"Yes, she learned while with them that it was Ruffin,—Ross Ruffin."
"I have heard of him, too, as being as great a scoundrel as Jeffers himself, only more of a coward," muttered Boyd.
"They made both Nita and Louis put on boots before leaving the boat," continued the narrator, "and that accounts for our finding what we supposed were the footprints of four white men. When they reached the place where the horses were waiting, both the captives had their wrists bound together, and a rope was passed from each to the saddle of one of the white men. So they rode for two days, and Nita says it was simply awful."
"I should imagine it might have been," said the colonel.
"Just at dusk of the second day, a lot of ambushed Indians surprised and captured them all without firing a shot. Nita says, in spite of her fright, she thinks that was one of the happiest moments of her life. The Indians knew Louis, and, of course, released him and her at once, tying up the white men instead. That night they camped some miles from the road, and when Louis told who the prisoners were, and of the many outrages they had committed, especially the stealing of poor Chen-o-wah, the Indians declared they should live no longer, and began at once to make preparations for killing them. Nita says she isn't certain how they were killed, as she made Louis take her a long way off, where she could neither see nor hear what was going on; but she thinks they were burned to death."
"And I know it," said Ralph Boyd, grimly. "Douglass and I saw their charred remains the next day, and not knowing who they were, I expended a certain amount of sympathy on them, that I now feel to have been wholly wasted."
"Oh brother! and you never told me! I'm glad you didn't, though, for it is too horrible to even think of. Well, when Nita got to the Indian village, they treated her just as nicely as they knew how, and promised to join Coacoochee, of course taking her with them, as soon as their crops were planted. Then you came along, colonel, and captured poor Nita with the others, and brought her in here, and the rest you know. Oh, I forgot! Nita is feeling very badly about her brother Louis, who was captured with her and brought here. She says he was taken off in one of the first boats this morning, and she is afraid she will never see him again."
"He must have given an assumed name," remarked the colonel, thoughtfully. "Under the circumstances, though, I am very glad that he did, and that he is well out of the country. I am afraid if it had been known a few hours sooner that Major Dade's guide was in the prisoners' camp, he would never have left it alive. In that case my course with Coacoochee, which now appears so plain, would have been beset with serious, if not insurmountable, difficulties. As it is, I congratulate you, Miss Anstice, on having Nita Pacheco for a friend, and look forward to the happiest result arising from that friendship. Within a week we shall be ready to start for the country of Coacoochee, and I can assure you that I have never anticipated any expedition with greater pleasure than I do this one."
The first of March, that loveliest month of the entire Floridian year, found Colonel Worth's command camped in Fort Gardiner hammock, on the western bank of the Kissimmee River. Here, they were more than one hundred miles beyond the nearest white settlers, and in a country so abounding with game of all kinds, including deer and turkey, besides fish and turtles in wonderful abundance, that the troops were fed on these, until they begged for a return to bacon and hardtack as a pleasing change of diet. The heavily timbered bottom lands were in their fullest glory of spring green, fragrant with a wealth of yellow jasmine, and the glowing swamp azalea, as well as vocal with the notes of innumerable song birds. It was one of the most charming bits of the beautiful land that the Seminole loved so well and fought so fiercely to retain. It was a typical home of the Indian, and one from which the soldiers of the United States had thus far been unable to drive him.
In the camp a large double tent, pitched next that of the commander, was set apart for the use of the Boyds and Nita. Here Anstice held regal court; for she was not only the first white woman to penetrate that wild region, but the first who had ever accompanied a command of the Florida army on one of its "swamp campaigns." In her efforts at entertaining the officers who flocked about her, Anstice was ably seconded by Nita, who, though demure and shy, was not lacking in quick wit and a cheery mirth that had been wonderfully developed during this expedition into the haunts of her lover.