“Well, whose scalp is it?”
“It ain’t your’n, kitten, an’ ye can be glad o’ that.”
“Shucks! How can you tell whose it might have been? How could anybody tell?” asked the boy.
Tom made no reply, and Ree deftly changed the subject by saying that one of them had better stand guard that night. He expected no trouble with the Indians, but he was not willing to be caught napping by the unknown foe whose work had now cost the life of their horse.
Tom was gloomy all the evening as they sat before the fire, but he told the boys of the great chief of the Delaware’s, Hopocon, or Capt. Pipe, and reminded them that he was one of the Indians who were responsible for the burning of Col. Crawford at the stake eight years earlier.
That and other stories of this noted chief made the boys curious to see him, and anxious to put themselves on friendly terms with him. It was decided that the next day they should visit the Delaware town and make arrangements for securing land. Without a horse they could move their goods only with great labor, and they were desirous of knowing just where they were taking their property, therefore, before they undertook to move it from their present camp.
“Guess I will stay an’ watch here, whilst you youngsters go to see Capt. Pipe,” said Tom, as the subject was under discussion. “I might not be as peaceful as a little lamb—plague take their greasy skins! Not if I clapped my eyes on that Buffalo critter ag’in!”
“Look a-here, Tom,” Ree answered, earnestly. “We boys are on a peaceable mission and we don’t want to get into trouble on your account. We know that the horrible sight of that scalp, and your belief that you know from where it came, has made you want revenge, but John and I have had no special trouble with the Delawares and it would be very foolish, situated as we are, for you or any of us to start a fight with them now.”
“I see all that—I ain’t so blind! But—” Tom did not finish the sentence. Instead he began talking of other things and advised the boys to take every precaution against being treacherously dealt with when they should find Big Buffalo at his own home—the Delaware town.
It was a windy, cloudy morning that found Ree and John tramping through the valleys and over the hills of a fine, thickly wooded country toward the Indian village. Early in the afternoon they came to a sloping hillside beyond which lay a swampy tract grown up to brush and rushes. Close by was a beautiful little lake and at the opposite side the smoke was rising from the town of the Delaware tribe of Indians.