Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters Part 12

A war party of the Shawnees had been defeated on the border; the spirits of their slain required revenge. The stranger chiefs gazed upon Simon indignantly. Why had he not been killed before? The Shawnee nation were getting childish. Let him be executed. The councils had so voted. Who now wanted him to live?

Simon Girty made another speech. He was hotly countered, by the stranger chiefs. They carried the day. He again turned to Simon Butler.

"My friend, I think you must die. But I have persuaded them to burn you at Upper Sandusky, where there will be many more Indians than here, receiving their presents from the British. I will ride ahead and see what I can do for you."

He left. Simon was immediately hustled out by the collar and arms, and led by a rope around his neck was marched afoot, guarded by hors.e.m.e.n, for the north.

What a sudden change! First he had been beaten; then he had been painted black, for death. Then he had been released. Now he was to be killed. He had faint hope. It flickered when Girty pa.s.sed him, and saying "I have friends in the next village," continued. It died completely when he arrived at the next village, and no Girty was there.

His friend Simon had failed, and had gone back by another trail.

By this time he himself was already in torture. On the way the march had been interrupted by an old Indian who was sitting on a log, smoking a pipe and watching his squaw chop wood. The sight of the roped prisoner enraged him. He had lost a son, by a white man's rifle. In a twinkling he had sprung up, grabbed the ax from the squaw, and at one blow had cut Simon's arm wellnigh off at the shoulder.

The ax whirled high for a more deadly blow, but another Indian caught at it just in time.

"Shame on you!" he scolded. "You act like a fool. This man is for the stake. Would you cheat us out of him, when the people ahead are expecting great pleasure?"

Half dead from loss of blood, poor Simon arrived at the village. It was the town where the sullen Logan, once the firm friend of the whites, lived. Here he was eating his heart, with grief over the wrongs done to him.[1]

Chief Logan the Mingo walked over to Simon, and surveyed him. Simon did not know who he was; he may have heard of Simon.

"Well, young man," he said, in good English, "these other young men seem very mad at you."

"They certainly do," Simon admitted ruefully.

The dark Logan slightly smiled.

"Don't be discouraged. I am a great chief. You are to go to Sandusky.

They talk of burning you there. But I will send two runners to speak good of you."

Simon's heart bounded. When he learned that this handsome, determined-looking Indian was Chief Logan the celebrated Mingo, he thought himself rescued, sure.

True to promise, the two runners took the Sandusky trail early in the morning. The Shawnee guard waited, and left Simon to the care of Logan. Things had brightened wonderfully. Chief Logan would not say, but he acted as if in hopes of success. He and Simon spent most of the day together. In the evening the two runners returned. They sought out Chief Logan, and talked apart with him, and Simon scarcely slept, so anxious was he to know their report.

The next morning he saw his guards coming, with Logan. Alas, the chief's face was sober. He brought a piece of bread.

"You are to be carried to Sandusky at once," he uttered shortly. That was all. He walked away without another sound. Plainly enough his good words had been of no use.

Simon sighed. Was ever a man so buffeted about, before, from high to low, and low to high, and high to low again! It was a case of the mouse and the cat, with fortune playing as the cat, and he serving as the mouse.

The five guards from Wakatomica took him in tow, for Upper Sandusky, and he gave over hoping any more.

Upper Sandusky, northern Ohio, was a Wyandot Huron town. It was a center for the Indians of many tribes. The Shawnees and Mingos gathered here to receive payment of gifts, from their British father.

Simon was roundly welcomed, but was not made to run another gauntlet.

Only, for a fourth time a council, and this time a grand council, sat to discuss him. He was wearied of councils; they usually condemned him.

The council had just opened, when a white man in the gay red uniform of a British captain entered. He was Pierre Drouillard, a French-Canadian in the British Indian department. Simon did not know, yet, but Chief Logan's runners had been sent to this same Drouillard, to tell about the prisoner. Chief Logan was smart.

The British captain looked at Simon sharply, and stood forward to make a speech.

"It is true," he said, with Simon listening hard, trying to understand the words, "that the Americans are a dangerous people. They are the cause of this b.l.o.o.d.y war. There can be no peace until they are either killed or driven out of the country."

"Good, good!" the council grunted.

"But we must meet them with cunning as well as bravery. To learn their plans, so to defeat them, is worth twenty prisoners. I think that if we take this man to Detroit, we might learn a great deal. The governor would find out from him the secrets of the Americans. I should like to take him. You would be rewarded, for your British father is good to his red children. When I bring him back, you may do with him as you choose. Have I spoken well?"

There were grunts and nods. It was a wise idea.

"As for you," said the captain, to the five Shawnees, "I can see that you have been put to a great deal of trouble, to carry the prisoner here. It is not right that you should have no pay. I will smooth your path by giving you rum and tobacco, or anything else, to the amount of one hundred dollars so that you may be happy while I am in Detroit."

That was indeed a pleasing as well as a crafty speech. The affair had been settled. The man in the British uniform grasped Simon by the arm.

"You are reprieved. Now you will come with me."

Again reprieved? Thoroughly bewildered, Simon followed him out. They mounted horses, and rode north, with one chief.

"I am Captain Drouillard," explained the officer. "This is what I said to the council." And he repeated. "You appreciate that I took a great risk by interfering. You were to have been burned at the stake in the morning. The Indians do not like to be robbed of their spoil, and I have engaged to return you. You will certainly be burned, if I do.

But that rests with you. You have information of value. Reply to my questions, and talk straight, and all will be well. You shall stay in Detroit. Now, what is the American force in Kentucky? And how many men are there in Fort McIntosh?"

Fort McIntosh was an American post erected only last spring at the mouth of the Big Beaver River, beside the Ohio twenty-six miles below Fort Pitt.

"Lor' bless you," laughed Simon. "I'm nothin' but a private soldier, else a scout, and 'tain't my business to deal in such large matters.

So I can't answer your questions, in any way, shape or manner. Fact is, as you can plainly see, I've enough to do to look out for myself."

Captain Drouillard eyed him, and laughed also.

"I believe you," he said. "You've made a bad bargain of it, at that.

Perhaps so have I."

But they went on, to Detroit.

Simon was saved. The British did not send him back to the Indians.

They sent presents, instead, and kept him as a prisoner of war. His arm healed, he grew strong, and stayed there from this October until the next June, 1779. He was by no means the only such prisoner in old Detroit. A great many others, taken in battle or on the trail, were here; among them, the majority of the ten Daniel Boone men sold by Chief Black Fish a year ago, to the British.

He and two of the Daniel Boone men planned to escape together. Mrs.

Harvey, the wife of an Indian trader, agreed to aid them. She was particularly fond of Simon, who never complained and who had suffered so much.

It was more than two hundred miles to the nearest post on the Ohio River. Every mile led through the country of war Indians. They would be only too glad to catch Simon again. So he must have guns for himself and his companions. Mrs. Harvey said that she would get the guns.

On the night of June 3, Simon, in his quarters, heard a rap on his door and a low voice. He opened. Mrs. Harvey was there. She beckoned him into the darkness, and spoke rapidly. She was out of breath from running.

"s.h.!.+ I have the guns--three. They are Indians' guns. I picked the best three while the Indians are on a big drunk. They stacked their arms near the house. I've hidden what I took, in the pea patch in my garden. Come at midnight. You will find a ladder waiting for you, by which to climb the garden wall. The guns will be in the pea patch.

There are food, ammunition and blankets in the hollow tree you know of, at the edge of town. Don't fail. Goodby." She scurried away.

"G.o.d bless you for an angel," murmured Simon, peering after her. And he hastened back to tell his comrades.

He knew that the Indians would have no thought of their guns before the morrow. At midnight the three climbed the wall, by the ladder. The guns were in the garden; so was Mrs. Harvey, waiting anxiously. In after years he said that her dim figure, sitting there, was the most beautiful thing that he ever saw. He never forgot Mrs. Harvey.

Outside, in the town, the yells of the drunken Indians were making the night hideous. There was little time for thanking the good woman. By daylight the three ought to be far from sight--and the hours seemed all too few.