Part 30 (2/2)

Instantly all was confusion. Mr. Brainerd laughed, and the Senecas, as they sprang to their feet, made no effort to interfere. Indeed, there was strong reason to believe they enjoyed the strange scene.

Aunt Peggy scratched and pulled with the most commendable enthusiasm, and her victim howled with pain.

”Take her off!” he shouted, ”or she will kill me!”

Eva and Maggie ran forward, but the Indians actually laughed, and the two girls were unable to restrain her until she had spent her vengeance.

Her victim was in a sorry plight, and in his blind retreat he tumbled backward over the log, springing instantly to his feet, and actually das.h.i.+ng off in the darkness.

”There!” gasped Aunt Peggy, ”I've been aching to get my hands on you, and now I feel better!”

At this juncture several of the Senecas uttered excited exclamations, for the discovery was made that during the hubbub one of the prisoners had escaped, and his name was Fred G.o.dfrey.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX.

Aunt Peggy Carey ”builded better than she knew.”

In her fierce attack on the Tory she administered well-merited punishment, leaving him in a demoralized condition, so thoroughly whipped, indeed, that for several minutes he was dazed and not himself.

Her friends trembled to think of the vengeance he would visit upon her for the act, but the good lady herself seemed to have no apprehensions, and, turning about, she carefully arranged her hair and bonnet, and resumed cooking slices from the carca.s.s of the pig, intending now to wait upon the Senecas, who had been kind enough not to interfere while she attended to the other important duty.

What the next step would have been was hard to guess, but for the sudden discovery which we have made known.

One of the captives was found to be missing, and he was the most important of all, being no less a personage than Lieutenant Fred G.o.dfrey.

The instant Aunt Peggy a.s.sailed Golcher the youth saw that the opportunity for which he was waiting had come, and he took advantage of it.

The uproar for the moment was great. The captives on the log sprang to their feet, and the Senecas fixed their attention on the couple, seeing which, Mr. Brainerd said to his son:

”_Now's your time, Fred!_”

He turned as he spoke, and saw the lieutenant vanis.h.i.+ng like a shot in the gloom. When the warriors noted his absence, he was at a safe distance in the wood.

Fully a half-dozen Senecas sprang off in the darkness, using every effort to recapture the prisoner, who could be at no great distance, no matter how fast he had traveled.

Had Fred given away to the excitement of the occasion, and lost that coolness that had stood him so well more than once on that dreadful afternoon and evening, he hardly would have escaped recapture before he went a hundred yards; for the Iroquois were so accustomed to the ways of the woods, they would have seized such advantage and come upon him while he was in the immediate neighborhood.

They believed he would continue running and stumbling in the darkness, and thus betray his whereabouts.

And that is precisely what Fred G.o.dfrey did not do.

He ran with all speed through the woods, tripping and picking himself up, and struggling forward, until he was far beyond the reach of the light of the camp-fire, when all at once he caught the signal whoops of the Indians, and he knew they were after him.

Then, instead of keeping on in his flight, he straightened up and stepped along with extreme caution, literally feeling every foot of the way.

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