University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XXIII.

The reader will please go back with me to that
fearful first night of my captivity, and to the moment
when I put into execution the plan for dear little
Mary's escape, which I prayed might result in her
restoration to our friends.

It must have been something more than a vague
hope of liberty to be lost or won that guided the feeble
steps of the child back on the trail to a bluff overlooking
the road where, weary from the fatigue and
terror of a night passed alone on the prairie, she sat,
anxious, but hopeful, awaiting the coming of friends.

Rescue was seemingly near, now that she had
reached the great road, and she knew that there would
be a passing train of emigrants ere long.

It was in this situation she was seen by some passing
soldiers, holding out her little trembling hands
with eager joy and hope, imploring them to save her.

It was a party of but three or four soldiers returning
from Fort Laramie, where they had been to meet
the paymaster. They had been pursued by Indians

the day before; had also passed the scene of the destruction
of our train; and believed the country
swarming with Indians. Their apprehensions were,
therefore, fully aroused, and, fearing the little figure
upon the distant bluff might be a decoy to lead them
into ambush, hesitated to approach. There was a
large ravine between, and it is not strange that their
imagination should people it with lurking savages.
However, they were about crossing to the relief of
the little girl, when a party of Indians came in sight,
and they became convinced it was a decoy, and turned
and fled.

They returned to Deer Creek Station, and related
the circumstance. Mr. Kelly, arriving soon after,
heard it, and his heart sank within him at the description
of the child, for he thought he recognized in it
the form of our little Mary.

He applied to the officer in command for a detail of
soldiers to go with him to search for her, but all entreaty
and argument were in vain.

The agony that poor child endured as the soldiers
turned away, and the war-whoop of the savage rang
upon her terrified soul, is known only to God. Instead
of the rescue and friends which, in her trusting heart
and innocent faith, she had expected to find, fierce
Indians stood before her, stringing their bows to take
her life, thus to win another trophy, marking the
Indian murderer.

The whizzing arrows were sent into the body of the
helpless child, and with the twang of the bow-strings,
the delicate form of the heroic child lay stretched upon
the ground, and the bright angel spirit went home to
rest in the bosom of its Father.

On the morning of the 14th, two days after Mary
was seen, Mr. Kelly succeeded in obtaining a squad of
soldiers at the station, and went out to search for the
child, and after a short march of eight miles, they discovered
the mutilated remains of the murdered girl.

Mr. Kelly's grief and anguish knew no bounds.

Three arrows had pierced the body, and the tomahawk
and scalping-knife had done their work. When
discovered, her body lay with its little hands outstretched
as if she had received, while running, the
fatal arrows.

Surely He who numbers the sparrows and feeds the
ravens was not unmindful of her in that awful hour,
but allowed the heavenly kingdom, to which her
trembling soul was about to take its flight, to sweeten,
with a glimpse of its beatific glory, the bitterness of
death, even as the martyr Stephen, seeing the bliss
above, could not be conscious of the torture below.

Extracting the arrows from the wounds, and dividing
her dress among the soldiers, then tenderly wrapping
her in a winding sheet, Mr. Kelly had the sad satisfaction
of smoothing the earth on the unconscious breast
that had ceased to suffer, and when this duty was performed,

they left the little grave all alone, far from the
happy home of her childhood, and the brothers, with
whom she had played in her innocent joy.

Of all strange and terrible fates, no one who had
seen her gentle face in its loving sweetness, the joy and
comfort of our hearts, would have predicted such a
barbarous fate for her. But it was only the passage
from death into life, from darkness into daylight, from
doubt and fear into endless love and joy. Those little
ones, whose spirits float upward from their downy pillows,
amid the tears and prayers of broken-hearted
friends, are blest to enter in at heaven's shining gate,
which lies as near little Mary's rocky, blood-stained
pillow in the desolate waste as the palace of a king,
and when she had once gained the great and unspeakable
bliss of heaven, it must have blotted out the
remembrance of the pain that won it, and made no
price too great for such delight.