CHAPTER I
AFTER FRESH VENISON
"Shall we give it up for to-day, Sandy?"
"But the afternoon is only half spent, Bob, and we have had such poor luck hunting."
"Just so; but it might have been worse. Two hickory-fed squirrels and a plump 'possum make a fair bag after such a hard winter."
"Not so very much where there are five mouths to fill. Oh! Bob, if only we could get the deer that made these tracks! I'm tired of jerked venison." ([Note 1.])[A]
Robert Armstrong, sixteen years of age, looked down upon the ground where the trail of the deer was well defined, and evidently he, too, felt some of the eagerness that possessed his more impulsive brother.
It was the days previous to the Revolution. Around the two youths stretched the great primeval Virginia wilderness, sparsely settled, and hedged in by the chain of Alleghany Mountains, beyond which only a few venturesome spirits had ever dared journey; and some of these bold pioneers had never come back to tell the tale of their discoveries and exploits.
The two boys had started from their cabin home, just outside a small Virginia town, determined to secure fresh food for the family, at that time facing unusual privation.