Sandy, always impulsive, threw his clumsy hoe to the ground, and, jumping over to the adjacent tree, against which their flint-lock muskets leaned, caught up his own weapon with trembling fingers. ([Note 1.])[A]
Bob was the more composed of the two, and it was his voice that now restrained his brother.
"Wait, Sandy," he said, "we are not so far off but that we can reach the cabin quickly."
"But, listen to all that noise, Bob," returned the other, fingering his gun eagerly. "Surely something has happened. Perhaps another tree has fallen the wrong way, and this time done worse than what happened to our father."
The matter to which Sandy referred had been an unfortunate accident whereby David Armstrong had barely escaped with his life. A tree he was chopping had by some means twisted around in falling, so that the settler was caught under the heavy limbs. Only by what seemed a miracle had his life been spared. As it was, he still had an arm in a sling, and was unable to keep up the work he had planned, so that a double duty devolved upon his sons.
"No, I don't think that can be the trouble," continued Bob, slowly. "I heard no crash of a tree. Besides, I fear that there is a note of alarm in the cries; it is as if men were answering each other. There! that time I could almost hear what was being shouted, only the breeze changed a second too soon."
"Could it be Daniel Boone who has come, or perhaps that young ranger, Simon Kenton, whom you and I liked so much when we saw him long ago?" suggested Sandy, with new eagerness; for, to tell the truth, he had greatly admired Kenton when the young friend of Colonel Boone visited the new settlement, and he secretly aspired to follow in his footsteps.
"No, I am afraid it cannot be that," Bob went on, soberly. "They might shout in that case; but there would be joy, and not fear, expressed. Hark! there it rises again! You have keen hearing, Sandy; did you not make out what our neighbor, Peleg Green, was calling then?"
Sandy turned a pale face toward his companion. These two boys had been through numerous perils in common, and were possessed of a great measure of courage; but, after all, they were only half-grown lads, and the sudden coming of this unknown peril filled them with dread.