The Trail of the Seneca by James A. Braden

Author:James A. Braden [Braden, James A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Frontier and pioneer life -- Juvenile fiction, Seneca Indians -- Juvenile fiction, Delaware Indians -- Juvenile fiction
ISBN: 9783962722098
Publisher: Otbebookpublishing
Published: 2017-12-16T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XIV—THE MYSTERIOUS CAMP IN THE GULLY

“Honestly, my neck’s out of joint, looking around trees all day,” John declared. But he was so light-hearted, so glad to be home again, that he fairly giggled as he spoke.

“Faith! I’m glad you’re here, unhealthy as it is for you,” Kingdom answered. “What with Lone-Elk always just over my shoulder, and now with the snow on the ground, I don’t know how I’d ever have managed to get to you in the woods!” And so the boys fell to telling each other all that each had been doing and all that had happened since their last meeting.

Kingdom showed the greatest interest in the discovery of the bodies of the two men whom John had found dead under the brush heap at the salt springs. He inquired for every shred of information possible for John to give him, and tried his best to determine whether the murder had been committed by Indians or white men. If it was done by white persons, he declared, the slayer or slayers had at any rate tried to make it appear that Indians were the guilty ones. The carrying off the scalps of the dead and removing all valuables from the bodies indicated this.

“Still, I don’t see what it signifies, or how it makes any great difference to us, one way or another,” said John, as Ree intimated that he would have looked into the matter more thoroughly had it been he who made the discovery.

“Why, of course you do, John! Just think a minute! I’ve told you about seeing that camp in the little hollow and the salt spread out to dry. Now, then, where did that salt come from if not from the big ‘lick’? You mark my word that when we find out whose camping place that is, or was, we will know pretty well who did that killing. What we ought to do is to carry the whole story to Wayne’s men or to Fort Pitt; but it wouldn’t do any good to go there merely telling that we had found a couple of men dead. Persons are found dead along the border, somewhere, every day in the year. But if we could go to Wayne, or anyone else, and show them that the murderers were white robbers, and not simply sneaking redskins, there would be more of a chance to call somebody to account.”

“That’s so,” John answered rather thoughtfully, yet in a way which showed Ree that he did not quite understand.

“Why, certainly!” Kingdom exclaimed somewhat warmly. “If the camp I saw was the camp of the murderers, who is it likely that they are? British! That’s what! British from Detroit, over in this part of the woods for no good purpose—spying around Fort Pitt or stirring the Indians up to hostilities! And that camp I saw was a white man’s camp! Indians don’t care much about salt to begin with, and in the second place what white men would be traveling in

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