Mad Anthony's scouts; or, The rangers of Kentucky

by Edward Sylvester Ellis

Waring, under the belief that they had penetrated further into Kentucky, for a long time examined the ground only upon that side of the fire. His efforts meeting with no success, he resorted to the opposite side, where the trail was discovered at once.

It being impossible to find any further signs of the passage of the Shawanoes in any other direction, he concluded that both parties must have gone this way, which, somewhat to his surprise, led toward the river. Keeping along on the trail, he found, as he had feared, that they had embarked in their canoes, and gone either up, down, or across the stream.

"And how am I to tell which way?" he muttered. "I must run the risk of getting the wrong choice out of these three." Waring, under ordinary circumstances, would have been discouraged at the formidable obstacles which now rose before him; but one of his temperament could never rest while the object of his choice was a captive in the hands of the savages, and he, therefore, did not once think of turning back.

"They cannot have gone up the river," he reflected, "because they have come from that direction. And yet what reason is that why they should not have done so? Yet it strikes me that they have not taken that course. They could have gone much more rapidly overland. If their destination is in Kentucky, it surely is not on the banks of the Ohio; it must be a good distance back from the river, so that they would only have lengthened their journey by taking to the water. From all that I have ever heard or read of the Shawanoes Indians—to whom this war party surely belongs—I have been led to suppose that although they range at will on both sides of the river, still their towns and villages, and their home, in fact, is in southern Ohio. And what more natural, now that they have secured their prisoner, than that they should return to their home as rapidly as possible? Such, it seems reasonable to believe, is the true state of the case, and I must cross the river again."

Waring was on the point of venturing into the river, when his attention was arrested by a loud splash in the direction of the flat-boat, and to his surprise he descried several Indians upon it. Finding that he was not observed, he drew back and watched their actions.

A glance convinced him that they belonged to the same war party of Shawanoes, and were searching the craft for plunder. They had thrown over a sort of bench, which was fastened, bottom upward, to the stern of a canoe. They were some half dozen savages, who, a moment later, shoved off and paddled down stream.

Their light craft shot rapidly forward, inclining neither to one shore nor the other. From this, Waring's belief that the main body had crossed the river was changed into the conviction that they had all gone down the stream in their canoes; and that all that remained for him to do was to keep these redskins in sight.

This was a difficult task, indeed. Under the skilful guidance of the sinewy Indian, their canoe skimmed like a swallow over the water, and it required the most strenuous efforts of Waring to keep it in sight. Fortunately, indeed, the wood, a few yards from the shore, was open, and his footsteps were not much impeded.

Hurrying thus forward, now and then darting to the river bank, he kept up the pursuit for five or six miles, the canoe all the time gaining upon him, until finally he lost sight of it behind a bend in the river.