Follow the River

Mary’s husband, William “Will” Ingles, and her brother, John Draper, are working in the fields, harvesting barley. Will thinks about how much he loves Mary and how anxious she was that morning when he left for work. He tells John that he is going to go back and check on Mary. When he reaches Casper Barrier’s cabin on the edge of the settlement, he sees that it’s on fire and realizes that the settlement has been attacked by Indigenous Americans. He sees Shawnee warriors looting his cabin while Mary and Bettie are tied up out front. Two of the Shawnee men see him, and Will runs away to avoid capture or death. He evades them and escapes into the woods.

The Shawnee leave town with Mary, Tommy, and Georgie on a horse while Bettie walks alongside. Henry Lenard has a noose around his neck that is tied to another horse. The group reaches the cabin of an old man named Philip Barger. The Shawnee decapitate him with Colonel Patton’s broadsword and take his head. They go to the Lybrook cabin and give Mrs. Lybrook Barger’s head in a bag.

Mary and the other captives ride away from town. By afternoon, Mary is weary and in pain. She thinks about her unborn baby, the other captives, her dead mother, and the fate of the others. She wonders why she, her children, Bettie, and Henry have not been killed. She thinks that they will be enslaved. Suddenly, Mary realizes that she needs to start paying closer attention to where they are going. She thinks to herself, “To be lost is to die” (29). She begins to memorize the landscape around her. She thinks about what the men have told her about the surroundings and how Sinking Creek leads to the New River and eventually flows into “a great river called, as [Will] had heard it, the Ho-he-o, or the O-y-o” (31).

As she reflects, the group starts going up a mountain instead of following the creek bed. They stop at a “gunpower spring” with mineral water, and the Shawnee give the captives water at Mary’s request. Then, they climb up a cliff and make camp. Mary sets Bettie’s broken arm. They sleep. In the morning, Mary urinates off the side of a cliff. Then, the Shawnee bring them food. At Mary’s request, they tie the rope around Henry’s hands instead of his neck.

The group of Shawnee and captives continue to follow the New River, sometimes climbing up on a ridge. Mary is determined to track their progress, and she notes that they are on their second day of travel. The Shawnee bury their two dead. That night, they camp in some caves at the base of a cliff. Mary is in a lot of pain from riding while heavily pregnant. She asks the chieftain for “medicine leaves” and hot water to treat Bettie’s wound. He tells her to go away. Later, they boil water in a kettle. Mary sees that Bettie’s wound is swollen and infected. She walks up to the campfire and takes some of the boiling water to wash Bettie’s wound. When she tries to get more, the chief tells her to “[g]o be still” and points out that they are preparing a poultice for Bettie (43). Mary treats Bettie’s wound with the comfrey poultice. Henry is kept apart from them.

On the third day, they are riding when Mary realizes that she is about to go into labor. She is having contractions, but she does not want to complain. That night, they camp in a mosquito-ridden forest. Mary’s water breaks, and she goes into labor. With Bettie acting as the midwife, Mary gives birth to a baby girl.

On the fourth day, Will and John accompany Captain Buchanan and 30 of his soldiers along Sinking Creek to find the hostages. They stop at the Lybrook cabin and learn how many hostages and Shawnee warriors there were. Captain Buchanan tells Philip Lybrook to go to the fort at Dunkard’s Bottom upriver. Captain Buchanan is worried that they will ride into an ambush and urges caution. A tracker named Gander Jack follows Mary and the others to the mountain path along the New River and then up to the cliff where they had camped on the first night. There, they find a scrap of Bettie’s dress. Captain Buchanan says that he will give them only one more day to search with his men. The next morning, Gander Jack loses the trail. The search party returns to Draper’s Meadows two days later.

Captain Buchanan says that he has to leave. Will and Johnny say that they will stay to bring in the harvest. Then, they tell Buchanan that they are going to contact the Cherokee to ask them to speak with the Shawnee about ransoming the hostages. Buchanan agrees to leave them 10 men and a sergeant to help them with the harvest if they agree to bring it to the fort at Dunkard’s Bottom.

Mary rides with her newborn for two days. She is bleeding badly. They have turned west off the New River up a tributary. Mary counts the days by making knots in a piece of yarn tied around her waist. On day 10, they camp on the riverbank. Tommy and Georgie have gotten used to the Shawnee, and Bettie’s arm is healing. Mary talks with the chieftain, who tells her that Shawnee women give birth while squatting, which makes Mary laugh. Later, Bettie is upset with her for laughing with the men who killed their families. They ride along a sulfuric spring that the Shawnee set on fire to startle the captives. A few days later, they hear gunshots. The Shawnee have shot elk and buffalo at a salt spring. They spend several days making the game into jerky.

On the 17th day, they continue. Bettie is upset that Mary gets to ride a horse while Bettie walks, so on the 19th day, Mary lets Bettie ride the horse. That afternoon, they reach the Ho-he-o or O-y-o river. That night, Mary and Bettie talk about how they can return home by following the rivers.

The next day, Mary is given a cradleboard to carry her baby on her back. Only Georgie is put on a horse, and the rest must walk. They cross the New River and follow the O-y-o River. Mary notices that the chieftain is watching her. On the 30th day, they cross the O-y-o River and arrive at a Shawnee settlement. The Shawnee residents jeer at Mary and the other captives and cheer when shown the scalps the warriors have collected. The captives are marched to the center of the village and tied to posts by nooses. There are other white captives tied there as well. Mary, her baby, and Bettie are tied to one post. Tommy, Georgie, and Henry are tied to another. An old woman tied to the post next to Mary tries to reassure her by saying gut, the German word for “good,” repeatedly. The chieftain tells some elders about their journey, including Mary giving birth. That evening, Mary talks to the old woman, whose name she thinks is Ghetel.

The next day, the Shawnee assemble, and two Frenchmen arrive with the chieftain. They make all the captives strip naked and run a gauntlet while being beaten. When a young female captive dies from the beating, the chieftain argues that Mary does not have to run the gauntlet.