We spent no time in leave-taking after once having made ready for the journey. It was as if we three formed a separate command, and had no comrades among the main body of the volunteers, therefore it was not necessary we should say good-by.
Simon Kenton was to carry up the Ohio certain papers with which Major Clarke had entrusted him, and once these were in his possession there was nothing to detain us at Kaskaskia.
We took our departure from the post a full half hour before daybreak, when none save the sentinels were there to see us push off from the shore, and allowed the canoe to drift down the river until we were come to the Ohio.
It would be more laborious to paddle the dugout against the swift current than to walk, and we had already decided to make our way through the wilderness on foot, ever keeping within a short distance of the river, where we might expect to get the earliest information if the savages were moving about bent on mischief.
We came to a halt at a point where we waited for the flat-boats on the journey down, and here a day was spent in procuring and cooking meat, for Simon Kenton had decided that once the long tramp was really begun we would push forward at the best possible pace. It was reasonable to believe that in a short time we would have arrived at that portion of the country where it might not be well to discharge a rifle simply for the purpose of killing game.
We did not expect to make the journey without some danger of coming across small parties of the painted brutes who thirsted for the blood of white people; but it was not in our thoughts that we should encounter any serious dangers. The worst of the tramp, so we believed, might be the labor of pushing on through the underbrush until the many miles which lay between us and Corn Island had been traversed.
Simon Kenton was in particularly good humor on that morning when, all our preparations completed, we left the camping place with our faces turned toward the north, and I was exceedingly happy, for at the end of the journey my mother was waiting to greet me.
During two full days we pressed steadily onward, seeing nothing to cause alarm, and making reasonably good progress, and then came that which threatened a fatal ending to what had been a most successful journey.
We encamped on the second night in a small thicket of scrub where the foliage was so dense that the chill night wind was shut out as completely as if we had been within four walls of stout logs, and felt so secure that Simon Kenton himself had proposed we build a light blaze to cook a turkey we had just killed.
The meat was roasted, and we ate such a supper as can be enjoyed only by those who have performed a full day's labor, and after the meal was come to an end Paul and I fell asleep even as we sat before the fire.