"Yes, when I g-get back. When I get back! I should rather be b-back without the story. L-Looks to me as if Davy's chance of hearing it is rather slim."
On the tenth day after we left Missisquoi Bay we reached a river.
Rogers said: "Boys, this is the St. Francis River. You have of course guessed by this time that we are going to punish the St. Francis Indians for making Captain Kennedy and his companions prisoners when they went to them with a flag of truce. I did not tell you before, because it was not safe to do so. If any of you had been waylaid, it was better he should not know where the party was going, for the Indians would torture him to make him tell all he knew, and then the French and Indians would be warned. Now they can only guess where we are to strike. The village of St. Francis is on the St. Lawrence River, at the mouth of this river, and on the further side. It is some fifteen miles from here. We shall attack them in the night. You need have no feelings of pity for them or mercy. They are the tribe who have been harassing our frontier for the past ninety years. I know that they have killed four or five hundred good New England men, beside the women and children they have slain and carried off. This river has a swift current, and we must put our packs on our shoulders and join arms, with the tallest and strongest up the river, so as to help each other. Come, Martin, and you, Comee, let's see how you can keep your legs to-day."
CROSSING THE RIVER
Rogers put me near the head of the line, as I was considered a strong man. We went into the water with arms locked, and struggled against the current. Though the river was over four feet deep, we got across with few accidents.
Several men were swept off their feet, and some guns were lost, but we arrived safely at the further shore.
We made a small raft, put our powder-horns on it, and pulled it to and fro across the stream till all were carried over.
Scouts were sent ahead, and flanking parties were thrown out. We advanced cautiously in three files. I did not like this kind of an expedition, and said so to Martin, who was next to me.
"I can't bear this sneaking up on the Indians, and jumping on them in the dead of night when they are sound asleep. I like a good square fight of give and take."
"Don't be a fool, Ben. Those Indians have killed and scalped two of your family. If you had lived on the frontier all your life as I have, you would be glad to pay them back in their own coin, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, scalp for scalp. I have had so many friends killed by them, good quiet people, who never harmed any one. Almost every year, and sometimes several times a year, I have gone with others to help drive these devils away from some fort or town. And the sights that I have seen make me hate the redskins worse than poison. And, Ben, you know enough of them yourself. How many Rangers have been tormented by them and scalped? Remember John McKeen! How he was stripped and tied to a tree; then the red devils danced around him, howled at him, taunted him, and threw their knives at him till he was full of holes from head to foot. Have you forgotten what they did then? Put a pine splinter in every wound he had, set them on fire and made a living torch of him."