“The chief will love the singing-bird while he lives; when he dies, her face will be in his heart,” said the warrior, fondly.
“When does the chief go on the war-path?” asked the girl.
“Three sleeps more and the Shawnees will burst like a thunder-cloud on the pale-faces,” replied the Indian.
“On the Ohio?”
“Yes,” answered the chief.
“Now, if the heathen would only say whar,” muttered Boone, listening eagerly.
“The white-skins will fight hard.” The girl was thinking of the peril that her lover was about to encounter.
“The red-men will fight as they have never fought before,” said the warrior. “The tomahawk and brand shall scourge the pale-face from the ground that the Great Spirit gave to the Indian. The waters of the Kanawha shall run red with blood. The Shawnees have not forgotten the many braves that fell by the deadly leaden hail of the white-skins many moons ago, by the Ohio and Kanawha.”
The chief referred to the defeat sustained by the Indians at the hands of the border-men commanded by Lewis, which took place some years before the time of the action of our story.
“It is against Point Pleasant, then,” said Boone, to himself, as the words of the Indian fell upon his ear. “Well, let ’em come! I reckon we can blaze ’em as bad the second time as we did the first. Now, if these young critters would only make tracks out o’ this, how quick I’d make a bee-line for the Ohio. But—dog-gone their copper-colored hides!—they don’t seem at all in a hurry to go.”