“I’d like to know whether Levi and his girl got into Strong’s or not,” said Wolf-Cap, with an anxious expression of countenance. “Silver Hand, they’d better not touch one o’ Huldah Armstrong’s hairs. I say I’ll kill the first fellar what does—there! I should judge that its pretty near midnight now,” he continued, after a pause, during which the Indian made no attempt to speak. “We’d better be movin’ somewhere. The fellars what we fooled down on Eel Creek haven’t passed yet; but mebbe they’ve joined their red brethren by another route. They could do that, you know. The troubles of Strong’s fort has begun now, and we’ve got to help ’em, somehow or other. But first, let’s go down to my hut and stir up a few eatables. Besides, I want to see if every thing’s right thar, and to liberate Yellow Dick.”
The Wyandot acquiesced in the trapper’s proposition, and a moment later the spot was deserted.
Silver Hand belonged to the same nation that besieged Fort Strong with malicious intent. During the Revolutionary war the Wyandots divided; a faction headed by the celebrated Captain Pipe aided the British, while the minor division, under the leadership of White Eyes, sided with the colonies. The factions refused to come together after the war, so when the second trouble with English oppression sought the combat of lead and steel, the unreconciled Indians resumed their old relations. The English Wyandots, led by Splitlog and Roundhead joined Proctor’s forces, while the friends of the United States opposed them. To the latter party Silver Hand belonged.
He was present at the encounter of Hull, but effected his escape after that catastrophe, and hastened to his old hunting-grounds—the fire-lands.
The white trapper and his staunch red ally reached the vicinity of the proscribed cabin during that period of darkness preceding dawn.
The skies were darkened overhead, for the moon had disappeared, and the scene was made quite dismal by the ominous hootings of a great owl perched upon the cone of the hut.
“Things are too still here for me, Silver Hand,” whispered the trapper, in his cautious tone, when they had halted near the solitary hut. “I’ve come home at all times o’ nights and mornin’s, but never afore hev I see’d an owl on the roof. Jest listen to ’im. Why I kin hear ’im say ‘go away’ as plainly as I hear his voice. No, chief, I don’t rush into the old hut jist now. We’re on the edge of a trap!”
Silver Hand did not appear to hear the trapper’s words.
His body was bent forward, and he was trying to discern the minutiæ of the cabin and its immediate vicinity. But the darkness baffled him.
For the period of an hour the twain crouched, like bowlders, in their place of concealment, and then Wolf-Cap moved forward, leaving the Indian to await his return.