“We must run!” said one quickly. “Run, or we shall all be killed!” And they took to cover without delay, and went crashing through the forest and cane-brake until the sounds of their retreat were lost in the distance.
“Father!” came from Jemima Boone, and in her joy she ran and threw herself into her parent’s arms. The Callaway girls were equally glad to be rescued.
Some of the members of the party were anxious to follow up the fleeing Indians and lay them all low, but Daniel Boone objected.
“I think the best thing we can do is to get back to the fort,” he said.
In his own mind Daniel Boone had come to the conclusion that the Indians were preparing for an early attack on the fort at Boonesborough. Had he been asked for his reasons he could scarcely have given them. To him it was “in the air”—that feeling that sometimes come to one as a forewarning of coming evil.
It was learned that the girls had been treated fairly well by the Indians, for which the whites were thankful. A midday meal was had of the food the red men had been preparing, and after a short rest the journey to the fort was begun.
So far the weather had been fair, but now it began to cloud up, and a cold spring storm set in which speedily wet the party thoroughly.
“We might as well go into camp,” said Daniel Boone at three in the afternoon. “I know of a fairly good shelter close by here,” and he led them to where a clump of gnarled trees overhung a bank of rocks and dirt. Among these roots some hunters had cleaned out an opening as large as a fair-sized room, and here the girls were kept out of the wet, while the men folks built a large camp-fire at which to dry themselves.
Just above the first clump of trees was a second, and after the camp-fire was lit, Joe and John Ford moved to the spot to see if they could not fix up some sort of shelter for themselves for the night.
“It will be better than lying out under the trees in the rain,” said John Ford. “I’ve had a bit of rheumatism the past winter, and I do not want more of it.”