Without further ado he descended the bank, deep, brown, and bare, for some sixty feet, and then ran quickly across a bed of sand into the shallow stream.
The Kentucky river, in winter a broad and powerful stream, had dwindled under the summer heats to a rivulet not more than two hundred feet across, running over a sandy rocky bed walled in by high banks.
Into this stream waded the hunter, and soon found himself midway between the banks and up to his armpits in water. He was obliged to lift up rifle and powder-horn over his head as he waded along, and every now and then he would stop to brace himself against the current, and glance anxiously up and down either side of the river, as if anticipating the presence of enemies, ready to take him at advantage.
At last the water began to sink below his arms; and slowly he emerged from the river, strode through the shallows, and stood on the opposite shore.
“By the holy poker!” he muttered, as he climbed the further bank, “that ar’s a bad scrape fur to ketch a kuss in. You’d best git to cover right smartly, Simon, ef you’re the spy you used to was. Git!”
And, as he spoke, he hurried up the bank into the woods, and threw himself down under a tree, completely hidden from sight. With the hunter’s instinct, he lay still as death, listening intently for sounds. The presence of the squirrel had assured him of the quiet of things before, or he would not have ventured where he did. But, the hunter knew too well that a very few minutes were able to change the whole current of events around him, and that the chance passing of a single Indian might render his own situation very perilous.
It was therefore with the keenest attention that he looked and listened in the woods all round, before going further.
Presently came the sweet pipe of a red-bird from a tree not far off, and the hunter muttered:
“All right on that side.”