and then came home faint with hunger and fatigue.
Tecaughretanego bade his little son bring him a broth which the boy had
made with some wildcat bones left by the buzzards near the camp, and
when Smith had eaten he rebuked him for his despair, and charged him
never again to doubt that God would care for him, because God always
cared for those children of his who trusted in him, as the Indians did,
while the white men trusted in themselves. The next day Smith went out
again, but the noise made by the snow crust breaking under his feet
frightened the deer he saw, and he could not get a shot at them.
Suddenly, he felt that he could bear his captivity no longer, and he
resolved to try and make his way back to Pennsylvania. The Indians might
kill him, long before he could reach home; but if he staid, he must die
of hunger. He hurried ten or twelve miles eastward, when he came upon
fresh buffalo tracks, and soon caught sight of the buffalo. He shot one
of them, but he could not stop to cook the meat, and he ate it almost
raw. Then the thought of the old man and little child whom he had left
starving in the cabin behind him became too much for him. He remembered
what Tecaughretanego had said of God's care for those who trusted in
him; and he packed up all the meat he could carry, and went back to the
camp. The boy ate ravenously of the half-raw meat, as Smith had done,
but the old man waited patiently till it was well boiled. "Let it be
done enough," he said, when Smith wished to take off the kettle too
soon; and when they had all satisfied their hunger, he made Smith
a speech upon the duty of receiving the bounty of Owaneeyo with
thankfulness. After this, Smith seems to have had no farther thoughts
of running away, and he made no attempt to escape until he had been four
years in captivity. He was then at Caughnewaga, the old Indian village
which the traveler may still see from his steamboat on the St. Lawrence
River near Montreal. He had come to this place with Tecaughretanego and
his little son in an elm-bark canoe, all the way from Detroit; and now,
hearing that a French ship was at Montreal with English prisoners of
war, he stole away from the Indians and got on board with the rest. The
prisoners were shortly afterwards exchanged, and Smith got home to his
friends early in 1760. They had never known whether he had been killed
or captured, and they were overjoyed to see him, though they found him
quite like an Indian in his w