210 RESCUE OF THE CAPTIVES. 



structed upon which the exhausted captives were borne 

 along in the way that it was usual for Indians to carry 

 off wounded men belonging to their tribe; but the 

 cutting of the sticks and work of manufacturing 

 these things could not be done without leaving a mark : 

 the Indians could not stop to erase every mark made, 

 because if they did, it would delay the march too 

 long; moreover, the marks of erasure would still 

 be visible, and in either case the pursuers would at 

 once see what had been done, and know that the 

 girls' lives would be safe, as long as the pursuit re- 

 mained undetected. It was by no means an unknown 

 thing in the Indian country for pursuits of this kind 

 to be kept up even for weeks, over hundreds of miles 

 of country, and for the rescue to be triumphantly 

 effected after all. 



In this case, as it seems, the pursuit was sharp and 

 brief, and the rescue nobly and ably effected. Fin- 

 ally the story ends in the usual way, the three lovers 

 and rescuers duly marry their respective sweethearts: 

 Samuel Henderson married Betsy Callaway, John 

 Holder married Fanny Callaway, and Flanders Calla- 

 way (no doubt a brother of theirs) married Jemima 

 Boone; and let us hope they all lived happily ever 

 afterwards, as true lovers are always supposed to do. 



As regards the ability of these frontier scouts, and 

 of the British officer in the conduct of wars with 

 savages of different kinds, a French general has (per- 

 haps unconsciously) paid our countrymen a high com- 

 pliment; for in a recent military work, of considerable 

 authority which he has published, we find that all the 

 instances quoted, as to the best methods of fighting 

 savages, are exclusively drawn from British experi- 



