The Riflemen of the Miami

by Edward Sylvester Ellis

With a want of foresight that was unaccountable, the settlers had failed to pay any further attention to the raft after it was fairly below them. Perhaps it was the recollection of this that led the elder Smith and one of his friends to walk down to the bank and look for it. They descried it, lying against their own side of the creek, not more than two hundred yards distant, and, at the very moment their eyes rested upon it, they caught a shadowy glimpse of an Indian, as he flitted noiselessly from it into the wood. As they waited and saw no more, they rightly judged that he was the last one, the others having landed entirely unobserved.

"That looks bad," said Smith, "we are not done with the rascals yet."

At this moment son Jim, who was still on the other side of the creek, called out that eight Indians had landed, and were stealing up the river bank to attack the party. His words were heard, and every man dropped on his face in the wood, and with loaded rifles waited the assault. They had scarcely done so when the sharp explosion of several guns broke the stillness, and the two foremost oxen, with a wild bellow of agony, sunk to the ground and died. The brutes behind them imitated their motion, although operated upon solely by their own sense of weariness. They thus unconsciously did the wisest thing possible under the circumstances, as the shots that were afterward fired passed harmlessly over them.

For the space of twenty minutes after this incident, a perfect silence reigned in the wood. These twenty minutes were occupied by the Shawnees in getting in a position to pick off the settlers. The latter could see them dodging from tree to tree, and coming closer and closer every moment. Emboldened by their immunity thus far, they became more incautious, until several exposed themselves so plainly that the elder Smith and one of the settlers fired precisely at the same moment, each one shooting a savage dead. A whole volley was returned, several bullets cutting the shrubbery and bushes over the heads of the settlers, while others passed through the wagon-covering, evidently fired with intent against the women and children in it. These shots accomplished nothing, as the latter kept their heads below the top of the heavy oaken sides, which were proof against the best rifle ever discharged.

The two shots of the settlers for a time created a sort of panic with the Indians. They retreated far more rapidly than they had come up, and in a few moments were invisible. The whites were too well versed in Indian ways and strategy to take this as a genuine retreat, knowing that in a few moments they would return more furious than ever.

There was an advantage in favor of the settlers of which, up to this moment, they had not been aware. Some fifty yards below them was an open space over forty feet in width, across which the Shawnees hurried pell mell into the cover beyond. Here they were reinforced by some half-dozen Indians of their own tribe, who had been in the vicinity and had been attracted by the sound of firing. The assailants now numbered about a dozen, and confident in their strength, made ready for the final attack.

All this time young Smith, upon the opposite side of the creek, was engaged in watching the Shawnees as well as he could from his covert. He now called out to the whites that they were about to advance again, and that he would pick off one at least as they passed across the open space referred to. A moment later, the crack of his rifle showed that he had kept his word and that the crisis of the contest was upon them.

Young Smith had fired just at the moment the foremost Indian came in view. The other had advanced to a point about half way across the opening, when five spouts of flame burst from the thick shrubbery upon the opposite side of the creek; there was the simultaneous report of as many rifles, and five messengers of death went tearing among the Shawnees, mangling, killing and scattering them like chaff in the whirlwind.

"The Riflemen of the Miami!" shouted Laughlin, in a delirium of joy, springing to his feet and swinging his cap over his head. All eyes, in a transport of pleasure, were turned toward the spot where the thin, blueish smoke of their rifles was rising, but for a few moments nothing was seen. At the expiration of that time, the manly form of Lewis Dernor rose to view, and, with a nod of recognition, he stepped into the stream and commenced wading across, closely followed by young Smith, who, up to the moment of the discharge of the rifles, had no more suspicion the hunters were in the vicinity than had the Shawnees themselves.

It scarcely need be said that the welcome which the settlers extended to the hunter was of the most hearty and genuine kind. Through his instrumentality they felt they all had been saved from massacre at the hands of the Shawnees.