The Forest Runners: A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky

AUTHOR OF THE YOUNG TRAILERS
D. APPLETON-CENTURY COMPANY INCORPORATED
NEW YORK LONDON 1936
1908, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1935, BY EQUITABLE TRUST CO Printed in the United States of America
BOOKS BY JOSEPH A. ALTSHELER
THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR SERIES The Hunters of the Hills The Rulers of the Lakes The Lords of the Wild The Shadow of the North The Masters of the Peaks The Sun of Quebec THE YOUNG TRAILERS SERIES The Young Trailers The Forest Runners The Keepers of the Trail The Eyes of the Woods The Free Rangers The Riflemen of the Ohio The Scouts of the Valley The Border Watch THE TEXAN SERIES The Texan Star The Texan Scouts The Texan Triumph THE CIVIL WAR SERIES The Guns of Bull Run The Guns of Shiloh The Scouts of Stonewall The Sword of Antietam The Star of Gettysburg The Rock of Chickamauga The Shades of the Wilderness The Tree of Appomattox THE GREAT WEST SERIES The Lost Hunters The Great Sioux Trail THE WORLD WAR SERIES The Guns of Europe The Forest of Swords The Hosts of the Air BOOKS NOT IN SERIES Apache Gold The Quest of the Four The Last of the Chiefs In Circling Camps The Last Rebel A Soldier of Manhattan The Sun of Saratoga A Herald of the West The Wilderness Road My Captive The Candidate
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY New York London
This story, while independent in itself, continues the fortunes of the two boys who were the central characters of The Young Trailers.
PAUL
Paul stopped in a little open space, and looked around all the circle of the forest. Everywhere it was the same—just the curving wall of red and brown, and beyond, the blue sky, flecked with tiny clouds of white. The wilderness was full of beauty, charged with the glory of peace and silence, and there was naught to indicate that man had ever come. The leaves rippled a little in the gentle west wind, and the crisping grass bowed before it; but Paul saw no living being, save himself, in the vast, empty world.
The boy was troubled and, despite his life in the woods, he had full right to be. This was the great haunted forest of Kain-tuck-ee , where the red man made his most desperate stand, and none ever knew when or whence danger would come. Moreover, he was lost, and the forest told him nothing; he was not like his friend, Henry Ware, born to the forest, the heir to all the primeval instincts, alive to every sight and sound, and able to read the slightest warning the wilderness might give. Paul Cotter was a student, a lover of books, and a coming statesman. Fate, it seemed, had chosen that he and Henry Ware should go hand in hand, but for different tasks.