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The Young Trailers: A Story of Early Kentucky

by Joseph A. Altsheler · English · Gutenberg #19477 · 424,650 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Young Trailers: A Story of Early Kentucky

Author: Joseph A. Altsheler


        
Release date: October 5, 2006 [eBook #19477]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19477

Credits: E-text prepared by the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUNG TRAILERS: A STORY OF EARLY KENTUCKY ***


E-text prepared by the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading
Team (http://www.pgdp.net/)



THE YOUNG TRAILERS

A Story of Early Kentucky

by

JOSEPH A. ALTSHELER







Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc.
New York
Copyright, 1907, by
D. Appleton and Company
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, must not be
reproduced in any form without permission of the publishers.
Copyright 1934 by Sallie B. Altsheler
Printed in the United States of America




TO
SYDNEY
A YOUNG KENTUCKIAN




CONTENTS

       I.--Into the Unknown

      II.--The First Great Exploit

     III.--Lost in the Wilderness

      IV.--The Haunted Forest

       V.--Afloat

      VI.--The Voice of the Woods

     VII.--The Giant Bones

    VIII.--The Wild Turkey's "Gobble"

      IX.--The Escape

       X.--The Cave Dust

      XI.--The Forest Spell

     XII.--The Primitive Man

    XIII.--The Call of Duty

     XIV.--The Return

      XV.--The Siege

     XVI.--A Girl's Way

    XVII.--The Battle in the Forest

   XVIII.--The Test

     XIX.--An Errand and a Friend




THE YOUNG TRAILERS




CHAPTER I

INTO THE UNKNOWN


It was a white caravan that looked down from the crest of the mountains
upon the green wilderness, called by the Indians, _Kain-tuck-ee_. The
wagons, a score or so in number, were covered with arched canvas,
bleached by the rains, and, as they stood there, side by side, they
looked like a snowdrift against the emerald expanse of forest and
foliage.

The travelers saw the land of hope, outspread before them, a wide sweep
of rolling country, covered with trees and canebrake, cut by streams of
clear water, flowing here and there, and shining in the distance, amid
the green, like threads of silver wire. All gazed, keen with interest
and curiosity, because this unknown land was to be their home, but none
was more eager than Henry Ware, a strong boy of fifteen who stood in
front of the wagons beside the guide, Tom Ross, a tall, lean man the
color of well-tanned leather, who would never let his rifle go out of
his hand, and who had Henry's heartfelt admiration, because he knew so
much about the woods and wild animals, and told such strange and
absorbing tales of the great wilderness that now lay before them.

But any close observer who noted Henry Ware would always have looked at
him a second time. He was tall and muscled beyond his years, and when he
walked his figure showed a certain litheness and power like that of the
forest bred. His gaze was rapid, penetrating and inclusive, but never
furtive. He seemed to fit into the picture of the wilderness, as if he
had taken a space reserved there for him, and had put himself in
complete harmony with all its details.

The long journey from their old home in Maryland had been a source of
unending variety and delight to Henry. There had been no painful
partings. His mother and his brother and young sister were in the fourth
wagon from the right, and his father stood beside it. Farther on in the
same company were his uncles and aunts, and many of the old neighbors.
All had come together. It was really the removal of a village from an
old land to a new one, and with the familiar faces of kindred and
friends around them, they were not lonely in strange regions, though
mountains frowned and dark forests lowered.

It was to Henry a return rather than a removal. He almost fancied that
in some far-off age he had seen all these things before. The forests and
the mountains beckoned in friendly fashion; they had no terrors, for
even their secrets lay open before him. He seemed to breathe a newer and
keener air than that of the old land left behind, and his mind expanded
with the thought of fresh pleasures to come. The veteran guide, Ross,
alone observed how the boy learned, through intuition, ways of the
wilderness that others achieved only by hard experience.

They had met fair weather, an important item in such a journey, and
there had been no illness, beyond trifling ailments quickly cured. As
they traveled slowly and at their ease, it took them a long time to pass
through the settled regions. This part of the journey did not interest
Henry so much. He was eager for the forests and the great wilderness
where his fancy had already gone before. He wanted to see deer and bears
and buffaloes, trees bigger than any that grew in Maryland, and
mountains and mighty rivers. But they left the settlements behind at
last, and came to the unbroken forest. Here he found his hopes
fulfilled. They were on the first slopes of the mountains that divide
Virginia from Kentucky, and the bold, wild nature of the country pleased
him. He had never seen mountains before, and he felt the dignity and
grandeur of the peaks.

Sometimes he went on ahead with Tom Ross, the guide, his chosen friend,
and then he considered himself, in very truth, a man, or soon to become
one, because he was now exploring the unknown, leading the way for a
caravan--and there could be no more important duty. At such moments he
listened to the talk of the guide who taught the lesson that in the
wilderness it was always important to see and to listen, a thing however
that Henry already knew instinctively. He learned the usual sounds of
the woods, and if there was any new noise he would see what made it. He
studied, too, the habits of the beasts and birds. As for fishing, he
found that easy. He could cut a rod with his clasp knife, tie a string
to the end of it and a bent pin to the end of a string, and with this
rude tackle he could soon catch in the mountain creeks as many fish as
he wanted.

Henry liked the nights in the mountains; in which he did not differ from
his fellow-travelers. Then the work of the day was done; the wagons were
drawn up in a half circle, the horses and the oxen were resting or
grazing under the trees, and, as they needed fires for warmth as well as
cooking, they built them high and long, giving room for all in front of
the red coals if they wished. The forest was full of fallen brushwood,
as dry as tinder, and Henry helped gather it. It pleased him to see the
flames rise far up, and to hear them crackle as they ate into the heart
of the boughs. He liked to see their long red shadows fall across the
leaves and grass, peopling the dark forest with fierce wild animals; he
would feel all the cosier within the scarlet rim of the firelight. Then
the men would tell stories, particularly Ross, the guide, who had
wandered much and far in Kentucky. He said that it was a beautiful land.
He spoke of the noble forests of beech and oak and hickory and maple,
the dense canebrake, the many rivers, and the great Ohio that received
them all--the Beautiful River, the Indians called it--and the game, with
which forests and open alike swarmed, the deer, the elk, the bear, the
panther and the buffalo. Now and then, when the smaller children were
asleep in the wagons and the larger ones were nodding before the fires,
the men would sink their voices and speak of a subject which made them
all look very grave indeed. It sounded like Indians, and the men more
than once glanced at their rifles and powderhorns.

But the boy, when he heard them, did not feel afraid. He knew that
savages of the most dangerous kind often came into the forests of
Kentucky, whither they were going, but he thrilled rather than shivered
at the thought. Already he seemed to have the knowledge that he would be
a match for them at any game they wished to play.

Henry usually slept very soundly, as became a boy who was on his feet
nearly all day, and who did his share of the work; but two or three
times he awoke far in the night, and, raising himself up in the wagon,
peeped out between the canvas cover and the wooden body. He saw a very
black night in which the trees looked as thin and ghostly as shadows,
and smoldering fires, beside which two men rifle on shoulder, always
watched. Often he had a wish to watch with them, but he said nothing,
knowing that the others would hold him too young for the task.

But to-day he felt only joy and curiosity. They were now on the crest of
the last mountain ridge and before them lay the great valley of
Kentucky; their future home. The long journey was over. The men took off
their hats and caps and raised a cheer, the women joined through
sympathy and the children shouted, too, because their fathers and
mothers did so, Henry's voice rising with the loudest.

A slip of a girl beside Henry raised an applauding treble and he smiled
protectingly at her. It was Lucy Upton, two years younger than himself,
slim and tall, dark-blue eyes looking from under broad brows, and
dark-brown curls, lying thick and close upon a shapely head.

"Are you not afraid?" she asked.

"Afraid of what?" replied Henry Ware, disdainfully.

"Of the forests over there in Kentucky. They say that the savages often
come to kill."

"We are too strong. I do not fear them."

He spoke without any vainglory, but in the utmost confidence. She
glanced covertly at him. He seemed to her strong and full of resource.
But she would not show her admiration.

They passed from the mountain slope into a country which now sank away
in low, rolling hills like the waves of the sea and in which everything
grew very beautiful. Henry had never seen such trees in the East. The
beech, the elm, the hickory and the maple reached gigantic proportions,
and wherever the shade was not too dense the grass rose heavy and rank.
Now and then they passed thickets of canebrake, and once, at the side of
a stream, they came to a salt "lick." It was here that a fountain
spouted from the base of a hill, and, running only a few feet, emptied
into a creek. But its waters were densely impregnated with salt, and all
around its banks the soft soil was trodden with hundreds of footsteps.

"The wild beasts made these," said the guide to Henry. "They come here
at night: elk, deer, buffalo, wolves, and all the others, big and
little, to get the salt. They drink the water and they lick up the salt
too from the ground."

A fierce desire laid hold of the boy at these words. He had a small
rifle of his own, which however he was not permitted to carry often. But
he wanted to take it and lie beside the pool at night when the game came
down to drink. The dark would have no terrors for him, nor would he need
companionship. He knew what to do, he could stay in the bush noiseless
and motionless for hours, and he would choose only the finest of the
deer and the bear. He could see himself drawing the bead, as a great
buck came down in the shadows to the fountain and he thrilled with
pleasure at the thought. Each new step into the wilderness seemed to
bring him nearer home.

Their stay beside the salt spring was short, but the next night they
built the fire higher than ever because just after dark they heard the
howling of wolves, and a strange, long scream, like the shriek of a
woman, which the men said was the cry of a panther. There was no danger,
but the cries sounded lonesome and terrifying, and it took a big fire to
bring back gayety.

Henry had not yet gone to bed, but was sitting in his favorite place
beside the guide, who was calmly smoking a pipe, and he felt the
immensity of the wilderness. He understood why the people in this
caravan clung so closely to each other. They were simply a big family,
far away from anybody else, and the woods, which curved around them for
so many hundreds of miles, held them together.

The men talked more than usual that night, but they did not tell
stories; instead they asked many questions of the guide about the
country two days' journey farther on, which, Ross said, was so good, and
it was agreed among them that they should settle there near the banks of
a little river.

"It's the best land I ever saw," said Ross, "an' as there's lots of
canebrake it won't be bad to clear up for farmin'. I trapped beaver in
them parts two years ago, an' I know."

This seemed to decide the men, and the women, too, for they had their
share in the council. The long journey was soon to end, and all looked
pleased, especially the women. The great question settled, the men
lighted their pipes and smoked a while, in silence, before the blazing
fires. Henry watched them and wished that he too was a man and could
take part in these evening talks. He was excited by the knowledge that
their journey was to end so soon, and he longed to see the valley in
which they were to build their homes. He climbed into the wagon at last
but he could not sleep. His beloved rifle, too, was lying near him, and
once he reached out his hand and touched it.

The men, by and by, went to the wagons or, wrapping themselves in
blankets, slept before the flames. Only two remained awake and on guard.
They sat on logs near the outskirts of the camp and held their rifles in
their hands.

Henry dropped the canvas edge and sought sleep, but it would not come.
Too many thoughts were in his mind. He was trying to imagine the
beautiful valley, described by Ross, in which they were to build their
houses. He lifted the canvas again after a while and saw that the fires
had sunk lower than ever. The two men were still sitting on the logs and
leaning lazily against upthrust boughs. The wilderness around them was
very black, and twenty yards away, even the outlines of the trees were
lost in the darkness.

Henry's sister who was sleeping at the other end of the wagon awoke and
cried for water. Mr. Ware raised himself sleepily, but Henry at once
sprang up and offered to get it. "All right," Mr. Ware said.

Henry quickly slipped on his trousers and taking the tin cup in his hand
climbed out of the wagon. He was in his bare feet, but like other
pioneer boys he scorned shoes in warm weather, and stubble and pebbles
did not trouble him.

The camp was in a glade and the spring was just at the edge of the
woods--they stopped at night only by the side of running water, which
was easy to find in this region. Near the spring some of the horses and
two of the oxen were tethered to stout saplings. As Henry approached, a
horse neighed, and he noticed that all of them were pulling on their
ropes. The two careless guards were either asleep or so near it that
they took no notice of what was passing, and Henry, unwilling to call
their attention for fear he might seem too forward, walked among the
animals, but was still unable to find the cause of the trouble. He knew
everyone by name and nature, and they knew him, for they had been
comrades on a long journey, and he patted their backs and rubbed their
noses and tried to soothe them. They became a little quieter, but he
could not remain any longer with them because his sister was waiting at
the wagon for the water. So he went to the spring and, stooping down,
filled his cup.

When Henry rose to his full height, his eyes happened to be turned
toward the forest, and there, about seven or eight feet from the ground,
and not far from him he saw two coals of fire. He was so startled that
the cup trembled in his hand, and drops of water fell splashing back
into the spring. But he stared steadily at the red points, which he now
noticed were moving slightly from side to side, and presently he saw
behind them the dim outlines of a long and large body. He knew that this
must be a panther. The habits of all the wild animals, belonging to this
region, had been described to him so minutely by Ross that he was sure
he could not be mistaken. Either it was a very hungry or a very ignorant
panther to hover so boldly around a camp full of men and guns.

The panther was crouched on a bough of a tree, as if ready to spring,
and Henry was the nearest living object. It must be he at whom the great
tawny body would be launched. But as a minute passed and the panther did
not move, save to sway gently, his courage rose, especially when he
remembered a saying of Ross that it was the natural impulse of all wild
animals to run from man. So he began to back away, and he heard behind
him the horses trampling about in alarm. The lazy guards still dozed and
all was quiet at the wagons. Now Henry recalled some knowledge that he
had learned from Ross and he made a resolve. He would show, at a time,
when it was needed, what he really could do. He dropped his cup, rushed
to the fire, and picked up a long brand, blazing at one end.

Swinging his torch around his head until it made a perfect circle of
flame he ran directly toward the panther, uttering a loud shout as he
ran. The animal gave forth his woman's cry, this time a shriek of
terror, and leaping from the bough sped with cat-like swiftness into the
forest.

All the camp was awake in an instant, the men springing out of the
wagons, gun in hand, ready for any trouble. When they saw only a boy,
holding a blazing torch above his head, they were disposed to grumble,
and the two sleepy guards, seeking an excuse for themselves, laughed
outright at the tale that Henry told. But Mr. Ware believed in the truth
of his son's words, and the guide, who quickly examined the ground near
the tree, said there could be no doubt that Henry had really seen the
panther, and had not been tricked by his imagination. The great tracks
of the beast were plainly visible in the soft earth.

"Pushed by hunger, an' thinking there was no danger, he might have
sprung on one of our colts or a calf," said Ross, "an' no doubt the boy
with his ready use of a torch has saved us from a loss. It was a brave
thing for him to do."

But Henry took no pride in their praise. It was no part of his ambition
merely to drive away a panther, instead he had the hunter's wish to kill
him. He would be worthy of the wilderness.

Henry despite his lack of pride found the world very beautiful the next
day. It was a fair enough scene. Nature had done her part, but his
joyous mind gave to it deeper and more vivid colors. The wind was
blowing from the south, bringing upon its breath the odor of wild
flowers, and all the forest was green with the tender green of young
spring. The cotton-tailed hares that he called rabbits ran across their
path. Squirrels talked to one another in the tree tops, and defiantly
threw the shells of last year's nuts at the passing travelers. Once they
saw a stag bending down to drink at a brook, and when the forest king
beheld them he raised his head, and merely stared at these strange new
invaders of the wilds. Henry admired his beautiful form and splendid
antlers nor would he have fired at him had it even been within orders.
The deer gazed at them a few moments, and then, turning and tossing his
head, sped away through the forest.

All that he saw was strange and grand to Henry, and he loved the
wilderness. About noon he and Ross went back to the wagons and that
night they encamped on the crest of a range of low and grassy hills.
This was the rim of the valley that they had selected on the guide's
advice as their future home, and the little camp was full of the
liveliest interest in the morrow, because it is a most eventful thing,
when you are going to choose a place which you intend shall be your home
all the rest of your days. So the men and women sat late around the
fires and even boys of Henry's age were allowed to stay up, too, and
listen to the plans which all the grown people were making. Theirs had
not been a hard journey, only long and tedious--though neither to
Henry--and now that its end was at hand, work must be begun. They would
have homes to build and a living to get from the ground.

"Why, I could live under the trees; I wouldn't want a house," whispered
Henry to the guide, "and when I needed anything to eat, I'd kill game."

"A hunter might do that," replied Ross, "but we're not all hunters an'
only a few of us can be. Sometimes the game ain't standin' to be shot at
just when you want it, an' as for sleepin' under the trees it's all very
fine in summer, if it don't rain, but 'twould be just a least bit chilly
in winter when the big snows come as they do sometimes more'n a foot
deep. I'm a hunter myself, an' I've slept under trees an' in caves, an'
on the sheltered side of hills, but when the weather's cold give me for
true comfort a wooden floor an' a board roof. Then I'll bargain to sleep
to the king's taste."

But Henry was not wholly convinced. He felt in himself the power to meet
and overcome rain or cold or any other kind of weather.

Everybody in the camp, down to the tiniest child, was awake the next
morning by the time the first bar of gray in the east betokened the
coming day. Henry was fully dressed, and saw the sun rise in a
magnificent burst of red and gold over the valley that was to be their
valley. The whole camp beheld the spectacle. They had reached the crest
of the hill the evening before, too late to get a view and they were
full of the keenest curiosity.

It was now summer, but, having been a season of plenteous rains, grass
and foliage were of the most vivid and intense green. They were entering
one of the richest portions of Kentucky, and the untouched soil was
luxuriant with fertility. As a pioneer himself said: "All they had to do
was to tickle it with a hoe, and it laughed into a harvest." There was
the proof of its strength in the grass and the trees. Never before had
the travelers seen oaks and beeches of such girth or elms and hickories
of such height. The grass was high and thick and the canebrake was so
dense that passage through it seemed impossible. Down the center of the
valley, which was but one of many, separated from each other by low easy
hills, flowed a little river, cleaving its center like a silver blade.

It was upon this beautiful prospect that the travelers saw the sun rise
that morning and all their troubles and labors rolled away. Even the
face of Mr. Ware who rarely yielded to enthusiasm kindled at the sight
and, lifting his hand, he made with it a circle that described the
valley.

"There," he said. "There is our home waiting for us."

"Hurrah!" cried Henry, flinging aloft his cap. "We've come home."

Then the wagon train started again and descended into the valley, which
in very truth and fact was to be "home."




CHAPTER II

THE FIRST GREAT EXPLOIT


They found the valley everything in beauty and fertility that Ross had
claimed for it, and above all it had small "openings," that is, places
where the trees did not grow. This was very important to the travelers,
as the labor of cutting down the forest was immense, and even Henry knew
that they could not live wholly in the woods, as both children and crops
must have sunshine to make them grow. The widest of these open spaces
about a half mile from the river, they selected as the site of their new
city to which they gave the name of Wareville in honor of their leader.
A fine brook flowed directly through the opening, but Ross said it would
be a good place, too, to sink a well.

It was midsummer now and the period of dry weather had begun. So the
travelers were very comfortable in their wagon camp while they were
making their new town ready to be lived in. Both for the sake of company
and prudence they built the houses in a close cluster. First the men,
and most of them were what would now be called jacks-of-all-trades,
felled trees, six or eight inches in diameter, and cut them into logs,
some of which were split down the center, making what are called
puncheons; others were only nicked at the ends, being left in the rough,
that is, with the bark on.

The round logs made the walls of their houses. First, the place where
the house was to be built was chosen. Next the turf was cut off and the
ground smoothed away. Then they "raised" the logs, the nicked ends
fitting together at the corner, the whole inclosing a square. Everybody
helped "raise" each house in turn, the men singing "hip-hip-ho!" as they
rolled the heavy logs into position.

A place was cut out for a window and fastened with a shutter and a
larger space was provided in the same manner for a door. They made the
floor out of the puncheons, turned with the smooth side upward, and the
roof out of rough boards, sawed from the trees. The chimney was built of
earth and stones, and a great flat stone served as the fireplace. Some
of the houses were large enough to have two rooms, one for the grown
folks and one for the children, and Mr. Ware's also had a little lean-to
or shed which served as a kitchen.

It seemed at first to Henry, rejoicing then in the warm, sunny weather,
that they were building in a needlessly heavy and solid fashion. But
when he thought over it a while he remembered what Ross said about the
winters and deep snows of this new land. Indeed the winters in Kentucky
are often very cold and sometimes for certain periods are quite as cold
as those of New York or New England.

When the little town was finished at last it looked both picturesque and
comfortable, a group of about thirty log houses, covering perhaps an
acre of ground. But the building labors of the pioneers did not stop
here. Around all these houses they put a triple palisade, that is three
rows of stout, sharpened stakes, driven deep into the ground and rising
full six feet above it. At intervals in this palisade were circular
holes large enough to admit the muzzle of a rifle.

They built at each corner of the palisade the largest and strongest of
their houses,--two-story structures of heavy logs, and Henry noticed
that the second story projected over the first. Moreover, they made
holes in the edge of the floor overhead so that one could look down
through them upon anybody who stood by the outer wall. Ross went up into
the second story of each of the four buildings, thrust the muzzle of his
rifle into every one of the holes in turn, and then looked satisfied.
"It is well done," he said. "Nobody can shelter himself against the wall
from the fire of defenders up here."

These very strong buildings they called their blockhouses, and after
they finished them they dug a well in the corner of the inclosed ground,
striking water at a depth of twenty feet. Then their main labors were
finished, and each family now began to furnish its house as it would or
could.

It was not all work for Henry while this was going on, and some of the
labor itself was just as good as play. He was allowed to go considerable
distances with Ross, and these journeys were full of novelty. He was a
boy who came to places which no white boy had ever seen before. It was
hard for him to realize that it was all so new. Behold a splendid grove
of oaks! he was its discoverer. Here the little river dropped over a
cliff of ten feet; his eyes were the first to see the waterfall. From
this high hill the view was wonderful; he was the first to enjoy it.
Forest, open and canebrake alike were swarming with game, and he saw
buffaloes, deer, wild turkeys, and multitudes of rabbits and squirrels.
Unaccustomed yet to man, they allowed the explorers to come near.

Ross and Henry were accompanied on many of these journeys by Shif'less
Sol Hyde. Sol was a young man without kith or kin in the settlement, and
so, having nobody but himself to take care of, he chose to roam the
country a great portion of the time. He was fast acquiring a skill in
forest life and knowledge of its ways second only to that of Ross, the
guide. Some of the men called Sol lazy, but he defended himself. "The
good God made different kinds of people and they live different kinds of
lives," said he. "Mine suits me and harms nobody." Ross said he was
right, and Sol became a hunter and scout for the settlement.

There was no lack of food. They yet had a good supply of the provisions
brought with them from the other side of the mountains, but they saved
them for a possible time of scarcity. Why should they use this store
when they could kill all the game they needed within a mile of their own
house smoke? Now Henry tasted the delights of buffalo tongue and beaver
tail, venison, wild turkey, fried squirrel, wild goose, wild duck and a
dozen kinds of fish. Never did a boy have more kinds of meat, morning,
noon, and night. The forest was full of game, the fish were just
standing up in the river and crying to be caught, and the air was
sometimes dark with wild fowl. Henry enjoyed it. He was always hungry.
Working and walking so much, and living in the open air every minute of
his life, except when he was eating or sleeping, his young and growing
frame demanded much nourishment, and it was not denied.

At last the great day came when he was allowed to kill a deer if he
could. Both Ross and Shif'less Sol had interceded for him. "The boy's
getting big and strong an' it's time he learned," said Ross. "His hand's
steady enough an' his eye's good enough already," said Shif'less Sol,
and his father agreeing with them told them to take him and teach him.

Two miles away, near the bank of the river, was a spring to which the
game often came to drink, and for this spring they started a little
while before sundown, Henry carrying his rifle on his shoulder, and his
heart fluttering. He felt his years increase suddenly and his figure
expand with equal abruptness. He had become a man and he was going forth
to slay big game. Yet despite his new manhood the blood would run to his
head and he felt his nerves trembling. He grasped his precious rifle
more firmly and stole a look out of the corner of his eye at its barrel
as it lay across his left shoulder. Though a smaller weapon it was
modeled after the famous Western rifle, which, with the ax, won the
wilderness. The stock was of hard maple wood delicately carved, and the
barrel was comparatively long, slender, and of blue steel. The sights
were as fine-drawn as a hair. When Henry stood the gun beside himself,
it was just as tall as he. He carried, too, a powderhorn, and the horn,
which was as white as snow, was scraped so thin as to be transparent,
thus enabling its owner to know just how much powder it contained,
without taking the trouble of pouring it out. His bullets and wadding he
carried in a small leather pouch by his side.

When they reached the spring the sun was still a half hour high and
filled the west with a red glow. The forest there was tinted by it, and
seen thus in the coming twilight with those weird crimsons and scarlets
showing through it, the wilderness looked very lonely and desolate. An
ordinary boy, at the coming of night would have been awed, if alone, by
the stillness of the great unknown spaces, but it found an answering
chord in Henry.

"Wind's blowin' from the west," said Sol, and so they went to the
eastern side of the spring, where they lay down beside a fallen log at a
fair distance. There was another log, much closer to the spring, but
Ross conferring aside with Sol chose the farther one. "We want to teach
the boy how to shoot an' be of some use to himself, not to slaughter,"
said Ross. Then the three remained there, a long time, and noiseless.
Henry was learning early one of the first great lessons of the forest,
which is silence. But he knew that he could have learned this lesson
alone. He already felt himself superior in some ways to Ross and Sol,
but he liked them too well to tell them so, or to affect even equality
in the lore of the wilderness.

The sun went down behind the Western forest, and the night came on,
heavy and dark. A light wind began to moan among the trees. Henry heard
the faint bubble of the water in the spring, and saw beside him the
forms of his two comrades. But they were so still that they might have
been dead. An hour passed and his eyes growing more used to the dimness,
he saw better. There was still nothing at the spring, but by and by Ross
put his hand gently upon his arm, and Henry, as if by instinct, looked
in the right direction. There at the far edge of the forest was a deer,
a noble stag, glancing warily about him.

The stag was a fine enough animal to Ross and Sol, but to Henry's
unaccustomed eyes he seemed gigantic, the mightiest of his kind that
ever walked the face of the earth.

The deer gazed cautiously, raising his great head, until his antlers
looked to Henry like the branching boughs of a tree. The wind was
blowing toward his hidden foes, and brought him no omen of coming
danger. He stepped into the open and again glanced around the circle. It
seemed to Henry that he was staring directly into the deer's eyes, and
could see the fire shining there.

"Aim at that spot there by the shoulder, when he stoops down to drink,"
said Ross in the lowest of tones.

Satisfied now that no enemy was near, the stag walked to the spring.
Then he began to lower slowly the great antlers, and his head approached
the water. Henry slipped the barrel of his rifle across the log and
looked down the sights. He was seized with a tremor, but Ross and
Shif'less Sol, with a magnanimity that did them credit, pretended not to
notice it. The boy soon mastered the feeling, but then, to his great
surprise, he was attacked by another emotion. Suddenly he began to have
pity, and a fellow-feeling for the stag. It, too, was in the great
wilderness, rejoicing in the woods and the grass and the running streams
and had done no harm. It seemed sad that so fine a life should end,
without warning and for so little.

The feeling was that of a young boy, the instinct of one who had not
learned to kill, and he suppressed it. Men had not yet thought to spare
the wild animals, or to consider them part of a great brotherhood, least
of all on the border, where the killing of game was a necessity. And so
Henry, after a moment's hesitation, the cause of which he himself
scarcely knew, picked the spot near the shoulder that Ross had
mentioned, and pulled the trigger.

The stag stood for a moment or two as if dazed, then leaped into the air
and ran to the edge of the woods, where he pitched down head foremost.
His body quivered for a little while and then lay still.

Henry was proud of his marksmanship, but he felt some remorse, too, when
he looked upon his victim. Yet he was eager to tell his father and his
young sister and brother of his success. They took off the pelt and cut
up the deer. A part of the haunch Henry ate for dinner and the antlers
were fastened over the fireplace, as the first important hunting trophy
won by the eldest son of the house.

Henry did not boast much of his triumph, although he noticed with secret
pride the awe of the children. His best friend, Paul Cotter, openly
expressed his admiration, but Braxton Wyatt, a boy of his own age, whom
he did not like, sneered and counted it as nothing. He even cast doubt
upon the reality of the deed, intimating that perhaps Ross or Sol had
fired the shot, and had allowed Henry to claim the credit.

Henry now felt incessantly the longing for the wilderness, but, for the
present, he helped his father furnish their house. It was too late to
plant crops that year, nor were the qualities of the soil yet altogether
known. It was rich beyond a doubt, but they could learn only by trial
what sort of seed suited it best. So they let that wait a while, and
continued the work of making themselves tight and warm for the winter.

The skins of deer and buffalo and beaver, slain by the hunters, were
dried in the sun, and they hung some of the finer ones on the walls of
the rooms to make them look more cozy and picturesque. Mrs. Ware also
put two or three on the floors, though the border women generally
scorned them for such uses, thinking them in the way. Henry also helped
his father make stools and chairs, the former a very simple task,
consisting of a flat piece of wood, chopped or sawed out, in which three
holes were bored to receive the legs, the latter made of a section of
sapling, an inch or so in diameter. But the baskets required longer and
more tedious work. They cut green withes, split them into strips and
then plaiting them together formed the basket. In this Mrs. Ware and
even the little girl helped. They also made tables and a small stone
furnace or bake-oven for the kitchen.

Their chief room now looked very cozy. In one corner stood a bedstead
with low, square posts, the bed covered with a pure white counterpane.
At the foot of the bedstead was a large heavy chest, which served as
bureau, sofa and dressing case. In the center of the room stood a big
walnut table, on the top of which rested a nest of wooden trays,
flanked, on one side, by a nicely folded tablecloth, and on the other by
a butcher knife and a Bible. In a corner was a cupboard consisting of a
set of shelves set into the logs, and on these shelves were the
blue-edged plates and yellow-figured teacups and blue teapot that Mrs.
Ware had received long ago from her mother. The furniture in the
remainder of the house followed this pattern.

The heaviest labor of all was to extend the "clearing"; that is, to cut
down trees and get the ground ready for planting the crops next spring,
and in this Henry helped, for he was able to wield an ax blow for blow
with a grown man. When he did not have to work he went often to the
river, which was within sight of Wareville, and caught fish. Nobody
except the men, who were always armed, and who knew how to take care of
themselves, was allowed to go more than a mile from the palisade, but
Henry was trusted as far as the river; then the watchman in the lookout
on top of the highest blockhouse could see him or any who might come,
and there, too, he often lingered.

He did not hate his work, yet he could not say that he liked it, and,
although he did not know it, the love of the wild man's ways was
creeping into his blood. The influence of the great forests, of the vast
unknown spaces, was upon him. He could lie peacefully in the shade of a
tree for an hour at a time, dreaming of rivers and mountains farther on
in the depths of the wilderness. He felt a kinship with the wild things,
and once as he lay perfectly still with his eyes almost closed, a stag,
perhaps the brother to the one that he had killed, came and looked at
him out of great soft eyes. It did not seem odd at the time to Henry
that the stag should do so; he took it then as a friendly act, and lest
he should alarm this new comrade of the woods he did not stir or even
raise his eyelids. The stag gazed at him a few moments, and then,
tossing his great antlers, turned and walked off in a graceful and
dignified way through the woods. Henry wondered where the deer would go,
and if it would be far. He wished that he, too, could roam the
wilderness so lightly, wandering where he wished, having no cares and
beholding new scenes every day. That would be a life worth living.

The next morning his mother said to his father:

"John, the boy is growing wild."

"Yes," replied the father. "They say it often happens with those who are
taken young into the wilderness. The forest lays a spell upon them when
they are easy to receive impressions."

The mother looked troubled, but Mr. Ware laughed.

"Don't bother about it," he said. "It can be cured. We have merely to
teach him the sense of responsibility."

This they proceeded to do.




CHAPTER III

LOST IN THE WILDERNESS


The method by which Mr. and Mrs. Ware undertook to teach Henry a sense
of responsibility was an increase of work. Founding a new state was no
light matter, and he must do his share. Since he loved to fish, it
became his duty to supply the table with fish, and that, too, at regular
hours, and he also began to think of traps and snares, which he would
set in the autumn for game. It was always wise for the pioneer to save
his powder and lead, the most valuable of his possessions and the
hardest to obtain. Any food that could be procured without its use was a
welcome addition.

But fishing remained his easiest task, and he did it all with a pole
that he cut with his clasp knife, a string and a little piece of bent
and stiffened wire. He caught perch, bass, suckers, trout, sunfish,
catfish, and other kinds, the names of which he did not know. Sometimes
when his hook and line had brought him all that was needed, and the day
was hot, he would take off his clothing and plunge into the deep, cool
pools. Often his friend, Paul Cotter, was with him. Paul was a year
younger than Henry, and not so big. Hence the larger boy felt himself,
in a certain sense, Paul's teacher and protector, which gave him a
comfortable feeling, and a desire to help his comrade as much as he
could.

He taught the smaller lad new tricks in swimming, and scarcely a day
passed when two sunburned, barefooted boys did not go to the river,
quickly throw off their clothing, and jump into the clear water. There
they swam and floated for a long time, dived, and ducked each other, and
then lay on the grass in the sun until they dried.

"Paul," said Henry once, as they were stretched thus on the bank,
"wouldn't you like to have nothing to do, but wander through the woods
just as you pleased, sleep wherever you wished, and kill game when you
grew hungry, just like the Indians?"

Henry's eyes were on the black line of the forest, and the blue haze of
the sky beyond. His spirit was away in the depths of the unknown.

"I don't know," replied Paul. "I guess a white boy has to become a white
man, after a while, and they say that the difference between a white man
and the Indian is that the white man has to work."

"But the Indians get along without it," said Henry.

"No they don't," replied Paul. "We win all the country because we've
learned how to do things while we are working."

Yet Henry was unconvinced, and his thoughts wandered far into the black
forest and the blue haze.

The cattle pastured near the deepest of the swimming holes, and it often
fell to the lot of the boys to bring them into the palisade at sunset.
This was a duty of no little importance, because if any of the cattle
wandered away into the forest and were lost, they could not be replaced.
It was now the latter half of summer, and the grass and foliage were
fast turning brown in the heat. Late on the afternoon of one of the very
hottest days Henry and Paul went to the deepest swimming hole. There had
not been a breath of air stirring since morning; not a blade of grass,
not a leaf quivered. The skies burned like a sheet of copper.

The boys panted, and their clothing, wet with perspiration, clung to
them. The earth was hot under their feet. Quickly they threw off their
garments and sprang into the water. How cool and grateful it felt! There
they lingered long, and did not notice the sudden obscurity of the sun
and darkening of the southwest.

A slight wind sprang up presently, and the dry leaves and grass began to
rustle. There was thunder in the distance and a stroke of lightning. The
boys were aroused, and scrambling out of the water put on their
clothing.

"A storm's coming," said Henry, who was weatherwise, "and we must get
the cattle in."

These sons of the forest did not fear rain, but they hurried on their
clothing, and they noticed, too, how rapidly the storm was gathering.
The heat had been great for days, and the earth was parched and thirsty.
The men had talked in the evening of rain, and said how welcome it would
be, and now the boys shared the general feeling. The drought would be
ended. The thirsty earth would drink deep and grow green again.

The rolling clouds, drawn like a great curtain over the southwest,
advanced and covered all the heavens. The flashes of lightning followed
each other so fast that, at times, they seemed continuous; the forest
groaned as it bent before the wind. Then the great drops fell, and soon
they were beating the earth like volleys of pistol bullets. Fragments of
boughs, stripped off by the wind, swept by. Never had the boys in their
Eastern home known such thunder and lightning. The roar of one was
always in their ears, and the flash of the other always in their eyes.

The frightened cattle were gathered into a group, pressing close
together for company and protection. The boys hurried them toward the
stockade, but one cow, driven by terror, broke from the rest and ran
toward the woods. Agile Henry, not willing to lose a single straggler,
pursued the fugitive, and Paul, wishing to be as zealous, followed. The
rest of the cattle, being so near and obeying the force of habit, went
on into the stockade.

It was the wildest cow of the herd that made a plunge for the woods, and
Henry, knowing her nature, expected trouble. So he ran as fast as he
could, and he was not aware until they were in the forest that Paul was
close behind him. Then he shouted:

"Go back, Paul! I'll bring her in."

But Paul would not turn. There was fire in his blood. He considered it
as much his duty to help as it was Henry's. Moreover, he would not
desert his comrade.

The fugitive, driven by the storm acting upon its wild nature, continued
at great speed, and the panting boys were not able to overtake her. So
on the trio went, plunging through the woods, and saving themselves from
falls, or collisions with trees, only by the light from the flashes of
lightning. Many boys, even on the border, would have turned back, but
there was something tenacious in Henry's nature; he had undertaken to do
a thing, and he did not wish to give it up. Besides that cow was too
valuable. And Paul would not leave his comrade.

Away the cow went, and behind her ran her pursuers. The rain came
rushing and roaring through the woods, falling now in sheets, while
overhead the lightning still burned, and the thunder still crashed,
though with less frequency. Both the boys were drenched, but they did
not mind it; they did not even know it at the time. The lightning died
presently, the thunder ceased to rumble, and then the darkness fell like
a great blanket over the whole forest. The chase was blotted out from
them, and the two boys, stopping, grasped each other's hands for the
sake of company. They could not see twenty feet before them, but the
rain still poured.

"We'll have to give her up," said Henry reluctantly. "We couldn't follow
a whole herd of buffaloes in all this black night."

"Maybe we can find her to-morrow," said Paul.

"Maybe so," replied Henry. "We've got to wait anyhow. Let's go home."

They started back for Wareville, keeping close together, lest they lose
each other in the darkness, and they realized suddenly that they were
uncomfortable. The rain was coming in such sheets directly in their
faces that it half blinded them, now and then their feet sank deep in
mire and their drenched bodies began to grow cold. The little log houses
in which they lived now seemed to them palaces, fit for a king, and they
hastened their footsteps, often tripping on vines or running into
bushes. But Henry was trying to see through the dark woods.

"We ought to be near the clearing," he said.

They stopped and looked all about, seeking to see a light. They knew
that one would be shining from the tower of the blockhouse as a guide to
them. But they saw none. They had misjudged the distance, so they
thought, and they pushed on a half hour longer, but there was still no
light, nor did they come to a clearing. Then they paused. Dark as it was
each saw a look of dismay on the face of the other.

"We've come the wrong way!" exclaimed Paul.

"Maybe we have," reluctantly admitted Henry.

But their dismay lasted only a little while. They were strong boys, used
to the wilderness, and they did not fear even darkness and wandering
through the woods. Moreover, they were sure that they should find
Wareville long before midnight.

They changed their course and continued the search. The rain ceased by
and by, the clouds left the heavens, and the moon came out, but they saw
nothing familiar about them. The great woods were dripping with water,
and it was the only sound they heard, besides that made by themselves.
They stopped again, worn out and disconsolate at last. All their walking
only served to confuse them the more. Neither now had any idea of the
direction in which Wareville lay, and to be lost in the wilderness was a
most desperate matter. They might travel a thousand miles, should
strength last them for so great a journey, and never see a single human
being. They leaned against the rough bark of a great oak tree, and
stared blankly at each other.

"What are we to do?" asked Paul.

"I can't say," replied Henry.

The two boys still looked blank, but at last they laughed--and each
laughed at the other's grewsome face. Then they began once more to cast
about them. The cold had passed and warm winds were blowing up from the
south. The forest was drying, and Henry and Paul, taking off their
coats, wrung the water from them. They were strong lads, inured to many
hardships of the border and the forest, and they did not fear ill
results from a mere wetting. Nevertheless, they wished to be
comfortable, and under the influence of the warm wind they soon found
themselves dry again. But they were so intensely sleepy that they could
scarcely keep their eyes open, and now the wilderness training of both
came into use.

It was a hilly country, with many outcroppings of stone and cavelike
openings in the sides of the steep but low hills, and such a place as
this the boys now sought. But it was a long hunt and they grew more
tired and sleepy at every step. They were hungry, too, but if they might
only sleep they could forget that. They heard again the hooting of owls
and the wind, moaning among the leaves, made strange noises. Once there
was a crash in a thicket beside them, and they jumped in momentary
alarm, but it was only a startled deer, far more scared than they,
running through the bushes, and Henry was ashamed of his nervous
impulse.

They found at last their resting place, a sheltered ledge of dry stone
in the hollow of a hill. The stone arched above them, and it was dark in
the recess, but the boys were too tired now to worry about shadows. They
crept into the hollow, and, scraping up fallen leaves to soften the hard
stone, lay down. Both were off to slumberland in less than five minutes.

The hollow faced the East, and the bright sun, shining into their eyes,
awakened them at last. Henry sprang up, amazed. The skies were a silky
blue, with little white clouds sailing here and there. The forest,
new-washed by the rain, smelt clean and sweet. The south wind was still
blowing. The world was bright and beautiful, but he was conscious of an
acute pain at the center of his being. That is, he was increasingly
hungry. Paul showed equal surprise, and was a prey to the same annoying
sensation in an important region. He looked up at the sun, and found
that it was almost directly overhead, indicating noon.

All the country about them was strange, an unbroken expanse of hill and
forest, and nowhere a sign of a human being. They scrutinized the
horizon with the keen eyes of boyhood, but they saw no line of smoke,
rising from the chimneys of Wareville. Whether the villages lay north or
south or east or west of them they did not know, and the wind that
sighed so gently through the forest never told. They were alone in the
wilderness and they knew, moreover, that the wilderness was very vast
and they were very small. But Henry and Paul did not despair; in fact no
such thought entered Henry's mind. Instead he began to find a certain
joy in the situation; it appealed to his courage. They resolved to find
something to eat, and they used first a temporary cure for the pangs of
hunger. Each had a strong clasp knife and they cut strips of the soft
inner bark of the slippery-elm tree, which they chewed, drawing from it
a little strength and sustenance. They found an hour or two later some
nearly ripe wild plums, which they ate in small quantities, and, later
on, ripe blackberries very juicy and sweet. Paul wanted to be voracious,
but Henry restrained him, knowing well that if he indulged liberally he
might suffer worse pangs than those of hunger. Slender as was this diet
the boys felt much strengthened, and their spirits rose in a wonderful
manner.

"We're bound to be found sooner or later," said Henry, "and it's strange
if we can't live in the woods until then."

"If we only had our guns and ammunition," said Paul, "we could get all
the meat we wanted, and live as well as if we were at home."

This was true, because in the untrodden forest the game was plentiful
all about them, but guns and ammunition they did not have, and it was
vain to wish for them. They must obtain more solid food than wild plums
and blackberries, if they would retain their strength, and both boys
knew it. Yet they saw no way and they continued wandering until they
came to a creek. They sat a while on its banks and looked down at the
fish with which it was swarming, and which they could see distinctly in
its clear waters.

"Oh, if we only had one of those fine fellows!" said Paul.

"Then why not have him?" exclaimed Henry, a sudden flash appearing in
his eye.

"Yes, why not?" replied Paul with sarcasm. "I suppose that all we have
to do is to whistle and the finest of 'em will come right out here on
the bank, and ask us to cook and eat 'em."

"We haven't any hooks and lines now but we might make 'em," said Henry.

"Make 'em!" said Paul, and he looked in amazement at his comrade.

"Out of our clothes," replied Henry.

Then he proceeded to show what he meant and Paul, too, when he saw him
begin, was quickly taken with the idea. They drew many long strands from
the fiber of their clothing--cloth in those days was often made as
strong as leather--and twisted and knotted them together until they had
a line fifteen feet long. It took them at least two hours to complete
this task, and then they contemplated their work with pride. But the
look of joy on Paul's face did not last long.

"How on earth are we to get a hook, Henry?" he asked.

"I'll furnish that," replied Henry, and he took the small steel buckle
with which his trousers were fastened together at the back. Breaking
this apart he bent the slenderest portion of it into the shape of a
hook, and fastened it to the end of his line.

"If we get a fish on this he may slip off or he may not, but we must
try," he said.

The fishing rod and the bait were easy matters. A slender stem of
dogwood, cut with a clasp knife, served for the first, and, to get the
latter, they had nothing to do but turn up a flat stone, and draw angle
worms from the moist earth beneath.

The hook was baited and with a triumphant flourish Henry swung it toward
the stream.

"Now," he said, "for the biggest fish that ever swam in this creek."

The boys might have caught nothing with such a rude outfit, but
doubtless that stream was never fished in before, and its inhabitants,
besides being full of a natural curiosity, did not dream of any danger
coming from the outer air. Therefore they bit at the curious-looking
metallic thing with the tempting food upon it which was suddenly dropped
from somewhere.

But the first fish slipped off as Henry had feared, and then there was
nothing to do but try again. It was not until the sixth or seventh bite
that he succeeded in landing a fine perch upon the bank, and then Paul
uttered a cry of triumph, but Henry, as became his superior dignity at
that moment, took his victory modestly. It was in reality something to
rejoice over, as these two boys were perhaps in a more dangerous
situation than they, with all their knowledge of the border, understood.
The wilderness was full of animal life, but it was fleeter than man,
and, without weapons they were helpless.

"And now to cook him," said Henry. So speaking, he took from his pocket
the flint and steel that he had learned from the men always to carry,
while Paul began to gather fallen brushwood.

To light the fire Henry expected to be the easiest of their tasks, but
it proved to be one of the most difficult. He struck forth the elusive
sparks again and again, but they went out before setting fire to the
wood. He worked until his fingers ached and then Paul relieved him. It
fell to the younger boy's lot to succeed. A bright spark flying forth
rested a moment among the lightest and dryest of the twigs, igniting
there. A tiny point of flame appeared, then grew and leaped up. In a few
moments the great pile of brushwood was in a roaring blaze, and then the
boys cooked their fish over the coals. They ate it all with supreme
content, and they believed they could feel the blood flowing in a new
current through their veins and their strength growing, too.

But they knew that they would have to prepare for the future and draw
upon all their resources of mind and body. Their hook and line was but a
slender appliance and they might not have such luck with it again. Paul
suggested that they make a fish trap, of sticks tied together with
strips cut from their clothing, and put it in the creek, and Henry
thought it was a good idea, too. So they agreed to try it on the morrow,
if they should not be found meanwhile, and then they debated the subject
of snares.

The undergrowth was swarming with rabbits, and they would make most
toothsome food. Rabbits they must have, and again Henry led the way. He
selected a small clear spot near the thick undergrowth where a rabbit
would naturally love to make his nest and around a circle about six
inches in diameter he drove a number of smooth pegs. Then he tied a
strong cord made of strips of their clothing to one end of a stout bush,
which he bent over until it curved in a semicircle. The other end of the
cord was drawn in a sliding loop around the pegs, and was attached to a
little wooden trigger, set in the center of the inclosure.

The slightest pressure upon this trigger would upset it, cause the noose
to slip off the pegs and close with a jerk around the neck of anything
that might have its head thrust into the inclosure. The bush, too, would
fly back into place and there would be the intruder, really hanged by
himself. It was the common form of snare, devised for small game by the
boys of early Kentucky, and still used by them.

Henry and Paul made four of these ingenious little contrivances, and
baited them with bruised pieces of the small plantain leaves that the
rabbits love. Then they contemplated their work again with satisfaction.
But Paul suddenly began to look rueful.

"If we have to pay out part of our clothes every time we get a dinner we
soon won't have any left," he said.

Henry only laughed.

It was now near sunset, and, as they had worked hard they would have
been thankful for supper, but there was none to be thankful for, and
they were too tired to fish again. So they concluded to go to sleep,
which their hard work made very easy, and dream of abundant harvests on
the morrow.

They gathered great armfuls of the fallen brushwood, littering the
forest, and built a heap as high as their heads, which blazed and roared
in a splendid manner, sending up, too, a column of smoke that rose far
above the trees and trailed off in the blue sky.

It was a most cheerful bonfire, and it was a happy thought for the boys
to build it, even aside from its uses as a signal, as the coming of
night in the wilderness is always most lonesome and weird.

They lay down near each other on the soft turf, and Henry watched the
red sun sink behind the black forest in the west. The strange,
sympathetic feeling for the wilderness again came into his mind. He
thought once more of the mysterious regions that lay beyond the line
where the black and red met. He could live in the woods, he was living
now without arms, even, and if he only had his rifle and ammunition he
could live in luxury. And then the wonderful freedom! That old thought
came to him with renewed force. To roam as he pleased, to stop when he
pleased and to sleep where he pleased! He would make a canoe, and float
down the great rivers to their mouths. Then he would wander far out on
the vast plains, which they say lay beyond the thousand miles of forest,
and see the buffalo in millions go thundering by. That would be a life
without care.

He fell asleep presently, but he was awakened after a while by a
long-drawn plaintive shriek answered by a similar cry. Once he would
have been alarmed by the sound, but now he knew it was panther talking
to panther. He and Paul were unarmed, but they had something as
effective as guns against panthers and that was the great bonfire which
still roared and blazed near them. He was glad now for a new reason that
they had built it high, because the panther's cry was so uncanny and
sent such a chill down one's back. He looked at Paul, but his comrade
still slept soundly, a peaceful smile showing on his face. He remembered
the words of Ross that no wild animal would trouble man if man did not
trouble him, and, rolling a little nearer to Paul, he shut his eyes and
sought sleep.

But sleep would not come, and presently he heard the cry of the panther
again but much nearer. He was lying with his ear to the ground. Now the
earth is a conductor of sound and Henry was sure that he heard a soft
tread. He rose upon his elbow and gazed into the darkness. There he
beheld at last a dim form moving with sinuous motion, and slowly it took
the shape of a great cat-like animal. Then he saw just behind it another
as large, and he knew that they were the two panthers whose cries he had
heard.

Henry was not frightened, although there was something weird and uncanny
in the spectacle of these two powerful beasts of prey, stealing about
the fire, before which two unarmed boys reposed. He knew, however, that
they were drawn not by the desire to attack, but by a kind of terrified
curiosity. The fire was to them the magnet that the snake is to the
fascinated bird. He longed then for his gun, the faithful little rifle
that was reposing on the hooks over his bed in his father's house. "I'd
make you cry for something," he said to himself, looking at the largest
of the panthers.

The animals lingered, glaring at the boys and the fire with great red
eyes, and presently Henry, doing as he had done on a former occasion,
picked up a blazing torch and, shouting, rushed at them.

The panthers sprang headlong through the undergrowth, in their eagerness
to get away from the terrible flaming vision that was darting down upon
them. Their flight was so quick that they disappeared in an instant and
Henry knew they would not venture near the site of the fire again in a
long time. He turned back and found Paul surprised and alarmed standing
erect and rubbing his eyes.

"Why--why--what's the matter?" cried Paul.

"Oh, it's nothing," replied Henry.

Then he told about the panthers. Paul did not know as much as Henry
concerning panthers and the affair got on his nerves. The lonely and
vast grandeur of the wilderness did not have the attraction for him that
it had for his comrade, and he wished again for the strong log walls and
comfortable roofs of Wareville. But Henry reassured him. The testimony
of the hunters about the timidity of wild beasts was unanimous and he
need have no fears. So Paul went to sleep again, but Henry lingered as
before.

He threw fresh fuel on the fire. Then he lay down again and gradually
weary nature became the master of him. The woods grew dim, and faded
away, the fire vanished and he was in slumberland.

When Henry awoke it was because some one was tugging at his shoulder. He
knew now that the Indian warriors had come across the Ohio, and had
seized him, and he sprang up ready to make a fierce resistance.

"Don't fight, Henry! It's me--Paul!" cried a boyish voice, and Henry
letting his muscles relax rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. It was Paul
sure enough standing beside him, and the sun again was high up in the
heavens. The fire was still burning, though it had died down somewhat.

"Oh, my breakfast!" cried Henry as he felt a sudden pang.

"Come, let's see if we're going to have any," said Paul, and off they
went to their snares. The first had not been touched, nor had the
second. The bait was gone from the third, and the loop sprung, but there
was nothing in it. The hearts of the boys sank and they thought again of
wild plums and blackberries which were but a light diet. But when they
came to the fourth snare their triumph was complete. A fat rabbit,
caught in the loop, was hanging by the neck, beside the bush.

"It's lucky the forest is so full of game that some of it falls into our
trap," said Henry.

They cooked the rabbit, and again they were so hungry that they ate it
all. Then they improvised new fishing tackle and both boys began to
fish. They knew that they must devote their whole time to this problem
of food, and they decided, for the present, not to leave the creek. They
were afraid to renew the search for Wareville, lest they wander deeper
into the wilderness, and moreover lose the way to the creek which seemed
to be the surest source of food. So they would stay a while where they
were, and keep their fire burning high as a signal to searchers.

Either the fish had learned that the curiously shaped thing with the
tempting bait upon it was dangerous, or they had gone to visit friends
in distant parts of the creek, for, at least two hours passed, without
either boy getting a bite. When the fish did lay hold it was usually to
slip again from the rude hook, and it was at least another hour before
they caught a fish. It was Paul who achieved the feat, and it repaid him
for being asleep when the panthers came, a matter that had lain upon his
mind somewhat.

They persisted in this work until Henry also made a catch and then they
gathered more plums and berries. They dug up, too, the root of the
Indian turnip, an herb that burnt the mouth like fire, but which Henry
said they could use, after soaking it a long time in water. Then they
discussed the matter of the fish trap which they thought they could make
in a day's work. This would relieve them of much toil, but they deferred
its beginning until the morrow, and used the rest of the day in making
two more snares for rabbits.

Paul now suggested that they accumulate as much food as possible, cook
it and putting it on their backs follow the creek to its mouth. He had
no doubt that it emptied into the river that flowed by Wareville and
then by following the stream, if his surmise was right, they could reach
home again. It was a plausible theory and Henry agreed with him.
Meanwhile they built their fire high again and lay down for another
night's rest in the woods. The next day they devoted to the fish trap
which was successfully completed, and put in the river, and then they
took their places on the turf for the third night beside the camp fire.

The day, like its predecessor, had been close and hot. All traces of the
great rain were gone. Forest and earth were again as dry as tinder. They
refreshed themselves with a swim in the creek just before lying down to
sleep, but they were soon panting with the heat. It seemed to hang in
heavy clouds, and the forest shut out any fresh air that might be moving
high up.

Despite the great heat the boys had built the fire as high as usual,
because they knew that the search for them would never cease so long as
there was a hope of success, and they thought that the signal should not
be lacking. But now they moved away from it and into the shadow of the
woods.

"If only the wind would blow!" said Henry.

"And I'd be willing to stand a rain like the one in which we got lost,"
said Paul.

But neither rain nor wind came, and after a while they fell asleep.
Henry was awakened at an unknown hour of the night by a roaring in his
ears, and at first he believed that Paul was about to have his storm.
Then he was dazzled by a great rush of light in his eyes, and he sprang
to his feet in sudden alarm.

"Up, Paul!" he cried, grasping his comrade by the shoulder. "The woods
are on fire!"

Paul was on his feet in an instant, and the two were just in time.
Sparks flew in their faces and the flames twisting into pyramids and
columns leaped from tree to tree with a sound like thunder as they came.
Boughs, burnt through, fell to the ground with a crash. The sparks rose
in millions.

The boys had slept in their clothes or rather what was left of them,
and, grasping each other's hands, they ran at full speed toward the
creek, with the great fire roaring and rushing after them. Henry looked
back once but the sight terrified him and the sparks scorched his face.
He knew that the conflagration had been set by their own bonfire, fanned
by a rising wind as they slept, but it was no time to lament. The rush
and sweep of the flames, feeding upon the dry forest and gathering
strength as they came, was terrific. It was indeed like the thunder of a
storm in the ears of the frightened boys, and they fairly skimmed over
the ground in the effort to escape the red pursuer. They could feel its
hot breath on their necks, while the smoke and the sparks flew over
their heads. They dashed into the creek, and each dived down under the
water which felt so cool and refreshing.

"Let's stay here," said Paul, who enjoyed the present.

"We can't think of such a thing," replied Henry. "This creek won't stop
that fire half a minute!"

A fire in a sun-dried Western forest is a terrible thing. It rushes on
at a gallop, roaring and crackling like the battle-front of an army, and
destroying everything that lies before it. It leaves but blackened
stumps and charred logs behind, and it stops only when there is no
longer food for it to devour.

The boys sprang out of the creek and ran up the hill. Henry paused a
moment at its crest, and looked back again. The aspect of the fire was
more frightful than ever. The flames leaped higher than the tops of the
tallest trees, and thrust out long red twining arms, like coiling
serpents. Beneath was the solid red bank of the conflagration, preceded
by showers of ashes and smoke and sparks. The roar increased and was
like that of many great guns in battle.

"Paul!" exclaimed Henry seizing his comrade's hand again. "We've got to
run, as we've never run before! It's for our lives now!"

It was in good truth for their lives, and bending low their heads, the
two boys, hand in hand, raced through the forest, with the ruthless
pursuer thundering after them. Henry as he ran, glanced back once more
and saw that the fire was gaining upon them. The serpents of flame were
coming nearer and nearer and the sparks flew over their heads in greater
showers. Paul was panting, and being the younger and smaller of the two
his strength was now failing. Henry felt his comrade dragging upon his
hand. If he freed himself from Paul's grasp he could run faster, but he
remembered his silent resolve to take Paul back to his people. Even were
it not for those others at Wareville he could never desert his friend at
such a moment. So he pulled on Paul's hand to hasten his speed, and
together the boys went on.

The two noticed presently that they were not alone in their flight, a
circumstance that had escaped them in the first hurry and confusion.
Deer and rabbits, too, flew before the hurricane of fire. The deer were
in a panic of terror, and a great stag ran for a few moments beside the
boys, not noticing them, or, in his fear of greater evil, having no fear
of human beings who were involved in the same danger. Three or four
buffaloes, too, presently joined the frightened herd of game, one, a
great bull running with head down and blowing steam from his nostrils.

Paul suddenly sank to his knees and gasped:

"I can't go on! Let me stay here and you save yourself, Henry!"

Henry looked back at the great fiery wall that swept over the ground,
roaring like a storm. It was very near now and the smoke almost blinded
him. A boy with a spirit less stanch than his might well have fled in a
panic, leaving his companion to his death. But the nearer the danger
came the more resolute Henry grew. He saw, too, that he must sting Paul
into renewed action.

"Get up!" he exclaimed, and he jerked the fainting boy to his feet.
Then, snatching a stick, he struck Paul several smart blows on his back.
Paul cried out with the sudden pain, and, stimulated by it into physical
action, began to run with renewed speed.

"That's right, Paul!" cried Henry, dropping his stick and seizing his
comrade again by the hand. "One more big try and we'll get away! Just
over this hill here it's open ground, and the fire will have to stop!"

It was a guess, only made to encourage Paul, and Henry had small hope
that it would come true, but when they reached the brow of the hill both
uttered a shout of delight. There was no forest for perhaps a quarter of
a mile beyond, and down the center of the open glittered a silver streak
that meant running water.

Henry was so joyous that he cried out again.

"See, Paul! See!" he exclaimed. "Here's safety! Now we'll run!"

How they did run! The sight gave them new strength. They shot out of
that terrible forest and across the short dry grass, burnt brown by late
summer days, running for life toward the flowing water. They did not
stop to notice the size of the stream, but plunged at once into its
current.

Henry sank with a mighty splash, and went down, down, it seemed to him,
a mile. Then his feet touched a hard, rocky bottom, and he shot back to
the surface, spluttering and blowing the water out of eyes, mouth and
nostrils. A brown head was bobbing beside him. He seized it by the hair,
pulled it up, and disclosed the features of Paul, his comrade. Paul,
too, began to splutter and at the same time to try to swim.

Splash!

A heavy body struck the water beside them with a thud too great for that
of a man. It was the stag leaping also for safety and he began to swim
about, looking at the boys with great pathetic eyes, as if he would ask
them what he ought to do next for his life. Apparently his fear of
mankind had passed for the moment. They were bound together by the
community of danger.

Splash! Splash! Splash!

The water resounded like the beating of a bass drum. Three more deer, a
buffalo, and any number of smaller game sprang into the stream, and
remained there swimming or wading.

"Here, Paul! Here's a bar that we can stand on," said Henry who had
found a footing. At the same time he grasped Paul by the wrist, and drew
him to the bar. There they stood in the water to their necks, and
watched the great fire as it divided at the little prairie, and swept
around them, passing to left and right. It was a grim sight. All the
heavens seemed ablaze, and the clouds of smoke were suffocating. Even
there in the river the heat was most oppressive, and at times the faces
of the boys were almost scorched. Then they would thrust their heads
under the water, and keep them there as long as they could hold their
breath, coming up again greatly refreshed. The wild game clustered near
in common terror.

"It's a lucky thing for us the river and prairie are here," said Henry.
"Another half mile and we'd have been ashes."

Paul was giving thanks under his breath, and watching the fire with
awe-stricken eyes. It swept past them and rushed on, in a great red
cloud, that ate all in its path and gave forth much noise.

It was now on the far side of the prairie, and soon began to grow
smaller in the distance. Yet so great was the wall of fire that it was
long in sight, dying at last in a red band under the horizon. Even then
all the skies were still filled with drifting smoke and ashes.

The boys looked back at the path over which they had come, and although
the joy of escape was still upon them it was with real grief that they
beheld the stricken forest, lately so grand a sight. It was now but a
desolate and blackened ruin. Here and there charred trunks stood like
the chimneys of burned houses, and others lay upon the ground like
fallen and smoking rafters. Scattered about were great beds of living
coals, where the brush had been thickest, and smoke rose in columns from
the burned grass and hot earth. It was all like some great temple
destroyed by fire; and such it was, the grandest of all temples, the
natural temple of the forest.

"We kindled that fire," said Paul.

"I guess we did," responded Henry, "but we didn't know our spark would
grow into so great a blaze."

They swam to the bank and walked toward the remains of the forest. But
the ground was still hot to their feet, and the smoke troubled them.
Near the edge of the wood they found a deer still alive and with a
broken leg, tripped in its panic-stricken flight or struck by a fallen
tree. Henry approached cautiously and slew him with his clasp knife. He
felt strong pity as the fallen animal looked at him with great mournful
eyes, but they were two hungry boys, and they must have a food supply if
they would live in the woods.

They cleaned and dressed the deer and found that the carcass was as much
as they could carry. But with great toil they lifted it over the hot
ground, and then across another little prairie, until they came to woods
only partially burned. There they hung the body to the bough of a tree,
out of the reach of beasts of prey.

Then they took thought for the future. Barring the deer which would last
some time they would now have to begin all over again, but they resolved
to spend the rest of the present day, there under the shade of the
trees. They were too much exhausted with exertion and excitement to
undertake any new risk just yet.

Paul was afflicted with a great longing for home that afternoon. The
fire and their narrow escape were still on his nerves. His muscular
fiber was not so enduring as that of Henry, and the wilderness did not
make so keen an appeal to him. Their hardships were beginning to weigh
upon him and he thought all the time of Wareville, and the comfortable
little log houses and the certain and easy supplies of food. Henry knew
what was on his comrade's mind but he did not upbraid him for weakness
of spirit. He, too, had memories of Wareville, and he pitied the grief
of their people who must now be mourning them as lost forever. But he
had been thinking long and hard and he had a plan. Finally he announced
to Paul that they would build a raft.

"I believe this is the same river that runs by Wareville," he said. "I
never heard Ross or Shif'less Sol or any of the men speak of another
river, near enough for us to have reached it, since we've been wandering
around. So it must be the same. Now either we are above Wareville or we
are below it. We've got to guess at that and take the risk of it. We can
roll a lot of the logs and timber into the river, tie 'em together, and
float with the stream until we come to Wareville."

"But if we never come to it?" asked Paul.

"Then all we have to do is to get off the raft and follow the river back
up the bank. Then we are sure to reach home."

This was so plausible that Paul was full of enthusiasm and they decided
that they would set to work on the raft early in the morning.




CHAPTER IV

THE HAUNTED FOREST


As the two boys sat before their camp fire that night, after making
their plan, they were far from feeling gloomy. Another revulsion had
come. Safe, for the moment, after their recent run for life, it seemed
to them that they were safe for all time. They were rested, they had
eaten good food in plenty, and the fire was long since but a dim red
blur on the horizon. Ashes, picked up by wandering puffs of wind, still
floated here and there among the burned tree trunks, and now and then a
shower of sparks burst forth, as a bough into which the flames had eaten
deep, broke and fell to the ground; but fear had gone from the lads,
and, in its place, came a deep content. They were used to the forest,
and in the company of each other they felt neither loneliness nor
despair.

"It's good here," said Paul who was a reader and a philosopher. "I guess
a fellow's life looks best to him just after he's thought he was going
to lose it, but didn't."

"I think that's true," said Henry, glancing toward the far horizon,
where the red blur still showed under the twilight. "But that was just a
little too close for fun."

But his satisfaction was even deeper than Paul's. The wilderness and its
ways made a stronger appeal to him. Paul, without Henry, would have felt
loneliness and fear, but Henry alone, would have faced the night
undaunted. Already the great forest was putting upon him its magic
spell.

"Have you eaten enough, Paul?" he asked.

"I should like to eat more, but I'm afraid I can't find a place for it,"
replied Paul ruefully.

Henry laughed. He felt himself more than ever Paul's protector and
regarded all his weaknesses with kindly tolerance. There the two lay
awhile, stretched out on the soft, warm earth, watching the twilight
deepen into night. Henry was listening to the voice of the wilderness,
which spoke to him in such pleasant tones. He heard a faint sighing,
like some one lightly plucking the strings of a guitar, and he knew that
it was the wandering breeze among the burned boughs; he heard now and
then a distant thud, and he knew that it was the fall of a tree, into
whose trunk the flames had bit deeply; as he lay with his ear to the
earth he heard more than once a furtive footfall as light as air, and he
knew that some wild animal was passing. But he had no fear, the fire was
a ring of steel about them.

Paul heard few of these sounds, or if hearing them he paid no heed. The
wilderness was not talking to him. He was merely in the woods and he was
very glad indeed to have his strong and faithful comrade beside him.

The twilight slipped away and the night came, thick and dark. The red
blur lingered, but the faintest line of pink under the dark horizon, and
the scorched tree trunks that curved like columns in a circle around
them became misty and unreal. Despite himself Paul began to feel a
little fear. He was a brave boy, but this was the wilderness, the
wilderness in the dark, peopled by wild animals and perhaps by wilder
men, and they were lost in it. He moved a little closer to his comrade.
But Henry, into whose mind no such thoughts had come, rose presently,
and heaped more wood on the fire. He was merely taking an ordinary
precaution, and this little task finished, he spoke to Paul in a vein of
humor, purposely making his words sound very big.

"Mr. Cotter," he said, "it seems to me that two worthy gentlemen like
ourselves who have had a day of hard toil should retire for the night,
and seek the rest that we deserve."

"What you say is certainly true, Mr. Ware," responded Paul who had a
lively fancy, "and I am glad to see that we have happened upon an inn,
worthy of our great merits, and of our high position in life. This, you
see, Mr. Ware, is the Kaintuckee Inn, a most spacious place, noted for
its pure air, and the great abundance of it. In truth, Mr. Ware, I may
assert to you that the ventilation is perfect."

"So I see, Mr. Cotter," said Henry, pursuing the same humor. "It is
indeed a noble place. We are not troubled by any guest, beneath us in
quality, nor are we crowded by any of our fellow lodgers."

"True! True!" said Paul, his bright eyes shining with his quick spirit,
"and it is a most noble apartment that we have chosen. I have seldom
been in one more spacious. My eyes are good, but good as they are I
cannot see the ceiling, it is so high. I look to right and left, and the
walls are so far away that they are hidden in the dark."

"Correctly spoken, Mr. Cotter," said Henry taking up the thread of talk,
"and our inn has more than size to speak for it. It is furnished most
beautifully. I do not know of another that has in it so good a larder.
Its great specialty is game. It has too a most wonderful and plenteous
supply of pure fresh water and that being so I propose that we get a
drink and go to bed."

The two boys went down to the little brook that ran near, and drank
heartily. They then returned within the ring of fire.

They were thoroughly tired and sleepy, and they quickly threw themselves
down upon the soft warm earth, pillowing their heads on their arms, and
the great Kaintuckee Inn bent over them a roof of soft, summer skies.

But the wilderness never sleeps, and its people knew that night that a
stranger breed was abroad among them. The wind rose a little, and its
song among the burned branches became by turns a music and a moan. The
last cinder died, the earth cooled, and the forest creatures began to
stir in the woodland aisles where the fire had passed. The disaster had
come and gone, and perhaps it was already out of their memories forever.
Rabbits timidly sought their old nests. A wild cat climbed a tree,
scarcely yet cool beneath his claws, and looked with red and staring
eyes at the ring of fire that formed a core of light in the forest, and
the two extraordinary beings that slept within its shelter. A deer came
down to the brook to drink, snorted at the sight of the red gleam among
the trees, and then, when the strange odor came on the wind to its
nostrils, fled in wild fright through the forest.

The news, in some way unknown to man, was carried to all the forest
creatures. A new species, strange, unexplainable, had come among them,
and they were filled with curiosity. Even the weak who had need to fear
the strong, edged as near as they dared, and gazed at the singular
beings who lay inside the red blaze. The wild cat crawled far out on the
bare bough, and stared, half afraid, half curious, and also angry at the
intrusion. He could see over the red blaze and he saw the boys stretched
upon the ground, their faces, very white to the eye of the forest,
upturned to the sky. To human gaze they would have seemed as two dead,
but the keen eyes of the wild cat saw their chests rising and falling
with deep regular breaths.

The darkness deepened and then after a while began to lighten. A
beautiful clear moon came out and sheathed all the burned forest in
gleaming silver. But the boys were still far away in a happy
slumberland. The wild cat fled in alarm at the light, and the timid
things drew back farther among the trees.

Time passed, and the red ring of fire about Paul and Henry sank. Hasty
and tired, they had not drawn up enough wood to last out the night, and
now the flames died, one by one. Then the coals smoldered and after a
while they too began to go out, one by one. The red ring of fire that
inclosed the two boys was slowly going away. It broke into links, and
then the links went out.

Light clouds came up from the west, and were drawn, like a veil, across
the sky. The moon began to fade, the silver armor melted away from the
trees, and the wild cat that had come back could scarcely see the two
strange beings, keen though his eyes were, so dense was the shadow where
they lay. The wild things, still devoured with curiosity, pressed
nearer. The terrible red light that filled their souls with dread, was
gone, and the forest had lost half its terror. There was a ring of eyes
about Henry and Paul, but they yet abode in glorious slumberland,
peaceful and happy.

Suddenly a new note came into the sounds of the wilderness, one that
made the timid creatures tremble again with dread. It was faint and very
far, more like a quaver brought down upon the wind, but the ring of eyes
drew back into the forest, and then, when the quaver came a second time,
the rabbits and the deer fled, not to return. The lips of the wild cat
contracted into a snarl, but his courage was only of the moment, he
scampered away and he did not stop until he had gone a full mile. Then
he swiftly climbed the tallest tree that he could find, and hid in its
top.

The ring of eyes was gone, as the ring of fire had died, but Henry and
Paul slept on, although there was full need for them to be awake. The
long, distant quaver, like a whine, but with something singularly
ferocious in its note came again on the wind, and, far away, a score of
forms, phantom and dusky, in the shadow were running fast, with low,
slim bodies, and outstretched nostrils that had in them a grateful odor
of food, soon to come.

Nature had given to Henry Ware a physical mechanism of great strength,
but as delicate as that of a watch. Any jar to the wheels and springs
was registered at once by the minute hand of his brain. He stirred in
his sleep and moved one hand in a troubled way. He was not yet awake,
but the minute hand was quivering, and through all his wonderfully
sensitive organism ran the note of alarm. He stirred again and then
abruptly sat up, his eyes wide open, and his whole frame tense with a
new and terrible sensation. He saw the dead coals, where the fire had
been; the long, quavering and ferocious whine came to his ears, and, in
an instant, he understood. It was well for the two that Henry was by
nature a creature of the forest! He sprang to his feet and with one
sweeping motion pulled Paul to his also.

"Up! Up, Paul!" he cried. "The fire is out, and the wolves are coming!"

Paul's physical senses were less acute and delicate than Henry's, and he
did not understand at once. He was still dazed, and groping with his
hands in the dusk, but Henry gave him no time.

"It's our lives, Paul!" he cried. "Another enemy as bad as the fire is
after us!"

Not twenty feet away grew a giant beech, spreading out low and mighty
boughs, and Henry leaped for it, dragging Paul after him.

"Up you go!" he cried, and Paul, not yet fully awake, instinctively
obeyed the fierce command. Then Henry leaped lightly after him and as
they climbed higher among the boughs the ferocious whine burst into a
long terrible howl, and the dusky forms, running low, gaunt and ghostly
in the shadow, shot from the forest, and hurled themselves at the beech
tree.

Henry, despite all his courage, shuddered, and while he clutched a bough
tightly with one hand put the other upon his comrade to see that he did
not fall. He could feel Paul trembling in his grasp.

The two looked down upon the inflamed red eyes, the cruelly sharp, white
teeth and slavering mouths, and, still panting from their climb, each
breathed a silent prayer of thankfulness. They had been just in time to
escape a pack of wolves that howled horribly for a while, and then sat
upon their haunches, staring silently up at the sweet new food, which
they believed would fall at last into their mouths.

Paul at length said weakly:

"Henry, I'm mighty glad you're a light sleeper. If it had been left to
me to wake up first I'd have woke up right in the middle of the stomachs
of those wolves."

"Well, we're here and we're safe for the present," said Henry who never
troubled himself over what was past and gone, "and I think this is a
mighty fine beech tree. I know that you and I, Paul, will never see
another so big and friendly and good as it is."

Paul laughed, now with more heart.

"You are right, Henry," he said. "You are a mighty good friend, Mr. Big
Beech Tree, and as a mark of gratitude I shall kiss you right in the
middle of your honest barky old forehead," and he touched his lips
lightly to the great trunk. Paul was an imaginative boy, and his whim
pleased him. Such a thought would not have come to Henry, but he liked
it in Paul.

"I think it's past midnight, Paul," said Henry, "and we've been lucky
enough to have had several hours' sleep."

"But they'll go away as soon as they realize they can't get us," said
Paul, "and then we can climb down and build a new and bigger ring of
fire about us."

Henry shook his head.

"They don't realize it," he replied. "I know they expect just the
contrary, Paul. They are as sure as a wolf can be that we will drop
right into their mouths, just ready and anxious to be eaten. Look at
that old fellow with his forepaws on the tree! Did you ever see such
confidence?"

Paul looked down fearfully, and the eyes of the biggest of the wolves
met his, and held him as if he were charmed. The wolf began to whine and
lick his lips, and Paul felt an insane desire to throw himself down.

"Stop it, Paul!" Henry cried sharply.

Paul jerked his eyes away, and shuddered from head to foot.

"He was asking me to come," he said hysterically, "and I don't know how
it was, but for a moment I felt like going."

"Yes and a warm welcome he would have given you," said Henry still
sharply. "Remember that your best friend just now is not Mr. Big Wolf,
but Mr. Big Beech Tree, and it's a wise boy who sticks to his best
friend."

"I'm not likely to forget it," said Paul.

He shuddered again at the memory of the terrible, haunting eyes that had
been able for a brief moment to draw him downward. Then he clasped the
friendly tree more tightly in his arms, and Henry smiled approval.

"That's right, Paul," he said, "hold fast. I'd a heap rather be up here
than down there."

Paul felt himself with his hand.

"I'm all in one piece up here," he said, "and I think that's good for a
fellow who wants to live and grow."

Henry laughed with genuine enjoyment. Paul was getting back his sense of
humor, and the change meant that his comrade was once more strong and
alert. Then the larger boy looked down at their besiegers, who were
sitting in a solemn circle, gazing now at the two lads and now at the
venison, hanging from the boughs of another tree very near. In the dusk
and the shadows they were a terrible company, gaunt and ghostly, gray
and grim.

For a long time the wolves neither moved nor uttered a sound; they
merely sat on their haunches and stared upward at the living prey that
they felt would surely be theirs. The clouds, caught by wandering
breezes, were stripped from the face of the sky, and the moonlight came
out again, clear, and full, sheathing the scorched trunks once more in
silver armor, and stretching great blankets of light on the burned and
ashy earth. It fell too on the gaunt figures of the gray wolves, but the
silent and deadly circle did not stir. In the moonlight they grew more
terrible, the red eyes became more inflamed and angry, because they had
to wait so long for what they considered theirs by right, the snarling
lips were drawn back a little farther, and the sharp white teeth gleamed
more cruelly.

Time passed again, dragging slowly and heavily for the besieged boys in
the tree, but the wolves, though hungry, were patient. Strong in union
they were lords of the forest, and they felt no fear. A shambling black
bear, lumbering through the woods, suddenly threw up his nose in the
wind, and catching the strong pungent odor, wheeled abruptly, lumbering
off on another course. The wild cat did not come back, but crouched
lower in his tree top; the timid things remained hidden deep in their
nests and burrows.

It was a new kind of game that the wolves had scented and driven to the
boughs, something that they had never seen before, but the odor was very
sweet and pleasant in their nostrils. It was a tidbit that they must
have, and, red-eyed, they stared at the two strange, toothsome
creatures, who stirred now and then in the tree, and who made queer
sounds to each other. When they heard these occasional noises the pack
would reply with a long ferocious whine that seemed to double on itself
and give back echoes from every point of the compass. In the still night
it went far, and the timid things, when they heard it, trembled all over
in their nests and burrows. Then the leader, the largest and most
terrible of the pack would stretch himself upon the tree trunk, and claw
at the scorched bark, but the food he craved was still out of reach.

They noticed that the strange creatures in the tree began to move
oftener, and to draw their limbs up as if they were growing stiff, and
then their long-drawn howl grew longer and more ferocious than ever; the
game, tired out, would soon drop into their mouths. But it did not, the
two creatures made sounds as if they were again encouraging each other,
and the hearts of the wolves filled with rage and impatience that they
should be cheated so long.

The night advanced; the moonlight faded again and the dark hours that
come before the dawn were at hand. The forest became black and misty
like a haunted wood, and the dim forms of the wolves were the ghosts
that lived in it. But to their sharp red eyes the dark was nothing; they
saw the two beings in the tree do a very queer thing; they tore strips
from themselves, so it seemed to the wolves, from their clothing in
fact, and wound it about their bodies and a bough of the tree against
which they rested. But the wolves did not understand, only they knew
that the creatures did not stir again or make any kind of noise for a
long time.

When the darkness was thickest the wolves grew hot with impatience.
Already they smelled the dawn and in the light their courage would ooze.
Could it be that the food they coveted would not fall into their mouths?
The dread suspicion filled every vein of the old leader with wrath, and
he uttered a long terrible howl of doubt and anger; the pack took up the
note and the lonely forest became alive with its echoes. But the
creatures in the tree stirred only a little, and made very few sounds.
They seemed to be safe and content, and the wolves raged back and forth,
leaping and howling.

The old leader felt the dark thin and lighten, and the scent of the
coming dawn became more oppressive to him. A little needle of fear shot
into his heart, and his muscles began to grow weak. He saw afar in the
east the first pale tinge, faint and gray, of the dreadful light that he
feared and hated. His howl now was one of mingled anger and
disappointment, and the pack imitated the note of the king.

The black veil over the forest gave way to one of gray. The dreadful bar
of light in the east broadened and deepened, and became beaming, intense
and brilliant. The needle of terror at the heart of the gray wolf
stabbed and tore. His red eyes could not face the great red sun that
swung now above the earth, shooting its fierce beams straight at him.
The dark, so kindly and so encouraging, beloved of his kind, was gone,
and the earth swam in a hideous light, every ray of which was hostile.
His blood changed to water, his knees bent under him, and then, to turn
fear to panic, came a powerful odor on the light, morning wind. It was
like the scent of the two strange, succulent creatures in the tree, but
it was the odor of many--many make strength he knew--and the great gray
wolf was sore afraid.

The sun shot higher and the world was bathed in a luminous golden glow.
The master-wolf cast one last, longing look at the lost food in the
tree, and then, uttering a long quavering howl of terror, which the pack
took up and carried in many echoes, fled headlong through the forest
with his followers close behind, all running low and fast, and with
terror hot at their heels. Their gaunt, gray bodies were gone in a
moment, like ghosts that vanish at the coming of the day.

"Rouse up, Paul!" cried Henry. "They are gone, afraid of the sun, and
it's safe for us now on the ground."

"And mighty glad I am!" said Paul. "The great Inn of Kaintuckee was not
so hospitable after all, or at least some of our fellow guests were too
hungry."

"It's because we were careless about our fire," said Henry. "If we had
obeyed all the rules of the inn, we should have had no trouble. Jump
down, Paul!"

Henry dropped lightly and cheerfully to the ground. As usual he let the
past and its dangers slip, forgotten, behind him. Paul alighted beside
him and the wilderness witnessed the strange sight of two stout boys,
running up and down, pounding and rubbing their hands and arms, uttering
little cries of pain, as the blood flowed at first slowly and with
difficulty in their cramped limbs, and then of delight, as the
circulation became free and easy.

"Now for breakfast," said Henry. "It will be easy, as Mr. Landlord has
kept the venison hanging on the tree there for us."

Henry was breathing the fresh morning air, and rejoicing in the
sunlight. His wonderful physical nature had cast away all thought of
fear, but Paul, who had the sensitive mind and delicate fancy, was still
troubled.

"Henry," he said, "I'm not willing to stay here, even to eat the deer
meat. All through those hours we were up there it was a haunted forest
for me. I don't want to see this spot any more, and I'd like to get away
from it just as soon as I can."

Was it some instinct? or an unseen warning given to Paul, and registered
on his sensitive mind, as a photographic plate takes light? To the keen
nose of the old wolf leader an alarming odor had come with the dawn! Was
a kindred signal sent to Paul?

Henry stared at his comrade in surprise, but he knew that he and Paul
were different, and he respected those differences which might be either
strength or weakness.

"All right, if you wish it, Paul," he said, lightly. "There are many
rooms in the Kaintuckee Inn, and if the one we have doesn't suit us
we'll just take another. Wait till I cut this venison down, and we'll
move without paying our score."

"I guess we paid that to the wolves," said Paul, smiling a little.

Henry detached the venison and divided it. Then each took his share, and
they moved swiftly away among the trees, still keeping to the general
course of the river. They came presently to a large area of unburned
forest, thick with foliage and undergrowth and, without hesitation, they
plunged into it. Henry was in front and suddenly to his keen ears came a
sound which he knew was not one of the natural noises of the forest. He
listened and it continued, a beat, faint but regular and steady. He knew
that it was made by footfalls, and he knew, too, that in the wilderness
everyone is an enemy until he is proved to be a friend. They were in the
densest of the undergrowth, and thought and action came to him on the
heels of each other, swift as lightning.

"Sink down, Paul! Sink down!" he cried, and grasping his comrade by the
shoulder he bore him down among the thick bushes, going down with him.

"Don't move for your life!" he whispered. "Men are about to pass and
they cannot be our kind!"

Paul at once became as still as death. He too under the strain of the
wilderness life and the need of caring for oneself was becoming
wonderfully acute of the senses and ready of action. The two boys
crouched close together, their heads below the tops of the bushes,
although they could see between the leaves and twigs, and neither moved
a hair.

Almost hidden in the foliage a line of Indian warriors, like dusky
phantoms, passed, in single file, and apparently stepping in one
another's tracks. Well for the boys that Paul had felt his impulse to
leave the vicinity of the besieged tree, because the course of the
warriors would carry them very near it, and they could not fail to
detect the alien presence. But no such suspicion seemed to enter their
minds now, and, like the wolves, they were traveling fast, but
southward.

The boys stared through the leaves and twigs, afraid but fascinated.
They were fourteen in all--Henry counted them--but never a warrior spoke
a word, and the grim line was seen but a moment and then gone, though
their dark painted faces long remained engraved, like pictures, on the
minds of both. But to Paul it was, for the instant, like a dream. He saw
them, and then he did not. The leaves of the bushes rustled a little
when they passed, and then were still.

"They must be Southern Indians," whispered Henry. "Cherokees most
likely. They come up here now and then to hunt, but they seldom stay
long, for fear of the more warlike and powerful Northern Indians, who
come down to Kaintuckee for the same purpose, at least that's what I
heard Ross and Sol say."

"Well, they did seem to be traveling fast," breathed Paul, "and I'm
mighty glad of it. Do you think, Henry, they could have done any harm at
Wareville?"

Henry shook his head.

"I have no such fear," he said. "We are a good long distance from home,
and they've probably gone by without ever hearing of the place. Ross has
always said that no danger was to be dreaded from the south."

"I guess it's so," said Paul with deep relief, "but I think, Henry, that
you and I ought to go down to the river's bank, and build that raft as
soon as we can."

"All right," said Henry calmly. "But we'll first eat our venison."

They quickly did as they agreed, and felt greatly strengthened and
encouraged after a hearty breakfast. Then with bold hearts and quick
hands they began their task.




CHAPTER V

AFLOAT


The boys began at once the work on their raft, a rude structure of a few
fallen logs, fastened together with bark and brush, but simple, strong
and safe. They finished it in two days, existing meanwhile on the deer
meat, and early the morning afterwards, the clumsy craft, bearing the
two navigators, was duly intrusted to the mercy of the unknown river.
Each of the boys carried a slender hickory pole with which to steer, and
they also fastened securely to the raft the remainder of their deer,
their most precious possession.

They pushed off with the poles, and the current catching their craft,
carried it gently along. It was a fine little river, running in a deep
channel, and Henry became more sure than ever that it was the one that
flowed by Wareville. He was certain that the family resemblance was too
strong for him to be mistaken.

They floated on for hours, rarely using their poles to increase the
speed of the raft and by and by they began to pass between cliffs of
considerable height. The forest here was very dense. Mighty oaks and
hickories grew right at the water's edge, throwing out their boughs so
far that often the whole stream was in the shade. Henry enjoyed it. This
was one of the things that his fancy had pictured. He was now floating
down an unknown river, through unknown lands, and, like as not, his and
Paul's were the first human eyes that had ever looked upon these hills
and splendid forests. Reposing now after work and danger he breathed
again the breath of the wilderness. He loved it--its silence, its
magnificent spaces, and its majesty. He was glad that he had come to
Kentucky, where life was so much grander than it was back in the old
Eastern regions. Here one was not fenced in and confined and could grow
to his true stature.

They ate their dinner on the raft, still floating peacefully and tried
to guess how far they had come, but neither was able to judge the speed
of the current. Paul fitted himself into a snug place on their queer
craft and after a while went to sleep. Henry watched him, lest he turn
over and fall into the river and also kept an eye out for other things.

He was watching thus, when about the middle of the afternoon he saw a
thin dark line, lying like a thread, against the blue skies. He studied
it long and came to the conclusion that it was smoke.

"Smoke!" said he to himself. "Maybe that means Wareville."

The raft glided gently with the current, moving so smoothly and
peacefully that it was like the floating of a bubble on a summer sea.
Paul still lay in a dreamless sleep. The water was silver in the shade
and dim gold where the sunshine fell upon it, and the trees, a solid
mass, touched already by the brown of early autumn, dropped over the
stream. Afar, a fine haze, like a misty veil, hung over the forest. The
world was full of peace and primitive beauty.

They drifted on and the spire of smoke broadened and grew. The look of
the river became more and more familiar. Paul still slept and Henry
would not awaken him. He looked at the face of his comrade as he
slumbered and noticed for the first time that it was thin and pale. The
life in the woods had been hard upon Paul. Henry did not realize until
this moment how very hard it had been. The sight of that smoke had not
come too soon.

There was a shout from the bank followed by the crash of bodies among
the undergrowth.

"Smoke me, but here they are! A-floatin' down the river in their own
boat, as comfortable as two lords!"

It was the voice of Shif'less Sol, and his face, side by side with that
of Ross, the guide, appeared among the trees at the river's brink. Henry
felt a great flush of joy when he saw them, and waved his hands. Paul,
awakened by the shouts, was in a daze at first, but when he beheld old
friends again his delight was intense.

Henry thrust a pole against the bottom and shoved the raft to the bank.
Then he and Paul sprang ashore and shook hands again and again with Ross
and Sol. Ross told of the long search for the two boys. He and Mr. Ware
and Shif'less Sol and a half dozen others had never ceased to seek them.
They feared at one time that they had been carried off by savages, but
nowhere did they find Indian traces. Then their dread was of starvation
or death by wild animals, and they had begun to lose hope.

Both Henry and Paul were deeply moved by the story of the grief at
Wareville. They knew even without the telling that this sorrow had never
been demonstrative. The mothers of the West were too much accustomed to
great tragedies to cry out and wring their hands when a blow fell.
Theirs was always a silent grief, but none the less deep.

Then, guided by Ross and the shiftless one, they proceeded to Wareville
which was really at the bottom of the smoke spire, where they were
received, as two risen from the dead, in a welcome that was not noisy,
but deep and heartfelt. The cow, the original cause of the trouble, had
wandered back home long ago.

"How did you live in the forest?" asked Mr. Ware of Henry, after the
first joy of welcome was shown.

"It was hard at first, but we were beginning to learn," replied the boy.
"If we'd only had our rifles 'twould have been no trouble. And father,
the wilderness is splendid!"

The boy's thoughts wandered far away for a moment to the wild woods
where he again lay in the shade of mighty oaks and saw the deer come
down to drink. Mr. Ware noticed the expression on Henry's face and took
reflection. "I must not let the yoke bear too heavy upon him," was his
unspoken thought.

But Paul's joy was unalloyed; he preferred life at Wareville to life in
the wilderness amid perpetual hardships, and when they gave the great
dinner at Mr. Ware's to celebrate the return of the wanderers he reached
the height of human bliss. Both Ross and Shif'less Sol were present and
with them, too, were Silas Pennypacker who could preach upon occasion
for the settlement and did it, now and then, and John Upton, who next to
Mr. Ware was the most notable man in Wareville, and his daughter Lucy,
now a shy, pretty girl of twelve, and more than twenty others. Even
Braxton Wyatt was among the members although he still sneered at Henry.

Theirs was in very truth a table fit for a king. In fact few kings could
duplicate it, without sending to the uttermost parts of the earth, and
perhaps not then. Meat was its staple. They had wild duck, wild goose,
wild turkey, deer, elk, beaver tail, and a half dozen kinds of fish; but
the great delicacy was buffalo hump cooked in a peculiar way--that is,
served up in the hide of a buffalo from which the hair had been singed
off, and baked in an earthen oven. Ross, who had learned it from the
Indians, showed them how to do this, and they agreed that none of them
had ever before tasted so fine a dish. When the dinner was over, Henry
and Paul had to answer many questions about their wanderings, and they
were quite willing to do so, feeling at the moment a due sense of their
own importance.

A shade passed over the faces of some of the men at the mention of the
Indians, whom Henry and Paul had seen, but Ross agreed with Henry that
they were surely of the South, going home from a hunting trip, and so
they were soon forgotten.

Henry's work after their return included an occasional hunting
excursion, as game was always needed. His love of the wilderness did not
decrease when thus he ranged through it and began to understand its
ways. Familiarity did not breed contempt. The magnificent spaces and
mighty silence appealed to him with increasing force. The columns of the
trees were like cathedral aisles and the pure breath of the wind was
fresh with life.

The first part of the autumn was hot and dry. The foliage died fast, the
leaves twisted and dried up and the brown grass stems fell lifeless to
the earth. A long time they were without rain, and a dull haze of heat
hung over the simmering earth. The river shrank in its bed, and the
brooks became rills.

Henry still hunted with his older comrades, though often at night now,
and he saw the forest in a new phase. Dried and burned it appealed to
him still. He learned to sleep lightly, that is, to start up at the
slightest sound, and one morning after the wilderness had been growing
hotter and dryer than ever he was awakened by a faint liquid touch on
the roof. He knew at once that it was the rain, wished for so long and
talked of so much, and he opened the shutter window to see it fall.

The sun was just rising, but showed only a faint glow of pink through
the misty clouds, and the wind was light. The clouds opened but a little
at first and the great drops fell slowly. The hot earth steamed at the
touch, and, burning with thirst, quickly drank in the moisture. The wind
grew and the drops fell faster. The heat fled away, driven by the waves
of cool, fresh air that came out of the west. Washed by the rain the dry
grass straightened up, and the dying leaves opened out, springing into
new life. Faster and faster came the drops and now the sound they made
was like the steady patter of musketry. Henry opened his mouth and
breathed the fresh clean air, and he felt that like the leaves and grass
he, too, was gaining new life.

When he went forth the next day in the dripping forest the wilderness
seemed to be alive. The game swarmed everywhere and he was a lazy man
who could not take what he wished. It was like a late touch of spring,
but it did not last long, for then the frosts came, the air grew crisp
and cool and the foliage of the forest turned to wonderful reds and
yellows and browns. From the summit of the blockhouse tower Henry saw a
great blaze of varied color, and he thought that he liked this part of
the year best. He could feel his own strength grow, and now that cold
weather was soon to come he would learn new ways to seek game and new
phases of the wilderness.

The autumn and its beauty deepened. The colors of the foliage grew more
intense and burned afar like flame. The settlers lightened their work
and most of them now spent a large part of the time in hunting, pursuing
it with the keen zest, born of a natural taste and the relaxation from
heavy labors. Mr. Ware and a few others, anxious to test the qualities
of the soil, were plowing up newly cleared land to be sown in wheat, but
Henry was compelled to devote only a portion of his time to this work.
The remaining hours, not needed for sleep, he was usually in the forest
with Paul and the others.

The hunting was now glorious. Less than three miles from the fort and
about a mile from the river Henry and Paul found a beaver dam across a
tributary creek and they laid rude traps for its builders, six of which
they caught in the course of time. Ross and Sol showed them how to take
off the pelts which would be of value when trade should be opened with
the east, and also how to cook beaver tail, a dish which could, with
truth, be called a rival of buffalo hump.

Now the settlers began to accumulate a great supply of game at
Wareville. Elk and deer and bear and buffalo and smaller animals were
being jerked and dried at every house, and every larder was filled to
the brim. There could be no lack of food the coming winter, the settlers
said, and they spoke with some pride of their care and providence.

The village was gaining in both comfort and picturesqueness. Tanned
skins of the deer, elk, buffalo, bear, wolf, panther and wild cat hung
on the walls of every house, and were spread on every floor. The women
contrived fans and ornaments of the beautiful mottled plumage of the
wild turkey. Cloth was hard to obtain in the wilderness, as it might be
a year before a pack train would come over the mountains from the east,
and so the women made clothing of the softest and lightest of the
dressed deer skin. There were hunting shirts for the men and boys,
fastened at the waist by a belt, and with a fringe three or four inches
long, the bottom of which fell to the knees. The men and boys also made
themselves caps of raccoon skin with the tail sewed on behind as a
decoration. Henry and Paul were very proud of theirs.

The finest robes of buffalo skin were saved for the beds, and Ross gave
warning that they should have full need of them. Winters in Kentucky, he
said, were often cold enough to freeze the very marrow in one's bones,
when even the wildest of men would be glad enough to leave the woods and
hover over a big fire. But the settlers provided for this also by
building great stacks of firewood beside each house. They were as well
equipped with axes--keen, heavy weapons--as they were with rifles and
ammunition, and these were as necessary. The forest around Wareville
already gave great proof of their prowess with the ax.

Now the autumn was waning. Every morning the wilderness gleamed and
sparkled beneath a beautiful covering of white frost. The brown in the
leaves began to usurp the yellows and the reds. The air, crisp and cold,
had a strange nectar in it and its very breath was life. The sun lay in
the heavens a ball of gold, and a fine haze, like a misty golden veil,
hung over the forest. It was Indian summer.

Then Indian summer passed and winter, which was very early that year,
came roaring down on Wareville. The autumn broke up in a cold rain which
soon turned to snow. The wind swept out of the northwest, bitter and
chill, and the desolate forest, every bough stripped of its leaves,
moaned before the blast.

But it was cheerful, when the sleet beat upon the roof and the cold wind
rattled the rude shutters, to sit before the big fires and watch them
sparkle and blaze.

There was another reason why Henry should now begin to spend much of his
time indoors. The Rev. Silas Pennypacker opened his school for the
winter, and it was necessary for Henry to attend. Many of the pioneers
who crossed the mountains from the Eastern States and founded the great
Western outpost of the nation in Kentucky were men of education and
cultivation, with a knowledge of books and the world. They did not
intend that their children should grow up mere ignorant borderers, but
they wished their daughters to have grace and manners and their sons to
become men of affairs, fit to lead the vanguard of a mighty race. So a
first duty in the wilderness was to found schools, and this they did.

The Reverend Silas was no lean and thin body, no hanger-on upon stronger
men, but of fine girth and stature with a red face as round as the full
moon, a glorious laugh and the mellowest voice in the colony. He was by
repute a famous scholar who could at once give the chapter and text of
any verse in the Bible and had twice read through the ponderous history
of the French gentleman, M. Rollin. It was said, too, that he had nearly
twenty volumes of some famous romances by a French lady, one
Mademoiselle de Scudery, brought over the mountains in a box, but of
this Henry and Paul could not speak with certainty, as a certain wooden
cupboard in Mr. Pennypacker's house was always securely locked.

But the teacher was a favorite in the settlement with both men and
women. A sight of his cheerful face was considered good enough to cure
chills and fever, and for the matter of that he was an expert hand with
both ax and rifle. His uses in Wareville were not merely mental and
spiritual. He was at all times able and willing to earn his own bread
with his own strong hands, though the others seldom permitted him to do
so.

Henry entered school with some reluctance. Being nearly sixteen now,
with an unusually powerful frame developed by a forest life, he was as
large as an ordinary man and quite as strong. He thought he ought to
have done with schools, and set up in man's estate but his father
insisted upon another winter under Mr. Pennypacker's care and Henry
yielded.

There were perhaps thirty boys and girls who sat on the rough wooden
benches in the school and received tuition. Mr. Pennypacker did not
undertake to guide them through many branches of learning, but what he
taught he taught well. He, too, had the feeling that these boys and
girls were to be the men and women who would hold the future of the West
in their hands, and he intended that they should be fit. There were
statesmen and generals among those red-faced boys on the benches, and
the wives and mothers of others among the red-faced girls who sat near
them, and he tried to teach them their duty as the heirs of a
wilderness, soon to be the home of a great race.

Among his favorite pupils was Paul who had not Henry's eye and hand in
the forest, but who loved books and the knowledge of men. He could
follow the devious lines of history when Henry would much rather have
been following the devious trail of a deer. Nevertheless, Henry
persisted, borne up by the emulation of his comrade, and the knowledge
that it was his last winter in school.




CHAPTER VI

THE VOICE OF THE WOODS


To study now was the hardest task that Henry had ever undertaken. It was
even easier to find food when he and Paul were unarmed and destitute in
the forest. The walls of the little log house in which he sat inclosed
him like a cell, the air was heavy and the space seemed to grow narrower
and narrower. Then just when the task was growing intolerable he would
look across the room and seeing the studious face of Paul bent over the
big text of an ancient history, he would apply himself anew to his labor
which consisted chiefly of "figures," a bit of the world's geography,
and a little look into the history of England.

Mr. Pennypacker would neither praise nor blame, but often when the boy
did not notice he looked critically at Henry. "I don't think your son
will be a great scholar," he said once to Mr. Ware, "but he will be a
Nimrod, a mighty hunter before men, and a leader in action. It's as
well, for his is the kind that will be needed most and for a long time
in this wilderness, and back there in the old lands, too."

"It is so," replied Mr. Ware, "the clouds do gather."

Involuntarily he looked toward the east, and Mr. Pennypacker's eyes
followed him. But both remained silent upon that portion of their
thoughts.

"Moreover I tell you for your comfort that the lad has a sense of duty,"
added the teacher.

Henry shot a magnificent stag with great antlers a few days later, and
mounting the head he presented it to Mr. Pennypacker. But on the
following day the master looked very grave and Henry and Paul tried to
guess the cause. Henry heard that Ross had arrived the night before from
the nearest settlement a hundred miles away, but had stayed only an
hour, going to their second nearest neighbor distant one hundred and
fifty miles. He brought news of some kind which only Mr. Ware, Mr.
Upton, the teacher and three or four others knew. These were not ready
to speak and Paul and Henry were well aware that nothing on earth could
make them do so until they thought the time was fit.

It was a long, long morning. Henry had before him a map of the Empire of
Muscovy but he saw little there. Instead there came between him and the
page a vision of the beaver dam and the pool above it, now covered with
a sheet of ice, and of the salt spring where the deer came to drink, and
of a sheltered valley in which a herd of elk rested every night.

Mr. Pennypacker was singularly quiet that morning. It was his custom to
call up his pupils and make them recite in a loud voice, but the hours
passed and there were no recitations. The teacher seemed to be looking
far away at something outside the schoolroom, and his thoughts followed
his eyes. Henry by and by let his own roam as they would and he was in
dreamland, when he was aroused by a sharp smack of the teacher's
homemade ruler upon his homemade desk.

But the blow was not aimed at Henry or anybody in particular. It was an
announcement to all the world in general that Mr. Pennypacker was about
to speak on a matter of importance. Henry and Paul guessed at once that
it would be about the news brought by Ross.

Mr. Pennypacker's face grew graver than ever as he spoke. He told them
that when they left the east there was great trouble between the
colonies and the mother country. They had hoped that it would pass away,
but now, for the first time in many months, news had come across the
mountains from their old home, and had entered the great forest. The
troubles were not gone. On the contrary they had become worse. There had
been fighting, a battle in which many had been killed, and a great war
was begun. The colonies would all stand together, and no man could tell
what the times would bring forth.

This was indeed weighty news. Though divided from their brethren in the
east by hundreds of miles of mountain and forest the patriotism of the
settlers in the wilderness burned with a glow all the brighter on that
account. More than one young heart in that rude room glowed with a
desire to be beside their countrymen in the far-off east, rifle in hand.

But Mr. Pennypacker spoke again. He said that there was now a greater
duty upon them to hold the west for the union of the colonies. Their
task was not merely to build homes for themselves, but to win the land
that it might be homes for others. There were rumors that the savages
would be used against them, that they might come down in force from the
north, and therefore it was the part of everyone, whether man, woman or
child to redouble his vigilance and caution. Then he adjourned school
for the day.

The boys drew apart from their elders and discussed the great news.
Henry's blood was on fire. The message from that little Massachusetts
town, thrilled him as nothing in his life had done before. He had a
vague idea of going there, and of doing what he considered his part, and
he spoke to Paul about it, but Paul thought otherwise.

"Why, Henry!" he said. "We may have to defend ourselves here and we'll
need you."

The people of Wareville knew little about the causes of the war and
after this one message brought by Ross they heard no more of its
progress. They might be fighting great battles away off there on the
Atlantic coast, but no news came through the wall of woods. Wareville
itself was peaceful, and around it curved the mighty forest which told
nothing.

Mountains and forest alike lay under deep snow, and it was not likely
that they would hear anything further until spring, because the winter
was unusually cold and a man who ventured now on a long journey was
braver than his fellows.

The new Kentuckians were glad that they had provided so well for winter.
All the cupboards were full and there was no need for them now to roam
the cold forests in search of game. They built the fires higher and
watched the flames roar up the chimneys, while the little children
rolled on the floor and grasped at the shadows.

Though but a bit of mankind hemmed in by the vast and frozen wilderness
theirs was not an unhappy life by any means. The men and boys, though
now sparing their powder and ball, still set traps for game and were not
without reward. Often they found elk and deer, and once or twice a
buffalo floundering in the deep snowdrifts, and these they added to the
winter larder. They broke holes in the ice on the river and caught fish
in abundance. They worked, too, about the houses, making more tables and
benches and chairs and shelves and adding to their bodily comforts.

The great snow lasted about a month and then began to break up with a
heavy rain which melted all the ice, but which could not carry away all
the snow. The river rose rapidly and overflowed its banks but Wareville
was safe, built high on the hill where floods could not reach. Warm
winds followed the rain and the melting snow turned great portions of
the forest into lakes. The trees stood in water a yard deep, and the
aspect of the wilderness was gloomy and desolate. Even the most resolute
of the hunters let the game alone at such a time. Often the warm winds
would cease to blow when night came and then the great lagoons would be
covered with a thin skim of ice which melted again the next day under
the winds and the sun. All this brought chills and fever to Wareville
and bitter herbs were sought for their cure. But the strong frame of
Henry was impervious to the attacks and he still made daily journeys to
his traps in the wet and steaming wilderness.

Henry was now reconciled to the schoolroom. It was to be his last term
there and he realized with a sudden regret that it was almost at its
end. He was beginning to feel the sense of responsibility, that he was
in fact one of the units that must make up the state.

Despite these new ideas a sudden great longing lay hold of him. The
winds from the south were growing warmer and warmer, all the snow and
ice was gone long ago, faint touches of green and pink were appearing on
grass and foliage and the young buds were swelling. Henry heard the
whisper of these winds and every one of them called to him. He knew that
he was wanted out there in the woods. He began to hate the sight of
human faces, he wished to go alone into the wilderness, to see the deer
steal among the trees and to hear the beaver dive into the deep waters.
He felt himself a part of nature and he would breathe and live as nature
did.

He grew lax in his tasks; he dragged his feet and there were even times
when he was not hungry. When his mother noticed the latter circumstance
she knew surely that the boy was ill, but her husband shrewdly said:

"Henry, the spring has come; take your rifle and bring us some fresh
venison."

So Henry shouldered his rifle and went forth alone upon the quest, even
leaving behind Paul, his chosen comrade. He did not wish human
companionship that day, nor did he stop until he was deep in the
wilderness. How he felt then the glory of living! The blood was flushing
in his veins as the sap was rising in the trees around him. The world
was coming forth from its torpor of winter refreshed and strengthened.
He saw all about him the signs of new life--the tender young grass in
shades of delicate green, the opening buds on the trees, and a subtle
perfume that came on the edge of the Southern wind. Beyond him the wild
turkeys on the hill were calling to each other.

He stood there a long time breathing the fresh breath of this new world,
and the old desire to wander through illimitable forests and float
silently down unknown rivers came over him. He would not feel the need
of companionship on long wanderings. Nature would then be sufficient,
talking to him in many tongues.

The wind heavy, with perfumes of the South, came over the hill and on
its crest the wild turkeys were still clucking to each other. Henry,
through sheer energy and flush of life, ran up the slope, and watched
them as they took flight through the trees, their brilliant plumage
gleaming in the sunshine.

It was the highest hill near Wareville and he stood a while upon its
crest. The wilderness here circled around him, and, in the distance, it
blended into one mass, already showing a pervading note of green with
faint touches of pink bloom appearing here and there. The whole of it
was still and peaceful with no sign of human life save a rising spire of
smoke behind him that told where Wareville stood.

He walked on. Rabbits sprang out of the grass beside him and raced away
into the thickets. Birds in plumage of scarlet and blue and gold shot
like a flame from tree to tree. The forest, too, was filled with the
melody of their voices, but Henry took no notice.

He paused a while at the edge of a brook to watch the silver sunfish
play in the shallows, then he leaped the stream and went on into the
deeper woods, a tall, lithe, strong figure, his eyes gazing at no one
thing, the long slender-barreled rifle lying forgotten across his
shoulder.

A great stag sprang up from the forest and stood for a few moments,
gazing at him with expanding and startled eyes. Henry standing quite
still returned the look, seeking to read the expression in the eyes of
the deer.

Thus they confronted each other a half minute and then the stag turning
fled through the woods. There was no undergrowth, and Henry for a long
time watched the form of the deer fleeing down the rows of trees, as it
became smaller and smaller and then disappeared.

All the forest glowed red in the setting sun when he returned home.

"Where is the deer?" asked his father.

"Why--why I forgot it!" said Henry in confused reply.

Mr. Ware merely smiled.




CHAPTER VII

THE GIANT BONES


About this time many people in Wareville, particularly the women and
children began to complain of physical ills, notably lassitude and a
lack of appetite; their food, which consisted largely of the game
swarming all around the forest, had lost its savor. There was no mystery
about it; Tom Ross, Mr. Ware and others promptly named the cause; they
needed salt, which to the settlers of Kentucky was almost as precious as
gold; it was obtained in two ways, either by bringing it hundreds of
miles over the mountains from Virginia in wagons or on pack horses, or
by boiling it out at the salt springs in the Indian-haunted woods.

They had neither the time nor the men for the long journey to Virginia,
and they prepared at once for obtaining it at the springs. They had
already used a small salt spring but the supply was inadequate, and they
decided to go a considerable distance northward to the famous Big Bone
Lick. Nothing had been heard in a long time of Indian war parties south
of the Ohio, and they believed they would incur no danger. Moreover they
could bring back salt to last more than a year.

When they first heard of the proposed journey, Paul Cotter pulled Henry
to one side. They were just outside the palisade, and it was a beautiful
day, in early spring. Already kindly nature was smoothing over the cruel
scars made by the axes in the forest, and the village within the
palisade began to have the comfortable look of home.

"Do you know what the Big Bone Lick is, Henry?" asked Paul eagerly.

"No," replied Henry, wondering at his chum's excitement.

"Why it's the most wonderful place in all the world!" said Paul, jumping
up and down in his wish to tell quickly. "There was a hunter here last
winter who spoke to me about it. I didn't believe him then, it sounded
so wonderful, but Mr. Pennypacker says it's all true. There's a great
salt spring, boiling out of the ground in the middle of a kind of marsh,
and all around it, for a long distance, are piled hundreds of large
bones, the bones of gigantic animals, bigger than any that walk the
earth to-day."

"See here, Paul," said Henry scornfully, "you can't stuff my ears with
mush like that. I guess you were reading one of the master's old
romances, and then had a dream. Wake up, Paul!"

"It's true every word of it!"

"Then if there were such big animals, why don't we see 'em sometimes
running through the forest?"

"My, they've all been dead millions of years and their bones have been
preserved there in the marsh. They lived in another geologic era--that's
what Mr. Pennypacker calls it--and animals as tall as trees strolled up
and down over the land and were the lords of creation."

Henry puckered his lips and emitted a long whistle of incredulity.

"Paul," he said, reprovingly, "you do certainly have the gift of
speech."

But Paul was not offended at his chum's disbelief.

"I'm going to prove to you, Henry, that it's true," he said. "Mr.
Pennypacker says it's so, he never tells a falsehood and he's a scholar,
too. But you and I have got to go with the salt-makers, Henry, and we'll
see it all. I guess if you look on it with your own eyes you'll believe
it."

"Of course," said Henry, "and of course I'll go if I can."

A trip through the forest and new country to the great salt spring was
temptation enough in itself, without the addition of the fields of big
bones, and that night in both the Ware and Cotter homes, eloquent boys
gave cogent reasons why they should go with the band.

"Father," said Henry, "there isn't much to do here just now, and they'll
want me up at Big Bone Lick, helping to boil the salt and a lot of
things."

Mr. Ware smiled. Henry, like most boys, seldom showed much zeal for
manual labor. But Henry went on undaunted.

"We won't run any risk. No Indians are in Kentucky now and, father, I
want to go awful bad."

Mr. Ware smiled again at the closing avowal, which was so frank. Just at
that moment in another home another boy was saying almost exactly the
same things, and another father ventured the same answer that Mr. Ware
did, in practically the same words such as these:

"Well, my son, as it is to be a good strong company of careful and
experienced men who will not let you get into any mischief, you can go
along, but be sure that you make yourself useful."

The party was to number a dozen, all skilled foresters, and they were to
lead twenty horses, all carrying huge pack saddles for the utensils and
the invaluable salt. Mr. Silas Pennypacker who was a man of his own will
announced that he was going, too. He puffed out his ruddy cheeks and
said emphatically:

"I've heard from hunters of that place; it's one of the great
curiosities of the country and for the sake of learning I'm bound to see
it. Think of all the gigantic skeletons of the mastodon, the mammoth and
other monsters lying there on the ground for ages!"

Henry and Paul were glad that Mr. Pennypacker was to be with them, as in
the woods he was a delightful comrade, able always to make instruction
entertaining, and the superiority of his mind appealed unconsciously to
both of these boys who--each in his way--were also of superior cast.

They departed on a fine morning--the spring was early and held
steady--and all Wareville saw them go. It was a brilliant little
cavalcade; the horses, their heads up to scent the breeze from the
fragrant wilderness, and the men, as eager to start, everyone with a
long slender-barreled Kentucky rifle on his shoulder, the fringed and
brilliantly colored deerskin hunting shirt falling almost to his knees,
and, below that deerskin leggings and deerskin moccasins adorned with
many-tinted beads. It was a vivid picture of the young West, so young,
and yet so strong and so full of life, the little seed from which so
mighty a tree was soon to grow.

All of them stopped again, as if by an involuntary impulse, at the edge
of the forest, and waved their hands in another, and, this time, in a
last good-by to the watchers at the fort. Then they plunged into the
mighty wilderness, which swept away and away for unknown thousands of
miles.

They talked for a while of the journey, of the things that they might
see by the way, and of those that they had left behind, but before long
conversation ceased. The spell of the dark and illimitable woods, in
whose shade they marched, fell upon them, and there was no noise, but
the sound of breathing and the tread of men and horses. They dropped,
too, from the necessities of the path through the undergrowth, into
Indian file, one behind the other.

Henry was near the rear of the line, the stalwart schoolmaster just in
front of him, and his comrade Paul, just behind. He was full of
thankfulness that he had been allowed to go on this journey. It all
appealed to him, the tale that Paul told of the giant bones and the
great salt spring, the dark woods full of mystery and delightful danger,
and his own place among the trusted band, who were sent on such an
errand. His heart swelled with pride and pleasure and he walked with a
light springy step and with endurance equal to that of any of the men
before him. He looked over his shoulder at Paul, whose face also was
touched with enthusiasm.

"Aren't you glad to be along?" he asked in a whisper.

"Glad as I can be," replied Paul in the same whisper.

Up shot the sun showering golden beams of light upon the forest. The air
grew warmer, but the little band did not cease its rapid pace northward
until noon. Then at a word from Ross all halted at a beautiful glade,
across which ran a little brook of cold water. The horses were tethered
at the edge of the forest, but were allowed to graze on the young grass
which was already beginning to appear, while the men lighted a small
fire of last year's fallen brushwood, at the center of the glade on the
bank of the brook.

"We won't build it high," said Ross, who was captain as well as guide,
"an' then nobody in the forest can see it. There may not be an Indian
south of the Ohio, but the fellow that's never caught is the fellow that
never sticks his head in the trap."

"Sound philosophy! sound philosophy! your logic is irrefutable, Mr.
Ross," said the schoolmaster.

Ross grinned. He did not know what "irrefutable" meant, but he did know
that Mr. Pennypacker intended to compliment him.

Paul and Henry assisted with the fire. In fact they did most of the
work, each wishing to make good his assertion that he would prove of use
on the journey. It was a brief task to gather the wood and then Ross and
Shif'less Sol lighted the fire, which they permitted merely to smolder.
But it gave out ample heat and in a few minutes they cooked over it
their venison and corn bread and coffee which they served in tin cups.
Henry and Paul ate with the ferocious appetite that the march and the
clean air of the wilderness had bred in them, and nobody restricted
them, because the forest was full of game, and such skillful hunters and
riflemen could never lack for a food supply.

Mr. Pennypacker leaned with an air of satisfaction against the upthrust
bough of a fallen oak.

"It's a wonderful world that we have here," he said, "and just to think
that we're among the first white men to find out what it contains."

"All ready!" said Tom Ross, "then forward we go, we mustn't waste time
by the way. They need that salt at Wareville."

Once more they resumed the march in Indian file and amid the silence of
the woods. About the middle of the afternoon Ross invited Mr.
Pennypacker and the two boys to ride three of the pack horses. Henry at
first declined, not willing to be considered soft and pampered, but as
the schoolmaster promptly accepted and Paul who was obviously tired did
the same, he changed his mind, not because he needed rest, but lest Paul
should feel badly over his inferiority in strength.

Thus they marched steadily northward, Ross leading the way, and
Shif'less Sol who was lazy at the settlement, but never in the woods
where he was inferior in knowledge and skill to Ross only, covering the
rear. Each of these accomplished borderers watched every movement of the
forest about him, and listened for every sound; he knew with the eye of
second sight what was natural and if anything not belonging to the usual
order of things should appear, he would detect it in a moment. But they
saw and heard nothing that was not according to nature: only the wind
among the boughs, or the stamp of an elk's hoof as it fled, startled at
the scent of man. The hostile tribes from north and south, fearful of
the presence of each other, seemed to have deserted the great wilderness
of Kentucky.

Henry noted the beauty of the country as they passed along; the gently
rolling hills, the rich dark soil and the beautiful clear streams. Once
they came to a river, too deep to wade, but all of them, except the
schoolmaster, promptly took off their clothing and swam it.

"My age and my calling forbid my doing as the rest of you do," said the
schoolmaster, "and I think I shall stick to my horse."

He rode the biggest of the pack horses, and when the strong animal began
to swim, Mr. Pennypacker thrust out his legs until they were almost
parallel with the animal's neck, and reached the opposite bank,
untouched by a drop of water. No one begrudged him his dry and unlabored
passage; in fact they thought it right, because a schoolmaster was
mightily respected in the early settlements of Kentucky and they would
have regarded it as unbecoming to his dignity to have stripped, and swum
the river as they did.

Henry and Paul in their secret hearts did not envy the schoolmaster.
They thought he had too great a weight of dignity to maintain and they
enjoyed cleaving the clear current with their bare bodies. What! be
deprived of the wilderness pleasures! Not they! The two boys did not
remount, after the passage of the river, but, fresh and full of life,
walked on with the others at a pace so swift that the miles dropped
rapidly behind them. They were passing, too, through a country rarely
trodden even by the red men; Henry knew it by the great quantities of
game they saw; the deer seemed to look from every thicket, now and then
a magnificent elk went crashing by, once a bear lumbered away, and twice
small groups of buffalo were stampeded in the glades and rushed off,
snorting through the undergrowth.

"They say that far to the westward on plains that seem to have no end
those animals are to be seen in millions," said Mr. Pennypacker.

"It's so, I've heard it from the Indians," confirmed Ross the guide.

They stopped a little while before sundown, and as the game was so
plentiful all around them, Ross said he would shoot a deer in order to
save their dried meat and other provisions.

"You come with me, while the others are making the camp," he said to
Henry.

The boy flushed with pride and gratification, and, taking his rifle,
plunged at once into the forest with the guide. But he said nothing,
knowing that silence would recommend him to Ross far more than words,
and took care to bring down his moccasined feet without sound. Nor did
he let the undergrowth rustle, as he slipped through it, and Ross
regarded him with silent approval. "A born woodsman," he said to
himself.

A mile from the camp they stopped at the crest of a little hill, thickly
clad with forest and undergrowth, and looked down into the glade beyond.
Here they saw several deer grazing, and as the wind blew from them
toward the hunters they had taken no alarm.

"Pick the fat buck there on the right," whispered Ross to Henry.

Henry said not a word. He had learned the taciturnity of the woods, and
leveling his rifle, took sure aim. There was no buck fever about him
now, and, when his rifle cracked, the deer bounded into the air and
dropped down dead. Ross, all business, began to cut up and clean the
game, and with Henry's aid, he did it so skillfully and rapidly that
they returned to the camp, loaded with the juicy deer meat, by the time
the fire and everything else was ready for them.

Henry and Paul ate with eager appetites and when supper was over they
wrapped themselves in their blankets and lay down before the fire under
the trees. Paul went to sleep at once, but Henry did not close his eyes
so soon. Far in the west he saw a last red bar of light cast by the
sunken sun and the deep ruddy glow over the fringe of the forest. Then
it suddenly passed, as if whisked away by a magic hand, and all the
wilderness was in darkness. But it was only for a little while. Out came
the moon and the stars flashed one by one into a sky of silky blue. A
south wind lifting up itself sang a small sweet song among the branches,
and Henry uttered a low sigh of content, because he lived in the
wilderness, and because he was there in the depths of the forest on an
important errand. Then he fell sound asleep, and did not awaken until
Ross and the others were cooking breakfast.

A day or two later they reached the wonderful Big Bone Lick, and they
approached it with the greatest caution, because they were afraid lest
an errand similar to theirs might have drawn hostile red men to the
great salt spring. But as they curved about the desired goal they saw no
Indian sign, and then they went through the marsh to the spring itself.

Henry opened his eyes in amazement. All that the schoolmaster and Paul
had told was true, and more. Acres and acres of the marsh lands were
fairly littered with bones, and from the mud beneath other and far
greater bones had been pulled up and left lying on the ground. Henry
stood some of these bones on end, and they were much taller than he.
Others he could not lift.

"The mastodon, the mammoth and I know not what," said Mr. Pennypacker in
a transport of delight. "Henry, you and Paul are looking upon the
remains of animals, millions of years old, killed perhaps in fights with
others of their kind, over these very salt springs. There may not be
another such place as this in all the world."

Mr. Pennypacker for the first day or two was absolutely of no help in
making the salt, because he was far too much excited about the bones and
the salt springs themselves.

"I can understand," said Henry, "why the animals should come here after
the salt, since they crave salt just as we do, but it seems strange to
me that salt water should be running out of the ground here, hundreds of
miles from the sea."

"It's the sea itself that's coming up right at our feet," replied the
schoolmaster thoughtfully. "Away back yonder, a hundred million years
ago perhaps, so far that we can have no real conception of the time, the
sea was over all this part of the world. When it receded, or the ground
upheaved, vast subterranean reservoirs of salt water were left, and now,
when the rain sinks down into these full reservoirs a portion of the
salt water is forced to the surface, which makes the salt springs that
are scattered over this part of the country. It is a process that is
going on continually. At least, that's a plausible theory, and it's as
good as any other."

But most of the salt-makers did not bother themselves about causes, and
they accepted the giant bones as facts, without curiosity about their
origin. Nor did they neglect to put them to use. By sticking them deep
in the ground they made tripods of them on which they hung their kettles
for boiling the salt water, and of others they devised comfortable seats
for themselves. To such modern uses did the mastodon come! But to the
schoolmaster and the two boys the bones were an unending source of
interest, and in the intervals of labor, which sometimes were pretty
long, particularly for Mr. Pennypacker, they were ever prowling in the
swamp for a bone bigger than any that they had found before.

But the salt-making progressed rapidly. The kettles were always boiling
and sack after sack was filled with the precious commodity. At night
wild animals, despite the known presence of strange, new creatures,
would come down to the springs, so eager were they for the salt, and the
men rarely molested them. Only a deer now and then was shot for food,
and Henry and Paul lay awake one night, watching two big bull buffaloes,
not fifty yards away, fighting for the best place at a spring.

Ross and Shif'less Sol did not do much of the work at the salt-boiling,
but they were continually scouting through the forest, on a labor no
less important, watching for raiding war parties who otherwise might
fall unsuspected upon the toilers. Henry, as a youth of great promise,
was sometimes taken with them on these silent trips through the woods,
and the first time he went he felt badly on Paul's account, because his
comrade was not chosen also. But when he returned he found that his
sympathy was wasted. Paul and the master were deeply absorbed in the
task of trying to fit together some of the gigantic bones that is, to
re-create the animal to which they thought the bones belonged, and Paul
was far happier than he would have been on the scout or the hunt.

The day's work was ended and all the others were sitting around the camp
fire, with the dying glow of the setting sun flooding the springs, the
marshes and the camp fire, but Paul and the master toiled zealously at
the gigantic figure that they had up-reared, supported partly with
stakes, and bearing a remote resemblance to some animal that lived a few
million years or so ago. The master had tied together some of the bones
with withes, and he and Paul were now laboriously trying to fit a
section of vertebræ into shape.

Shif'less Sol who had gone with Henry sat down by the fire, stuffed a
piece of juicy venison into his mouth and then looked with eyes of
wonder at the two workers in the cause of natural history.

"Some people 'pear to make a heap o' trouble for theirselves," he said,
"now I can't git it through my head why anybody would want to work with
a lot o' dead old bones when here's a pile o' sweet deer meat just
waitin' an' beggin' to be et up."

At that moment the attempt of Paul and the schoolmaster to reconstruct a
prehistoric beast collapsed. The figure that they had built up with so
much care and labor suddenly slipped loose somewhere, and all the bones
fell down in a heap. The master stared at them in disgust and exclaimed:

"It's no use! I can't put them together away out here in the
wilderness!"

Then he stalked over to the fire, and taking a deer steak, ate hungrily.
The steak was very tender, and gradually a look of content and peace
stole over Mr. Pennypacker's face.

"At least," he murmured, "if it's hard to be a scholar here, one can
have a glorious appetite, and it is most pleasant to gratify it."

As the dark settled down Ross said that in one day more they ought to
have all the salt the horses could carry, and then it would be best to
depart promptly and swiftly for Wareville. A half hour later all were
asleep except the sentinel.




CHAPTER VIII

THE WILD TURKEY'S GOBBLE


Henry had conducted himself so well on his first scout and, had shown
such signs of efficiency that Ross concluded to take him again the next
day. Henry's heart swelled with pride, and he was no longer worried
about Paul, because he saw that the latter's interest and ambitions were
not exactly the same as his own. Henry could not have any innate respect
for heaps of "old bones," but if Paul and the master found them worthy
of such close attention, they must be right.

Henry and Ross slipped away into the undergrowth, and Henry soon noticed
that the guide's face, which was tense and preoccupied, seemed graver
than usual. The boy was too wise to ask questions, but after they had
searched through the forest for several hours Ross remarked in the most
casual way:

"I heard the gobble of a wild turkey away off last night."

"Yes," said Henry, "there are lots of 'em about here. You remember the
one I shot Tuesday?"

Ross did not reply just then, but in about five minutes he vouchsafed:

"I'm looking for the particular wild turkey I heard last night."

"Why that one, when there are so many, and how would you know him from
the others if you found him?" asked Henry quickly, and then a deep
burning flush of shame broke through the tan of his cheeks. He, Henry
Ware, a rover of the wilderness to ask such foolish questions! A child
of the towns would have shown as much sense. Ross who was looking
covertly at him, out of the corner of his eye, saw the mounting blush,
and was pleased. The boy had spoken impulsively, but he knew better.

"You understand, I guess," said Ross.

"Yes," replied Henry, "I know why you want to find that wild turkey, and
I know why you said last night we ought to leave the salt springs just
as soon as we can."

The smile on the face of the scout brightened. Here was the most
promising pupil who had ever sat at his feet for instruction; and now
they redoubled their caution, as their soundless bodies slipped through
the undergrowth. Everywhere they looked for the trail of that wild
turkey. It may be said that a turkey can and does fly in the air and
leaves no trail, but Henry knew that the one for which they looked might
leave no trail, but it did not fly in the air.

Time passed; noon and part of the afternoon were gone, and they were
still curving in a great circle about the camp, when Ross, suddenly
stopped beside a little brook, or branch, as he and his comrades always
called them, and pointed to the soft soil at the edge of the water.
Henry followed the long finger and saw the outline of a footstep.

"Our turkey has passed here."

The guide nodded.

"Most likely," he said, "and if not ours, then one of the same flock.
But that footprint is three or four hours old. Come on, we'll follow
this trail until it grows too warm."

The footsteps led down the side of the brook, and when they curved away
from it Ross was able to trace them on the turf and through the
undergrowth. A half mile from the start other footsteps joined them, and
these were obviously made by many men, perhaps a score of warriors.

"You see," said Ross, "I guess they've just come across the Ohio or we
wouldn't be left all these days b'il'n salt so peaceful, like as if
there wasn't an Indian in the whole world."

Henry drew a deep breath. Like all who ventured into the West he
expected some day to be exposed to Indian danger and attack, but it had
been a vague thought. Even when they came north to the Big Bone Lick it
was still a dim far-away affair, but now he stood almost in its
presence. The Shawnees, whose name was a name of terror to the new
settlements, were probably not a mile away. He felt tremors but they
were not tremors of fear. Courage was an instinctive quality in him.
Nature had put it there, when she fashioned him somewhat in the mold of
the primitive man.

"Step lighter than you ever did afore in your life," said Ross, "an'
bend low an' follow me. But don't you let a single twig nor nothin' snap
as you pass."

He spoke in a sharp, emphatic whisper, and Henry knew that he considered
the enemy near. But there was no need to caution the boy, in whom the
primal man was already awakened. Henry bent far down, and holding his
rifle before him in such a position that it could be used at a moment's
warning, was following behind Ross so silently that the guide, hearing
no sound, took an instant's backward glance. When he saw the boy he
permitted another faint smile of approval to pass over his face.

They advanced about three-quarters of a mile and then at the crest of a
hill thickly clothed in tall undergrowth the guide sank down and pointed
with a long ominous forefinger.

"Look," he said.

Henry looked through the interlacing bushes and, for the second time in
his life, gazed upon a band of red men. And as he looked, his blood for
a moment turned cold. Perhaps thirty in number, they were sitting in a
glade about a little fire. All of them had blankets of red or blue about
them and they carried rifles. Their faces were hideous with war paint
and their coarse black hair rose in the defiant scalp lock.

"Maybe they don't know that our men are at the Lick," said Ross, "or if
they do they don't think we know they've come, an' they're planning for
an attack to-night, when they could slip up on us sleepin'."

The guide's theory seemed plausible to Henry, but he said nothing. It
did not become him to venture opinions before one who knew so much of
the wilderness.

"It can't be more'n two o'clock," whispered Ross, "an' they'd attack
about midnight. That gives us ten hours. Henry, the Lord is with us.
Come."

He slid away through the bushes and Henry followed him. When they were a
half mile from the Indian camp they increased their speed to an
astonishing gait and in a half hour were at the Big Bone Lick.

"Have 'em to load up all the salt at once," said Ross to Shif'less Sol,
"an' we must go kitin' back to Wareville as if our feet was greased."

Shif'less Sol shot him a single look of comprehension and Ross nodded.
Then the shiftless one went to work with extraordinary diligence and the
others imitated his speed. To the schoolmaster Ross breathed the one
word "Shawnees," and Henry in a few sentences told Paul what he had
seen.

Fortunately the precious salt was packed--they had no intention of
deserting it, however close the danger--and it was quickly transferred
to the backs of the horses along with the food for the way. In a little
more than a half hour they were all ready and then they fled southward,
Shif'less Sol, this time, leading the way, the guide Ross at the rear,
eye and ear noticing everything, and every nerve attuned to danger.

The master cast back one regretful glance at his beloved giant bones,
and then, with resignation, turned his face permanently toward the south
and the line of retreat.

"O Henry," whispered Paul, half in delight, half in terror, "did you
really see them?"

"Yes," replied Henry, "twenty or more of 'em, and an ugly lot they were,
too, I can tell you, Paul. I believe we could whip 'em in a stand-up
fight, though they are three to our one, but they know more of these
woods than we do and then there's the salt; we've got to save what we've
come for."

He sighed a little. He did not wholly like the idea of running away,
even from a foe thrice as strong. Yet he could not question the wisdom
of Ross and Shif'less Sol, and he made no protest.

The men looked after the heavily laden horses--nobody could ride except
as a last resort--and southward they went in Indian file as they had
come. Henry glanced around him and saw nothing that promised danger. It
was only another beautiful afternoon in early spring. The forest glowed
in the tender green of the young buds, and, above them arched the sky a
brilliant sheet of unbroken blue. Never did a world look more
attractive, more harmless, and it seemed incredible that these woods
should contain men who were thirsting for the lives of other men. But he
had seen; he knew; he could not forget that hideous circle of painted
faces in the glade, upon which he and Ross had looked from the safe
covert of the undergrowth.

"Do you think they'll follow us, Henry?" asked Paul.

"I don't know," replied Henry, "but it's mighty likely. They'll hang on
our trail for a long time anyway."

"And if they overtake us, there'll be a fight?"

"Of course."

Henry, watching Paul keenly, saw him grow pale. But his lips did not
tremble and that passing pallor failed to lower Paul in Henry's esteem.
The bigger and stronger boy knew his comrade's courage and tenacity, and
he respected him all the more for it, because he was perhaps less fitted
than some others for the wild and dangerous life of the border.

After these few words they sank again into silence, and to Paul and the
master the sun grew very hot. It was poised now at a convenient angle in
the heavens, and poured sheaves of fiery rays directly upon them. Mr.
Pennypacker began to gasp. He was a man of dignity, a teacher of youth,
and it did not become him to run so fast from something that he could
not see. Ross's keen eye fell upon him.

"I think you'd better mount one of the horses," he said; "the big bay
there can carry his salt and you too for a while until you are rested."

"What! I ride, when everybody else is afoot!" exclaimed Mr. Pennypacker,
indignantly.

"You're the only schoolmaster we have and we can't afford to lose you,"
said Ross without the suspicion of a grin.

Mr. Pennypacker looked at him, but he could not detect any change of
countenance.

"Hop up," continued Ross, "it ain't any time to be bashful. Others of us
may have to do it afore long."

Mr. Pennypacker yielded with a sigh, sprang lightly upon the horse, and
then when he enjoyed the luxury of rest was glad that he had yielded.
Paul, and one or two others took to the horses' backs later on, but
Henry continued the march on foot with long easy strides, and no sign of
weakening. Ross noticed him more than once but he never made any
suggestion to Henry that he ride; instead the faint smile of approval
appeared once more on the guide's face.

The sun began to sink, the twilight came, and then night. Ross called a
halt, and, clustered in the thickest shadows of the forest, they ate
their supper and rested their tired limbs. No fire was lighted, but they
sat there under the trees, hungrily eating their venison, and talking in
the lowest of whispers.

Mr. Pennypacker was much dissatisfied. He had been troubled by the hasty
flight and his dignity suffered.

"It is not becoming that white men should run away from an inferior
race," he said.

"Maybe it ain't becomin', but it's safe," said Ross.

"At least we are far enough away now," continued the master, "and we
might rest here comfortably until dawn. We haven't seen or heard a sign
of pursuit."

"You don't know the natur' of the red warriors, Mr. Pennypacker," said
the leader deferentially but firmly, "when they make the least noise
then they're most dangerous. Now I'm certain sure that they struck our
trail not long after we left Big Bone Lick, an' in these woods the man
that takes the fewest risks is the one that lives the longest."

It was a final statement. In the present emergency the leader's
authority was supreme. They rested about an hour with no sound save the
shuffling feet of the horses which could not be kept wholly quiet; and
then they started on again, not going so quickly now, because the night
was dark, and they wished to make as little noise as possible, threshing
about in the undergrowth.

Paul pressed up by the side of Henry.

"Do you think we shall have to go on all night, this way?" he asked.
"Wasn't Mr. Pennypacker right, when he said we were out of danger?"

"No, the schoolmaster was wrong," replied Henry. "Tom Ross knows more
about the woods and what is likely to happen in them than Mr.
Pennypacker could know in all his life, if he were to live a thousand
years. It's every man to his own trade, and it's Tom's trade that we
need now."

After hearing these sage words of youth Paul asked no more questions,
but he and Henry kept side by side throughout the night, that is, when
neither of them was riding, because Henry, like all the others, now took
turns on horseback. Twice they crossed small streams and once a larger
one, where they exercised the utmost caution to keep their precious salt
from getting wet. Fortunately the great pack saddles were a protection,
and they emerged on the other side with both salt and powder dry.

When the night was thickest, in the long, dark hour just before the
dawn, Henry and Paul, who were again side by side, heard a faint,
distant cry. It was a low, wailing note that was not unpleasant,
softened by the spaces over which it came. It seemed to be far behind
them, but inclining to the right, and after a few moments there came
another faint cry just like it, also behind them, but far to the left.
Despite the soft, wailing note both Henry and Paul felt a shiver run
through them. The strange low sound, coming in the utter silence of the
night, had in it something ominous.

"It was the cry of a wolf," said Paul.

"And his brother wolf answered," said Henry.

Shif'less Sol was just behind them, and they heard him laugh, a low
laugh, but full of irony. Paul wheeled about at once, his pride aflame
at the insinuation that he did not know the wolf's long whine.

"Well, wasn't it a wolf--and a wolf that answered?" he asked.

"Yes, a wolf an' a wolf that answered," replied Shif'less Sol with
sardonic emphasis, "but they had only four legs between 'em. Them was
the signal cries of the Shawnees, an', as Tom has been tellin' you all
the time, they're hot on our trail. It's a mighty lucky thing for us we
didn't undertake to stay all night back there where we stopped."

Paul turned pale again, but his courage as usual came back. "Thank God
it will be daylight soon," he murmured to himself, "and then if they
overtake us we can see them."

Faint and far, but ominous and full of threat came the howl of the wolf
again, first from the right and then from the left, and then from points
between. Henry noticed that Ross and Shif'less Sol seemed to draw
themselves together, as if they would make every nerve and muscle taut,
and then his eyes shifted to Mr. Pennypacker, and seeing him, he knew at
once that the master did not understand; he had not heard the words of
Shif'less Sol.

"It seems that we are pursued by a pack of wolves instead of a war
party," said Mr. Pennypacker. "At least we are numerous enough to beat
off a lot of cowardly four-footed assailants."

Henry smiled from the heights of his superior knowledge.

"Those are not wolves, Mr. Pennypacker," he said, "those are the
Shawnees calling to one another."

"Then, why in Heaven's name don't they speak their own language!"
exclaimed the exasperated schoolmaster, "instead of using that which
appertains only to the prowling beast?"

Henry, despite himself, was forced to smile, but he turned his face and
hid the smile--he would not offend the schoolmaster whom he esteemed
sincerely.

The dawn now began to brighten. The sun, a flaming red sword, cleft the
gray veil, and then poured down a torrent of golden beams upon the vast,
green wilderness of Kentucky. Henry, as he looked around upon the little
band, realized what a tiny speck of human life they were in all those
hundreds of miles of forest, and what risks they ran.

Ross gave the word to halt, and again they ate of cold food. While the
others sat on fallen timber or leaned against tree trunks, Ross and Sol
talked in low tones, but Henry could see that all their words were
marked by the deepest earnestness. Ross presently turned to the men and
said in tones of greatest gravity:

"All of you heard the howlin' just afore dawn, an' I guess all of you
know it was not made by real wolves, but by Shawnees, callin' to each
other an' directin' the chase of us. We've come fast, but they've come
faster, an' I know that by noon we'll have to fight."

The schoolmaster's eyes opened in wonder.

"Do you really mean to say that they are overhauling us?" he asked.

"I shore do," replied Ross. "You see, they're better trained travelers
for woods than we are, an' they are not hampered by anythin'."

Mr. Pennypacker said nothing more, but his lips suddenly closed tightly
and his eyes flashed. In the great battle ground of the white man and
the red man, called Kentucky, the early schoolmaster was as ready as any
one else to fight.

Ross and Sol again consulted and then Ross said:

"We think that since we have to fight it would be better to fight when
we are fresh and steady and in the best place we can find."

All the men nodded. They were tired of running and when Ross gave the
word to stop again they did so promptly. The questioning eyes of both
Ross and Sol roamed round the forest and finally and simultaneously the
two uttered a low cry of pleasure. They had come into rocky ground and
they had been ascending. Before them was a hill with a rather steep
ascent, and dropping off almost precipitously on three sides.

"We couldn't find a better place," said Ross loud enough for all to
hear. "It looks like a fort just made for us."

"But there is no line of retreat," objected the schoolmaster.

"We had a line of a retreat last night and all this mornin' an' we've
been followin' it all the time," rejoined the leader. "Now we don't need
it no more, but what we do need to do is to make a stan'-up fight, an'
lick them fellers."

"And save our salt," added the master.

"Of course," said Ross emphatically. "We didn't come all these miles an'
work all these days just to lose what we went so far after an' worked so
hard for."

They retreated rapidly upon the great jutting peninsula of rocky soil,
which fortunately was covered with a good growth of trees, and tethered
the horses in a thick grove near the end.

"Now, we'll just unload our salt an' make a wall," said Ross with a
trace of a smile. "They can shoot our salt as much as they please, just
so they don't touch us."

The bags of salt were laid in the most exposed place across the
narrowest neck of the peninsula and they also dragged up all the fallen
tree trunks and boughs that they could find to help out their primitive
fortification. Then they sat down to wait, a hard task for men, but
hardest of all for two boys like Henry and Paul.

Two of the men went back with the horses to watch over them and also to
guard against any possible attempt to scale the cliff in their rear, but
the others lay close behind the wall of salt and brushwood. The sun
swung up toward the zenith and shone down upon a beautiful world. All
the wilderness was touched with the tender young green of spring and
nothing stirred but the gentle wind. The silky blue sky smiled over a
scene so often enacted in early Kentucky, that great border battle
ground of the white man and the red, the one driven by the desire for
new and fertile acres that he might plow and call his own, the other by
an equally fierce desire to retain the same acres, not to plow nor even
to call his own, but that he might roam and hunt big game over them at
will.

The great red eye of the sun, poised now in the center of the heavens,
looked down at the white men crouched close to the earth behind their
low and primitive wall, and then it looked into the forest at the red
men creeping silently from tree to tree, all the eager ferocity of the
man hunt on the face of everyone.

But Paul and Henry, behind their wall, saw nothing and heard nothing but
the breathing of those near them. They fingered their rifles and through
the crevices between the bags studied intently the woods in front of
them, where they beheld no human being nor any trace of a foe. Henry
looked from tree to tree, but he could see no flitting shadow. Where the
patches of grass grew it moved only with the regular sweep of the
breeze. He began to think that Ross and Sol must be mistaken. The
warriors had abandoned the pursuit. He glanced at Ross, who was not a
dozen feet away, and the leader's face was so tense, so eager and so
earnest that Henry ceased to doubt, the man's whole appearance indicated
the knowledge of danger, present and terrible.

Even as Henry looked, Ross suddenly threw up his rifle, and, apparently
without aim, pulled the trigger. A flash of fire leaped from the long
slender muzzle of blue steel, there was a sharp report like the swift
lash of a whip, and then a cry, so terrible that Henry, strong as he
was, shuddered in every nerve and muscle. The short high-pitched and
agonizing shout died away in a wail and after it came silence, grim,
deadly, but so charged with mysterious suspense that both Henry and Paul
felt the hair lifting itself upon their heads. Henry had seen nothing,
but he knew well what had happened.

"They've come and Ross has killed one of 'em," he whispered breathlessly
to Paul.

"That yell couldn't mean anything else," said Paul trembling. "I'll hear
it again every night for a year."

"I hope we'll both have a chance to hear it again every night for a
year," said Henry with meaning.

The master crouched nearer to the boys. He was one of the bravest of the
men and in that hour of danger and suspense his heart yearned over these
two lads, his pupils, each a good boy in his own way. He felt that it
was a part of his duty to get them safely back to Wareville and their
parents, and he meant to fulfill the demands of his conscience.

"Keep down, lads," he said, touching Henry on his arm, "don't expose
yourselves. You are not called upon to do anything, unless it comes to
the last resort."

"We are going to do our best, of course, we are!" replied Henry with
some little heat.

He resented the intimation that he could not perform a man's full duty,
and Mr. Pennypacker, seeing that his feelings were touched, said no
more.

A foreboding silence followed the death cry of the fallen warrior, but
the brilliant sunshine poured down on the woods, just as if it were a
glorious summer afternoon with no thought of strife in a human breast
anywhere. Henry again searched the forest in front of them, and,
although he could see nothing, he was not deceived now by this
appearance of silence and peace. He knew that their foes were there,
more thirsty than ever for their blood, because to the natural desire
now was added the tally of revenge.

More than an hour passed, and then the forest in front of them burst
into life. Rifles were fired from many points, the sharp crack blending
into one continuous ominous rattle; little puffs of white smoke arose,
whistling bullets buried themselves with a sighing sound in the bags of
salt, and high above all rang the fierce yell, the war whoop of the
Shawnees, the last sound that many a Kentucky pioneer ever heard.

The terrible tumult, and above all, the fierce cry of the warriors sent
a thrill of terror through Paul and Henry, but their disciplined minds
held their bodies firm, and they remained crouched by the primitive
breastwork, ready to do their part.

"Steady, everybody! Steady!" exclaimed Ross in a loud sharp voice, every
syllable of which cut through the tumult. "Don't shoot until you see
something to shoot at, an' then make your aim true!"

Henry now began to see through the smoke dusky figures leaping from tree
to tree, but always coming toward them. It was his impulse to fire, the
moment a flitting figure appeared, gone the next instant like a shadow,
but remembering Ross's caution and their terrible need he restrained
himself although his finger already lay caressingly on the trigger.
Around him the rifles had begun to crack. Ross and Sol were firing with
slow deliberate aim, and then reloading with incredible swiftness, and
down the line the others were doing likewise. Bullets were spattering
into trunks and boughs, or burying themselves with a soft sigh in the
salt, but Henry could not see that anybody was yet hurt.

He saw presently a dark figure passing from one tree to another and the
passage was long enough for him to take a good aim at a hideously
painted breast. He pulled the trigger and then involuntarily he shut his
eyes--he was a hunter, but he had never hunted men before. When he
looked again he saw a blur upon the ground, and despite himself and the
fight for life, he shuddered. Paul beside him was now in a state of wild
excitement. The smaller boy's nerves were not so steady and he was
loading and firing almost at random. Finally he lifted himself almost
unconsciously to his full height, but he was dragged down the next
instant, as if he had been seized from below by a bear.

"Paul!" fiercely exclaimed the schoolmaster, all the instincts of a
pedagogue rising within him, "if you jump up that way again exposing
yourself to their bullets, I'll turn you over my knee right here, big as
you are, and give you a licking that you'll remember all your life!"

The master was savagely in earnest and Paul did not jump up again. Henry
fired once more, and a third time and the tumult rose to its height.
Then it ceased so suddenly and so absolutely that the silence was
appalling. The wind blew the smoke away, a few dark objects lay close to
the ground among the trees before them, but not a sound came from the
forest, and no flitting form was there.




CHAPTER IX

THE ESCAPE


Henry and Paul, with their eyes at the crevices, stared and stared, but
they saw only those dark, horrible forms lying close to the earth, and
heard again the peaceful wind blowing among the peaceful trees. The
savage army had melted away as if it had never been, and the dark
objects might have been taken for stones or pieces of wood.

"We beat 'em off, an' nobody on our side has more'n a scratch,"
exclaimed Shif'less Sol jubilantly.

"That's so," said Ross, casting a critical eye down the line, "it's
because we had a good position an' made ready. There's nothin' like
takin' a thing in time. How're you, boys?"

"All right, but I've been pretty badly scared I can tell you," replied
Paul frankly. "But we are not hurt, are we, Henry?"

"Thank God," murmured the schoolmaster under his breath, and then he
said aloud to Ross: "I suppose they'll leave us alone now."

Ross shook his head.

"I wish I could say it," he replied, "but I can't. We've laid out four
of 'em, good and cold, an' the Shawnees, like all the other redskins,
haven't much stomach for a straightaway attack on people behind
breastworks; I don't think they'll try that again, but they'll be up to
new mischief soon. We must watch out now for tricks. Them's sly devils."

Ross was a wise leader and he gave food to his men, but he cautioned
them to lie close at all times. Two or three bullets were fired from the
forest but they whistled over their heads and did no damage. They seemed
safe for the present, but Ross was troubled about the future, and
particularly the coming of night, when they could not protect themselves
so well, and the invaders, under cover of darkness, might slip forward
at many points. Henry himself was man enough and experienced enough to
understand the danger, and for the moment, he wondered with a kind of
impersonal curiosity how Ross was going to meet it. Ross himself was
staring at the heavens, and Henry, following his intent eyes, noticed a
change in color and also that the atmosphere began to have a different
feeling to his lungs. So much had he been engrossed by the battle, and
so great had been his excitement, that such things as sky and air had no
part then in his life, but now in the long dead silence, they obtruded
themselves upon him.

The last wisp of smoke drifted away among the trees, and the sunlight,
although it was mid-afternoon, was fading. Presently the skies were a
vast dome of dull, lowering gray, and the breeze had a chill edge. Then
the wind died and not a leaf or blade of grass in the forest stirred.
Somber clouds came over the brink of the horizon in the southwest, and
crept threateningly up the great curve of the sky. The air steadily
darkened, and suddenly the dim horizon in the far southwest was cut by a
vivid flash of lightning. Low thunder grumbled over the distant hills.

"It's a storm, an' it's to be a whopper," said Shif'less Sol.

"Ay," returned Ross, who had been back among the horses, "an' it may
save us. All you fellows be sure to keep your powder dry."

There would be little danger of that fatal catastrophe, the wetting of
the powder, as it was carried in polished horns, stopped securely, nor
would there be any danger either of the salt being melted, as it was
inclosed in bags made of deerskin, which would shed water.

"One of the men," continued Ross, "has found a big gully running down
the back end of the hill, an' I think if we're keerful we can lead the
horses to the valley that way. But just now, we'll wait."

Henry and Paul were watching, as if fascinated. They had seen before the
great storms that sometimes sweep the Mississippi Valley, but the one
preparing now seemed to be charged with a deadly power, far surpassing
anything in their experience. It came on, too, with terrible swiftness.
The thunder, at first a mere rumble, rose rapidly to crash after crash
that stunned their ears. The livid flash of lightning that split the
southwest like a flaming sword appeared and reappeared with such
intensity that it seemed never to have gone. The wind rose and the
forest groaned. From afar came a sullen roar, and then the great
hurricane rushed down upon them.

"Lie flat!" shouted Ross.

All except four or five who held the struggling and frightened horses
threw themselves upon the ground, and, although Henry and Paul hugged
the earth, their ears were filled with the roar and scream of the wind,
and the crackle of boughs and whole tree trunks snapped through, like
the rattle of rifle fire. The forest in front of them was quickly filled
with fallen trees, and fragments whistled over their heads, but
fortunately they were untouched.

The great volley of wind was gone in a few moments, as if it were a
single huge cannon shot. It whistled off to the eastward, but left in
its path a trail of torn and fallen trees. Then in its path came the
sweep of the great rain; the air grew darker, the thunder ceased to
crash, the lightning died away, and the water poured down in sheets over
the black and mangled forest.

"Now boys, we'll start," said Ross. "Them Shawnees had to hunt cover,
an' they can't see us nohow. Up with them bags of salt!"

In an incredibly short time the salt was loaded on the pack horses and
then they were picking their way down the steep and dangerous gully in
the side of the hill. Henry, Paul and the master locked hands in the
dark and the driving rain, and saved each other from falls. Ross and Sol
seemed to have the eyes of cats in the dark and showed the way.

"My God!" murmured Mr. Pennypacker, "I could not have dreamed ten years
ago that I should ever take part in such a scene as this!"

Low as he spoke, Henry heard him and he detected, too, a certain note of
pride in the master's tone, as if he were satisfied with the manner in
which he had borne himself. Henry felt the same satisfaction, although
he could not deny that he had felt many terrors.

After much difficulty and some danger they reached the bottom of the
hill unhurt, and then they sped across a fairly level country, not much
troubled by undergrowth or fallen timber, keeping close together so that
no one might be lost in the darkness and the rain, Ross, as usual,
leading the line, and Shif'less Sol bringing up the rear. Now and then
the two men called the names of the others to see that all were present,
but beyond this precaution no word was spoken, save in whispers.

Henry and Paul felt a deep and devout thankfulness for the chance that
had saved them from a long siege and possible death; indeed it seemed to
them that the hand of God had turned the enemy aside, and in their
thankfulness they forgot that, soaked to the bone, cold and tired, they
were still tramping through the lone wilderness, far from Wareville.

The darkness and the pouring rain endured for about an hour, then both
began to lighten, streaks of pale sky appeared in the east, and the
trees like cones emerged from the mist and gloom. All of the
salt-workers felt their spirits rise. They knew that they had escaped
from the conflict wonderfully well; two slight wounds, not more than the
breaking of skin, and that was all. Fresh strength came to them, and as
they continued their journey the bars of pale light broadened and
deepened, and then fused into a solid blue dawn, as the last cloud
disappeared and the last shower of rain whisked away to the northward. A
wet road lay before them, the drops of water yet sparkling here and
there, like myriads of beads. Ross drew a deep breath of relief and
ordered a halt.

"The Shawnees could follow us again," he said, "but they know now that
they bit off somethin' a heap too tough for them to chaw, an' I don't
think they'll risk breaking a few more teeth on it, specially after
havin' been whipped aroun' by the storm as they must 'a been."

"And to think we got away and brought our salt with us, too!" said Mr.
Pennypacker.

Dark came soon, and Ross and Sol felt so confident they were safe from
another attack that they allowed a fire to be lighted, although they
were careful to choose the center of a little prairie, where the rifle
shots of an ambushed foe in the forest could not reach them.

It was no easy matter to light a fire, but Ross and Sol at last
accomplished it with flint, steel and dry splinters cut from the under
side of fallen logs. Then when the blaze had taken good hold they heaped
more brushwood upon it and never were heat and warmth more grateful to
tired travelers.

Henry and Paul did not realize until then how weary and how very wet
they were. They basked in the glow, and, with delight watched the great
beds of coals form. They took off part of their clothing, hanging it
before the fire, and when it was dry and warm put it on again. Then they
served the rest the same way, and by and by they wore nothing but warm
garments.

"I guess two such terrible fighters as you," said Ross to Henry and
Paul, "wouldn't mind a bite to eat. I've allers heard tell as how the
Romans after they had fought a good fight with them Carthaginians or
Macedonians or somebody else would sit down an' take some good grub into
their insides, an' then be ready for the next spat."

"Will we eat? will we eat? Oh, try us, try us," chanted Henry and Paul
in chorus, their mouths stretching simultaneously into wide grins, and
Ross grinned back in sympathy.

The revulsion had come for the two boys. After so much danger and
suffering, the sense of safety and the warmth penetrating their bones
made them feel like little children, and they seized each other in a
friendly scuffle, which terminated only when they were about to roll
into the fire. Then they ate venison as if they had been famished.
Afterwards, when they were asleep on their blankets before the fire,
Ross said to Mr. Pennypacker:

"They did well, for youngsters."

"They certainly did, Mr. Ross," said the master. "I confess to you that
there were times to-day when learning seemed to offer no consolation."

Ross smiled a little, and then his face quickly became grave.

"It's what we've got to go through out here," he said. "Every settlement
will have to stand the storm."

A vigilant watch was kept all the long night but there was no sign of a
second Shawnee attack. Ross had reckoned truly when he thought the
Shawnees would not care to risk further pursuit, and the next day they
resumed their journey, under a drying sun.

They were not troubled any more by Indian attacks, but the rest of the
way was not without other dangers. The rivers were swollen by the spring
rains, and they had great trouble in carrying the salt across on the
swimming horses. Once Paul was swept down by a swift and powerful
current, but Henry managed to seize and hold him until others came to
the rescue. Men and boys alike laughed over their trials, because they
felt now all the joy of victory, and their rapid march south amid the
glories of spring, unfolding before them, appealed to the instincts of
everyone in the band, the same instincts that had brought them from the
East into the wilderness.

They were passing through the region that came to be known in later days
as the Garden of Kentucky. Then it was covered with magnificent forest
and now they threaded their way through the dense canebrake. Squirrels
chattered in every tree top, deer swarmed in the woods, and the buffalo
was to be found in almost every glen.

"I do not wonder," said the thoughtful schoolmaster, "that the Indian
should be loath to give up such choice hunting grounds, but, fight as
cunningly and bravely as he will, his fate will come."

But Henry, with only the thoughts of youth, could not conceive of the
time when the vast wilderness should be cut down and the game should go.
He was concerned only with the present and the words of Mr. Pennypacker
made upon him but a faint and fleeting impression.

At last on a sunny morning, whole, well fed, with their treasure
preserved, and all fresh and courageous, they approached Wareville. The
hearts of Henry and Paul thrilled at the signs of white habitation. They
saw where the ax had bitten through a tree, and they came upon broad
trails that could be made only by white men, going to their work, or
hunting their cattle.

But it was Paul who showed the most eagerness. He was whole-hearted in
his joy. Wareville then was the only spot on earth for him. But Henry
turned his back on the wilderness with a certain reluctance. A primitive
strain in him had been awakened. He was not frightened now. The danger
of the battle had aroused in him a certain wild emotion which repeated
itself and refused to die, though days had passed. It seemed to him at
times that it would be a great thing to live in the forest, and to have
knowledge and wilderness power surpassing those even of Shif'less Sol or
Ross. He had tasted again the life of the primitive man and he liked it.

Mr. Pennypacker was visibly joyful. The wilderness appealed to him in a
way, but he considered himself essentially a man of peace, and Wareville
was becoming a comfortable abode.

"I have had my great adventure," he said, "I have helped to fight the
wild men, and in the days to come I can speak boastfully of it, even as
the great Greeks in Homer spoke boastfully of their achievements, but
once is enough. I am a man of peace and years, and I would fain wage the
battles of learning rather than those of arms."

"But you did fight like a good 'un when you had to do it, schoolmaster,"
said Ross.

Mr. Pennypacker shook his head and replied gravely:

"Tom, you do right to say 'when I had to do it,' but I mean that I shall
not have to do it any more."

Ross smiled. He knew that the schoolmaster was one of the bravest of
men.

Now they came close to Wareville. From a hill they saw a thin, blue
column of smoke rising and then hanging like a streamer across the clear
blue sky.

"That comes from the chimneys of Wareville," said Ross, "an' I guess
she's all right. That smoke looks kinder quiet, as if nothin' out of the
way had happened."

They pressed forward with renewed speed, and presently a shout came from
the forest. Two men ran to meet them, and rejoiced at the sight of the
men unharmed, and every horse heavily loaded with salt. Then it was a
triumphal procession into Wareville, with the crowd about them
thickening as they neared the gates. Henry's mother threw her arms about
his neck, and his father grasped him by the hand. Paul was in the center
of his own family, completely submerged, and all the space within the
palisade resounded with joyous laugh and welcome, which became all the
more heartfelt, when the schoolmaster told of the great danger through
which they had passed.

That evening, when they sat around the low fire in his father's
home--the spring nights were yet cool--Henry had to repeat the story of
the salt-making and the great adventure with the Shawnees. He grew
excited as he told of the battle and the storm, his face flushed, his
eyes shot sparks, and, as Mrs. Ware looked at him, she realized, half in
pride, half in terror, that she was the mother of a hunter and warrior.




CHAPTER X

THE CAVE DUST


The great supply of salt brought by Ross and his men was welcome to
Wareville, as the people had begun to suffer for it, but they would have
enough now to last them a full year, and a year was a long time to look
ahead. Great satisfaction was expressed on that score, but the news that
a Shawnee war party was in Kentucky and had chased them far southward
caused Mr. Ware and other heads of the village to look very grave and to
hold various councils.

As a result of these talks the palisade was strengthened with another
row of strong stakes, and they took careful stock of their supplies of
ammunition. Lead they had in plenty, but powder was growing scarce. A
fresh supply had been expected with a new band of settlers from Virginia
but the band had failed to come, and the faces of the leaders grew yet
graver, when they looked at the dwindling supply, and wondered how it
could be replenished for the dire need that might arise. It was now that
Mr. Pennypacker came forward with a suggestion and he showed how book
learning could be made of great value, even in the wilderness.

"You will recall," he said to Mr. Ware and Mr. Upton, and other heads of
the settlement, "that some of our hunters have reported the existence of
great caves to the southwestward and that they have brought back from
them wonderful stalactites and stalagmites and also dust from the cave
floors. I find that this dust is strongly impregnated with niter; from
niter we obtain saltpeter and from saltpeter we make gunpowder. We need
not send to Virginia for our powder, we can make it here in Kentucky for
ourselves."

"Do you truly think so, Mr. Pennypacker?" asked Mr. Ware, doubtfully.

"Think so! I know so," replied the schoolmaster in sanguine tones. "Why,
what am I a teacher for if I don't know a little of such things? And
even if you have doubts, think how well the experiment is worth trying.
Situated as we are, in this wild land, powder is the most precious thing
on earth to us."

"That is true! that is true!" said Mr. Ware with hasty emphasis.
"Without it we shall lie helpless before the Indian attack, should it
come. If, as you say, this cave dust contains the saltpeter, the rest
will be easy."

"It contains saltpeter and the rest _will_ be easy!"

"Then, you must go for it. Ross and Sol and a strong party must go with
you, because we cannot run the risk of losing any of you through the
Indians."

"I am sure," said Mr. Pennypacker, "that we shall incur no danger from
Indians. The region of the great caves lies farther south than Wareville
and the Southern Indians, who are less bold than the Northern tribes,
are not likely to come again into Kentucky. The hunters say that Indians
have not been in that particular region for years."

"Yes, I think you are right," said Mr. Ware, "but be careful anyhow."

Henry, when he heard of the new expedition, was wild to go, but his
parents, remembering the great danger of the journey to the salt licks,
were reluctant with their permission. Then Ross interceded effectively.

"The boy is just fitted for this sort of work," he said. "He isn't in
love with farming, he's got other blood in him, but down there he will
be just about the best man that Wareville has to send, an' there won't
be any Indians."

There was no reply to such an argument, because in the border
settlements the round peg must go in the round hole; the conditions of
survival demanded no surplusage and no waste.

When Paul heard that Henry was to go he gave his parents no rest, and
when Mr. Pennypacker, whose favorite he was, seconded his request, on
the ground that he would need a scholar with him the permission had to
be granted.

Rejoicing, the two boys set forth with the others, the dangers of the
Shawnee battle and their terrors already gone from their minds. They
would meet no Indians this time, and the whole powder-making expedition
would be just one great picnic. The summer was now at hand, and the
forests were an unbroken mass of brilliant green. In the little spaces
of earth where the sunlight broke through, wild flowers, red, blue, pink
and purple peeped up and nodded gayly, when the light winds blew. Game
abounded, but they killed only enough for their needs, Ross saying it
was against the will of God to shoot a splendid elk or buffalo and leave
him to rot, merely for the pleasure of the killing.

After a while they forded a large river, passed out of the forests, and
came into a great open region, to which they gave the name of Barrens,
not because it was sterile, but because it was bare of trees. Henry, at
first, thought it was the land of prairies, but Ross, after examining it
minutely, said that if left to nature it would be forested. It was his
theory that the Indians in former years had burned off the young tree
growth repeatedly in order to make great grazing grounds for the big
game. Whether his supposition was true or not, and Henry thought it
likely to be true, the Barrens were covered with buffalo, elk and deer.
In fact they saw buffalo in comparatively large numbers for the first
time, and once they looked upon a herd of more than a hundred, grazing
in the rich and open meadows. Panthers attracted by the quantity of game
upon which they could pr

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