It would require a volume to detail the exploits of these Riflemen. Unlike many other confederations that were formed about this period, their only object was that of self-defense, and of offering protection to the settlers who were constantly penetrating the Great West. No innocent Indians ever suffered at their hands, and many was the one they befriended and assisted in his extremity. But woe betide the offender that fell into their hands. To the cruel they were unsparing; to the merciless they showed no mercy. While their name was loved and revered by the whites, it was feared and execrated by the savages. The Shawnees were unusually active and vindictive at this time, and it was with them that the most frequent encounters took place. The incident detailed in the first chapter was but one among many that were constantly occurring, and it scarcely equaled in importance numerous exploits that they had before performed.
There was a fifth member, who joined the Riflemen only a year or two previous to the period in which we design to notice their actions more particularly. He was known as Ferdinand Sego, and became a member from a part which he performed one night on the Ohio, when the Riflemen were attacked by three times their number. He displayed such activity, skill and courage, that he was importuned to unite with them, although, up to this time, they had refused to receive any accessions to their number. He consented, and from that time forward the Riflemen of the Miami numbered five hunters.
Sego joined them, however, with the understanding that he should be obliged to absent himself from time to time. At regular intervals he left them, and was gone sometimes for over a week. As he had no rifle, the cause of these excursions remained a mystery to his friends until he chose to reveal it himself. It then turned out that it was nothing less than a female that exercised such a potent influence upon him. Sego, as he became intimately acquainted with his friends, often spoke of this girl, and of the great affection he bore her. One day he gave her name—Edith Sudbury. This excited no unusual interest, until Lewis Dernor learned, on the day that he encountered the emigrants, that he and Sego loved the same girl!
This was the cause of his unusual agitation, and the pain he felt at hearing her name pronounced. He entertained the strongest friendship for Sego, but, until he had met Edith, he had never known any thing, by experience, of the divine power of our nature. When he did love, therefore, it was with his whole soul and being. His companions, less sagacious in sentimental affairs than worldly, failed to divine the cause of the singular actions of their leader, who did his utmost to conceal it from them. Little did he dream, as he listened to the enthusiastic praises of Edith by Sego, that it was the being who constantly occupied his thoughts. But the truth had broken upon him like a peal of thunder at midday.
On the day succeeding Lewis' departure from the settlers, three of his men, O'Hara, Dernor and Allmat, stood on the banks of the Miami, several hundred yards above their rendezvous. The sky was clear and sunshiny, and they were making ready for a trial of skill with their rifles. From where they stood, the most practiced eye would have failed to discover any spot which could possibly afford shelter for one of their number, much less for them all. But beneath a cluster of bushes, projecting from the upper edge of the bank, was an orifice, barely sufficient to admit the passage of a man's body. Entering this, on his hands and knees, he was ushered into a subterranean cave, dark, but of ample dimensions to accommodate a dozen men. It was furnished with blankets and the skins of different animals, and each of the Riflemen took especial pride in decorating and fixing it up for their convenience.
Dick paced off two hundred yards, and then chipped a small piece from the trunk of a beech tree along the river-bank, as a target for their weapons. As he stepped one side, O'Hara raised his piece, and scarcely pausing to take aim, fired. Instead of striking the mark, he missed it by fully two inches. When this was announced, he turned round, and with an impatient exclamation, demanded:
"Who fired that gun last?"
"I believe I did," replied Dernor.
"You just touch it again, and you'll never touch another rifle. Do you know what you have done?"
"Know what I've done? Of course I do. I've fired it."