"Oh, yes, they will, Maggie, and I could kill you so much easier than they would!"
For a long time he endeavored to persuade her, and even looked about for a stick sufficiently large for his purpose; but despair gave the child strength, and she promised her brother she would neither complain nor falter if he would help her make her way out of the field.
The little boy's idea that he could save his sister from savage barbarity only by taking her life shows with what tales of horror the children of the early settlers were familiar.
After a few more efforts, they made their way out of the field into an open pasture ground where, to their great delight, they saw some cows feeding. They recognized the animals as belonging to Granny Myers, an old woman who lived at some little distance from the place where they then were, but in what direction they were utterly ignorant.
With a sagacity beyond his years the boy said, "Let us hide ourselves till sunset. Then the cows will go home, and we will follow them."
This they did; but, to their dismay, when they reached Granny Myers's they found the house deserted. The old woman had been called down the valley by some business, and did not return that night.
Tired and hungry, the children could go no farther, and after an almost fruitless endeavor to get some milk from the cows, lay down to sleep under an old bedstead that stood behind the house. During the night their father and his party caused them additional terror. The shouts and calls which had been designed to arouse the inmates of the house the children mistook for the whoop of the Indians, and, unable to distinguish friends from foes, crept close to each other, as far out of sight as possible. When found the following morning, they were debating what course for safety to take next.
The commandant at Fort Pitt entered warmly into the affairs of Mr. Lytle, and readily furnished a detachment of soldiers to aid him and his friends in the pursuit of the marauders. Circumstances having thrown suspicion upon the Senecas, the party soon directed their search among the villages of that tribe.
Their inquiries were prosecuted in various directions, and always with great caution, for all the tribes of the Iroquois, or, as they pompously called themselves, the Five Nations, being allies of Great Britain, were inveterate in their hostility toward the Americans. Thus some time elapsed before the father with his assistants reached the village of the Big White Man.
Negotiations for the ransom of the captives were immediately begun and in the case of Mrs. Lytle and the younger child easily carried into effect. But no offers, no entreaties, no promises could procure the release of little Eleanor, the adopted child of the tribe. No, the chief said, she was his sister; he had taken her to supply the place of his brother who was killed by the enemy; she was dear to him, and he would not part with her.