“Dunmore is Governor of Virginia,” commenced the stranger, “and General Lewis is marching with all the force that can be raised along the border, against Corn-planter at the head of the Shawnees, the Mingoes and the Wyandots. He has halted here, information having reached the ears of the General that the Indians, in great numbers, are at the junction of the Kanawha and the Ohio, ready to give him battle.”
As the stranger spoke, Treveling, with a bewildered air, was gazing around him. Slowly, little by little, the memory of the past came back to him.
The little glade now seemed familiar to his eyes. It had been the camping-ground of his own regiment.
“I do remember now!” he exclaimed. “Here I encamped the day before the fight. The glade has changed somewhat, though, since that time. Then, instead of this broad trail, there was naught but an Indian foot-path here.”
“Yes, it is some years since Lewis’ army eat their hog and hominy under the forest boughs that shadow in this little glade.”
“Why do you recall Lewis’ campaign?” asked Treveling.
“Wait a little and you shall learn,” said Benton, and an ominous light shone in his eyes as he spoke. “Here Lewis’ army halted to prepare for the deadly fight that they expected would come on the morrow. In this little opening your division was encamped. Your men had hardly laid aside their arms and begun to prepare their supper, when a blow was given and received. You, the colonel in command, were struck in the face and felled to the earth by a private soldier to whom you had given the lie.”
“Yes, I remember the circumstance now that you call it to my memory, although I had forgotten it long since,” said Treveling, calmly.
“The man who struck you was a volunteer; a man known far and wide as one of the best scouts in all the Ohio valley. He did not think for a moment that you wore the golden marks of a colonel on your shoulders while his were covered only by the buck-skin hunting-shirt of the borderer. You insulted him, and he struck you to his feet as any man would have done.”
“But, on the following morning, he paid dearly for that blow,” said Treveling, quickly.