Well, lest I draw this poor tale out to such length as to weary him who may read, it is enough if I say that three times more did we succeed in finding targets for our rifles by using the poles vigorously, and I was certain that from the moment the scout was awakened until the savages refused to come out at our bidding, we had sent bullets into no less than thirteen of them.
Considering the fact that their number could not have exceeded forty, judging from what we had seen and heard, this work of ours was well calculated to discourage them.
They had poured into the pile of logs no less than an hundred bullets, and yet we had not received a scratch!
I almost forgot that I was hungry or thirsty, for the fever of killing was upon me, and my one hope was that we might draw them two or three times more in order to give the villainous brutes such a lesson in blood-letting as they had never learned before.
In this I was disappointed, however, for the snakes had either come to understand our game, or were drawn off to nurse their wounds, and we saw no more of them.
At nightfall we stole cautiously out from among the fallen timber, and not a shot was sent after us.
A mile or more from the scene of our greatest triumph we made a halt that we might quench our thirst from the river, and during the night our march was less hurried than when we began the race.
We stopped for breakfast next morning, after shooting a turkey, and by this time it was certain that the painted reptiles who had relied on spilling our blood, no longer retained such desire at the price we set upon it.
After this we pushed forward at a leisurely pace, and in comparative security, until we arrived at Corn Island, where my mother greeted Paul and me as if we were come from the dead.
What we did there, or what further adventures befell Simon Kenton before he was able to revisit his home in Virginia, is not for me to set down here, since it forms a tale by itself. Neither can I relate how I made a home for my mother in that new settlement which came to be known by the name of Louisville; but it seems necessary I should copy from what another has written, the story of how Major Clarke succeeded in wresting the valley of the Mississippi from the clutches of the British, and with such account I bring this writing to an end, hoping others may find as much pleasure in the reading as I have in the writing of it.