“Of course not. I won’t believe he’s dead if he don’t come back for a month, unless Moffat comes in and says he saw him go under.”
“If you have nothing to detain you, suppose you go on to the house. The families are very anxious to get the particulars, and I suppose your wife is looking with much concern for your reappearance.”
“Umph! not much, I guess; but I’ll go down with you, for I happen to be most confoundedly hungry.”
CHAPTER VII.
WAITING AND WATCHING.
The result of the battle had one salutary effect upon the settlement: it gave every one a true sense of the danger in which they all stood. Thus far they had relied too much upon the good-heartedness of the Indians. They now saw their mistake, and remedied it before it was too late. Most of the men set to work, and in a short time a double row of firm pickets enclosed the settlement. Although buried deeply and firmly into the earth, of course they were not impregnable; but they were a protection which few settlements on the frontier were willing to do without. They enclosed the settlement in the shape of a square, with a block-house, well manned, at each corner.
A scout, whose principal duty was to skirt along the Ohio and watch the movements of the hostile tribes, came in a short time after the battle and reported that a flat-boat, with some thirty persons on board, bound for this settlement, had been enticed into shore by a white man, not more than a dozen miles up the river, and every one tomahawked!
The scout believed that the renegade was no other than the notorious Pete Johnson, who figured in our account of the battle of Chillicothe. Girty was at the bottom of the affair and had given strict and positive orders that no white man, woman, or child who fell into their hands should be spared!
This scout’s present duty was to visit the settlements along the frontier and warn them to make preparations for the worst. The Indians were evidently concentrating to strike some decisive blow against civilization, and woe to the villages whose sentinels slumbered and who were found unprepared.
There could no longer be any doubt of the intentions of the tribes through the whole territory.
“A war, and a long and bloody one, I fear, is unavoidable,” remarked Edwards, in conversation with the scout.