I was afraid to move or to turn my eyes. Listening, I tried
to remember how many Indians he was talking about. I knew it must be a
great many, for it was such a long word. After they went away and the
house was dark, I still seemed to see his excited manner and to hear
him say:
"Mrs. Lennox, we've got to get out of here right away, for I heard tell
at the store before I come up that there's bound to be an Injun
outbreak. Them savages from Sonora are already on their way up, and
they'll kill and scalp every man, woman, and child they can ketch, and
there's nothing to keep them from ketching us, if we stay at this here
little fort any longer."
I lay awake a long while. I did not dare call out because I imagined
some of those Indians might have got ahead of the rest and be sneaking
up to our house at that very moment. I wondered where I could hide if
they should climb through the window, and I felt that Georgia would
never know what had become of me, if they should kill and scalp me.
As soon as Mrs. Lennox stirred in the morning, I ran to her and had a
good cry. She threatened all sorts of things for the man who had caused
me such torture, and declared that he believed everything he heard. He
did not seem to remember how many hundred miles away Sonora was, nor
how many loaded cannon there were at the Fort. I felt better satisfied,
however, when she told me that she had made up her mind to start for
Sonoma the next day.
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