Fifteen hundred went out from Cincinnati,—five hundred came back. A thousand scalps had Thayendanegea.
The news came to Mulberry Hill like a thunderbolt. Kentucky, even Pittsburg, looked for an immediate savage inundation,—for was not all that misty West full of warriors? The old fear leaped anew. Like an irresistible billow they might roll over the unprotected frontier.
From his bed of sickness General Clark started up. "Ah, Detroit! Detroit! Hadst thou been taken my countrymen need not have been so slaughtered."
At Marietta, up in the woods and on the side hills, glittered multitudes of fires, the camps of savages. Hunger added its pangs to fear. The beleaguered citizens sent all the money they could raise by two young men to buy salt, meat, and flour at Redstone-Old-Fort on the Monongahela. Suddenly the river closed with ice; in destitution Marietta waited.
"They have run off with the money," said some.
"They have been killed by Indians," said others. But again, as suddenly, the ice broke, and early in March the young men joyfully moored their precious Kentucky ark at the upper gate of the garrison at Marietta.
XXV
THE SWORD OF "MAD ANTHONY" WAYNE
"Another defeat will ruin the reputation of the government," said Washington, as he sent out "Mad Anthony" Wayne, the uproarious Quaker general, with ruffles, queue, and cocked hat, the stormer of Stony Point in the Revolution.
In vain Wayne sent commissioners to treat with the Indians. Elated with recent victories, "The Ohio shall be the boundary," was the defiant answer.
An Indian captured and brought to Wayne said of the British: "All their speeches to us are red, red as blood. All the wampum and feathers are painted red. Our war-pipes and hatchets are red. Even the tobacco is red for war."