On the first anniversary of their wedding he killed a fine stag with it on the Kinzua, while hunting with Philip Tome. It was in the fall of the second year of their marriage that Abram Antoine was called away[away] during a heavy flood in the Ohe-yu, which flowed in front of their house. Old Shem, the one-eyed, half-breed ferryman, had difficulty in getting him across in the batteau, so swift was the angry current. He was to be gone, as usual, several days.
On the night when she was expecting him home, Ernestine heard a loud knocking at the kitchen door. Opening it she beheld Old Shem standing outside, the rain dripping from his hat and clothing.
“Missus Antoine,” he wheezed, “Abram is over to the public house at Corydon, a very sick man, and wants you to come to him at once.”
Ernestine was horrified, but, jerking down her cloak from the nail on which it hung, ran out into the storm, and followed the aged ferryman down the steep bank to the landing. The wind was bellowing terribly among the almost bear hickories and butternuts along the shore, the current was deep, dark and eddying.
When one-third the way over, Old Shem looked up, saying: “Missus, it hain’t Abram that’s sick; it’s your other man, Mister Nitschman, what wants you.” “shouted Ernestine. “I never had any other man. Take me back home at once, you treacherous old snake in the grass.”
Just then a pile of buffalo robes in one end of the deep batteau stirred, and the form of a man arose–Carl Nitschman, back from jail.
“Talk sensibly, Ernestine,” he said. “I have come for you, and will forgive everything. You know you belong to me; your going off with that Indian was all a hasty mistake.”
Ernestine glared at him and again ordered the ferryman to take her home. Instead he seemed to be trying to reach the Corydon shore the faster. Just then Nitschman stepped forward, with arms outstretched, as if to seize her.
The slight and supple Ernestine sprang up on the gunwale, the boat tipped; she either fell or jumped into the dark, swirling current. She was gone before an effort could be made to save her, and the two frightened men, white as ghosts, pulled for the light which gleamed through the storm, in the tavern window at Corydon, with redoubled energy. With a thud the prow hit the muddy bank and slid on shore.
To their surprise Abram Antoine was standing on the bank. The one-eyed ferryman began to cry, a strange thing for any one of Indian blood. “I was fetching your wife across to meet you and she fell in the river.”