On the following afternoon two figures were seen by the eager watchers to leave the fort and stroll toward the trader's store a mile away. Osceola's keen eye was the first to recognize them, and he knew that the hour of his vengeance had arrived.
The two who strolled thus carelessly, apparently unconscious of danger, were the agent, General Wiley Thompson, and his friend, Lieutenant Constantine Smith. They were smoking their after-dinner cigars and talking earnestly. Their subject was the rights and wrongs of the Indian. As they reached the crest of a slight eminence, these words, uttered in Wiley Thompson's most emphatic tone, reached the ears of Osceola, who, with flashing eyes and compressed lips, peered at the speaker from a thicket not ten yards away.
"I tell you, sir, the Indian is no better than any other savage beast, and deserves no better treatment at our hands."
They were the last words he ever spoke; for at that instant there burst from the thicket a blinding flash and the crashing report of thirty rifles, discharged simultaneously. Both men were instantly killed, and with yells of triumph the Indians rushed from their hiding-place, each intent upon procuring a scalp or some other trophy of the first event of the contest so long anticipated and now so sadly begun.
But Osceola's vengeance did not rest here. There were others within reach who had aided in the stealing of his wife, and he bade his warriors follow him to the store of the trader. A few minutes later Rogers and his two clerks had been added to the list of victims. After helping themselves to all the goods they could carry, the Indians set fire to the store and started toward the Wahoo Swamp, where they hoped to join Coacoochee in time to participate in the battle of which he had sent them notice.
The little garrison of fifty men at Fort King heard the firing and the war-cries, and saw the smoke from the blazing store rise above the hammock. They knew only too well what these things meant; but supposing the Indians to be in force and about to attack the post, they dared not venture beyond its limits. They waited anxiously for the coming of the promised reinforcements from Tampa, but weary days passed, and no word came from them.
ON THE VERGE OF THE WAHOO SWAMP
On the afternoon of Christmas Day, Major Dade's little command of two companies of troops, numbering one hundred and ten souls, marched gaily out from Fort Brooke on Tampa Bay and started for Fort King, one hundred miles away, near where the city of Ocala now stands. Both officers and men were in the highest spirits, and regarded their present expedition as a pleasant relief from the monotony of garrison life. It was not at all likely they would be called upon to do any fighting; for, although the Indians had been acting suspiciously for some time, nobody believed they would dare come into open conflict with the whites. And what if they did! Was not one white man equal to five Indians at any time? To be sure, the soldiers were unfamiliar with the country, but then they had a guide who knew every foot of it.