Moving with rapid strides through the crowd, pigmies beside his giant stature, he blocked his little enemy’s further progress. “Nitschman, I believe you are,” he said.
“No, no; that hain’t my name,” spluttered the short man, coloring to the roots of his faded yellow hair.
“Yes, it is, Chief,” yelled a young Indian who was standing close by.
That confirmation was all that Abram Antoine, bad Indian, wanted. Swinging his rifle above the crowd, he brought it down with terrific force on the head of his foe, crashing right through his high, flat brimmed beaver hat and shattering the lock.
To use the language of Jim Jacobs, Nitschman fell to the turf like a “white steer,” and laid there, weltering in blood, for he was dead.
All the latent hate and jealousy in the crowd against Indians immediately found vent, and an angry mob literally drove Abram Antoine, bad Indian, out of the fair grounds to the town lockup. It was some time during 1823 that he expiated his crime on the gallows.
XVI
Do You Believe in Ghosts?
A. D. Karstetter, painstaking local historian, tells us that there was no more noteworthy spot in the annals of mountainous Pennsylvania than the old Washington Inn at Logansville. Built after the fashion of an ancient English hostelry, with its inn-yard surrounded by sheds and horse stables, it presented a most picturesque appearance to discerning travelers. The passage of time had obliterated[obliterated] it, long before the great fire on June 24, 1918, swept the town, removing even the landmarks which would have showed where the old-time inn was situated.
Many are the tales, grave or gay, clustered about its memory, far more, says Mr. Karstetter, than were connected with the Logan Hotel, run by the Coles, which was erected at a much later day, just when the old coaching days were passing out, and the new era coming in. All of the history that grew up about the Washington Inn ante-dated the Civil War, while that of the Logan Hotel was of the period of that war and later. This gives one a good mental picture of the type of legend interwoven with the annals of the ancient Washington Inn.