In due course of time the army of which the picked Wyandot warriors formed a part, met their English foemen on Braddock’s Field, completely routing and all but annihilating them. General Braddock himself was shot from behind by one of his own men in the wild stampede, and the French and Indians were completely victorious.
Surveying the gorey[gorey] scene, every wooded glade lying thick with dead redcoats and broken accoutrements, Weguarran carefully opened the panther skin pouch at his best, taking out the sprig of Prostrate Juniper. Then he lifted the handsome wild pigeon from its bottle-nosed cage of oak withes, and with a light leathern string, affixed the little twig, on which the berries still clustered, to the bird’s leg, then tossed the feathered messenger up into the air.
The pigeon quickly rose above the trees, circled a few times, and then started rapidly for the east, as fast as his broad, strong wings could carry him.
This done, Weguarran visited his chief, obtaining leave to proceed to Bethlehem to claim his bride, promising to report back with her on the banks of the Ohio as speedily as possible. The pigeon naturally had a good start, and by the next morning was flying over the palisaded walls of John Harris’ Trading Post on the Susquehanna.
A love story was being enacted within those walls, in the shadow of one of the huge sheds used in winter to store hides. Keturah Lindsay, Harris’ niece, an attractive, curly-haired Scotch girl, was talking with a young Missionary whom she admired very much, Reverend Charles Pyrleus, the protege of Col. Conrad Weiser.
Unfortunately they had to meet by stealth as his attentions were not favored by the girl’s relatives, who considered him of inferior antecedents. They had met in the shed this fair July morning, whether by design or accident, no one can tell, and were enjoying one another’s society to the utmost.
In the midst of their mutual adoration, the dinner gong was sounded at the trading house, and Keturah, fearful of a scolding, reluctantly broke away. As she came out into the sunlight, she noticed a handsome wild pigeon drop down, as if exhausted, on one of the topmost stakes of the palisade which surrounded the trading house and sheds.
Keturah, like many frontier girls, always carried a gun, and quickly taking aim, fired, making the feathers fly, knocking the bird off its perch, and it seemed to fall to the ground outside the stockade[stockade]. In a minute it rose, and started to fly off towards the east. She had reloaded, so fired a second time, but missed.
“How strange to see a wild pigeon travelling through here at this time of year,” she thought, as carrying her smoking firearm, she hurried to the mess room of the big log trading house.
The messenger pigeon had been grievously[grievously] hurt, but was determined to go “home.” On and on it went, sometimes “dipping” like a swallow, from loss of blood, but by sheer will power keeping on the wing. As it neared the foothills of the South Mountains, near the village of Hockersville, with old Derry Church down in the vale, it faltered, spun about like a pin wheel, and fell with a thud. Gulping and blinking a few times, it spread out its wide pinions and lay on its breastbone–stone dead–the twig of Prostrate Juniper still affixed to one of its carmine feet. There it lay, brave in death, until the storms and winds shivered it, and it rotted into the ground.