All was bustle within the Indian village. To one used to the Indian customs, it would have been plain that the red-skins were preparing for the war-path.
The village was alive with warriors. Gayly-painted savages, decked with ocher and vermilion, strutted proudly up and down, eagerly waiting for the time to come when, like tigers, they could spring upon the pale-faces and redden their weapons with the blood of their hated foes.
Over the village ruled the great chief, Ke-ne-ha-ha, or “The-man-that-walks”—so termed, first, because he was reputed to be the fastest runner of any red braves in the Ohio valley, Shawnee, Wyandot or Mingo; second, that when a youth, on his first war-path against the Hurons, he had stolen by night into the midst of a Huron village, literally walked among the sleeping warriors, and brought back to his comrades the scalp of a great Huron chief, whom he had dispatched without alarming the sleepers—the greatest warrior in all the Shawnee nation—a chief wise in council, brave on the war-path, and wily as the red fox.
In the village of the red-men were two whose skins were white, though they were Indians at heart. The two were renegades from their country and their kin.
These two stood together by the river’s bank, and idly watched the daring and howling warriors. They were dressed in the Indian fashion, and were sinewy, powerful men in build.
The taller of the two, whose hair and eyes were dark, was called Simon Girty. At one time he had been reputed to be one of the best scouts on the border, but, for some reason, he had forsaken the settlements and found a home with the fierce red-men of the forest-wild, giving up home, country, friends, every thing. He had been adopted into the Indian tribe, and none of his red-skinned brothers seemed to bear as deadly a hatred to the whites as this renegade, Simon Girty.
His companion was not quite so tall, or as stoutly built. He was called David Kendrick, and was an adopted son of the Shawnees, as Girty was of the Wyandots.
“This is going to be a bloody business,” said Girty, as he surveyed the yelling Indians, who were busy in the “scalp-dance.”
“Yes, our chief, Ke-ne-ha-ha, has sworn to break the power of the whites along the Ohio. The braves are well provided with arms by the British Governor. Kentucky never saw such a force upon her border as this will be,” replied the other.
“The more the better,” said the renegade, Girty, moodily.