Chapter 15: The Deed in the Dark

Henry was the leading swimmer, but he paused ten yards from the shore and the others paused with him. Six black dots hung in a row on the dark surface of the river. But so well did they blend with the shadow of the stream that an Indian eye on the bank, no matter how sharp, might have passed them over.

“The thing to do,” said Henry, “is to make no noise. We must swim without splashing and we’ve got to find that flatboat with the cannon on it. You understand?”

Not a word was said in reply, but five heads nodded, and the silent six resumed their swim across the Ohio. They had entered the stream as far up as possible in order that they might go diagonally toward the south, thus taking advantage of the current.

Henry turned over on his back, floating easily with the help of one hand and holding the little pot above his face. Once he opened it a little to feel that it was still warm from within, and, satisfied that it was so, he floated silently on. His position made it easiest for him to look upward, but not much was to be seen there. The promise of the night still held good in performance. Rolling clouds hid the moon and stars, and again Henry gave thanks for so favorable a night.

His comrades swam so silently that he turned a little on his side to see that they were there. Five black dots on the water followed him in a close row, and, proud of their skill, he turned back again and still floated with his face to the skies.

They soon passed the middle of the river, and now the extremely delicate part of their task was come. The lights on the northern bank had increased to a half dozen and were much larger. They seemed to be camp fires. Dim outlines of canoes appeared against the bank.

Henry paused, and the five black heads behind him paused with him. He raised his head a little from the water and studied the shore. A shape, bigger and darker than the others, told him where the flatboat lay. Owing to its greater draught, it was anchored in deeper water than the canoes, which was a fortunate thing for the daring adventurers. Henry saw the muzzles of the cannon, and a dark figure by each, evidently the warriors on guard. He could see them, but they could not see him and his comrades, whose heads were blurred with the darkness of the river. He turned on his side and whispered to Seth, who was next to him:

“I think we’d better swim above the flatboat, keeping at a good distance, and then drop down between it and the bank. They will not be expecting an enemy from that side. What do you think of it, Seth?”

Seth Cole nodded, and they swam silently up stream. If any one splashed the water it passed for the splash of a leaping fish, and there was no alarm in the Indian camp. Henry, studying the shore minutely as he swam with slow stroke, could not see motion anywhere. The fires burned low, and now that they were dropping down near the shore he saw the dim outlines of figures beside them. Some of the warriors slept in a sitting posture with their heads upon their knees, which were clasped in their arms, while others lay in their blankets. The canoes, in which Indians also slept, were tied to saplings on the bank.

They swam now with the greatest slowness, barely making a stroke, drifting rather. Henry knew that not all the warriors on the bank were asleep. Sentinels stood somewhere among the trees, and it was hard to escape the vigilance of an Indian on watch. Only a night of unusual darkness made an approach such as theirs possible.

A broad shape rose out of the obscurity. It was the flatboat, now not twenty feet away, and Henry paused a moment, the five heads pausing with him.

“Nobody is watching on this side of the boat,” whispered the youthful leader, “and it will not be hard to climb over the side. We must all do so at once and make a rush.”

“I’m thinkin’ you’re right,” Seth Cole whispered back.

They headed straight for the flatboat and each put a hand upon its side. A Miami sentinel on the bank heard a splash a little louder than usual, and he saw a gleam of white in the water beside the flatboat.

The Miami sprang forward for a better look, but he was not in time. Six white figures rose from the water. Six white figures gave a mighty heave, and the next moment they were upon the deck. The sentinels, looking toward the middle of the river, heard the sound of light, pattering footsteps behind them, and wheeled about. Despite their courage, they uttered a cry of superstitious horror. Surely these white, unclad figures were ghosts, or gods come down from the skies! One in his fright sprang overboard, but the other, recovering himself somewhat, fired at the foremost of the invaders. His bullet missed, and Henry, not noticing him, rushed toward the little cabin. Here he saw some bedding, evidently taken with the boat from its former owners, and he emptied the coals from the iron pot among it. A blaze instantly sprang up and spread with great rapidity. Despite the heat, Henry scattered the burning cloth everywhere with a canoe paddle that lay on the floor. Seth Cole and Tom Wilmore were also setting the boat on fire in a half dozen places.

The flames roared around them, and then they rushed upon the deck, where the sounds of conflict had begun. There were renegades as well as Indians upon the boat, and both soon realized that the invaders were human beings, not spirits or ghosts. Several shots were fired. A man from Fort Prescott was slightly wounded in the shoulder, and the red blood was streaking his white skin. But one of the invaders had used his tomahawk to terrible purpose--the figure of a warrior lay motionless upon the deck.

As Henry sprang to the relief of his comrades he ran directly into some one. The two recoiled, but their faces were then not more than a foot apart, and Henry recognized Braxton Wyatt. Wyatt knew him, too, and exclaimed: “Henry Ware!” He had been sleeping upon the boat and instantly he raised a pistol to make an end of the one whom he hated. Henry had no time to draw tomahawk or knife, but before the trigger could be pulled he seized the renegade in the powerful clasp of his bare arms.

The excitement of the moment, the imminence of the crisis, gave a superhuman strength to the great youth. He lifted Braxton Wyatt from his feet, whirled him into the air, and then sent him like a stone from a sling into the deep water of the Ohio. The renegade uttered a cry as he sank, but when he came up again he struggled for the shore, not for the boat. The renegade McKee had already been driven overboard, and the Indians, who alone were left on the boat, felt their superstition returning when they saw Braxton Wyatt tossed into the river as if by the hand of omnipotence. The flames, too, had gained great headway, and were now roaring high above the deck and the heat was increasing fast. If these were devils--and devils they certainly must be!--they had brought with them fire which could not be fought.

The Indians hesitated no longer, and the last of them, leaping overboard, swam for the land.

“It’s time for us to go, too,” said Henry to his panting comrades. “They’ll get over their fright in a minute or two and be after us.”

“I’m thinkin’ you’re right,” said Seth Cole, “but nothin’ kin save this boat now. She must be an old one. She burns so fast.”

Henry sprang into the river and the five followed him, swimming with their utmost power toward the southern shore. They heard behind them the crackling of the flames, and a crimson light was cast upon the water.

Henry looked back over his shoulder. The boat was blazing, but the light from it reached his comrades and himself. The Indians on the bank saw them. Hasty bullets began to flick the water near them. Canoes were already starting in chase.

“If that light keeps up, they’re bound to git us,” said Seth Cole.

“But it won’t keep up,” said Henry. “Swim, boys! Swim with all your might! It’s not Indians alone that we’ve got to dodge!”

Tired as they were, they increased their speed by a supreme effort for a minute or so, and then as if by the same impulse all looked back. The boat was a mass of flame, a huge core of light, casting a brilliant reflection far out over the river and upon the bank, where trees, bushes, and warriors alike stood out in the red flare.

The boat seemed to quiver, and suddenly it leaped into the air. Then came a tremendous explosion and a gush of overpowering flame. Henry and his comrades dived instantly and swam as far as they could under water toward the eastern shore. When they came up again the flatboat and its terrible cannon were gone, heavy darkness again hung over land and water, and pieces of burning wood were falling with a hissing splash into the river. But they heard the voices of warriors calling to each other, organizing already for pursuit. Their expedition was a brilliant success, but Henry knew that it would be a hard task to regain Fort Prescott. Led by the renegades and driven on by their bitter chagrin, the Indians would swarm upon the river in their canoes, seeking for them everywhere with eyes used to darkness.

“Are you all here, boys?” he asked. He had been scorched on the shoulder by a burning fragment, but in the excitement he did not notice it. Two of the men were slightly wounded, but at that time they thought nothing of their hurts. All six were there, and at Henry’s suggestion they dived again, floating down stream as long as they could hold their breath. When they came up again the six heads were somewhat scattered, but Henry called to them softly, and they swam close together again. Then they floated upon their backs and held a council of war.

“It seems likely to me,” said Henry, “that the Indian canoes will go straight across the stream after us, naturally thinking that we’ll make at once for Fort Prescott.”

“I’m thinkin’ that you’re tellin’ the truth,” said Seth Cole.

“Then we must drop down the stream, strike the bank, and come back up in the brush to the place where our rifles and clothes are hid.”

“Looks like the right thing to me,” said Tom Wilmore. “I’ll want my rifle back, but ‘pears to me I’ll want my clothes wuss. I’m a bashful man, I am. Look thar! they’ve got torches!”

Indians standing up in the canoes were sweeping the water with pine torches in the search for the fugitives, and Henry saw that they must hasten.

“We must make another dash for the bank,” he said. “Keep your heads as low down on the water as you can.”

They swam fast, but the Indian canoes were spreading out, and one tall warrior who held a burning pine torch in his hand uttered a shout. He had seen the six dots on the stream.

“Dive for it again,” cried Henry, “and turn your heads toward the land!”

He knew that the Indians would fire, and as he and his comrades went under he heard the spatter of bullets on the water. When they rose to the surface again they were where they could wade, and they ran toward the bank. They reached dry land, but even in the obscurity of the night their figures were outlined against the dark green bush, and the warriors from their canoes fired again. Henry heard near him a low cry, almost suppressed at the lips, and if it had not been for the red stain on Tom Wilmore’s shoulder he would not have known who had been hit.

“Is it bad, Tom?” he exclaimed.

“Not very,” replied Wilmore, shutting his teeth hard. “Go on. I can keep up.”

A boat suddenly shot out of the dusk very near. It contained four Indian warriors, two with paddles and two with upraised rifles. One of the rifles was aimed at Henry and the other at Seth Cole, and neither of them had a weapon with which to reply. Henry looked straight at the muzzle which bore upon him. It seemed to exercise a kind of terrible fascination for him, and he was quite confident that his time was at hand.

He saw the warrior who knelt in the canoe with the rifle aimed at him suddenly turn to an ashy paleness. A red spot appeared in his forehead. The rifle dropped from his hands into the water, and the Indian himself, collapsing, slipped gently over the side and into the Ohio. The second Indian had fallen upon his back in the canoe, and only the paddlers remained.

Henry was conscious afterward that he had heard two shots, but at the time he did not notice them. The deliverance was so sudden, so opportune, that it was miraculous, and while the frightened paddlers sent their canoe flying away from the bank, Henry and his comrades darted into the thick bush that lined the cliff and were hidden from the sight of all who were on the river.

“Our clothes and our rifles,” whispered Henry. “We must get them at once.”

“They fired from the fort just in time,” said Tom Wilmore.

Henry glanced upward. The palisade was at least three hundred yards away.

“Those bullets did not come from Fort Prescott,” he said. “It’s too far from us, and they were fired by better marksmen than any who are up there now.”

“I think so, too,” said Seth Cole, “an’ I’m wonderin’ who pulled them triggers.”

Shif’less Sol and Tom Ross were first in Henry’s mind, but he knew that both had suffered wounds sufficient to keep them quiet for several days, and he believed that the timely shots were the work of other hands. Whoever the strangers might be they had certainly proved themselves the best and most timely of friends.

They reached the thicket in which they had hidden their clothes and rifles, and found them untouched.

“Queer how much confidence clothes give to a feller!” exclaimed Seth Cole, as he slipped on his buckskins.

“It’s so,” said Henry, “and it’s so, too, that you’re not a whole man until you get back your rifle.”

When he grasped the beautiful weapon which had been his prize he felt strength flowing in a full tide in every vein. Before he was halt, a cripple, but now he was a match for anybody. He heard a quick, gasping breath, and the sound of a soft fall.

Tom Wilmore had sunk forward, prone in the bushes. His wound in the shoulder was deeper than he had admitted. Through the thicket came the sounds of pursuit. The warriors had left the canoes and were seeking them on land.

But the borderers had no thought of deserting their senseless comrade. Two of the men raised him up between them, and Henry, Seth Cole, and the sixth, armed with weapons of range and precision, protected the rear. Up the slope they went toward the fort. Henry presently heard light footsteps among the bushes and he fired toward the sound. He did not believe that he could hit anything in the darkness and uncertainty, but he wished to attract the attention of the watchers of the palisade. The diversion was effective, as shots were fired over their heads when they came near the wooden walls, and the pursuers drew back.

Tom Wilmore revived and demanded to be put down. It hurt his pride that he should have to be carried. He insisted that he was not hurt seriously, and was on his feet again when they reached the palisade. The anxious voice of Major Braithwaite hailed from the dark.

“Is it you, Ware; is it you, young sir?”

“We are here, all of us,” replied Henry, and the next instant they were at the foot of the palisade, where Major Braithwaite and at least twenty men were ready to receive them.

When they were helped over the wall the Major counted quickly:

“One! two! three! four! five! six! all here, and only two wounded! It was a wonderful exploit! In the name of Neptune, how did you do it?”

“We took the flatboat just as we planned,” replied Henry with pardonable pride. “We set it on fire, and it blew up, also just as we planned. Those cannon are now twisted old iron lying at the bottom of the Ohio River.”