Part 17 (1/2)

”Ike ain't got no stummick for a reg'lar stand-up fight. He'll hang round the creek and kill when he catches a red along.”

”He'll get no powder from my stock to use around the creek,” I declared.

Hughes eyed me moodily.

”What odds where they're killed so long as they're rubbed out?” he harshly demanded.

”Women and children are the odds,” I retorted. ”Crabtree kills friendly Indians. Even young Cousin, who hates reds as much as any man alive, won't make a kill in a settlement unless the Indians are attacking it.”

”That's the one weak spot in Cousin,” regretted Hughes. ”He's a good hater. But he'd have a bigger count for that little sister of his if he'd take them wherever he finds them. It's all d.a.m.n foolishness to pick and choose your spot for killing a red skunk. And this friendly Injun talk makes me sick! Never was a time but what half the Shawnees and other tribes was loafing 'round the settlements, pretending to be friends, while t'other half was using the tomahawk and scalping-knife.

”That sort of medicine won't do for me. No, siree! Injuns are a pest, just like wolves and painters, only worse. They must be wiped out. That's my belief and I make it my business to wipe them out. Few men that's got more'n me.”

It's a waste of time to talk with a b.l.o.o.d.y-minded man. Hughes' brother was killed by the Indians. As for that, there was hardly a settler in Virginia who had not lost some dear friend or relative. When the history of the country is written, it will surprise the coming generations to read the many names having opposite them, ”Killed by the Indians.”

I was sorry I had met Hughes. His company grated on me. It was impossible to think of Patsy Dale with the fellow's cruel babble ringing in my ears.

I remained silent and he garrulously recounted some of his many exploits, and with gusto described how he had trapped various victims. It was his one ambition of life. He cared nothing for land.

Offer him all of Colonel Was.h.i.+ngton's thirty-odd thousand acres on the Ohio and Great Kanawha as a gift, and he would have none of them unless they contained red men to slaughter. He had laid down a red path and it was his destiny to follow it. I had no love for Shawnee or Mingo, but my mind held room for something besides schemes for bloodletting.

And yet it was well for me that I had met Hughes the Indian-hater, and doubly well that I had brought powder and lead so that he had turned back with me. We were riding down the western slope and about clear of the mountains, I trying to think my own thoughts and he talking, talking, his words dripping blood, when ahead in the trace I spied something on the ground that caused me to exclaim aloud.

It was a brightly beaded moccasin, very small, and strangely familiar even at a distance. Hughes saw it and stared at it through half-closed lids. I leaped from my horse and started forward to pick it up.

”Don't touch it;” yelled Hughes. ”Come back! Come back!”

I heard him and understood his words, and yet I continued advancing while I mechanically endeavored to guess his reason for stopping me.

”Jump, you fool!” he yelled as I stretched out my hand to pick up the moccasin. And his horse was almost upon me and covering me with dirt as he pivoted and slid into the bushes, his hindquarters. .h.i.tting me and hurling me over, half a dozen feet beyond the little moccasin. I landed on my head and shoulders with the crack of a rifle echoing in my dazed ears.

Instinct sent me rolling out of the trace and into the bushes. By the time I gained my knees and had cleared the dirt from my eyes Hughes was working rapidly up the right-hand slope. His horse stood at the edge of the bushes, rubbing noses with my animal. I kept under cover of the growth and halted abreast of the moccasin.

There was a furrow within a few inches of its embroided toe. I broke a branch and pawed the moccasin toward me and picked it up and went back to the horses. Then I took time to examine my prize. It was one of the pair I had given to Patsy Dale. She must have carried it carelessly to drop it in the trace without discovering her loss. I slipped it into my hunting-s.h.i.+rt and sat down to wait for Hughes. It was fully an hour before he came back.

”Couldn't git a crack at him,” he growled, his face grim and sullen. ”But you was a fool to be took in by such a clumsy trick as that.”

”It's an old trick,” I conceded, taking the moccasin from my s.h.i.+rt. ”If it had been any Indian finery I would have kept clear of it. But this happens to belong to Ericus Dale's girl. She dropped it coming down the slope.”

He heard this in astonishment and scratched his head helplessly.

”Then I must 'a' been asleep, or in a h.e.l.l of a hurry when I come to this slope,” he muttered. ”And it ain't just the right kind of a slope to go galloping over. I don't understand it a bit. They was riding into the settlement when I come out. I called to Dale and asked if he'd seen any Injun signs. He told me he hadn't seen any. Then that feller Ward come trotting out the woods, looking like a' Injun, and I was bringing up my rifle to give him his needings when Dale let out a yelp and said he was a white man. Wal, it'll tickle the gal to learn how near her moccasin come to killing you.”

”The Indian knew it was there and knew we were coming, and used it for bait,” I mused.

”A five-year-old child would know that,” was the scornful rejoinder. ”But what no five-year-old on Howard's Creek would 'a' done was to go for to git it after I'd called a halt. You must 'a' been foolish in your mind.

The Injun took a spot where he could line his gun on the moccasin. The growth cut off any sight of the trace 'cept where the moccasin lay. All he had to do was to line it and shoot when you stooped over it. The second he couldn't see the moccasin he'd know some one's body was between it and him. He heard me bawl out, but he didn't git sight of you till you was over it, and by that time my old hoss give you a belt and made you keep on moving.”

”He undershot, yet as I was bending close to it he would have bagged me,”

I said. ”I have to thank you for saving my life.”