Why she had done so, she could never tell, but doubtless it was a spark of love lain dormant since the old days at Chateau Gaspar, when she had seen the young outlaw breaking her father’s unmanageable colts, that furnished the motive for the elopement.
In the glade, where at an early hour in the morning, Girty and his fair companion joined his entourage of Indians and white outlaws, Simon, in the presence of all, unsheathed his formidable hunting knife, a relic of his first campaign against the Indians when he belonged to the Virginia “Long Knives,” and cut a notch on the stock of his trusty rifle, which was handed to him by his favorite bodyguard, a half Jew, half Indian, named Mamolen, a native of Heidelberg in Berks County.
Although during the past eight years he had personally killed and scalped over a hundred Indians and whites, Girty had never, as the other frontiersmen always did, “nicked” his rifle stock.
Turning to Lady Claypoole with a smile, he said: “Some day I will tell you why I have cut this notch; it is a long and curious story.”
In order to have her safe from capture or molestation, Girty took the woman on a lengthy and perilous journey to Kentucky, “the dark and bloody ground.” To the country of the mysterious Green River, in what is now Edmonson County, land of caves, and sinks, and knobs, and subterranean lakes and streams, amid hardwood groves and limestone, he built a substantial log house, where he left her, protected only by the faithful Mamolen, while he returned to fight with the French and Indians along the banks of the Ohe-yu, “The Beautiful River.”
The defeat of the allied forces by the British, and the abandonment of Fort Duquesne, were sore blows to Simon Girty’s plans and hopes, but his position and prestige among the Indians remained undimmed.
Claypoole, though promoted to full Colonel, did not take part in any of the battles, being intermittently off on leave, hunting for his recreant wife, and spluttering vengeance against “that snake, that dog, Girty,” as he alternately called him. It seemed as if the earth had swallowed up the lovely object of the outlaw’s wiles, for though Girty himself was heard of everywhere, being linked with the most hideous atrocities and ambushes, no Indian prisoner, even under the most dreadful torture, could reveal the Lady Claypoole’s whereabouts. The reason for that was only two persons in the service knew, one was Mamolen, the other Girty, and Mamolen remained behind with the fair runaway.
It was not until after the final collapse of the French power in 1764, and the western country was becoming opened for settlement, that Colonel Claypoole received an inkling of Eulalie’s whereabouts. It did not excite his curiosity to see her again, or bring her back, but merely fired his determination the more to even his score with Girty. When he was sober and in the sedate atmosphere of his correctly appointed library on Grant’s Hill, in the new town of Pittsburg, he realized how foolish it would be to[to] journey to the wilds to kill “a scum of the earth,” he a gentleman of many generations of refined ancestry, all for a “skirt” as he contemptuously alluded to his wife.
But when in his cups, and that was often, he vowed vengeance against the despoiler of his home, and the things he planned to do when once he had him in his clutches would have won the grand prize at a Spanish Inquisition.
If it was Girty’s destiny to notch his rifle once, Nemesis provided that Colonel Claypoole should also have that rare privilege. At a military muster on the Kentucky side of Big Sandy, during the Revolutionary War, Simon Girty boldly ventured to the outskirts of the encampment, to spy on the strength and armament of the patriot forces, as he had done a hundred times before. Colonel Claypoole, riding on the field on his showy, jet black charger, noticed a low-brewed face, whiskered like a Bolshevik, peering out through a clump of bushes. Recognizing him after a lapse of over a quarter of a century, he rode at him rashly, parrying with the flat blade of his sabre, the well directed bullet which Girty sent at him. Springing from his mount, which he turned loose, and which ran snorting over the field, with pistol in one hand, sabre in the other, he rushed into the thicket, and engaged his foe in deadly combat. He was soon on top of the surprised Girty, and stamping on him, like most persons do with a venomous snake, at the same time shooting and stabbing him.