St. Clair and Wayne 107 



so, riding boldly forward, they came right among 

 the warriors who stood grouped around the camp- 

 fires. They were at arm's-length before their dis- 

 guise was discovered. Immediately each of them, 

 choosing his man, fired into an Indian, and then 

 they fled, pursued by a hail of bullets. May's horse 

 slipped and fell in the bed of a stream, and he was 

 captured. The other three, spurring hard and lean- 

 ing forward in their saddles to avoid the bullets, 

 escaped, though both Wells and McClellan were 

 wounded; and they brought their Indian prisoners 

 into Wayne's camp that night. May was recognized 

 by the Indians as their former prisoner; and next 

 day they tied him up, made a mark on his breast 

 for a target, and shot him to death. 35 



With his advance effectually covered by his scouts, 

 and his army guarded by his own ceaseless vigi- 



35 McBride collects or reprints a number of narratives deal- 

 ing with these border heroes ; some of them are by contem- 

 poraries who took part in their deeds. Brickell's narrative 

 corroborates these stories ; the differences are such as would 

 naturally be explained by the fact that different observers 

 were writing of the same facts from memory after a lapse 

 of several years. In their essentials the narratives are un- 

 doubtedly trustworthy. In the Draper collection there are 

 scores of MS. narratives of similar kind, written down from 

 what the pioneers said in their old age; unfortunately it is 

 difficult to sift out the true from the false, unless the stories 

 are corroborated from outside sources; and most of the tales 

 in the Draper MSS. are evidently hopelessly distorted. Wells' 

 daring attack on the Indian camp is alluded to in the Bradley 

 MSS. ; the journal, under date of August i2th, recites how 

 four white spies went down almost to Lake Erie, captured 

 two Indians, and then attacked the Indians in their tents, 

 three of the spies being wounded. 



