* * * What have you to do with fallen men? “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” * * * Not as you love the stars. Are you to remain here cradled in the lap of nature? A wood nymph of six feet two? Why your great strength?—your broad shoulders? Why a man that can discern? Why a voice? Why a soul?—and one that has visions of the glory of God. What use for a teacher in this solitude? What use for broad shoulders where burdens are light? What use for vision if you are not a prophet? Visions but beget broader vision. Are you not of those whose honors come after death? Since you first began to think and speak have you not thought and said: I will go forth to service, in order that the grain ripe for harvest may not perish from my neglect? Wouldst be questioned and commanded: Wist you not that you must be about the Master’s business? Go!
Through the last days of June and into July, John hoed and sweated in the corn; the weeds came thicker than the year before; the tares grew denser and closer—and whence the tares? And his mind was on the call to go to the Settlements to serve men—where Dorothy * * *
The corn was laid by, the days grew sultry and hot, it was early August. Then he went into the meadow; with each swing of the blade and each rasp of the whetstone he heard the call to service—or to Dorothy.
Each Sunday afternoon and when unfit weather made a holiday, he climbed to the Gap and the Pinnacle; and always his eyes were turned northward towards the Settlements; where the harvest was ripe and needed reapers and where Dorothy, if she were home again, * * * but [pg 233] why always was his call to service coupled with thoughts of Dorothy? Was it in truth a call—or did he merely wish to leave the valley to be with Dorothy?
This Sunday afternoon on the Pinnacle resolutely he turned his back to the Settlements, facing the unbroken forest of Powell’s Valley, saying: “I fought this out a year ago; my call comes first.”
His vision became fixed upon a fleecy cloud way to the southward or was it the smoke from a burning forest? Did he sleep; or did he see the misty filmy substance take shape? He never knew with certainty. In any event he saw a great river and floating upon it a large flat boat, such as river emigrants used. As he looked the boat rounded a great bend and approached the mouth of a smaller river emptying into it from the northward. Hid in the willows at the mouth of the smaller river, he counted, one by one, ten large war canoes filled with Indians waiting.
He recognized the location. It was the mouth of the Big Miami; where John Filson and Colonel Patterson, with their men, had held the pow-wow with the Indians, on their way up river to lay off Losanteville.
Two white men running along the bank of the Ohio, some distance above the willows, were calling to the boat: “Come ashore and take us aboard. We escaped from the Indians last night and shall be found and murdered.” They were the decoys of the war party.
The boat had heavy bulwarks and was heavily loaded; aboard were more than a dozen men and several women and children. On the deck fastened to a chain running between two heavy supports were eight horses and several cows.
The crew, confident of their strength, approached the shore though warned not to do so by Captain Fairfax, [pg 234] who with his daughter were passengers. The captain of the boat said: “They may be decoys as you say, but we will not land; merely go in close enough to ascertain who the men are and if they are in distress throw out a line, if they cannot swim to us. It seems hard to believe that white men could be found to decoy us; and if they are closely pursued and murdered in our sight or recaptured we would never forgive ourselves for not helping them. Several of you men have your rifles ready in case of attack. The beach is clear of undergrowth until we reach the willows and we will shove out again before we get that far.”