Accordingly spies were kept well out on the trails for any sign of an advancing army. Others were sent nearer the Indian's lair. On April 7 two messengers, Freeman and Gerrard, were sent from Fort Washington with a speech to the hostile tribes, being ordered to follow Harmar's Trace up the Little and Great Miamis. Three days later Wilkinson sent word to Armstrong to order out a spy by way of St. Clair's road, who should carefully study the route all the way to the Miami towns. Accordingly one of the boldest men on the frontier, William May, was ordered to "desert" to the enemy and, shaving his head and adopting their dress and manner of living, to learn all that was being planned and done in the red-men's camps. On May 12 Sergeant Reuben Reynolds was ordered to "desert" from Fort St. Clair and also follow St. Clair's route to the Maumee and reside with the Indians until a favorable opportunity to return occurred. On May 20 Colonel Hardin and Captain Alexander Trueman left Fort Washington for the Maumee, bearing an official message from the Government, of similar tenor to that given to General Putnam. Thus six men had preceded Putnam to the Maumee, and only two of them went merely as spies--May and Reynolds. The fate of four of these men dampened the ardor of the frontier people for peaceful efforts. Freeman, Gerrard, Trueman, and Hardin were all murdered before reaching the Maumee. Reynolds and May returned in safety later in the year. General Putnam learned at Fort Washington of the fate of his predecessors and determined not to throw life away uselessly. Favorable messages having been received from the upper Wabash, he turned all his efforts toward securing a meeting with the Wabash Indians in the fall of the year at Vincennes, Indiana. No more attempts were made to reach the Maumee over the "Bloody Way," as the Indians termed the route north from Fort Washington. "The President of the United States must know well why the blood is so deep in our paths," exclaimed a Shawanese chieftain, "... he has sent messengers of peace on these bloody roads, who fell on the way." A messenger was even now preparing to come this way to whom bloody roads were not new and for whom they had no fear. Leaving the Indian commissioners going slowly on their way to a conference with the hostile tribes at "Auglaize"--the mouth of the Auglaize River where Defiance, Ohio, now stands--and Putnam waiting for the Weas and Kickapoos to assemble at Vincennes, let us look back to the gathering "Legion of the United States" into whose ready hands the matter of peace would go when the Indians got courage enough to throw off the mask.