"Will we eat? will we eat? Oh, try us, try us," chanted Henry and Paul in chorus, their mouths stretching simultaneously into wide grins, and Ross grinned back in sympathy.
The revulsion had come for the two boys. After so much danger and suffering, the sense of safety and the warmth penetrating their bones made them feel like little children, and they seized each other in a friendly scuffle, which terminated only when they were about to roll into the fire. Then they ate venison as if they had been famished. Afterwards, when they were asleep on their blankets before the fire, Ross said to Mr. Pennypacker:
"They did well, for youngsters."
"They certainly did, Mr. Ross," said the master. "I confess to you that there were times to-day when learning seemed to offer no consolation."
Ross smiled a little, and then his face quickly became grave.
"It's what we've got to go through out here," he said. "Every settlement will have to stand the storm."
A vigilant watch was kept all the long night but there was no sign of a second Shawnee attack. Ross had reckoned truly when he thought the Shawnees would not care to risk further pursuit, and the next day they resumed their journey, under a drying sun.
They were not troubled any more by Indian attacks, but the rest of the way was not without other dangers. The rivers were swollen by the spring rains, and they had great trouble in carrying the salt across on the swimming horses. Once Paul was swept down by a swift and powerful current, but Henry managed to seize and hold him until others came to the rescue. Men and boys alike laughed over their trials, because they felt now all the joy of victory, and their rapid march south amid the glories of spring, unfolding before them, appealed to the instincts of everyone in the band, the same instincts that had brought them from the East into the wilderness.
They were passing through the region that came to be known in later days as the Garden of Kentucky. Then it was covered with magnificent forest and now they threaded their way through the dense canebrake. Squirrels chattered in every tree top, deer swarmed in the woods, and the buffalo was to be found in almost every glen.
"I do not wonder," said the thoughtful schoolmaster, "that the Indian should be loath to give up such choice hunting grounds, but, fight as cunningly and bravely as he will, his fate will come."