Follow the River Read Online Free PDF

family.
    He plodded on through the woods, his soul crushed, and soon every step he took jarred a sob of guilt and misery out of him.
    The warriors led their train of stolen horses out of the sunlight of the meadows down into the profound humid green shade of the forest and into a creek bed. They went westward in the ankle-deep water, which washed away their trail at once.
    In bundles on the back of one horse were the bodies of the two braves Colonel Patton had killed with his broadsword. On the horse behind that one, Mary Ingles rode, holding her son Georgie before her. She rode unblinking, in a state of shock, her head wobbling on a limp neck with the horse’s movements. She had hardly heeded the Shawnee chieftain when he had said, in English:
    “Mo-ther will ride.”
    And they had put her on the horse, and had handed her little boy up to her.
    Bettie Draper, in a trance of grief, rode astride the next horse, with Tommy behind her. He sat with his arms around her waist and the side of his face pressed against her back, his eyes glazed. Bettie’s broken right arm hung bloody and untreated at her side.
    The other horses were laden with everything the Indians had seen fit to carry away from the burning settlement: tools, clothing, pots and kettles, blankets, guns and ammunition. From the Ingleses’ house they had brought virtually every movable thing except the grandfather clock; they had shied away from its mysterious ticking noise and left it standing by the wall.
    Still secured by wrist-thongs and the noose around his neck, Henry Lenard splashed afoot down the stream. The other end of his noose was tied to the baggage on a horse’s back. If he lagged, he would be jerked forward and fall, to be dragged almost under the horse’s hooves. Thus he concentrated on his pace and footing and did not try to speak with Mary Ingles or Bettie Draper. Nor did he try to look back andsee whether their husbands were following. He simply behaved very well, knowing that his life depended on it.
    The creek curved around the base of a mountain. After progressing about half a mile, the party emerged into the sunlight in a cleared patch of bottomland. Through the numbness of her soul, Mary Ingles was vaguely aware that this was the little homestead of old Phillip Barger. This brook they had followed, she knew, led to Sinking Creek, whereon Mr. and Mrs. Lybrook lived farther down. And their house was the last they would encounter. At the end of Sinking Creek they would come to the New River, upon which, she knew, no white man lived. Adam Harmon and his sons had a hunting shack and a cornpatch there, but seldom stayed there. There was too much Indian traffic on the New River.
    The Shawnees stopped the horses a few yards from Mr. Barger’s cabin, which was little more than a hut. The tall chieftain spoke to two warriors, who vanished into the corn toward the cabin with their muskets at the ready.
    Mary suddenly was aware that they were going to attack the old man.
    “Mister Barger!” she cried at the top of her voice. “Indians!”
In
 …” her voice was choked off by a strong brown hand at her throat. And as she tried to take in breath through that powerful grip, she saw the snowy-haired old man emerge into the sunlight at his cabin door, blinking, looking around. He did not see the two Indians until they materialized on both sides of him and pinioned his arms.
    Then the chieftain called something to them. He drew Colonel Patton’s broadsword from its scabbard, which was lashed to the side of one of the packhorses, and strode through the corn. He stopped in front of the old man and said something to the two braves, who then twisted the old man’s arms up behind him and forced him into a kneeling position, bent so far forward that his silvery forelock almost swept the ground. Holding the broadsword in both hands, the tall Shawnee laid the blade on the back of Philip Barger’s neck for an instant, then raised it.
    Mary Ingles shut her