The Riflemen of the Ohio: A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River"

E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)

The Riflemen of the Ohio, while a complete story in itself, continues the fortunes of Henry Ware, Paul Cotter, and their friends, who were the central characters in The Young Trailers, The Forest Runners, The Keepers of the Trail, The Eyes of the Woods, and The Free Rangers.
The fleet of boats and canoes bearing supplies for the far east turned from the Mississippi into the wide mouth of the Ohio, and it seemed, for a time, that they had come into a larger river instead of a tributary. The splendid stream, called by the Indians The Beautiful River, flowed silently, a huge flood between high banks, and there was not one among the voyagers who did not feel instinctively the depths beneath him.
A single impulse caused every paddle and oar to lie at rest a few moments, and, while they swung gently with the slow current just beyond the point where one merged into the other, they looked at the two mighty rivers, the Mississippi, coming from the vast unknown depths of the northwest, rising no man knew where, and the Ohio, trailing its easy length a thousand miles through thick forests haunted by the most warlike tribes of North America. The smaller river—small only by comparison—bore the greater dangers, and they knew it.
It was the fleet of Adam Colfax, and the five who had gone to New Orleans and who had come back, triumphing over so many dangers in the coming and the going, were still with him. Henry Ware, Paul Cotter, and Shif'less Sol Hyde sat in the foremost boat, and the one just behind them contained Silent Tom Ross and Long Jim Hart. After the great battle on the Lower Mississippi in which they defeated the Indians and desperadoes under Alvarez, the voyage had remained peaceful as they pulled up to the Ohio.
It's our own river again, Henry, said Paul. Both felt a sort of proprietary interest in the Ohio.