Boone, the simple and childlike, blushed under his tan, and Simon Kenton spoke for the first time.
"Now don't you be teasin' Dan'l," he said. "He's done all them things that people talk about, an' more, too, that he's hid, but he's plum' bashful. When anybody speaks of 'em he gets to squirmin'. I'm not that way. When I do a big thing, I'm goin' to tell about it."
Boone laughed and gave his comrade a look of mild reproof.
"Don't you believe what he tells you about either him or me," he said. "Simon's a good boy, but his tongue runs loose sometimes."
Henry knew that an explanation of his and Tom's appearance there was expected, and now he gave it.
"I've just escaped from the Indians, a Wyandot band, Mr. Boone," he said, "and I was lucky enough to meet in the forest four old comrades of mine. The other three are back about a mile. We came on ahead to scout. Indians of different tribes are in great numbers behind us."
"We reckoned that they were," said Boone. "Me an' Simon have been takin' a look through the woods ourselves, and we know that mighty big things are stirrin'."
"The biggest yet," said Henry. "We've been to New Orleans, and we've come back up the Mississippi into the Ohio with a big fleet of boats and canoes loaded with arms, ammunition, and all kinds of supplies. It is commanded by a brave man, Adam Colfax, and they mean to take all these things up the river to Pittsburgh, where they will be carried over the mountains to our people in the east who are fighting Great Britain."
"I've heard of that fleet, too," said Boone, "an' it's got to get to Pittsburgh, but it won't have any summer trip. Now, what did you hear among the Wyandots?"
"I saw chiefs from all the valley tribes, Wyandots, Shawnees, Miamis, Lenni-Lenape, Ottawas, and Illinois," replied Henry, "and they've bound themselves together for a great war. Their bands are on the march now to the meeting place on the Ohio, opposite the mouth of the Licking. The renegades, too, are with the Wyandots, Mr. Boone. I saw with my own eyes Girty, Blackstaffe, McKee, Eliot, Quarles, and Braxton Wyatt."