After the brutal massacre, by the Indians, of the Woolcomber family, came fresh rumors of fresh atrocities in contemplation, consequently it was considered advisable to gather the women and children of the surrounding country within the stockade of Fort Robinson, under a strong guard, while the bulk of the able-bodied men went out in companies to reap the harvest. Some of the harvesters were on guard part of the time, consequently all the men of the frontier community performed a share of the guard duty.

Among the most energetic of the guardsmen was young Hugh Gibson, son of the Widow Gibson, a name that has later figured prominently in the public eye in the person of the Secretary of the American Legion at Brussels, who endured a trying experience during the period of the over-running of the Belgian Paris by the hordes of blood-thirsty Huns, as rapacious and merciless as the red men of Colonial Pennsylvania.

Hugh Gibson, of Colonial Pennsylvania, was under twenty, slim and dark, and very anxious to make a good record as guardian of so many precious lives. As days wore on, and no Indian attacks were made, and no fresh atrocities committed by the blood-loving monster, Cooties, the terror of the lower Juniata Valley, even the punctilious Gibson relaxed a trifle in the rigidity of his guardianship.

It was near the end of the harvest when the majority of the men announced that they would remain away over night at a large clearing on Buffalo Creek, as it would be difficult to reach the fort by nightfall and be back at work by daybreak the next morning. Hugh Gibson was made captain of the guard and placed in charge of the safety of the stockade full of refugees.

All went well with Gibson and his fellow pickets until about midnight, when the Indians launched a gas attack. The wind being propitious, they built a fire, into which they stirred a large number of oak balls, and the fumes suddenly engulfing the garrison, all became very drowsy, with the result that the nimble redskins rushed in on the defenders, who were gaping about, thinking that there must be a forest fire somewhere, but too dazed and semi-conscious to think very succinctly about anything.

When the guards saw that it was red men, and not red fire, they roused themselves as best they could, and fought bravely to save the fort and its inmates. By throwing firebrands into the stockade, the women and children, and cattle, were stampeded, and by a common impulse burst open the gates, and dashed past the defenders, headed for the creek, to escape the threatened conflagrations. Then the Indians closed in, and in the darkness, amid the crackling of the fire–for a forest fire was now in progress, and part of the stockade wall was blazing, amid war whoops and shrieks of hatred and agony, the barking of dogs, the bellowing of cattle running amuck, rifle shots, the crack of tomahawks on defenseless skulls, the midnight air resounded with uncouth and horrible medley.

The fight continued all night long, until the approach of dawn, and the danger of the forest fire cutting them off made the Indians decamp. They did not stop until in the big beaver meadow at Wildcat Valley, they paused long enough to take stock of prisoners, and to count wounded and missing. They had captured an even dozen prisoners, and as the light grew stronger they noticed that they had one male captive, his face almost unrecognizable with soot, and mostly stripped of clothing, who proved to be none other than the zealous Hugh Gibson himself.

It was a strange company that moved in single file towards the Alleghenies, eleven women and one man, all tied together with leather thongs, like a party of Alpinists, one after another, not descending a monarch of mountains, but descending into captivity, into the valley of the shadow.shadow. The Indians were jubilant over the personnel of their captives. In addition to Hugh Gibson, late captain of the guard, they had taken Elsbeth Henry, daughter of the most influential of the settlers, a girl of rare beauty and charm, who had enjoyed some educational advantages among the Moravians at Nazareth, the pioneers of women’s education in America.

Gibson had for a year past, ever since he first appeared in the vicinity of Fort Robinson, admired the uncommonly attractive girl, and being ambitions in many ways, aspired to her hand. She had never treated him with much consideration, except to be polite to him, but she was that to everyone, and could not be otherwise, being a happy blend of Huguenot and Bohemian ancestry.

The minute that Gibson saw that Elsbeth was his fellow prisoner he forgot the chagrin at being the sole male captive, and congratulated himself in secret on the good fortune that would make him, for a year or more, the daily companion of the object of his admiration. He would redeem the humiliation of this capture by staging a sensational double escape, and then, after freeing the maiden, she could not fail to love him and agree to become his wife. He was, therefore, the most cheerful of prisoners, and whistled and sang Irish songs as he marched along at the tail end of the long line of captives.

It seemed as if they were being taken on a long journey, and he surmised that the destination was Fort Duquesne, to be delivered over to the French, where rewards would be paid for each as hostages. He could see by the deference paid to Elsbeth Henry that the redmen recognized that they had a prisoner of quality, and as she walked along, away ahead of him, whenever there was a turn in the path, he would note her youthful beauty and charm.

She was not very tall, but was gracefully and firmly built. Her most noticeable features were the intense blackness of her soft wavy hair, and the whiteness of her skin, with minute blue veins showing, gave her complexion a blue whiteness, the color of mother of pearl almost, and Gibson, being a somewhat poetical Ulster Scot, compared her to an evening sky, with her red lips, like a streak of flame, across the mother of pearl firmament, her downcast eyes, like twin stars just appearing!

The further on the party marched the harder it was going to be to successfully bring her back in safety to the Juniata country, through a hostile Indian territory, for he had not the slightest doubt that he would outwit the clumsy-witted redmen and escape with her. It might be best to strike north or northwest, out of the seat of hostilities, and make a home for his bride-to-be in the wilderness along Lake Erie, and never take her back to her parents. But then there was his mother; how could he desert her? He must go back with Elsbeth, run all risks, once he had escaped and freed her from her inconsiderate captors.

After a few days he learned that the permanent camp was to be on the Pucketa, in what is now Westmoreland County. Cooties was located there, and since his unparalleled success in massacring whole families of whites, he was apparently again in favor with the Indian tribal Chieftains. He was to take charge of the prisoners, and when ready, would lead them to Fort Duquesne, or possibly to some point further up La Belle Riviere, to turn them over to the French, who would hold them as hostages.

It was in the late afternoon when the party filed into Cooties’ encampment, at the Blue Spring, near the headwaters of the beautiful Pucketa. Cooties had been apprised of their coming, and had painted his face for the occasion, but meanwhile had consumed a lot of rum, and was beastly drunk, so much so that in his efforts to drive the punkis off his face, which seemed to have a predilection for the grease paint, he smeared the moons and stars into an unrecognizable smudge all over his saturnine countenance.

As he sat there on a huge dark buffalo robe, a rifle lying before him, a skull filled with smoking tobacco on one side, and a leather jug of rum on the other, smoking a long pipe, his head bobbing unsteadily on its short neck, he made a picture never to be forgotten. The slayer of the Sheridan family was at best an ugly specimen of the Indian race. He was short, squat–Gibson described him as “sawed off”; his complexion was very dark, his lips small and thin, his nose was broad and flat, his eyes full and blood-shot, and his shaven head was covered with a red cap, almost like a Turk’s fez.

He was too intoxicated to indicate his pleasure, if he felt any, at the arrival of the prisoners. In front of where he sat were the embers of a campfire, as the weather–it was early in March–was still very cold. He had the prisoners lined up in front of him beyond the coals, while he squatted on his rug, eyeing them as carefully as his bleared, inebriated vision would permit. Calling to several of his henchmen, he had them fetch fresh wood and pile it beside the embers, as if a big bonfire was to be started later.later.

Just as they were in the midst of bringing the wood, a group of six stalwart Indians rushed on the scene, literally dragging a rather good-looking, dark-haired white woman of about thirty years, whose face showed every signsign of intense terror. From words that he could understand, and the gesturesgestures, Gibson made out that this woman had belonged to another batch of prisoners, but before she could be delivered at Shannopin’s Town had somehow made her escape.

To deliver a body of prisoners short one of the quota had brought some criticism on Cooties, and he was in an ugly frame of mind when she was brought before him. There was an ash pole near the wood pile, to which prisoners were tied while being interrogated, and Cooties ordered that the unfortunate woman should be strapped to it. The Indian warriors, needless to say, made a thorough job and bound her to it securely, hand and foot.

Though she saw twelve or more white persons, the bound woman never said a word, and the captives from Fort Robinson and other places were too terror-stricken to address a word to her. They stared at her with that look of dumb helplessness that a flock of sheep assume when peering through the bars of their fold at a farmer in the act of butchering one of their number. Sympathy they may have felt, but to express it in words would have availed nothing.

Once tied to the tree, Cooties ordered that the wood be piled about her feet. It was ranked until it came almost to her waist. Then the cruel warrior turned to his victim, saying to her in German, “It’s going to be a cold night; I think you can warm me up very nicely.”

Then he grinned and looked at each of his other prisoners menacingly. Silas Wright in his excellent “History of Perry County” thus quotes Hugh Gibson in describing the scene then enacted: “All the prisoners in the neighborhood were collected to be spectators of the death by torture of a poor, unhappy woman, a fellow-prisoner who had escaped, and been recaptured. They stripped her naked, tied her to a post and pierced her with red hot irons, the flesh sticking to the irons at every touch. She screamed in the most pitiful manner, and cried for mercy, but the ruthless barbarians were deaf to her agonizing shrieks and prayers, and continued their horrid cruelty until death came to her relief.”

After this fiendish episode, the Fort Robinson prisoners were sick at heart and in body for days, and most of them would have dropped in their tracks if they had been compelled to resume the long, tedious western journey.

It appeared that in the foray on Fort Robinson one young Indian had been slain; rumor among the Indians had it that he had been shot by mistake by a member of his own party. At any rate his parents, who lived near Cooties’ camp-ground, took his end very hard, and the squaw, who was Cooties’ sister, demanded the adoption of Hugh Gibson to take the place of her lost warrior son. This was a good point for Gibson, although the warrior’s father, Busqueetam, acted very coldly towards him, and he feared he might some day, in a fit of revenge and hate, take his life. However, the young white man, by making every effort to help his Indian foster parents, who were very feeble and unable to work, won their confidence, and also that of Cooties, who requisitioned him to do all sorts of errands and work about the encampment.

One day Busqueetam was in a terrible state of excitement. His spotted pony, the only equine in the camp, and the one that he expected to give to Cooties to ride with chiefly dignity through the portals of the Fort had strayed off in the night.

Most of the Fort Robinson and other prisoners who had been brought in from various directions since their arrival, to make a great caravan of captives to impress the commanders at Shannopin’s Town, like a Roman triumph, were allowed their liberty during the daytime. At night they were all tied together as they lay about the campfire, not far from the charred stump of the ash pole where the poor white woman had been burned to death, and where the small Indian dogs were constantly sniffing. There were about twenty-five prisoners, all told, and with these were tied about half a dozen guards, and all lay down in a circle about the fire, guards and prisoners sleeping at the same time. It was a different system from that of the whites, for if a prisoner got uneasy or tried to get up, he or she would naturally pull on the leather thongs, and rouse the guardians and other prisoners. The thongs were around both wrists, so a prisoner was tied to the person on either side.

Hugh Gibson managed to have a few words with Elsbeth, when he heard of the horse’s disappearance. Much as he would like to have talked to her, few words passed between them during the captivity. Elsbeth was naturally reserved, and had never known Hugh well before, and he was playing for big stakes, and saw how the Indians resented any hobnobbing among their prisoners. He managed to whisper to her that he would volunteer to hunt for Busqueetam’s missing pony, but would return at night and wait for her in the Panther Glade, a dense Rhododendron thicket through which they had passed on their way to the campground; that she should gnaw herself free with her teeth, and that done, with her natural agility and moccasined feet, could nimbly spring away into the darkness and escape to him. He thought he knew where the pony was hiding, and she could ride on the animal to civilization. And now let Gibson tell the adventure in his own words:

“At last a favorable opportunity to gain my liberty. Busqueetam lost a horse and sent me to hunt him. After hunting some time, I came home and told him I had discovered his tracks at some considerable distance, and that I thought I would find him; that I would take my gun and provisions and would hunt him for three or four days, and if I could kill a deer or a bear, I would pack home the meat on the horse.”

Hugh Gibson, the privileged captive, strolled out of camp with a business-like expression on his lean face, and carrying Cooties’ favorite rifle. He took a long circle about through the deep forest, and at dark was ensconced in the Panther Glade, to wait the fateful moment when Elsbeth, his beloved, would come to him, and as his promised wife, he would lead her to liberty.

It was a cold night, and his teeth chattered as he squatted among the rhododendrons waiting and listening. The wolves were howling, and he wondered if the girl would feel afraid!

At the usual time the various prisoners and their guards were lashed together, and lay down for their rest around the embers of the campfire. Most of them were short of coverings, so they huddled close together. Not so Elsbeth, for Cooties looked after her and provided her with four buffalo robes, which she would have loved dearly to share with her less favored fellow prisoners, but they would not allow it. The Indians made the captives work hard during the day cutting wood, dressing furs and pounding corn. They did not feed them any too well, as game was scarce and ammunition scarcer, so all were tired when they lay down by the campfire’s soothing glow.

One by one they fell asleep, all but Elsbeth, who, covering her head with the buffalo robes, began to gnaw on the leather thongs as if they were that much caramel, first this side, then the other. She felt like a rodent before she was half through, and her pretty pearl-colored teeth grew shorter and blunter before she was done. It was a gigantic task, but she stuck to it bravely, and some time during the “wee, sma’” hours had the delicious sensation of knowing she was free, even though she felt horridly toothless and sore-gummed in her moment of victory.

Like a wild cat she slipped out from under the buffalo robes, wiggled along among the wet leaves and moss, then crawled to her feet and was off like a deer towards the Panther Glade, regardless of the howling of the wolves. Hugh Gibson’s quick sense of hearing told him she was coming, and he walked out so that he stood on the path before her, and clasped her white shapely arms in heartfelt congratulations.

“Now that we are free,” he said, “I will take you to the pony in three hours’ travel. I want to arrange the one final detail to make this reunion always memorable for us both. We have shared common hardships and perils; we have plotted and planned for freedom together. Let us guarantee that our lives shall always be together, for I love you, and want you to be my wife.”

Elsbeth drew herself back out of his grasp, and a shudder went through her supple little frame. “Why I have never heard the like of what you say, much as I have appreciated all you have done; ours was only a common misfortune. I could not care for you that way, even though recognizing your bravery, your foresight and your kindliness.”

For a moment Hugh Gibson was so angry that he felt like leading her back to Cooties, where she would probably have been received with open arms, and be burned at the stake, but he finally “possessed his soul” and accepted the inevitable.

They found the pony by morning, but it took some maneuvering to capture the wily beast, and packed him across the Kittanning Path, where, at Burgoon’s Run, they came upon a party of traders headed by George McCord, who had lately come from the Juniata.

McCord told them the details of the conflict at Fort Robinson, of the shocking killing of Widow Gibson, Robert Miller’s daughter, James Wilson’s wife, John Summerson, and others, on that bloody night of gas, forest fires, smoke and surprises.

It was the turning point in Hugh Gibson’s life; his mother gone, and not a sign of weakening in Elsbeth Henry’s mother-of-pearl countenance; in fact, the indistinct line of her mouth was more like a streak of crimson flame than ever. A new light had dawned for him out of these shocking misfortunes; his purpose would be to redeem his inactivity at Fort Robinson, his overconfidence, his over self-esteem, by going at once to Carlisle to secure a commission in the Royal American Regiment of Riflemen. He left Elsbeth in charge of the McCord party who would see her back to her distracted parents, while he tramped over the mountains towards Reastown and Fort Littleton, by the shortest route to the Cumberland Valley.