Meanwhile the mother and her four
children remained paralyzed with fear until the Indian inside the room
had cut a hole through the wall. He then turned, brained one of the
children with his tomahawk, threw the body out into the yard through the
opening, and motioned to her to follow it. In mortal fear she obeyed,
stepping out over the body of one of her children, with two others
screaming beside her, and her baby in her arms. Once outside he scalped
the murdered boy, and set fire to the house, and then drove the woman
and the remaining children to a knoll where the wounded Indian lay with
the others around him. The Indians hoped the flames would destroy both
cabins; but Edward Cunningham and his son went into their loft, and
threw off the boards of the roof, as they kindled, escaping unharmed
from the shots fired at them; and so, though scorched by the flame and
choked by the smoke, they saved their house and their lives. Seeing the
failure of their efforts the savages then left, first tomahawking and
scalping the two elder children. The shuddering mother, with her baby,
was taken along with them to a cave, in which they hid her and the
wounded Indian; and then with untold fatigue, hardship, and suffering,
for her brutal captors gave her for food only a few papaw nuts and the
head of a wild turkey, she was taken to the Indian towns.
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