CHAPTER II.
THE BOY PIONEER—DEERFOOT, THE SHAWANOE.
Before proceeding further it is proper to give the information the reader needs in order to understand the incidents that follow.
Macaiah Preston and his wife were among the original settlers of Wild Oaks, a small town on the Kentucky side of the Ohio, during the latter portion of the last century, their only child being Ned, who has already been introduced to the reader. Beside him they had the bound boy Wildblossom Brown, a heavy-set, good-natured and sturdy negro lad, whom they took with them at the time they removed from Western Pennsylvania. He was faithful and devoted, and he received the best of treatment from his master and mistress.
Ned was taller and more graceful than the African, and the instruction from his father had endowed him with more book learning than generally falls to the lot of boys placed in his circumstances. Besides this, Mr. Preston was one of the most noted hunters and marksmen in the settlement, and he gave Ned thorough training in the art which is always such a delight for a boy to acquire.
When Ned was thirteen years old he fired one day at a squirrel on the topmost branch of a mountain ash, and brought it down, with its body shattered by the bullet of his rifle. The father quietly contemplated the work for a minute or so, and then, without a word, cut a hickory stick, and proceeded to trim it. While he was thus employed Ned was looking sideways at him, gouging his eyes with his knuckles and muttering,
"You might excuse me this time—I didn't think."
When the hickory was properly trimmed, the father deliberately took his son by his coat collar with one hand and applied the stick with the other, during which the lad danced and shouted like a wild Miami Indian. The trouncing completed, the only remark made by the father was—
"After this I reckon when you shoot a squirrel you will hit him in the head."
"I reckon I will," sniffled Ned, who was certain never to forget the instructions of his parent on that point.
Such was the training of Ned Preston; and at the age of sixteen, when we introduce him to the reader, there were none of his years who was his superior in backwoods "lore" and woodcraft.