Chapter 22 - Page 2

pierced the smoke. Then came a tremendous report and a twelve-pound cannon ball smashed through a wooden house. Another and another and it was demolished. The defenders fled for their lives. Every other house that could be used for shelter was served in the same way. The last ambushed foe was swept from his covert, and when the twilight fell Piqua, throughout its whole length of three miles along Mad River, was held by the Kentuckians.

The Indian women and children had fled already to the forest, and there they were slowly followed by the warriors, their hearts filled with rage and despair. Beaten on ground of their own choosing, and not even able to bring away their dead, they saw their power crumbling. Fierce words passed between Timmendiquas and Simon Girty. The Wyandot chieftain upbraided the renegade. He charged him with giving up too soon, but Girty, suave and diplomatic, said, after his first wrath was over, that he had not yielded until it was obvious that they were beaten. Instead of a fruitless defense it was better to save their warriors for another campaign. They could yet regain all that they had lost. There was some truth in Girty's words. Blue Lick and St. Clair's terrible defeat were yet to come, but Clark's blow had destroyed the very nerve-center of the Indian confederacy. The Kentuckians had shown that not only could they fight successfully on the defensive, but they could also cross the Ohio and shatter the Indian power on its own chosen ground. Neither the valor of the warriors, nor the great aid that they received from their white allies could save them from ultimate defeat.

Henry, Paul, the officers, and many others felt these things as the night came down, and as they roamed through Piqua, now deserted by the enemy. Paul and Jim Hart went in one direction to look at the big Council House, but Henry, the shiftless one, and Tom Ross remained with Colonel Clark.

"We've won a great victory, though we've lost many good men," said the Colonel, "and now we must consign Piqua to the fate that Chillicothe has just suffered. It's a pity, but if we leave this nest, the hornets will be back in it as soon as we leave it, snug and warm, and with a convenient base for raiding across the Ohio."

"We'll have to give it to the flames," said Colonel Logan.

The other Colonels nodded. First they gathered up all the dead, whether red or white and buried them. At Henry's instance the two old chiefs, Yellow Panther, the Miami, and Red Eagle, the Shawnee, were laid side by side in the same grave. Then he fixed a board at their head upon which he cut this inscription:

In this grave Lie Yellow Panther, the Miami, And Red Eagle, the Shawnee; They were great Chiefs, And died fighting For Their People.

Not a white man disturbed the epitaph. But as soon as the last of the fallen were buried, and the soldiers had eaten and refreshed themselves, the