Ned in the Block-House: A Tale of Early Days in the West

by Edward Sylvester Ellis

Deerfoot the Shawanoe first pinned the rattlesnake to the earth with the arrow which he threw with his deft left hand, then he flung the reptile from his path and resumed his delicate and dangerous attempt to creep past the three Wyandots who were lying against the hank of the Licking, watching the block-house, now and then firing a shot at the solid logs, as if to express their wishes respecting the occupants of the building.

If the task was almost impossible at first, it soon became utterly so, as the young Shawanoe was compelled to admit. The contour of the bank was such that, after getting by the log, he would be compelled to approach the warriors so close that he could touch them with his outstretched hand. This would have answered at night, when they were asleep, but he might as well have attempted to lift himself through the air as to do it under the circumstances we have described.

Deerfoot never despaired nor gave up so long as he held space in which to move. He immediately repeated the retrograde motion he had used when confronted by the venomous serpent, his wish now being to return to the spot from which he fired the arrow.

The ventures made satisfied him that he had but one chance in a thousand of escaping capture and death. He could not move to the right nor left: it would have been certain destruction to show himself on the clearing, and equally fatal to attempt to use the shallow Licking behind him.

There was a remote possibility that the arrowy messenger which he had sent from his bow had not been noticed by any of the besieging Wyandots, and that, as considerable time had already passed, none of them would come over to where he was to inquire into the matter.

If they would keep as far away from him as they were when his friend Ned Preston started on his desperate run for the block-house, of course he would be safe. He could wait where he was, lying flat on the ground, through all the long hours of the day, until the mantle of night should give him the chance for which he sighed.

Ah, but for one hour of darkness! His flight from the point of danger would be but pastime.

The single chance in a thousand was that which we have named: the remote possibility that none of the Wyandots would come any nearer to where he was hugging the river bank.

For a full hour Deerfoot was in suspense, with a fluttering hope that it might be his fortune to wait until the sun should climb to the zenith and sink in the west; for, young as was the Shawanoe, he had learned the great truth that in the affairs of this world no push or energy will win, where the virtue of patience is lacking. Many a time a single move, born of impatience, has brought irretrievable disaster, where success otherwise was certain.

As the Shawanoe lay against the bank, looking across the clearing toward the block-house, he recalled that message which, instead of being spoken, as were all that he knew of, was carried on the arrow he sent through the window. If he but understood how to place those words on paper or on a dried leaf even, he would send another missive to Colonel Preston, saying that, inasmuch as he was shut in from all hope of escape, he would make the effort to run across the open space, as did his friends before him.