The Border Watch: A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand

by Joseph A. Altsheler

He found the next day that for which he was looking. The army had camped in another of the little prairies, and the Indians had held a great dance. The earth, trampled heavily over a regulated space, showed it clearly. Most of the white men had stayed in one group on the right. Here were the deep traces of military boot heels such as the officers might wear.

Again his vivid imagination and power of mental projection into the dark reconstructed the whole scene. The Indians, Wyandots, Shawnees, Miamis and the others, had danced wildly, whirling their tomahawks about their heads, their naked bodies painted in many colors, their eyes glaring with the intoxication of the dance. Timmendiquas and the other chiefs had stood here looking on; over there, on the right, Caldwell and his officers had stood, and few words had passed between officers and chiefs.

"Now the division will become more complete," said Henry to himself, as he followed the trail anew into the forest, and he was so sure of it that he felt no surprise when, within a mile, it split abruptly. The greater trail continued to the west, the smaller turned abruptly to the north, and this was the one that contained the imprints of the military boot heels. Once more he read his text with ease. Timmendiquas and Caldwell had parted company. The English and Tories were returning to Detroit. Timmendiquas, hot with wrath because his white allies would not help him, was going on with the warriors to the defense of their villages.

Without beholding with his own eyes a single act of this army he had watched the growth of the quarrel between red and white and he had been a witness to its culmination. But all these movements had been influenced by some power of which he knew nothing. It was his business to discover the nature of this power, and he would follow the Indian trail a little while longer.

Henry had not suffered for food. Despite the passage of the Indian army the country was so full of game that he was able to shoot what he wished almost when he wished, but he felt that he was now coming so near to the main body that he could not risk a shot which might be heard by outlying hunters or skirmishers. He also redoubled his care and rarely showed himself on the main trail, keeping to the woods at the side, where he would be hidden, an easy matter, as except for the little prairies the country was covered with exceedingly heavy forest.

The second day after the parting of the two forces he saw smoke ahead, and he believed that it was made by the rear guard. It was a thin column rising above the trees, but the foliage was so heavy and the underbrush so dense that he was compelled to approach very close before he saw that the fire was not made by Indians, but by a group of white men, Simon Girty, Blackstaffe, Quarles, Braxton Wyatt and others, about a dozen in all. They had cooked their noonday meal at a small fire and were eating it apparently in perfect confidence of security. The renegades sat in the dense forest. Underbrush grew thickly to the very logs on which they were sitting, and, as Henry heard the continuous murmur of their voices, he resolved to learn what they were saying. He might discover then the nature of the menace that had broken up or deferred the great invasion. He knew well the great danger of such an attempt but he was fully resolved to make it.

Lying down in the bushes and grass he drew himself slowly forward. His approach was like that of a wild animal stalking its prey. He lay very close to the earth and made no sound that was audible a yard away, pulling himself on, foot by foot. Yet his patience conquered, and presently he lay in the thickest of the undergrowth not far from the renegades, and he could hear everything they said. Girty was speaking, and his words soon showed that he was in no pleasant mood.

"Caldwell and the other English were too stiff," he said. "I don't like Timmendiquas because he doesn't like me, but the English oughtn't to forget that an alliance is for the sake of the two parties to it. They should have come with Timmendiquas and his friends to their villages to help them."

"And all our pretty plans are broken up," said Braxton Wyatt viciously. "If we had only gone on and struck before they could recover from Bird's blows we might have swept Kentucky clean of every station."

"Timmendiquas was right," said Girty. "We have to beware of that fellow at the Falls. He's dangerous. His is a great name. The Kentucky riflemen will come to the call of the man who took Kaskaskia and Vincennes."