"Yes, it was Marshall Page, I think," answered Major Gilcrest; "but why your exclamation, Mr. Dudley? Do you know any one of that name?"
"I can't recall that I do," answered young Dudley; "but the name seems familiar, and, in fact, I have a dim impression, absurd though it may seem to you, of having heard or experienced many incidents such as you and Mr. Rogers have been describing. But my impressions may be baseless."
"Your impressions," said Gilcrest, "are doubtless only the faint memory of some tale heard in your early childhood. Such harrowing incidents as Mason and I were recalling were common enough in the pioneer days, and have furnished the theme of many a fireside recital. As for Marshall Page, you very likely have known some one of the name; for I believe there are still many Pages living in Virginia and Maryland; but you can not have known the man I mean—either Marshall Page or his brother, whose Christian name I can not recall just now—for he was killed there on the banks of the Licking while bravely helping his comrades to escape. Which brother was it, Mason?"
"Blest ef I know," Rogers replied; "but one, whicheveh it wuz, wuz killed at the Licking, an' the otheh wuz captured by the savages. Seems to me, though, I heard aftehwa'ds thet he escaped befoh they got to the Injun town way back in Ohio, an' thet he turned up agin at Bryan's thet fall, an' took the little Page boy back across the mountains to his own people. Wuzn't thet the way uv it, Cynthy Ann?"
"Yes," Mrs. Rogers answered, "Mary Jane Hart, who kept the little boy with her at the station afteh his motheh died, tole me about it the nex' summeh when she come oveh to Houston's one day, an' uv how she hated to part with him; fur she hed no childurn uv her own then, an' hed took a mighty fancy to the pore little fellah."
"Speaking of Netherland's and Page's brave deed," here spoke Major Gilcrest, "Mason, do you remember Aaron Reynolds' equally brave and self-sacrificing rescue of young Patterson that day?"
And the two veterans, spurred by each other's promptings into livelier recollection, painted in vivid colors many more of the stirring incidents of that most tragic event in the annals of pioneer Kentucky, the battle of Blue Lick Springs.
Young Dudley and Henry Rogers, their fighting blood aroused by the realistic portrayal, sat by with kindling eyes and quickened pulses, while each in his heart pictured some deed of daring heroism which himself might have achieved had he been in that memorable battle.
Mrs. Rogers' sewing lay unheeded in her lap as she rocked slowly to and fro, her gaze fixed upon the fire. She, too, was painting pictures and seeing visions of the long ago—pictures which included not only the heroic band of Kentucky's defenders in the midst of the bloody horrors of that battlefield, but also that band of devoted women shut up alone with their helpless little ones in that lonely station, not knowing what terrible fate was befalling husbands, brothers, kinsmen out in the wilderness, nor what even greater evils from lurking foes might at any moment beset themselves within their stockade fortress; and her brave lip trembled and the visions in the fire became dimmed and blurred as she thought of that terrible ride under the scorching rays of the August sun, and of the eighteen-months-old babe, her little William, who, already ailing before the departure from Houston's, and unable to bear the merciless heat of the long journey, had died in her arms at Bryan's two days later—hours before her husband returned from that ill-fated march to the Licking.
"No," she thought, as she wiped the tears from her eyes, and resumed her sewing, "our men didn't hev all the strugglin's an' the trials; we women fought our battles, too; an' ours, afteh all, wuz the hardest parts."