A Virginia Scout. Hugh Pendexter
was no one between me and the river. At last I passed under some overhanging boughs and slipped down the bank to the water’s edge.
Once more I searched both banks of the river, the Cheat, and then ventured to drink. Like an animal I drank a swallow, then threw up my head and glanced about. It took me some time to drink my fill, but I was not tomahawked while at the spring. At last I was convinced I had the bank to myself; and satisfied that the screen of overhanging boughs screened me from any canoe turning a bend up- or down-stream I removed my clothes and very softly slipped into the water.
There could be no hilarious splashing nor swimming, but the silent immersion was most refreshing. It was while supine on my back with only my nose and toes above water that I received my first alarm for that morning. My position being recumbent I was staring up at the sky and in the direction of up-stream, and I saw a speck.
It was circling and from the west a smaller speck was hastening eastward. A third tiny speck showed on the southern skyline. Turkey-buzzards. The one circling had sighted dead beast or man. The others had seen the discoverer’s maneuvers advertising his good luck; and now each scavenger in hastening to the feast drew other scavengers after him.
I crawled ashore and hurriedly began slipping into my few garments. I drew on my breeches and paused for a moment to part the shrubbery and stare into the sky. I was startled to observe the buzzards—there were three of them now—were much nearer, as if following something. I pulled on my leggings and finished fitting my moccasins carefully about the ankles to keep out all dust and dirt and took my second look.
The buzzards were five, and in making their wide circles they had again cut down the distance. Then it dawned upon me that they were following something in the river. I watched the bend, the buzzards ever circling nearer, their numbers continually being augmented by fresh arrivals. At last it came in sight—a canoe containing one man.
Hastily drying my hands on my hunting-shirt, I picked up my rifle and drew a bead on the distant figure. The man was an Indian and was allowing the canoe to drift. But why should the turkey-buzzards follow him? As I pondered over this problem and waited to learn whether he be friendly or hostile, there came the spang of a rifle from my side of the river and above me.
A second shot quickly followed and I thought the figure in the canoe lurched to one side a bit. Still there was no attempt made to use the paddle. The shrill ear-splitting scream of a panther rang out, and this like the two shots was on my side of the river. That the Indian made no move to escape was inexplicable unless the first shot had killed him outright.
The canoe was deflected toward my hiding-place, and I expected to hear another brace of shots from above me. But there was no more shooting, and the canoe swung in close enough for me to observe the Indian was holding something between his teeth. I now recognized him as a friendly native, a Delaware; and anxious to protect him from those lurking on the bank I showed myself and softly called:
“Bald Eagle is in danger! Paddle in here.”
He paid no attention to my greeting, although the canoe continued its approach until it grounded against the bank. I slipped down to the water to urge him to come ashore and take cover. He was a well-known chief, and for years very friendly to the whites. The thing he held in his mouth was a piece of journey-cake, only he was not eating it as I had first supposed. As I gained the canoe I noticed a paddle placed across it so as to support his back, and another so braced as to prop up his head.
The man was dead. There was a hideous wound at the back of his head. He had been struck down with an ax. While I was weighing this gruesome discovery the scream of the panther rang out again and close by, and the bushes parted and I wheeled in time to strike up a double-barrel rifle a young man was aiming at the chief.
“You’ve fired at him twice already, Shelby Cousin,” I angrily rebuked. “Isn’t that about enough?”
“Nothin’ ain’t ’nough till I git his sculp,” was the grim reply; and Cousin, scarcely more than a boy, endeavored to knock my rifle aside. “At least you ought to kill before you scalp,” I said.
His lips parted and his eyes screwed up into a perplexed frown and he dropped the butt of his rifle to the ground. Holding the barrels with both hands, he stared down at the dead man.
“Some one bu’sted him with a’ ax most vastly,” he muttered. “An’ me wastin’ two shoots o’ powder on the skunk!”
“Without bothering to notice the turkey-buzzards that have been following him down the river,” I said.
He looked sheepish and defended himself:
“The cover was too thick to see anything overhead.”
“He was a friend to the whites. He has been murdered. His killer struck him down from behind. As if murder wasn’t bad enough, his killer tried to make a joke of it by stuffing journey-cake in his mouth. The cake alone would tell every red who sees him that a white man killed him.”
“Only trouble with the joke is that there ain’t a couple o’ him,” hissed young Cousin. “But the fellor who played this joke owes me two shoots of powder. I ’low he’ll pay me.”
“You know who he is?”
“Seen Lige Runner up along. I ’low it will be him. Him an’ me look on Injuns just the same way.”
“It’s fellows like him and Joshua Baker and Daniel Greathouse who bring trouble to the settlements,” I said.
His face was as hard as a mask of stone as he looked at me. His eyes, which should have glowed with the amiable fires of youth, were as implacably baleful as those of a mad wolf.
“You don’t go for to figger me in with Baker an’ Greathouse?” he fiercely demanded.
“I know your story. It wouldn’t be just to rank you with them.”
“Mebbe it’s my story what turns other men ag’in’ these critters,” he coldly suggested. “There was a time when I had a daddy. He talked like you do. He called some o’ the red devils his friends. He believed in ’em, too. Cornstalk, the Shawnee devil, was his good friend.
“Daddy an’ mammy ’lowed we could live on Keeney’s Knob till all git-out bu’sted up an’ never have no trouble with friendly Injuns. That was ten years ago. I was eight years old. Then Cornstalk made his last visit. Daddy had just brought in some deer meat. Made a feast for th’ bloody devils.
“I happened to be out in the woods when it was done. Or, happen like, I’d ’a’ gone along t’others. There’s two things that’ll make me hunt Cornstalk an’ his Shawnees to the back-country o’ hell—my little sister, an’ their overlookin’ to wipe me out.”
He turned and stood by the canoe, glaring down at the dead man. All Virginia was familiar with the terrible story of the Cousin massacre at Keeney’s Knob. Fully as tragic and horrible to me, perhaps, was the terrible change in the only survivor. He became an Injun-killer as soon as he was able to handle a rifle; and a Virginia boy of twelve was ashamed when he failed to bring down his squirrel shot through the head.
At eighteen Cousin was hated and feared by the Ohio tribes. He was not content to wait for Shawnee and Mingo to cross the river, but made frequent and extremely hazardous trips into their country. His panther-scream had rung out more than once near the Scioto villages to proclaim a kill.
Isaac Crabtree was a killer, but his hate did not make him rash. Jesse Hughes would have been one of our best border scouts if not for his insane hatred of Indians. He killed them whenever he met them; nor did he, like Crabtree, wait until the advantage was all on his side before striking. William White, William Hacker and John Cutright massacred five inoffensive Indian families at Bulltown on the Little Kanawha as a reprisal for the Stroud family, slain on Elk River.
Elijah Runner, who Cousin believed had killed Bald Eagle, was yet another with an insatiable thirst for red blood. Many others were notorious Injun-killers. Some were border ruffians; some were driven to the limits