Trail and Trading Post; or, The Young Hunters of the OhioStratemeyer, Edward
General
Trail and Trading Post; or, The Young Hunters of the Ohio
Stratemeyer, Edward
Frontier and pioneer life -- Juvenile fiction
“Let me go and I will reward you well,” said Henry, after he saw that
the red men had no intention of giving him his liberty.
Instead of agreeing to this, the Indian asked the youth about Jean
Bevoir and Moon Eye. Then Henry was left once again to himself, while
two Indians went off on a run,—to interview the French trader, as it
afterwards proved.
The upshot of the matter was that Henry was taken to the camp Jean
Bevoir and Moon Eye had made in the forest. Bevoir hailed the coming of
the young prisoner with keen delight.
“Ha! so ve haf at least von of dem!” said he, rubbing his hands
together. “How you like to be prisonair, hey?”
“Not at all,” answered Henry, bluntly. “Now you have me, what do you
intend to do, Jean Bevoir?”
“You shall soon see, _oui_! I haf not forgot ze past, no! no! I tak care
of you, by gar!” And Jean Bevoir shook his fist in poor Henry’s face.
“You will gain nothing by mistreating me,” went on the youth, as
steadily as he could. “Sooner or later the law will get hold of you. The
best thing you can do is to let me go.”
“I not let you go. Ve shall fight zem at ze post. Ve vin sure—but if ve
lose, hey? I haf you, hey? Vat can za do to Jean Bevoir if you be a
prisonair, hey? If za keel me den my men keel you! Now you understand,
_oui_?”
Henry did understand, and it made his heart sink lower than ever. By
holding him a prisoner the Frenchman expected to keep himself from harm.
If he was captured he would warn his captors not to harm him, otherwise
Henry must suffer.
The preparations for attacking the post were now going forward, and a
little later Henry was removed in the care of two Indians to a station
still further up the Ohio. Here some of the red men had something of a
village, and here, to his astonishment, the youth found many of the
horses of the pack-train and also the sick man who had so mysteriously
disappeared.
The sick man lay in a wigwam on some blankets. Strange to relate, his
recent adventures had not made him any weaker than he had formerly been;
in fact, they appeared to have helped him.
“I, too, tried to get away, on one of the horses,” he said. “But some
Indians followed me up, and captured me. They brought me to this place,
and an old Indian medicine man gave me some medicine which has helped me
wonderfully.”
The man then wanted to know something about Henry, and the youth told
him as much as he deemed necessary. The two were in the midst of the
conversation when two Indians came in and hustled Henry out of the
wigwam and to another part of the village.
“White people talk too much,” said one of the Indians, thereby giving
the youth to understand that they did not wish the pair to consult
together.
From what little Henry had learned he was now certain that a strong
attack was to be made on the trading post. As a consequence he wanted to
get free more than ever, that he might warn his friends.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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