The upshot of the matter was that Henry was taken to the camp Jean Bevoir and Moon Eye had made in the forest. Bevoir hailed the coming of the young prisoner with keen delight.
“Ha! so ve haf at least von of dem!” said he, rubbing his hands together. “How you like to be prisonair, hey?”
“Not at all,” answered Henry, bluntly. “Now you have me, what do you intend to do, Jean Bevoir?”
“You shall soon see, oui! I haf not forgot ze past, no! no! I tak care of you, by gar!” And Jean Bevoir shook his fist in poor Henry’s face.
“You will gain nothing by mistreating me,” went on the youth, as steadily as he could. “Sooner or later the law will get hold of you. The best thing you can do is to let me go.”
“I not let you go. Ve shall fight zem at ze post. Ve vin sure—but if ve lose, hey? I haf you, hey? Vat can za do to Jean Bevoir if you be a prisonair, hey? If za keel me den my men keel you! Now you understand, oui?”
Henry did understand, and it made his heart sink lower than ever. By holding him a prisoner the Frenchman expected to keep himself from harm. If he was captured he would warn his captors not to harm him, otherwise Henry must suffer.
The preparations for attacking the post were now going forward, and a little later Henry was removed in the care of two Indians to a station still further up the Ohio. Here some of the red men had something of a village, and here, to his astonishment, the youth found many of the horses of the pack-train and also the sick man who had so mysteriously disappeared.
The sick man lay in a wigwam on some blankets. Strange to relate, his recent adventures had not made him any weaker than he had formerly been; in fact, they appeared to have helped him.
“I, too, tried to get away, on one of the horses,” he said. “But some Indians followed me up, and captured me. They brought me to this place, and an old Indian medicine man gave me some medicine which has helped me wonderfully.”