The coonskin cap, the grizzly whiskers, the rough garments were frosted with tiny snowflakes which glistened and glinted in the fire-light like points of burnished silver. The figure was as motionless as were the three Wyandots, who could only stare at what must have seemed an apparition from the other world. As they gazed, the figure spoke in a slow sepulchral voice—
"Let the Wyandot chieftain and his warriors go back to their squaws and pappooses, for the pale-face is hurrying through the forest to burn his lodges and to make captive his children! The Great Spirit commands that the Wyandots shall go."
Having uttered these extraordinary words, Jo Stinger took several steps backward, without moving a muscle of the upper portion of his body, so silently and imperceptibly that he seemed to dissolve in the surrounding darkness.
The moment after, Waughtauk uttered a cry of such distress that the Wyandots in the immediate neighborhood heard it and hurried to him. Stinger was quick to perceive his chance, and hurrying to the door of the block-house, he rapped so sharply on it that the listening Colonel Preston hurried down the ladder and approached the entrance.
"Who's there?" asked the commandant, in a guarded voice.
"Me—Jo; it's all right; quick, let me in afore the varmints get back!"
There was no mistaking the voice, and Colonel Preston removed the fastenings with a nervous haste, which did not leave him until his friend was inside, and the bars were replaced in their sockets.
He then grasped the hand of Jo and shook it warmly, for the relief of all over the return of the invaluable scout was beyond expression. They hurriedly went up the ladder, where all, including Mrs. Preston, who declared she could sleep no more that night, listened to the stirring story which Jo had to tell. His auditors fairly held their breath when he drew the picture of himself standing at the window of the cabin, with his rifle pointed at the Wyandot chief, and commanding him in the name of the Great Spirit to hasten to protect his own lodges from the invading white man.
"You gave him such a fright that he may strike his tents and leave," suggested Colonel Preston.
"No," said Jo; "such things have been done, and Simon Kenton once played the trick so well that he kept a party of Delawares from massacreing a white family going down the Ohio, but Kenton had a much better show than me."