Then on Sunday morning came the gravest news of all. Manasink Valley on the North Branch had been attacked, the fort taken, and the settlers killed or driven off. It was the capture of the fort in the great valley that shook the people in the inn. News of the savage victory had spread among the Indians like wildfire, refugees said. All through the wilderness the tribes were rising.

“Won’t you stay and help defend us?” the black-coated preacher asked fleeing men who stopped overnight at the inn. “Our captain and most of his men are away.”

But none could be held back from the security of the south. That day and next the indefensible wooden inn emptied like a basin suddenly riddled with holes. Those who remained the preacher invited to the protection of his stone house with a spring in the cellar. The bride and bridegroom left hurriedly with their traps on the boat in which the bridegroom had come. Instead of Ohum, Mrs. Karricher went along.

“Take me with you, Mary!” Nan cried, following them to the river, but they said there was no room in the boat. She must wait till her father got back.

Stone Girl had gone after her with some of the child’s belongings. Now she waited while the small girl watched the boat move farther and farther downstream. Nan’s face worked with disappointment. It convulsed with anger when she turned and saw Stone Girl standing there.

“What did you have to tag after me for?” she accused bitterly and ran back to her room.

The grandmother urged gravely that Stone Girl and Otter Boy come to the protection of the preacher’s stone house but the girl said they would stay where they were. The red-headed barkeeper had already left down the river on foot. The cook and other help went their own way while Billy the stableman and the deaf-and-dumb youth who helped him vanished like partridges into the bush. That night no living thing but Stone Girl and Otter Boy was left in the stable.

It seemed ghostly to lie awake and, for the first time since they had come, hear the sound of neither horses nor men below. The inn next morning when they went over for breakfast was like a tomb. Once or twice they thought they heard shouts but no one appeared. Close to noon a medley of curious sounds rose from the direction of the river.

“Guka, Mamma,” Otter Boy said. “Maybe our brothers have come and we are not there to meet them.”

When they reached the bank, they stared in surprise. A sight lay before them that had not been seen in the wilderness before. The whole stretch of water a mile wide and several miles up and down stream was alive with fleeing settlers. Flatboats, keelboats, poleboats, hollow-tree canoes, birch- and elm-bark canoes, pine-log rafts, and even hog troughs made up the flotilla. Anything that floated was crowded with cargo. There were women and children, chickens, small pigs, together with piles of traps, plunder, and belongings. At each riffle the women and children jumped out in bare legs and feet to push their particular flotsam through the shallows. On shore in single file keeping abreast of their families marched men and boys, some driving cattle, some with horses and carts, most of them on foot with muskets in their hands. They looked with certain misgivings at Stone Girl and especially Otter Boy. A gray-bearded settler stopped briefly to ask where they were. He and all the rest had come from the West Branch, he told her, and were lucky to get away with their hair.