Part 43 (2/2)

In seventeen hundred and seventy-four, The month of October, we know, An army of Indians, two thousand or more, Encamped on the Ohio.”

There was a whirl of linsey petticoats behind me, and two plump arms were about my neck; and her dear voice was sobbing:

”They didn't know! I feared you were dead beyond the Ohio!”

”But I sent you a message!” I protested, patting her bowed head. ”I sent word by Moulton that it was only an arrow-wound in the leg, and that I must wait.”

”And he never came, nor brought your word! He stopped in Tygart's Valley and sent his brother to bring Mrs. Moulton and the children. One man said he heard you had been hurt. I wrote to Colonel Lewis but he was not at Richfield. So I never knew!”

We walked aside, and I petted her and listened to her dear voice and forgot the cold wind biting into my thin blood, forgot I would always walk with a slight limp. When we did awake, because the early dusk was filling the clearing, the singer was finis.h.i.+ng his seventeen-stanza song:

”As Israel did mourn and her daughters did weep, For Saul and his host on Gilbow, We'll mourn Colonel Field and the heroes who sleep On the banks of the Ohio.”

And I thought of Shelby Cousin and the others, who gave their lives that we might meet thus without the war-whoop interrupting our wooing. And I wondered if our children's children would ever realize that the deaths died at Point Pleasant made life and happiness possible for them. I prayed it might be so, for lonely graves are not so lonely if they are not forgotten.

THE END

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