University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.

It was about ten o'clock on the evening in question, and Simon Girty was
seated by a fire, around which lay stretched at full length some six or eight
dark Indian forms, and near him, on the right, two of another sex and race.
He was evidently in some deep contemplation; for his hat and rifle were
lying by his side, his hands were locked just below his knees—as if for the
purpose of balancing his body in an easy position—and his eyes fixed intently
on the flame that, waving to and fro in the wind, threw over his ugly
features a ruddy, flickering light, and extended his shadow to the size and
shape of some frightful monster. The clouds of the late storm had entirely
passed away, and through the checkered openings in the trees overhead,
could be discerned a few bright stars, which seemed to sparkle with uncommon
brilliancy, owing to the clearness of the atmosphere. All beyond the
immediate circle lighted by the fire, appeared dark and silent, save the solemn,
almost mournful, sighing of the wind, as it swept among the tree-tops
and through the branches of the surrounding mighty forest.

What the meditations of the renegade were, we shall not essay to tell;
but doubtless they were of a gloomy nature; for after sitting in the position
we have described, some moments, without moving, he suddenly started,
unclasped his hands, and looked hurriedly around him on every side, as if
half expecting, yet fearful of beholding, some frightful phantom; but he
apparently saw nothing to confirm his fears; and with a heavy sigh, he resumed
his former position.

What were the thoughts of that dark man, as he sat there?—he whose
soul had been steeped in crime!—he whose hands had long been made red
with the blood of numberless innocent victims! Who shall say what guilty
deeds of the past might have been harrowing his soul to fear and even
remorse? Who shall say he was not then and there meditating upon death,
and the dread eternity and judgement that must quickly follow dissolution?
Who shall say he was not secretly repenting of that life of crime, which
had already drawn down the curses of thousands upon his head? Something
of the kind, or something equally powerful, must have been at work
within him; for his features ever and anon, by their mournful contortions—
if we may be allowed the phrase—gave visible tokens of one in deep agony
of mind. It would be no pleasant task to analyze and lay bare the secret
workings of so dark a spirit, even had we power to do it; and so we will
leave his thoughts, whether good or evil, to himself and his God.

By his side, and within two feet of the renegade, lay extended the beautiful
form of Ella Barnwell—with nothing but a blanket and her own garments
between her and the earth—with none but a similar covering over
her—with her head resting upon a stone, and apparently asleep. We say
apparently asleep; but the drowsy son of Erebus and Nox had not yet
closed her eyelids in slumber; for there were thoughts in her breast more
potent than all his persuasive arts of forgetfulness, or those of his prime
minister, Morpheus. Was she thinking of her own hard fate—away there in
that lonely forest—with not a friend nigh that could render her assistance—
with now no hope of escape from the awful doom to which she was hastening?
Or was she thinking of him, for whom her heart yearned with all the thousand,

undefined, indescribable sympathies of affection?—he who so lately had
been her companion?—for the heart of love measures duration, not by the
cold mathematical calculation of minutes and hours, and days and weeks,
and months and years, but by events and feelings; and the acquaintance of
weeks may seem the friend of years, and the acquaintance of years be almost
forgotton in weeks;—was she thinking of him, we say—of Algernon?
who, even in misery, had been torn from her side, had said perchance his
last trembling farewell and gone so suffer a death at which humanity
must shudder! Ay, all these thoughts, and a thousand others, were rushing
wildly through her feverish brain. She thought of her own fate—of his—
of her relations—pictured out in her imagination the terrible doom of each—
and her tender heart became wrung to the most excruciating point of agony.

By the side of Ella, was her adopted mother—buried in that troubled sleep,
which great fatigue sends to the body, even when the mind is ill at ease, filling
it with startling visions—and around the fire, as we said before, lay the
dusky forms of the savages, lost to all consciousness of the outer world. The
position of Ella was such, that, by slightly turning her head, she could
command a view of the features of the renegade, whose strange workings,
as before noted, served to fix her attention and divide her thoughts, between
him, as the cause of her present unhappiness, and that unhappiness itself—
and she gazed on his loathsome, contorted countenance, with much the same
feeling as one might be supposed to gaze upon a serpent, coiling itself around
his body, whose deadly fangs, either sooner or later, would assuredly give
the fatal stroke of death. She noted the sudden start of Girty, and the
wildness with which he peered around him, with feelings of hope and fear—
hope, that rescue might be at hand—fear, lest something more dreadful was
about to happen. At length Girty started again, and turned his head toward
Ella so suddenly, that she had not time to withdraw her eyes, ere his were
fixed searchingly upon them.

“And are you too awake?” he said, with something resembling a sigh.
“I thought the innocent could ever sleep!”

“Not when the guilty are abroad, with deeds of death, and friends exposed,”
returned Ella, bitterly.

“Ah! true—true!” rejoined Girty, again looking toward the fire, in a
musing mood.

“Well may you muse and writhe under the tortures of your guilty acts,”
continued Ella, in the same bitter tone; “for you have much to answer for,
Simon Girty.”

“And who told you the past tortured me?” cried Girty, quickly, turning
on her a fierce expression.

“Your changing features and guilty starts,” answered Ella.

“Ha! then you have been a spy upon me, have you?” said Girty, pressing
the words slowly through his clenched teeth, knitting his shaggy brows,
and fixing his eye with intensity upon hers, until she quailed and trembled
beneath its seeming fiery glance, which the light, whereby it was seen, rendered
more demon-like than usual, while it made shadow chase shadow, like
waves of the sea, across his face: “You have been a spy upon my actions,
eh? Beware! Ella Barnwell—beware! Do not put your head in the lion's
mouth too often, or he may think the bait troublesome; and by —! had
other than you told me what I just now heard, he or she had not lived to
repeat it.

“Far better an early death and innocence, than a long life of guilt and
misery,” returned Ella, at once regaining her former boldness of speech:
“Far better the fate you speak of, than mine.”

“And would you prefer being wedded to death, rather than me?” asked
Girty, quickly, in surprise.

“Ay, a thousand times!” replied Ella, energetically, rising as she spoke,
into a sitting posture, and looking fearlessly upon the renegade, her previously
pale features now flushed with excitement. “I fear not death, Simon
Girty; I have done no act that should make me fear the change that all
must sooner or later undergo; but I could not join my hand to that of a
man of blood, without loathing and horror, and feeling criminal in the sight
of God and man; and least of all, to you, Simon Girty, whose name has
become a word of terror to the weak and innocent of my race, and whose
deeds of late, have been such as to make me join my voice in the general
maledictions called down upon you.”

During this speech of Ella, Girty sat and gazed upon her with the look
of a baffled demon; and, as she concluded, fairly hissed through his teeth:

“And so you would prefer death to me, eh? By —! you shall have
your choice!”

As he spoke, he grasped Ella by the wrist with one hand, seized his
tomahawk with the other, and sprang upon his feet. His rapid movement
and wild manner now really frightened her; and uttering a faint cry of horror,
she endeavored to release his hold; while the warriors, aroused by the
noise, bounded up from the earth, weapon in hand, with looks of alarm.

Turning to them, Girty now spoke a few words in the Indian tongue, and
with significant glances at Ella, they were just in the act of again encamping,
when crack went some five or six rifles, followed by yells little less savage
than their own, and four of them rolled upon the earth, groaning with pain,
while the others, surprised and bewildered, grasped their weapons and shouted:

“The Shemanoes!” “The Long Knives!” not knowing whether to
stand or fly.

Girty, meantime, had been left unharmed; although the shivering of the
helve of the tomahawk in his hand, in front of his breast, showed him he
had been a target for no mean marksman, and that his life had been preserved
almost by a miracle. For a moment he stood irresolute—his nostrils
fairly dilated with fear and rage, still holding Ella by the wrist, who was too
paralyzed with what she had seen to speak or move—straining his eyes in
every direction to note, if possible, the number of his foes and whence their
approach. The whole glance was momentary; but he saw himself nearly
surrounded by his enemies, who were fast closing in toward the center with
fierce yells; and pausing no longer in indecision, he encircled Ella's waist
with his left arm, raised her from the ground, and keeping her as much as
possible between himself and his enemies, to deter them from firing, darted
away toward a thicket, some fifty yards distant, pursued by two of the attacking
party.

Just as Girty gained the thicket, one of his pursuers made a sudden
bound forward and grasped him by the arm; but his hold was the next moment
shaken off by the renegade, who, being now rendered desperate, drew
a pistol from his belt, with the rapidity of lightning, and laid the bold adventurer
dead at his feet. Almost at the same moment, Girty received a blow
on the back of his head, from the breech of the rifle of his other antagonist,
that staggered him forward, when releasing his hold of Ella, he turned and
darted off in another direction, firing a pistol as he went, the ball of which
whizzed close to the head of him for whom it was designed, and in a moment
more he was lost in the mazes of the forest.

Meantime the bloody work was going forward in the center; for at the
moment when Girty darted away, the report of some three or four rifles

again echoed through the wood, two more of the red warriors bit the
dust, while the other two fled in opposite directions, leaving Boone and his
party sole masters of the field.

Eager, excited, reckless and wild, several of the young men now rushed
forward, with yells of triumph, to the wounded Indians, whom they immediately
tomahawked without mercy, and began to scalp, when the voice of
Boone, who had been more cautious, reached them from a distance: “Beware
o' the fire-light, lads! or the red varmints will draw a bead[1] on some of ye.”

Scarcely were the words uttered, ere his warning was sadly fulfilled; for
the two savages finding they were not pursued, and thirsting for revenge, turned
and fired almost simultaneously, with aims so deadly, that one of the young
men, by the name of Beecher, fell mortally wounded and expired a moment
after; and another, by the name of Morris, had his wrist shattered by a ball.
This fatal event produced a panic in the others, who at once fled precipitately
into the darkness, leaving Mrs. Younker, who had by this time gained
her feet, standing alone by the fire, a bewildered spectator of the terrible
tragedies that had so lately been enacted by her side. To her Boone
now immediately advanced, notwithstanding the caution he had given the
others, and turning to him as he came up, the good lady exclaimed, in a tone
of astonishment:

“Why, Colonel Boone, be this here you? Why when did you come—
and how on yarth did ye git here—and what in the name o' all creation has
been happening? For ye see I war jest dosing away thar by the fire, and
dreaming all sorts of things, like all nater, when somehow I kind o' thought
I'd all at once turned into a man and gone to war a rale soldier, and the battle
had opened, and the big guns war blazing away, and the little guns war
popping off, and the soldiers war shrieking and groaning and falling around
me, like all possessed; and men a trampling, and horses a running like skeered
deer; and then I sort o' woke up, and jumped up, and seed all them dead
Injen wretches; and then I jest began to think as how it warn't no dream at
all, but a living truth, all 'cept my being a man and a soldier, as you com'd
up. Well, ef this arn't a queer world,” resumed the good dame, catching
breath meanwhile, “as Preacher Allprayer used to say, then maybe as how
I don't know nothing at all about it.”

“Your dream war a very nateral one, Mrs. Younker,” returned Boone,
who, during the speech of the other, had been actively employed in scattering
the burning brands, to prevent the recurrence of another sad catastrophe;
“and I'm rejoiced to see that you've escaped unharmed, amid this bloody work.
Allow me to set you free;” and as he spoke, he drew his scalping knife, and severed
the thongs that bound her wrists.

“Gracious on me!” cried the dame, chafing the parts which had been
swollen by the tightness of the cords, “how clever 'tis to get free agin, and
have the use o' one's hands and tongue, to do and say jest what a body
pleases; for d'ye know, Colonel Boone, them thar imps of Satan war awfully
afeared o' my talking to 'em, to convince 'em they war the meanest varmints
in the whole univarsal yarth o' creation, and actually put a peremshus stop
to my saying what I thought on 'em, although I told 'em as how it war a liberty
as these blessed colonies war this moment fighting for with the hateful
red-coated Britishers. But, Lord presarve us! gracious on us! where in
marcy's sake is my dear, darling Ella!” concluded Mrs. Younker, with vehemence
and alarm, as she now missed her adopted daughter for the first
time.

“She's here, mother,” answered a voice close behind her; and turning

round, the dame uttered a cry of joy, sprang into the arms of her son Isaac, and
wept upon his neck—occasionally articulating, in a choked voice:

“God bless you, Isaac! God bless you, son!—you're a good boy—the
Lord's presarved you through the whole on't—the Lord be praised!—but
your father, poor lad—your father!” and with a strong burst of emotion,
she buried her face upon his breast and wept aloud.

“I know it,” sobbed forth Isaac, his whole frame shaken with the force of
his feelings: “I—I know the whole on't mother—Ella's told me. I'd rather
he'd bin killed a thousand times; but thar's no help for it now!”

“No help for it!” cried Ella in alarm, who, having greeted the old hunter,
with tearful eyes, now stood weeping by his side. “No help for it! God of
mercy!—say not so! They must—they must be rescued!” Then turning
wildly to Boone, she grasped his hand in both of hers, and exclaimed: “Oh!
sir, speak! tell me they can be saved—and on my knees will I bless you!”

A few words now rapidly uttered by Isaac, put the old hunter in possession
of the facts, concerning the forced march of Younker and Reynolds, of
which he had previously heard nothing; and musing on the information a
few moments, he shook his head sadly, and said, with a sigh:

“I'm sorry for you, Ella—I'm sorry for all o' ye—I'm sorry on my own
account,—but I'm o' the opinion o' Isaac, that thar's no help for it now.
They're too far beyond us—we're in the Indian country—our numbers are
few—two or three o' the red varmints have escaped to give 'em information
o' what's been done—they'll be thirsty for revenge—and nothing but a
special Providence can now alter thar prisoners' doom. I had hoped it war to
be otherwise; but we must submit to God's decrees;” and raising his hand to
his eyes, the old woodsman hastily brushed away a tear, and turned aside to
conceal his emotion; while Ella, overcome by her feelings, at the thought
of having parted, perhaps for the last time, from Algernon and her uncle,
staggered forward and sunk powerless into the arms of Mrs. Younker, whose
tears now mingled with her own.

By this time the whole party had gathered silently around their noble leader,
and were observing the sad scene as much as the feeble light of the scattered
brands would permit, their faces exhibiting a mournfulness of expression
in striking contrast to that they had so lately displayed previous to the death
of their comrade. To them Boone now turned, and running his eye slowly
over the whole, said, in a sad voice:

“Well, lads, one o' our party's gone to his last account, I perceive,”
and he pointed mournfully to the still body of Beecher, some three or four
paces distant; “another I see is wounded, and a third's missing. I hope no
harm's befallen him, the noble Master Harry Millbanks!”

“Alas! he's dead, colonel!” answered Isaac, covering his eyes with his
hand.

“Dead!” echoed Boone.

“Dead!” cried the others simultaneously.

“Yes,” rejoined Isaac, with a sigh; “he and I war chasing that thar infernal
renegade Girty, who war running away with Ella thar, and he'd jest
got up to him, and got him by the arm, when Girty shuk him off like it
warn't nothing at all, and then shot him dead on the spot. Ef he hadn't a
bin quite so quick about it, I think as how it wouldn't a happened; for the
next moment I hit him a rap on the head with the but-end o' my rifle, that sent
him a staggering off, and would ha' fetched him to the ground, ef it hadn't
first struck a limb. Howsomever, it made him let go o' Ella, and start up a
new trail—jest leaving his compliments for me in the shape of a bullet, which,
ef it didn't do me no harm, it warn't 'cause he didn't intend it to. I jest

stopped to look at poor Harry, and finding he war dead, I took Ella by the
hand and come straight down here.”

“Who's that you said war dead, Isaac?” inquired his mother, who had
partially overheard the conversation.

“Harry Millbanks, mother.”

“Harry Millbanks!” repeated the dame in astonishment. What, young
Harry?—our Harry?—Goodness, gracious, marcy on me! what orful mean
wretches them Injens is, to kill sech as him. Dear me! then the hull family
is gone; for I hearn from Rosetta, that her father and mother and all war
killed afore her eyes; and now she's bin taken on to be killed too, the darling.”

“Ha! yes,” said Boone, as if struck with a new thought, “I remember
seeing the foot-prints of a child—war they made by this unfortunate young
man's sister?”

“I reckon as how they war,” answered Mrs. Younker; “for the poor
thing war a prisoner along with us, crying whensomever she dared to, like
all nater.”

“Well,” rejoined the old hunter, musingly, “we've done all we could—
I'm sorry it didn't turn out better—but we must now leave their fates in the
hands o' Providence, and return to our homes. We must bury our dead first;
and I don't know o' any better way, than to sink thar bodies in the Ohio.”

Accordingly, after some further conversation, four of the party proceeded
for the body of Millbanks—with which they soon returned—while Boone
conducted the ladies away from the scene of horror, and down to where Ella
informed him the canoes were hidden, leaving his younger companions to
rifle and scalp the savages if they chose. In a few minutes from his arrival
at the point in question, he was joined by the others, who came slowly, in
silence, bearing the mortal remains of Millbanks and Beecher. Placing the
canoes in the water, the whole party entered them, in the same silent and
solemn manner, and pulled slowly down the Miami, into the middle of the
Ohio; then leaving the vessels to float with the current, they uncovered
their heads, and mournfully consigned the bodies of the deceased to the watery
element.

It was a sad and impressive scene—there, on the turbid Ohio, near the
midnight hour—to give to the rolling waters the last remains of those who
had been their friends and companions, and as full of life and activity as
themselves but an hour before;—it was a sad, impressive, and affecting
scene—one that was looked upon with weeping eyes—and one which, by
those who witnessed it, was never to be forgotten. There were no loud
bursts of grief—there were no frantic exclamations of wo—but the place—
the hour—and withal the various events which had transpired to call them
so soon from a scene of festivity to one of mourning—together with the
thoughts of other friends departed, or in terrible captivity,—served to render
it a most painfully solemn one,—and one, as we said before, that was destined
never to be forgotten.

For a short space after the river engulphed the bodies, all gazed upon the
waters in silence when Boone said, in a voice slightly trembling.

“They did their duties—they have gone—God rest their souls, and give
peace to their bones!” and taking up a paddle, the noble old hunter pulled
steadily for the Kentucky shore, in silence, followed by the other boats in
the same manner. There they landed, placed the canoes in safety, in case
they should again be needed, rekindled their fire, and encamped for the night.

On the following morning, they set out upon their homeward journey,
where they finally arrived, without any events occurring worthy of note.