Dear Folks, Recently Don White from Houston, TX, sent me the following article from the Buffalo Courier. When I read it, it was so exciting and sounded like the first chapter to a historical novel. I know it's a bit long but I didn't want to send it in two parts. Hope you enjoy it. vee The Buffalo Courier September 3, 1888 FROM FORT NIAGARA. A Thrilling Moonlight Ride Prompted by Visions of the Long Ago. The Ichabod Crane of the Niagara Frontier. Fort Niagara, N.Y. Sept. 1-It was two hours past midnight. The waning moon, four hours high, flooded the fields with her pale light. Over the road which skirts the eastern bank of the gorge of the Niagara, three miles below the great cataract, a solitary horseman was wending his way-as G. P. R. James, a British novelist long since dead, buried and almost forgotten, would have said. The horse, a rather undersized pony, was cantering easily, and his rider leaned over occasionally, patting his neck and speaking encouraging words to him, for the city-bred animal had a long jaunt the previous day. The rider showed by his bearing that he was no stranger to the saddle, although he was no adept in bestriding a horse. The river moaned and seethed and the sound coming up from the foliage-lined depths of the gorge fell not cheerily upon the ear. Over hill and hollow the horse and his master traveled. In the window of a farm-house he saw between the shutters the gleam of the night lamp. He heard muffled sobs, and intuitively knew that in the sick-room a soul had gone out into the impenetrable darkness of death. But the house was passed in a few moments. At the brow of the declivity leading to the Devil's Hole the horse reduced his pace to a walk. The rider guided the animal to the verge of the bank, and, gazing down into the darksome chasm, nearly two hundred feet deep, shuddered as he thought of the cruel massacre which the gulf had witnessed one hundred and twenty-five years before. The gigantic trees which springing from the bottom of the gorge, sent their leafy branches high up in the air above him, rustling mournfully. In his minds eye, the rider saw the long wagon-train of the English defiling along the road. He saw the tired horses stoop to drink from the spring of cool pure water, which then but not now, gushed from the hillside and poured its laughing water over the brink into the frowning chasm. He fancied in the rustling of the trees, he could hear the parting of the branches as the Seneca Indians peered cautiously out upon their prey. And then, he seemed to hear the unearthly yell of the savages, as they rushed out upon the unsuspecting teamsters and their insufficient escort of soldiery; he could distinguish amidst the din, the cries of the victims for mercy, and could see the forms of the Englishmen as, to escape the tomahawk of the howling Senecas, they hurled themselves over the bluff. The horse, neglected by the rider in his reverie, had stopped and was whinnying and tossing his head about nervously. He was urged to a trot and the hollow was nearly passed when the observant animal halted with an abruptness which nearly threw his rider. At the same instant the man saw an object to his left rising out of the gulf, which nearly froze the young blood in his veins. The figure of a boy eighteen or twenty years old, surrounded by the pale nebulous light, floated up from the leafy gorge, and was approaching him. The clothing was partly that of a drummer-boy and partly a mazy ethereal white shroud. A portion of the drum-strap hung diagonally across his breast. On his pallid forehead was a dark and bloody mark. A delicately shaped hand beckoned to him. All this the horrified horseman saw in an instant. Nearer and nearer came the figure. Recovering his wits with all the mental strength the rider could muster, he dug his spurs deep into the side of the horse and applied the whip. The horse needed neither. All of a tremble and perspiration at first, he gave a frightened jump and bounded up the hill, on a dead gallop. On they sped; the horse's hoofs echoed as they passed over the wooden bridge spanning the rocky cut half a mile below, and the horseman, glancing over his shoulder thought he saw the form of the figure, mounted on the horse of an English officer, a long sabre waving in his hand, and the scabbard clanking nosily on the horse's flank. The pursuing figure slowly gained on the fleeing horseman who brought his whip down on his animal as fast and as vigorously as his shaking arm would allow. Three, four miles flew away under the hoofs of the galloping horse, and just as the brow of the Mountain came in sight, the rider, casting his eyes behind him saw, with inexpressible relief, that the figure had vanished. The horseman drew rein under a great spreading oak which stands where the Military road debouches into the river road. The horse, still trembling, could scarcely be quieted. Finally, however he consented to graze the freshly bedewed grass by the wayside, while the rider, recovering from his fright, rested and glanced about him. The scene which met his eyes was peaceful and lovely almost beyond the power of words to describe, and had a soothing influence on his disquieted nerves. To his left was the slender silver thread of the river, shimmering in the moonlight as it issued from the turbulent gorge above. In front of and below him lay the village of Lewiston, sleeping almost as much by day as by night. He could descry the white stones in the graveyard where lie the bones of many of the warriors of the last war with England. The broad, fertile farms spread out before him, and disclosed their richness as he turned his eyes from one direction to another. His gaze followed the winding way of the river to the point where it loses itself in the lake of the Iroquois. The electric lights at the month of the river on the opposite shore, which on his ride up the river a few hours before he had seen glistening with their white glare, were not to be seen. The mellow beams from the lighthouse at the old fortress of Niagara twinkled and were more variable than those of the stars in the blue field above him. The night wind was chilly; he could feel the damp, moist air from the water roll over him in warm waves. He buttoned his coat closer about him, and resumed his journey. Down the steep Portage road they went-he and his horse-on a walk. He was wearied and trusting somewhat to his sure-footed animal, he threw one leg over the pommel, side-saddle fashion. When he had reached a turn in the road about half way down, he heard the beating of a horse's hoofs behind him. His mind instantly reverted to his former experience, he looked back, and there, on a sharp trot down the road was his ghostly pursuer. Releasing his leg from the restful position, he replaced it in the stirrup, and notwithstanding the fearful steepness of the road, urged the unwilling horse to a hard gallop. Though ordinarily sure-footed the animal was hardly proof against a trial and again and again did he stumble, threatening to throw the rider far over his head to the foot of the mountain. On came the pursuing horseman and on sped the earthly rider. "Go Major, go Major" called the man of flesh and blood. "Go" The horse behind flew like the wind. Around the curve at the foot of the hill they galloped, the rider in advance almost lying down on his horse's neck, in fear. Along the broad business street of Lewiston, then turning into a side street, which brought them to the river road, and then on and on. Both the fleeing horseman and his animal felt their strength giving way. The rider could scarcely keep his feet in the stirrups, and yet he know that he must or he would be thrown and trampled to death. The horse's breath came in short convulsive grasps. The turn in the road was reached which bends around the Five Mile Meadows, and the flats were passed, with no slackening of speed. For mile after mile the pursuit continued until the hollow through which flows the Bloody Run was in sight. Here, four years before the massacre of the Devil's Hole, the English had met and defeated with great slaughter a detachment of French and Indians who had hurried up from the posts on the south shore of Lake Erie, to the relief! of the besieged Pouchot at Fort Niagara. At a little mound half a mile above the bed of the rivulet, which the sage inhabitants of that region declare with wise looks, are the graves of some of the slain Frenchmen, the pursuer was seen to rise from his stirrups, and with a brandish of his cavalry sabre melt into air. When the horseman, who had been for the second time chased by this apparition from the Devil's Hole, turned in his saddle the clattering steed of the murdered boy had disappeared with its rider. The reeking horse was led into its stable nearby and the rider lay down in his bed to dream mingled visions of the competitions at the Fort, and Ichabod Crane, the luckless lover of Katrina of Sleepy Hollow.