“What was Tom Fish an’ Bridges doin’ that they let ye come ’way off here by yerselves?” suddenly asked Todd, who had been shutting his eyes and mouth tight, and shaking his head most emphatically, in answer to everything the boys had said.
“Oh, they said to wait until winter and they would come with us. But we did not agree to that, and as they lived so far away, we did not see them again. It was in July that we saw them last. When we got ready, we started. If they had come it would have been only for a little hunting, and we were afraid they would think they were obliged to go with us, if we sent them word.”
“It was only last week that a white man was found dead and scalped just beyond old Fort McIntosh,” said an elderly man, quietly. “About a month ago a chap named Keaton was tomahawked and his scalp taken, not a day’s march from this very spot. Both were killed in a mysterious way, too—one shot from ambush, the other attacked while he was cooking himself a meal; and he never knew what hit him, from all appearances, they say. It looks mighty bad. I’ve been through the woods a good many times, and I don’t get scared at my shadow, but honest to goodness I mean it, when I say that I wouldn’t care to go a great ways into the Ohio country alone, now.”
“By jinks, it is queer how them two fellers was killed, ain’t it?” put in Tall Todd. “An’ it jest reminds me o’ ol’ man Crane that was killed the same way four days after he left here for the Moravian settlement. Nobody knew how, nor nothin’. Ye remember some fellers comin’ up river picked up his carcass. Not a thing he had was touched. Only his bullets an’ powder was gone—an’ his hair. His gun an’ knife—everything else was layin’ jest as he fell!”
“Well, who did it?” demanded John Jerome, quite abruptly.
“That’s jest it! Who did it?” Todd answered.
“There’s a story told,” said the quiet, elderly man, “that a Redskin who got away at the time of the massacre of the Christian Indians at the Moravian settlement, ten years ago, come next March, has lately come back to these parts and kills every white man he sees, on sight. A couple of hunters and traders coming in here from Kentucky told the tale. We don’t know how true it is.”
“There ain’t nothin’ of it, I’ll bet a gun,” said Todd. “I’ve heard the yarn, an’ it don’t stand to reason. ’Cause as you jest said, Eli, the Moravians was killed ten years ago, come March, an’ that score was all settled when Crawford was burned. An’ right there, youngsters, is somethin’ to put in yer nightcaps, when yer countin’ on the friendship of that ornery Delaware, Captain Pipe, by jinks! He was one of the critters that burnt Colonel Crawford!”
“Yes, we knew that before we ever met him,” said Kingdom cheerfully, lest his friend Jerome should be depressed by these alarming reports.
“I only started out to say that the killin’ of the Moravians was so long ago, that it ain’t likely any Injun has just now started out to hunt scalps and satisfaction on account of it,” Todd replied, somewhat taken back by the young traveler’s cheery reply to his doleful warning against Captain Pipe.