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

by Edward Sylvester Ellis

But the thing was impossible: the door of the block-house was fastened, and if Deerfoot should start, he would reach it, if he reached it at all, before the Colonel could draw the first bolt. Even if the Shawanoe youth should succeed in making the point, which was extremely doubtful, now that the Wyandots were fully awake, the inevitable few seconds' halt there must prove fatal.

The short conversation which he had overheard, convinced him of the sentiments of Waughtauk and his warriors toward him, and led the young Shawanoe to determine on an effort to extricate himself. It is the very daring of such a scheme which sometimes succeeds, and he put it in execution without delay.

Instead of crouching to the ground, as he had been doing, he now rose upright and moved down the bank, in the direction of the three Wyandots who first turned him back. They were in their old position, and he had gone only a few steps when one of them turned his head and saw the youthful warrior approaching. He uttered a surprised "Hooh!" and the others looked around at the figure, as they might have done had it been an apparition.

The scheme of Deerfoot was to attempt the part of a friend of the Wyandots and consequently that of an enemy of the white race. He acted as if without thought of being anything else, and as though he never dreamed there was a suspicion of his loyalty.

At a leisurely gait he walked toward the three Indians, holding his head down somewhat, and glancing sideways through the scattered bushes at the top of the bank, as though afraid of a shot from the garrison.

"Have any of my brethren of the Wyandots been harmed by the dogs of the Yenghese?" asked Deerfoot in the high-flown language peculiar to his people.

"The eyes of Deerfoot must have been closed not to see Oo-oo-mat-ah lying on the ground before his eyes."

This was an allusion to the warrior who made the mistake of stopping Ned Preston when on his way to the block-house.

"Deerfoot saw Oo-oo-mat-ah fall, as falls the brave warrior fighting his foe; the eyes of Deerfoot were wet with tears, when his brave Wyandot brother fell."

Strictly speaking, a microscope would not have detected the first grain of truth in this grandiloquent declaration, which was accompanied by a gesture as though the audacious young Shawanoe was on the point of breaking into sobs again.