Chapter II: Part 2

Doby had another reason for being forlorn. He had been rejected by a group of men whom he wanted to join on an expedition into Kentucky. No one likes to be snubbed. He was trying to forget the uncomfortable experience by visiting all the points of interest in the city and then by climbing to the top of the knob where he could get a high and impersonal glimpse of things.

Opposite him was the mouth of the Licking River as it flowed north into the Ohio. Half a dozen miles east was the Little Miami. A score or so to the west was the Big Miami.

All low grounds about these river mouths were flooded in spring by what the astonished emigrants called "amazing high freshets," and the towns which the promoters began on them had to be abandoned by "the respectable public" whom their advertisements had drawn there.

But the knob was above the reach of backwater and higher than any rising ague fog.

Three wise men thought it the best place for a city. One, Denman, who was rich, paid two hundred and fifty dollars for the eight hundred acres on the knob. Another, Colonel Patterson, who was influential, had an army post for protection built here. And the third, Filson, who was clever, surveyed the lands and made most valuable maps of the regions round about. The irate Indians scalped Filson for his pains, but the other two waxed prosperous with the growth of their city.

Doby had seen some of Filson's drawings of the surrounding trails. Particularly was he entranced by the map of Kentucky. "Every time I look at that dotted line of the great Clark War Road stretching alongside the Kentucky River away into the wilderness, I want to go down it." His thoughts kept coming back to his grievance like a cat to an empty house. "There is no good reason why a boy shouldn't travel that road any more than there is an excuse for a boy not having a dog." He felt dreadfully sorry for himself. "Perhaps if I had a dog--a fine tracking-hound or a fierce watch-dog--the scouts might need the dog and take me along with it. But I haven't one thing that they want and I can't go."

Up the road of Doby's desire, while it was yet a trail, had come the Indians to the broad plateau of the knob. Long before Filson's time these savages had seen the value of such a lookout. They made it a stopping-place because it could so well be guarded against surprise. Their signal-fires upon it could be seen by all surrounding tribes. Even a smoke message could warn three valleys.

"'Twas such a safe place," thought Doby, whimsically, "that the Miamis had to fight all the time to keep it from other Indians who also wanted to be secure upon it. Constant battles here have given it the name of the 'Miami slaughter-house.'"

George Rogers Clark, the Virginian, a Revolutionary hero, who came across Kentucky hot on the track of the Miamis, used the savage trail to such quick and victorious service against the British, making it part of his route to his renowned conquest of the Northwest, that it had taken his name. He built a sturdy little blockhouse for a fort and supply station on the knob in 1780 as a half-way station between his Kentucky outposts and the forts on the Wabash and the Great Lakes. And there it still stood, like one of Clark's chunky soldiers who was said to sink deeper into the ground every time the enemy charged him and who had no intention of giving up, no matter how many times he was licked.

Cincinnati was founded by Revolutionary soldiers who were paid for their services by grants of land in this neighborhood. Two companies of regular troops in Fort Washington guarded them as they returned to the plow and used their trusty swords to make their little pigs into famous Queen City sausages.

Doby munched on a sweet, lumpy souvenir of his visit to the sugar-factory as he gazed at the glass factory, the furniture-factory, the cotton and hemp spinning and weaving mills, the flour-mills, the tanneries, all the big city buildings where the newly invented steam-engine was beginning to make for the pioneers all the things that they had been obliged to do for themselves by hand.

"Ma will be glad to hear of the machine that can make cloth as fast as I wear it out," and the boy examined the inside of his much-used knife-pocket at a patch which needed a patch itself, although it was already a patch upon another patch.

But all this machinery made his head tired. So did the smoke and the smells and the confusion of streets.

Some rural path--preferably in Kentucky--was the only thing he could think of that would rest him and entertain him when he had no person to talk to and no pet to play with.

So he sat upon the knob and kicked his heels to cool his restless feet. His eyes turned from the city's buildings to its fringe of green. They wandered again to the spot where he had seen the most satisfactory thing of the whole day--those passing dogs.

There was a bunch of tawny leaves blowing along the hillside. He stared at it idly. No, it was not leaves, that patch of uncertain color. It was something living, something leaping.

How uncertainly it moved! How wabbly it was! Doby sat up sharply and peered. He stood up and leaned forward. He shut his eyes for a better long-distance focus and squinted.

"It is the yellow dog again. Dog? No! Fox? It can't be a fox! It surely is a fox." Behind the fox a dog was running. A long chase had tired them both. Their pace was dragging.

"It is the same dog, I do believe, and the same fox that I saw before. What a big circle they must be running!"

All alert now, Doby measured their speed. If he ran forward in quick time at right angles to it, their course would pass quite close to him. Away he flew.

He was thinking, "That fox is exhausted. It can hardly get along. The hunt has been an all-day one. The dog--ah, the poor brave doggie!--is worse off than the fox. He will never catch it. What a fine dog! What a game dog, not to give up when he is outrun! He is my kind of a dog. I'll help him."

Doby rushed down the hill to head off the fox. At most times it would have been a silly and a useless thing to do. But now the spent fox was not equal to any of its sly dodges.

It saw the man creature--that cruel enemy of all wild life--and for one second it paused. On the instant the persistent dog also saw the man creature--that kind friend of all tame brutes--and, reinforced by his presence, leaped with a last bit of strength for the quarry.

Doby was in at the death. He cut the brush. It was a splendid trophy. Then he gave his whole attention to the dog, who had fallen over on one side and lay prone.

"Poor doggie, he looks as though he were going to die!" quavered Doby. "Poor doggie! Come, doggie! I'll carry you to our flatboat and tend you."

So over the hillside and down the terraces and through the unheeding city streets he lugged the limp dog to the landing at the water's edge and into the flatboat and on to a cushion.

"That dog seems to have a little of every kind of breed, so we will call him a foxhound, for short," was Mr. Holman's comment, as Doby bent anxiously over his find with water and milk and bread and meat. "But if you want to do so, you may keep him for your own," he promised, as he always did on every one of those numerous occasions when Doby adopted some hapless stray and wistfully begged to be allowed to take care of it and train it.

Thus, by chance, Doby had within an hour acquired a dog at a time when he fancied that he needed it most.

What a good thing a reliable dog would be to a party of scouts, if the boy who had him could go along to make him do his doggie best! These were Doby's reflections as he watched the fagged one, bit by bit, grow strong and lively.

He proved to be a grateful brute and an affectionate one. He answered Doby's endearments most ardently. But, alas! as he recovered he grew restless. He wanted to be off again.

Now around this dog's neck was a band of leather, the only kind of collar that pioneer puppies knew. Mr. Holman had glanced at this collar. He knew what it meant, but he did not say a word about it. Doby also knew what it meant, but he did not speak of it, either. He sat and stared at it by the hour together.

The collar had been made and fastened on the dog by some other boy. The dog was some other boy's dog. He was a pet dog. If he was set free he might return to some far-away home--to that other boy.

At this moment he was looking at Doby with adoring eyes, as that uncomfortable boy thought, "If I keep him a long time, keep him shut up and well fed, he will finally like me best and be my pet, for I saved his life." The dog wagged a hearty assent to this; and to all Doby's claims to loyalty he pounded his tail thankfully on the resounding floor of the flatboat.

"The scouts would listen to me and take me along, almost surely take me along, if I could show them a good tracking-hound," he argued. "It is my one chance to get in with them." He was more miserable now with the dog than he had ever been without it--well--because he kept thinking.

The dog licked Doby's hands and reached for his face with a moist and loving tongue. "I believe they would take me if he went, too." The dog begged for a joyous tussle. He was the greatest fun to play with.

"You want to stay with me, don't you?" Doby asked of the completely restored and lively hound, flushed and happy as they paused in a romp. But the dog was already beginning to pace back and forth inside the barricaded boat. He whined at every crack. He brought pleading sniffs to Doby's feet.

The boy stood and thought. He must decide what to do about another man's property. The more he thought, the deeper he frowned. His face was a tangled hard knot of lines when, after a long inner struggle, he finally got out his knife to cut a strip of bark from a slippery-elm tree, stopping frequently to sigh over the hard task he had given himself.

On the plain white inner side of the bark his stone knife carved plainly, THE FOX TAIL IS ON HOLMAN'S FLATBOAT IN CINCINNATI HE IS A FINE DOG WE HELPED HIM OBADIAH HOLMAN. Carefully rolling and tying it, he fastened it inside the dog's collar as messages were sometimes sent.

He carried the dog ashore and released him. He was sure that all his hopes for going with the scouts vanished with the dog.

A strange feeling of being grown up came over him. "After this when I ought to do a thing, I'll just go ahead and do it, and not hesitate so long about the deed I know is right."

Acting on this decision, he was silent and showed no childish regrets, when the scouts, gathering on the dock the next afternoon, made ready for their start. They never noticed him. Their thoughts were on Simon Kenton, who was to direct them. He was the pioneer's ideal. He had once saved the life of Daniel Boone, that most famous of all the patriotic Kentucky rangers, and had become his fast friend in consequence.

Kenton's services as an Indian-fighter had given him a name that filled the Middle West. He was brave beyond belief. The number of times that he had been captured and the great difficulties of his escapes never prevented him from offering his help wherever his woodcraft could lead soldiers to victory through savage-infested country.

Half a dozen times and more he had run the gauntlet. Three times he is said to have been tied to the stake for torture and burning. During several periods of captivity he was most brutally treated. Yet in every important battle with the redskins in his own State and out of it he was one of the directing powers. Between-times he was a matchless spy and a fearless ranger. Even now, although he was past middle age, he had a splendid body, a tireless mind, and a dauntless courage.

"If any one can rescue the besieged wagon-train from the Indians, this is the scout who will do it," said Mr. Holman. And they all rose respectfully as the gray-eyed giant came among them.

They knew him to be fond of animals and kind to pets, so there was no surprise that a dog should be hanging on his heels. The wonder was that this should chance to be Doby's dog--the so-called foxhound. In noisy recognition the happy pup leaped upon the boy, licked his face, knocked him over backward, and tried to eat him up.

"Oh, you bad bow-bow," laughed Doby, returning the embrace.

"Wow-wow," answered the hound, rolling over on his back in an ecstasy of delight at the meeting.

Simon Kenton's speech was as old-fashioned as his big brave heart. He asked the boy, "Be ye Obadiah Holman?"

Doby nodded with something like a bow. "Well, then, I'm huntin' for ye. I want a boy to go with us into Kentucky. Git ready to start instanter." On Kenton's arm was hanging a small suit of fringed buckskin. "Put these duds on. They'll fit well enough. When I found the note in the collar I reckoned on ye bein' young," and the tall scout smiled down on the boy. "I fetched a leetle rifle for ye."

The other men objected in chorus: "He's nothing but a boy. He can't go. We can't take a boy and we can't take a dog."

"Don't want to take the dog; never do take the dog," was the easy answer.

"The boy is too small," was the second chorus.

The bright gray eyes ran over Doby from his eager face to his moccasined toes. Then Simon Kenton said "He is big enough for me. I can use him on this ventur'. I've taken chances afore on folks that befriended my dog. Nary chance did I ever lose."

Without more ado he took command of the expedition. He showed each man his duty. Then he said to Doby: "I'll trust ye. Climb into yer new suit, son, and scoot along. Show us yer ready for business. I reckon ye'll never be anybody's small boy again. When ye made up yer mind to give a man the things that belonged to him--the minute ye wrote that note--w'y, just that minute ye growed into a first-class scout!"

V

BLUE-JAY FEATHERS

_An Indian Talisman on Clark's Kentucky War Road_

"I LOOK so grand that I want to say, 'Sir,' every time I speak to myself," and Obadiah Holman swaggered a little as he donned his equipment.

His coonskin cap was set atilt. Its short ringed tail was a tassel bobbing over his left ear. He wore a man's suit of fringed buckskin. He had shortened his "galluses" and hitched up his breeches to a very comfortable fit. Leggings added a picturesque touch to them. His shirt, which was worn outside like a coat, had a belt to hold in the fullness. Cut off a little at the bottom and fringed anew, and treated the same way at the cuffs, it had become exactly his size. Best of all, it was _not_ new.

When he appeared among the other scouts, his clothes had the same worn effect of a serviceable uniform that theirs did.

Doby glowed with pride when he considered the company he kept. What patriotic duties had not these scouts been in? What good work had not these uniforms seen?

He resolved with all the best that was in him to be worthy of the place Simon Kenton had given him with Johnson's Long Hunters--the Kentucky cavalrymen.

The War of 1812 was now all over. But who could forget the services of these men through that trying time? For the grizzled veterans all about him were Col. Richard Johnson's troopers, the bravest and boldest men in the West.

When William Henry Harrison, the governor of the Northwest Territory, the man who had won the battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, against the Indians, and so saved the Northwest to civilization, had later, in 1813, become so hard pressed in his struggle against Tecumseh's forces allied with that Indian's British friends, farther east near Detroit, it was the Kentucky regiment of Johnson's men whose furious valor broke the stout line of British regulars on the Thames River and who kept the Middle West from the clutches of old England.

A grateful country afterward made Colonel Johnson Vice-President of the United States.

Boys and men cheered the doughty Kentuckians wherever they appeared.

Said one of them to Doby: "That Indian chief Tecumseh was a smart man. He had more sense than most white men. He was a king, if ever a man was. When the natives in his absence ceded to the whites so much of the land around Fort Wayne, he was angry. He organized all the Western Indians into a confederacy whose plan was to drive the Americans out of the country. For he understood very soon the thing that it took the other Indians a long time to learn. That was, the English and American way of buying land."

"You see, the French, who came here first, met the Indians on terms of friendly equality. The Indians responded to this by offering hospitality. The French accepted it gratefully. The Indians passed the peace pipes and said: 'Our Great Spirit tells us to welcome our pale-face brothers. Our hunting-grounds are his.' And the happy-go-lucky Frenchmen made their best society bows and said, 'After you, kind friends, we will use them.' And they got along together first rate."

"Our folks don't want to share and share alike with savages," declared Doby. "We want to buy the land outright."

"That's what makes the trouble," answered the old Indian-fighter, "savages do not know what buying land means. They never get our point of view. When we give an Indian 'fire-water' and a disgracefully small piece of money for his land, he thinks it is a present because we thank him for the chance to hunt on that land. He fully expects us to buy it again the next day and the next and the next. He thinks it is still his after all this so-called buying."

"He gives us a deed to it," said Doby. "Anybody can understand what a land title is."

"An Indian cannot. One day a white man, all smiles, comes to an Indian's land, gives him a tawdry present, juggles a piece of parchment, and shows the Indian how to make his mark among printed words which he cannot read. Next day, the white man, all frowns, says to the Indian, 'What d'you mean, making yourself to hum on my ground? Git out!' and he kicks him off. It makes the Indian mad."

The veteran wagged his beard and his sweeping curly hair like an old lion shaking his mane. "That's the real cause of the Indian uprisings. General Harrison, who is a just and far-seeing ruler, has done his best to compel fair play on both sides. Between the greed of the whites and the treachery of the savages he hasn't had much luck."

"You fought with the other Long Hunters at New Orleans, didn't you?" asked Doby.

"At that battle we licked the British again. The treaty of peace had been signed, but word hadn't reached the South and we went at it and hammered the beef-eaters fair and hard. Ah, those were the good old times. Nothin' like it nowadays. Nothin' but a few odd jobs of rescue-work like this one we are on. No real fightin'."

Doby looked in true respect at his friends of many scars. His hand went up to his cap. He took it off in the presence of these patriots.

The Kentucky settlers called these men "Long Hunters" because they could stay out more weeks on hunting-trips than less stalwart backwoodsmen. "Long Knives" was the name the Indians gave them on account of the ferocious dirks they carried. Even Doby sported his stone knife in a formidable sheath.

Soft-hearted Simon Kenton had taken Doby along for a "lucky penny" or "pocket-piece" as a later time would have taken some entertaining child for a "mascot."

Like the other two dozen men in the group, Doby boasted a tomahawk swung on his hip.

"A tomahawk is wild and savage-looking," laughed one of the men, seeing how gingerly Doby handled the murderous thing, "but this one has been tamed. It will be used to chop kindling-wood and to cut brush, unless we get into a brash with redskins and you want to try its edge on a scalp."

Also Doby had a powder-horn swung over his shoulder. In the hollow of his left arm was as light a flintlock as that day afforded. It was possible for him to carry the weight of this weapon because, oh, joy of joys! between his knees was a Kentucky thoroughbred!

"No old nag to bring up the cows"--Doby was almost bursting with pride--"will do for a fellow who is going West to fight Indians. He needs a fast horse. This is one of the blue-grass best."

Every scout's saddle-bags carried rations for several days. They would not use their rifles for game, nor would they build a fire except at some station. They were traveling as light as possible, as fast as their mounts would allow, and with as little noise as they could.

"Boonesboro'll keep the wagon-train as long as the grub holds out. The pesky redskins 'ain't got a thing to do but to lay round an' besiege the stockade 'til the buffaler come. When the herds git here the redskins will follow the game north and the wagon-train can move again. Trouble is that folks in stockades can't git along without eatin', and these are plumb out o' vittles." And Simon Kenton, who had often gone hungry in the Indian country, gave a little sigh of sympathy. "It ain't likely that we will have a brash with Injuns hereabouts." Yet these sagacious scouts slept in their clothes, had no fires, and took turns, two at a time, doing sentinel duty. They rode, always, with guns primed and loaded and ready under their trigger fingers.

Their plan was to add their force to the small number of men in the train at Boonesboro and with a little food to bring them out to within reach of game and to escort them north to Cincinnati. The Indians generally fell back from any "Long Knives" train.

The scouts had crossed the Ohio River at Cincinnati, coming down, gathering a few more fighters as they went. Doby's father, a seasoned frontiersman, had gone with them because he was anxious to learn the prospects for buying farming land in this richest soil of all the States.

Now they were whirling down toward the Salt Lick Springs on the old Clark War Road of Indian raids. At first the famous path led them to the southwest.

Doby had ridden bareback from babyhood. He could "break" a colt or subdue a "fractious" mare, but never had he gone down any pike at the pace these Kentuckians set him as they tore away on their errand of mercy.

His legs clung to the saddle, his moccasins stuck to the stirrups, his hands grasped the bridle-rein as they flew. The scrambling up-hill over rough ground, the breakneck sliding down into valleys, were his delight. But when he saw the swollen Kentucky River that he must plunge into for the first of several times on its winding course, he could have screamed with hysterical excitement. He had no choice whether to go or to stay. His horse carried him with the others on a rush into the turbulent stream. The shock of the water and the sensation of leaving solid earth for this swirling danger shook his chest with heavy sobs.

There is a contagion of courage as well as of fear. He caught the spirit of his companions. By imitating them he was able to hold his horse's head at an acute angle to the bank, so that the constant up-stream effort kept the swimming animal from being swept down. He stayed abreast of the others and landed with them at the road on the opposite shore.

Then magnificent forests and open glades spun by them. They entered canebrakes, those bottom-land stretches of succulent sugar-bearing canes where wild turkeys scuttled in flocks before the sound of hoofs.

Simon Kenton smiled at Doby: "There ye be! Cane! Turkey! Kain tu'key! There's where we git our name."

One night when they stopped to rest, Doby discovered on a flat-faced boulder some crude outline pictures like the childish cartoons of first-reader pupils. There were round turtles, square horses, spindle-legged boys, moon faces, pigs with curly tails; just such things as he had drawn on his slate many a time. All had been cut or scraped in with a sharp point of stone or metal.

What boy could resist such a challenge? "Must be some sort of a wilderness school near here," Doby thought as he whipped out his too ready knife. Using the tip of the hilt, for he dare not risk the precious point, he scratched a bird, to face another bird, something like a blue jay which was already drawn to perch in this menagerie.

"I'll have to do something to tell what my bird and the other fellow's bird are called," and he picked up a couple of fallen blue-jay feathers. With a paste of mud he added them, one to each bird, for a flaunting tail, grinning to think how surprised the children would be when they noticed this addition to their art-gallery.

Simon Kenton, coming up, seemed to regard this as a serious matter. "That pictur' is Injun writin'; lots of it hereabouts; every line and dot means somethin'; can't tell what the varmints'll think of your sign," and he shook his head dubiously; but he would not let the boy try to erase it. "Better quit foolin' with it."

Doby was rather dismayed by this bit of indiscretion on his part. But in the rapid going of the next few hours and in the flurry of the wild-pig hunt which they allowed themselves when they came within hail of the station, he forgot his regrets.

At this station they gave themselves a hot pork supper and a good rest.

A Kentucky station was from the first settlement of that coveted State a spot full of romance, of danger, and of delight.

So fair was Kentucky, so rich, so promising, that native red men and immigrating white men were ever ready to fight for a piece of her fertile soil. Never was she more beautiful than in those days when numerous battles caused her to be named the "dark and bloody ground."

Her stations, far apart, were built of log houses set in a hollow square to form a solid wall toward the open country. Tiny loopholes for rifles were the only windows on the outside walls. At each corner was a two-story blockhouse, or "flanker," set up in such a way with loopholes that the men inside could see and could cover with guns the outside fort walls without themselves being seen by the Indians. There were huge gates to these forts. They could defy and they did defy many a savage attack. They were snug places for emigrants to stop.

Doby employed his idle hour making a "shrieker." First he cut a willow whistle. On it he fastened the bladder of the slaughtered pig. Then he took an immense breath, blew into the whistle, and filled the bladder with air. When he could blow no longer he jerked it out of his mouth. The air from the bladder rushed back through the whistle with a hair-raising squeal.

Doby hopped in glee. But he dared not use it when they started again on the dangerous War Road. There was always the chance of attracting some foe.

"When we get inside the next station I'm going to give it one good blow, Injuns or no Injuns," he declared.

So far had they now come by the road southwest, south, southeast, and south again, that they were in the heart of Kentucky and approaching Harrod's station not far distant from Boonesboro.

At Harrod's they had meant to eat hot game and save their full saddle-bags for the wagon-train. But the sight of an Indian trading at the post made them pause and go into a consultation with the storekeeper.

A general store was kept in each of these stations. It dealt in every article a settler could want. Here a trapper, red or white, who never had any money could "swap" his furs for powder and coffee with a storekeeper who never had any money, either. Though powder and coffee were each a dollar a pound, neither the buyer nor the seller ever saw that dollar. Trading was the rule.

Doby paid little heed to anything except the Indian, who stood motionless beside a pile of 'coonskins which he had laid on a tobacco bale. Any boy would have known that Indian for a warrior. He wore a plain blanket. There were no feathers and no paint to be seen upon him, yet he looked the wild fighting-man. He was tall and straight, haughty of bearing, cruelly beautiful. He ignored the hunters with royal indifference while he waited for his goods to be packed.

As Doby eyed the savage he thought: "How handsome he is and how powerful! Perhaps Tecumseh had the same appearance."

Under the boy's admiring stare the Indian stood absolutely and perfectly still, minute after minute, minute after minute, until Doby became possessed of an impulse to test that stolidity, to shock that dignity. So he impishly blew into the pig's-bladder whistle. Its blast rent the air.

With snake-like quickness the Indian's hand shot out. He grabbed the whistle and hid it in his blanket. He offered a blue-jay feather in exchange. Doby felt indignant at this sort of trading and showed that he did, whereupon the Indian, who certainly had seemed to have neither paint nor feathers upon him, stuck the first feather and then a second one in the front of Doby's cap. In so doing he left a streak of paint on the boy's forehead. It was of the same shape and color as the feather.

The boy's face flamed with anger, but when the watching Kenton said, "Make your manners, bub," Doby thrust his hand into the Indian's palm and said, "How?"

The Indian answered, "How?"

These two words were considered to be a complete conversation of the friendliest sort between any two members of the white and red races.

Calmly and instantly Kenton pushed the boy from the store into the midst of the hunters, who were hurriedly up and away. Night was closing in, but they increased their pace. Kenton told Doby: "Under his blanket that chief is rigged up for battle. He is buying guns and ammunition."

"A storekeeper will sell any Indian any amount of bullets to shoot any number of settlers, if the savage merely says he wants 'em for buffalo," thought Doby, in bitter contempt of that thing we call commercialism, which allows one man to sacrifice others for his own mercenary profit.

"To git through the varmints' stampin'-ground, we must use this dark night for to cover us," and Kenton glanced at the black clouds and at the occasional flashes of lightning. He listened to the wind in the trees. He stopped to consult the others and laid his ear to the ground, "for buffaler," he said.

For here the War Road, the Indian trail, and the Buffalo trace all coincided to run through a very long, narrow ravine.

They decided to risk the trip through the ravine. The byways were long and difficult. In the ravine there was danger of Indians in ambush, danger of a cloudburst, and danger of meeting the buffalo herds almost due on their annual migration north. But where was there not danger?

To these hardy soldiers danger was their bread and meat and they rejoiced in it. So when they felt no quake of earth from moving hoofs, they took the ravine at a run. They knew it was the sort of night when the war of fire and water in the air might frighten buffalo into a stampede; and Doby, blinking in the lightning, listened between thunderclaps for other noises.

They were nearing the southern end of the ravine, too far from the northern entrance to turn back, when they caught the far-away rumble of myriad pounding hoofs. They spurred ahead. If they could reach the plain and turn aside before the oncoming herds entered the ravine they were safe. Kenton put his hand on Doby's bridle and they ran for their lives straight toward the buffalo, which they could not see, but which they could hear plainer and plainer with every hurrying second.

The rangers ahead yelled triumphantly as one by one they gained the open and swerved in safety around to the east. Their shouts were drowned in a vast bellowing that grew so near it roared in their ears like heavy surf.

Kenton and Doby were bringing up the rear. Kenton's horse stepped into a hole and went down heavily. Doby's leaped ahead. After a few jumps he was able to check it. He wheeled and came back. Kenton had gained his feet, but his mount was doomed--a broken leg. There was no help for the poor brute but a merciful bullet. To this sad use unhappy Doby put his proud flintlock. To Kenton, who was badly jarred, he reached a firm hand and took him up behind.

Too late now to gain the plain, impossible to face the flying, panic-stricken hordes, there was nothing for it but to flee straight back over the course they had come.

To be overtaken was to be trampled down to earth, ground into fragments and totally destroyed. Oh, the irony of traveling for days and days through a country where the buffalo would have been harmless and then to meet them in the one hour and the one place where they meant death to man!

Kenton, recovering himself under the prick of their danger, watched by the lightning flashes for an opening in the sides of the ravine. He soon saw a tiny brook trickling from a cleft. They bolted from the trace and stopped in it. Although it was only a tiny pocket set back and up from the sides of the bluff, it was enough to shelter them and their horse. In less than two minutes the herd came sweeping past below them.

All night long, under a stormy sky, they huddled in their covert and saw and heard and smelled the buffalo as they galloped past. All day long, through the clearing weather, they watched more buffalo and more buffalo--walking now. All night long again, under clear skies and brilliant stars, they listened to the stragglers sedately following behind.

The man and boy had food in their saddle-bags and water at their feet. The horse drank and helped himself to green stuff.

Kenton said: "Give the Injuns followin' the herds time to vamoose. Then we go on. Our folks won't hunt for us, 'cause they think we're wiped out."

"If we trail alone, do you suppose the Indians will scalp us--you and me?" quavered Doby. His bright dreams had been to win glory by defeating Indians in open battle. Never at any time had he planned to have them destroy _him_ on the sly.

"Think likely--yes," drawled Kenton. "Ye must git used to close calls. I've had 'em many and many a time. Don't wash yer face. That's yer big chance."

"Don't wash my face?" repeated Doby. "Don't wash my face!"

"The chief marked that paint daub an' set the feathers on ye for some reason. He liked that noisy whistle. 'Tis Injun nature to return a favor. Likely he stalked us when ye drew that pictur'. Blue jays may be his totem."

"O-oh!" breathed Doby. "O-oh! Will this mark save me? Will it save you?"

"Perhaps. Two guns won't amount to much if there 're Injuns in the ravine or the canebrake. We are in plain sight here; no use to try to hide."

They could not stay longer where they were in the cramped little hollow. They must follow the trace. There was no other way out. The doubly loaded horse stepped into the road; but he was uneasy. He snorted and backed about.

"Hold your face so the light will strike it. Turn from side to side so the blue in your cap will show," commanded Kenton.

Crows on a dead tree above the ravine shrieked something at them. Doby clutched the rein, for the bushes on the opposite bank had parted ever so little. Red of nostril, white of eye, the horse stood still and twitched his sensitive ears.

The crows called again. They circled widely. They returned to chatter a warning.

Kenton, who never was known to lose his self-control, said, calmly: "Go on. My gray curls will make a purtier scalp than your hank o' tow; 'f I don't fret, you needn't."

Doby went on. The horse needed constant petting and coaxing. The crows flapped and cawed, following a hiding something--an evil something moving near the trail. The horse quivered and shied at the unseen peril stalking him.

They reached the end of the ravine and descended into the canebrake of the bottom-land which led to the Kentucky River. Far away on the other side of the river they could see the stockade of Boonesboro.

"Could we signal the stockade?" faltered Doby.

"We'll be made into broth if we do," was the quiet reply.

Some Indians were cannibals. At this reminder, Doby's spine turned to water and he slumped into a heap. But Kenton caught him up and shook him forcibly with the words: "I once felt that-a-way myself. Ye can git used to 't. Keep right on. The cane's full of the pesky redskins."

"I don't see any," gasped Doby, in forlorn hope.

"Nary glimpse. Watch the crows. Show yer passport. They're there," declared Kenton.

When the horse found that he could not hang back, he bolted. Wilder and wilder his pace grew. Fear had seized him past all control.

Ever the canes, before, beside, behind their mad flight wavered for a wicked pursuing foe who peeped and ran.

Ever the crows in dread curiosity beat the air and croaked in apprehension.

Ever the boy, with his blue-jay feathers upright, clung to the saddle and lifted his white face so plainly marked, with an attempt at bravado.

As the ford came in sight and the trampled clearing at its edge showed an open space of ground they knew that the crisis was near.

What was that sound? Shrill and weird, cutting their ears, they caught the note of the pig's-bladder "shrieker"--Doby's whistle!

"Don't shoot," said Kenton. "Whatever happens--don't shoot--mind that--don't shoot!"

Then--from the canebrake on three sides of the clearing sprang the nimble-footed savages who had teased and outrun their horse. The painted bodies closed across the entrance to the ford. Paralyzed with fear, the sweating horse crouched.

The ears of Kenton and Doby were deafened with war-whoops, their nostrils sickened by dangling scalps. A horrid threatening dance swung round them. Tomahawks hurled past them. Color and noise, stench and motion, caught them in a hideous vortex. Each savage gibed at the boy's painted talisman, but each obeyed its message. They did not touch him.

Doby did not scream--he could not. Kenton never moved, resistance was futile. In a great swoop the Indians bore down upon them. They were covered with a shower of blue-jay feathers thrown by murderous fingers as with wild gestures and wilder laughter the Indians vanished into the canebrake to follow the buffalo north for more profitable hunting.

Surprised Boonesboro did not know what to make of the flurry. The sentries halloed from the "flankers," and the Long Hunters, who had never thought to see them again, swung wide the gates, and Kenton and Doby swam across to Boonesboro--the end of their trail.

VI

LEFT HIND FOOT

_A First Survey for the Underground Railway_

AS though bell metal had been softly touched, a note of clear low mirth came to the ear. Irresistible chuckles, one after another, in purest glee followed. Gurgle upon gurgle of laughter was added to it. And Obadiah Holman, who never in his life had heard anything quite so musical or so funny, burst into sympathetic giggles before he was really awake or knew what it was all about.

He was curled up on a bundle in an emigrant wagon. He raised his head and peeped out of the round hole in the back of its canvas cover.

A hard day's ride had tired him. He had climbed into this wagon for a short snooze and had taken instead a heavy sleep of several hours. During that time his company of emigrants had been joined by another wagon-train which they were expecting from a detour to the east, and all had gone into camp together for the night.

The boy looked out on such a curious scene that he asked of himself, "Where am I, Doby?" to be sure that he was not still in dreamland.

Against a purple sky, star-spangled, stood a solid bank of black-green forest. In front of this woodsy background were the white tops of the wagons. Silhouetted upon their canvases were the horses and the cows, picketed for the night inside the protecting wall of the wagon-beds.

In the center, under the red glow of after-supper fires, a few belated emigrants were finishing their tasks.

Among them Doby saw, what he had never seen before, what he had been expecting to see with this coming wagon-train, and what he was hoping for a glimpse of--black men!

Close to the tail-gate of the wagon, on a saddle which he was supposed to be cleaning, sat a youth who was the color of a "tar baby." There was a gourd in his hand. Out of his round throat came those sounds which had so delighted the boy. And every time he laughed he waved the gourd, threw back his kinky head, opened a tremendous mouth, and showed a double set of teeth perfect enough for a dentist's sign. A mocking-bird might have envied the trill in his laugh.

He rolled up his eyes until only the whites showed. Doby clutched the canvas in alarm. What if they should not come down again?

"So that is a darky," he thought as he stared. "I can guess how he got the name."

Many a boy has seen a darky, but few have ever watched one with a gourd fiddle, the primitive African violin.

New England Doby did not approve of slavery. He had been taught that it was a dreadful thing. So it gave him something of a surprise to see what he had supposed would be a miserable, downtrodden captive having such a very good time.

Tuning his fiddle and swinging his bow, the negro began to play and to dance and to sing, drawing round him a dozen or so of other black boys who joined the dance and the song, giving themselves up to such utter enjoyment as Doby had never seen among any white people.

At first his Northern ears could not make out the words of the song. When he had guessed at them, he listened with his attention so divided between the syllables and the melody and the negroes' appearance and actions, that their full meaning did not come to him until long afterward.

Night wind in the trees, peeper frogs in the sedges, bare feet thumping on the turf, and the sweet obligato of the gourd strings accompanied the lyric tenor, who sang:

"Dar am a b'ar,
A big, la'ge b'ar,
He wave hes tail so high,
He wave hes tail,
Hes big, la'ge tail
At no'th star in de sky.

"Dar am a b'ar,
A sma', wee b'ar,
He wave hes tail so high,
He wave hes tail,
Hes sma', wee tail
At no'th star in de sky.

"All night he wave,
Big b'ar he wave,
And show de nig' what dar.
He wave hes tail,
Hes big, la'ge tail,
'Til nigger see dat star.

"All night he wave,
Sma' b'ar he wave,
And show de nig' what dar.
He wave hes tail,
Hes sma', wee tail,
'Til nigger see dat star."

Several melodious baritones took up the air and a superb bass joined in. To this happy narcotic the boy gave himself up and went to sleep again.

Doby's place in the train was with Simon Kenton's group of mounted scouts. Many of them had belonged to Col. Richard Johnson's Kentucky regiment of rangers. From Boonesboro, they had accompanied this wagon party of Quaker emigrants northward on the road to Lexington.

The Quakers were a religious sect who did not believe in slavery. They had left the Carolinas, where it was practised, and were going north across the Ohio, where it was not allowed. They were opposed to war in any form and continually preached the gospel of peace.

Through the dangerous State of Kentucky, which was ever the battle-ground between the southern Creek and Cherokee, and the northern Shawnee and Delaware Indians, the rangers traveled with the Quakers to so intimidate the Indians that no fighting would be necessary.

The other wagon-train was from Virginia. It was made up of groups who had the greatest pride in family honor, worldly estates, and ceremonial government. They expected to found in the center of this fertile Kentucky new farms, and homes, where lavish hospitality and dignified elegance should imitate the easy life of the Old Dominion.

They were bringing their household goods, their slaves, and their domestic animals with them. All were armed and ready to defend their possessions and their views with vigor.

The Quakers, in serene self-denial, stood for the moral doctrine of freedom in body and mind and spirit. They wore plain clothes and used plain speech and practised plain living.

The common cause of keeping their scalps intact had linked these different peoples together for protection on the trip, just as the prospect of making a better living had driven them both northward through Cumberland Gap.

Oh, Cumberland Gap! That "high-swung gateway of the mountains!" What boy has not in fancy joined Daniel Boone when he held in his hand the key to this wondrous portal? When that famous frontiersman opened the gates and started on its course the most tremendous tide of emigration this continent had ever seen, and when as scout he went before his countrymen, he had more adventures than ever before fell to the lot of any one pioneer as he blazed for them the trail through the Middle West.

The spunky little settlements around the fort at Watauga, on the eastern side of the mountains, continually fought the Indians to keep them from extending their tribal lines north. By this bravery the Gap was kept open for travel. Henderson's land company secured home acres. Boone pointed out the acres and by the force of his splendid personality kept the scattered settlers loyal to the United States and to one another during the trying days of the Revolution.

Nothing could be better than the view from Cumberland Gap. Nothing much worse than the path through it. Rough, miry, stony, over-flowed, washed out, precipitous--all this and more! Every fault that a road could have this one displayed. Yet because it was the only road nature had cut through the mountains, Watauga guarded it and Boone's followers trod it as never road was traveled before.

Between 1775 and 1790 seventy thousand people sweated in the jagged up-hill climb to its sixteen hundred feet of height, paused for a moment to look at the sides of the mountains towering another thousand feet above the Gap, and then slid and scrambled down on the Kentucky side. In 1816 they were still coming over this wilderness road.

Doby was tired of the twice-told tales of its hardships. He wanted to make his rest-times as pleasant as possible, so on the second night he left the wagging gray-beards and in sheer exuberance he tried to run down a rabbit in the glade where they were encamped. All work and talk broke off to see him do it.

The younger the rabbit the easier to catch. With every day's growth of its hopping-muscles it waxes more enduring. Doby, having picked an older rabbit than he thought, was hard pressed to tire the lively creature out. He called for help. The older men instantly forbade the younger ones to join the hunt. The boy who began it must finish it to prove his right to the game.

He shouted to the darkies. They huddled in an excited bunch, but they did not come.

Then as a matter of honor Doby was obliged to catch that rabbit. So of course he did!

But he was over-tired, out of breath, and a little indignant as he said to the lyric tenor, "Next time, come and help." And he tried the grand manner of a Virginia slave-owner.

Such a bow and a scrape and a grin as he got!

"Yas, sir, nex' time, Mars'er Dob', yas, sir."

"Well, then, why didn't you come this time?"

"'Cause you is red-headed, Mars'er Dob'!" with a polite and complimentary flourish.

In anger too great for words, Doby stalked away. If he had had one of the Virginia whips he would have laid it on that darky then and there. Red-headed! He had pummeled many a chum for that one word.

"I am _not_ red-headed. It is the firelight that makes my hair look coppery. I don't so much mind being called tow-headed, because I _am_ a little bit tow-headed," he conceded, "but red-headed, never!"

"Don't bother to dress the rabbit," said Simon Kenton to Doby.

"Why not?" asked the boy, putting back his stone knife as quickly as he had pulled it out, for Kenton's slightest wish was law to him.

"The niggers'll steal it 'fore sun-up."

"Why?"

"Red-head for luck! That coon with a high voice needs a left hind foot, or I miss my guess."

"Why?"

"Watch and see," was the puzzling answer.

So Doby slept on top of his rabbit to save it. But in the morning it was gone.

He spied around.

About a freshly built knob of kinks on the tenor's head, the taint of over-warm rabbit fur was climbing above all other odors, as the tuneful one hummed, "Dar am a b'ar," with flagrant unconsciousness.

As an article of diet, Doby lost his interest in rabbit, but as a charm it might prove exciting, so he decided to keep still and "watch and see."

It is one of the results of slavery that the superstitions of the "quarters" creep into the "big house" where the master lives.

Thus it happened that when they came to Ashland, one of those splendid estates which slave labor made possible, in the neighborhood of Lexington, the lucky boy, Doby, who looked red-headed but was not, became one of the important persons invited with the Virginia "gentlemen," the scout "officers," and the Quaker "preachers," by the statesman, Henry Clay, to be his guest at dinner and to view his model house and grounds.

Some of the Virginians had known Henry Clay when, as the barefooted "mill boy" of the "Slashes"--a newly cleared region--he had ridden back and forth in the Old Dominion with grist for his widowed mother, and they now rejoiced in his self-made prosperity. Several of the scouts had worked with him in political changes and they were proud of his positions of trust. Many of the preachers of the "Society of Friends," as the Quakers called themselves, had discussed with the great leader the evils and injustice of slavery; no one knew better than they how hard Henry Clay worked to influence the laws which were intended to help the blacks' condition and which tended toward final emancipation for them.

In the evening, by torch-light on the lawn, darkies played the banjo and danced and sang for the company.

Not one of them equaled the lyric tenor of the wagon-train, so Doby wandered away from the lawn and in curiosity strolled out through the quarters where the slaves lived. All the little whitewashed houses were deserted, for the servants were allowed to look on at all festivities and "minstrel shows." He was turning back when from one of the cabins there came a tiny sound.