Scarcely had they disappeared, however, before the tall chief, whose ill-omened appearance and conduct we have noted, again darted out into the opening; when, with a quick, wild glance around him, and a yell of fiendish triumph, he rapidly whirled his arm aloft, and, the next instant, the glittering tomahawk was seen, like a shooting gleam of light, swiftly speeding its way on its death-doing errand.
One solitary, piercing shriek, suddenly cut short, and sinking into an appalling groan, rose from the fatal spot; while the white robes of the victim, like the ruffled pinions of some struck bird, came fluttering to the ground. The deed was done and the spirit of the beauteous and unfortunate Jane McRea had left its mangled tenement and fled forever! [Footnote: From the various published accounts of the massacre of Miss McRea, we have followed, in our illustrations of that melancholy tragedy, as far as our limits and plan permitted us to carry them, the one deemed by us the most probable. By way of finishing the details of the horrible scene, however, it may be proper here to state, that Captain Jones, the strangely infatuated lover, having despatched, for the reward of a barrel of rum, one party of Indians after her, and then a second one, for the same reward, had started to meet her, when, encountering the murderer with the scalp, which he recognized by the peculiar color and length of the hair, he hastened, in a state bordering on absolute distraction, to the fatal scene. A British officer, with a few attendants, had, in the mean time, removed the corpse to a wagon by the road side, and was guarding it, when the lover arrived to claim it. But his lamentations were so terrible, and his conduct so frantic, that it was deemed advisable to remove him, and bury the remains from his sight. From that hour, the bereaved lover was an altered and ruined man. And he died soon after, as there is every reason to believe, of a broken heart.]
A momentary pause ensued; when, amidst the intermingling shouts and cries of murder and vengeance, that now burst from both scouts and Indians, the fiend-like perpetrator of the foul deed, who had been seen to leap forward towards his fallen victim with his scalping-knife, bounded back into the road, and, there holding up and shaking the gory trophy at his rival, immediately plunged into the forest and disappeared. The next moment a detachment of British cavalry, who had been sent out to intercept the scouts, came thundering down the road, and put an end to the tumult. Turning away in horror from the spot, now made dangerous by the presence of the British, who, on seeing what was done, and learning the facts, soon began to scatter in all directions after the murderer, Miss Haviland and her guide hastily resumed their journey by the route which the latter had discovered for avoiding the road, and which they pursued till dark, when, arriving at the house of a family in the interest of the American cause, they found a comfortable shelter for the night, and the repose so much needed to counteract the effect of the agitating events of the day on our heroine, and fortify her for the trials yet in store for her.
CHAPTER XI.
“Still on? Have not the forest gloom,
The taunt of foes, the threatened doom,
Shaken thy courage yet?”
The indefatigable Bart, after seeing the object of his greatest solicitude in safety for the night, that of his next, his loved Lightfoot, well stabled and fed, and, lastly, his own wants supplied, determined, with his usual caution and forethought, on making a little tour of observation to Fort Edward, now some miles in the rear, for the purpose of gathering what new intelligence could be gained respecting the movements of the enemy, which might both enhance the value of his budget of news to carry home, and enable him to shape his course more understandingly and safely on the morrow. Accordingly, in the new disguise of a barefooted, bareheaded, coatless farmer's boy, with a basket of green corn to sell for roasting slung on his arm, he proceeded on foot to the recently-established rendezvous of the enemy at the place above named, and boldly entered their encampment. Here he soon made discoveries that filled him with uneasiness, and, finally, those which thoroughly alarmed him for his own and the safety of his charge. The whole camp was in a state of bustle and commotion. Colonel Baum, in anticipation of the time fixed for his march, had just arrived with his appointed force, and was intending, after allowing his troops a short respite, to press immediately forward that night on the contemplated expedition. Bands of painted Indians, who had also arrived from the main army since dark, were feasting and drinking in grim revelry, or enacting the frightful war-dance, on the outskirts of the encampment. Parties of tories were constantly coming in from the surrounding towns, receiving arms, and departing to their different allotted stations, to act as pickets to the force about to advance, or as scouts to scour the country along the road to the south. And at last, to crown all, Peters and Haviland, with a small number of attendants, all bearing, on their bespattered persons, evidence of hard and rapid travelling, rode hurriedly into camp, and announced that a dangerous spy had, that afternoon, been at the head-quarters of the main army audaciously abducted a young lady, and with her escaped in this direction, for the arrest of which a handsome reward should be paid.
“It is time you and I was jogging, Bart,” muttered the unsuspected personage within hearing, who deemed himself not the least interested in this unexpected announcement, as he gradually edged himself out of the camp, and made his way, with unusual haste, back to his quarters for the night.
Scarcely had the first faint suffusions of morning light begun to be distinguishable in the chambers of the east, before the well-recruited Lightfoot stood pawing at the door, as if impatient to receive and bear off her precious burden from the scene of danger. In a few minutes, the fair fugitive, in answer to the summons of her vigilant attendant, came forth, evidently refreshed by her repose, and, in a good measure, recovered from the shock occasioned by the sad and fearful spectacles of yesterday. Without any allusions to the startling discoveries he had made since they parted for the night, other than the quiet remark that he had ascertained that it might not be wholly safe for them to proceed any longer in the main road, Bart assisted the lady to mount, and led the way on their now doubly difficult and hazardous flight. Striking off obliquely to the left, into a partially cleared pine plain, and then, after thus proceeding a while, again turning to the right, they directed their course forward in a line parallel to the great thoroughfare to the south, but at a sufficient distance from it to insure them against the observation of all who might be passing therein, or scouting along its borders. And on, on, now through open fields, and now through dense forests, now through splashy pools, or rapid rivers, and now over sharp pitches or deep ravines, now in cross-roads or cow-paths, and now in trackless thickets, now over fenny moors, and now along the rocky declivities of mountains,—on, on, did they pursue their toilsome and weary way through the seemingly interminable hours of all the first half of that eventful day.