"I suppose we only gratified a kind of sentiment in shooting those wolves," he said, " but I for one am glad we did it.""So am I," said Paul.
"Me, too," said the other three together.
They went back to their positions near the wall, and one by one fell asleep.No more wolves howled that night anywhere near them.
When the five awakened the next morning the rain had ceased, and a splendid sun was tinting a blue sky with gold.Jim Hart built a fire among the blackened logs, and cooked venison.They had also brought from Fort Penn a little coffee, which Long Jim carried with a small coffee pot in his camp kit, and everyone had a small tin cup.He made coffee for them, an uncommon wilderness luxury, in which they could rarely indulge, and they were heartened and strengthened by it.
Then they went again up the valley, as beautiful as ever, with its silver river in the center, and its green mountain walls on either side.But the beauty was for the eye only.It did not reach the hearts of those who had seen it before.All of the five loved the wilderness, but they felt now how tragic silence and desolation could be where human life and all the daily ways of human life had been.
It was mid-summer, but the wilderness was already reclaiming its own.The game knew that man was gone, and it had come back into the valley.Deer ate what had grown in the fields and gardens, and the wolves were everywhere.The whole black tragedy was written for miles.They were never out of sight of some trace of it, and their anger grew again as they advanced in the blackened path of the victorious Indians.
It was their purpose now to hang on the Indian flank as scouts and skirmishers, until an American army was formed for a campaign against the Iroquois, which they were sure must be conducted sooner or later.Meanwhile they could be of great aid, gathering news of the Indian plans, and, when that army of which they dreamed should finally march, they could help it most of all by warning it of ambush, the Indian's deadliest weapon.
Everyone of the five had already perceived a fact which was manifest in all wars with the Indians along the whole border from North to South, as it steadily shifted farther West.The practical hunter and scout was always more than a match for the Indian, man for man, but, when the raw levies of settlers were hastily gathered to stem invasion, they were invariably at a great disadvantage.They were likely to be caught in ambush by overwhelming numbers, and to be cut down, as had just happened at Wyoming.The same fate might attend an invasion of the Iroquois country, even by a large army of regular troops, and Henry and his comrades resolved upon doing their utmost to prevent it.An army needed eyes, and it could have none better than those five pairs.So they went swiftly up the valley and northward and eastward, into the country of the Iroquois.They had a plan of approaching the upper Mohawk village of Canajoharie, where one account says that Thayendanegea was born, although another credits his birthplace to the upper banks of the Ohio.
They turned now from the valley to the deep woods.The trail showed that the great Indian force, after disembarking again, split into large parties, everyone loaded with spoil and bound for its home village.The five noted several of the trails, but one of them consumed the whole attention of Silent Tom Ross.
He saw in the soft soil near a creek bank the footsteps of about eight Indians, and, mingled with them, other footsteps, which he took to be those of a white woman and of several children, captives, as even a tyro would infer.The soul of Tom, the good, honest, and inarticulate frontiersman, stirred within him.Awhite woman and her children being carried off to savagery, to be lost forevermore to their kind! Tom, still inarticulate, felt his heart pierced with sadness at the tale that the tracks in the soft mud told so plainly.But despair was not the only emotion in his heart.The silent and brave man meant to act.
"Henry," he said, "see these tracks here in the soft spot by the creek."The young leader read the forest page, and it told him exactly the same tale that it had told Tom Ross.
"About a day old, I think," he said.
"Just about," said Tom; "an' I reckon, Henry, you know what's in my mind.""I think I do," said Henry, " and we ought to overtake them by to-morrow night.You tell the others, Tom."Tom informed Shif'less Sol, Paul, and Long Jim in a few words, receiving from everyone a glad assent, and then the five followed fast on the trail.They knew that the Indians could not go very fast, as their speed must be that of the slowest, namely, that of the children, and it seemed likely that Henry's prediction of overtaking them on the following night would come true.
It was an easy trail.Here and there were tiny fragments of cloth, caught by a bush from the dress of a captive.In one place they saw a fragment of a child's shoe that had been dropped off and abandoned.Paul picked up the worn piece of leather and examined it.
"I think it was worn by a girl," he said, "and, judging from its size, she could not have been more than eight years old.Think of a child like that being made to walk five or six hundred miles through these woods!""Younger ones still have had to do it," said Shif'less Sol gravely, "an' them that couldn't-well, the tomahawk."The trail was leading them toward the Seneca country, and they had no doubt that the Indians were Senecas, who had been more numerous than any others of the Six Nations at the Wyoming battle.They came that afternoon to a camp fire beside which the warriors and captives had slept the night before.
"They ate bar meat an' wild turkey," said Long Jim, looking at some bones on the ground.
