The Pioneer Boys on the
Great Lakes
CHAPTER I
THE ALARM BELL
"Hark! Bob, what can all that shouting mean?"
"I'm sure I don't know, Sandy."
"It comes from the other side of the settlement, doesn't it?"
"True enough, brother; for you see the wind carries the sounds; and that is now in the west."
"Oh! I wonder what it can be; and if it means trouble for us, after all these months of peace!"
The two Armstrong boys, Robert and Alexander, who usually went by the shorter names of Bob and Sandy, stood resting on their hoes while listening anxiously to the rapidly increasing clamor.
In the clearing close by stood the cabin of the Ohio settler, David Armstrong. The time was close to early fall, at a time when the strained relations between England and her American colonies had almost reached the breaking-point. But away out here, far removed from civilization, the hardy pioneers were only concerned regarding possible uprisings of the red men; and the widening of their fields, where corn might be cultivated profitably, and tobacco grown.
Early in the preceding spring the Armstrong family, consisting of David, his gentle wife, Mary, the two lads, now fifteen and sixteen years of age, and a young sister named Kate, had left their Virginia home to dare the unknown perils of the wilderness in the hope of bettering their condition.[1]