s neared, and the home shore grew plainer. Swimming,
Little Fat Bear was getting blue around the mouth, his face was pale
and pinched. The November water had chilled him to the bone.

"Can you keep going?"

"Yes, I'm all right. You keep paddling."

"There they are!"

The Miamis had burst out upon the shore behind. They yelled furiously,
and shook their fists--but they yelled and threatened in vain. Now
they dared not follow farther. The boats from the Kentucky shore took
the paddlers off the raft; dragged Little Fat Bear from the cold water.
His teeth chattered. He could not manage himself. He had not been
taken out any too soon.

"Who are you, anyhow! White boys? Where from?"

"We're the boys that the Miamis stole from the Pope settlement last
February--all except Billy Wells. He's with 'em still."

"What! How'd you get away? Your folks had give you up. I declare!
Made off alone, did you!"

"Clear from the Little Calumet River. Been three weeks."

"Whoopee! Think o' that! Guess we'd better take you down to
Louisville, soon as we can. Colonel Pope's moved into town, 'count o'
Injuns. He'll be powerful glad to see you, and so will your other
folks."

And that proved true. Colonel Pope met them at the landing. Little
Fat Bear was carried ashore, to be rubbed and dosed. And from this
time on for many a week there certainly were four boy heroes in the
Louisville district, with "tall" stories to be told over and over again.

Sometimes they wondered how William Wells, "Black Snake," was getting
along; but they knew that he was all right.

[1] See chapter on "Little Turtle of the Miamis," in "Boys' Book of
Indian Warriors."

CHAPTER XII

ODDS AGAINST HIGGINS THE RANGER (1814)

AND HIS RESCUE BY HEROINE PURSLEY

Chief Little Turtle and his brother chiefs of eleven other tribes in
the Northern Confederacy signed a treaty of peace with the United
States, in August of 1795. This opened the way for the white settlers.
They crossed the Ohio and spread westward through southern Ohio,
Indiana and Illinois, to the Mississippi River.

But the Indians clung to their old hopes that a portion at least of
their lands between the Great Lakes and the Ohio would be left to them.
In the beginning of the new century, 1800, there arose among the
restless Shawnees a medicine-man styled the Prophet and the Open Door.
He aimed to band all the Indians of north, south, east and far west
into a va