The Phantom of the River

by Edward Sylvester Ellis

The scout was surprised and somewhat alarmed for his friends over one or two facts which thus came to light. The Indian who paid so dearly for this little trick he attempted upon the white man was not the one that sat on the bank near the clearing while the boat was withdrawn from before him. This proved that more than one Shawanoe was down the river between the pioneers and the cabin in the clearing. The cawing from the Ohio side showed that the lynx-eyed watchers were there, with the unwelcome certainty that the Shawanoes were far more numerous than either Boone or Kenton had supposed.

"Wa-on-mon has been doing some good work," reflected Kenton, "since he sneaked out of sight, instead of meeting me for our last scrimmage. Dan'l is right when he says the reason The Panther done that warn't 'cause he was afeared of me, but' cause he seed a chance of hittin' a powerfuller blow than in sending nobody but Sime Kenton under. That's what he's up to, with a mighty big chance of doing what he set out to do."

The signal from the Ohio bank, and the encounter with the redskin, drove all hesitation from the ranger's mind regarding the canoe. He drew it from the water and upon the dry land, his paddle and rifle lying inside, and then, with no little labor, dragged it among the trees to the other side of the open space, where it was launched again, uninjured by its rough experience.

"I hope there ain't many such places," he muttered, as he took the paddle in hand; "'cause if there is, this old boat will suffer."

But night was closing in, and, with the coming of darkness, the need of such extreme caution would pass. The wind too, was now blowing so strongly up the river that it was not necessary to use the extreme caution against making any noise while pushing his way along the bank.

To Kenton's disgust, he had gone a little more than a hundred yards further when he struck another of the very places he had in mind. It was twice as broad as the one he had flanked a few minutes before, and did not offer the slightest concealment.

He checked the canoe, with the nose on the edge of the opening, and took several minutes to look over the ground and decide upon the best course to follow.

To most persons it must seem like an excess of caution for Kenton to hesitate to propel his boat across this open space when it confronted him. That there was any dusky foe crouching in the woods, with his eyes fixed upon that "clearing" in the water and watching for the appearance of Kenton, was a piece of fine-spun theorizing that entered the realms of the absurd. It was preposterous to suppose anything of the kind. Simon Kenton was too much of a veteran in woodcraft to make such preposterous mistakes.

But the unwelcome truth which stared him in the face was that he had been followed from the clearing, and the signal from the other side of the river, resembling the call of a crow, he believed referred to him. It looked as if there was an understanding between the Shawanoe scouts on the Ohio and those on the Kentucky side of the river.

As the matter stood, however, Kenton decided not to drag the canoe among the trees again. In the gathering darkness he was liable to injure it beyond repair, and in a brief while the gloom itself would afford him the screen he needed.