“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 little creature strength, and she promised her brother that she would neither complain nor falter, if he would assist her in making her way out of the field.
The idea of the little boy that he could save his sister from savage barbarity by taking her life himself, shows what tales of horror the children of the early settlers were familiar with.
After a few more efforts they made their way out of the field, into an unenclosed pasture-ground, where to their great delight they saw some cows feeding. They recognized them as belonging to Granny Myers, an old woman who lived at some little distance, but in what direction from the place they then were, they were utterly ignorant.
With a sagacity beyond his years, the boy said:
“Let us hide ourselves till sunset, when the cows will go home, and we will follow them.”
They did so, but to their dismay, when they reached Granny Myers' they found the house deserted. The old woman had been called by some business down the valley and did not return that night.
Tired and hungry they could go no further, but after an almost fruitless endeavor to get some milk from the cows, they laid themselves down to sleep under an old bedstead that stood behind the house. Their father and his party had caused them additional terror in the night. The shouts and calls which had been designed to arouse the inmates of the house, they had mistaken for the whoop of the Indians, and not being able to distinguish friends from foes, they had crept close to one another, as far out of sight as possible. When found the following morning, they were debating what course to take next, for safety.
The commandant at Fort Pitt entered warmly into the affairs of Mr. Lytle, and readily furnished him with a detachment of soldiers, to aid him and his friends in the pursuit of the marauders. Some circumstances having occurred to throw suspicion upon the Senecas, the party soon directed their search among the villages of that tribe.