The Indians faithfully performed their part and the one who was given especial charge over Sarah's horse (after the party landed on the banks of the Hudson near Cornwall), although half-naked, as were the other two, watched carefully her comfort. Their eyes were piercing, their voices harsh and grating, yet Sarah's attendant showed a deference; and gentle anxiety to please that many white men of to-day might envy.
Sarah mounted on the second horse, sat upon beds and bedding with many small articles around her and managed her horse with great difficulty. The Indian marched close by her side, helped her on and off her horse, and pointed out many things in the woods calculated to interest her attention and draw her out in conversation. Not infrequently he plucked an early flower as it sprang up by the wayside, and calling her attention to it, tasted its leaves and then presented it for acceptance.
They arrived on the bank of the stream, now the Otterkill, opposite the spot which Christofer Denn had selected as the place of his residence. Thus the journey in full twenty miles of pathless forest, with occasional thick underwood, was performed in a single day.
They built a fire beneath a tree whose branches guarded them from dampness. They put boughs of trees upon forked sticks driven into the ground and laid the beds there to escape the snakes, and the carpenters lay down and slept well till morning, but Sarah dreamed and slept fitfully, while the Indians threw themselves on the ground with their feet to the fire and slept all night. Whenever Sarah roused herself to look about, "her Indian" made signs to her that all was well and he was guarding her. The next day the carpenters built a wigwam of split logs resting on end against a frame of poles 16 by 18 feet with a ditch about it to carry off rain. It had a slanting roof with a hole three feet square in the peak for the escape of smoke, the fireplace being below it.
The goods were first unpacked and plates set on the table for supper the second evening of their arrival, when one of the Indians saw two people at a distance, and going to reconnoiter, found Madam Denn and her husband. They had been so overcome by the parting from Sarah and the enormity of their conduct in sending her on such a perilous adventure, that they had followed her on horseback up through New Jersey as fast as they could, and arrived in time for the first meal in the new wigwam. On seeing them at the door she fainted at their feet.
It is only just to say that the friendship thus begun between Sarah and the Indians continued to the end.
When the Indians were most hostile to others in the neighborhood the family could always give a safe refuge to the many who sought a shelter under their roof when night came.
WILLIAM BULL.
In 1716 William Bull entered on the scene. Born in Wolverhampton, England, February, 1689, his youth was, however, passed in Dublin, where his father moved when he was small.
He was apprenticed to learn the trade of a mason and stone cutter. When his apprenticeship ended he and a young friend took the contract to build a large arch for a bridge being constructed near Dublin. Tradition says: One Saturday night the work was nearly done and the arch finished but for the keystone. He begged the men to remain and put it in place, so completing the work, but they refused. On going down to see it on the next morning he found it fallen and his fortunes with it. It had carried with it his all and imprisonment for debt—as far as he knew it might be for life—stared him in the face.