His words cleared my mind of madness. Instead of the dark forest, forty rods away, marking the end of everything, I need not entirely despair until the girl reached the Scioto.
“They’ve hitched a rope to Dale an’ are draggin’ him to the woods. The damn fool ain’t dead yet. Black Hoof fetched him a crack with the flat of his ax, but they’ll roast him to a frizzle by ’n’ by if our medicine don’t fetch him out of it.”
The man had been grossly mistaken and I pitied him. I wondered what he would think of the influence of trade on red heathens at war when he regained his senses! Surely he would learn the torments of hell when he beheld his daughter a prisoner.
The cabin was like an oven and the sting of powder-smoke made our eyes water. Outside the birds were fluttering about their daily tasks. High among the fleecy cloud-bundles were dark specks which we knew to be turkey-buzzards, already attracted by the dead. For some time the only sign of the enemy’s presence was when three horses galloped down the valley, running from the savages in the edge of the woods. As the animals drew near the cabins and showed an inclination to visit the lick-block a volley from the Indians sent one down. The other two dashed madly toward the Bluestone.
Cousin studied the ridge back of the cabin and failed to discover any suggestion of the hidden foe.
“Which ain’t no token they ain’t there,” he muttered.
“If they hadn’t scared the horses we could have caught a couple!” I lamented.
“We’d been shot off their backs afore we’d gone two rods,” assured my companion. “Let me show you.”
With that he took a big gourd from the corner and painted a face on it with a piece of charcoal found in the fireplace. To a few small wooden pegs stuck in the top he made fast some long strings of tow, shredded out to resemble hair. Then he placed my hat on top of the gourd and the effect was most grotesque. Yet from a distance it easily would be mistaken for a human face.
It was a vast improvement on the old trick of hoisting a hat on a stick. His next maneuver was to enlarge one of the holes I had made in the roof. When he thrust his hands through the hole, as if about to draw himself up, he focused every savage eye on the back of the cabin roof. Through the opening he slowly pushed the gourd, topped by the hat and having long hair hanging down the sides.