s situation--for if the alarm should
reach the camp, he and his companion must inevitably perish.
Self-preservation impelled him to inflict a noiseless death upon the
squaws, and in such a manner as to leave no trace behind. Ever rapid in
thought, and prompt in action, he sprang upon his victims with a rapidity
and power of a panther, and grasping the throat of each, with one bound he
sprang into the river, and rapidly thrust the head of the elder woman
under the water, and making stronger efforts to submerge the younger, who,
however, powerfully resisted. During the short struggle, the younger
female addressed him in his own language, though almost in inarticulate
sounds. Releasing his hold, she informed him, that, ten years before, she
had been made a prisoner, on Grave Creek flats, and that the Indians, in
her presence, butchered her mother and two sisters; and that an only
brother had been captured with her, who succeeded on the second night in
making his escape; but what had become of him she knew not.

During the narrative, White, unobserved by the girl, had let go his grasp
on the elder squaw, whose body soon floated where it would not, probably
soon be found. He now directed the girl hastily to follow him, and with
his usual energy and speed, pushed for the Mount. They had scarcely gone
two hundred yards from the spring, before the alarm cry was heard some
quarter of a mile down the stream. It was supposed that some warriors
returning from a hunt, struck the Hockhocking just as the body of the
drowned squaw floated past. White and the girl succeeded in reaching the
Mount, where M'Clelland had been no indifferent spectator to the sudden
commotion among the Indians, as the prairie warriors were seen to strike
off in every direction, and before White and the girl had arrived, a party
of some twenty warriors had already gained the eastern acclivity of the
Mount, and were cautiously ascending, carefully keeping under cover. Soon
the two scouts saw the swarthy faces of the foe, as they glided from tree
to tree, and rock to rock, until the whole base of the Mount was
surrounded, and all hopes of escape were cut off.

[Illustration: A SHAWANESE CHIEF.]

In this peril nothing was left, other than to sell their lives as dearly
as possible; this they resolved to do, and advised the girl to escape to
the Indians, and tell them she had been a captive to the scouts.

She said, "No! Death, and that in presence of my people,