e raft of timber that bordered the fatal _chute_; where,
not doubting that, from the fury of the current, all his companions had
perished, and that he was left to contend alone against the savages, he
immediately sought a concealment among the logs, in which he remained
during the remainder of the night and the greater part of the following
day, until pretty well assured the Indians were no longer in his
vicinity. Then, scaling the cliffy banks of the river, and creeping
through the woods, it was his good fortune at last to stumble upon the
clearings around Brace's Station, at which he arrived soon after the
defeated Regulators had effected their return. Here--having now lost his
horse, arms, everything but life; having battled away also in the
midnight siege some of those terrors that made Indians and border life so
hateful to his imagination, and being perhaps seduced by the hope of
repairing his losses, and revenging the injuries he had suffered--he was
easily persuaded to follow Colonel Bruce and the army of Kentuckians to
the Indian territory, where Fate, through his arm, struck a blow so
dreadfully yet retributively just at the head of the long-prospering
villain, the unprincipled and unremorseful Braxley.

It was mentioned, that when Nathan first burst upon the astonished
Bruce, where he lay with his vanguard encamped in the woods, his
appearance and demeanour were rather those of a truculent madman than of
the simple-minded, inoffensive creature he had so long appeared to the
eyes of all who knew him. His Indian garments and decorations contributed
somewhat to this effect; but the man, it was soon seen, was more changed
in spirit, than in outward attire. The bundle of scalps in his hand, the
single one, yet reeking with blood, at his belt, and the axe of Wenonga,
gory to the helve, and grasped with a hand not less blood-stained, were
not more remarkable evidences of transformation than were manifested in
his countenance, deportment, and expressions. His eye beamed with a wild
excitement, with exultation, mingled with fury; his step was fierce,
active, firm, and elastic, like that of a warrior leaping through the
measures of the war-dance; and when he spoke, his words were of battle
and bloodshed. He flourished the axe of Wenonga, pointed grimly toward
the village, and while recounting the number of warriors who lay therein
waiting to be knocked on the head, he seemed, judging his thoughts from
his gestures, to be