At the appointed time word reached the valley that a large force of Indians had gathered at Kittanning. The last meeting of the plotters was held April 10, in the forest, and thirty-one took the oath of allegiance and pledged themselves to follow Weston.
On the following morning, at the break of day they began their march over the mountains. In the afternoon of the second day they had come within a few miles of their intended destination, when they encountered a band of about 100 Iroquois Indians. The savages burst suddenly out of the thicket in full war paint.
John Weston sprang forward, waving his hand and crying out, “Friends! Friends!” The Indians were not in the British conspiracy, but were bent on a plundering raid on their own account and regarded Weston and his armed companions as a hostile party.
The Indian chieftain fired at Weston, and the Tory leader fell dead. His startled and horrified followers halted in dread astonishment. Another of the savages sprang forward and, before the ignorant borderers could recover from their surprise, tore the scalp from Weston’s head.
At this point McKee rushed out, holding aloft in one hand a white handkerchief and in the other hand the letter from the British officer at Carlisle, and called out to the Indians: “Brothers! Brothers!” The savages did not respond. Almost as suddenly as they appeared they vanished into the undergrowth, leaving the bewildered mountaineers alone with their dead and scalped leader. Weston was buried where he fell.
The Tories feared to go forward and even more to return to their homes. They held a consultation, when some declared their intention to return to Bedford County, but others feared arrest and determined they would seek safety elsewhere.
Hard was the fate of this company. Some of them wandered in the forests and perished from hunger. Some of them made their way to the southward, and reached British posts after great suffering. Five of them returned to their homes in Sinking Spring Valley and were seized by the aroused frontiersmen and lodged in the log jail at Bedford.
Richard Weston, brother of the slain leader, was caught near his home by a party of settlers going to work in the lead mines there, and he was sent under guard to Carlisle. Weston confessed the whole plot, but claimed he had been misled by his older brother. He escaped from prison before his trial, so his taint of treason was hardly to be blamed on his brother.
The Supreme Executive Council ordered a special court to try the prisoners at Bedford. It held two sessions in the fall of 1778 and spring of 1779, with General John Armstrong, of Carlisle, as president. The court failed to convict any of the defendants on the charge of high treason. The leaders were either dead or out of the country, and the few men brought before the court seemed to be sufficiently punished by their imprisonment and the contempt of their neighbors.
Those who fled away were tainted with treason and their estates were declared forfeited.