midnight
The senior plotter had some map or chart of his own making , and he was pricking out on it for Falconnet the route agreed upon in council with the Cherokees . At this cool outlaying of the working plan , some proper sense of what this plot of savage-arming meant to every undefended cabin on the frontier seized and thrilled me . I knew , as every border-born among us knew , the dismal horrors of an Indian massacre ; and this these men were planning was treacherous murder on an unwarned people . All was to be done in midnight secrecy . Supplied with ammunition , the Cherokees , led by this Captain Stuart or some other , were first to fall upon the over-mountain settlements . These laid waste , the Indians were to form a junction with the army of invasion , and so to add the torch and tomahawk and scalping knife to British swords and muskets . It was a plot to make the blood run cold in my veins , or in the veins of any man who knew the cruel temper of these savages ; and when I thought upon the fate of my poor countrymen beyond the mountains , I saw what lay before me .