“If he comes we are saved.”
These remarks from the emigrants were of a character to indicate the estimation in which they held our hero and his wonderful invention.
“How far away is he?” asked one of the men.
“I can’t tell,” said the guide. “He may be one mile, and he may be fifteen or twenty. You can’t tell anything by a light in the sky at night, for it’s a mighty deceptive thing. But you can bet your sweet life that he won’t be very long in getting here now after he’s been signaled.”
“I hope the reds will keep off until he arrives,” said one.
“I am afraid of them when they come in the dark,” said another.
“Afraid?” cried Max.
“Not for myself,” said the man, a resolute-looking young pioneer. “But afraid of my beautiful young bride. If they had her in their hands and I lay on the ground wounded, what do you suppose I’d do?”
“What?” asked several.
“I’d try to put a bullet through her dear heart and let her die a painless death before she should suffer at their hands, the red fiends!” said the young man, with earnestness and warmth. “Oh, my God! how I blush for the weak, miserable policy of our great men in public office. Here are we near the year eighteen hundred and sixty. I can look back, close my eyes, and in my mind see the terrible defeat of General Braddock a century ago, and when I open my eyes what do I then see? Indians! red devils, scalping the living and the dead at the present hour as they did in the last century, when Braddock sustained that awful defeat; and then I blush to think that the men in office, the leaders in politics of my well loved native land, are still at their weak, humdrum policy. They are still fighting the Indians.”