shawnees. Individual ownership of land was of no value to an
Indian, hence never included in offers made by aspiring husbands to the
head of a lodge for the purchase of a wife. But she had learned that the
reverse was true among the whites--that land was their most prized
possession. The substance of the conversation regarding the land in
question she interpreted from the Shawnee point of view and was vaguely
troubled by the hesitancy of her aunt. The woman, she believed, was
insisting that Buckner pay a greater price.

"Is it then, that the present head of my lodge refuses the price
Talk-with-birds offers for White Fawn?" she inquired of Buckner, in the
Shawnee tongue. "And can you not pay the price that they demand?"

Buckner's eyes lighted with swift amusement as he divined her
interpretation of the conversation, then deepened with sudden tenderness
as he grasped the inner significance of her words. For years he had been
so occupied with war as to have given no thought to taking a woman to
wife. On the whole, having observed the restrictions that such family
ties saddled upon a man, the idea had been vaguely distasteful to him as
a probable drag upon the freedom of his actions. Yet marriage had not
served to operate that way among the red men. White Fawn would
understand that a man must wander where hunting, war and other pursuits
of men chanced to call him. There had always been a deep bond between
them. It came to him now, for the first time, that perhaps his former
disinclination to contract a civilized marriage had been occasioned,
without his being actively conscious of it, by some hidden knowledge
that White Fawn was his predestined mate. Gazing now upon her loveliness
and the rapt affection in the pansy-blue eyes that looked into his own,
he knew it. What other course ever had been open to him? The knowledge
came to him with something of a shock. She had been his, wholly and
unreservedly, since that first day when he had allayed the fears of a
tiny white captive. Always, she had known that she belonged to him. And
he, too, had belonged to her from that first day--but he had had no
active consciousness of the fact. But he was conscious of it now.

"The price will be ample. No price would be too great to pay to the head
of White Fawn's lodge so that she may come to the lodge of
Talk-with-birds as his woman," he said in the Shawnee tongue. "These
matters are arranged differently among the Long-knives, and they think
more of what the man has to offer the bride of his choice than of his
offering of a high price to the head of her lodge. Always the thought of
White Fawn will warm my heart to life as the rays of the sun stirs to
life the roots of the corn so that its grains may ripen to seed. But I
go now to the fighting."

"Go, loved one," she said. "But if you do not return, the heart of White
Fawn will shrivel and turn hard as a grain of corn, picked while in the
milk, shrivels when dried in the sun without having ripened to seed."

As he headed back to the frontier he regretted having left her with
people among whom she could not be any too happy. The suddenness with
which this new campaign had arisen had rendered it impossible to carry
out his original plan of making the long trip back to Great Oaks with
her. And he had not a doubt as to the terrible conflict that would soon
break out upon the whole frontier, so he had not felt like leaving her
in any of the exposed border settlements. He had decided, therefore, to
take her to Crenshaw Bottom to these relatives, where, of course, he had
expected her to be welcomed with open arms. How could he have known that
such narrow, hard and grasping folk existed? Well, she would be safe
there, at least, until times cleared again and he could return for her.

Upon his arrival at the frontier, he found settlers pouring in from
every quarter and assembling at the appointed spot on the Ohio. These
men came self-equipped, self-armed, self-provisioned, each man prepared
to fend for himself. The settlers of the frontier had adopted such
tactics from the border woodsmen so they could move more swiftly,
unhampered by cumbersome commissary and equipment. Years of border
warfare had hardened these frontier settlers into the best fighting men
in the world, with the possible exception of the warriors of the Ohio
wilderness against whom they fought.

Also, it had whipped them into a body of wild and reckless
individualists, fierce and lacking in self-restraint. Fight they would,
at every call of duty. Surrender their own personal liberty of action to
the command of any officer, they most determinedly would not. There was
no longer even a semblance of authority exercised by any militia
officers commanding frontier settlers in the West. As early as Dunmore's
war, while still commanded by British officers, the Virginia volunteers
had openly threatened to kill Governor Dunmore of Pennsylvania, the
commander in chief, and prosecute the war themselves when they deemed
his peace treaty with the savages premature. The garrison that had risen
to slay Cornstalk and his fellow Shawnee braves had done so in open
mutiny against the orders of the commanding officers. The detachment
that had slain the Delawares so recently had carried out the bloody work
over the remonstrance of Colonel Williamson, officer commanding,
accompanied with the threat to kill him on the spot if he so much as
interfered. A fierce, hard lot, inured to hardship and to danger,
calloused to bloodshed by years of war, they were the best that the
world afforded for the grim and desperate work of pushing forward the
frontier and reclaiming a continent from savagery. Also, the world
afforded no men more difficult to command.

Almost five hundred men gathered at the appointed rendezvous on the
Ohio. Each came mounted upon his best horse, since a cavalry campaign
had been decided upon. All were keen to cross the Ohio and invade the
Indian country.

This common cause, however, was not quite sufficient to prevent several
violent altercations between Pennsylvanians and Virginians over boundary
matters. A strip of some thirty or forty miles in width was debatable
ground, claimed by both factions of settlers. Those who took up land
under the laws of either colony were certain to find their titles
contested by settlers who claimed rights under the laws of the rival
colony.

Gilpin listened to this wrangling over land ownership and boundaries.
"All we need to iron out this dispute is for some Connecticut Yank to
turn up and claim the hull of the lands from here to the Western seas
under that old charter of Connecticut," he said. "Then again, by way of
variety, an Iroquois buck should be here to explain that the Iroquois of
New York, having once conquered the Western tribes, sold all the West to
the whites on the grounds that the lands belonged to the Iroquois by
right of conquest. Then the allied tribes of the Ohio ort to have
delegates to p'int out as how they owned the land by treaty from the
whites, and so had double claim to ownership, since they'd never
admitted losing title to it to the conquering Iroquois. With all
factions represented, 'stid of only two, it would no doubt be settled
satisfactory to all consarned."

He spat disgustedly into the fire and composed himself for sleep.

Again it was strife over land, Buckner reflected. With a whole continent
for the taking, why should two men wrangle so desperately over the
ownership of any particular piece of it? He was thankful that he had
never felt the desire to acquire a piece of land for himself and be
forced to defend it against all comers. Some day, of course, he would
take up land. All men did. But there was ample time.




CHAPTER X


Upon waking in the morning, the assembled volunteers, with customary
promptness to consult their own wishes rather than those of constituted
authority, decided to elect officers of their own choosing, which they
proceeded to do. Colonel Crawford, retired, was selected as commander in
chief. Reluctantly the old veteran left his peaceful home and well-loved
family to take command. Many officers found themselves relegated to the
ranks for the duration of this particular campaign. Jonathan Zane, of
Wheeling, was selected as chief guide, and the command plunged into the
wilderness of the Ohio. No Indian sign was encountered. Buckner and
other woodsmen, acting under Zane's orders, scoured the forest ahead and
on the flanks of the advancing column. These men found evidence that
occasional redskin scouts had observed the passing of the troops from
various points of vantage. Surprise, therefore, was out of the question.

"Oh, the whole Indian confederacy is kept posted on our movements--no
doubt of that," Zane said to Buckner. "We'll never be able to surprise a
town of them. But with thirty-odd frontiersmen scouting a mile or two
ahead and on either flank, the savages haven't a chance in a hundred to
surprise us or draw us into an ambush, so it evens the odds on that
score."

"Except that they know where we are and we can only guess where they
are," Buckner said. "And they can make us fight on ground of their own
choosing or not at all."

"They'll do that, right enough," Zane agreed.

The Muskingum was crossed and still there was no sign of an enemy. Such
Indian towns as were passed gave evidence of having been unoccupied for
days. There were not even the usual emissaries of peace that were sent
forward to treat with the commanders of expeditions into the Indian
country when the savages found it inopportune to give battle. As each
day led the command many miles deeper into the wilderness, and each
night passed without so much as an alarm from the outflung fringe of
woodsmen who served as sentinels, there was increasing apprehension
among the frontiersmen. Versed in the ways of the redskins, they read
ominous portent in this uncanny lack of opposition when in the very
heart of the Indian country.

"I don't like the looks of it, Buckner," Zane said. "Neither does the
colonel. It has all the appearance that they intend letting us march as
deep into their country as we choose before they gather all forces and
swoop down on us. We could draw on a battle right now by facing about
and turning heads for home. It is my belief that that is exactly what we
should do--and that without delay. Colonel Crawford is firmly of the
opinion. What do the scouts think of it?"

Buckner shrugged.

"When the geese and swans hurry south in the fall, we know that winter
approaches," he said. "And to every woodsman in the lot the signs are no
less clear than they are to you and the colonel. They believe as you
do--that we would be no more than a half-day's journey on the homeward
way before we would have fighting on our hands in plenty. It cannot be
otherwise."

A conference was called and the men apprised of the views of their
commander and of the scouts. Zane was particularly forceful in
expressing himself. The men felt that the return of such a large and
well-equipped force without striking a single blow or taking a scalp
would weaken the cause of the settlers and put heart in the savages.
They were, nevertheless, impressed by the uniformity of opinion
exhibited by their commander, their chief scout and every border
woodsman with the outfit.

"I'll guarantee a bellyfull of fighting for every last man of you before
we're a half-day's march on our back track," Zane declared. "Have no
doubt of that."

But the men insisted that they should push on at least a little farther
in hopes of establishing contact with the enemy. It was decided that one
more day's march should be made, then a return toward the Ohio. This
plan, necessarily, was adopted.

Round noon of the following day, Buckner, having been on sentinel duty
throughout the night, rode near the rear of the column when there was a
sudden commotion ahead. The war whoop mingled with the war of musketry
and the wild cheers of the settlers who rode in advance. The horsemen in
the rear advanced at a sharp trot, deploying through the forest and
charging to the aid of their comrades ahead. By the time Buckner arrived
at the edge of a belt of open prairie, the warriors, a hundred or more,
already were being driven from the shelter of a sizable patch of timber
that stood out in the center of the open expanse. The foremost settlers
had routed the last savages from this grove before the rearmost horseman
charged up. Woodsmen raced in from the flanks to announce that warriors
were pouring through the forest in every direction.

In the shelter of the grove, the settlers rested their panting horses
while waiting to discover the whereabouts of the main band of savages,
so as to launch an effective charge. No sizable body of the enemy
appeared, however. Scores of braves crawled within musket range in the
tall grass and began to pour in a galling fire. The settlers shot back
at the white puffs of smoke in the grass. Night descended without a
sortie on either side.

When morning came, the settlers found their retreat surrounded by
concealed savages and the long-range duel was continued. Leaden slugs
whined nastily into the thicket and sang of death as they glanced from
tree trunks or ricocheted from the ground. There was the occasional
impact of lead upon flesh and the cry of some stricken settler. Each
man, however, had taken to shelter and the horses suffered more than the
men. Here and there a horse screamed in anguish. Others threshed about
in their dying agonies on the ground. From all sides the heavy
detonations of muskets merged into a jarring rumble, and high above all
sounds of battle sounded the high-pitched gabbling yelps of the war
whoop that rose from hundreds of savage throats.

Not once during all that time did a savage show himself in the open
within musket range. Shooting back into smoke puffs from the tall grass
was the only recourse of the settlers. Every savage, knowing that the
smoke of his musket would draw fire, rolled sidewise on the instant of
discharging it and thus rendered the return fire of the settlers
ineffective.

Late in the afternoon a contingent of some two hundred Shawnee warriors
were seen approaching down the belt of prairie land to reinforce the
besiegers. Later, a party of fifty fierce Wyandotte braves appeared,
accompanied by Kemper and Benoit. Small war parties from every one of
the allied tribes swarmed in, most of them accompanied by white
renegades.

"It came about as we expected, Colonel Crawford," Zane said. "We are
outnumbered more than two to one and with fresh arrivals charging on to
the scene every hour. It will be night soon, and under cover of it we'd
best make a speedy shift towards the Ohio."

Colonel Crawford nodded agreement.

"These are fighting men we have with us," he said. "We can cut our way
through."

Toward nightfall there was a lull in the firing as concealed savages
squirmed back through the grass and drew beyond musket range. Through
the ensuing quiet, men raised their voices on either side to hurl
taunts at the enemy.

Buckner saw Kemper and Benoit standing with a group of savage chiefs
beyond musket range. Kemper was no longer a member of the British army.
Violation of a parole was a serious matter when it was customary to
release officers on both sides on oath of parole. The colonial
authorities had made urgent representation to the British army to the
effect that Kemper was not an escaped prisoner but an officer liberated
on a parole which he had violated. The British, therefore, rather than
endanger the parole system, had cashiered Kemper from the army. He was
now a trader among the Indians of the West.

Savage chiefs and renegade white men could be heard calling out orders
to the warriors. Delawares shouted fierce threats of the vengeance they
would wreak in retaliation for the slaying of their relatives. Then,
suddenly, British cavalry began to wheel into the picture. If there had
been any lingering doubt in the minds of the settlers as to the truth of
their scouts' assertions that redskin spies had watched every move of
the expedition, it was now removed. Fast runners had relayed the news of
the start of their march, and from distant Detroit the British cavalry
had pressed forward with all dispatch to aid the allied tribes in the
battle.

"Well," Gilpin observed to Buckner, "if the men had listened to Zane and
the colonel and turned back before now, they'd still have had their fill
of fighting, but not agin the entire allied nations and the British
army throwed it. It bids fair to be a warmish job, working our way clear
of this."

"Hell!" growled a settler who had overheard the remark. "We'll fight
through. We come out to fight. Not a man in the lot was timid enough to
turn back without so much as a brush with the miscreants."

"Oh, as to courage," Gilpin said easily, "there's never been a doubt in
my mind but what the average settler on the frontier has a sight too
much courage instead of too little."

"How can a man have too much?" the settler demanded.

"The lynx is brave enough but has a wholesale respect for the quills of
the porcupine, so he slays the quill hog by cunning," said Gilpin. "A
wolverine, the most ferocious and courageous of varmints, can whip a
whole forest full of lynxes without overexerting himself. Yet the
wolverine rushes in and slams a porcupine round and tears it to pieces,
until he causes his own undoing by filling his own mouth, throat and
belly with porcupine quills. 'Tis why the mighty wolverines are few in
the forest while there is no scarcity of the more cautious lynxes.
Courage is an admirable vartue, but it works best when tempered with
caution."

"Caution never won battles with redskins and fetched in the scalps," the
settler insisted. "It's courage that does it."

"Well, in my case, I've been on the border for fifty-odd year, in which
time I've lifted enough redskin hair to make a fair load for a pack
horse," said Gilpin. "Such hair as I've lost in that time, as you'll
notice, has been removed from my head by the processes of Nature and not
persuaded away from my skull by a knife in the hands of a savage.
Meanwhile, I've obsarved the scalp locks of many equally courageous but
less cautious men curing in the smoke of the savages' camp fire and
there's many others whose trails I no longer cross in the woods."

The firing had ceased save for an occasional demonstration on the part
of a few savages. Darkness descended. There was little sound save for
the voices of leaders among the enemy. The savages had a natural
aversion for night fighting so it seemed certain that no general attack
would be made before dawn. Colonel Crawford, the veteran commander,
seized upon that trait of redskin nature. Under cover of what purported
to be the construction of defenses and the kindling of outlying fires as
if to guard against night surprise, the settlers prepared for immediate
retreat. It was certain that scouts had crept close to spy upon the
activities of the beleaguered forces and to report on the nature of all
overheard conversations. False orders were given as to the posting of
sentries and men called to one another about cutting logs and dragging
them with their horses for the construction of breastworks. With the
tomahawks of those who were to bring up the rear still ringing against
tree trunks as they sat their horses, the head of the column was already
riding straight out across the open space toward the edge of the forest
on the side nearest the Ohio.

Suddenly the savages in the line of march, roused by the trample of
horses that were almost upon them, leaped up with frightful yells of
rage and surprise. With a cheer the foremost ranks of settlers charged
headlong through the night. The savages, believing that a detachment of
settlers had launched a night surprise attack, gave way to either side
and the column broke through their ranks. Warriors fired from the flanks
and the settlers fired back, indulging in short charges to either side
on the part of small contingents by way of feinting general flank
movements. Those who were wounded and fell from their horses without
being observed by their comrades fought desperately to the last and the
fight resolved itself into a series of individual duels, the flames of
the muskets spitting crimson streaks through the black shadows. With all
the attendant confusion, the fact that the main body of settlers had
broken through and were riding hard toward the east did not dawn on the
enemy for several minutes. Then the voices of chiefs and renegade white
men were to be heard, roaring out orders for reinforcements as the
pursuit began.

Some of the horses of the settlers became mired in bogs or trapped in
matted tangles of windfall trees and had to be deserted, their riders
striking out on foot. Here and there a few wounded made a determined
last stand; and the foremost of the savages, fearful of running into a
general ambuscade, were retarded in their pursuit. Always, too, there
were sudden frenzied rushes on the part of a few riderless horses at
the approach of the savages, and the latter, apprehensive of a
rear-guard action, were confused on each such occasion. Small parties of
settlers, veering aside to skirt marshes or other obstructions, found
themselves well off on the flanks of the main body. Parties of warriors,
swinging wide with intent to outflank the retreating troops, ran foul of
those small strayed detachments of settlers, who promptly gave fight and
so the outflanking warriors, too, were held up while the main command of
the colonists rode hard and fast toward the east.

Many a settler, hearing a call for help, gave a hand-up to some wounded
and unhorsed companion and carried the helpless one to safety behind his
saddle or across the horse's neck before him.

Buckner, riding near the rear, was hailed by a voice from the night:

"Could you help me, friend? I'm shot through the leg and dismounted. The
man with me has got lead in his ribs."

Buckner swung from the saddle to find a stalwart youth of sixteen
summers and a man thrice his age. Both were wounded and unable to
proceed on foot.

"Quick!" Buckner ordered, and gave the youth a lift to the saddle, then
swung the older man up behind him. "Give the horse his head and he'll
overtake the column."

"But you!" the young man protested. "We'll not leave you afoot."

"I'd have quit his back anyhow," Buckner said. "I can out-travel any
horse through forest and swamp on a dark night like this and would
rather trust my own two feet than a horse's four in this sort of a
ruckus."

He slapped the horse on the rump and the nervous animal started swiftly
on in the wake of the retreating troops.

"I quit my own horse half a mile back for no other reason than that I
feel as you do about trusting my own feet," said a voice from the
forest, and Buckner found Gilpin running beside him.

From behind them came a spasmodic outbreak of rifle fire and a volley of
war whoops reeking with vindictive triumph.

"Some few poor devils got cut off back there and are making a fight for
it," Buckner said.

The two ran silently for several miles. A broad swamp forced them to
turn to the right and led them much farther in that direction than they
had intended to go. They rounded it at last and swung again to the left
toward the route that the main column would follow. Within a mile, both
halted as one and stepped to a huge oak trunk as the sound of stealthy
footfalls reached their ears.

"Savages," Buckner whispered. "Their tread is too light for that of
white men."

"There was a more direct route through the swamp and they took it,"
Gilpin whispered back.

Fifty yards to their left a voice spoke a few words in the Shawnee
tongue.

"Shawnees," Buckner said. "Shuck off your jacket and tie its sleeves
round your waist. Tuck your cap in your belt. We'll fall in behind them.
If we should run foul of them, they could scarce tell us from part of
their party, dark as it is."

They followed the diminishing sound of the padded tread of the Shawnee
war party and found themselves on a faintly worn forest path. The
savages were traveling in haste with the evident purpose of covering all
possible distance to the east in the hope of encountering and cutting
off stragglers. Buckner took the lead and kept pace with the savages a
hundred yards ahead of him. At dawn the forest would be swarming with
warriors on the lookout for fugitives. It was imperative that the two
woodsmen should put all possible distance between themselves and the
scene of the fight before morning. By holding to this path in the wake
of the war party they could make twice the time that could be attained
by casting through trackless forest, circling swamps and dodging
windfall jams while still striving to travel with absolute silence.

At intervals of two or three minutes, Buckner halted for a single second
to listen. If the sound of soft tramping came from ahead, he moved on.
If such footfalls had ceased, he stood motionless until they were
resumed again, knowing that the war party would halt on occasion to
listen for straggling parties of settlers. During one such halt the
silence continued for so long a space that Buckner knelt with ear to the
ground, thinking that perhaps the Shawnees had passed beyond earshot.
Just as he heard them resume their march, a voice spoke in Shawnee from
close at hand in the blackness.

"What do you there?" the savage demanded.

"Listening for the heavy feet of Long-knives fleeing through the
forest," Buckner returned instantly in a low tone, slipping his tomahawk
from his belt.

"Why did you fall so far behind?" the warrior asked.

"We fell out of line to listen, believing that we heard a horse in the
distance," said Buckner. "It was but a deer."

"Step on ahead of me then," the Shawnee instructed, evidently still
suspicious. The warrior knew that scores of white men spoke the Shawnee
tongue perfectly.

As Buckner moved to obey, still unable to make out even the form of his
interlocutor in the blackness, a cold shock passed through him as a hand
reached forth and explored his naked torso. The feel of bare skin where
a white man would have been clothed with buckskin or cloth reassured the
savage and he grunted his satisfaction as he fell in behind Buckner.
That grunt was his last. As he stepped into the trail, it brought his
skull within range of the old woodsman's tomahawk, which was buried deep
in his brain on the instant. Buckner stopped in his tracks, knowing full
well the meaning of that one crunching blow and the thud of a heavy body
falling to the trail almost on his heels.

"It was a chance I had to take--that I'd strike him so dead he couldn't
let out a screech," Gilpin whispered. "He'd have addressed some
question to me inside the next few rods; and while I speak the Shawnee
tongue, it is after the manner in which a Dutchman maltreats the English
language. He'd have knowed me for a white man and raised the alarm. Give
me a hand with the remainders. We'll move it off the trail so the fust
war party won't stumble on to it."

Buckner stooped and laid hold of the dead warrior's feet as Gilpin
lifted his shoulders. Depositing the savage behind a down log a dozen
feet from the trail, Gilpin stripped the scalp from his quarry. Both men
flattened silently behind the log as the soft tramp of many feet reached
their ears.

The thudding came closer and the leaders of another big war party drew
abreast of their retreat and passed almost within arm's reach. The thump
of moccasined feet seemed interminable, as if that sinister procession
would never pass. They could feel, rather than see, that long line of
ferocious warriors streaming by without a word, the silence of the
forest unbroken save for that dull thud of feet. Then even that sound
ceased. Every one of the long line of warriors had stopped in his
tracks. For a space of ten seconds, the same thought filled the minds of
both woodsmen--that the savages, with that uncanny, animal-like faculty
for sensing what went on in the forest round them, had somehow become
aware of their presence. The muscles of both men were tensed for the
first spring of a desperate flight through the night in case of
discovery. That dead silence seemed fraught with every sinister
significance. But it was merely one of the usual halts to listen for the
progress of fugitives. Presently there was the faint cheep of a night
bird and every savage stepped forward as one. The last of the war party
passed and the thud of feet died out in the distance. Gilpin released a
pent sigh of relief.

"This forest is sure a-boiling with savages," he said. "We could make
better time on the trail but we'd soon run up on some of those ahead or
some would run up on us from behind. We'll have to keep off it."

"Most of them will hold close to the general route of the column,"
Buckner said. "Our best chance is to angle southeast and make it through
by ourselves without trying to rejoin the command."

Throughout the night they made their way through the forest, skirting
swamps, wading streams and climbing windfalls. Dawn found them thirty
miles from the scene of the fight. They spent the day in a dense expanse
of down timber and started on again at night. Eventually, they reached
the Ohio and crossed it.

The main body of settlers had managed to hold together and return in
safety. Some few stragglers continued to reach the Ohio along a broad
front, clear from Fort Pitt to Wheeling. The final check-up revealed
that some seventy men had been killed. Colonel Crawford, it was learned
later, had been captured and burned alive by the Lake Delawares while a
group of renegade white men looked on.

"The frontier settlers are l'arning the woods and the ways of the
redskins till they've become the best fighting men top side of ground,
if only they'd temper courage with caution," Gilpin said. "This affair
proves it. They was outnumbered three to one in the heart of the Injun
country and fit their way clean back to the settlements with a loss of
but seventy men. If it had been regular sojers caught in that mess, even
if the odds had been reversed so they outnumbered the savages, it's not
likely a tenth of them would have come out of the woods wearing their
hair. Taking that view of the matter, 'twas almost a victory."

But the frontier did not consider it a victory. The whole border was
thrown into a panic at this disastrous defeat of the best body of
fighting men that the frontier afforded. It was certain that the savages
would swoop on every isolated settlement. War parties would scour the
hills. Small bands of savages would lie in ambush along every trail and
artery of travel and haunt the woods to waylay travelers and parties of
hunters. These forebodings were realized. War parties swooped upon
various settlements. Every new sunrise was ushered in with the fear of
hearing the dread war whoop. No man's life was safe except when he
remained within the walls of a blockhouse. Men were shot down as they
worked in the fields, their wives and children carried off to captivity.
Haastown, Pennsylvania, was sacked and burned to the ground. And under
cover of these depredations on the Pennsylvania and Virginia frontiers,
the main body of savages had marched secretly to Kentucky under the
leadership of the same renegade whites who had commanded at Crawford's
defeat.

The news of various minor engagements and the defeat of small parties of
Kentucky settlers reached the settlements of the Upper Ohio. Then a
woodsman came up the river with the tidings of the disastrous defeat of
Daniel Boone's forces at Blue Licks.

"They'd set out on the trail of several hundred Injuns that had attacked
Bryant's station," the woodsman told Buckner. "When they come to the
river Boone p'inted out an ambush on the far side. The woodsmen all
throwed in with him and done their best to hold the men back. But thar's
a sizable array of sojers and officers from the Eastern armies come to
settle in Kentucky the past year or two. They'd fit trained white sojers
in battle and warn't afraid of no redskin rabble, they says. They
wouldn't even wait for Logan and his four hundred men to come up. One
man shoved Boone aside and put his horse at the river, shouting for all
who wasn't cowards to follow his lead. They all boiled across and rode
up a bare ridge flanked on both sides by timber. Then the savages poured
it in from both flanks and the front. It was sartinly one bloody
shambles. In twenty minutes thar was close to a hundred men shot down or
captured, Boone's son amongst the lot, and the savage loss was so
triflin' it warn't wuth mentioning."

Terror reigned on the frontier. But despite continued disasters,
aspiring settlers poured westward across the passes of the Cumberlands
to Kentucky and flooded into the outlying settlements of Western
Pennsylvania and Virginia. When that year came to an end, hundreds of
whites had been slain by the redskins and it is doubtful if the whole
Indian confederacy of the Ohio had lost fifty braves. But despite such
reverses, the white population of the western frontier had increased.
Single cabins and colonies sprang up for hundreds of miles along the
settlement side of the Ohio. Its far shore, just west of Pennsylvania
and Western Virginia and north of Kentucky flaunted its rich lands and
invited the aspiring land seekers to come and tomahawk their rights upon
the trees. But except for the border woodsmen, endowed with the cunning
of foxes, of all those who ventured to prowl on the Ohio side of the
river few ever returned. The Ohio River still was the dead line after
more than twenty years of war on the border.




CHAPTER XI


The flatboat glided smoothly down the broad bosom of the Ohio.

"Work her over a bit more to the left," Buckner ordered. Two brawny
black men tugged at the great oars that were mounted on the bulwarks,
one at either side, while a third slave manned the after sweep. Slowly,
almost imperceptibly, the great boat edged closer to the left-hand
shore.

"Enough! Steady her! Don't let her get into slack water," Buckner said.

Lucia Harper, sister of his uncle's wife, turned mischievous eyes up to
him.

"Are you afraid that the very air of that northern shore will poison
us?" she demanded. "And I had pictured you as so bold and fearless," she
mildly scoffed. "Instead I find you cautious to an amazing degree."

He nodded, smiling down at her. They gazed at the age-old forest that
decked the Ohio shore. Save for the usual flights and voices of birds,
there was no sign of life. The forest floor beneath those ranks of
mighty trees seemed but peaceful dells that had never known the tread of
human feet. But Buckner knew that deadly menace lurked there.

His uncle's wife, Becky, joined them and rested her hand on his arm.

"Your eyes always rest on the wilderness shore, never on the Kentucky
side," she chided. "Does your heart, then, so yearn for the wilderness
that you cannot even turn your gaze on the settlement side? Myself, I
find the Kentucky shore lovely--the site of our future home, the new
Virginia."

"It is not only the wilderness shore but the Indian shore," he said,
indicating the Ohio side with a nod. "I have no desire to let the boat
drift into slack water under that bank and within easy musket range of
lurking savages. And you'll find that there is more wilderness than
settlements, a hundred to one, even in Kentucky."

"Soon there will be peace, as the Indians come to understand us," Lucia
predicted. "Then there will be quiet homes over there where all is now
wilderness."

"The Indians understand us all too well now," Buckner said. "Peace will
be only temporary, for the very reason that you mention. A single year
of peace will induce white men to attempt to settle on the Ohio side in
violation of all treaties. Then the savages will rise again and go on
the warpath, knowing that if they do not they will be driven from the
Ohio, as already they have been driven westward beyond it."

"Then what will be the end of it all?" Lucia wanted to know.

"The end of the Indian," Buckner prophesied. "The Indian will fight to
the last to retain a part of his lands, and so long as he retains a
square foot of land that the whites can take from him, they will never
rest satisfied until it is taken."

Ever since that morning when he had stood gazing out across the Illinois
prairies, he had never had a doubt as to the ultimate outcome of the
struggle between the two races with unalterably opposite viewpoints, the
one believing in general ownership, the other in individual control of
the land. It would be a war to the death.

"There is a note of sadness in your voice as you prophesy the fate of
the red men at the hands of the whites," Lucia chided him gaily. "I
believe you like them better than you do your own race."

"I have fought on the side of my race," he said, a bit coldly.

It was that occasional cold aloofness that piqued the girl. She was
accustomed to the charmingly obsequious suitors who, on the surface at
least, deferred to her point of view in all matters. She could not know
that Buckner's heart was back in a little backwash settlement in
Pennsylvania where the girl White Fawn dwelt among harshly righteous
people from whom he was anxious to take her. He was all impatience for
this journey to end so that he might be free to go to her.

"I know you have fought on the side of your race," she conceded.

"But my sympathy goes out to the Indians as a vanishing people," he
said. "Already, the more intelligent among them realize the inevitable
end. There is a calm despair among them and they fight only to delay the
finish. Too proud to become the despised and landless vassals of a
conquering race, they prefer to die. And as for liking them, they have
many good traits."

"Good traits!" Lucia exclaimed. "How can one see good traits in savages
who slay women and children?"

"As to that, Miss," Gilpin said from behind them, "we must admit that
the whites have give the reds lessons in savagery from the first.
French, English, Dutch and Spanish settlers alike have exterminated
whole redskin nations from the day when the first white man set foot on
American shores. And speaking of unprovoked killings, from the close of
Pontiac's war in sixty-three down to Dunmore's War in seventy-four,
records will prove what I know of my own knowledge--that as many
harmless Injuns was murdered by whites as thar was settlers massacred by
the reds."

"I can scarcely credit that," the girl declared.

"Ask Buckner," Gilpin advised. "He'll tell you the same. And on many an
occasion the whites has proved as merciless to the women and children of
friendly Injuns whose land they wanted as the savages themselves have in
raids on white settlements. Look into the matter, unbiased like, Miss,
and even torture was inflicted on the Injuns by the Spaniards, down to
suckling babes, to twenty times the number of whites that has been put
to the fire by the savages. Even scalping is a custom they picked up
from the whites, as I've l'arned from the best authority. The New
Englanders made a practice of putting the heads of slain redskins on
poles round their settlements, King Philip's among them. The
yaller-hides adopted the custom, but varied it by merely removing the
hair, which sarves the same parpose when hung in their lodges and is a
lot easier transported than the whole human head."

The young woman shuddered daintily.

"I do believe that all you woodsmen favor the Indians above those of
your own race and blood," she accused.

"As to that," Gilpin said, "we stand with those whose skins favor our
own in color, as 'tis fitting we should, and as our deeds prove that we
do. But we face facts as they are without inventing pretty fairy tales
to justify our misdeeds. When we lift the scalp of a redskin 'tis with
full belief that he had an equal right to separate us from our hair if
he'd been sufficiently wily to carcumvent us. As to relative degrees of
savagery betwixt them as wears yaller hides and them as wears white, I
still maintain thar ain't much--the chief difference resting in the fact
that the white man has a better brain in his skull on the average."

A settler named Harmon, who had lost his land in the boundary dispute
between Pennsylvania and Virginia and who was going to Kentucky to seek
out new buildings, came up to make some inquiry of Gilpin.

Buckner turned to look back at the three flatboats that followed, strung
out for half a mile in the current of the Ohio. The leading boat on
which he stood carried his uncle's family, Lucia Harper, three black
male slaves and two female servants, together with Harmon, Gilpin and a
half dozen young Virginians who desired to become members of the Buckner
colony and to take up land adjacent to that which the elder Buckner
would file on under his warrants. The Buckner household effects also
were stored on the leading boat, together with several wagons. The next
two boats, loaded with live stock, were manned by additional slaves and
by a dozen settlers who, like Harmon, had lost title to their lands
through boundary disputes and were heading west to take up new land. It
had been at Buckner's suggestion that those men, accustomed to the rough
life of the border, had been selected as members of his uncle's colony
in preference to choosing the entire personnel from among young Virginia
blades of no frontier experience. The rear boat contained the families
and household effects of such of the settlers as had not elected to
leave their families behind until such time as quarters and defenses
could be erected on the new holdings. The two Hernes rode that rear boat
with two settlers.

After assuring himself that all was well with the following boats,
Buckner's gaze returned to the Ohio shore and ranged ahead. Boats now
came down the Ohio almost daily and the savages, lurking along the
wilderness shore, took heavy toll. They would scarcely set off in their
frail bark canoes to attack such a strongly manned flotilla as this one,
from which the whites could fire upon them from behind bulwarks. But it
was inconceivable that they would make no attempt whatever to take such
a valuable prize.

"Your precious savages haven't discovered us yet," Lucia Harper said
brightly.

Gilpin, as the occasional bawling of cattle and squealing of pigs
reached his ears from the boats behind, allowed his eyes to inspect the
film of smoke that ascended from the four cook fires of the boats, then
turned a quizzical gaze upon her.

"No doubt thar's a few braves among the allied tribes of the Ohio that
ain't yet l'arned of this expedition," he commented dryly.

Buckner, gazing far ahead, said suddenly to Gilpin, "Drop back to the
cattle boats. Don't let them put in toward the shore."

Following the direction of Buckner's gaze, the woodsman nodded and
entered a skiff which he paddled against the current so that the cattle
boats would overtake him. The women saw two white men run along an open
space on the Ohio shore a few hundred yards ahead of the boat. They
signalled its occupants to head in toward them.

"What is it?" Buckner called, as the boat drew almost abreast of the
men.

The voice of one of the distant figures drifted faintly back to them,
declaring that they had been captured by savages and had escaped; that
their pursuers were close behind and would recapture them and put them
to death unless the boats came to their rescue.

"Oh! Hurry!" Lucia breathed at Buckner's side. "Hurry to them!"

Buckner shook his head.

"Do you mean that you will let the savages take them?" the young woman
demanded. "That would be the trick of a coward!"

The elder Buckner joined them.

"They need assistance," he said. "Do you mean you will not put in for
them?"

"It is a hundred to one that they are decoys sent out by the savages to
lure us ashore," Buckner said.

"I cannot take the chance of leaving two unfortunates of my own race at
the mercy of savages!" the elder man declared in great agitation. He
turned and shouted an order to the slaves to head the boat for the Ohio
shore. The group of young Virginians seized their rifles and manned the
bulwarks.

"Hold the boat as she is!" Buckner roared to the blacks, countermanding
his uncle's orders.

The Virginians had been under arms throughout the Revolution. Fearless
and of high temper, it was unthinkable that they should hold to their
course rather than to face possible danger to rescue two of their own
race from death.

"I am in command of this expedition!" Buckner coldly informed them.
Then, to the blacks, "Hold the boat on her course!"

The two men were now running abreast of the boat and making frenzied
appeals to be taken on board.

"Take off your caps!" Buckner shouted.

They pretended not to hear until he roared a repetition. Then they
whipped off their coonskin caps. Their heads were shaved save for scalp
locks. They seemed to divine that there was some woodsman aboard who
knew savage customs.

"The savages didn't shave our heads," one's voice came faintly. "We're
woodsmen and we wear it that way."

"Then swim off to the boats!" Buckner called back.

"We can't swim!" one man shouted. "For God's sake, don't leave us to be
killed by the reds!"

They were dropping back now, making their frenzied appeals to the
occupants of the first cattle boat, which Gilpin already had boarded.
Buckner calmly disregarded the anxious pleas and reproaches of his
passengers. The elder Buckner declared such base desertion was a stain
on his honor. The fiery young Virginians would have been unrestrainedly
mutinous except for the fact that they felt assured that the hardy
settlers on the two cattle boats would put ashore for the fugitives. The
two women accused Buckner of being a feelingless monster.

"The other boats will put in for them!" Lucia declared.

"Not if Gilpin and the two Hernes have their say in the matter," Buckner
predicted.

It was only when the last boat had passed the two men that Lucia,
looking back at the two distant figures abandoned there on the shore,
burst into tears and a storm of reproaches. The Virginians were openly
scornful. The elder Buckner, having vast confidence in his nephew's
knowledge of the savages and the ways of the wilderness, was distressed
nevertheless. Gilpin was dropping downstream again in the skiff to
reboard the lead boat.

"Quit carrying on!" Harmon, the settler advised the passengers. "Buckner
knows what he's at."

"I don't see how he could be certain that they were not fugitives," one
of the Virginians, Captain Farris, asserted. "Personally, I'm sure that
they were."

"Personally, you'll sacrifice your scalp to no parpose if you rely on
your own scatter-brained jedgment instead of heeding them as knows
wilderness ways," Gilpin said, as he boarded the boat.

"Now," Buckner said to Farris, "I will take you aside and inform you how
I knew. Gilpin will take another of you and Harmon a third. With no
words between us as to why I chose not to stop, each of us will tell one
of your number exactly why the whole thing was as clearly a trap in his
estimation as a printed page would be clear to you."

Farris followed him to the far side of the boat.

"Those men's heads were shaved save for scalp locks. The Indians of the
Ohio absolutely never shave the head of a captive unless it is the
intent to adopt him. In which case, they were in no danger at the hands
of the savages. When they discovered that I knew that custom they
proclaimed themselves woodsmen who wore their hair that way from choice,
which would be natural enough--except that they pretended that they
could not swim to the boats. There's not a woodsman the length of the
frontier but who could swim the Ohio without giving much thought to it.
There are scores of whites that have become naturalized Indians. Every
tribe has them in plenty. It is regular custom for them to attempt to
lure flatboaters ashore. They were dressed as whites for the occasion
and the forest behind them was swarming with braves."

He turned and walked back to the others. The young Virginians compared
notes and found that the diagnosis of the three woodsmen had been
identical.

"Reading all such sign is everyday habit with us, as a matter of
necessity," Gilpin explained. "A common ruse of the redskins, that is,
and one you'll see more of, beyant doubt, before the journey is ended."

The boats glided on down the placid face of the Ohio. Once a party of
woodsmen hailed them from the Kentucky shore and called out a warning
against touching on the Ohio side to take off fugitives. The lazy
afternoon sun beat down. The negroes began to voice soft singsong
chants, through the chords of which were woven the unconscious
melancholy of their race. The elder Buckner was for quieting them, lest
their voices apprise the savages of their whereabouts.

"Let them sing," Buckner said. "The savages don't need that to inform
them. They have eyes--and, scouts posted the length of the Ohio on the
lookout for flatboats. They have us under observation every moment."

Night fell again and enveloped them in steel-blue obscurity, shut in by
the velvet black walls of the flanking forests. The woodsmen were on the
alert for the stealthy dip of paddles that would presage a night attack
by war canoes. A red illumination revealed a savage camp on the Ohio
shore. Figures moved about, pygmy forms at the foot of the giant trees,
and frenzied voices drifted in a raucous hum to the boatmen.

"A drinking spree," Buckner said. "They've captured some boat or have
secured rum from some trader."

The savages shrieked imprecations as the boats passed. From below the
fire, the black wall of the forest was punctuated here and there by
crimson flashes, followed by heavy reports as drunken savages fired
their muskets. Spent balls chugged into the river with hollow impacts.
Presently the moon rose and transformed the river into a pathway of
uneasy silver down which they glided toward the promised land.

Shortly after breakfast, Farris and another of the Virginians took a
skiff and dropped back to the cattle boats. Perhaps two hours later, a
wild shriek sounded from the forest and drew all eyes in the lead boat
to the Ohio shore. A white woman, stripped bare and followed by a girl
of around seven years of age, equally denuded of clothing, ran
frenziedly along the shore, holding out her arms in supplication to the
occupants of the boat. She cast fearful glances behind her as she ran.

Again there was a clamor from the occupants of the boat for a rescue.

"Hold fast!" Buckner ordered. "It is a shallower ruse than the last.
Notice how dark the body of the child is, except round the hips? She's
been living much in the sun with nothing on but a breechclout. The skin
of the woman, of course, is white throughout, because she's been clothed
in buckskin, as are all squaws. Their cries are unintelligible, you'll
notice. They have been so long with the savages as to have forgotten
their own tongue, otherwise they'd call out to us in English."

"Then they should be rescued in any event and returned to their own
race," the Virginians hotly insisted. At that juncture a hail from the
cattle boat just behind drew all eyes to the rear. Farris and his
companion, despite Gilpin's shouted orders to return, had put off in a
skiff and were pulling swiftly toward the Ohio shore.

"Some are not too fearful to attempt a rescue," Lucia Harper said
proudly. Her eyes danced with excitement as the boat neared the shore.
Then she gave a stifled bleat of horror as a frightful cry rose from the
forest and a dozen painted savages swarmed forth and seized Farris and
his fellow Virginian. Her horrified gaze beheld Farris struggling in the
grip of brawny arms while other savages cut down his companion with
their tomahawks and tore off his scalp. One of them waved the bloody
trophy vindictively at the boats. Others led the captive Farris to the
water's edge.

The girl was sick with terror, her face blanched white.

"Will you go to his rescue?" she demanded faintly of Buckner.

"Can't be done," he answered shortly. "That is why they hold him there
for us to see. There's a hundred more back in the forest, hoping that we
will attempt a rescue."

Before she could reply, Farris' voice came to their ears in a sudden
hail.

"Keep off! There's hundreds more in the woods. Th--"

His utterance was cut short as a warrior who understood English struck
him sharply across the mouth.

Knowing that their plans had failed, a hundred or more painted warriors
leaped from concealment and brandished their tomahawks at the boats, to
the accompaniment of hideous war whoops. The luckless Farris was led
back out of sight by two braves. The whole face of the forest was
swarming with savages. A smaller group appeared abreast of the leading
boat.

"There are white men among them!" one of the Virginians exclaimed.

Buckner nodded.

"Renegades," he said. "No doubt my friends Benoit and Kemper are there
among them. They have been very active in leading the Indians in
flatboat outrages of late."

A voice rose from among this latter group.

"Missed you this time, Buckner, but we'll have you tied to a stake
before long! I've promised five hundred pounds reward to the warrior
that brings me your scalp!"

"The redskins know that the one who violates all promises to those of
his own race would never keep one made to them," Buckner shouted back.
Then he lifted his voice in Shawnee and the yelling savages ceased their
clamor to catch his words as the familiar language reached their ears.
"Warriors, it is known that the British took off Kemper's red coat
because a false black heart beat beneath it. Their ears are deaf when he
speaks because his tongue is forked and his words are wind. The voice of
the bullfrog who hides in the slime is as loud as that of the bear, but
who of us trembles when the bullfrog roars from his mudhole? Any among
you who can take Buckner's scalp is welcome. But I counsel you to sell
it for a charge of powder or a drink of rum to the first honest man that
covets it, for Kemper's promise of much gold is worth less than either."

Kemper's voice came back faintly in horrible blasphemy. The girl, pale
and terror-ridden, widened her eyes in surprise as a grim smile wreathed
Buckner's face in realization of a poisonous shaft driven home in the
heart of his enemy. An hour later she came back to him.

"Captain Farris raised his voice to warn us, even at cost of his life,"
she said.

"The British may ransom him. They always have bought such condemned
captives as they could from the savages. After all, there are not many
among them as bloody-minded as Hamilton was. Even when the hair-buyer
was offering a price for settlers' scalps and nothing for prisoners,
British officers and traders bought the life of many a captive and
exchanged or paroled him back to the colonists. I'm hoping they will do
that for Farris."

"He was so brave, standing there alone," the girl choked.

"There is no fear in Farris," Buckner said. "Virginians, in fact, are
too recklessly brave, rather than too cautious. That was the chief
reason why I insisted upon more border settlers, schooled in the ways of
the frontier rather than men of Captain Farris' type for the new colony.
Such men as Farris are overapt to sacrifice their lives to no purpose
through some chivalrous impulse. That won't do in a border settlement.
It would leave all the women and children at the mercy of the reds.
Backwoods settlers are preferable for that reason."

Captain Farris had been a favorite among the young Virginians of the
expedition. The loss of the gallant Revolutionary officer and his
companion had dampened the spirits of the others. Some time later one of
them approached Buckner.

"I hear that the Hernes' brother is a renegade among the savages," he
said.

"Not a renegade, though among them," Buckner corrected. "There are men
of white blood, though indistinguishable from the savages, in many a war
party. The Indian towns are full of them. They were captured when young
and know nothing else than the life of the redskins. They are
naturalized Indians, not renegades."

"Yet you named those whites back there renegades," the man said.

"Because they have deserted to the savages from choice, to plunder
against those of their own race," Buckner explained. "William Herne is
as true a Shawnee as any that was born in their lodges. During peace
times he is my friend. Benoit and Kemper are monsters, and during war
times or peace, their throats will know the feel of my knife if ever I
am granted opportunity to slit them."

Lucia Harper, overhearing this assertion as she drew near, shuddered
slightly.

"I see your point," the Virginian said. "And it is rightly taken. But
Kemper led the Indians as a British officer, as did many another. Do you
term them all renegades?"

"No. I took Kemper's parole as if he had been leading white troops
against us. He violated it and pillaged in Kentucky. At my solicitation,
Patrick Henry and General Washington so represented the matter to the
British, demanding that Kemper be dismissed from the army or that ten
paroled colonial officers be given a return of their word of honor and
permitted to resume arms against England. The British cashiered Kemper
out of the army and he joined the savages from choice. He likes nothing
better than to rip off the scalps of settlers that fall by his hand.
Naturally he bears me no love."

Lucia Harper, still sick at heart from the savage scene that she had
witnessed a few hours before, and with Buckner's cool assertion that he
would some day open the throats of Kemper and Benoit with his knife,
gazed at him in an effort to fathom his nature. She had had no
experience with the men of the border, implacably iron-hard in spirit as
they were tireless of body.

"I hear that you have done some scalping yourself," she said.

He looked down at her without smiling, endeavoring to divine the motive
back of her words.

"Many scalps I have lifted," he said. "But I have always felt a
repugnance against stripping the hair from a white man. British I have
killed, but have yet the first one to scalp. I would gladly shoot
Kemper's black heart out or bury my knife in his throat. But I'd leave
him there for the wolves with his hair still on his head."

"I can't see that one is not as bloody and repulsive as the other," she
said.

"Then I cannot make you see it," he said. "My ways and views displease
you." He was turning away to put an end to the discussion when she
detained him with a hand on his arm.

"It is only because of my interest in you, Rodney," she said, "that I
try to temper some of your hardness."

He had no way of knowing that it was his primitive male hardness and
strength that appealed to the spark of the primitive female buried deep
beneath the civilized layers of the woman before him. But he did know
that the civilized nature of her would never be content to do aught but
strive to make him over into a male pattern of her civilized self. It
was the way of all sheltered women to weaken the fibre of the male by
demands that made him ever more pliable to their wishes until he was
ruled by their softness. His thoughts leaped back to White Fawn, who
would love him unto death as he stood, without trying to change him. A
primitive woman loved a man for what he was, a civilized woman for what
changes she could make in him. And he caught a look in the eyes that
were upturned to his own that warned him that this woman, too, desired
him. All the wild, fierce unrestraint under which his life had been
spent rose in instant rebellion against the silken tendrils with which
she would fetter him. For a second his spirit writhed as a fierce
warrior hornet might writhe upon finding itself enmeshed in the
invisible web of a spider--and as fiercely he freed himself of it.

Excusing himself, he dropped back to the first cattle boat in a skiff
and sent Gilpin up to take charge of the leading boat. His impatience to
end this journey and return for White Fawn increased, as he stood gazing
at the black line of the wilderness shore during the night.

Eventually two buckskin-clad figures put off in a canoe from the
Kentucky shore. Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton, the first and second
citizens in importance in Kentucky, boarded the leading boat at the
point formerly agreed upon with Buckner. They were to aid in locating
the new colony.

"No better land anywhar than that choosed by Rod," Boone told the elder
Buckner. "It'll make you as fine an estate as ever Great Oaks did."

"Better, I say," affirmed Kenton, a Virginian himself. "Kentucky is the
cream of the world, with wild honey throwed in for good measure."

This pair, the heroes of every settler in the whole of Kentucky,
accompanied the boats to where a landing was effected at a point farther
west than any present settlement. The household effects of the Buckners
were loaded into the wagons, a score of horses packed with surplus
equipment. Boone, Kenton and Buckner led the way, followed by the
wagons, upon which rode the women and children of the settlers, then by
the live stock herded by mounted men, with a body of settlers and
woodsmen bringing up the rear. The leaders headed toward the interior
valley chosen by Buckner as the site of the colony.

They traveled through virgin wilderness, the forested stretches giving
way on occasion to open meadowlands carpeted knee-deep with grass and
clover. Game abounded on every side. All were elated at having reached
the land of their hopes to find those hopes doubly realized. The best of
Virginia could be no fairer than this new region.

Here and there a tree was cut to afford wagon space where the young
growth was thick. A few fords were negotiated with difficulty, but in
the main the route afforded fair travel for wagons. Just before
nightfall, Boone and Buckner went ahead and shot two buffaloes near the
point where the overnight camp was to be made. One of the settlers
killed an elk, another two deer. One of two trusted slaves, armed in
case of possible attack by the savages, strayed a few yards into the
timber, fired his rifle and returned, holding a fat turkey, his teeth
flashing in a white grin from the ebony black of his face.

"Dis hyar's a fine lan' we all have come to, Marse Buckner," he
declared. "She's jus' lak Va'ginny."

Round noon of the third day they came out upon a low wooded ridge and a
wide bottom land opened out before them. Here Buckner had laid out the
boundaries of the five thousand acres to be covered by his uncle's
warrants. A sparkling creek traversed the property, which extended from
ridge to ridge across the wide valley, including a generous slice of the
great meadow. Buckner led his uncle and the two ladies to a point of
timber that thrust its nose out into the grasslands. The timbered ground
was slightly higher and the creek curled round it. The trees were mighty
oaks, some of them centuries old.

"Great Oaks the Second," Buckner said.

The elder man could not answer for the lump in his throat, but he took
Buckner's hand in a grip that spoke volumes.

"Some of the finest land in all Kentucky," Boone declared.

Already the horses and cattle were grazing eagerly in one of the finest
stretches of pasture land in the world.

"Truly, it is the land of milk and honey, as all Kentuckians have
claimed," Colonel Buckner said, controlling his voice at last. "The new
Virginia! I hereby dedicate myself to the new Virginia in the future as
I have been loyal to old Virginia in the past."

After the custom of the times, he called upon all present to bare their
heads and give thanks to the Almighty for having blessed this fair
region and led them to it.

Boone and Kenton, the two rugged woodsmen, warmed with pride at this
unstinted praise of the country they had fathered. Long before the first
cabin had been erected in the broad expanse of Kentucky, both of these
men had roamed its fields and forests, hunting the wild beasts and in
turn being hunted as wild beasts by the savages whose ancestral lands
they had invaded. Each had known a hundred sanguinary encounters with
the red men. Each had been captured by savages; and once Boone had been
shaved and adopted by them, so great was their admiration for this chief
of the fighting woodsmen. Six times Kenton had been put to the ordeal of
running the gauntlet in Indian towns of the Ohio wilderness. Once he had
been stripped and lashed to the back of a wild horse which then had been
chased through the brush for two days by the Indians. Twice he had been
condemned to the stake. On the first occasion, Simon Girty, the white
Indian, an adopted Wyandotte and the dreaded scourge of the border, had
returned to the Indian town of Wappatomica with seven captive women and
children and seven fresh scalps. He had pointed to this evidence that
for years his hands had been red with settlers' blood in order to
strengthen his plea that Kenton was too great a man to die at the
stake. Reprieved, again condemned to die later in another Indian town,
the great Mingo chief Logan, whose family had been slain treacherously
by Daniel Greathouse and his men, had exerted his prestige and eloquence
to save Kenton. A British trader had once ransomed him. On each
occasion, both Boone and Kenton had returned to lead the woodsmen of
Kentucky against the savages and to locate new settlers on its fertile
lands. Their work was by no means ended but already they had devoted
their very souls to it for so long that when men gave praise to Kentucky
it warmed their hearts as if some one had lavished praise upon some
favorite child.

The settlers and the four remaining young Virginians drew lots for
choice of locating upon smaller tracts of adjacent lands. Some were to
take land by warrant, some purchase, most of them by filing Tomahawk
Rights.

Buckner pointed out a crystal spring which he had chosen as the site of
the first building to be erected. This was to be a large blockhouse with
the walled-in spring within one corner of it. When finished, the
Buckners were to take up quarters in it during the completion of the
stockade wall, with a smaller blockhouse at each corner, which would
enclose a tract of meadowland a hundred yards each way with the spring
rill running through it. All hands were to headquarter within those
walls thereafter until each settler could erect his individual buildings
upon his own land.

That night they sat round blazing fires and roasted buffalo and elk meat
while some of the woodsmen, with native caution, prowled the adjacent
wilderness to guard against possible surprise attacks. At dawn the next
morning a sound never before heard in that region shattered the primeval
silence--the ringing strokes of many axes and the crash of falling
trees, the voices of settlers and black men lifted in command to horses
and plodding oxen, as they dragged the logs to the blockhouse site.

On the evening of the fourth day three wild figures rode up to the
encampment. Two of them, upon dismounting, threw aside blankets and
coonskin caps to stand forth in the sunshine clad only in breechclout,
leggings and moccasins, their heads shaven except for scalp locks. They
were Vrain and Curtis, two of Buckner's former rangers. The third was
General George Rogers Clark, another far-famed Kentuckian, the hero of
the conquest of Illinois, whose name had been upon the lips of every
military commander in the world. That the United States Government had
been unable to send reinforcements, supplies or even powder and ball to
retain the conquered territory, thus necessitating its abandonment,
detracted not a bit from the brilliance of Clark's almost incredible
achievement. He had accomplished with a band of a few hundred woodsmen
what was to require another fifteen years, many disastrous campaigns
with resulting losses treble the number of Clark's entire command, a
gradual consolidation of the country and a final campaign of an army of
five thousand men to reconquer only partially, since he had been forced
to abandon the land after his conquest. It was destined to be thirty
years after its abandonment by Clark before Tippecanoe Harrison would
defeat the combined forces of the British and the great war chief
Tecumseh and reclaim all of Illinois.

Clark was but little older than Buckner, but already the mark of dawning
melancholy had descended upon the spirit of this great border general as
he foresaw the undoing of his master stroke: the same melancholy that
marked the greater Indian chieftains as they also foresaw that what
Clark had accomplished in the past would be reaccomplished in the not
distant future, and with irrevocable thoroughness.

Something of this same mild depression of spirit descended upon Buckner
as he surveyed the busy scene. He had viewed this loveliest of all
valleys first when the feet of no white man, not even those of Boone and
Kenton, had left their tracks upon it. He had visited it once long ago,
when out with a hunting party of Shawnees. Kill-cat and Gray Wolf had
told him that not even an Indian lodge would be erected there, as these
lands had been reserved for the mutual hunting grounds of the Cherokees
of the South and the allied tribes of the Ohio. It was true that no
Indian lodge had been erected there; but now more than a score of land
filings had been made and within the month a fort and two dozen cabins
would mark its loveliness as the site of a flourishing and growing
settlement. The next man who came, red or white, would not be free to
roam at will and bivouac of nights, wherever fancy dictated. Within a
few short years the buffalo, the elk, the bear, the deer and the turkey,
roaming here now in unbelievable abundance, would be but a memory,
having been shot down to provide meat and hides for the toiling
settlers. That prospect, inspiring those of the working throng to happy
laughter and rough badinage as they visualized the peaceful civilization
of the near future, somehow failed to bring joy to the heart of Buckner.
Instead, he was looking back upon the past, reviewing the scene as he
had first looked upon it in company with Kill-cat, Gray Wolf and others
of the Shawnee hunting party. He stood there with Boone, Kenton and
Clark, each man silent and occupied with his own thoughts as he surveyed
the joyous scene.

A man with a long rifle stepped from the timber's edge a musket shot
away and peered about him. Then he signalled to those behind him and a
dozen cows and horses, each packed with some sort of equipment, were
herded from the forest into the open meadow by several half-wild
children. A tall, rangy pioneer woman brought up the rear, an ax in one
hand, a baby strapped papoose fashion upon her back. This settler family
had braved the Ohio alone on a self-constructed flatboat, then had
picked up the trail of the Buckner party with the intent to take up land
and so avail themselves of the protection of the neighboring colony.
Aside from the few cows and horses, they had what they wore upon their
backs, a rifle, an ax, two tomahawks, a small supply of powder and
lead, a bullet mold, a very few cooking utensils, a few quilts and a
number of skins to serve as bedding--and a vast amount of courage and
high optimism.

"Who is chief yere?" the man demanded, striding to the unfinished
blockhouse.

"I am," Colonel Buckner stated.

"We aim to settle. I'd like to bargain for a pair of pigs, come yore
next litters," he said, "and maybe three-four young hens and a cock.
Mine died on the way. I'll work it out, many days as you think right,
before I start my own work. What say?"

"Certainly," Colonel Buckner agreed. "It will be some little time before
I can let you have them. But I'll have another flatboat load of live
stock, poultry and furniture coming down river as soon as we are
prepared for them."

"Whenever you can spare 'em," the man acquiesced. He turned to the
woman. "Make camp," he instructed. He handed the rifle to a
tousle-headed lad of twelve. "Go git some meat," he ordered. Then, to
Colonel Buckner, "I'll need a half-day off to-morrow, I reckon, to
select and tomahawk out my land."

The colonel nodded agreement. The woman and children were preparing to
construct a shelter of poles and bark some distance away in the timber.
The man picked up his ax and peeled off his jacket.

"Is thar a lick hereabouts?" he asked.

"I understand there is, a few miles down the creek," the colonel said.

"I'd like to bargain later to make salt for you, in swap for a pair of
ducks whenever you can spare 'em--or the woman could bile down some
sugar for yo'all. Thar's a fine maple orchard a piece north into the
Injun country and we figure to slip up thar and draw off sap sometime.
The kids set a heap o' store by maple b'ilings. The woman's a great hand
to make soap too. We got everything we need, except we're a mite shy on
stock and poultry."

"We will arrange it some way so that you get a start in pigs and
poultry. Sheep too, later," the colonel promised.

The man slapped his thigh with a resounding pop in token of his
satisfaction, shouldered his ax and strode off to join the loggers in
the forest.

"All hell can't hold back such frontier settlers as that man from
pushing on into the wilderness to take up land," Clark said. "It takes
border men to conquer each strip of wilderness and prepare the way--men
of that fellow's type to settle it up later and hang on with the
tenacity of a bulldog. You, Boone and Kenton, may well be proud to have
led the borderers into Kentucky, to claim it for the settlers that are
following to make homes. I led the borderers into Illinois but lost it
again, and it will be after my day when settlers make their homes there
as they do now in Kentucky."

Buckner, too, knew a lofty pride in this new race of men who were
advancing the far frontiers of a new nation--such as that family that
had just arrived to hew out a home despite all obstacles. He felt a warm
satisfaction at knowing that the man and woman had attained their
hearts' desire at last--a piece of land on which they could take root
and call it home; to which they could point and say, "That is ours. We
won it from the wilderness."

But while he experienced warm sympathy for such desires in others, the
urge to secure land and remain upon it permanently himself seemed
atrophied. His was a detached interest, selfless in so far as gaining
land for himself was concerned. Instead his interest had been
broader--the desire to conquer much land for his people as a whole
rather than to conquer a small section of it for himself alone.

"It must be the Injun in me," he reflected. "The redskin chief goes to
war to take territory from neighboring tribes and conquer it for the use
of his people as a whole, not to claim a lodge site of his own."

Clark stood peering off to the west, and spoke as if prophetically.

"We four are border men, the advance guards of civilization. For so long
as there is a frontier, there will be the border fringe of woodsmen far
beyond it, while the settlers follow along behind. For so long as there
is a frontier, there will be need for men of our breed. But when the
civilization for which we have fought overtakes us, we find ourselves
out of step with it."

Colonel Buckner hastened up to the four men. The arrival of the settler
family had recalled a matter which, in the general activity, had slipped
his mind.

"If settlers keep arriving, which it is to be hoped they will, all the
land of the valley and for miles beyond it will be taken," he said. "And
you have not made your selection yet."

Before Buckner could reply, Gilpin, the two Hernes, Vrain and Curtis
joined the group.

"You men are going to take up land with us, of course?" the colonel
inquired of the five woodsmen.

"Not right off, Cunnel, speaking for myself," Gilpin said.

"We got right smart of prowling to do before settling at one spot," one
of the Hernes declared.

Vrain and Curtis also seemed indisposed to take up permanent residence
at that time. The latter two, however, closed a deal with the colonel on
the spot. They agreed to remain and hunt meat for the Buckner household
and retainers and to scout for Indian sign in case any marauding war
parties penetrated the neighborhood. For this service they were to
receive five dollars a month each in gold or thirteen dollars a month in
supplies, as they chose, powder and lead to be furnished free.

This arrangement concluded, the colonel turned to his nephew.

"You have warrants for a thousand acres for services in the Revolution,"
he said. "When will you make your selection?"

Buckner looked out across the lovely valley.

"Right to-day," he said at last. "To-morrow I start back up the Ohio
with Gilpin and the Hernes. Captain Farris may be ransomed from the
Indians by the British. It's a good chance that he will be. They offer
a big price in rum for condemned captives. But by the time he'd get
back, the land hereabouts would all be filed on. If he returns inside a
year, give him the land I take by warrant to-day. If he hasn't showed up
by then, give it to Lucia Harper. When I come this way again, I will
sign the necessary papers."

"But you!" his uncle exclaimed. "What will you do for land?"

"I don't need warrants to get what land I'll want," Buckner said.
"Whenever I am ready to live on one piece of land I can take Tomahawk
Rights to whatever piece strikes my fancy."

That decision, though he himself was not then aware of it, marked him
irrevocably as a member of that border fringe of which General Clark
just now had spoken so prophetically.




CHAPTER XII


At intervals throughout the night, Buckner lifted his head from the
ground to listen. On each such occasion, he recalled that he was fifty
miles back from the frontier and in no danger of attack from savages.
Such precautions, however, were part of his very nature. The least
unusual sound, no matter how slight, waked him on the instant. His three
companions slept soddenly. They were three militiamen returning to their
settlements far removed from the border.

The panic on the frontier had communicated itself to the quieter
settlements far behind it. Small parties of savages, traveling in twos
and threes, had been slipping past the closely guarded and ever-alert
frontier settlements and pressing far to the rear where the farmers had
no thought of danger. There they would collect a few easy scalps by
shooting down field hands from ambush, capture a child or two as they
crossed through woodlots or along country lanes, steal a few head of
horses and return with all haste to the Indian country.

There were no woodsmen in such communities to read the signs left by the
marauders and discover that it was the work of but two or three braves.
Such a foray never failed to throw the quiet community in which it
occurred into a panic for months.

Many viewed the depredations as retaliatory measures on the part of the
savages by way of reprisal for the implacable hostility of the frontier
settlers against all Indians. Forgetting the days of long ago, when
their own communities had been on the frontier and their own settlers
had committed every variety of outrage against the Indians despite the
protest of quieter communities farther east, they now demanded that the
present frontier settlers treat the redskins as human beings. Others
believed that the defenses of the frontier were weakening. Quiet
communities, long immune to savage depredations, decided to organize
volunteer militia to be called together for local defence in case the
savages broke through and invaded such neighborhoods. Meanwhile the
clamor against the frontier practice of slaying any and all Indians was
kept up. Major Donner had been selected by Crenshaw Bottom to organize
and train a body of some fifty men who could be summoned to leave work
and defend the community if danger should threaten.

It was for Crenshaw Bottom that Buckner now headed, to take White Fawn
back with him to Kentucky. Two hours before dawn, he lifted his head
again to listen. The moon was still high and shed its white radiance
over the landscape. Reason told him that nothing could be wrong here so
far behind the frontier. But he could not shake off the feeling that he
had been roused by some unusual sound. Suddenly he realized that it was
not an unusual sound that had roused him but the lack of a usual one.
When he had freed his horse for the night, along with those of his
companions, he had put the usual small bell on its neck in case the
animal, after satisfying its hunger, should head back toward its home
range on the frontier. Throughout the night its slow, occasional tinkle
had conveyed to him, even when sleeping, the information that the animal
was moving round aimlessly as if feeding. He had not heard the bell
since waking. Had the horse headed back toward the Ohio and moved off
beyond earshot before Buckner had waked? He doubted it. The steadily
diminishing sound of it into the west would have penetrated his
consciousness even as he slept and roused him.

Buckner threw off his blanket and rose. He stripped the waterproof
deer-gut covering from his gunlock and looked carefully to the priming,
another invariable custom of his.

"Where you going?" one of his companions inquired, lifting his head.

"Horses seem to have strayed," Buckner said. "I'll have a look around
for them."

"I'll go with you," the man volunteered. He set off through the
moonlight without so much as picking up his gun.

The two men moved out across the dew-drenched valley, the misty drops
glistening silver-white on the grass. The meadow was dotted with patches
of brush. The horses had not been gone long. Dark streaks where their
feet had scuffed the dew from the grass were as clearly discernible to
Buckner's practiced eyes under the white moonlight as the trail of a
buck in the snow at high noon would have been to the eyes of most men.

Buckner halted suddenly. A darkening of the dew-bespangled grass showed
on the west.

"Wait," he said to his companion, and advanced to investigate.

"They haven't strayed. They've been lifted," he announced presently.

"Stole!" his companion exclaimed incredulously. "Who by?"

"Savages, likely," Buckner said. "Probably a pair of them on one of
those little forays that have been upsetting the settlements behind the
frontiers. Two men came across the grass from the west." He moved
swiftly along on the trail of the horses. "They bunched them here. See
where they milled round in this one little patch? The savages mounted
two and led the others. The trail runs in a straightaway from here. I'll
be off after them."

All that was so apparent to Buckner was a sheer blank to the militiaman.

"We'll make sure in the morning," he suggested.

"I've made sure now," Buckner returned.

He started off at a swinging trot on that dark swathe in the
dew-spangled grass. Not until the trail led up through the choppy
timbered hills did he find a place where he could not follow it at a
run. Even in the timber, the four sets of hooves had cut so deeply into
the leaf mold and trampled down so many nettles and other such
vegetation that he could follow it at a fast walk. Two hours later, in
the first rays of dawn, he had covered some seven miles. The thieves
were heading straight west toward the Ohio and had something over forty
miles yet to go. He was certain that they would not travel the entire
distance and try to swim their stolen mounts across the river to the
Indian side by daylight for fear of running foul of prowling woodsmen or
settlers. Somewhere short of the Ohio, they would stop until nightfall
before attempting a crossing, in which case he could overhaul them with
ease.

The trail revealed the fact that the horses had been pressed to a good
gait wherever the going was feasible. Mile after mile, Buckner held on
without slackening his pace. The way led across rough ranges of hills
and dipped into valleys, always veering to avoid the vicinity of
settlers' cabins. He covered another fifteen miles without any certainty
that he was gaining much on the thieves. Then the trail grew fresher and
at last he came to indisputable evidence that the horses were but a few
minutes ahead of him. The low ridge on which he stood descended almost
imperceptibly to merge into a wide timbered flat. He was on the point of
putting on a fresh burst of speed in an effort to overhaul the animals
when he stopped short as the faint tinkle of a horse bell reached his
ears from out in that timbered flat. Instantly he took cover behind a
tree and surveyed the forest ahead and on either flank.

Unquestionably the bell had been removed from the horse before it had
been ridden away. Now it had been restored to the horse's neck. Several
times the faint tinkle rose from the same spot a quarter of a mile
ahead. The thieves had made a halt--and that bell had been restored for
but one purpose. It was a favorite trick of savages to leave stolen
horses grazing at some strategic point so in case the owner had managed
to work out the trail, he would see them feeding quietly and believe
that they had traveled there of their own volition. Countless settlers,
hastening forward to gather their missing stock, had lost their lives to
savages who were lying in wait for them. It was a familiar and
transparent ruse to Buckner.

He turned at right angles and moved some three hundred yards through the
forest, then turned again to parallel the trail. Occasionally he stopped
to listen for the horse bell. Presently it informed him that he was
abreast of the horses. He held on for a distance, then angled over until
the tinkle of the bell indicated that he was some two hundred yards
beyond the horses, in the direction opposite to that from which they had
come.

Yard by yard, slowly and with exceeding caution, he moved toward them,
taking advantage of every bit of cover. He glided face down from one
windfall log to another or along the course of little depressions in the
surface. At each point so attained, with a spray of leaves held before
his face, he elevated both the spray and his head an inch at a time
until his eyes cleared the obstruction behind which he lay and enabled
him to study the landscape before him.

There being only two Indians, it was highly probable that instead of
waiting in ambush near the horses they would conceal themselves on the
flank of their back track. Then, if following settlers appeared on the
trail, the savages could attack if the pursuers were but few, or could
slip away and abandon the stolen horses if a large party arrived.
Buckner discovered the animals feeding in a slight depression, the
bottom of a shallow, grassy swale. Somewhere beyond them, two alert
savages were watching their back track. But on which side of the trail
were they stationed? Upon divining that all-important point depended the
advantage of coming upon them from behind or the disadvantage of
approaching in the face of watchful eyes. The cover seemed equal on
either flank.

Buckner watched the horses. Whenever they lifted their heads he observed
the direction of their gaze and the action of their sensitive ears.
Several times they looked in his direction, their ears pricked forward,
as if aware of his presence. Their attention turned most frequently,
however, to the northeast, as if something in that direction challenged
their casual attention. That would mean that the warriors were stationed
on the north side of the back track. Acting on this assumption, Buckner
began his stalk, circling to get in the rear of his quarry.

Then, with the patience of a hunting cat, he worked toward the point
where he hoped to find them. At the end of an hour of maneuvering, he
located them, prone behind a down log which commanded the trail made by
the horses on the way in. Foot by foot, he made his way to within fifty
yards of the two braves. Rising to stand behind a huge tree, he examined
the priming pan of his piece, then thrust it past the tree, preparatory
to drawing a bead on one of the unsuspecting braves. At that instant a
red squirrel, racing down the tree, discovered him at the foot of it and
scurried aloft with a startled bark, followed by an insistent chirring
rasp of anger.

At the first startled note, the eyes of the warriors were drawn to the
spot. Each saw the movement of the rifle as Buckner thrust it from
behind the tree. With incredible swiftness, they leaped the down log and
dropped flat upon its far side, then glided to station themselves behind
trees. The war whoop rose defiantly from two throats.

Buckner silently cursed the squirrel that had reversed the odds at the
final instant of his long and tedious stalk. He exposed one eye for a
split second to survey the forest head, then withdrew it. Most of the
savages of the Ohio were excellent marksmen and could plant a ball in
the exposed half of a man's head at forty yards if given but a brace of
seconds in which to draw a bead. He knew that two muskets were trained
upon his tree. Again he peered forth, this time upon the left side of
the trunk, withdrawing his head as quickly as before. That time he
located a rifle barrel with the peering eye of a warrior behind it.
Dropping to one knee, he took another flashing survey. At intervals
varying from five to fifteen seconds he exposed one eye or the other,
never twice from the same point so that the waiting savages would be
unable to determine at just what second or at what point that elusive
eye was to appear. Buckner failed to locate the stand of the second
savage. It was almost certain that one of them would draw off to circle
around beyond musket range and come in behind him. When the remaining
brave lifted his voice to engage Buckner in conversation, the woodsman
knew that his apprehension was about to be realized. It was an old ruse
of the redskins for one to engage a concealed enemy in conversation
while another maneuvered to outflank him.

"Why you steal Injun hoss?" the savage called out. "Me no steal. Injun
man only take his own back. That Wyandotte hoss. Me take now."

It was true that Buckner's mount had once belonged to the Wyandottes.
Stealing horses from the whites was a regular occupation with the
Indians of the Ohio wilderness. Reckless young borderers had grouped
together to wage similar raids against the Indians, sometimes slipping
into the very Indian towns at night and departing with the mounts of the
redskins. It was a custom sanctioned by the entire frontier and
Buckner's steed was one of the animals obtained in this fashion.

"That white man's hoss," Buckner called back. "You plenty big thief."

He must draw the fire of the redskin in front, then rush him before he
could reload--and that very quickly, for the one who was circling would
be in a position to shoot in the back before many minutes.

Many a woodsman had drawn the fire of a concealed savage by exposing his
coonskin cap, then rushed him with the ferocity of a panther before he
could reload, but the ruse was now known to the redskins and they were
seldom deluded by it. A huge, whitish slab of lichen that grew from the
base of the moldy trunk gave Buckner the inspiration to attempt a
variation of the trick. Tearing it from the tree, he sized it up
swiftly, placed his coonskin cap on top of it, then gouged with his
thumb nail a dark spot to correspond with the human eye.

As he worked, he answered the conversation of the remaining savage, but
his eyes roved to the rear and to either flank for a glimpse of the one
who was circling. He detected movement far behind him to the left. He
worked his rifle barrel along the ground on the right side of the tree
as if it were being thrust forward by a man prone on the ground, who
hoped that it would avoid detection. Then, very slowly, he allowed the
rounded edge of the lichen, topped by the coonskin cap, to slide into
the view of the warrior as if it were the half of a man's face peering
along the barrel of the rifle that rested on the ground. Even as he
performed this maneuver, his eyes were concerned with the landscape
behind him. A dark shape flitted from tree to tree a hundred yards to
the rear. Already the savage was within range. A few more yards and he
would draw a bead on the crouching woodsman. If the lichen failed to
draw the fire of the remaining savage in two seconds, Buckner decided,
he would dart forth and make a running fight of it. Even as his muscles
tensed for the leap from cover, the forest was rocked by an explosion
and the lichen was torn from his fingers as the warrior in front sent a
ball through it. On the instant, jerking his rifle back to a position
that covered the rear, Buckner sprawled prone on the ground with a
portion of his body exposed to the view of the savage who had fired. The
warrior, peering beneath the smoke of his musket shot, gave voice to a
fierce yell of triumph. The brave who had circled to the rear peered
from behind a tree seventy yards away, then stepped into view, only to
go down with a wild screech as Buckner sent a heavy ball through his
chest.

Springing to his feet, the woodsman leaped upon the startled warrior who
was advancing to scalp his supposed victim. The powerful savage met him
toe to toe and lunged so viciously with his knife that Buckner, to avoid
being ripped open by the murderous blade, sprang aside and the blow of
his tomahawk fell short. With the speed of a striking snake, the savage
knocked it from his hand with a single sweep of a brawny left arm.
Buckner transferred his own heavy knife from his left hand to his right
as he leaped back, then jumped in again. The two came to grips, each
with a left hand gripping the right wrist of his adversary, endeavoring
thus to hold the knife hand of his opponent while freeing his own.

Back, shoulder and arm muscles bulged with the strain, thighs and calves
were braced to high tension as the powerful pair fought through the
forest after the fashion of two heaving buck deer with their horns
locked in a death grip. The struggling pair tore up the soft leaf mold
with toes that sought for a firm foothold to brace against the onset of
the foe, caromed against trees and twice fell to the earth, only to rise
in that same lock, the hold of neither of them broken. Few men were
Buckner's equal in strength and endurance, but this powerful Wyandotte
was a match for him.

At the end of ten minutes of continual straining, the savage showed not
the least symptom of fatigue. His eyes glared into those of the woodsman
with unquenchable hatred. Buckner then resorted to passive defense. His
left hand gripped the right wrist of the Wyandotte with unyielding power
to prevent the use of the savage's knife, but he ceased straining to
free his own right wrist from the vise-like grip of the Indian's left
hand. After the space of a minute, the savage's eyes gleamed with
vindictive triumph as he sensed the weakening struggles of that right
arm to be free. He increased his efforts to twist his knife arm from the
white man's steel fingers. At last Buckner's left arm, too, seemed to
weaken slightly and the Wyandotte heaved with every ounce of his power
to bend it back and press the point of his knife home in the body of his
foe. While he concentrated on that effort, insensibly the muscles of the
savage's left arm had relaxed to meet only the strain put upon them by
Buckner's right, which for the past ten minutes had been but little.

Those muscles, relaxed from lack of resistance against which to exert
their power, were unable to tense with sufficient swiftness when
Buckner's right arm, so long apparently strengthless, whipped side-wise
and down with the sudden energy of a steel spring and broke the
Wyandotte's grip. Only then did the warrior comprehend the caliber of
his foe--a man who could remain cool and calculatingly patient for many
minutes during the heat of a desperate struggle. He knew then that he
had been tricked.

Still clamping the Indian's knife wrist with his left hand, Buckner's
right held his own knife low and to the rear of his right thigh where
the savage, who lunged to regain his grip, could not reach it. With the
deadliness of a striking snake, Buckner's knife leaped up to the
Wyandotte's left side as the savage sought to encircle his opponent with
his huge left arm. Again the knife was whipped up. Only when the
warrior's frame had become limp and sagged to the ground did Buckner's
grip on his opponent's wrist relax.

Buckner was both hungry and sleepy. Reloading his rifle, he shot a
squirrel and roasted it over a fire, then slept, to wake hours later to
the sound of distant voices. The three militiamen, in company with a
settler, had managed to work out the trail left by the four horses.

The quartette observed the two fresh scalps at Buckner's belt and made
eager inquiry as to the fight. He recounted the details of it,
mentioning incidentally the efforts of the Wyandotte to engage him in
an argument as to the ownership of Buckner's horse while the other brave
circled to outflank him. The men viewed the remains of the two slain
braves and the settler announced their identity. They were two friendly
Indians who had come to the settlements far behind the frontier on
several occasions of late, he said.

"No doubt they have been responsible, along with a few companions, for
most of the minor outrages behind the frontier that have so upset the
settlements during the past few months," Buckner declared and dismissed
the matter from his mind.

He returned with the settler and the militiamen to their former
overnight camp from which the horses had been stolen, arriving late at
night. In the morning he started on to cover the remaining fifty miles
to Crenshaw Bottom. It was late when he reached his destination and he
bivouacked outside the settlement for the night.

In the morning he repaired to Lander's farm, a mile outside the village.
Mrs. Lander's horrified gaze fastened on the two scalps at his belt and
her eyes rolled heavenward. Shrilly she gave him a tongue-lashing as to
his heathenish ways. He listened to this tirade for a while in stoical
indifference, then silenced the woman with an imperious gesture as he
repeated his original question.

"Where is White Fawn?"

"She works in the field with the others," the woman said sullenly.
"Where else would she be at this time of day?"

Buckner turned from her and strode toward a distant group in the field.
He had covered but a fraction of the distance when a figure detached
itself and raced toward him. White Fawn cast herself into his arms and
for the first time he tasted the sweetness of the lips she held up to
him. For a long minute he held them with the ardor of the starving.

"Come, White Fawn," he said then. "We return to Kentucky."

There was great content in her eyes as she paced by his side toward the
Lander farmhouse.

"You were long in coming," she said. "In a short while I would have
returned to the Shawnees to wait for you there. I like not these
Long-knives of Crenshaw. The three who came with you to the Shawnee
country were different. Laughter came readily to their lips. Those of
Crenshaw seldom smile. The three men had kindness. These speak of
goodness, but of kindness they know not. Do the Long-knives, then,
believe that laughter is sin, and to be kind is a weakness?"

"There are many tribes of Indians in the Ohio," said Buckner. "It is so
with the Long-knives. These of Crenshaw take pleasure in being a joyless
people. The butterfly spreads its lovely wings to the sunlight in the
joy of living, while the cheerless slug hides the mold, each deeming his
own mode of life best. White Fawn is a butterfly. The people of Crenshaw
are slugs. I should not have left you with them, but I did not then know
how bad it would be or how long I was to be before my return. But we
leave them now for the sunlit woods of Kentucky."

They rounded the corner of the house and a dozen men pounced upon
Buckner and bore him down by sheer weight of numbers. Even as they
seized him he struck out with hands and feet. A sweep of his arm sent
one man crashing against the log walls. As he went down on his back and
men fell forward upon him, he lifted one foot to an assailant's middle
and propelled him into the air with a powerful thrust. The man came down
on his head and collapsed in a senseless heap on the ground. Buckner's
hand sought his knife but some assailant had plucked it from his belt.
Even his heaving strength was insufficient to shake off his antagonists.
Two men to each arm, they bent his wrists behind his back and pinioned
them with rawhide while others held his body and legs. He was jerked to
his feet and found himself confronting Major Donner.

"What is the meaning of this?" Buckner demanded.

"You are the prisoner of the State of Pennsylvania--held to answer for
the murder of two friendly Indians," Donner informed. "You will be
detained until the authorities send for you."

Buckner knew then the nature of the thing that had befallen him. The
East, stirred by the villainous murder of the harmless Delawares on the
Muskingum two years before, had risen to demand that the propensities of
the frontier settlers for bloodshed be curbed and all offenders
punished. Such sentiment was not new. As early as Dunmore's time, that
colonial governor of Pennsylvania had been forced to offer large rewards
for the capture of various white men who had been guilty of murdering
peaceful redskins. The frontier, standing back of its own, had
steadfastly refused to give up the offenders. Several for whom such
rewards had been offered were popular heroes of the border. In response
to the pressure brought by the thickly settled communities well removed
from the scene of savage depredations, various State governments had
been forced to sanction the imprisonment by militia officers of all
settlers who killed friendly Indians. The frontier was highly incensed
at this new bit of interference.

"So you think the two redskins whose scalps I took were friendly?"
Buckner inquired.

"That is what the settlers of that community claim," Donner stated.
"They are greatly alarmed lest the Wyandottes retaliate by invading the
vicinity in force."

"The groundless fears of old women," Buckner retorted.

"After all," Donner said, "the horse you rode had been stolen from the
Wyandottes, as you related yourself. You also admitted that one Indian
called out that he was no thief but was merely taking his own back. No
doubt he believed it was simple justice and he intended no bloodshed."

"No bloodshed?" Buckner scoffed. "Then why did they resort to the old
redskin ruse of leaving the horses peacefully grazing as decoys while
they lay in ambush on their back track?"

"That is not for me to answer. But you might have discussed the matter
instead of taking their lives," Donner said.

"Discuss?" Buckner echoed incredulously. "After they had gobbled the war
whoop at first glimpse of me? Does one temporize playfully with a
copperhead after its head is lifted to strike?"

"What bearing has that?" Donner demanded.

"When a warrior gobbles at you it means that he has declared his
intention--which is to lift your hair if he can. It never did and never
will mean anything but just that in redskin parlance," Buckner
explained.

"Perhaps. Nevertheless, in your case, I should have attempted to settle
the matter in some way," Donner stated.

"No doubt you would," Buckner agreed grimly.

He knew that this fiasco might have serious results. Donner was a power
in this part of Pennsylvania and he had small love for Buckner. The
prisoner was a Virginian and the bitterness over boundary disputes would
not aid his case with Pennsylvanians. Donner, he could see, was prepared
to put the worst construction upon his possession of a Wyandotte horse
and the apparently peaceful arguments which, according to Buckner's own
assertions, had been advanced by one of the Wyandotte braves. It was
known that the two braves had posed as friendly Indians in various
settlements behind the frontier. With the present wave of almost
hysterical demands that frontier settlers who killed friendly Indians
should be punished, it was highly probable that the authorities of this
part of Pennsylvania would attempt to make an example of Buckner and
give him a prison sentence. If he had been taken by the enemy he would
have accepted it stoically. But his fierce pride rebelled at being
imprisoned by the very people for whom he had fought throughout the long
years of the war. He fiercely resented being treated as a criminal by
one community for an act which would have been hailed as a public
benefaction in an adjacent community.

He surveyed the volunteer militiamen, raised to defend their town from
imaginary savages, but who instead had imprisoned him for doing in
reality what they accomplished only in fancy. He laughed scornfully.

"Crenshaw Bottom hails the major as its heroic leader for the savages he
failed to slay. It regards me as a criminal for succeeding where he
failed," he scoffed.

Thirty-odd hours later, as he lounged in the ancient blockhouse of
Crenshaw Bottom, Buckner fretted at White Fawn's failure to come to him.

At that very moment, she was a hundred miles away, peering from the edge
of the forest at the camp of several settlers' families on the banks of
the Ohio. Terrified at the seizure of her man by those of his own race,
she had slipped away unobserved and had traveled without a halt. She saw
no familiar faces among those in the camp. But several men among them
were garbed in buckskin hunting shirts. The matter was urgent, so she
approached the nearest of them.

"Where is Gilpin, the Long-knife of the woods?" she asked.

The settler surveyed her in kindly fashion. "Long-knife of the woods,
eh? You've lived among the Injuns, gal, I take it. Gilpin is som'eres
within many miles o' hyar, but I can't rightly say jest whar."

"Then where are the Hernes, the brothers of Gray Wolf?" the girl asked.

"You'll find them wharever Gilpin is camped at, I reckon," the man
returned. The urgency of the girl's manner impressed him. "You're
looking for borderers that you knowed in the Injun towns? They can't be
more 'n twenty-thirty miles off from hyar. I've heered folks mention
seeing them in the past few days. We kin locate 'em fer you in a day or
two, most likely."

"That will be too late!" she said. "I must find Long-knives of the woods
who are friends of Buckner," White Fawn declared.

"Now you can sartinly count me a friend of hisn," the settler stated
emphatically. "Every man on the border is that." A sudden thought struck
him. "You don't mean Buckner's been took by the redskins? Speak up and
tell us what's ailing."

The man's face set in a frown as she related her story. When she had
finished, he gave vent to a low growl of resentment and strode to the
other men who were engaged in constructing flatboats on the banks of the
river.

"It's Buckner's woman," she heard him say. "She's come a hundred miles
afoot to look for borderers to help him."

The rest of his words were lost but she saw hard, reckless faces light
up with wild fury as he proceeded.

"Rest easy, gal," the man said, returning. "We on the border looks after
our own."

The men had dropped their tools and each one secured his rifle from the
shelter where his own family was domiciled. They scattered swiftly, some
going upriver, some downstream. Within the hour, armed men began to come
into the camp, singly and in two and threes. Gilpin and the two Hernes
arrived in hot haste.

More than a score of border woodsmen congregated there and almost an
equal number of frontier settlers. The desperate little band set off at
a purposeful trail trot and was lost to view in the forest. Other
woodsmen arrived singly as the news spread, made brief inquiry and
disappeared in the forest on the trail of those who had gone on ahead.

White Fawn slept many hours out of the next forty-eight. At the end of
that period, she saw a sizable body of armed men approaching.

"Milishy," one of the frontier women said.

White Fawn was apprehensive on the instant. The men of Crenshaw Bottom
who had taken Buckner had been called militia. Now the borderers had
gone on the warpath against Crenshaw Bottom. Militia came here. Were
they in search of her for the part she had played? The difference
between various faction of whites was but vaguely known to her. She fled
to the river and launched a canoe. Those of the camp called out to her
to come back but she did not so much as turn. They watched her make a
landing on the Indian side of the Ohio and disappear in the wilderness.

Back in the ancient blockhouse, Buckner scornfully watched the plodding
of the volunteer guards in the walled-in compound. A score or more of
them were quartered there. Two men stood as guards before the door of
the blockhouse. Two others paced useless beats along the wall of the
little compound before it. Donner would be military at all costs, no
matter how absurd the demonstration, Buckner reflected.

At first Buckner had decided to await the outcome of this affair, hoping
that a trial would result in his public exoneration. But of late years
all such formalities of civilization had come to be more or less
meaningless to him. He was capable of defending his honor most
religiously as an individual, of punishing summarily any who should
question it to the slightest degree. A public gesture was rather an
impersonal matter. The whole frontier would resent the absurdity and
injustice of his punishment. The larger centers of civilization
understood less than nothing of the ways of the redskins and the
necessities of savage warfare, so their united opinion as to his action
was valueless in his eyes. Always there had been a profound difference
between the views of the older settled communities and those of the
frontier, amounting almost to hostility. Buckner was essentially a
creature of action and he now began to chafe against confinement and
enforced inactivity with the restlessness of a caged panther. Release
from this tedium became the paramount consideration. It should be no
difficult matter to escape from it, to invade the Lander premises,
release White Fawn from their custody and take to the woods. Once in the
clear, it would be impossible for a hundred such militiamen as those
outside to recapture himself and White Fawn.

The prophetic words of Clark, the young border general, recurred to
Buckner. Clark had said that as soon as the woodsmen had won the
frontier for civilization it would no longer be the frontier; and that
there would be no place for the frontiersmen in the civilization that
their efforts had made possible. Buckner's present plight was an apt
illustration of the accuracy of Clark's prophesy.

The light from the fire in the compound, filtering through narrow
apertures, was all that relieved the blackness of Buckner's quarters. On
the morrow, when there was sufficient light, he would examine the
interior of the room for some point of weakness upon which to work
during the day so that he might effect his escape the next night and
take White Fawn from the Lander farm. With this decision, he fell into
an untroubled sleep sometime before midnight, little suspecting that
within twenty miles some forty half-wild borderers were streaming
through the woods like a pack of hunting wolves, covering the miles
with a space-devouring lope. Behind them, strung out for many miles,
other border men were running steadily through the night.

A half-hour before dawn, Buckner waked suddenly, reaching instinctively
for his rifle. Then he realized that he was weaponless, imprisoned
within four log walls. What had waked him with a sense of impending
menace? A dog growled angrily from somewhere outside. An owl hooted
twice and was answered by three notes from somewhat farther away.
Buckner's spine tingled with the old wariness as he stepped to a narrow
aperture and peered forth into the compound. Two sentries patrolled
their restricted beats. The others slept around the coals of the fire in
the compound. There was more owl conversation. The sentries seemed to
pay no heed to it. Dogs made growling rushes in the adjacent town. Still
the men around the fire slept on and the sentries stolidly paced their
beats. The night was dark but Buckner's straining eyes discerned queer
excrescences on the top of the stockade wall. There was a faint cheep,
as if voiced by some small bird roused from its slumbers. Two dark
figures dropped silently from the wall. There were two muffled thuds and
the sentries no longer paced their beats. Then the whole compound
swarmed with vague shapes that had scaled the stockade wall and dropped
inside with the agility and noiselessness of prowling cats. Strong hands
seized the sleepers around the fire. Some woke with startled cries, only
to be warned in fierce low tones to keep silence. Several attempted to
put up a fight, and in each instance there came again that muffled thud
of a well-wrapped club descending upon a human head. Within a space of
two minutes after that bird had cheeped, every one of the score or more
of militiamen inside the blockade had been securely tied. The gates were
opened and the moving forms disappeared to return with the rifles and
equipment which they had been forced to cache outside to facilitate
their noiseless scaling of the stockade.

"Whar is your den, Chief?" a voice inquired.

"Here," Buckner answered from his aperture.

Fresh fuel had been added to the fire. The outer bars of the door to
Buckner's room were lowered and the door swung open. He stepped outside
among his friends. Save for the stockade walls, the picture was a
familiar one to him, the one which he loved above all others--a fire
round which a score of wild figures were gathered, some of them garbed
in buckskins, some naked from the waist up, attired only in moccasins,
breechclouts and leggings. The sentries and the others who had been
knocked on the head so unceremoniously were reviving, to find themselves
securely bound.

"No lives lost," Gilpin said. "They grow skulls so thick hereabouts that
cannon shot would scassly dent them--nor a new idea seep in."

The prisoners were warned against raising an alarm.

"If you'd do a favor for your own breed o'cats, it's best not to rouse
the townfolk," Gilpin said. "Thar's twenty-odd more of our kind
scattered round the edge of town. They're het up agin such communities
as this for their stand on the Injun question. If they was to be fired
on, these border wolves would clean up your green sheep of milishy like
a pack of weasels in a hen roost, which I'd be sorry to see."

Gray dawn was spreading. The prisoners were confined in Buckner's former
quarters while the woodsmen devoured the rations intended for the
consumption of the militia. The others had been signalled in and the
compound swarmed with them when a sentinel, peering from a loophole,
announced that Donner was approaching. The gate was opened to admit him
and he gazed wildly around him as he was made a prisoner.

"The authorities will punish this outrage!" he threatened.

"Sure! Sure!" an oldish woman soothed him. "Times change. I hail from
these parts myself, when it was on the frontier and the settlers' lands
unsafe from the depredations of savages. 'Twas the very settlers from
hereabouts that made such an uproar about the East deserting 'em to the
savages that they forced Pennsylvania to put a bounty on all Injun
scalps. Now, with their lands safe these many years, they've turned smug
and virtuous, denying others the right to do now as they done in the
past."

"I'm for good treatment of the Injuns and agin further encouragement on
the Injun lands myself--after I've got good land safe for me and mine as
you hereabouts done before me," a settler declared.

In the gray light of dawn the townsfolk looked forth to see a motley
crew of half-savage figures marching past in straggling formation. They
stood and watched until the woodsmen had disappeared toward the west.




CHAPTER XIII


The night was black as Buckner neared the Wyandotte town. Upon his
return to the camp of the flatboaters on the Ohio to learn that White
Fawn had disappeared into the Indian country, he had started at once in
pursuit of her. That the Shawnees would welcome her with open arms, he
knew. It was Kemper that he feared.

Far to the west, on a stream that flowed to the Wabash, Kemper had
established a trading post that was the hang-out of renegade white men.
He incited the savages to prey upon the flatboat travel on the Ohio. For
such goods as they plundered from the boats he paid a good price in rum.
Then he traded the goods to the Western tribes for furs, which in turn
he sold to the fur traders of Detroit.

Kemper had offered Tonk-a-naw a very big price for White Fawn even
before he had suspected that she had the least interest in Buckner or
the slightest intention of leaving the Shawnees. The moment that he
heard of her return, he would increase his offer to any price that was
necessary. Tonk-a-naw, having once lost out altogether by waiting, would
be very apt to close the arrangement with all possible dispatch. In that
case, the girl would be very closely watched from the moment of her
arrival to make sure that she did not depart again. It might prove
impossible for Buckner to get in touch with her. With that in mind, he
felt it imperative to overtake her before she should reach her home
town.

It was certain that she would stop in the nearest Indian town on her
direct route for food and perhaps linger there to rest. It was for that
reason that he headed for the nearest Wyandotte town. As he traveled he
was conscious of an increasing dull rage at the interfering militia at
Crenshaw and of all such gentry in general for having been responsible
for this occurrence.

Mingled apprehension and anger crowded upon Buckner's thoughts as he
pressed on through the night. In his anxiety, his usual cool
consideration of every possible adverse contingency had been lessened to
a considerable extent.

Indian scouts, ever watching along the Ohio, had accosted White Fawn
almost at the instant of her landing. They had kept her in their camp
for a day and a night. The romance between Buckner and White Fawn was
known throughout the Ohio wilderness. These Delaware scouts, with true
redskin shrewdness, had divined that Buckner might follow White Fawn.
They had escorted her to the nearest Indian town. The savages were well
aware of Buckner's boldness. It was known that he had penetrated to the
heart of Indian towns at night to eavesdrop upon conversations and so
determine the future activities of the tribes and the destination of the
war parties. That he would now follow a similarly daring course seemed
probable.

So Buckner, his usual vigilance temporarily dulled by anxiety and the
pressing necessity of overtaking White Fawn, proceeded along the very
lines that the wily red strategists had hoped he would follow. That the
outer Indian towns were on the alert for him, he had no idea.

He entered the Wyandotte town boldly. All seemed very quiet. He listened
for conversation upon which he could eavesdrop but the lodges were dark
and silent, as if all of the occupants had retired for the night. A
warrior passed him in the darkness as he made his way toward the center
of the town.

"How is it with you, Brother?" the savage inquired.

"Well," Buckner returned in the Wyandotte tongue.

The warrior passed on without halting. Three others passed him or
crossed his path, paying no heed to him. Voices rose from a big lodge
near the center of the town. He drew near and stood in the outer
darkness, his ears strained to catch the text of the conversation. He
heard White Fawn's name and held his breath to hear what was said of
her. Suddenly a tingle of mingled delight and relief flooded through him
as White Fawn's own voice reached him. Instantly, he started upon a
retreat. He would withdraw to the forest and give their old signal. As
soon as was feasible after hearing it, White Fawn would come to him.
Even as he turned to withdraw, his old wariness reasserted itself. Some
uncanny sense informed him that this town was too quiet. The lodges
stood black and silent, save for this large central one. Had it been
planned to that end--only one spot to which an eavesdropper would
naturally gravitate? He felt, rather than reasoned, some sinister
significance in the very ease with which his feet had led him to White
Fawn--as a fox is left but one inviting lane to the trap. That animal
wariness rose from the depths in swift warning that all was not
well--but it arrived one second too late. He turned to retreat but iron
hands clamped his ankles and jerked him off balance as dark forms sprang
upon him and bore him to the ground. Securely bound, he was dragged to
the council house. A fire was kindled and he found himself hemmed in by
fierce and hostile faces. Throughout the balance of the night a council
deliberated upon his case without arriving at a definite conclusion.
There was no doubt as to his fate, but merely as to the manner of his
death. The Wyandottes had outlawed the custom of torturing captives at
the stake and refused to accede to the demand of the few Lake Delawares
that the prisoner be dispatched in that manner. The Lake Delawares were
equally adamant.

"The prisoner belongs to the Delawares of the lakes," one brave
asserted. "It was to our camp of Delaware scouts that White Fawn came. I
myself divined the fact that Buckner the Long-knife might follow and
that he would come into one of the nearest Indian towns at night to
listen for news of her. He has done so. It was my own hands that
fastened upon his ankles and jerked him from his feet."

"The right of the Delawares to the prisoner is certain," an influential
Wyandotte brave agreed. "But it is not their privilege to burn the
captive in the Wyandotte towns when it is against our customs."

"Then we shall start with him at once for our own towns and there scorch
him well," a Delaware declared.

"This man is a great enemy of the Wyandottes and as such we wish to make
sure of his death," a Wyandotte chief objected. "If you start with him
for the Delaware towns, it is probable that he will escape."

"How can he escape us?" a Delaware demanded, striking his chest, "when
there are five of us?"

"The wolf who has many times escaped the circle thrown about him by a
hundred hunters might not find it difficult to escape from five," the
other returned.

"But he is tied with bullhide and will remain so," a Delaware protested.

"A bird with a clipped wing, if kept alive too long, learns to fly again
and escape the pot," a Wyandotte pointed out.

Still the Delawares stood upon their rights as captors.

"But why should you take the slightest chance in the case of such a
prisoner?" one Wyandotte demanded impatiently. "He is the most dangerous
Long-knife of them all. Also there is the fact that Kemper, the trader,
offers the greatest price for his scalp that ever has been offered in
the Ohio."

"Never fear. Buckner of the Long-knives will never again finger the hair
of a warrior, and his own scalp shall be delivered to Kemper without
fail. Then may the Wyandottes drink with the Delawares for many days and
nights on the high wine we will receive for it."

It was so decided in council.

"What have you to say for yourself?" a brave asked Buckner, now that his
fate had been settled.

"A warrior dies as his conquerors decide," Buckner returned.

"Then the Long-knife shall know the feel of the Delaware fires."

"No Delaware can kindle a fire so hot as to make Buckner weaken," the
captive declared. "It is known to you that my knife would rust from
disuse and my tomahawk grow dull before I would sharpen them upon women
and children. Scores of scalps have I taken, and all of them from those
whose knives were at my throat or whose muskets were trained upon my
heart. Many great warriors have hunted me and I have slit their throats
as an old dog wolf slays deer that are bogged to their ears in soft
snow. Think you the Delaware lives who can strike fear to Buckner?"

There was a murmur of hostile approval. Hate him as a dangerous enemy
they did; admire him as a great brave they must. That he knew, being
intimately versed in redskin nature. He now prepared to try the plan he
had devised--his one slim chance to live.

"I shake with silent laughter when I think of the big drinking spree the
Delawares will have on the high wine that the dog Kemper will pay for my
scalp," he scoffed.

"We will laugh with you as we drink to your departed spirit, flapping on
scorched wings toward the happy hunting ground," a brave promised.

"If you hear strange sounds from the air above you, it will be the
laughter of that same spirit," Buckner said. "Once I saw wolves that had
run far for water, with their tongues protruding from thirst; and I
watched their faces when those tongues were dipped in the hot sands of
the false water hole that had gone dry."

"But the trading post of Kemper never goes dry. We have it straight from
the tribes of the West that there is always much high wine stored
there," a Delaware stated.

"There was always much water stored beneath the dry sands where the
wolves sought to drink," Buckner said. "But the wolves could not reach
it."

"But Kemper has given to the four winds his promise to pay a big price
for the scalp of Buckner, the Long-knife," a brave pointed out.

"The bladder of a bull buffalo, if inflated and dried, gives off a great
sound when used as a drum or a rattle," Buckner said, "but it is hollow
and empty inside. Also, its emptiness takes on a fine appearance if the
dried skin is painted. The Redcoats heard that Kemper's promises were
but wind. They liked it not that one of their chiefs spoke with forked
tongue. They stripped off his scarlet jacket and found it to be but the
paint which decorated a bladder drum that gave off false sounds."

All the tribes of the Ohio knew that Kemper had been captive to Buckner,
who had spared his life; that the British had drummed Kemper out of
their army because he had violated a promise to his preserver. They
pondered Buckner's words for a space in silence.

"Kemper has not been a Redcoat for many years now," Buckner said,
"wherefore he longs for the scalp of Buckner, the Long-knife."

"Well, he shall have it," a Delaware asserted. "He will keep his faith
with the red men even though he violated his faith with the whites."

"The buzzard who betrays his own nest mates for a mouthful of carrion
will not hesitate to defraud the crows of a banquet," Buckner
confidently prophesied.

"If he breaks a promise to me, he will find my knife in his heart!" a
warrior declared fiercely, his knife flashing into his hand. "I shall
take one scalp to him. If he refuses to pay, I shall bring two scalps
back with me."

"Would that Manitou so arranges it," Buckner said. "I could die in peace
with the knowledge that my scalp was to be the means of guiding your
knife to the black heart of Kemper. But it will not come to pass. When
you take my scalp to him, he will not pay. Neither will you slay him."

"Do you think my words are but wind?" the brave demanded angrily, his
knife flashing before the captive's eyes.

"No--but that his are," Buckner said. "His tongue will lead you on false
trails and you will be swayed from your purpose."

"My ears will listen only to straight words," the warrior boasted. "How
could his lying tongue delude the ears of a Delaware?"

"The tongue of the mocking bird is never at a loss for new songs that
delude the ears of the feathered tribes," Buckner said.

"But what false song can this Kemper sing to me when I appear before him
with your scalp and demand the high wine?" the Delaware insisted.

"He would relate to you the story of the hawk who promised to provide
meat for a jay if the jay would coax the great horned owl forth into the
daylight and lead him to some spot where the crows would kill him. The
jay returned after many days with a feather in its bill and presented it
to the hawk, proclaiming that it was from the body of the owl who had
been slain by the crows at a distant point. The hawk inspected the
feather and declared it to be that of a tiny screech owl, accused the
jay of speaking with a split tongue and refused to provide the meat."

The assembled warriors pondered this for a space.

"It is true that scalps have much the same appearance," a brave
commented at last, his eye roving over Buckner's head. "And this
Long-knife wears his hair after the fashion of a brave. Yes, it would be
difficult to prove from whose head it was taken if this Kemper chose
not to believe those who brought it."

"I have it!" a brave exclaimed. "We will take this Long-knife to the
post on the Wabash and slay him before Kemper's eyes."

"It is many sleeps from here," another objected.

That plan, however, was adopted. Buckner sighed with relief. On a long
march of that sort he would devise some means of escape. His taunts had
been planned to that end. A bull-hide collar was looped about his neck
and attached by a stout rawhide cable to the waist of a powerful brave.
With his hands pinioned behind him, he set off on the long journey to
the westward with an escort of a dozen warriors. His eyes roved over the
faces of the jeering throng for a last glimpse of White Fawn but she was
nowhere to be seen. He was not sure that she had been informed of his
capture. No doubt she had resumed her journey toward her home town among
the Shawnees.

"Watch this man well," a sub-chief of the Wyandottes admonished as they
left the town. "He is strong and active as a bull elk, with the courage
of the wolverine and as slippery as the weasel. One careless second and
he will be gone from you."

Hour after hour the little procession filed through the forest. It was
late in the autumn and frost was to be expected any night, which made
the insect pests all the more insistent and ravenous as if they realized
that each taste of blood or meat might be their last. The flies and
mosquitoes clustered on the captive in swarms and he could not free
himself of them. The bullhide chafed his neck and the thongs that bound
his wrist bit deep into his flesh. And as he strode on and on, a fierce
resentment against those of his own race who were responsible for his
plight found lodgment in his breast. Save for those at Crenshaw Bottom,
their course sanctioned at least by the Pennsylvania authorities, he
would now have been well on his way to Kentucky with White Fawn. Was it
in this fashion that those for whom he had fought the long years would
reward him? He was by no means the first borderer to receive such
treatment at the hands of those residing in quieter communities far to
the rear; by no means the first, in fact, to be rescued by his border
friends. Always there had been that bitter difference between those of
the present frontier who still sought to protect their lands against the
savages and those of past frontiers whose lands had long been safe.
Always it was the status of the land that tinged men's viewpoints. That
difference was to persist for another hundred years, the settlers of
each successive frontier fiercely insisting upon their rights to
encroach further into the Indian lands, those in the rear forever
clamoring against further aggression.

That rankling sense of injustice grew upon Buckner as his bonds bit into
him and the flies and mosquitoes feasted on him. Worst of all was the
weight on his spirit from the prospect of missing life with White Fawn.
The very thought of her sent a gentle madness through his veins, the
vision of her face obscuring his whole horizon. He swore an oath that
if he made his escape he would never again set foot in those settled
communities behind the frontier but would live out his life on the
border where dwelt his own iron breed of men. Few among the hundreds of
border woodsmen of his acquaintance who had not made similar vows in his
hearing, for some reason or another. He now made one himself.

Toward nightfall, the procession filed into an Indian town. A British
trader watched from among the jeering throng of savages. Later he came
to the lodge where Buckner was confined under guard and sought to
purchase the captive's life. Eventually, his offer was raised to include
all of his rum and trade goods and his own gun and horses. The Delawares
declined to listen to his offers and finally grew threatening, expelling
him from the lodge. They had rescued many a luckless captive, these
British traders. It was not the man's fault that he had failed. He had
offered all that he possessed. No man could do more than that.

The Delawares loitered in the town until well along toward noon before
resuming the march. That night they bivouacked at a spring. The rawhide
rope attached to Buckner's neck was fastened to a tree, his bound ankles
secured to a sapling and his hands securely pinioned behind his back.
Not all of his captors slept at any one time. Always there were two or
more sitting there stolidly at the fire, their eyes turning to him at
his slightest move.

Tentatively, he tensed and flexed his great arm muscles. It was
possible, he believed, for him to break the thongs that bound his
wrists.

He made no effort to release himself at that time. During the next two
overnight halts Buckner slept but little, pretending to be wrapped in
heavy slumber while in reality he watched to determine if the vigilance
of the few Delawares who had been detailed to remain awake as guards
would be relaxed. If they should fall asleep and give him but a few
short minutes, he could free himself. He could break the bonds on his
wrists with one wrench, untie the thongs that secured his feet in the
space of a minute, rise silently to untie the neckrope from the tree and
fade into the forest, freeing his neck of it as he ran. Not once,
however, did all of his captors sleep at the same time and a false start
would be fatal to his plans. So, with untiring patience, he watched his
chance. On several occasions, the two guards allowed their heads to fall
forward on their chests. One or the other, however, never failed to
rouse with a start within a half minute and peer at the captive.

On the evening of the fifth day the skies were overcast with gray that
seemed to darken and to descend as night approached, so lowering as to
lend the appearance that a leaden canopy was supported by the tips of
the forest trees. As night shut down with its excessive blackness, the
forest was gripped in unearthly silence, as if the prowlers of the night
held their breath in fearful anticipation of what the elements might do.

Before morning there would be snow, the Delawares predicted. Buckner
knew it too. The feel of it was in the air for the wild things and all
humans who slept upon the ground to read. That would be bad for
Buckner's plans. With snow on the ground, his only course would be to
make a run of it to the Ohio and swim to the Kentucky shore. The river
should be somewhere round forty miles due south of him. The westernmost
fringe of the Shawnee towns were almost in his line of flight and he
would have to veer slightly west to miss them. His own former home town,
he estimated, was about twenty miles to the south. As his mind was
occupied with these matters there was the slightest rattle of the
leafless branches overhead as if the merest breath of wind stirred them.
Then the first flakes of the coming storm burned the naked skin of
Buckner's torso and face.

His captors slept, each rolled in his single skin robe or trade blanket,
except the two guards who sat with their blankets wrapped to their
chins. Whether the guards slept or not, he must make his try for freedom
this night. Reclining on his side, his face to the savages, he waited
until the fire had burned to coals that shed but a feeble light. Then,
the guards apparently having dropped into one of their brief naps,
Buckner tensed his muscles for the wrench that would part the thongs on
his wrists. The heads of the guards sagged on their chests. Buckner's
muscles bulged with the strain. He relaxed suddenly as a thudding sound
came from the forest behind him. On the instant, every Delaware was
awake and peering about him. For the space of a minute, all listened in
silence. Had they been in enemy country they would have investigated.

"Bear," said one of the guards, who had been asleep but professed to
have been awake.

Buckner, who had been awake, doubted that the sound had been made by a
bear.

One after another, the Delawares relaxed again and slept.

While he waited with stolid patience, Buckner reflected upon the
difficulties of his task. A sleeping redskin was the most difficult
creature in the world to take by surprise. Buckner had participated in
scores of surprise attacks staged by woodsmen against parties of
sleeping savages. The amazing celerity with which each warrior attained
his feet in instant readiness to put up a desperate fight had never
failed to recall to Buckner's mind the actions of a sleeping cat when
surprised by a snarling dog--transformed in a half-second into a
spitting demon with back arched, teeth and claws unsheathed.




CHAPTER XIV


The two guards drowsed intermittently but not for a sufficient period to
afford the chance for which he waited. But he must make his effort soon
now. They no longer paid much heed to his threshing about as if to free
his body of snow. Again a slight sound came from behind him, the least
rustling, as if some tiny creature crawled through the snow.

A cold shock flooded his being as something touched his hand from behind
with a hot stab of pain. His fingers writhed up to explore it and felt
the blade of a heavy knife. Further exploration revealed the fact that
its handle was lashed to the slender tip of a pole. Help was at hand.
Some lone woodsman on a scout in the Indian country, or perhaps the
British trader who had tried to ransom him, had writhed up to the base
of a tree fifteen feet away to thrust this knife forward on the tip of a
long slender pole. Swiftly, Buckner's groping fingers freed it of its
lashings and cramped it up to bear upon the thongs that bound his
wrists. They parted and slid from him. Watching the two guards, he bent
his knees to the limit while his underneath hand slid down to sever the
rawhide that secured his ankles. Tingling in every nerve, he slipped
that lower hand back up his body, twisting his elbow to an
uncomfortable angle, until the point of the knife found the rawhide
neckrope. One of the guards stirred and glanced toward him, then settled
back. The knife completed its work. Buckner gathered his muscles to rise
silently. Both guards seemed to sleep. The captive was in the act of
rising when the nearest Delaware gave a sudden start and threw off his
blanket. Before the savage could rise from where he sat, Buckner hurled
the heavy knife and the point of it found the soft spot at the base of
the warrior's throat. He fell forward with a gurgling cry. Even as
Buckner leaped away, every Delaware was on his feet, a yell of rage
sounding through the night. A red splash flared almost in Buckner's face
from the inky darkness and an explosion rocked his ears as his rescuer
fired from behind a tree and shot down another Delaware. Buckner lifted
his voice in the wild yell of the border woodsmen, the war cry of his
clan, and shouted a command to charge the camp. The Delawares took to
the shelter of the trees, prepared to defend themselves against attack.
Buckner, with his rescuer pressing close upon his heels, gained a
hundred yards into the black shadows of the forest before the pursuit
was organized.

A voice said softly from behind him, "Bear a bit more to the left."

The voice was that of White Fawn and the shock of it was so great that
he almost halted.

"Take the lead," he said. "I will follow at your gait."

She slipped ahead on the run and fled like a startled deer, pressing a
musket into his hand as she passed. For the space of a minute, the
forest behind them echoed to the cries of the Delawares as they started
in pursuit. Then all was silent and Buckner knew that they had picked up
the trail in the half-inch snow and were following at their best speed.
White Fawn was but a fleeing shadow ahead of him. She led the way
through a broad drift of shed leaves that the gentle breeze had stirred
enough to spill the snow from them; later through a broad opening where
the light snowfall had sifted down through the tall grass. Unerringly,
she chose such going as would make it most difficult for the Delawares
to hold the trail on so black a night, even with the revealing powder of
snow on the ground.

As Buckner's cramped muscles relaxed with action and the power flowed
back to them, elation lifted his spirit and buoyed his heart with the
knowledge that White Fawn had flanked the trail of his captors from the
first. Living like a wild thing of the forest, she had stayed close at
hand during the nights while she watched her chance to slip the knife to
him. They must have a half-mile lead upon the Delawares by now, he
estimated. White Fawn still fled on ahead like a startled hare. Her
endurance was that of a woodsman. Dawn would not overtake them for
another five hours. They should gain at least a mile an hour upon the
Delawares, he thought. By daylight they would have covered two thirds of
the distance to the Ohio and would have a five-mile lead. They came to
another broad opening and White Fawn darted quarteringly across it.

When they came again into the forest she spoke a word to Buckner and
passed back a powder horn and bullet pouch as they ran. Adept at
reloading on the run, as were all woodsmen, he soon had the musket
recharged. She then passed him a tomahawk which he fastened at his belt.
At the end of the first hour, it seemed to him that the girl's pace had
slowed somewhat. Nevertheless, she ran steadily. At the end of another
hour, he found himself crowding upon her heels even when he trotted.
They had covered over ten miles by now, he estimated; but at their
present gait the Delawares would be holding their own. The snow, shallow
as it was, prevented the fugitives from breaking their trail save at
certain strategic points. It was a bit deeper here and for the past
half-hour they had left the plainest of trails. Presently it seemed to
him that the girl ran only with great effort.

"Do you tire, my heart?" he asked in Shawnee.

"Yes," she confessed. "It is the blood. The loss of it weakens me."

"Blood!" Buckner exclaimed, fear tugging at his heart.

Without halting, struggling gamely ahead, she explained that as she had
neared the camp, the long pole balanced in one hand, the knife in the
other, she had fallen into a depression in the forest floor. In her
endeavor to keep the pole aloft so it would not clatter to earth, she
had fallen upon the knife, which had slashed her thigh. The fall had
occasioned the sound that had roused the Delawares and mystified
Buckner. Calling a halt, Buckner swiftly explored the wound with his
fingers. It was not dangerous, but continuous exertion for many hours
might easily cause sufficient loss of blood to result fatally. It was
almost thirty miles to the Ohio. Buckner cursed under his breath.
Mingled with his anxiety for White Fawn was that dark rage at those of
his own race whose meddling ingratitude had brought her to this pass.
Swiftly, he revised his plans.

"Bear more to the east," he said, although the course to which they had
been holding was barely far enough to the west to clear the most
westerly of the Shawnee towns. Their own former home town could not be
more than ten miles to the southwest. "Travel slowly and apply snow to
the wound to staunch the flow of blood."

The girl obeyed without question. Carefully, he estimated their rate of
travel. They covered another two miles. The Shawnee town could not be
much more than eight miles away.

"Do you travel on slowly, White Fawn, and hold a direct southeast
course," he instructed. "Do not overexert yourself, my heart. I stay
here to throw them off the trail. Then I will circle to you. Answer
three hoots of the great horned owl."

He swung to the right and traveled back swiftly on a course parallel to
their trail. After half a mile, he moved over until his searching eyes
found their tracks. Then he stationed himself behind a huge tree beside
the trail and waited. The minutes dragged by. The Delawares could not be
far behind now. His eyes were of small use, so dark was the night. One
could not see a man a dozen feet away. Looking down at the vague white
of the snow, the vision was somewhat aided--to a sufficient extent, at
least, so the Delawares would have no trouble in following the trail,
even though not at top speed.

Another minute passed. Then his straining ears caught the soft tramp of
feet. Not until the leading savage was within a dozen feet could
Buckner's eyes discern the vague shape in the gloom. As the first
warrior drew abreast of him, Buckner swung his tomahawk down upon his
skull and felled him. Instantly, the woodsman fired his musket at the
breast of the next dark shape on the trail, then turned and darted
straight west through the forest.

Cries of rage followed him, also the balls of a half-dozen muskets that
were fired blindly after him.

"Follow Buckner through the forest at night if you will!" he roared back
to them in the Delaware tongue, "I will slay the last of you before
dawn. It is a game that I like."

Then they were off in hot pursuit of him. He ran at his best gait until
he knew that they had lost the sound of his progress and must again
resort to following his trail. After a mile to the westward, he angled
to the south and held on for another two miles, then veered to the east.
Three times in that distance he had made short circles of twenty yards
or more and crossed his own trail. With the recent lesson fresh in
their minds, each such circle would cause confusion and doubt in the
ranks of the Delawares. Inevitably, they would fear that he had been
circling to repeat his former deadly maneuver. It was the sort of deed
that Buckner was noted for. On a night so black, and knowing that they
would be on his trail, he could choose his own place to strike.
Realization of that fact would slow them up. No doubt of that. Dawn was
not far off now. They would move with greater caution until then,
relying upon their ability to overtake him after daylight had rendered
impossible another successful assault upon superior numbers.

Buckner hooted three times in imitation of the great horned owl.
Receiving no answer, he pressed on for a short distance, then repeated
the signal. An answer drifted back and he found White Fawn still
plodding ahead. He caught her up in his arms and leaped on through the
night. It was snowing harder now. In the first faint light of dawn he
put the girl down upon her own feet at the edge of the Shawnee town.
Through the swirling snow, they advanced to the lodge of Standing Bear.
The Shawnee waked as they entered. He gave no sign of surprise.

"What do you do here?" he inquired.

"We come to rejoin the Shawnees," Buckner said. "The Long-knives
imprisoned me and I escaped. Unfortunately, I was forced to take the
lives of Delawares who captured me. I will tell you."

Briefly, he recited the events since he had set foot on the Indian side
of the Ohio in his effort to overtake White Fawn. Then he led the girl
to the lodge of Tonk-a-naw. The old warrior was not so imperturbable as
Standing Bear had been. He grunted in frank surprise.

Buckner had taken every characteristic of Indian mental processes into
consideration before deciding upon his manner of approach.

"We have returned to join our brothers, the Shawnees," he said. "We may
live here forever. Who knows? I have purchased White Fawn from the head
of her lodge among the Long-knives, so she is mine in the eyes of men,
but I have not yet taken her to wife. Since you were once the head of
her lodge, I would pay you a large price because you gave her better
treatment than was accorded her by the white man from whom I purchased
her. It is more by way of a present that I make you in return for your
good treatment of her when she was young." Casually, he mentioned a big
price in trade goods and rum, enumerating the articles.

Tonk-a-naw was not quite sure of his own standing in the matter, since
Buckner had purchased the girl among the whites and returned with her,
casually claiming her as his squaw. Buckner spoke as if this big price
was a present, not an offer for the girl. Perhaps Tonk-a-naw had no
further rights in her and the matter would be decided that way in open
council if a controversy should arise. And Tonk-a-naw was of no mind to
decline this sudden offer of wealth that was so unexpectedly thrust upon
him this cold morning at dawn. Up to this point, Buckner had divined
correctly what the Shawnee's mental processes would be. It was the final
obstacle--the redskin custom of lengthy deliberation that now must be
overcome. Time was very short. But he counted also upon the fact that
Tonk-a-naw had once lost out altogether by too long a deliberation over
Kemper's offers. That, too, was in the Shawnee's mind.

"It is done," he agreed, with but the merest pretense of deliberation.

Buckner was conscious of a vast influx of relief. But outwardly he
remained perfectly calm.

"Of course I cannot pay the price until such time as peace comes and I
can secure the goods from my relatives in Kentucky," he said carelessly.

"I will wait," Tonk-a-naw said. "It is known to me that your tongue is
straight. But White Fawn must not go to your lodge as your squaw until I
have received the goods. Otherwise you might die before securing them
and Tonk-a-naw would be the loser."

"It is written," Buckner agreed. As if the matter had been settled for
all time, he turned and strolled slowly back through the falling snow to
the lodge of his brother. In the brief time allotted to him, he had
spiked a few of the enemy guns at least. The knowledge of White Fawn's
great value would prevent Tonk-a-naw from surrendering her into the
hands of the Delawares for the part she had played in Buckner's escape.
She was safe, no matter what his own fate might be. And if he did
survive the coming ordeal, it would be public knowledge that Tonk-a-naw
had accepted his offer for the girl and it would be Buckner's right to
deal with those who sought to set aside that agreement.

As he entered his brother's lodge, his former mother, Winnebanca,
greeted him with tears of rejoicing, the young squaw of Standing Bear
according him a shy friendliness. Gray Wolf, once William Herne, and
Tecumseh, now a stalwart young warrior of grave and haughty demeanor,
entered and seated themselves. A dozen other former friends of Buckner,
summoned by Standing Bear, filed into the lodge.

"My brother comes to rejoin the Shawnees," Standing Bear said.

"And why?" Tecumseh asked.

"Because he is no longer welcome among the Long-knives except those of
the border," said Standing Bear.

"Does he come to fight with the Shawnees?" Tecumseh inquired.

"No," Buckner said. "My hands are weary of war and my heart is on the
ground from watching good men die. I come to live among the Shawnees
until peace is declared."

"But on the way to rejoin us," said Standing Bear, "he was forced to
slay several Delaware braves who sought to prevent his reaching us and
who would have sold his scalp to Kemper, the trader of the West. Even
now the others are on his trail and will arrive any moment."

"That is bad," Tecumseh said reflectively. "The Delawares are our
friends. They will demand him as their prisoner."

"But I am no man's prisoner, as you can see," Buckner placidly pointed
out. "Am I not here of my own accord, with my good feet under me and
weapons in my hands? I wish to remain here, not to escape."

He did not think it necessary to explain that his chief reason for
wishing to remain was through the fear that if he went on alone and left
White Fawn here she would fall into the hands of Kemper. He knew that
the few friends here could not decide his fate. The matter must be
decided in open council, as Buckner and the Shawnees present well knew.

They discussed the matter gravely. Presently eight Delaware warriors
filed from the forest and advanced through the swirling smother of
flakes. Discovering from inquiry the whereabouts of their former
prisoner they came to the lodge of Standing Bear and demanded him.

"He came not to us as a prisoner but as a free man and a guest," the
Shawnee informed them. "As a guest in my lodge he is entitled to my
protection until his case has been decided in open council."

The council was called before noon. The matter was complicated by the
arrival of a war party of forty-odd wild northwestern tribesmen, mixed
Chippewas and Ojibwas, led by ferocious chiefs whose sole remedy for all
difficulties was to slay. They had been raiding on the Ohio and now were
returning to their homes in the North for the winter. As allies, they
were entitled to vote in council. Almost two hundred Shawnee warriors
assembled in the huge council house. Fires roared within as the
screeching blizzard roared outside. The council opened with the formal
demand by the Delawares that the prisoner be delivered into their hands.
Standing Bear countered with the declaration that Buckner had come of
his own accord, as a free man, and hence was entitled to the privileges
of a guest among the Shawnees, not to be viewed as a prisoner of the
Delawares. The latter insisted that the fugitive had been too
hard-pressed to escape and, knowing that he would soon fall into their
hands again, had only saved himself by the ruse of throwing himself upon
the mercy of the Shawnees. Hence, they claimed, he was still technically
their prisoner. This elicited fierce exclamations of approval from the
wild northern tribesmen. Several of the Shawnees testified that Buckner
had arrived a full hour in advance of the Delawares but had declined to
make good his escape, declaring instead his purpose to rejoin his
brothers the Shawnees.

"Why did you wish to rejoin the Shawnees?" the spokesman of the
Delawares asked.

"I killed two men who sought my life," Buckner stated, "and am not
welcome in the settlements."

There was nothing unusual in a white man fleeing from the settlements to
the Indian country to seek shelter from the strange laws of the whites.
The wilderness was full of such fugitives from justice. No less a
personage than Simon Kenton had fled from Virginia long ago and had
lived in the Indian country for years under another name before
returning.

"Could the Delawares have overtaken you when you came to our town?" the
Shawnee spokesman inquired.

"I arrived an hour ahead of them," Buckner said. "Is there any here who
can give Buckner one minute the start and overtake him again?"

"The fox that could so easily have escaped the hounds does not
voluntarily halt to be overwhelmed by their teeth," the Delaware
insinuated.

"When I fled from the whites to rejoin the Shawnees, should I flee on
past the Shawnees and deliver myself again to the whites because a few
Delawares yelped on my trail?" Buckner demanded.

Then Tecumseh rose and held up his hand for silence. Young as he was,
and not yet attained to chieftainhood, Tecumseh's prestige was spreading
among the Indian confederacy. Already, from his calm wisdom and clear
insight into all matters, eyes were turning to him as the savior of the
peoples of Manitou. His implacable hostility toward the encroaching
settlers and his counsel to the effect that only by resistance, never by
treaty, could the red men retain even a portion of their lands, had made
a widespread impression.

Now his bugle voice sounded above the crackle of the flames and the roar
of the storm outside. Every ear in the smoke-hung council house was
strained to catch his every word. Graphically, he recited many things in
Buckner's favor as a great warrior who took life only in battle and
whose word could be relied upon by enemy and friend alike. He described
the time that Buckner had saved him from death at the hands of Donner's
men. His speech made a favorable impression even on the wild northern
tribesmen. Their eyes glittered through the smoke to rest upon the
captive. His own fearless demeanor found favor with them.

It had been well established, Tecumseh said, that Buckner had come to
the Shawnees as a free man, and as of natural consequence was entitled
to be viewed as a guest. The Delawares were the friends and allies of
the Shawnees, and the latter could not harbor their enemies. There was
but one equitable course which would violate neither the obligations of
the Shawnees to a guest nor the rights of the Delawares as friends.
Buckner had come to the Shawnee town an hour ahead of the Delawares. He
should leave it an hour ahead of them. If he could beat them to the Ohio
and cross to Kentucky, it was his right. If the Delawares could overtake
him and lift his scalp, well and good.

This was received with loud exclamations of approval.

Buckner rose.

"If the council so decides," he said, "I would ask the privilege to
return to the Shawnees as a free man to live among them."

A vote was taken and the proposal was adopted unanimously. Buckner had
arrived at dawn, an hour ahead of the Delawares. An hour before dawn he
should leave; and at dawn they were to start out on his trail.

An hour before daylight, with the assembled population of the Shawnee
town and all visiting braves looking on, Buckner was given the signal
and leaped into the forest. The storm had ceased and it was not
difficult to see with the forest floor carpeted with white. He knew the
country intimately from his rambles as a boy, knew where the easiest
going was to be found. With the first faint rays of dawn, he was
bounding tirelessly as a wolf, over a third of the way to the Ohio. Far
behind him, the eager Delawares were just being started on his trail by
the Shawnees. He laughed as he pictured the scene, breathed deep of the
crisp air and ran steadily on toward the Ohio.

At sunset, the Delawares and a few of the Shawnees and visiting
tribesmen who had elected to accompany the Delawares on the race
returned. Buckner strode at their head.

"When we reached the Ohio, Buckner the Long-knife sat on the far shore,
waiting for us to appear," the Delaware spokesman said. "He escaped us
this time, so it is sure that he would have escaped us before, had he
held on instead of stopping here. The words of Tecumseh the Shawnee were
wise. The test was fair. It was written."




CHAPTER XV


Despite the thirty-year peace between England and the United States, the
allied tribes of the Ohio and Illinois wilderness carried on a war of
their own against the encroaching settlers of the latter nation,
ceaseless save for a few brief periods of unstable peace. Meanwhile they
regarded England as a friend, though no longer as an active ally, and
permitted those of British allegiance to prowl through the Indian
country.

Desperate criminals, fleeing from justice in the United States, entered
the Indian country and posed to the Indians as deserters to the British
cause, as if assuming that the two nations were still at war.

Almost a half-century of border warfare had developed a breed of men so
inured to hardship, constant danger and the free and reckless life of
the woods that life in the settlements proved intolerably slow and
irksome. The majority of them joined the brotherhood of the border
fringe as the frontier was pushed farther and farther into the land of
the setting sun. They became perhaps the most useful body of men on
successive frontiers.

Others had become so steeped in bloodshed, violence and pillage that
they had lost all sense of nationality. Outlawed from the settlements
for crimes of violence, which they perpetrated upon those of their own
race with as little compunction as formerly they had committed outrages
upon the Indians, they took to the wilderness. There they lived in
little groups, vicious and depraved beyond all understanding.

As the Indians were pushed on toward the west, a new menace took the
place of former savage forays. The desperate outcast whites grouped
themselves into larger units, some operating as mere pillaging mobs,
others as organizations led by chiefs more terrible and bloody-minded
than any that the red nations had produced, preying upon those of their
own race and leaving a trail of blood and desolation in their wake.

For a generation after the close of the Revolution, commerce in the more
westerly settlements was almost exclusively a matter of barter and
exchange--a trading of surplus commodities for other necessities between
individuals and communities. The settlements of Kentucky and Tennessee
could be supplied with the merchandise of the East only by means of pack
outfits operating through the passes of the Cumberlands from Southern
Virginia and the Carolinas and by flatboats coming down the Ohio from
Pennsylvania. By the close of the Revolution, pack-train commerce,
particularly, was already well established. Shortly thereafter, desirous
of opening trade with the Spaniards of the South, communities clubbed
together to ship surplus commodities down the Ohio to the Mississippi
and down that stream to New Orleans, there to be traded for Spanish
merchandise. Thus the clan of the keel-boaters came into existence,
living a wild, hard life of exceeding toil that either killed or
developed physiques of tremendous strength and endurance. A reckless
lot, proud of their calling, in which only the most perfect human
animals could survive, the keel-boaters upheld the traditions of their
clan as a fighting, hard-drinking breed. They took their pay largely in
liquor and drank it where they found it, enlivening the sprees in their
camps by fighting among themselves for no other purpose than that of
proving physical superiority.

The pack-outfitters were scarcely less rough and fierce, though not
making a cult of their toughness as did the brotherhood of the keel
boats. Naturally, such men were not easily preyed upon, for when
attacked by outside enemies they shot and knifed as expertly as they
fought with fist and foot for pastime or to determine physical supremacy
among themselves. No men were better equipped than the drovers of the
pack trains and the crews of the keel boats to defend themselves against
the perils of their calling.

Nevertheless, tempted by the prizes to be reaped by plundering such
richly laden outfits, the vicious whites, outcast from the United
States, Canada and Spanish and French America, banded together in
powerful organizations to prey upon the inland commerce of all nations.
These freebooters of the interior were no less bloody and ruthless in
their methods than those of their kind who had followed the trade of
piracy and floated the black flag on the high seas. With strongholds
in the cane brakes of Tennessee, the swamps of Louisiana and Arkansas
and the hills of Missouri as the frontier moved westward, they
swooped forth to commit every sort of fiendish depredation known to
mankind--murdering, outraging, torturing and terrorizing. They murdered
harmless travelers for sheer lust of blood. They terrorized isolated
communities into paying tribute in food and horses in return for a
precarious immunity.

Hardy and competent as were the men of the pack trains and the keel
boats, it became necessary to conduct all such commerce under heavily
armed escorts.

In the beginning, before the Indians had been moved beyond the
Mississippi, these groups of depraved whites operated with much greater
secrecy, garbing themselves as savages so their depredations would be
fastened upon the Indians. Among the first such vicious crews to operate
as organized bands was one composed of the renegade whites who had
congregated near Kemper's post on a stream that flowed to the Wabash.

Buckner's first intimation of the activities of this nefarious crew was
derived from piecing together scraps of Shawnee conversation. During the
summer a particularly atrocious affair occurred well down the Ohio. Two
flatboats, loaded with the families and effects of several settlers,
were decoyed ashore and captured. A woodsman, viewing the affair from
far off on the Kentucky shore, slipped over to the Indian side later to
discover that of the twenty-odd occupants of the boats, all had been
slain on the spot except two young women. Evidently they had been led
into captivity. The news had been common knowledge among the settlements
of Kentucky for some time, but the Shawnees had heard nothing of the
matter until a war party returned from Kentucky some two months later
with several prisoners. One of the latter inquired what tribe had taken
the two boats and slaughtered the occupants. Such captures were by no
means infrequent but each instance of the sort was soon known in every
detail to all of the tribes of the Ohio. The Shawnees told the captive
that he must be mistaken. Later a few Delawares, returning along the
Ohio from far to the westward, chanced across signs of the outrage and
made inquiry of the Shawnees as to what war parties had captured the
boats.

Buckner heard all that within a few days after rejoining the Shawnees. A
week later, a small party of Wyandottes reported having found the
remains of two men that had been excavated by wolves from a shallow
grave in the forest. Indians seldom, if ever, buried their victims. It
was odd, too, that the raiding party had killed all of the captives on
the spot save two young women. Then, quite suddenly, as if the details
had worked themselves into a perfect pattern without any conscious help
on his part, Buckner knew that the atrocity had been perpetrated by the
renegade whites that headquartered near Kemper's post in the Wabash
country. The spot where the wolves had excavated the bodies of the two
young women was within a day's march of Kemper's post. No witness had
been left alive to testify. It was common knowledge that Kemper incited
the savages to plunder flatboats and traded rum to them for the goods
secured. What could be easier than for Kemper and his associates to garb
themselves as Indians and capture an occasional rich prize on their own
account? Bloody monsters, all of them, it was their natural tendency to
slay and pillage. But why should they have kept their activities in that
line a secret from the Indians? The answer was formulated even before
Buckner put that query to himself.

Those men posed as British subjects. Some few of them were. England was
at peace with the United States. If men posing as British traders made
war against citizens of the rival nation, it would constitute an act of
aggression for which England would have to compensate--or rectify by the
summary punishment of the offenders. Many of those men in the wilderness
of the Wabash were outcasts from the United States, with a price on
their heads in case they should return. They had no desire to become
embroiled with the British authorities. Their activities, therefore,
must be kept secret. Buckner was convinced that the renegade of the
Wabash country had been responsible in person for that particular
outrage. But his conviction was unsupported by a shred of proof.

Winter was the time of famine among the red nations of the Ohio.
Warriors must turn hunters to provide food for their household. Many of
them scattered, a few lodges traveling together to winter in some
favored hunting ground. Buckner accompanied the lodge of Standing Bear,
consisting of the Shawnee, his squaw and two children and his widowed
mother, Winnebanca. With them went the lodges of Gray Wolf and
Tonk-a-naw, numbering some thirty souls all told. For the purpose of
further perfecting himself in the English tongue by conversing with
Buckner, Tecumseh elected to accompany them, instead of remaining with
his own people.

The party made a winter camp some twenty miles from the Shawnee town and
erected quarters. At first the hunters found game in plenty but a few
weeks of hunting served to diminish the supply. This scarcity became
more pronounced as the winter advanced and there were long periods when
the camp was in actual want. Bones were roasted and cracked open for the
marrow.

Despite the pinch of hunger and the arduous labor of following the meat
trail day after day, Buckner found himself occupied with exactly the
sort of life that appealed to him above all others. His proximity to
White Fawn in the winter camp was a source of constant satisfaction as
he planned their life together when peace should come again and they
could return to the frontier settlements.

Game was very scarce and famine was at its height as the winter dragged
to an end. Buckner and Tecumseh, after three days of hunting from a
bivouac, were fortunate enough to kill two does. They started back at
once to relieve the famine in the main camp.

"Each year the Shawnees are closer to starvation," Tecumseh said. "We
have lost forever our ancestral hunting grounds in Kentucky. We must
subsist more and more upon the game near our towns, which grows scarcer
yearly from overmuch hunting. Scarcely a summer passes but what a large
body of soldiers makes a swift march and lays waste our crops, which
forces us to rely upon the game that is disappearing."

It was true that the Shawnees suffered heavily from such expeditions.
The most southerly of the Shawnee towns were within a day's forced march
of the Ohio. It was customary to send large bodies of troops from
Kentucky. The inhabitants of the towns fled. The soldiers cut down the
green corn with their sabers and retreated before the tribes could
muster a sufficient body of warriors to oppose them. The white losses
were considerable because small parties of Shawnee braves harassed the
rear and flanks of all such columns and took heavy toll without
suffering any considerable loss on the Indian side. But the loss of the
crops was always a severe blow. Gradually, the red men of the Ohio were
being starved into submission or retreat.

"For twenty years we have taken ten scalps for every one that we have
lost," Tecumseh said. "But the Long-knives are many, the Shawnees but
few. They are too strong for us. Soon, now, we will be forced to fall
back and give up the Ohio from sheer starvation. Not for much longer
will the Ohio River be the dead line."

"It is true," Buckner agreed. "Perhaps if you cede the Ohio country to
the whites by treaty, they will agree to give the red nations the
Illinois region for all time."

"Treaties are but wind. The white men make promises to the red men only
to break them when they see fit. Never since the first white man set
foot on American shores have they kept a treaty. And they never will.
The Indians are a vanishing race, my friend. They are doomed to perish
from the earth. Tecumseh sees it written. It will be my mission to
counsel against further treaties, which are made only to be broken, and
to lead the red nations in war to delay the inevitable end as long as
possible."

Buckner had been expecting a visit from Kemper and Benoit at any time.
But the Indians traveled little in winter and news did not spread
rapidly. It was not until spring that word of White Fawn's return to the
Shawnees reached the distant post in the wilderness of the Wabash. The
three lodges of Shawnees had left the winter hunting camp and returned
to their town before Kemper put in an appearance.

He came with Benoit and two other renegade whites. They brought a pack
train loaded with liquor and trade goods. There could be little doubt as
to Kemper's purpose. His regular trading territory was many days'
travel to the westward and he had little to gain in a material way from
a trading trip to the Shawnees. Their country was full of traders; and
at this time of year the Shawnees were destitute of furs, having traded
in all they possessed for food and liquor during the winter months.

Knowing this, Kemper had brought coffee, sugar and other concentrated
foods. He made many small presents of sugar to hungry squaws and
children. Particularly was he generous to Tonk-a-naw and those of his
lodge in the matter of food and drink. Knowing little of Indian customs,
he was annoyed at first because Tonk-a-naw seemingly did not respond in
the same friendly spirit and invite him to stay as a guest in his lodge.
Benoit, versed in every detail of savage life and customs, explained
that the suitor for the hand of any maiden never visited as a guest in
her lodge nor did she visit in the lodge where the suitor was domiciled.

Kemper believed that the only feature in obtaining the hand of a girl
among the Indians was to outbid all competitors. He knew that Buckner
was practically pauperized for the present, at least, so he had no doubt
of the outcome.

Benoit knew otherwise. At first he was not quite sure of Buckner's
present status among the Shawnees, thinking that perhaps he was merely
on a precarious probation among them. But on the first day, observing
that Buckner was fully armed and free to come and go as he chose without
being watched, he knew that the woodsman was considered a Shawnee in
good standing. He knew, too, that while all courting among the Indians
was conducted through the head of the lodge, the maiden herself
apparently having no hand in the decision, it was very seldom that a
girl went to any save the suitor for whom she evinced the greatest
preference. All such under-the-surface customs were unknown to Kemper.
In the final analysis, with many women to be had through the simple
expedient of capturing flatboats, Benoit had small sympathy for Kemper's
obsession to own this one woman despite all obstacles. The mission was
not to Benoit's fancy and he made no secret of it. Savage and
conscienceless as a wild boar, he nevertheless was endowed with too much
practical wisdom to jeopardize his life to no purpose.

"Keep your head," he growled to Kemper. "Buckner's on his own ground
here. You can't pick a quarrel with a Shawnee and kill him in his own
town and escape with your hair. Remember that."

"Shawnee!" Kemper scoffed. "He's no more Shawnee than I am. He's a white
refugee from the United States."

"Once a man's been adopted into an Indian tribe he is considered one of
them, the same as if he'd been born in their lodges. There's even a
ceremony of rebirth, meaning that he has been reborn an Indian. I'm an
adopted Ojibwa myself, so I know."

Kemper shrugged his indifference.

"Mark me! Buckner will sit back and offer no offense to you as a guest
of the Shawnees," Benoit said. "If you lose your ugly temper and give
public offense to him, it will be his excuse to kill you. And if you
should kill him, it would be as the aggressor, and the Shawnees would
take our scalps. Never doubt it."

Meanwhile, no longer rated as an enemy but as a Shawnee in good standing
and with Tonk-a-naw's agreement common knowledge throughout the tribe,
Buckner pursued his course as placidly as Benoit had predicted. Kemper,
without Benoit's knowledge, set in motion a scheme of his own for
Buckner's undoing. Benoit, knowing the kinks of Indian nature, would
have vetoed it flatly had he known of it.

Twice, when passing Buckner, Kemper made slurring remarks pertaining to
the sorry lot of an outcast who was forced to seek refuge among the
savages. On each occasion, Buckner noted that one or another of the
white renegades was close at hand, as if strolling past by accident.
Kemper's plan was instantly apparent--to taunt Buckner into making an
assault upon him. Then one of the renegades would shoot the woodsman
down and the visiting party would proclaim that Buckner had been the
aggressor. Buckner ignored the insults and Kemper believed that his
enemy feared to take issue with him.

Tonk-a-naw now visited interminably at the lodge in which Kemper was
housed as a guest. The old Shawnee tippled on the trader's brandy and
partook freely of his coffee and sugar. It was Kemper's privilege to
invite the woman who obsessed him to walk with him in the forest. But
whenever he presented himself outside her lodge and issued such an
invitation, her voice came from within declining it. He was subjected to
the added humiliation of watching her come forth to wander into the
forest with Buckner whenever the latter called to her. When Tonk-a-naw
declined Kemper's offer for White Fawn's hand, as Benoit had confidently
predicted would be the case, the trader's rage boiled to the surface.
For the third time, he accosted Buckner.

"There was a time when your damned lies caused me to be dropped from the
British army," he snarled. "But there never was a price offered for my
arrest as a fugitive from justice, as there is now for one Buckner in
the State of Pennsylvania. How do you like it?"

Buckner's eyes swept the vicinity. Just within the door of an empty
lodge, one of the renegade whites was sitting with his rifle across his
knees, his eyes trained upon Buckner.

Buckner's gaze came back to rest upon Kemper. His eyes bored into those
of the trader. "I am a Virginian," he said, "and so am little concerned
as to how they view me in Pennsylvania." His eyes continued to hold
Kemper's. "Look about you," he advised at last.

That the Shawnees had been prepared for some such occurrence was
evident. A dozen braves had appeared as if by magic and were eying
Kemper bleakly from various near-by points. Standing Bear and another
warrior had entered the empty lodge and were standing directly behind
the seated renegade.

Another of Kemper's men appeared round a lodge and two Shawnees quietly
ranged themselves on either side of him.

"Did you think, Kemper, that these Shawnees would not observe that you
planned murder?" Buckner demanded. Without warning, he leaped upon
Kemper and swung a heavy fist to the point of his jaw. The trader
measured his length on the ground. Before he could recover, Buckner had
disarmed him and jerked him to his feet. The man's face was white with
anger. He saw his two men, each of them disarmed and standing between
two savages. Benoit, arriving on the scene, surrendered his arms
instantly, as a Shawnee demanded them.

"You shall meet me for this, Buckner," Kemper said. "Benoit will act as
my second. Choose yours from among the Shawnees."

Buckner's laugh had a rasp in it.

"A moment ago you proclaimed me an outcast," he said coldly. "Yet now
you challenge me as one gentleman might another. If you still considered
yourself a man of honor, which your challenge implies, you should not
waive it to challenge one whom you have branded an outcast. Knowing
myself for a man of honor, I decline to waive it to accept the challenge
of one whom I know for a cutthroat dog. Therefore, I forego the pleasure
of ending your worthless life with pistol or sword, as I would much
like to do, and will settle it in a manner much more fitting to one of
your class."

His open palm struck the man's face with a report like that of a pistol
shot. The burly trader leaped in with clenched fists; and Buckner's
knuckles smashed home on his mouth and drove him back. Coldly and
mercilessly, the woodsman hammered the big trader's face. Some of
Kemper's return blows found their mark on Buckner's head and body, but
he seemed not to feel them and kept up his sledgehammer punches until
Kemper, three times knocked flat to earth, struggled to gain his feet
after the third knockdown but collapsed with a groan.

"My brothers," Buckner said to the Shawnees, "you have seen. Grossly
this man insulted me, and each time I held my peace because I would not
violate the guest rules of the Shawnees. This time, he planned to have
me murdered, as you saw for yourselves. My knife would have found his
black heart where he stood, but I would not bring trouble upon the
Shawnees. The Redcoats might be angry if these men were killed in our
town. Therefore, it is best that the murdering dogs be permitted to
return to their kennels in the land of the Wabash."

"It is for you to say," Standing Bear decreed.

"Pack and be on your way," Buckner instructed the recovering Kemper.

The man started to offer some surly objection as he regained his feet,
but Benoit, with a savage admonition to be quiet, led him away.

"Keep him in hand, Benoit," Buckner advised. "If he makes further
trouble, I shall certainly kill him."

"I'll get him away, never fear," Benoit said. "The bungling fool!"

As they rode from the Shawnee town, Kemper turned on Benoit.

"I would think you were in league with Buckner instead of with me," he
snarled. "You agreed to everything he said fast enough."

"Would you have me argue myself out of my hair?" Benoit demanded. "I
told you he was waiting for you in ambush. But a man who knows nothing
of Indians is always the last to take advice from a man who knows all
about them. I've never been in favor of this lunatic mission from the
start, and maybe now you see why."

"How could you have done better?" Kemper growled.

"Left to me, and without any one suspecting me of having a hand in the
matter, Buckner would soon have been deader than Pontiac," Benoit
stated.

"And how would you have fixed it to send him on the trail of the
departed Pontiac?" Kemper insisted.

"By the same simple means that Pontiac himself went over that trail,"
Benoit said. "There are bad Indians, same as there are bad white men,
only not near so many. The whites bribed an Illinois Indian to pose as
Pontiac's friend and brain him with a tomahawk, which he did. Thus ended
the greatest chief the red men ever knew and the most inveterate enemy
of the whites. You recall yourself that the great Mingo chief, Logan,
was slain by an Indian in this same Ohio wilderness quite recently. I
suspect with good reasons that it wasn't just a personal feud but the
result of bribery on the part of the whites. It's always been a favorite
trick to dispose of great Indian leaders that way--time and again. If
the greatest Indian chiefs have been put across that way, it wouldn't
have been any difficult trick to fix Buckner's departure for the happy
hunting ground with a barrel of rum. There's any number of war parties
from the northwest that head down through the Shawnee country to raid on
the Ohio. I could easy have sorted out some of those wild northern
braves who'd have agreed to pick a quarrel with him and rap him on the
head with a tomahawk. But you would arrange things your own way."

Kemper cursed Buckner and all his antecedents in foulest terms.

"I'll kill him yet," he promised.

"My blessing," Benoit sneered. "But don't be fool enough to try and go
into the Shawnee country to do it. I'd like well enough to put a knife
in his ribs myself, but not to the point where I'll trade in my own hair
for the privilege."

"I wouldn't have tried it that way without consulting you," Kemper said.
"But I could see that I couldn't get the girl while he still lived among
the Shawnees."

"Oh, damn the girl!" Benoit flared scornfully. "There's flatboats for
the taking and a world full of women to choose from. Why risk your life
over one? They're all the same in the end. Use some sense!"

Buckner had informed Kemper that, being a Virginian, he cared little how
he was viewed in Pennsylvania. In the main, that was true. He had come
to regard the people of the United States as divided into two general
classes. One faction consisted of the populations of the old
long-established communities, busily engaged in manufacturing civil laws
and rules by which life must be lived in teeming communities. The other
was composed of the woodsmen of the border fringe, the drovers of the
pack trains, crews of the keel boats and the settlers of the outermost
frontiers--people whose lives were automatically regulated by whatever
rules of conduct were expedient to face the emergencies of the moment.

Those of the thickly settled regions leaned more to group thought and to
daily conduct that was cut to standard pattern, tending to take on
community similarity of individuals from the very nature of their
routine existence. Those of the other class, never knowing what deadly
peril from savages, freebooters or the elements might be ushered in with
each new sunrise, were similar in thought and conduct only in the
respect that each individual was firmly convinced that it was his
God-given privilege to regulate his actions to the emergencies of life
as he found it. And he fiercely resented all efforts to curb that
privilege. Buckner considered the latter class as his own.

The frontier would be back of him to a man, both as to the act for which
he had been imprisoned and in the matter of his escape. But the
authorities of Pennsylvania, no doubt, considered his departure without
waiting to be tried for his act by the law of the people a far more
serious offense than the commission of the act itself.

At first, knowing the sentiment of the entire frontier, as evidenced by
the rally of frontiersmen to his aid, he felt only a rankling sense of
anger at the injustice of the thing that had been inflicted upon him.
The knowledge that Pennsylvania had offered a reward for his
apprehension added to the hurt that stirred deep within him. No doubt
the authorities classed him with such depraved and vicious gentry as had
fled from justice and now were holding out in the Wabash wilderness. He
knew, of course, that upon his return to Kentucky, there was not a
chance that the Kentuckians would even consider requesting him to return
to Pennsylvania for trial. On the contrary, they would hotly resent any
such suggestion. It was true, therefore, that he cared little for the
viewpoint of the Pennsylvania communities behind the frontier; but it
was equally true that he held that viewpoint responsible for the fact
that he and White Fawn still dwelt in separate lodges.

The Shawnees took literally his statement that he would wait among them
until peace came. Even the sending of emissaries to his uncle in
Kentucky for the goods promised to Tonk-a-naw was waved aside when he
suggested that measure. It could not be done without flatly breaking his
oath to them. So he settled down to wait for a peace to be effected. He
met White Fawn and took long walks with her in the forest, but he could
not take her to his lodge nor could he visit her in the lodge of
Tonk-a-naw. Save for that fact, he was well content with his lot. He
understood the Shawnees and enjoyed the wild free life of the
wilderness. If he felt the lack of anything, it was more because he was
deprived of the society of Gilpin and the two Hernes than any desire for
civilized luxuries.

But the enmity of the tribes of the Ohio wilderness toward the settler
of the United States seemed to become ever more bitter. Peace was long
in coming. As the months slid past and seasons changed, his being so
long deprived of the right to take White Fawn to wife caused Buckner's
original scornful anger to deepen into a cold dislike of all thickly
settled communities and the ways of the people who dwelt therein. The
two classifications into which he had grouped the population of his own
nation in his mind grew more sharply defined--and with a wider gulf
between. Donner and the inhabitants of Crenshaw Bottom seemed symbolical
of one class. Such men as the Zanes, Boone, General Clark and Buckner's
own former rangers seemed to typify the other. In common with most men
of action, whose lives are filled with hourly hardship, excitement and
danger, Buckner was but little given to introspection and
philosophizing. His thoughts had arranged themselves almost without
conscious participation on his own part. His convictions and viewpoints
were more largely matters of feeling, shaped by events, than the result
of cold analytical reasoning. Those convictions, therefore, for that
very reason, were proportionately more unalterable.

Always it had been his tendency to feel ill at ease and out of his
element in thickly settled communities. Now he had formed a profound
determination never to reside where populations were teeming. The
frontier was the only enjoyable place in which to reside. There one
could meet men of his own breed--and a few steps took one into the
wilderness beyond even the last fringe of settlements. Well, he would
take White Fawn to his uncle's colony on the westernmost frontier of
Kentucky if peace ever came.

There were more white captives than ever before in the Indian towns of
the Ohio wilderness. Many of them had lived among the red men so long as
to have become naturalized Indians, with no thought of returning to the
whites. Others, of course--largely the older captives, not the
children--would never become reconciled. Many of these latter were
ransomed from time to time by Canadian traders. Buckner heard that
Captain Farris, captured during the first expedition down the Ohio at
the time of locating the Buckner colony in Kentucky, had been ransomed
some six or eight months after his capture. He had been taken to
Detroit, and Buckner wondered if he had made his way to Kentucky.

For a time, it seemed likely that a temporary peace might be patched up.
Then an expedition from Kentucky made a swift march to the southernmost
Shawnee towns and destroyed the crops. The inhabitants fled before the
troops. Moluntha, the old Shawnee chief who had led the warriors against
Boone's forces at the battle of the Licking years before, remained with
his family and went forth to greet the troops. An officer--the same who
had caused the disaster of the Licking by disregarding Boone's warning
and calling on the men to follow him across the river--pressed forward
among the men. The commanding officer of the expedition called out to
him not to molest the Shawnees. But the officer struck Moluntha dead
with a tomahawk and would have murdered the rest of the family except
for the intervention of the men.

Peace was again deferred and war parties marched south to raid in
Kentucky. But such campaigns were increasingly difficult for the red
raiders. A constant watch was maintained all along the Kentucky shore of
the Ohio. It was difficult for war parties to cross unobserved, even at
night. And Kentucky was now so thickly settled that thousands of men
could be raised with a few hours' notice. Aspiring settlers swarmed
through the passes of the Cumberlands and swept westward through
Kentucky and Tennessee like a plague of locusts. Already, Kentucky
numbered a greater population than that of the combined Indian nations
of the Ohio and Illinois wilderness. And on the east, another surging
tide of settlers was dammed up on the shores of the Ohio in Western
Virginia and Pennsylvania, waiting only an opportunity to break through
in an overwhelming flood.

At last it became inevitable, from sheer starvation, for the allied
tribes to give way and make another stand farther to the west. There
were many earnest councils in the wilderness.

"We must fall back to the north and west," a sachem of the Shawnees
proclaimed to the warriors of the nation in council. "As our uncles the
Six Nations and our grandfathers the Delawares lost their lands in the
East and fell back upon the Shawnees of the Ohio, so now must the
Shawnees give up a portion of their lands and fall back into the West.
For over a generation, the Ohio has been the dead line. The instant we
give way a foot, the settlers will swarm into eastern and southern Ohio.
Already they have smothered our ancient hunting grounds of Kentucky as
thickly as flies smother a carcass. But we cannot hold out here. Our
women and our children wail with hunger. The Long-knives will make
treaty. We will pretend to believe them. But we all know that their
promises are written in the sand. It cannot be helped. We must fall
back. The sun is setting on the great nation of the Shawnees as it began
setting long ago on our uncles the Six Nations and our grandfathers the
Delawares. Perhaps some time the sun may rise on the Shawnees again.
Who knows? But now the face of Manitou is behind a cloud. He sleeps and
cannot see the distress of his people the Shawnees."

When the troops marched into the wilderness to make the peace and effect
the new treaty, taking over a part of the Shawnee lands, some of the
tribes did not even send delegates. There were Delawares and Wyandottes
but the main representation was that of the Shawnees. What that most
powerful of the red nations decided naturally must be accepted as final
by the rest of the allied tribes. Generals Butler, Parsons and George
Rogers Clark were the treaty commissioners.

For several days the warriors poured into the appointed rendezvous in
little bands. The council began with the passing of peace pipes. There
was lack of the usual dignity and gravity that ordinarily was observed
on such great occasions; for many of the Shawnee sub-chiefs were hostile
and unruly, unwilling to abide by the counsel of their wiser leaders who
saw the inevitable and bowed to it. One of these unruly ones jumped to
his feet and addressed the assemblage fiercely in the flowing,
unpunctuated language customary in treaty councils.

"Chiefs of the Big-knife I see no reason to give a part of our lands as
our uncles the Six Nations and our grandfathers the Delawares have done
before us their lands are gone and the Shawnees still retain theirs I do
not believe we should give up a foot of it you ask for hostages to be
put in your hands as a pledge that the Shawnees deliver to you the
white captives among us and the captive black men who belong to the
Big-knife as horses belong to the Shawnees the promises of the Shawnees
have always been fulfilled faithfully and always will be for we are
honorable men and do what we say while the Big-knife does not we have
promised to return our white captives and the black men it will be done
I speak for our uncles the Six Nations and our grandfathers the
Delawares we will return the captives as we promised but we will give no
hostages we never have so why should we now.... A string!"

The string that the unruly chief threw down was a string of black
wampum, a war belt, meaning that the white leaders could pick it up if
they chose or abide by his words. There was great excitement in both
camps and it appeared likely that the peace conference would resolve
itself into the most sanguinary of affrays.

Cool and undisturbed, the three white generals regarded the wild
assemblage. General Clark made a motion of distaste toward the war belt.
His voice ringing coldly, he addressed the excited ranks of the council.

"The Shawnee speaks bad words. They are unwise. Leave us at once and
return to-morrow when you have considered this well and have listened to
the counsels of the wise leaders among you. We will talk with you no
more to-day. Leave."

The council broke up to reconvene the following day. Meanwhile, the
wiser of the leaders, recognizing the inevitable, impressed the
necessities of the occasion upon the more unruly members. General Clark
made the first talk, concise and to the point, abating not a single item
outlined in the original stipulations on which the treaty had been
called.

"The chief who spoke so hotly yesterday was misinformed. The Shawnees
have given hostages before as pledges that the captives will be returned
to us as agreed." He cited the instances. "You know the terms of the
treaty as agreed upon. We have no changes to make and will listen to
none.... Two strings!"

Of the two strings that he threw down, one was of black wampum, the
other of white, one a war belt, the other a peace belt, indicating that
the Shawnees might pick up either one that they chose. But the Shawnees
had decided. They chose the peace belt and agreed to the terms of the
treaty. As the oratory proceeded in the concluding details and in mutual
expressions of everlasting friendship in the future, General Clark's
gaze roved over the ranks upon ranks of fierce warriors assembled there.
His eyes came to rest upon a mighty brave in the foremost row, his
blanket pulled up to his chin. The border general's eyes lingered on the
warrior's rugged features. An odd sense of familiarity flirted teasingly
with his consciousness. Somewhere--no doubt leading his braves in
battle, against the soldiers--Clark had seen that towering savage
before. The thought tugged his gaze back to the painted face of the
Shawnee brave.

Realization came to him with a shock. It was not the face of a former
foe but the face of a former comrade in arms--a valiant friend who for
long had been mourned as dead. So Buckner had gone back to the wilds,
trading the comforts of civilization for life in an Indian lodge. So
many woodsmen did. Well, if Buckner had found it good to revert, let him
stay and wish him well. So far as the world would ever know, Clark had
not recognized the face of a former comrade beneath the war paint of a
Shawnee brave.

But Buckner had no desire to remain unrecognized. He waited only until
peace had been definitely decided upon before approaching General Clark.
When Buckner stated his intention of returning to Kentucky to take up
land and settle, Clark wondered if one who had spent the major portion
of his life in the wilderness would find anything but discontent in the
settlements.

"Oh, I won't live in the settlements," Buckner said, when Clark
suggested the thought. "No settlements for White Fawn and me. We'll
never go back to them. We'll settle in Kentucky."

Clark's eyes rested on the lovely, eager face of the woman. Then he
smiled at Buckner.

"Kentucky is 'the settlements' now, Buckner," he said. "It is no longer
the frontier--save in the respect that troops start from there every
year to campaign in the Indian country of the Ohio. Already the woodsmen
are drifting on, headed for new frontiers in the unknown wilderness of
the West."

The general stood with folded arms and watched Buckner and White Fawn,
accompanied by a small party of Shawnees, head for Kentucky to secure
the goods that Buckner had promised to Tonk-a-naw.

Between the Kentucky shore of the Ohio and the Buckner colony, Buckner
found that the wilderness route which the party had traversed to found
that colony was no longer wilderness. There were cabins on every hand.
Practically every acre of good land throughout the entire distance had
been settled. There were clearings on every side, the smoke of burning
logs and brush rising to the heavens for as far as the eye could see, as
settlers cleared more land.

As the party reached the edge of the wide valley in which Buckner had
located his uncle's colony, he called a halt and surveyed the scene.
Cattle, sheep and horses grazed in hundreds on the broad meadows. A
village of some fifty or more houses had sprung up at the edge of his
uncle's land. There was a store building there, and the spire of a white
church rose from among a few trees. A mansion, equal in size to that of
Great Oaks, loomed among the trees on the wooded point.

Looking back, it seemed no time at all since Buckner had visited that
valley, first with a hunting party of Shawnees, when the meadows had
been full of buffaloes and elk instead of cattle. His heart swelled with
pride at the thought that he had had a hand in winning this country for
a land-hungry people. Still, he was slightly bewildered at the rapidity
of it all.

He had left his own few head of horses and cattle with his uncle's
herds. There would be more than enough to trade for such goods as he had
promised to Tonk-a-naw and plenty left to give him a start in stock on
his own account.

Buckner led the way toward his uncle's home. He had forgotten the day of
the week. The tolling of church bells and the sudden concourse of people
streaming about the white church in the village apprised him of the fact
that it was Sunday and that church was just over. Vehicles of various
sorts, containing settlers' families, scattered widely along the roads
that led out of the village. Several carriages rolled toward the big
house among the mighty oaks on the wooded point and Buckner knew that
his uncle was having in some of the gentry of the countryside for a big
Sunday dinner.

The Shawnees looked about them as imperturbably as if such scenes were
daily occurrences in their lives. The people were descending from the
carriages before the big house, gazing curiously at the little band of
savages that advanced across the lawn.

Lucia Harper was first to recognize the tall warrior who marched in the
lead. She took two quick steps toward him, her arms half lifted to him
as if from some involuntary impulse. Then she recalled that she was Mrs.
Captain Farris. The half-lifted arms were lowered, also her eyes, lest
they reveal what she knew must have leaped into them at this sudden
apparition from the past.

His uncle nearly crushed Buckner's hand, as did Captain Farris. All of
the young Virginians who had floated down the Ohio with the original
locaters of the colony were there, most of them with wives who had come
out from Virginia. It was a lively gathering and a merry one. Captain
Farris, having been months in the Indian towns as an adopted captive and
who understood Indians far better than at the time of his capture,
signed to the Shawnees that there would be food in any quantity. The
ladies cooed over White Fawn and she met their advances with the natural
friendly dignity of an Indian.

The entire assemblage entered the huge living room in a flurry of
conversation. Almost immediately there was a strained silence, covered
by apparent effort at conversation on the part of Colonel Buckner's wife
and guests. The minister leaped into the painful breach with a
resounding offer of thanks for the return of the lost ones. Still,
Buckner knew that something awkward had occurred. With a shock, it
dawned upon him that, instead of seating themselves in chairs, as had
the others, he and White Fawn had seated themselves cross-legged on the
floor of the living room, in common with the Shawnees. Odd, he thought,
that such minute items of conduct were considered of such importance. He
would have to pick all those things up again as he had once learned them
at Great Oaks.

Lucia Harper Farris, with native tact, smiled warmly upon Buckner and
White Fawn and observed, "Nice of you to do as they do, so they will
feel at ease."

But Buckner knew that every member of the gathering was aware of the
fact that he had lived so much of his life in an Indian lodge that his
act had been a perfectly natural one. Suddenly he knew himself as an
alien.

But there was no intention on the part of those present to permit any
such feeling to grow. Nothing but utmost friendliness and good
fellowship was accorded him. His uncle summoned him to the broad
veranda, where they were joined by Captain Farris.

The elder Buckner waved a hand to indicate the landscape that rolled
away before them. "Your eyes were the first to rest upon this valley,
Rod," he said. "It was you who located us here, on the fairest lands in
the world. As Boone and Simon Kenton fathered Kentucky, so you fathered
this colony. You should be proud of your work."

Buckner nodded. He was proud of it. Yet in a way he knew that he had had
relatively little to do with the building of this prosperous community.
Left to his own devices he would not have toiled toward that end, as
these others had. He belonged to the breed that blazed trails into new
lands. Those who followed blazed trees and claimed those lands. He was
proud of the scene of peace and prosperity before him. But there was
something missing. Somewhere in the foreground there should be a bivouac
fire round which a few buckskin-clad figures were roasting venison over
the coals--a deer or an elk hung up in a tree.

"As you know, Buckner, I am living on the land you covered by your
warrants," Captain Farris was saying. "I covered it with my own warrants
as well, to make doubly sure. Thousands of titles are being contested
these days by aspiring land-seekers who have not the courage to push on
to the frontier and take unoccupied land. Lawyers find it easy to cloud
titles. But our title is safe. You will take half of it, of course."

He spoke as if the matter were settled definitely and went on to speak
of other matters. The elder Buckner declared that he had always intended
a thousand acres of his own lands for his nephew and would deed them to
him at once. Buckner's heart warmed at the loyalty of these fellow
Virginians but he declined their offers. It had only been raw land, he
said, and it was through their own efforts that it had become valuable
improved property. No, he would take tomahawk rights of his own on
unoccupied land.

"Don't you realize that there is no unoccupied land within many miles of
here?" his uncle demanded.

He would find some, Buckner insisted.

The wedding was spoken of long afterward--regarded by many as a bizarre
affair. For Buckner, devoid of sentiment in so many things which were
considered subjects for sentiment by the civilized world, had his own
sentiments as to what was fitting between himself and White Fawn. He
declined to have a church or indoor ceremony of any kind. He had courted
his mate in the forest with no roof over their heads but the blue sky
and the trees, he said, and they would be wed as they had loved, in the
open.

They were married on the lawn beneath the great spreading oaks. Buckner
had insisted that Tonk-a-naw was the one to give the bride away. When
the moment came for Tonk-a-naw's part in the ceremony, Buckner signalled
him, and the ancient Shawnee spoke a few words in his native tongue
which none of the fashionably attired guests understood.

"She has been a good daughter. I have already given her to this man.
Three days back he delivered to me the presents promised long ago. I
gave her to him then. That settled it. She became his. But the white men
think I should give her to him again. The young bird that falls from the
nest may fly back to it again, but she cannot fall twice from the nest
without having returned to it once. Having given White Fawn once, I
cannot give her again until she has returned to my lodge. One cannot
give what he has not. She is yours. Keep her. It was already settled. To
give her again is but wind in the trees. If the medicine doctor of the
Long-knives wishes to make much talk about what has been done already,
let him speak. He cannot change what has been written. That is all I
have to say."




CHAPTER XVI


The peace which had resulted in Buckner's return to Kentucky had been of
brief duration. Settlers had rushed into the Ohio wilderness, converting
old Indian towns into white settlements and forging on to tomahawk their
rights upon the trees and claim the land. So swift and urgent had the
invasion been that the Indians, in a desperate effort to retain a bit of
their territory, had made war against the fringe of settlers who had
pushed their outposts farthest into the Indian lands.

In the ensuing war the white soldiers had suffered fearful reverses. One
army after another had been hurled back by the red warriors of the
wilderness. Harmer's army had suffered great losses and retreated
without inflicting a blow upon the savages. Then General St. Clair, with
an army of three thousand men, had marched into the Indian country.
Fifteen hundred braves had crept upon the soldier camp at night,
crawling close in the tall grass. At dawn they had poured in a deadly
fire, charging with desperate valor right into the ranks of the soldiers
to bring their tomahawks into play. St. Clair's army had fallen back
toward the Ohio in a disorganized rout. If the Indians had followed up
their advantage, it would have resulted in the greatest reverse in the
annals of warfare between the whites and reds on American soil. But the
tired warriors, instead of pursuing their helpless prey, had stopped to
plunder the stores and equipment abandoned by the fleeing army. As it
was, the white losses had mounted to nearly five hundred men with but a
handful of casualties among the warriors of the allied tribes.
Immediately after St. Clair's defeat, Mad Anthony Wayne had been
selected to launch another and larger expedition. With an army of five
thousand men, Wayne had ordered a spirited charge against some two
thousand warriors--almost the entire remaining strength of the allied
tribes--who had taken their stand in a large expanse of down-timbered
forest. Pressed in front and hemmed in on both flanks by cavalry and
riflemen, the Indian leaders had conducted the retreat so skilfully that
the Indian loss was but forty braves--less than that of the whites. But
it was a great victory for the latter, nevertheless. Unable to provide
food for their families and still gather to resist the swiftly repeated
thrusts of overwhelming forces, the warriors of the allied tribes were
forced to fall back again; and Wayne's army, building forts to hold the
frontier that had been gained at the battle of Fallen Timbers, had won
the Ohio wilderness for the whites at last.

Buckner had taken tomahawk rights on a beautiful piece of land far
beyond the westernmost fringe of settlements. Arch Herne, wed to a white
girl captive among the Wyandottes, and Tom Herne, married to a woman of
the Lake Delawares, had taken up land on either side of him. From the
first, Buckner had been more hunter than planter. His broad fields had
known but little cultivation, merely a few acres of corn and other
crops. With rifle, rod and traps, he had provided for his family,
trading with the Indians during peace times and disposing of his furs
for trade goods.

But scarcely had he settled there before his home was no longer on the
far frontier. Fighting with desperation in their own country, the allied
tribesmen had been unable to do any but the most sporadic raiding in
Kentucky. Since that fertile region had been made safe, the land-seekers
had come in an overwhelming horde. They had taken all the land round the
holdings of Buckner and the Hernes and surged on for twenty miles
beyond. Already most of the game had been killed off. The woodsmen who
had not gone on into the unknown West had made a habit of headquartering
upon the three square miles of land held under the tomahawk rights of
these three members of their own clan.

Buckner had turned a deaf ear to all requests that he act as scout in
the previous campaign.

"I have laid down the tomahawk with the Indians," he had insisted. "I'd
fight for my own on the frontier, if there was an Indian invasion.
Invade their lands farther to make room for more settlements like
Crenshaw Bottom, I will not."

Deep within him, though he thought of it but seldom these days, rankled
the knowledge that he was still subject to arrest if ever he should set
foot in Pennsylvania.

A sizable group of woodmen had congregated at Buckner's. They felt that
the battle of the timbers had broken the backbone of the tribes and that
the present peace would last for many years.

"It's odd, then," said a visiting settler, "that the Injuns went raiding
again right off and sacked that boat on the Ohio."

"Thar's always a passel of wild young bucks that the chiefs can't
control," another offered.

"It was whites dressed as redskins that done it," a woodsman said. "I
heered 'em talking amongst themselves when they thought thar warn't a
survivor left to listen. I was telling Buckner and the Hernes when I
first lit here."

The woodsman, coming down the Ohio on a flatboat that carried the
families and effects of two settlers, had remonstrated at the folly of
tying up on the Indian shore for the night, even though a peace between
the settlers and Indians prevailed at the time. He had escaped the fate
of the others by the mere accident of having dropped downstream a
hundred yards or more in a skiff to fish for a few hours after
nightfall. From there he had heard the attack on those who slept on the
boat. They had been murdered to the last one and their goods removed.

"It is that plundering den of snakes in the Wabash country," Gilpin
said. "That nest ort to be cleaned out to the last unholy miscreant."

"It's rated as a British settlement. If it was sacked, our government
would view it as an act of aggression against England and outlaw the lot
of us as bandits," Buckner pointed out.

"Governments, laws and lawyers is skittish and unstable as winds in
winter. No predicting which way they'll blow next," Gilpin agreed.
"Every man of that Wabash outfit is a murdering malefactor with a price
on his head if he returns to the States. If we was to catch ary one of
them on United States soil and tomahawk him on the spot, the authorities
would label it a public benefaction. If we was to surge over thar and
bag the lot, those same authorities would call it an act of war agin
England and put the ban on every man of us, like Buckner says."

But all such casual and customary matters as Indian wars and plundering
by renegade whites could not hold for long the interest of the remaining
members of the brotherhood of the border fringe. Among them there was
but one all-consuming topic--the vast frontiers that called all of their
iron breed to the unknown West. Many of them had listened to the
seductive song of adventure in far places and had headed into the
setting sun to see what was in store for them. Some were destined to
spring again into world-wide renown as overlapping waves of civilization
overtook them. Ten times as many were destined to leave no record of
their valiant deeds behind them save for the speculations of those later
explorers who chanced across bones that had bleached for decades in the
uncharted wilds.

Tales were plentiful of the splendors of the great beyond. Alexander
Henry, Thompson and a few other gay and hardy souls had clubbed
themselves together and had become known as the Northmen, a little group
whose fame was destined to eclipse that of all others in
exploration--until the names of the Northmen were forgotten. While the
Revolution had been in progress, and during all the subsequent years,
this little group of intrepid souls had disregarded all such minor
matters as warfare to carry on the much more interesting life of
exploring traders. Almost before the first shot of the Revolution had
been fired, Alexander Henry, the Frobishers, Peter Pond, the Yankee, and
others, had penetrated as far west as Fort des Prairies, to be known a
century later as Edmonton, Alberta. They had established posts in the
prairies of Dakota and Saskatchewan. Later they had been joined by one
Mackenzie, who, not content with the post established by his comrades in
the forests on Lake Athabasca, had pushed fifteen hundred miles beyond
it into the North and West, across the Great Slave Lake and down the
river that now bears his name to the Arctic Ocean. Later, Peter Ogden,
Frazer and other illustrious adventurers were to throw in their lot with
them.

Former Kentucky woodsmen, returning with the keel-boaters, spun yarns of
the wide horizons of Texas and the fabulous wealth of the Spanish
colonies of New Mexico. Others came with tales of the limitless
prairies, extending from the country of the Osage and Kansas Indians to
the mighty ranges of the Rocky Mountains that bounded the Great Plains
on the West. They told of vast herds of buffaloes that darkened the
prairies as the pigeon flights darkened the skies of the Ohio
wilderness. And from every quarter, all agreed upon the tremendous
wealth of furs that waited to be harvested. The allied tribes of the
Ohio and Illinois country could muster scarcely three thousand fighting
men all told. Yet there were tales of a score of different tribes in the
West that could number more than that in a single village; of perhaps a
dozen red nations that could boast from twenty to forty thousand souls
apiece.

The remaining borderers spoke of all these things. The tales of those of
their breed who had gone on beyond fired their waking hours and haunted
their dreams in sleep. The gatherings at Buckner's became smaller. The
wild woodsmen of Kentucky were faring forth into the great unknown. John
Goiter came no more. Later he was to cross the continent with Lewis and
Clark, remaining to cruise the Northwest alone and become the discoverer
of the Yellowstone. Robert McClellan, one of Wayne's chief scouts in the
recent campaign, found the settlements too tedious. Later he was to
spring again into world-wide renown by guiding the Astorians to the
Pacific. Others were to fill the ranks of the fur brigades and scour the
West so thoroughly in their quest for fur that every creek that flowed
and every lake the size of a pocket handkerchief was to become known to
them a generation before exploring geographers rediscovered the West.
The brotherhood of the border fringe shouldered long Kentucky rifles and
marched into the land of the setting sun. Among those of their clan who
remained behind there was unrest. The siren song of the great unknown
was singing in their veins and teasing their feet upon untrodden trails.
Out of Kentucky was drifting that breed of men who had made that fair
region habitable for softer members of their race, leaving for others to
hold what they had won, while the iron clan of the border forged on to
conquer another half of a continent for those whose feet would follow
the trails thus blazed for them.

Buckner, too--happy though he was with White Fawn, the mate of his
heart, with their young son at her breast--was conscious of vague
stirrings of unrest. Those tales of far places and battles unrecorded
fired his imagination. Gilpin, attired only in moccasins, breechclout
and leggings, sat in the sunshine before the cabin, but his old eyes
were turned to the West.

A dozen lodges of Shawnees appeared suddenly one afternoon, having
caused excitement and consternation among the settlers in their passing.
They pitched camp before Buckner's cabin and kindled fires at nightfall.

"We go to the West beyond the Father of the Waters to find a new home
where the Long-knives will leave us to our hunting," Standing Bear
explained. "It is not long now until the Illinois country, too, will be
lost to us. When the other Shawnees are driven beyond the great river,
they will find us waiting there."

Gray Wolf's lodge also was among this offshoot band of Shawnees that had
given up the unequal struggle and headed into the West. For three days
they lingered on Buckner's land, partaking of his fare. Meanwhile,
several settlers' families passed each day on their westward way, all of
them looking enviously upon the broad acres held by Buckner and the
Hernes, with so little of the land under cultivation.

When the Shawnees prepared to depart, Tecumseh stood alone and watched
them pack. They would meet him out beyond somewhere, they said in
parting.

"It is farewell," Tecumseh said. "Never shall we meet again. Tecumseh
will not be forced across the Father of the Waters. When the time comes,
he will stand with his back to the great river and die with his eyes
turned toward the land of the rising sun."

With folded arms, the melancholy, haughty chieftain gazed after the
little Shawnee cavalcade.

"Your kind goes too," he said to Buckner, gesturing with both hands.

Buckner was conscious of a strange panic as he saw, far across the
meadows to the south, the family of Arch Herne, all belongings packed on
horses, angling across to join the march of the migrating Shawnees. To
the north, the family of Tom Herne was similarly converging upon the
Shawnee line of march. Smoke still rose from the chimneys of the two
distant cabins but Buckner knew that it rose from empty homes. Someway,
there was an empty spot in his heart.

"Yes," Gilpin said from behind him. "They decided to go out thar and
have a look around--the Hernes did. I'll be taking the trail myself.
Good luck."

There was an eager, questing look in the old man's eyes--the look that
an ancient battle-scarred eagle might cast upon a new hunting ground--as
he shouldered his rifle and strode out across the meadows on the trail
of those who traveled into the setting sun. Half consciously, Buckner
observed that eagerness and contrasted it with the soberness of the
Shawnees who had just left. He did not then realize the significance of
that contrast. But Tecumseh, the melancholy Shawnee chief who stood with
folded arms beside him, realized it all too well.

A light hand fell upon Buckner's shoulder and he turned and looked down
into a pair of fond blue eyes that smiled into his with perfect
understanding. The half-panic subsided. Wherever he and White Fawn stood
together, there was home and happiness, though nations rose and fell.
His hand stroked the head of the rollicking infant that rested in the
curve of her arm.

"Never let him forget that he is a Buckner of Kentucky," he said.

She smiled at him with the inscrutable wisdom of the female who knows
that it matters not so much where one comes from as where one is going.
She spoke in the Shawnee tongue, which she used but seldom now.

"No, my heart. Always he must know that."

She stood with an arm twined through his own and he knew that all was
well with him. But within the week that feeling of semi-panic was
recurrent. The section of Arch Herne on the south had been taken over by
four settlers, each claiming a quarter of it. On the north, the land of
Tom Herne had been claimed by four others. And there was a fifth
claimant in each case--eight available quarter sections with ten men
claiming rights to settle there. Their wranglings were carried to
Buckner for verification as to which one had been first to locate his
family on each contested tract. A village had sprung up within two miles
of Buckner's holdings and two lawyers had located there. They dipped
into the matter of the contested claims. Buckner listened to equally
plausible arguments on either side.

Suddenly he spoke.

"It is all wind in the trees," he said. Unconsciously, he moved his
hands in the old gesture by which the Shawnees had indicated in sign
language that they would have nothing to do with a matter. He stalked
into the cabin and left all parties to their own devices. What did he
care about squabbles over land titles when there was half a continent
where one might have land for the taking?

But contesting of land titles was one of the chief occupations in
Kentucky these days. Instead of the war whoop launched to the winds, the
air now resounded with the oratory of politics and legislation. Those
who coveted land in Kentucky but who had not the hardihood to press on
to the far frontier and take it, sought to dispossess those first
settlers who had fought the savages to hold their homes but who had been
careless in the matter of perfecting titles.

Daniel Boone's two remaining sons had been dispossessed and had gone on
into the West with others of their kind. Boone himself had lost all of
his valuable holdings in Kentucky through contested titles, which had
left him unable to pay his neighbors the few debts he owed them. The
Spaniards, knowing him for a great colonizer, had offered him a tract of
over eight thousand acres of fine land in the wilderness of Missouri.
Later, when again the civilization of his own countrymen overtook him,
he was to lose title to those lands too. As a very old man, he was
destined to return to Kentucky and hunt up old neighbors, to pay from a
buckskin bag of gold, earned by trapping in the West, the little debts
which he had been unable to pay so many years before.

Buckner heard that Simon Kenton, too, had lost title to his lands and
had slipped quietly out of Kentucky, unable to meet his small debts.
Many years later he was destined to return, a strange figure moving in
bewilderment through the streets of Frankfort while the people smiled at
the wild old man of the woods. An old-time resident was to recognize him
as the man who was second only to Boone in fathering Kentucky and to
take him before the Kentucky legislature, then in session, and announce
his identity; that body voting him a pension of two hundred and fifty
dollars a year.

General George Rogers Clark, penniless and no longer needed in Kentucky,
had gone on into the West to hire his sword arm and his military genius
to the French as a soldier of fortune.

Buckner felt himself stranded. His breed of men had gone on and left
him. Instead of planting a greater acreage, that year he planted less.
It did not occur to him that others might think it shiftlessness. His
was the non-acquisitive outlook of the Indian and the border woodsman.
Why raise more food when fewer friends came to eat his fare? He spent
much time prowling the woods with his rifle, bagging squirrels and an
occasional turkey. To drop a deer was an occasion of moment now. He
secured two hounds and hunted "varmints" at night to allay the vague
itch of restlessness.

With settlers pouring by the thousands into the Ohio, the allied tribes,
pressed farther west into the Illinois country, still maintained the
peace. Occasional families of Shawnees presented themselves at Buckner's
cabin and feasted for a few days before heading on into the West to join
the offshoot band of their nation that had preceded them. Occasional
woodsmen, too, stopped there, then headed westward. Again and again
Buckner observed that curious difference between the faces of the
woodsmen and the Shawnees who headed into the unknown West. The
woodsmen started out with that same eager, questing light that had
glowed from Gilpin's old eyes; the Indians with sober melancholy.

Quite suddenly, one day, he divined the reason for that difference. The
Indians were banished against their will and went as the rearguards of a
vanquished race, backing into the setting sun, so to speak, their eyes
turned wistfully to the East, which they would see no more. The woodsmen
went eagerly, of their own accord, the advance guards of a conquering
breed. The slanting rays of the setting sun did not mean to them the
eclipse of their race, but rather a beacon that challenged them to new
and high adventure. The setting sun meant the descent of night to the
red man, but appeared as a new dawn to the white.

Eastern Kentucky and much of the central area had been settled largely
by Virginians under the old charter of that colony, which had given it
territorial rights to the Kentucky region a hundred years before its
settlement. But in western Kentucky, many of the recent settlers had
come floating down the Ohio from Pennsylvania. It so happened that all
those who had taken up land on all sides of Buckner's were of the latter
type.

A hawk screamed one day from overhead and Buckner started with that old
alertness. Always in the days of Buckner's rangers, the scream of a hawk
had been the signal to take cover--that an enemy had been sighted in the
forest. Those had been the days when enemies swarmed on every hand. He
laughed at that sudden start at the hawk's scream. No, there were not
enemies on all sides now. Still, those Pennsylvania settlers that hemmed
him in were not his kind of folks exactly.

He sat one evening looking into the red ball of the setting sun. Out
there where it still shone brightly were Gilpin and the Hernes, the
Boones, McClellan and others of the border clan--and the offshoot band
of Shawnees.

Long ago, on that morning when he had looked into the rising sun across
the Illinois prairies, the picture of the onrushing swarm of settlers
and the banishment of the Indians had been sharp and distinct. Now, as
he looked into the setting sun, it was given to him again to lift for a
moment the veil of the future--but the vision this time was vague and
nebulous and lacking in detail.

It came to him merely as a picture of buckskin-clad figures moving
westward on a broad front, and coupled with it the knowledge that
wherever powder burned on every new frontier, there would be long
Kentucky rifles; and behind them eyes that had been trained to
marksmanship in the woods of Kentucky and the Ohio, as the brotherhood
of the border moved eagerly on to hew out new frontiers. And suddenly he
was very lonesome.

White Fawn, sensing his unrest, came out and rested her hand upon his
arm. And presently, two figures came striding across the meadow from the
west. Gilpin and Tom Herne talked until well into the night of the
wonders of the Missouri wilderness and the Kansas prairies; of vast
herds of bison, streams overcrowded with beaver and Indian nations
numbering many thousands, eager to trade for the white man's goods.
Before they had recited the half of it, Buckner knew that he would go
back with them for just one look around.




CHAPTER XVII


It was on the second night of the westward journey that Tecumseh
appeared unexpectedly in the camp of the three woodsmen and seated
himself at the fire.

"Those who live in the little settlement west of the Wabash are bad
white men," he said reflectively.

"None worse," Buckner agreed.

"When the hawks are at war with the owls, they do not object if a few
owls come forth at night to slay secretly among their own kind," said
Tecumseh.

"Sartin," Gilpin agreed. "The Injuns had no complaint if them miscreants
of the Wabash made war agin the settlers in secret. It was just that
much more fighting strength on the Injun side."

"But since peace was declared, those men have taken several boats and
killed half a hundred of their own race, leaving none alive to tell of
it save a few women who have been taken to their lodges. Devil's
business goes on there sometimes of nights. The women there have seen
enough to know what will occur if they attempt to speak a word of how
they came there. Such of their captures of boats as have become known
have been blamed on the wild young men of the Shawnees."

"And thar's a similar nest o' vipers operating from the Osage country
in Arkansas, preying on Mississippi River travelers, for which the
Osages is frequent blamed," Gilpin said.

"This Kemper still desires White Fawn," Tecumseh said. "It was that
which I came to tell you. Finding you gone, I followed. Often, during
your last months among the Shawnees, he sent messages to Tonk-a-naw,
offering greater and greater prices. After you returned to the
settlements, he did not despair."

Buckner was conscious of a thrill of apprehension. White Fawn and his
young son were alone, save for a black woman. Still, a raid on his cabin
would yield small spoils in a material way, and those of the Wabash
country pillaged for profit. A flatboat would prove a much richer prize
and one to be secured with far less danger than a raid deep in the
settlements. Kemper might still desire White Fawn but those other
marauders could scarcely be expected to engage upon a profitless raid,
fraught with considerable danger, for no other reason than to humor
Kemper's whim.

Tecumseh, as if reading what was in his mind, continued, "There were
many woodsmen round your cabin at first and those of the Wabash turned a
deaf ear to Kemper's plans. But he has an informant among the settlers
who kept him posted about you. Kemper has prospered. He has offered two
men a price far greater than they could make by capturing flatboats to
watch their chance to steal White Fawn away and bring her to him. I have
it from a Shawnee woman who is the squaw of one of the men living
there. You should not leave White Fawn alone."

Two hours before dawn, Buckner started back toward home, Tecumseh and
the two woodsmen accompanying him. A great fear pervaded Buckner's heart
as he entered the cabin and found it untenanted. The dead ashes on the
hearth were no colder than the dread that clutched his heart.

"Took 'em early last night likely, so's they could cross back beyond the
Ohio unobserved before sun-up," Gilpin said. "Some neighbor's been
watching you, like Tecumseh heard. No doubt Kemper's two miscreants hung
out at the informant's place, watching their chance. Well, we'd best be
on our way."

Buckner traveled with grief and black rage in his heart and with death
peering out of his eyes. White Fawn, of course, would be delivered to
Kemper alive. But Kemper would have no wish to be encumbered with an
infant. Buckner had no doubt that the abductors had put an end to the
black woman and his infant son after reaching the wilderness side of the
Ohio. Those jolly little eyes, the same color as White Fawn's, seemed to
gaze at Buckner reproachfully as he traveled through the forest. He
could not rid his mind of the picture.

On the fourth day, three painted braves waited for darkness in the woods
a mile from Kemper's trading post. They had traveled hard and fast but
could not yet determine whether or not they had reached the spot ahead
of the renegade abductors.

Impatience rode Buckner with merciless spurs as he waited. But he must
keep cool for the work that lay ahead. He took quick turns around the
immediate vicinity, unable to remain quiet in one spot. Gilpin and Herne
sat immovable. Before leaving them, Tecumseh had explained the
arrangement of the settlement. Kemper's post, merely a big log trade
room with living quarters attached, stood in the center of a string of a
dozen or more cabins, straggling at intervals for a quarter of a mile
along the course of the creek.

Darkness descended at last and an hour later three warriors came through
the blackness to the creek. A dog guarding one of the cabins rushed
furiously out toward the intruders. A door was thrown open and a man
stood silhouetted against the light.

Buckner scolded the dog in Shawnee and the man shouted a command to the
beast to come back. The dog desisted from his demonstrations, returning
toward the cabin with diminishing growls.

There was yet another cabin to pass before reaching the dark bulk of the
trading house from which a few lights glowed dimly. The door of the
cabin opened just before the three prowlers drew abreast of it and a man
came forth. He saw the three braves on the trail and greeted them as he
stepped into it just ahead and started toward the store himself, paying
little heed to the three savages. Indians of all tribes came here to
trade or to beg for rum and tobacco at all hours of the day or night.

If this man joined those at the store, it would mean one more to
participate on the enemy side in whatever trouble occurred there. The
trio followed along behind him in single file, Herne in the lead, almost
treading upon the man's heels. There was the sound of a crunching blow
and the man went down with Herne's tomahawk buried deep in his brain.

The three men swiftly removed the body from the trail.

"'Twould be simple enough, if only we could ketch them outside in the
night, one at a time," Gilpin said in a low tone.

The door to the big trading room stood open, the interior of it dimly
lighted by guttering candles. Two men sat there engaged in conversation.
Buckner knew neither of them. Doors led from the rear of the main room
into living quarters and storerooms behind. All of those doors were
closed save one, and it led into a furhouse where raw furs were kept.

Dimly, a hum of voices could be heard, evidence that some of those rear
rooms were occupied. Swiftly, Buckner rounded the corner of the building
and moved back to where a vaguely lighted square revealed the location
of a window covered by glazed deerskin, dressed thin as paper and
greased, sufficiently opaque to admit light but not of a transparence to
permit one to see through it.

Benoit's voice, raised in anger, reached Buckner's ear through this
window. Dark lines across the opaque parchment revealed the fact that
the window was barred. Kemper's voice answered Benoit's.

"The plan was for them to pot Buckner when he was out in the woods
hunting squirrels and bury him somewhere, then bring the girl here. But
he started west for a trip of several months. So they took her.
Neighbors will think she's gone visiting. The wench was killed this side
the Ohio, so she'll never talk. What's wrong with it?"

"Oh, let it drop," Benoit conceded. "It's your game, not mine. But if
you let that she wolverine get away from you, she'll outrun the lot of
you to the Ohio and report."

"How will she get away?" Kemper demanded. "That door there, barred on
this side, is the only opening into that room. If she did get out
through it, which she can't, she'd only be in this room, and no way out
of it except through another barred door into the main trade room."

"And she'll fight you like a she-panther every second you're within
range of her teeth and claws," Benoit growled.

"Not at all," Kemper declared calmly. "Why do you think I had the brat
brought to me alive--out of love for it? A mother will do anything to
save her infant. She'll come to terms when she realizes that the babe
gets the same treatment at my hands as I get at hers. You will see."

A wave of joy flooded through Buckner at the knowledge that both White
Fawn and his son still lived. Then poisonous rage at Kemper sent him
striding toward the front of the building. So hurried was his pace that
it revealed to Gilpin the state of the man's nerves and the old
woodsman halted him with a hand braced against his chest.

"Steady!" he whispered. "Whatever is to be done now must be done with
cool heads!"

Herne's fingers pressed into his arm. In Buckner's mind was a picture of
a barred door behind which his mate and her infant were imprisoned; and
before it was a room in which sat two men whom he must kill before
reaching that door to unbar it. He was impatient to start upon the work
in hand. But he was too old a hand at border warfare to allow emotion to
rise above reason for long. He fought to regain his usual iron control.
This thing must be worked without a flaw. The least slip-up which would
give Kemper and Benoit a second's warning in which to barricade
themselves would be fatal. It would give the occupants of that scattered
line of cabins time to swoop down to aid those in the post. Once
started, the attack must be carried to a conclusion swiftly, and, if
possible, silently.

Buckner steeled himself to calmness. A whispered conference was held. It
would be no trick at all to shoot down those two men in the main room.
But Benoit might bar the door to the room in which he sat with Kemper on
the instant, until he could determine the cause of the shooting. It
could not be done that way; Gilpin was elected to remain outside to
intercept any who might come along while Buckner and Herne attended to
matters inside.

The two men who sat in the big main room looked up indifferently as two
savages entered silently from the night, the dim light of the candles
glinting on the bright paints that adorned naked chests and faces.

"Where trade man?" Buckner asked gutturally.

"He'll be out pooty quick," one of the men said.

Buckner sought to shuffle on past toward the closed door behind which
were Kemper and Benoit. If he could once reach that door, throw it open
and spring inside, Herne would handle these two men in the main room.

"Where you go?" one of the men inquired.

"Injun man talk now with trade man," Buckner grunted, holding to his
course.

With surprising agility, the man sprang from his seat and barred his
path.

"You no go there!" he snapped.

Those words were his last. Buckner's tomahawk was buried so deep in his
forehead that as the man was hurled back by the force of the blow, the
handle of the weapon was wrenched from Buckner's grip. Without waiting
to retrieve it, Buckner sprang toward that closed door thirty feet away.
Even as he started, Benoit, bent upon seeing who had arrived, threw open
the door and peered out. His startled eyes took in the scene and he
endeavored to slam the door in the face of the savage who sprang for him
with a naked knife in his hand.

Herne, who had struck down the other occupant of the room at the same
instant that Buckner had felled his man, had tossed up his rifle to
shoot Benoit but could not because of Buckner's rushing form. Buckner
hurled himself at the closing door and thrust one leg into the
diminishing crack of it. It jammed the calf of his leg painfully. There
was a roar from behind as Herne fired past him through the planks of the
door. The heavy ball found Benoit and hurled him back. Buckner threw
wide the door.

Benoit was groping about on hands and knees, stricken by Herne's ball.
Buckner leaped over him and sprang at Kemper, who had gained his feet
and had seized a tomahawk from the wall. Buckner's left hand clamped on
the trader's right wrist before he could bring the tomahawk into play.
Only then did he realize that there was another man in the room. From
where he had been sleeping on a bunk in the corner of the room, a
bearded renegade launched himself at Buckner with a knife.

Buckner swung Kemper to interpose the trader's body between himself and
this new antagonist. Another form hurtled into the room as Herne leaped
headlong over the groping Benoit to assault the man with the knife. The
first blow of his tomahawk almost severed the man's wrist, the next
found his brain.

"Look to Benoit!" Buckner said.

His mighty left hand held Kemper's wrist helpless. His right hand held
his knife low and to the rear of his right thigh where the trader's
clutching left hand could not reach it. His eyes glared pitilessly back
into the terrified stare of his victim. Kemper struck him twice with
his left hand.

From behind them Herne's voice sounded. "Too bad you can't look up,
Benoit, and see whose hand is about to send your black soul to hell and
put a stop to your murdering on the Ohio."

Stark horror stared from Kemper's eyes as Herne's tomahawk descended
upon the head of the crawling Benoit. The trader's mouth opened to utter
a shriek for help. Twice he screamed.

"So!" Buckner said. "You who have murdered many helpless ones in cold
blood, bleat in fear like a sheep when your own time comes to die. Keep
quiet! Never before have I struck my knife into a screaming squaw!"

Twice his knife leaped up. Then he cast the man from him into a corner
where he fell in a limp heap.

Already, Herne was lifting the two bars that secured a heavy door
leading into another room. Buckner swung it open. White Fawn sprang into
his arms, holding her infant.

"Come, my heart," he said, taking the baby from her. They fled out
through the main room, Herne stooping to retrieve the rifle he had
dropped to spring inside to Buckner's assistance. As he cleared the
outer door and stepped into the night, Buckner grasped his own rifle
which he had left against the wall just outside of it. The intended
program of silence had failed and the occupants of some of those near-by
cabins even now would be on their way through the night to investigate.
Even as he raised his voice in the signal to Gilpin to draw off, there
was a report from the far corner of the building.

Then Gilpin answered the call. Presently he was running with them
through the forest.

"Since you'd made such a ruckus inside, I took the liberty of shooting
down the big miscreant who rushed over so precipitate from the next
cabin, instead of tackling him with a silenter weapon," the old man
said.

Throughout the night they traveled into the south without a halt, then
pressed on again after a few hours' rest. They made a forced march of it
to the Ohio and crossed that stream at night.

"Thar's none who set eyes on us that lived to tell who done it," Gilpin
chuckled, as they parted there in the moonlight on the shores of the
Ohio. "If it does come out we was in it, and they consider it an act of
aggression against England, they'll find me and Herne in our new
hang-out half a thousand miles deep in Spanish territory, where the more
aggression you practice agin England the better the Spaniards think of
you."

"There'll nothing come of it," Buckner said. "It can't be pointed out
that we did it without pointing out why. The less investigating there's
done round that renegade hang-out, the better for them, and they know
it."

Gilpin and Herne prepared to drop off down the Ohio in a canoe to head
for their new stamping ground in the West.

"That country will be United States too, one day," Herne predicted. "A
large slice of the folks out thar is Kentucky border men. The Missoury
wilderness is overrun with 'em now."

Buckner stood and watched their canoe glide off down the moonlit stream
until it became a black speck in the distance. And his thoughts traveled
on ahead of it to that bright country where they were heading. Again he
saw a thin line of buckskin-clad figures, armed with long Kentucky
rifles, advancing on a broad front into the glamorous unknown lands of
the West.

The Buckner family bivouacked until dawn, then headed on toward home. As
he strode along with his infant on his arm, without being conscious of
it, Buckner lapsed back into the old habit of addressing White Fawn in
the Shawnee tongue. With quick perception, she answered in the same
language. They made another overnight camp when within a few miles of
home, for the reason that the infant was worn and cross from overmuch
traveling. In the shadows round the edge of light thrown by the
campfire, Buckner seemed to see dim forms bivouacked for the night.

When he reached his own place early in the morning, he was somewhat
surprised to see a rude pole-and-bark shack at the edge of the timber, a
hundred yards from his cabin. There was a similar camp, with a wagon
near it, farther along the edge of the meadows. Buckner went down into
the meadow to catch his half-dozen head of horses while White Fawn
cooked breakfast. He picketed them near the cabin.

When he emerged after breakfasting, he observed a group of men coming
toward him from the pole hut along the edge of the timber. There were
four men and three nearly grown boys.

"Well, we might as well tell you fust off," the spokesman for the party
said. "We all has jumped your land, a family to each quarter."

The group eyed him with truculent apprehensiveness, resolved to carry
through their plans, yet doubtful as to what a man of Buckner's
reputation might do. His breed usually took the law into their own
hands. For a space he regarded them in fierce silence.

"We're willing to law you about it," the spokesman said. "Thar's only
one squar way to settle sech matters--accordin' to law."

Still Buckner maintained silence. The fierceness faded slightly from his
eyes and into them crept an expression as if they gazed upon some
distant scene.

"The lawyer who settled us here says you ain't got the ghost of a title.
It ain't boughten land or warrant land. You took it by tomahawk. But you
ain't worked it, except for a triflin' patch of crops, and ain't even
fenced. Lawyer Enders says he can bust your title easy as prickin' a
bubble. No use fighting about it. We'll settle it by law."

They watched him with that same truculent apprehensiveness. A woman with
hair as yellow as his was black, and with pansy-blue eyes, came from the
cabin to join him. She spoke to him in some alien tongue and the men
fidgeted with uneasy suspicion as Buckner answered her in kind. Turning
their backs upon the visitors, the pair of them disappeared in the
cabin, to emerge again a brief space, their arms loaded with personal
effects which they deposited near the picketed horses. Swiftly, Buckner
saddled two of the horses and put pack saddles on the others.

The land-jumpers held a heated conference some little distance away,
then approached him again as he expertly packed the effects which White
Fawn was carrying out to him from the cabin. He put the final hitch on
the last pack and swung to the saddle, his long Kentucky rifle balanced
across the pommel before him.

The men drew back as he faced them from the saddle. But there was
neither melancholy nor menace in the eyes he turned upon them. Rather,
there was an eager, questing light in them, as in the fierce eyes of the
eagle that has been caged and liberated at last to fly again toward the
sun.

Then Buckner headed his horse toward the West on the trail of his
fellows of the border clan who had gone on ahead. Never again would he
fall so far behind them.

The men stood there until the forest beyond the meadows had folded round
the little cavalcade. Then they turned to gaze at one another in wonder
at the ease with which the thing had been accomplished.

And off in the forest that had enfolded them, Buckner and White Fawn
gazed at each other with perfect understanding. With eager hearts and
high hopes, they were riding on toward that land of promise that lies
always just ahead--always just around the bend or over the next divide.


THE END

       *       *       *       *       *


    By Hal G. Evarts


    THE CROSS PULL

    THE BALD FACE: AND OTHER ANIMAL STORIES

    FUR SIGN

    TUMBLEWEEDS

    SPANISH ACRES

    THE MOCCASIN TELEGRAPH

    FUR BRIGADE

    TOMAHAWK RIGHTS

       *       *       *       *       *

Transcriber's Note: Hyphen variations left as printed.


[The end of _Tomahawk Rights_ by Hal G. Evarts]