Finding it was all useless to attempt to stay the tide, Wetzel, Captain Parks and Kingman attempted to save themselves. The two former successfully made their escape in the darkness, but the latter was wounded, and crawled for safety beneath a cluster of bushes. Here he lay all night, while the dreadful carnival went on. He caught sight of the shadowy forms rushing to and fro, heard the continual shrieks of the victims, and now and then the death yell of some over-venturesome Indian. He expected every moment to be discovered, and to share the fate of his companions.
When the morning finally dawned, the tumult died away, and overpowered by his exhaustion he fell asleep. When he awoke the day was well advanced. As he regained his consciousness he looked about him; but no person was visible. The massacre was finished.
Kingman crawled to a brook near by and quenched his thirst, and then made his way back again, seeing no prospect for him but to lie there and perish, or suffer a death of violence from the hands of the first one who should discover him.
He lay there all day. At nightfall he was startled by the appearance of a little whiffit of a dog directly in front of him. Knowing that some one else must be close at hand, he managed to lure the brute to him, when he cut his throat from ear to ear.
“There,” he muttered, as he wiped the blood from his hands, “you can’t betray my hiding place.—sh!”
Just then he looked up and saw the renegade Johnson but a few rods away, and apparently looking for something.
CHAPTER II.
POMPEY IN WAR.
“Dis yer gemmen ob color orter for to go to war, dat am sartin. While de rest am sheddin’ dar blood round dese parts, it ain’t right for him to be idle.”
Thus soliloquized Pompey when the forces marched from his village to join those in invading the Indian country. The reason he gave himself, however, was not the true step that influenced him. Through his thick skull there crept some such logic as this:
“If de best men lebe dis place, den dis place becomes de weakes’. De Injins will find dis out, and den what’s to sabe us dat stays behind? Whereas and wherefore dem dat goes away will be de safes’. Darfore, inasmuch as, de best ting I can do is to go wid ’em. Darfore, howsumever, I go.”