Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/144

 country) at a justice's court, which squire Sears, who resides at the falls, holds on the last Saturday of every month: He supposed there would be sixty or seventy men there—some plaintiffs, and some defendants in causes of small debts, actions of defamation, assaults, &c. and some to wrestle, fight, {117} shoot at a mark with the rifle for wagers, gamble at other games, or drink whiskey. He had his rifle with him and was prepared for any kind of frolick which might be going forward. He was principally induced to go there from having heard that another man who was to be there, had said that he could whip him (the provincial phrase for beat.) After his frolick was ended he purposed returning home through the woods.

He related a laughable story of a panick which seized the people of his neighbourhood about two years ago, occasioned by a report being spread that two hundred Indians were encamped for hostile purposes on the banks of Shade river.

The Pickets's and some others not accustomed to Indian war, forted themselves, and hired Buffington to go and reconnoitre. He hunted, and, to use his own language, fooled in the woods three or four days; then returned late in the evening to his own house, and discharged his two rifles, giving the Indian yell after each, which so terrified the party forted at Pickets's, that the centinels threw down their rifles, and ran into the river up to the belts of their hunting shirts. The whole party followed—crossed the Ohio in canoes, and alarmed the Virginia side by reporting that Buffington's wife, and some others, who had not been forted, were shot and scalped by the Indians; but when the truth came out, they were much ashamed.

Buffington deals in cattle and hogs, which he occasionally drives to the south branch of the Potomack, where they find a ready market for the supply of Baltimore and the sea