They had some food with them, taken in the hurried flight, and now the men asked them to eat.Few could do it, and others insisted on saving what little they had for the children.Long Jim found a spring near by, and all drank at it.
The six men decided that, although night had not yet come, it would be best to remain there until the morning.Evidently the fugitives were in no condition, either mental or physical, to go farther that day, and the rest was worth more than the risk.
When this decision was announced to them, most of the women took it apathetically.Soon they lay down upon a blanket, if one was to be had; otherwise, on leaves and branches.Again Henry thanked God that it was summer, and that these were people of the frontier, who could sleep in the open.No fire was needed, and, outside of human enemies, only rain was to be dreaded.
And yet this band, desperate though its case, was more fortunate than some of the others that fled from the Wyoming Valley.It had now to protect it six men Henry and Paul, though boys in years, were men in strength and ability - five of whom were the equals of any frontiersmen on the whole border.Another crowd of women was escorted by a single man throughout its entire flight.
Henry and his comrades distributed themselves in a circle about the group.At times they helped gather whortleberries as food for the others, but they looked for Indians or game, intending to shoot in either case.When Paul and Henry were together they once heard a light sound in a thicket, which at first they were afraid was made by an Indian scout, but it was a deer, and it bounded away too soon for either to get a shot.They could not find other game of any kind, and they came back toward the camp-if a mere stop in the woods, without shelter of any kind, could be called a camp.
The sun was now setting, blood red.It tinged the forest with a fiery mist, reminding the unhappy group of all that they had seen.But the mist was gone in a few moments, and then the blackness of night came with a weird moaning wind that told of desolation.Most of the children, having passed through every phase of exhaustion and terror, had fallen asleep.Some of the women slept, also, and others wept.But the terrible wailing note, which the nerves of no man could stand, was heard no longer.
The five gathered again at a point near by, and Carpenter came to them.
"Men," he said simply, "don't know much about you, though Iknow you fought well in the battle that we lost, but for what you're doin' now nobody can ever repay you.I knew that I never could get across the mountains with all these weak ones."The five merely said that any man who was a man would help at such a time.Then they resumed their march in a perpetual circle about the camp.
Some women did not sleep at all that night.It is not easy to conceive what the frontier women of America endured so many thousands of times.They had seen their husbands, brothers, and sons killed in the battle, and they knew that the worst of torture had been practiced in the Indian camp.Many of them really did not want to live any longer.They merely struggled automatically for life.The darkness settled down thicker and thicker; the blackness in the forest was intense, and they could see the faces of one another only at a little distance.The desolate moan of the wind came through the leaves, and, although it was July, the night grew cold.The women crept closer together, trying to cover up and protect the children.The wind, with its inexpressibly mournful note, was exactly fitted to their feelings.Many of them wondered why a Supreme Being had permitted such things.But they ceased to talk.No sound at all came from the group, and any one fifty yards away, not forewarned, could not have told that they were there.
Henry and Paul met again about midnight, and sat a long time on a little hillock.Theirs had been the most dangerous of lives on the most dangerous of frontiers, but they had never been stirred as they were tonight.Even Paul, the mildest of the five, felt something burning within him, a fire that only one thing could quench.
