“Why? Why am I? Because I said that there wasn’t much snow? Well there wasn’t! Of course there was lots of snow, but it wasn’t any seven or eight feet deep!”
“One heap big fool liar,” the redskin reiterated.
The Indians seemed to have satisfied themselves completely as to the truthfulness of the prisoner. They gave his words no further attention, and how bitterly crestfallen, and in his heart ashamed and disgraced, he felt, no one knew so well as he, as they turned away to resume their conference.
John realized that he had probably made bad matters worse. Seeing how anxious he was to deceive them, the redskins would be more than ordinarily distrustful of him and perhaps conclude that he was one who, for some reason, was particularly hostile to them. They asked him no more questions now, but appeared to guard him even more closely than before.
John thought so, at least, for his mind was turning with increased attentiveness to the possibility of escape. Not the slightest prospect that a favorable opportunity would come to him did he see, however, and when the Indians resumed their journey a little later, he was put between the two most villainous looking fellows in the band.
The course the savages took, in starting off this time, was slightly different from that pursued the night before. As nearly as John could reckon it would, if continued, land them, at the end of two or three days, at the “Crossing Place of the Muskingum,” the point at which the Great Trail from Pittsburg to Detroit crossed the Muskingum river. Where this particular party of savages did eventually find themselves, though, John Jerome never knew, nor did he ever learn definitely that they had come from Detroit, as he suspected.
The reason for this presented itself the second day after the cross-questioning of the prisoner and the wretched failure of his effort to deceive. The Indians encamped at noon, after a leisurely journey through a fine forest country, beside a little spring bubbling from under the very trunk of a mammoth oak. They lingered here several hours and while they waited a party of five bucks from Captain Pipe’s town chanced suddenly upon them.
John recognized the fellows immediately. He knew, too, that they recognized him, though they did not at once pay any attention to him. It was not until after quite extensive greetings between them and the seven warriors in the Shawnee party, in fact, that they bestowed even a look upon the prisoner. Then they turned toward him with grins of malicious pleasure.
Having learned that their prisoner was none other than the “witch,” of whom they had heard as having been the cause of the death of that well known warrior, Big Buffalo, the Shawnees plainly regarded him now as a dangerous individual. A little later he was the subject of a long conversation between the young Delawares and his captors and the wretched boy quickly discovered that his worst fears were realized. For the five from Pipe’s town were anxious to have him taken to their village, and the Shawnees appeared not to object.
At some length the Delawares told of the certain evidence Lone-Elk had discovered—the hatchet found in the corn—the very hatchet with which Big Buffalo was killed, and of the long and fruitless search that had been made for the “witch.” They urged the Shawnees to come and see the Paleface burned, and the killing of one of the greatest warriors of the Delawares avenged.