“Now, Simon,” said the elder scout, “there are no sign about here yet, but that doesn’t say there won’t be before long. We’ve a good day’s tramp to Harrodsburg, and, tew chances to one, the Shawnees will take a short cut and lie in wait for us at the town, leaving a small party to follow the lady’s trail. It’s a chance if they hit upon ours. So you take the right hand, I’ll take the left, and Miss, here, shall have the middle. Forward.”
Without another word the three set out on their perilous tramp through the silent woods, at a long distance from each other, stealing like shadows among the trees, and glancing from side to side as they went, suspicious of every rustling leaf.
Boone was at least a hundred yards to the left and in front, very rarely visible at all, but all eyes and ears in the direction he was guarding, the quarter from which he himself thought the danger most imminent.
Simon Kenton was at an equal distance from Ruby on the other side, and never allowed a glimpse of himself, the only announcement of his presence being the occasional whistle of a robin from the leafy covert.
Little Ruby, in the center, held her own course fearlessly, flitting from tree to tree, and always peering ahead from behind every trunk, to see that the coast was clear, before flitting to another. As noiseless as a startled bird, she passed through the dense forest toward Harrodsburg, without a sounding footfall, and many a time her two companions would have thought she had disappeared, but for the answering signals which she sent back to Kenton, whenever he was doubtful.
Instead of finding the little girl an incumbrance, both hunters were compelled to admit that her Indian education had made her a more skillful hider than they.
Thus the three companions pressed through the silent forest in a south-westerly direction, cutting across the bend of the stream which separated them from Harrodsburg. They had only about twenty-five miles to go in a direct line, but in the woods, and among wily foes like the red-men, such a distance took double the time to traverse that it would on a high-road in a quiet country. Every half-hour they called a halt, while the two scouts went on a circuit on either hand, to look for sign of enemies in pursuit.
For a long time nothing was found. The sun climbed up overhead, and darted his flaming arrows through the leaves, the birds ceased to sing, and only the sleepy whirr of the cicada recurred at intervals to make the silence deeper. Far away in the woods they could hear the occasional mournful boom boom of the wood dove, but the squirrels and deer were all silent and hidden away.
At noon Boone uttered the cry of the wood dove three times in succession, as a signal to close, and the three friends met together under a great tree.
“The enemy have passed ahead toward Harrodsburg,” said the hunter, in a low tone. “I have just come on a trail not more than three hours old, off to the left. They have twenty warriors with them, and have gone to join Blackfish and his band at Harrodsburg.”