88 DESOLATION OF THE FRONTIERS. [17C3. 



the house, but was shot dead as he leaped the 

 fence. A negro woman gained a place of conceal- 

 ment, whither she was followed by her screaming 

 child ; and, fearing lest the cries of the boy should 

 betray her, she turned and killed him at a blow. 

 Among the prisoners was the wife of Glendenning, 

 a woman of a most masculine spirit, who, far from 

 being overpowered by what she had seen, was 

 excited to the extremity of rage, charged her cap- 

 tors with treachery, cowardice, and ingratitude, and 

 assailed them with a tempest of abuse. Neither 

 the tomahawk, which they brandished over her 

 head, nor the scalp of her murdered husband, with 

 which they struck her in the face, could silence 

 the undaunted virago. When the party began 

 their retreat, bearing with them a great quantity 

 of plunder packed on the horses they had stolen, 

 Glendenning's wife, with her infant child, was 

 placed among a long train of captives guarded 

 before and behind by the Indians. As they defiled 

 along a narrow path which led through a gap in the 

 mountains, she handed the child to the woman 

 behind her, and, leaving it to its fate,^ slipped into 

 the bushes and escaped. Being well acquainted 

 with the woods, she succeeded, before nightfall, in 

 reaching the spot where the ruins of her dwelling 

 had not yet ceased to burn. Here she sought out 

 the body of her husband, and covered it with fence- 



1 Her absence was soon perceived, on which one of the Indians 

 remarked that he would bring the cow back to her calf, and, seizing the 

 child, forced it to scream violently. This proving ineffectual, he dashed 

 out its brains against a tree. This was related by one of the captives who 

 was taken to the Indian villages and afterwards redeemed. 



