(No. 282.)
RUBY ROLAND,
THE GIRL SPY.
CHAPTER I.
THE RANGER’S RUSE.
A tall, muscular young fellow, dressed in hunter garb, came silently out of the woods from the north side of the Kentucky river, about a hundred years ago, and pausing by the bole of a gigantic beech tree, scanned the opposite shore with keen, silent attention.
There was a peculiar air of resolute fearless deviltry in the face of the young hunter, coupled with the piercing, roving glances of his intensely black eyes, that showed he was no novice to the trade of hunter and scout. He was in the midst of the hunting-grounds of Shawnee and Delaware, miles away from the then infant settlement of Boonesborough; and he was all alone with his rifle and knife, to take care of himself.
The look of his face abundantly evinced that he felt quite equal to the task, and only the acquired caution of his craft kept him from wading boldly into the river at once.
But as it was, he had learned the lesson of the successful Indian-slayer by hard experience. Therefore, now, it was with a long, deep scrutiny that he scanned the opposite banks, across the first open piece of landscape he had come on in a day’s travel. On the opposite bank all was still as death, save for the occasional note of a bird. It was late in May and the forest was all blinded with its canopy of leaves, while game was distant and hiding in the coverts.
As the young hunter looked, a black squirrel, shyest of all its kind, ran out on a limb of a tree on the other side of the river, and stood, whisking its tail and chattering, before his eyes, above the stream.
“Wal,” muttered the young man, as he stepped boldly out, “thar kurn’t be much to be skeered on when you’re thar, my little kuss. Go ahead, Simon.”