“I never knew the prospect of danger or hard work to hold you back in anything you wanted to do,” he said.
Boone laughed.
“I’ve always tried not to let them, I reckon,” said he.
“This fall,” and the colonel spoke slowly, “I am going to send an exploring party into the northwest country; and later, if it’s what I think it is, I’ll want a party of trail makers and a man to treat with the Shawnees. How would you like to take charge of this matter for me?”
For a moment Boone sat his horse, staring at the speaker.
“You mean it?” he said, at last.
“I do.”
The backwoodsman held out a strong brown hand; Colonel Henderson gripped it.
“I’m with you,” said Boone, in a tone of deep satisfaction. “It’s a thing I’ve been sort of dreaming of for years. That great region, now given over to the Indian hunters and wild beasts, is calling the white man. I heard its voice as I stood among the lonely hills, in the forests, and upon the banks of its rivers. Once there with their families, their plows and their horses, their cabins built, the settler will meet——”
“Death!” said a strange voice; and, startled, both Boone and Colonel Henderson turned their eyes in the direction from which it came.