Here, too,
lived the redoubted chief called Captain Jacobs, the terror of the
English border. Armstrong set out from Fort Shirley, the farthest
outpost, on the last of August, and, a week after, was within six miles
of the Indian town. By rapid marching and rare good luck, his party had
escaped discovery. It was ten o'clock at night, with a bright moon. The
guides were perplexed, and knew neither the exact position of the place
nor the paths that led to it. The adventurers threaded the forest in
single file, over hills and through hollows, bewildered and anxious,
stopping to watch and listen. At length they heard in the distance the
beating of an Indian drum and the whooping of warriors in the war-dance.
Guided by the sounds, they cautiously moved forward, till those in the
front, scrambling down a rocky hill, found themselves on the banks of
the Alleghany, about a hundred rods below Kittanning. The moon was near
setting; but they could dimly see the town beyond a great intervening
field of corn. "At that moment," says Armstrong, "an Indian whistled in
a very singular manner, about thirty perches from our front, in the foot
of the cornfield." He thought they were discovered; but one Baker, a
soldier well versed in Indian ways, told him that it was only some
village gallant calling to a young squaw. The party then crouched in the
bushes, and kept silent. The moon sank behind the woods, and fires soon
glimmered through the field, kindled to drive off mosquitoes by some of
the Indians who, as the night was warm, had come out to sleep in the
open air.
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