CHAPTER XXXI
FATHER AND SON
When Dave regained his senses all was dark around him and his head ached as it had never ached before. He was lying flat on his back, close to some brushwood growing beside the river. At a short distance glowed the dying embers of a camp-fire and around this the youth made out the forms of a score of Indians, four on guard and the others sleeping.
Hardly realizing what he was doing, he put forth a hand and felt the clothing of somebody beside him. With an effort he turned his head to look in the direction and weak as he was gave a start. The person was the Ranger Barringford had been carrying and he was stone dead and scalped.
Under ordinary conditions Dave would have left the place horrified. But on trying to sit up he found himself so weak that the effort was a failure and he fell back with his head in a whirl and sharp pains flashing across his eyes. He had been struck down with the flat side of a tomahawk and although his skull was not cracked it was sadly bruised.
“I am in for it now,” was his dismal thought. “If the French allow it these redskins will certainly burn me at the stake. I wonder where Sam is?”
In vain he asked himself the question. His old friend was nowhere in sight. On the other side of him lay two English soldiers, one dead like the Ranger, and the other wounded in the breast. Presently the latter began to moan piteously.
“Boys, don’t be a-leavin’ me ’ere, so far from ’ome,” he panted. “Take me with yer. An’ give me a drop of water, won’t yer?” And then he began to mumble to himself of home and of some friends he had left behind in “Lunnon town.” He was a tall, heavy-set grenadier, and his beautiful uniform was dyed deep with his life’s blood.
Dave, too, was thirsty and would have given a good deal for a drink from the river which rolled so tantalizingly near. Once he thought to call on the Indian guard, but then grated his teeth and remained silent.
“They would only kick me for disturbing them,” he reasoned, and truthfully. “They are only leaving me alive so that they may torture me. Oh, if only I knew what had become of Sam!”
Slowly the night wore away until with the first streak of dawn the camp was astir. Dave had fallen into a light doze from which he was aroused by an Indian raising him up on the end of his moccasin.