Kenton was a man to be trusted when he had such a task on hand. He would sleep on it, and, with the coming of another day, no doubt they might hear just how he expected to go about entering the village of the Senecas, and robbing Black Beaver's wigwam of its latest tenant, the paleface girl whom the young chief had stolen to replace the daughter so mourned by the old squaw, his mother.
CHAPTER XXIV
KENTON'S LIFE WITH THE INDIANS
"Must we wait for night to come, Bob, before we can make a move?" asked Sandy, as he and his brother sat back of the water curtain that concealed the wonderful cavern discovered by Simon Kenton.
"Why, what else could be done?" exclaimed Bob. "In the broad daylight, if we left this hiding-place, we might run across some hunting party of Senecas; or, perhaps, a group of other Indians returning to their own country. What a calamity that would prove, Sandy!"
"Yes, I understand," the younger boy replied, with a heavy sigh; "but how slowly the hours pass. They seem like lead to me. Every minute drags as if it stood for ten. I've tried to sleep; but the terrible position of our poor sister haunts me. And then I get to thinking of father. What if it was his party that the Indians attacked and killed."
"We can only hope on, and trust that all will come out well in the end," replied Bob, who only with a most determined effort was able to keep from falling into the same despondent condition that Sandy showed.
Truth to tell, there was good reason for his courage to be put to the test. By some accident Abijah Cook, the companion of Kenton on this long and hazardous trip to the country of the Great Lakes, had overheard some Indians talking, while he lay concealed in a dense thicket near the borders of the Seneca village.
Among other things which they discussed, was the information that a party of palefaces travelling eastward had been taken by surprise, and utterly wiped out of existence. Their scalps even then adorned the lodge-poles of a Shawanee village far to the southeast.