Having now the river current in aid of the paddle-gear, they reached the confluence with the Ohio in a little more than two days. After what had taken place there a week or more before, they judged it prudent to go past “Cairo” during the small hours of the night. Beyond doubt this was a wise precaution. It was learned subsequently that the population of the old “broadhorn” was watching the river for them. Practical jokes have an unpleasant habit of coming home to roost.
On March 19th they “cordelled” up Letart’s “Falls,” the scene of their encounter with the Shawnees, and a little before sunset, three days later—just a year and two days from the time when they had started—the Milly Ayer rounded the bend below Fish Creek, and came in sight of home.
As the familiar hillocks and clearings came into view, Lewis, Moses and Wistar waxed wild with excitement and delight. They danced and whooped; Moses actually stood on his head, and Marion Royce felt his own heart beating hard and fast. But he was pondering gravely on all that might have happened during their long absence, and on the evil tidings that he must bear to the mother of Louis Gist and the wife of John Cutler.
Not one word from home had reached them in all that time; but he supposed that Corson and MacAfee had arrived long ago, bearing his message that the horse-boat was on her way.
In point of fact, however, no news had come to the home people since that black day in early June, when Gist had found his way back and reported the capture of the ark by the Indians.
Gist’s account had been doubted by many, and for a long time those anxious little homesteads had waited and hoped that further tidings would come. But when September and October passed and winter drew on, even the most sanguine grew hopeless; and how disconsolately the spring opened! For, not only had these pioneer families lost the fruits of two years’ hard labor, but also their most efficient young men. There seemed nothing left them with which to begin another year; not even heart and courage to labor on.
In the Royce and Hoyt families there was mourning for both their sons; and at the Ayer farmhouse grief more silent, perhaps, but even more poignant, was felt. Milly was among those who had hoped bravely on till midwinter. She and Molly Royce were the last to give up faith that Marion, Lewis and Moses had somehow escaped and would yet come back.
But when March passed and no tidings came, despair fell on them, too, and the despair of such hopeful young hearts is sad to witness. The little settlement was in mourning none the less sincere that there was no black crape or sable plume for outward symbols of it.
Yet one emblem of their grief these sad-faced women and girls were able to contrive. They wove and fashioned little shoulder capes from homespun linen, and dyed them black with an “ink” made by boiling the twigs of the swamp-maple. Nine of these little black capes were worn that spring, and one of those pathetic little tokens of pioneer sorrow is still in existence, the property of a lineal descendant of Milly Ayer.
That afternoon Milly and Molly chanced to be coming from Mrs. Merrick’s cabin, when, as they climbed the hillside, where a vista of the Ohio opened to view, Molly saw the “keel” rounding the bend.