1     .

972 INDIAN TRAGEDIES AND ROMANCES.

belief that they were Indians from the distance, that had come to take part in the battle which all knew was imminent. As auxiliary warriors, they were welcome to them. After they had passed the village some distance, they fell in with an Indian man and woman on horseback, who Were returning to the town from a hunting party. These were both made captives without resistance, and then the party set off for Fort Defiance with their prisoners.

As they were rapidly proceeding up the Maumee River, a little after dark, they came near a large encampment of Indians, who were merrily amusing themselves around their camp-fires. While they passed around the camp with their prisoners, they ordered them to be silent, under pain of instant death. After they got about half a mile above the camp, they halted for a consultation, when it was proposed to have some fun with the savages, and give them a volley, in which each should kill his Indian. They deliberately got down, gagged and fastened their prisoners to trees, rode boldly into the Indian encampment, and halted, with their rifles lying across the pummels of their saddles. The Indians were surprised at their nightly visitors, who asked of them when last they had heard of General Wayne and the movements of his army, how soon and where it was expected the battle would be fought. The Indians who gathered around Wells and his daring comrades were very communicative, answering all their interrogatories, without suspecting any deceptive movements on the part of their strange visitors, who, as they thought, belonged to some of the numerous tribes that had gathered to take part in the conflict with the whites. Their appearance at length aroused the suspicion of an Indian, who was sitting some distance from them, and wlfb remarked, in an undertone, that he had his doubts about the strangers, and that he believed their visit to mean mischief. Wells, however, overheard these remarks, and at once gave the preconcerted signal, when each one fired his rifle into the body of an Indian, and then set spurs to their horses, dashing off into the