They bound the two half drowned men to stakes and built great fires about them. They killed the two cows and roasted the men and their meat in the same fires.
A few small pieces of drift and an upturned canoe marked the site of the battle; otherwise the bosom of the river was as placid as before. * * * And the vision faded.
John, as deeply moved as if he had been tied to a stake and helplessly witnessed it all, knew that the vision he had seen had just occurred as pictured, though he was more than two hundred miles from the mouth of the Big Miami.
He went home in a very frenzy of passion; ate his supper in silence and as his parents noticed in a sort of semi-consciousness; eating more than he habitually did.
After supper he told them of his dream, as he chose to call it, saying: "After I have rescued Dorothy I will take her to her mother; then I will attend a theological school for some months. After I have finished, I will come back here and help during the summer; then I shall give my whole time to preaching."
He made hasty preparation to leave for the Miami country; knowing in an unaccountable way that Dorothy was yet alive. He went to bed and slept until the moon rose over the mountains, which gave sufficient light to travel, then set forth afoot, carrying only his girdle, a hunting knife, hatchet, blanket and several days' rations of parched corn and jerked meat.
He took the Warrior's Trail northward, traveling the first sixty miles in twenty hours, stopping only for a drink of water now and then, munching an occasional mouthful of parched corn or dried meat as he walked. Darkness having come again and, needing rest, he bathed in a small stream, and in a dry, sheltered spot under an overhanging cliff slept until the gray of morning; then he hurried on, breakfasting upon the corn and meat as he walked.
On the afternoon of the fourth day, he reached the south bank of the Ohio, opposite the mouth of the Miami, and could see the willows where the Indians had waited in their canoes. Walking up the stream to offset the distance the current would wash him down while swimming across, he selected from a pile of drift two small, dry cottonwood logs and lashed and launched them into the river; having tied his clothing on one end and holding to the other, he swam across, landing on the opposite shore at the mouth of the draw a few yards above the willows.