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NICK OF THE WOODS

Or, Adventures of Prairie Life

by

ROBERT M. BIRD, M.D.

Unenlightened man—
A savage, roaming through the woods and wilds
In quest of prey, and with th' unfashiomed fur
Bough clad.

THOMPSON.

PREFACE.

At the period when "Nick of the Woods" was written, the genius of Chateaubriand and of Cooper had thrown a poetical illusion over the Indian character; and the red men were presented—almost stereotyped in the popular mind—as the embodiments of grand and tender sentiment—a new style of the beau-ideal—brave, gentle, loving, refined, honourable, romantic personages—nature's nobles, the chivalry of the forest. It may be submitted that such are not the lineaments of the race—that they never were the lineaments of any race existing in an uncivilised state—indeed, could not be—and that such conceptions as Atala and Uncas are beautiful unrealities and fictions merely, as imaginary and contrary to nature as the shepherd swains of the old pastoral school of rhyme and romance; at all events, that one does not find beings of this class, or any thing in the slightest degree resembling them, among the tribes now known to travellers and legislators. The Indian is doubtless a gentleman; but he is a gentleman who wears a very dirty shirt, and lives a very miserable life, having nothing to employ him or keep him alive except the pleasures of the chase and of the scalp-hunt—which we dignify with the name of war. The writer differed from his critical friends, and from many philanthropists, in believing the Indian to be capable—perfectly capable, where restraint assists the work of friendly instruction—of civilisation: the Choctaws and Cherokees, and the ancient Mexicans and Peruvians, prove it; but, in his natural barbaric state, he is a barbarian—and it is not possible he could be anything else. The purposes of the author, in his book, confined him to real Indians. He drew them as, in his judgment, they existed—and as, according to all observation, they still exist wherever not softened by cultivation,—ignorant, violent, debased, brutal; he drew them, too, as they appeared, and still appear, in war—or the scalp-hunt—when all the worst deformities of the savage temperament receive their strongest and fiercest development.

Having, therefore, no other, and certainly no worse, desire than to make his delineations in this regard as correct and true to nature as he could, it was with no little surprise he found himself taken to account by some of the critical gentry, on the charge of entertaining the humane design of influencing the passions of his countrymen against the remnant of an unfortunate race, with a view of excusing the wrongs done to it by the whites, if not of actually hastening the period of that "final destruction" which it pleases so many men, against all probability, if not against all possibility, to predict as a certain future event. Had the accusation been confined to the reviewers, he might not, perhaps, have thought it safe to complain; but currency was given to it in a quarter which renders a disclaimer the more reasonable or the less presumptuous. One may contend with a brother author who dares not resist the verdict of the critics. In the English edition of the novel, published at the same time as the American, in a preface furnished by Mr. Ainsworth, the distinguished author of "Rookwood," "Crichton," &c. &c., to whom he is indebted for many polite and obliging expressions respecting it, it is hinted, hypothetically, that the writer's views were "coloured by national antipathy, and by a desire to justify the encroachments of his countrymen upon the persecuted natives, rather than by a reasonable estimate of the subject." The accused notices this fancy, however injurious he first felt it to be, less to refute than to smile at it. He prefers to make a more philosophic and practical application. The real inference to be drawn is, that he has succeeded very ill in this, somewhat essential, portion of his plan,—on the principle that the composition must be amiss, the design of which is so readily misapprehended. He may plead guilty to the defect; but he cannot admit the charge to have had any foundation in truth.

The writer confesses to have felt a little concern at an imputation, which was once faintly attempted to be made, he scarcely now remembers by whom, that in the character of Nathan Slaughter he intended to throw a slur upon the peaceful Society of Friends, of which Nathan is described as having been an unworthy member. This notion is undeserving of serious challenge. The whole object was here to portray the peculiar characteristics of a class of men, very limited, of course, in number, but found, in the old Indian days, scattered, at intervals, along the extreme frontier of every State, from New York to Georgia; men in whom the terrible barbarities of the savages, suffered through their families, or their friends and neighbours, had wrought a change of temper as strange as fearful. That passion is the mightiest which overcomes the most powerful restraints and prostrates the strongest barriers; and there was a dramatic propriety, at least, in associating with such a character as Nathan's, obstacles of faith and habit, which gave the greater force to his deeds and a deeper mystery to his story. No one conversant with the history of border affairs can fail to recollect some one or more instances of solitary men, bereaved fathers or orphaned sons, the sole survivors, sometimes, of exterminated households, who remained only to devote themselves to lives of vengeance; and "Indian-hating" (which implied the fullest indulgence of a rancorous animosity no blood could appease) was so far from being an uncommon passion in some particular districts, that it was thought to have infected, occasionally, persons, otherwise of good repute, who ranged the woods, intent on private adventures, which they were careful to conceal from the public eye. The author remembers, in the published journal of an old traveller—an Englishman, and, as he thinks, a Friend; but he cannot be certain of this fact, the name having escaped him, and the loose memorandum he made at the time, having been mislaid—who visited the region of the upper Ohio towards the close of the last century, an observation on this subject, which made too deep an impression to be easily forgotten. It was stated, as the consequence of the Indian atrocities, that such were the extent and depth of the vindictive feeling throughout the community, that it was suspected in some cases to have reached men whose faith was opposed to warfare and bloodshed. The legend of Wandering Nathan is, no doubt, an idle and unfounded one, although some vague notions touching the existence of just such a personage, whose habitat was referred to Western Pennsylvania, used to prevail among the cotemporaries, or immediate successors, of Boone and Kenton, M'Colloch and Wetzel. It is enough, however, for the author to be sustained in such a matter by poetical possibility; and he can afford to be indifferent to a charge which has the scarce consistent merit of imputing to him, at one and the same time, hostility towards the most warlike and the most peaceable of mankind.

NICK OF THE WOODS.

CHAPTER I.

The sun of an August afternoon, 1782, was yet blazing upon the rude palisades and equally rude cabins of one of the principal stations in Lincoln county, when a long train of emigrants, issuing from the southern forest, wound its way over the clearings, and among the waving maize-fields that surrounded the settlement, and approached the chief gate of its enclosure.

The party was numerous, consisting perhaps of seven or eight score individuals in all, men, women, and children, the last bearing that proportion to the others in point of numbers usually found in a borderer's family, and thus, with the help of pack-horses, cattle, and a few negroes, the property of the more wealthy emigrants, scattered here and there throughout the assemblage, giving to the whole train the appearance of an army, or moving village, of Vandals in quest of some new home to be won with the edge of the sword. Of the whole number there were at least fifty well-armed; some of these, however, being striplings of fourteen, and, in one or two instances, even of twelve, who balanced the big rifle on their shoulders, or sustained it over their saddle-bows, with all the gravity and dignity of grown warriors; while some few of the negroes were provided with the same formidable weapons. In fact, the dangers of the journey through the wilderness required that every individual of a party should be well armed, who was at all capable of bearing arms; and this was a kind of capacity which necessity instilled into the American frontiersman in the earliest infancy.

Of this armed force, such as it was, the two principal divisions, all well mounted, or at least provided with horses, which they rode or not as the humour seized them, were distributed in military order on the front and in the rear; while scouts, leading in the van, and flanking parties beating the woods on either side, where the nature of the country permitted, indicated still further the presence of a martial spirit on the part of the leaders. The women and children, stowed carefully away, for the most part with other valuable chattels, on the backs of pack-horses, were mingled with droves of cattle in the centre, many of which were made to bear burdens as well as the horses. Of wheeled carriages there was not a single one in the whole train, the difficulties of the road, which was a mere bridle-path, being such that they were never, at that early day, attempted to be brought into the country, unless when wafted in boats down the Ohio.

Thus marshalled, and stealing from the depth of the forest into the clearings around the Station, there was something in the appearance of the train—wild, singular, and striking. The tall and robust frames of the men, wrapped in blanket coats and hunting-frocks,—some of which, where the wearers were young and of gallant tempers, were profusely decked with fringes of yellow, green, and scarlet; the gleam of their weapons, and the tramp of their horses, gave a warlike air to the whole, typical, it might be supposed, of the sanguinary struggle by which alone the desert was to be wrung from the wandering barbarian; while the appearance of their families, with their domestic beasts and the implements of husbandry, was in harmony with what might be supposed the future destinies of the land, when peaceful labour should succeed to the strife of conquest.

The exiles were already in the heart of their land of promise, and many within view of the haven where they were to end their wanderings. Smiles of pleasure lighted their wayworn countenances, as they beheld the waving fields of maize and the gleam of the distant cabins; and their satisfaction was still further increased when the people of the Station, catching sight of them, rushed out, some mounted and others on foot, to meet them, uttering loud shouts of welcome, such as, in that day, greeted every band of new comers; and adding to the clamour of the reception a feu-de-joie, which they fired in honour of the numbers and martial appearance of the present company. The salutation was requited, and the stirring hurrahs returned, by the travellers, most of whom pressed forward to the van in disorder, eager to take part in the merry-making ere it was over, or perhaps to seek for friends who had preceded them in the journey through the wilderness. Such friends were, in many instances, found, and their loud and affectionate greetings were mingled with the scarce less cordial welcomes extended by the colonists, even to the unknown stranger. Such was the reception of the emigrants at that period and in that country, where men were united together by a sense of common danger; and where every armed visitor, besides being an accession to the strength of the colonists, brought with him such news of absent friends and still remembered homes as was sure to recommend him to favour.

The only individual who, on this occasion of rejoicing, preserved a melancholy countenance, and who, instead of riding forward, like the others, to shake hands with the people of the Station, betrayed an inclination to avoid their greetings altogether, was a young man, who, from the position he occupied in the band, and from other causes, was entitled to superior attention. With the rank and nominal title of second-captain,—a dignity conferred upon him by his companions, he was, in reality, the commander of the party, the ostensible leader being, although a man of good repute on the Virginia border, entirely wanting in the military reputation and skill which the other had acquired in the armies of the Republics, and of which the value was fully appreciated, when danger first seemed to threaten the exiles on their march. He was a youth of scarce twenty-three years of age; but five of those years had been passed in camps and battles; and the labours, passions, and privations of his profession had antedated the period of manhood. A frame tall and athletic, a countenance which, although retaining the smoothness and freshness of youth, was yet marked with the manly gravity and decision of mature life, added, in appearance, at least six years to his age. He wore a hunting-frock of the plainest green colour, with cap and leggings of leather, such as were worn by many of the poorest or least pretending exiles; like whom also he bore a rifle on his shoulder, with the horn and other equipments of a hunter. There was little, therefore, to distinguish him at the first view, from among his companions; although his erect military bearing, and the fine blooded bay horse which he rode, would have won him more than a passing look. The holsters at his saddle-bow, and the sabre at his side, were weapons not indeed very generally worn by frontiersmen, but still common enough to prevent their being regarded as badges of rank.

With this youthful officer the rear-guard, which he commanded, having deserted him, to press forward to the van, there remained only three persons, two of whom were negro slaves, both mounted and armed, that followed at a little distance behind, leading thrice their number of pack-horses. The third was a female, who rode closely at his side, the rein of her pony being, in fact, grasped in his hand; though he looked as if scarce conscious that he held it,—a degree of insensibility that would have spoken little in his favour to an observer; for his companion was both young and beautiful, and watched his moody countenance on her part with looks of the most anxious and affectionate interest. Her riding-habit, chosen, like his own garments, with more regard to usefulness than beauty, and perhaps somewhat the worse for its encounters with the wind and forest, could not conceal the graceful figure it defended; nor had the sunbeam, though it had darkened the bright complexion exposed to its summer fury, during a journey of more than six weeks, robbed her fair visage of a single charm. There was, in the general cast of features, a sufficient resemblance between the two to indicate near relationship; although it was plain that the gloom seated upon the brow of her kinsmen, as if a permanent characteristic, was an unwelcome and unnatural visitant on her own. The clear blue eye, the golden locks floating over her temples, the ruddy cheek and look of seventeen, and, generally, the frank and open character of her expression, betokened a spirit too joyous and elastic to indulge in those dark anticipations of the future or mournful recollections of the past, which clouded the bosom of her relative. And well for her that such was the cheerful temper of her mind; for it was manifest, from her whole appearance, that her lot, as originally cast, must have been among the gentle, the refined, and the luxurious, and that she was now, for the first time, exposed to discomfort, hardship, and suffering, among companions, who, however kind and courteous of conduct, were unpolished in their habits, conversation, and feelings, and, in every other respect, unfitted to be her associates.

She looked upon the face of her kinsman, and seeing that it grew the darker and gloomier the nearer they approached the scene of rejoicing, she laid her hand upon his arm, and murmured softly and affectionately—

"Roland,—cousin,—brother!—what is it that disturbs you? Will you not ride forward, and salute the good people that are making us welcome?"

"Us!" muttered the young man, with a bitter voice; "who is there on earth, Edith, to welcome us? Where shall we look for the friends and kinsfolk, that the meanest of the company are finding among yonder noisy barbarians?"

"You do them injustice, Roland," said the maiden. "Yesternight we had experience at the Station we left, that these wild people of the woods do not confine their welcomes to kinsmen. Kinder and more hospitable people do not exist in the world."

"It is not that, Edith," said the young man; "I were but a brute to doubt their hospitality. But look, Edith; we are in Kentucky, almost at our place of refuge. Yonder hovels, lowly, mean, and wretched—are they the mansions that should shelter the child of my father's brother? Yonder people, the outcasts of our borders, the poor, the rude, the savage—but one degree elevated above the Indians, with whom they contend,—are they the society from whom Edith Forrester should choose her friends?"

"They are," said Edith, firmly; "and Edith Forrester asks none better. In such a cabin as these, and, if need be, in one still more humble, she is content to pass her life, and dream that she is still in the house of her fathers. From such people, too, she will choose her friends, knowing that, even among the humblest of them, there are many worthy of her regard and affection. What have we to mourn in the world we have left behind us? We are the last of our name and race; fortune has left us nothing to regret. My only relative on earth, saving yourself, Roland,—saving yourself, my cousin, my brother,"—her lip quivered, and, for a moment her eyes were filled with tears,—"my only other living relation resides in this wilderness-land; and she, tenderly nurtured as myself, finds in it enough to engage her thoughts and secure her happiness. Why, then, should not I? Why should not you? Trust me, dear Roland, I should myself be as happy as the day is long, could I only know that you did not grieve for me."

"I cannot but choose it," said Roland. "It is to me you owe the loss of fortune and your present banishment from the world."

"Say not so, Roland, for it is not true; no! I never can believe that our poor uncle would have carried his resentment, for such a cause, so far. But supposing that he could, and granting that all were as you say, I am prouder to be the poor cousin of Roland Forrester, who has bled in the battles of his country, than if I were the rich and courted kinswoman of one who had betrayed the memory of his father."

"You are, at least, an angel," said the youth; "and I am but a villain to say or do anything to give you pain. Farewell then to Fell-hallow, to old James River, and all! If you can forget these things, Edith, so will I; at all events, I will try."

"Now," said Edith, "you talk like my true cousin."

"Well, Edith, the world is before us; and shame be upon me, if I, who have health, strength, and youth to back my ambition, cannot provide you a refuge and a home. I will leave you for a while in the hands of this good aunt at the Falls; and then, with old Emperor there for my adjutant, and Sam for my rank and file, I will plunge into the forest, and scatter it as I have seen a band of tories scattered by my old major (who, by the bye, is only three years older than myself), Henry Lee, not many years back. Then, when I have built me a house, furrowed my acres with my martial plough-share (for to that, it appears, my sword must come), and reaped my harvest with my own hands (it will be hard work to beat my horse-pistols into a sickle), then, Edith—"

"Then, Roland," said the maiden, with a smile and a tear, "if you should still remember your poor cousin, it will not be hard to persuade her to follow you to your retreat, to share your fortunes of good and of evil, and to love you better in your adversity than she ever expected to love you in your prosperity."

"Spoken like my true Edith!" said the young officer, whose melancholy fled before her soft accents, as the evil spirit of Saul before the tinklings of the Jewish harp,—"spoken like my true Edith; for whom I promise, if fate smile upon my exertions, to rear a new Fell-hallow on the banks of the Ohio, in which I will be, myself, the first to forget that on James River. And now, Edith, let us ride forward and meet yon gay looking giant, whom, from his bustling demeanour, and fresh jerkin, I judge to be the commander of the Station, the redoubtable Colonel Bruce himself."

As he spoke the individual thus alluded to, separating himself from the throng, galloped up to the speaker, and displayed a person which excited the envy even of the manly looking Forrester. He was a man of at least fifty years, but as hale as one of thirty, without a single gray hair to deform the beauty of his raven locks, which fell down in masses nearly to his shoulders. His stature was colossal, and the proportions of his frame as just as they were gigantic; so that there was much in his appearance of real native majesty. Nothing, in fact, could be well imagined more truly striking and grand than his appearance, as seen at the first glance; though the second revealed a lounging indifference of carriage, amounting, at times, to something like awkwardness and uncouthness, which a little detracted from the effect. Such men were oft-times, in those days, sent from among the mountain counties of Virginia, to amaze the lesser mortals of the plains, who regarded them as the genii of the forest, and almost looked, as was said of the victor of the Kenhawa,[1] himself of the race, to see the earth tremble beneath their footsteps. With a spirit corresponding to his frame, he would have been the Nimrod that he seemed. But nature had long before extinguished the race of demigods; and the worthy Commander of the Station was not of them. He was a mortal man, distinguished by little, save his exterior, from other mortal men, and from the crowd of settlers who had followed him from the fortress. He wore, it is true, a new and jaunty hunting-shirt of dressed deer-skin, as yellow as gold, and fringed and furbelowed with shreds of the same substance, dyed as red as blood-root could make them; but was otherwise, to the view, a plain yeoman, endowed with those gifts of mind only which were necessary to his station, but with the virtues which are alike common to forest and city. Courage and hospitality, however, were then hardly accounted virtues, being too universal to be distinguished as such; and courtesy was equally native to the independent borderer.

[Footnote 1: Gen. Andrew Lewis.]

He shook the young officer heartily by the hand, a ceremony which he instantly repeated with the fair Edith; and giving them to understand that he claimed them as his own especial guests, insisted with much honest warmth, that old companionship in arms with one of their late nearest and dearest kinsmen had given him a double right to do so:—

"You must know," said he, "the good old Major your uncle, the brave old Major Roly, as we called him, Major Roland Forrester: well, K'-yaptin,—well, young lady,—my first battle war fought under his command; and an excellent commander he war; it war on the bloody Monongahela, whar the Frenchmen and Injuns trounced us so promiskous. Perhaps you've h'ard him tell of big Tom Bruce,—for so they called me then? I war a copporal in the first company of Rangers that crossed the river. Lord! how the world is turning upside down! I war a copporal then, and now I'm a k'-yunnel; a greater man in commission than war ever my old Major; and the Lord, he nows, I thought my old Major Forrester war the greatest man in all Virginnee, next to the G'-yovernor and K'-yunnel George Washington! Well, you must know, we marched up the g'yully that runs from the river; and bang went the savages' g'-yuns, and smash went their hatchets; and it came to close quarters, a regular rough-and-tumble, hard scratch! And so I war a-head of the Major, and the Major war behind, and the fight had made him as vicious as a wild cat, and he war hungry for a shot; and so says he to me, for I war right afore him, 'Git out of my way, you damned big rascal, till I git a crack at 'em!' And so I got out of his way, for I war mad at being called a damned big rascal, especially as I war doing my best, and covering him from mischief besides. Well! as soon as I jumped out of his way, bang went his piece, and bang went another, let fly by an Injun;—down went the Major, shot right through the hips, slam-bang. And so said I, 'Major,'—for I warn't well over my passion,—'if you'd 'a' taken things easy, I'd 'a' a stopped that slug for you.' And so says he, 'Bang away you big fool, and don't stand talking.' And so he swounded away; and that made me vicious, too, and I killed two of the red niggurs, before you could say Jack Robinson, just by way of satisfaction for the Major; and then I helped to carry him off to the tumbrels. I never see'd my old Major from that day to this; and it war only a month ago that I h'ard of his death. I honour his memory; and so, K'-yaptin, you see, thar's a sort of claim to old friendship between us."

To this characteristic speech, which was delivered with great earnestness, Captain Forrester made a suitable response; and intimating his willingness to accept the proffered hospitality of his uncle's companion in arms, he rode forward with his host and kinswoman towards the Station, of which, when once fairly relieved of the forest, he had a clear view.

It seemed unusually populous, as indeed it was; but Roland, as he rode by, remarked, on the skirts of the village, a dozen or more shooting-targets set up on the green, and perceived it was a gala-day which had drawn the young men from a distance to the fort. This, in fact, he was speedily told by a youth, whom the worthy Bruce introduced to him as his eldest son and namesake, "big Tom Bruce,—the third of that name; the other two Toms,—for two others he had had,—having been killed by the Injuns, and he having changed the boy's name, that he might have a Tom in the family." The youth was worthy of his father, being full six feet high, though scarcely yet out of his teens, and presented a visage of such serene gravity and good-humoured simplicity as won the affections of the soldier in a moment.

"Thar's a boy now, the brute," said Colonel Bruce, sending him off to assist in the distribution of the guests among the settlers, "that comes of the best stock for loving women and fighting Injuns in all Kentucky! And so, captain, if young madam, your sister h'yar, is for picking a husband out of Kentuck, I'll say it, and stand to it, thar's not a better lad to be found than Tom Bruce, if you hunt the district all over. You'd scarce believe it, mom," he continued, addressing Edith herself, "but the young brute did actually take the scalp of a full-grown Shawnee before he war fourteen y'ar old, and that in fa'r fight, whar thar war none to help him. The way of it war this: Tom war out in the range, looking for a neighbour's horse; when what should he see but two great big Shawnees astride of the identicular beast he war hunting! Away went Tom, and away went the bloody villians hard after, one of 'em afoot, the other on the horse. 'Now,' said Tom, this won't do, no how;' and so he let fly at the mounted feller; but being a little skeary, as how could he help it, the young brute, being the first time he ever banged at an Injun, he hit the horse, which dropped down in a flurry; and away comes the red devil over his head, like a rocket, end on to a sapling. Up jumps Tom and picks up the Injun's gun; and bang goes the other Shawnee at him, and jumps to a tree. 'A bird in the hand,' said Tom, 'is worth two in a bush;' and with that he blows out the first feller's brains, just as he is gitting up, and runs into the fort, hard chased by the other. And then to see the fellers, when I asked him why he didn't shoot the Injun that had fired at him, and so make sure of both, the other being in a sort of swound-like from the tumble, and ready to be knocked on the head at any moment? 'Lord!' said Tom, 'I never thought of it, I war such a fool!' and with that he blubbered all night, to think he had not killed them both. Howsomever, I war always of opinion that what he had done war good work for a boy of fourteen.—But, come now, my lovely young mom; we are entering the Station. May you never enter a house where you are less welcome."

CHAPTER II.

Men and boys had rushed from the fortress together, to greet the new comers, and few remained save the women; of whom not a few, particularly of the younger individuals, were as eager to satisfy their curiosity as their fathers and brothers. The disorderly spirit had spread even among the daughters of the commandant, to the great concern of his spouse; who, although originally of a degree somewhat humbler even than his own, had a much more elevated sense of the dignity of his commission as a colonel of militia, and a due consciousness of the necessity of adapting her manners to her rank. She stood on the porch of her cabin, which had the merit of being larger than any other in the fort, maintaining order among some half dozen or more lasses, the eldest scarce exceeding seventeen, whom she endeavoured to range in a row, to receive the expected guests in state, though every moment some one or other might be seen edging away from her side, as if in the act of deserting her altogether.

"Out on you, you flirting critturs!" said she, her indignation provoked, and her sense of propriety shocked by such unworthy behaviour:—"Stop thar, you Nell! whar you going? You Sally, you Phoebe, you Jane, and the rest of you! ha'nt you no better idea of what's manners for a Cunnel's daughters? I'm ashamed of you,—to run ramping and tearing after the strange men thar, like tom-boys, or any common person's daughters! Laws! do remember your father's a Cunnel in the milishy, and set down in the porch here on the bench, like genteel young ladies; or stand up, if you like that better, and wait till your father, Cunnel Bruce that is, brings up the captains: one of 'em's a rale army captain, with epaulets and broad-sword, with a chance of money, and an uncommon handsome sister,—rale genteel people from old Virginnee: and I'm glad of it,—it's so seldom you sees any body but common persons come to Kentucky. Do behave yourselves: thar's Telie Doe thar at the loom don't think so much as turning her eyes around; she's a pattern for you."

"Law, mother!" said the eldest of the daughters, bridling with disdain, "I reckon I know how to behave myself as well as Telie Doe, or any other girl in the settlement;"—a declaration echoed and re-echoed by her sisters, all of whom bent their eyes towards a corner of the ample porch, where, busied with a rude loom, fashioned perhaps by the axe and knife of the militia colonel himself, on which she was weaving a coarse cloth from the fibres of the flax-nettle, sat a female somewhat younger than the eldest of the sisters, and doubtless of a more humble degree, as was shown by the labour in which she was engaged, while the others seemed to enjoy a holiday, and by her coarse brown garments, worn at a moment when the fair Bruces were flaunting in their best bibs and tuckers, the same having been put on not more in honour of the exiles, whose coming had been announced the day before, than out of compliment to the young men of the settlement, who were wont to assemble on such occasions to gather the latest news from the States.

The pattern of good manners thus referred to, was as unconscious of the compliment bestowed upon her by the worthy Mrs. Bruce as of the glances of disdain it drew from the daughters, being apparently at that moment too much occupied with her work to think of anything else; nor did she lift up her eyes until, the conversation having been resumed between the mother and daughters, one of the latter demanded "what was the name of that army captain, that was so rich and great, of whom her mother had been talking?"

"Captain Roland Forrester," replied the latter; at the sound of which name the maiden at the loom started and looked up with an air of fright, that caused exceeding diversion among the others. "Look at Telie Doe!" they cried, laughing: "you can't speak above your breath but she thinks you are speaking to her; and, sure, you can't speak to her, but she looks as if she would jump out of her skin, and run away for her dear life!"

And so, indeed, the girl did appear for a moment, looking as wild and terrified as the animal whose name she bore, when the first bay of the deer-hound startles her in the deep woodland pastures, rolling her eyes, catching her breath convulsively, shivering, and, in short, betraying a degree of agitation; that would have appeared unaccountable to a stranger; though, as it caused more amusement than surprise among the merry Bruces, it was but fair to suppose that it sprung from constitutional nervousness, or the sudden interruption of her meditations. As she started up in her confusion, rolling her eyes from one laughing maiden to another, her very trepidation imparted an interest to her features, which were in themselves pretty enough, though not so much as to attract observation, when in a state of rest. Then it was that the observer might see, or fancy he saw, a world of latent expression in her wild dark eyes, and trace the workings of a quick and sensitive spirit, whose existence would have been otherwise unsuspected, in the tremulous movement of her lips. And then, too, one might have been struck with the exquisite contour of a slight figure, which even the coarse garments, spun, and perhaps shaped, by her own hands, could not entirely conceal. At such times of excitement, there was something in her appearance both striking and singular—Indian-like, one might almost have said. Such an epithet might have been borne out by the wildness of her looks, the darkness of her eyes, the simple arrangement of her coal-black hair—which instead of being confined by comb or fillet, was twisted round a thorn cut from the nearest locust-tree—and by the smallness of her stature, though the lightness and European tinge of her complexion must have instantly disproved the idea.

Her discomposure dispelled from the bosoms of her companions all the little resentment produced by the matron's invidious comparison; and each now did her best to increase it by cries of "Jump, Telie, the Indians will catch you!" "Take care, Telie, Tom Bruce will kiss you!" "Run, Telie, the dog will bite you!" and other expressions, of a like alarming nature, which, if they did not augment her terror, divided and distracted her attention, till quite bewildered, she stared now on one, now on the other, and at each mischievous assault, started, and trembled, and gasped for breath, in inexpressible confusion. It was fortunate for her that this species of baiting, which from the spirit and skill with which her youthful tormentors pursued it, seemed no uncommon infliction, the reforming mother considered to be, at least at that particular moment, unworthy the daughters of a colonel in the militia.

"Do behave yourselves, you ungenteel critturs," said she; "Phoebe Bruce, you're old enough to know better; don't expose yourself before stranngers. Thar they come now; thar's Cunnel Bruce that is, talking to Captain Forrester that is, and a right-down soldier-looking captain he is, too. I wonder whar's his cocked hat, and feather, and goold epaulets? Thar's his big broad-sword, and—but, Lord above us, ar'nt his sister a beauty! Any man in Kentucky will be proud of her; but, I warrant me, she'll take to nothing under a cunnel!"

The young misses ceased their sport to stare at the strangers, and even Telie Doe, pattern of propriety as she was, had no sooner recovered her equanimity than she turned her eyes from the loom and bent them eagerly upon the train now entering through the main gate, gazing long and earnestly upon the young captain and the fair Edith, who with the colonel of militia, and a fourth individual, parted from it, and rode up to the porch. The fourth person, a sober, and substantial-looking borderer, in a huge blanket-coat and slouched hat, the latter stuck round with buck's tails, was the nominal captain of the party. He conversed a moment with Forrester and the commandant, and then, being given in charge by the latter to his son Tom, who was hallooed from the crowd for this purpose, he rode away, leaving the colonel to do the honours to his second in command. These the colonel executed with much courtesy and gallantry, if not with grace, leaping from his horse with unexpected activity, and assisting Edith to dismount, which he effected by taking her in his arms and whisking her from the saddle with as little apparent effort as though he were handling an infant.

"Welcome, my beautiful young lady," said he, giving her another hearty shake of the hand: "H'yar's a house that shall shelter you; though thar's not much can be said of it, except that it is safe and wholesome. H'yar's my old lady too, and my daughters, that will make much of you; and as for my sons, thar's not a brute of 'em that won't fight for you; but th' ar' all busy stowing away the stranngers; and, I reckon, they think it ar'nt manners to show themselves to a young lady, while she's making acquaintance with the women."

With that the gallant colonel presented the fair stranger to his wife and daughters, the latter of whom, a little daunted at first by her appearance, as a being superior in degree to the ordinary race of mortals, but quickly re-assured by her frank and easy deportment, loaded her with caresses, and carried her into the house, to improve the few hours allowed to make her acquaintance, and to assist her in changing her apparel, for which the means were furnished from sundry bags and packages, that the elder of the two negromen, the only immediate followers of her kinsmen, took from the back of a pack-horse. The mother of the Bruces thought it advisable to follow them, to see, perhaps, in person, that they conducted themselves towards their guest as a colonel's daughter should.

None of the females remained on the porch save Telie, the girl of the loom, who, too humble or too timid to seek the acquaintance of the stranger lady, like the others, had been overlooked in the bustle, and now pursued her labour with but little notice from those who remained.

"And now, Colonel," said the young officer, declining the offer of refreshments made by his host, "allow me, like a true soldier, to proceed to the business with which you heard our commander, Major Johnson, charge me. To-morrow we resume our journey to the Falls. I should gladly myself, for Miss Forrester's sake, consent to remain with you a few days, to recruit our strength a little. But that cannot be. Our men are resolved to push on without delay; and as I have no authority to restrain them, I must e'en accompany them."

"Well," said Colonel Bruce, "if it must be, it must, and I'm not the brute to say 'No' to you. But lord, Captain, I should be glad to have you stay a month or two, war it only to have a long talk about my old friend, the brave old major. And thar's your sister, Captain,—lord, sir, she would be the pet of the family, and would help my wife teach the girls manners. Lord!" he continued, laughing, "you've no idea what grand notions have got into the old woman's head about the way of behaving, ever since it war that the Governor of Virginnie sent me a cunnel's commission. She thinks I ought to w'ar a cocked hat and goold swabs, and put on a blue coat instead of a leather shirt; but I wonder how soon I'd see the end of it, out h'yar in the bushes? And then, as for the girls, why thar's no end of the lessons she gives them;—and thar's my Jenny,—that's the youngest,—came blubbering up the other day, saying, 'she believed mother intended even to stop their licking at the sugar-troughs, she was getting so great and so proud!' Howsomever, women will be women, and thar's the end of it."

To this philosophic remark the officer of inferior degree bowed acquiescence, and recalling his host's attention to the subject of most interest to himself, requested to be informed what difficulties or dangers might be apprehended on the further route to the Falls of Ohio.

"Why, none on 'arth that I know of," said Bruce; "you've as cl'ar and broad a trace before you as man and beast could make—a buffalo-street,[2] through the canes; and, when thar's open woods, blazes as thick as stars, and horse-tracks still thicker: thar war more than a thousand settlers have travelled it this year already. As for danngers, Captain, why I reckon thar's none to think on. Thar war a good chance of whooping and howling about Bear's Grass, last year, and some hard fighting; but I h'ar nothing of Injuns thar this y'ar. But you leave some of your people h'yar: what force do you tote down to the Falls to-morrow?"

[Footnote 2: The bison-paths when very broad, were often thus called.]

"Twenty-seven guns in all: but several quite too young to face an enemy."

"Thar's no trusting to years in a matter of fighting!" said the Kentuckian. "Thar's my son Tom, that killed his brute at fourteen; but, I remember, I told you that story. Howsomever, I hold thar's no Injuns on the road; and if you should meet any, why, it will be down about Bear's Grass, or the Forks of Salt, whar you can keep your eyes open, and whar the settlements are so thick, it is easy taking cover. No, no, Captain, the fighting this year is all on the north side of Kentucky."

"Yet, I believe," said Roland, "there have been no troubles there since the defeat of Captain Estill on Little Mountain, and of Holder at that place,—what do you call it?"

"Upper Blue Licks of Licking," said Bruce; "and war'nt they troubles enough for a season? Two Kentucky captains (and one of them a south-side man, too,) whipped in fa'r fight, and by nothing better than brutish Injuns!"

"They were sad affairs, indeed; and the numbers of white men murdered made them still more shocking."

"The murdering," said the gallant Colonel Bruce, "is nothing, sir: it is the shame of the thumping that makes one feel vicious; thar's the thing no Kentuckian can stand, sir. To be murdered, whar thar's ten Injuns to one white man, is nothing; but whar it comes to being trounced by equal numbers, why thar's the thing not to be tolerated. Howsomever, Captain, we're no worse off in Kentucky than our neighbours. Thar's them five hundred Pennsylvanians that went out in June, under old Cunnel Crawford from Pittsburg, agin the brutes of Sandusky, war more ridiculously whipped by old Captain Pipe, the Delaware, thar's no denying."

"What!" said Roland, "was Crawford's company beaten?"

"Beaten!" said the Kentuckian, opening his eyes; "cut off the b, and say the savages made a dinner of 'em, and you'll be nearer the true history of the matter. It's but two months ago; and so I suppose the news of the affa'r hadn't got into East Virginnie when you started. Well, Captain, the long and short of it is,—the cunnel war beaten and exterminated, and that on a hard run from the fight he had hunted hard after. How many ever got back safe agin to Pittsburg, I never could rightly h'ar, but what I know is, that thar war dozens of prisoners beaten to death by the squaws and children, and that old Cunnel Crawford himself war put to the double torture and roasted alive; and, I reckon, if he war'nt eaten, it war only because he war too old to be tender."

"Horrible!" said the young soldier, muttering half to himself, though not in tones so low but that the Kentuckian caught their import; "and I must expose my poor Edith to fall into the power of such fiends and monsters!"

"Ay, Captain," said Bruce, "thar's the thing that sticks most in the heart of them that live in the wilderness and have wives and daughters;—to think of their falling into the hands of the brutes, who murder and scalp a woman just as readily as a man. As to their torturing them, that's not so certain, but the brutes arn't a bit too good for it; and I did h'ar of their burning one poor woman at Sandusky. But now, Captain, if you are anxious to have the young lady, your sister, in safety, h'yar's the place to stick up your tent-poles, h'yar, in this very settlement, whar the Injuns never trouble us, never coming within ten miles of us. Thar's as good land here as on Bear's Grass; and we shall be glad of your company. It is not often we have a rich man to take luck among us. Howsomever, I won't deceive you, if you will go to the Ohio; I hold, thar's no danger on the trace for either man or woman."

"My good friend," said Roland, "you seem to labour under two errors in respect to me which it is fitting I should correct. In the first place, the lady whom you have several times called, I know not why, my sister, claims no such near relationship, being only my cousin."

"Why, sure!" said the colonel, "someone told me so, and thar's a strong family likeness."

"There should be," said the youth, "since our fathers were twin brothers, and resembled each other in all particulars, in body, in mind, and, as I may say, in fortune. They were alike in their lives, alike also in their deaths: they fell together, struck down by the same cannon-ball, at the bombardment of Norfolk, seven years ago."

"May I never see a scalp," said the Kentuckian, warmly grasping the young man's hand, "if I don't honour you the more for boasting such a father and such uncles! You come of the true stock, captain, thar's no denying; and my brave old major's estates have fallen into the right hands; for, if thar's any believing the news the last band of emigrants brought of you h'yar, thar war no braver officer in Lee's corps, nor in the whole Virginnee line, than young Captain Forrester."

"Here," said Roland, looking as if what he said cost him a painful effort, "lies the second error,—your considering me, as you manifestly do, the heir of your old major, my uncle Roland,—which I am not."

"Lord!" said the worthy Bruce, "he was the richest man in Prince-George, and he had thousands of fat acres in the Valley, the best in all Fincastle, as I know very well, for I war a Fincastle man myself; and thar war my old friend Braxley,—he war a lieutenant under the major at Braddock's, and afterwards his steward, and manager, and lawyer-like,—who used to come over the Ridge to see after them. But I see how it is; he left all to the young lady?"

"Not an acre," said Roland.

"What!" said the Kentuckian: "he left no children of his own. Who then is the heir?"

"Your old friend, as you call him, Richard Braxley. And hence you see," continued the youth, as if desirous to change the conversation, "that I come to Kentucky, an adventurer and fortune-hunter, like other emigrants, to locate lands under proclamation-warrants and bounty-grants, to fell trees, raise corn, shoot bisons and Indians, and, in general, do any thing else that can be required of a good Virginian or good Kentuckian."

It was evidently the captain's wish now to leave altogether the subject on which he had thought it incumbent to acquaint his host with so much; but the worthy Bruce was not so easily satisfied; and not conceiving there was any peculiar impropriety in indulging curiosity in matters relating to his old major, however distasteful that curiosity might prove to his guest, he succeeded in drawing from the reluctant young man many more particulars of his story; which, as they have an important connection with the events it is our object to narrate, we must be pardoned for briefly noticing.

Major Roland Forrester, the uncle and godfather of the young soldier, and the representative of one of the most ancient and affluent families on James River (for by this trivial name Virginians are content to designate the noble Powhatan), was the eldest of three brothers, of whom the two younger, as was often the case under the ancien regime in Virginia, were left, at the death of their parent, to shift for themselves; while the eldest son inherited the undivided princely estate of his ancestors. This was at the period when that contest of principle with power, which finally resulted in the separation of the American Colonies from the parent State, first began to agitate the minds of the good planters of Virginia, in common with the people of all the other colonies. Men had already begun to take sides, in feeling as in argument; and, as usual, interest had, no doubt, its full share in directing and confirming the predilections of individuals. These circumstances,—the regular succession of the eldest-born to the paternal estate, and the necessity imposed on the others of carving out their own fortunes,—had, perhaps, their influence in determining the political bias of the brothers, and preparing them for contention when the increase of party feeling, and the clash of interests between the government abroad and the colonies at home, called upon all men to avow their principles and take their stands. It was as natural that the one should retain affection and reverence for the institutions which had made him rich and distinguished, as that the younger brothers, who had suffered under them a deprivation of their natural rights, should declare for a system of government and laws more liberal and equitable in their character and operation. At all events, and be the cause of difference what it might, when the storm of the Revolution burst over the land, the brothers were found arrayed on opposite sides—the two younger, the fathers of Roland and Edith, instantly taking up arms in the popular cause, while nothing, perhaps, but helpless feebleness and bodily infirmities, the results of wounds received in Braddock's war, throughout which he had fought at the head of a battalion of "Buckskins," or Virginia Rangers, prevented the elder brother from arming as zealously in the cause of his king. Fierce, uncompromising, and vindictive, however, in his temper, he never forgave his brothers the bold and active part they both took in the contest; and it was his resentment, perhaps, more than natural affection for his neglected offspring, that caused him to defeat his brothers' hopes of succession to his estates, (he being himself unmarried), by executing a will in favour of an illegitimate child, an infant daughter, whom he drew from concealment and acknowledged as his offspring. This child, however, was soon removed, having being burned to death in the house of its foster-mother. But its decease effected little or no change in his feelings towards his brothers, who, pursuing the principles they had so early avowed, were among the first to take arms among the patriots of Virginia, and fell, as Roland had said, at Norfolk, leaving each an orphan child—Roland, then a youth of fifteen, and Edith, a child of ten, to the mercy of the elder brother. Their death effected what perhaps their prayers never would have done. The stern loyalist took the orphans to his bosom, cherished and loved them, or at least appeared to do so, and often avowed his intention to make them his heirs. But it was Roland's ill fate to provoke his ire, as Roland's father had done before him. The death of that father, one of the earliest martyrs to liberty, had created in his youthful mind a strong abhorrence of everything British and loyal; and after presuming a dozen times or more to disclose and defend his hatred, he put the coping-stone to his audacity, by suddenly leaving his uncle's house, two years after he had been received into it, and galloping away, a cornet in one of the companies of the first regiment of horse which Virginia sent to the armies of Congress. He never more saw his uncle. He cared little for his wrath or its effects; if disinherited himself, it pleased his imagination to think he had enriched his gentle cousin. But his uncle carried his resentment further than he had dreamed, or indeed any one else who had beheld the show of affection he continued to the orphan Edith up to the last moment of his existence. He died in October of the preceding year, a week before the capitulation at York-town, and almost within the sound of the guns that proclaimed the fall of the cause he had so loyally espoused. From this place of victory Roland departed to seek his kinswoman. He found her in the house—not of his fathers, but of a stranger—herself a destitute and homeless orphan. No will appeared to pronounce her the mistress of the wealth he had himself rejected; but, in place of it, the original testament in favour of Major Forrester's own child was produced by Braxley, his confidential friend and attorney, who, by it, was appointed both executor of the estate and trustee to the individual in whose favour it was constructed.

The production of such a testament, so many years after the death of the girl, caused no little astonishment; but this was still further increased by what followed, the aforesaid Braxley instantly taking possession of the whole estate in the name of the heiress, who, he made formal deposition, was, to the best of his belief, yet alive, and would appear to claim her inheritance. In support of this extraordinary averment, he produced, or professed himself ready to produce, evidence to show that Forrester's child, instead of being burned to death as was believed, had actually been trepanned and carried away by persons to him unknown, the burning of the house of her foster-mother having been devised and executed merely to give colour to the story of her death. Who were the perpetrators of such an outrage, and for what purpose it had been devised, he affected to be ignorant; though he threw out many hints and surmises of a character more painful to Edith and Roland than even the loss of the property. These hints Roland could not persuade himself to repeat to the curious Kentuckian, since they went, in fact, to charge his own father, and Edith's, with the crime of having themselves concealed the child, for the purpose of removing the only bar to their expectations of succession.

Whatever might be thought of this singular story, it gained some believers, and was enough in the hands of Braxley, a man of great address and resolution, and withal, a lawyer, to enable him to laugh to scorn the feeble efforts made by the impoverished Roland to bring it to the test of legal arbitrament. Despairing, in fact, of his cause, after a few trials had convinced him of his impotence, and perhaps himself almost believing the tale to be true, the young man gave up the contest, and directed his thoughts to the condition of his cousin Edith; who, upon the above circumstances being made known, had received a warm invitation to the house and protection of her only female relative, a married lady, whose husband had, two years before, emigrated to the Falls of Ohio, where he was now a person of considerable importance. This invitation determined the course to be pursued. The young man instantly resigned his commission, and converting the little property that remained into articles necessary to the emigrant, turned his face to the boundless West, and with his helpless kinswoman at his side, plunged at once into the forest. A home for Edith in the house of a relative was the first object of his desires; his second, as he had already mentioned, was to lay the foundation for the fortunes of both.

There was something in the condition of the young and almost friendless adventurers to interest the feelings of the hardy Kentuckian; but they were affected still more strongly by the generous self-sacrifice, as it might be called, which the young soldier was evidently making for his kinswoman, for whom he had given up an honourable profession and his hopes of fame and distinction, to live a life of inglorious toil in the desert. He gave the youth another energetic grasp of hand, and said, with uncommon emphasis,—

"Hark'ee, Captain, my lad, I love and honour ye; and I could say no more, if you war my own natteral born father! As to that 'ar' Richard Braxley, whom I call'd my old friend, you must know, it war an old custom I have of calling a man a friend who war only an acquaintance; for I am for being friendly to all men that ar' white and honest, and no Injuns. Now, I do hold that Braxley to be a rascal,—a precocious rascal, sir! and, I rather reckon, thar war lying and villiany at the bottom of that will; and I hope you'll live to see the truth of it."

The sympathy felt by the Kentuckian in the story was experienced in a still stronger degree by Telie Doe, the girl of the loom, who, little noticed, if at all, by the two, sat apparently occupied with her work, yet drinking in every word uttered by the young soldier with a deep and eager interest, until Roland by chance looking round, beheld her large eyes fastened upon him, with a wild, sorrowful look, of which, however, she herself seemed quite unconscious, that greatly surprised him. The Kentuckian observing her at the same time, called to her,—"What, Telie, my girl, are you working upon a holiday? You should be dressed like the others, and making friends with the stranger lady. And so git away with you now, and make yourself handsome, and don't stand thar looking as if the gentleman would eat you."

"A qu'ar crittur she, poor thing!" said Bruce, looking after her commiseratingly; "and a stranger might think her no more nor half-witted. But she has sense enough, poor crittur! and, I reckon, is just as smart, if she war not so humble and skittish, as any of my own daughters."

"What," said Roland, "is she not then your child?"

"No, no," replied Bruce, shaking his head; "a poor crittur, of no manner of kin whatever. Her father war an old friend, or acquaintance-like; for, rat it, I won't own friendship for any such apostatised villians, no how:—but the man war taken by the Shawnees; and so as thar war none to befriend her, and she war but a little chit no bigger nor my hand, I took to her myself and raised her. But the worst of it is, and that's what makes her so wild and skeary, her father, Abel Doe, turned Injun himself, like Girty, Elliot, and the rest of them refugee scoundrels you've h'ard of. Now that's enough, you see, to make the poor thing sad and frightful; for Abel Doe is a rogue, thar's no denying, and everybody hates and cusses him, as is but his due; and it's natteral, now she's growing old enough to be ashamed of him, she should be ashamed of herself too,—though thar's nothing but her father to charge against her, poor creatur'. A bad thing for her to have an Injunised father; for if it war'nt for him, I reckon, my son Tom, the brute, would take to her, and marry her."

"Poor creature, indeed!" muttered Roland to himself, contrasting in thought the condition of this helpless and deserted girl with that of his own unfortunate kinswoman, and sighing to acknowledge that it was still more forlorn and pitiable.

His sympathy was, however, but short-lived, being interrupted on the instant by a loud uproar of voices from the gate of the stockade, sounding half in mirth, half in triumph; while the junior Bruce was seen approaching the porch, looking the very messenger of good news.

CHAPTER III.

"What's the matter, Tom Bruce?" said the father, eyeing him with surprise.

"Matter enough," responded the young giant, with a grin of mingled awe and delight; "the Jibbenainosay is up again!"

"Whar?" cried the senior, eagerly,—"not in our limits?"

"No, by Jehoshaphat," replied Tom; "but nigh enough to be neighbourly,—on the north bank of Kentuck, whar he has left his mark right in the middle of the road, as fresh as though it war but the work of the morning!"

"And a clear mark, Tom?—no mistake in it?"

"Right to an iota!" said the young man;—"a reggelar cross on the breast, and a good tomahawk dig right through the skull; and a long-legg'd fellow, too, that looked as though he might have fou't old Sattan himself?"

"It's the Jibbenainosay, sure enough; and so good luck to him!" cried the commander: "thar's a harricane coming!"

"Who is the Jibbenainosay?" demanded Forrester.

"Who?" cried Tom Bruce: "Why, Nick,—Nick of the Woods."

"And who, if you please, is Nick of the Woods?"

"Thar," replied the junior, with another grin, "thar, strannger, you're too hard for me. Some think one thing, and some another; but thar's many reckon he's the devil."

"And his mark, that you were talking of in such mysterious terms,—what is that?"

"Why, a dead Injun, to be sure, with Nick's mark on him,—a knife-cut, or a brace of 'em, over the ribs in the shape of a cross. That's the way the Jibbenainosay marks all the meat of his killing. It has been a whole year now since we h'ard of him."

"Captain," said the elder Bruce, "you don't seem to understand the afta'r altogether; but if you were to ask Tom about the Jibbenainosay till doomsday, he could tell you no more than he has told already. You must know, thar's a creatur' of some sort or other that ranges the woods round about our station h'yar, keeping a sort of guard over us like, and killing all the brute Injuns that ar' onlucky enough to come in his way, besides scalping them and marking them with his mark. The Injuns call him Jibbenainosay, or a word of that natur', which them that know more about the Injun gabble than I do, say, means the Spirit-that-walks; and if we can believe any such lying devils as Injuns (which I am loath to do, for the truth ar'nt in 'em), he is neither man nor beast, but a great ghost or devil that knife cannot harm nor bullet touch; and they have always had an idea that our fort h'yar in partickelar, and the country round about, war under his friendly protection—many thanks to him, whether he be a devil or not; for that whar the reason the savages so soon left off a worrying of us."

"Is it possible," said Roland, "that any one can believe such an absurd story?"

"Why not?" said Bruce, stoutly. "Thar's the Injuns themselves, Shawnees, Hurons, Delawares, and all,—but partickelarly the Shawnees, for he beats all creation a-killing of Shawnees,—that believe in him, and hold him in such eternal dread, that thar's scarce a brute of 'em has come within ten miles of the station h'yar this three y'ar; because as how, he haunts about our woods h'yar in partickelar, and kills 'em wheresomever he catches 'em,—especially the Shawnees, as I said afore, against which the creatur' has a most butchering spite; and there's them among the other tribes that call him Shawneewannaween, or the Howl of the Shawnees, because of his keeping them ever a-howling. And thar's his marks, captain,—what do you make of that? When you find an Injun lying scalped and tomahawked, it stands to reason thar war something to kill him?"

"Ay, truly," said Forrester; "but I think you have human beings enough to give the credit to, without referring it to a supernatural one."

"Strannger," said Big Tom Bruce the younger, with a sagacious nod, "when you kill an Injun yourself, I reckon,—meaning no offence—you will be willing to take all the honour that can come of it, without leaving it to be scrambled after by others. Thar's no man 'arns a scalp in Kentucky, without taking great pains to show it to his neighbours."

"And besides, captain," said the father, very gravely, "thar are men among us who have seen the creatur'!"

"That," said Roland, who perceived his new friends were not well pleased with his incredulity, "is an argument I can resist no longer."

"Thar war Ben Jones, and Samuel Sharp, and Peter Small-eye, and a dozen more, who all had a glimpse of him stalking through the woods, at different times; and, they agree, he looks more like a devil nor a mortal man,—a great tall fellow, with horns and a hairy head like a buffalo-bull, and a little devil that looks like a black b'ar, that walks before him to point out the way. He war always found in the deepest forests, and that's the reason we call him Nick of the Woods; wharby we mean Old Nick of the Woods; for we hold him to be the devil, though a friendly one to all but Injuns. Now, captain, I war never superstitious in my life,—but I go my death on the Jibbenainosay! I never seed the creatur' himself, but I have seen, in my time, two different savages of his killing. It's a sure sign, if you see him in the woods, that thar's Injuns at hand: and it's a good sign when you find his mark without seeing himself, for then you may be sure the brutes are off,—for they can't stand old Nick of the Woods no how! At first, he war never h'ard of afar from our station; but he has begun to widen his range. Last year he left his marks down Salt River in Jefferson; and now, you see, he is striking game north of the Kentucky; and I've h'ard of them that say he kills Shawnees even in their own country; though consarning that I'll not be so partickelar. No, no, Captain, thar's no mistake in Nick of the Woods; and if you are so minded, we will go and h'ar the whole news of him. But, I say, Tom," continued the Kentuckian, as the three left the porch together, "who brought the news?"

"Captain Ralph,—Roaring Ralph Stackpole," replied Tom Bruce, with a knowing and humorous look.

"What!" cried the father, in sudden alarm; "Look to the horses, Tom!"

"I will," said the youth, laughing: "it war no sooner known that Captain Ralph war among us than it was resolved to have six Regulators in the range all night! Thar's some of these new colts (not to speak of our own creaturs), and especially that blooded brown beast of the captain's, which the nigger calls Brown Briery, or some such name, would set a better man than Roaring Ralph Stackpole's mouth watering."

"And who," said Roland, "is Roaring Ralph Stackpole? and what has he to do with Brown Briarens?"

"A proper fellow as ever you saw," replied Tom, approvingly;—"killed two Injuns once, single-handed, on Bear-Grass, and has stolen more horses from them than ar' another man in Kentucky. A prime creatur'! but he has his fault, poor fellow, and sometimes mistakes a Christian's horse for an Injun's, thar's the truth of it!"

"And such scoundrels you make officers of?" demanded the soldier, indignantly.

"Oh," said the elder Bruce, "thar's no reggelar commission in the case. But whar thar's a knot of our poor folks out of horses, and inclined to steal a lot from the Shawnees (which is all fa'r plundering, you see, for thar's not a horse among them, the brutes, that they did not steal from Kentucky), they send for Roaring Ralph and make him their captain; and a capital one he is, too, being all fight from top to bottom; and as for the stealing part, thar's no one can equal him. But, as Tom says, he sometimes does make mistakes, having stolen horses so often from the Injuns, he can scarce keep his hands off a Christian's, and that makes us wrathy."

By this time the speakers had reached the gate of the fort, and passed among the cabins outside, where they found a throng of the villagers, surrounding the captain of horse-thieves, and listening with great edification to, and deriving no little amusement from, his account of the last achievement of the Jibbenainosay. Of this, as it related no more than the young Bruce had already repeated,—namely, that, while riding that morning from the north side, he had stumbled upon the corse of an Indian, which bore all the marks of having been a late victim to the wandering demon of the woods,—we shall say nothing; but the appearance and conduct of the narrator, one of the first, and perhaps the parent, of the race of men who have made Salt River so renowned in story, were such as to demand a less summary notice. He was stout, bandy-legged, broad-shouldered, and bull-headed, ugly, and villanous of look; yet with an impudent, swaggering, joyous self-esteem traced in every feature and expressed in every action of body, that rather disposed the beholder to laugh than to be displeased at his appearance. An old blanket-coat, or wrap-rascal, once white, but now of the same muddy brown hue that stained his visage—and once also of sufficient length to defend his legs, though the skirts had long since been transferred to the cuffs and elbows, where they appeared in huge patches—covered the upper part of his body; while the lower boasted a pair of buckskin breeches and leather wrappers, somewhat its junior in age, but its rival in mud and maculation. An old round fur hat, intended originally for a boy, and only made to fit his head by being slit in sundry places at the bottom, thus leaving a dozen yawning gaps, through which, as through the chinks of a lattice, stole out as many stiff bunches of black hair, gave to the capital excrescence an air as ridiculous as it was truly uncouth; which was not a little increased by the absence on one side of the brim, and by a loose fragment of it hanging down on the other. To give something martial to an appearance in other respects so outlandish and ludicrous, he had his rifle, and other usual equipments of a woodsman, including the knife and tomahawk, the first of which he carried in his hand, swinging it about at every moment, with a vigour and apparent carelessness well fitted to discompose a nervous person, had any such happened among his auditors. As if there was not enough in his figure, visage, and attire to move the mirth of beholders, he added to his other attractions a variety of gestures and antics of the most extravagant kinds, dancing, leaping, and dodging about, clapping his hands and cracking his heels together, with the activity, restlessness, and, we may add, the grace, of a jumping-jack. Such was the worthy, or unworthy, son of Salt River, a man wholly unknown to history, though not to local and traditionary fame, and much less to the then inhabitants of Bruce's Station, to whom he related his news of the Jibbenainosay with that emphasis and importance of tone and manner which are most significantly expressed in the phrase of "laying down the law."

As soon as he saw the commander of the station approaching, he cleared the throng around him by a skip and a hop, seized the colonel by the hand, and doing the same with the soldier, before Boland could repel him, as he would have done, exclaimed, "Glad to see you, cunnel;—same to you, strannger—What's the news from Virginnie? Strannger, my name's Ralph Stackpole, and I'm a ring-tailed squealer!"

"Then, Mr. Ralph Stackpole, the ring-tailed squealer," said Roland, disengaging his hand, "be so good as to pursue your business, without regarding or taking any notice of me."

"'Tarnal death to me!" cried the captain of horse-thieves, indignant at the rebuff, "I'm a gentleman, and my name's Fight! Foot and hand, tooth and nail, claw and mudscraper, knife, gun, and tomahawk, or any other way you choose to take me, I'm your man! Cock-a-doodle-doo!" And with that the gentleman jumped into the air, and flapped his wings, as much to the amusement of the provoker of his wrath as of any other person present.

"Come, Ralph," said the commander of the Station, "whar'd' you steal that brown mar' thar?"—a question whose abruptness somewhat quelled the ferment of the man's fury, while it drew a roar of laughter from the lookers-on.

"Thar it is!" said he, striking an attitude and clapping a hand on his breast, like a man who felt his honour unjustly assailed. "Steal! I steal any horse but an Injun's! Whar's the man dar's insinivate that? Blood and massacree-ation! whar's the man?"

"H'yar," said Bruce, very composedly. "I know that old mar' belongs to
Peter Harper, on the north side."

"You're right, by Hooky!" cried Roaring Ralph; at which seeming admission of his knavery the merriment of the spectators was greatly increased; nor was it much lessened when the fellow proceeded to aver that he had borrowed it, and that with the express stipulation that it should be left at Bruce's Station, subject to the orders of its owner. "Thar, cunnel," said he, "thar's the beast; take it; and just tell me whar's the one you mean to lend me,—for I must be oft afore sunset."

"And whar are you going?" demanded Bruce.

"To St. Asaphis,"—which was a Station some twenty or thirty miles off,—replied Captain Stackpole.

"Too far for the Regulators to follow, Ralph," said Colonel Bruce; at which the young men present laughed louder than ever, and eyed the visitor in a way that seemed both to disconcert and offend him.

"Cunnel," said he, "you're a man in authority, and my superior officer; wharfo' thar' can be no scalping between us. But my name's Tom Dowdle, the ragman!" he screamed, suddenly skipping into the thickest of the throng, and sounding a note of defiance; "my name's Tom Dowdle, the ragman, and I'm for any man that insults me! log-leg or leather-breeches, green-shirt or blanket-coat, land-trotter or river-roller,—I'm the man for a massacree!" Then giving himself a twirl upon his foot that would have done credit to a dancing-master, he proceeded to other antic demonstrations of hostility, which when performed in after years on the banks of the Lower Mississippi, by himself and his worthy imitators, were, we suspect, the cause of their receiving the name of the mighty alligator. It is said, by naturalists, of this monstrous reptile, that he delights, when the returning warmth of spring has brought his fellows from their holes, and placed them basking along the banks of a swampy lagoon, to dart into the centre of the expanse, and challenge the whole field to combat. He roars, he blows the water from his nostrils, he lashes it with his tail, he whirls round and round, churning the water into foam; until, having worked himself into a proper fury, he darts back again to the shore, to seek an antagonist. Had the gallant captain of horse-thieves boasted the blood, as he afterwards did the name, of an "alligator half-breed," he could have scarce conducted himself in a way more worthy of his parentage. He leaped into the centre of the throng, where, having found elbow-room for his purpose, he performed the gyration mentioned before, following it up by other feats expressive of his hostile humour. He flapped his wings and crowed, until every chanticleer in the settlement replied to the note of battle; he snorted and neighed like a horse; he bellowed like a bull; he barked like a dog; he yelled like an Indian; he whined like a panther; he howled like a wolf; until one would have thought he was a living managerie, comprising within his single body the spirit of every animal noted for its love of conflict. Then, not content with such a display of readiness to fight the field, he darted from the centre of the area allowed him for his exercise, and invited the lookers-on individually to battle. "Whar's your buffalo-bull," he cried, "to cross horns with the roarer of Salt River? Whar's your full-blood colt that can shake a saddle off? h'yar's an old nag can kick off the top of a buck-eye! Whar's your cat of the Knobs? your wolf of the Rolling Prairies? h'yar's the old brown b'ar can claw the bark off a gum tree! H'yar's a man for you, Tom Bruce! Same to you, Sim Roberts! to you, Jimmy Big-nose! to you, and to you, and to you! Ar'n't I a ring-tailed squealer? Can go down Salt on my back, and swim up the Ohio! Whar's the man to fight Roaring Ralph Stackpole?"

Now, whether it happened that there were none present inclined to a contest with such a champion, or whether it was that the young men looked upon the exhibition as a mere bravado meant rather to amuse them than irritate, it so occurred that not one of them accepted the challenge; though each, when personally called on, did his best to add to the roarer's fury, if fury it really were, by letting off sundry jests in relation to borrowed horses and Regulators.[3] That the fellow's rage was in great part assumed, Roland, who was, at first, somewhat amused at his extravagance, became soon convinced; and growing at last weary of it, he was about to signify to his host his inclination to return into the fort, when the appearance of another individual on the ground suddenly gave promise of new entertainment.

[Footnote 3: It is scarce necessary to inform the reader that by this term must be understood those public-spirited citizens, amateur jack-ketches, who administer Lynch-law in districts where regular law is but inefficiently, or not at all, established.]

CHAPTER IV.

"If you're ralely ripe for a fight, Roaring Ralph," cried Tom Bruce the younger, who had shown, like the others, a greater disposition to jest than to do battle with the champion, "here comes the very man for you. Look, boys, thar comes Bloody Nathan!" At which formidable name there was a loud shout set up, with an infinite deal of laughing and clapping of hands.

"Whar's the fellow?" cried Captain Stackpole, springing six feet into the air, and uttering a whoop of anticipated triumph. "I've heerd of the brute, and, 'tarnal death to me, but I'm his super-superior! Show me tho critter, and let me fly! Cock-a-doodle-doo!"

"Hurrah for Roaring Ralph Stackpole!" cried the young men, some of whom proceeded to pat him on the back in compliment to his courage, while others ran forward to hasten the approach of the expected antagonist.

The appearance of the comer, at a distance, promised an equal match to tho captain of horse-thieves; but Roland perceived, from the increase of merriment among the Kentuckians, and especially from his host joining heartily in it, that there was more in Bloody Nathan than met the eye. And yet there was enough in his appearance to attract attention, and to convince the soldier that if Kentucky had shown him, in Captain Stackpole, one extraordinary specimen of her inhabitants, she had others to exhibit not a whit less remarkable. It is on the frontiers, indeed, where adventurers from every corner of the world, and from every circle of society are thrown together, that we behold the strongest contrasts, and the strangest varieties, of human character.

Casting his eyes down the road, or street (for it was flanked by the outer cabins of the settlement, and perhaps deserved the latter name), which led, among stumps and gullies, from the gate of the stockade to the bottom of the hill, Forrester beheld a tall man approaching, leading an old lame white horse, at the heels of which followed a little silky haired black or brown dog, dragging its tail betwixt its legs, in compliment to the curs of the Station, which seemed as hospitably inclined to spread a field of battle for the submissive brute, as their owners were to make ready another for its master. The first thing that surprised the soldier in the appearance of the person bearing so formidable a name, was an incongruity which struck others as well as himself, even the colonel of militia exclaiming, as he pointed it out with his finger, "It's old Nathan Slaughter, to the backbone! Thar he comes, the brute, leading a horse in his hand, and carrying his pack on his own back! But he's a marciful man, Old Nathan, and the horse thar, old White Dobbin, war foundered and good for nothing ever since the boys made a race with him against Sammy Parker's jackass."

As he approached yet higher, Roland perceived that his tall, gaunt figure was arrayed in garments of leather from top to toe, even his cap, or hat (for such it seemed, having several broad flaps suspended by strings, so as to serve the purpose of a brim), being composed of fragments of tanned skins rudely sewed together. His upper garment differed from a hunting shirt only in wanting the fringes usually appended to it, and in being fashioned without any regard to the body it encompassed, so that in looseness and shapelessness, it looked more like a sack than a human vestment; and, like his breeches and leggings, it bore the marks of the most reverend antiquity, being covered with patches and stains of all ages, sizes, and colours.

Thus far Bloody Nathan's appearance was not inconsistent with his name, being uncommonly wild and savage; and to assist in maintaining his claims to the title, he had a long rifle on his shoulder, and a knife in his belt, both of which were in a state of dilapidation worthy of his other equipments; the knife, from long use and age, being worn so thin that it seemed scarce worthy the carrying, while the rifle boasted a stock so rude, shapeless, and, as one would have judged from its magnitude and weight, so unserviceable, that it was easy to believe it had been constructed by the unskilful hands of Nathan himself. His visage, seeming to belong to a man of at least forty-five or fifty years of age, was hollow, and almost as weather-worn as his apparel, with a long hooked nose, prominent chin, a wide mouth exceedingly straight and pinched, with a melancholy or contemplative twist at the corners, and a pair of black staring eyes, that beamed a good-natured, humble, and perhaps submissive, simplicity of disposition. His gait, too, as he stumbled along up the hill, with a shuffling, awkward, hesitating step, was like that of a man who apprehended injury and insult, and who did not possess the spirit to resist them. The fact, moreover, of his sustaining on his own shoulders a heavy pack of deer and other skins, to relieve the miserable horse which he led, betokened a merciful temper, scarce compatible with the qualities of a man of war and contention. Another test and criterion by which Roland judged his claims to the character of a roarer, he found in the little black dog; for the Virginian was a devout believer, as we are ourselves, in that maxim of practical philosophers, namely, that by the dog you shall know the master, the one being fierce, magnanimous, and cowardly, just as his master is a bully, a gentleman, or a dastard. The little dog of Nathan was evidently a coward, creeping along at White Dobbin's heels, and seeming to supplicate with his tail, which now draggled in the mud, and now attempted a timid wag, that his fellow-curs of the Station should not be rude and inhospitable to a peaceful stranger.

On the whole, the appearance of the man was anything in the world but that of the ferocious ruffian whom the nick-name had led Roland to anticipate; and he scarce knew whether to pity him, or to join in the laugh with which the young men of the settlement greeted his approach. Perhaps his sense of the ridiculous would have disposed the young soldier to merriment; but the wistful look with which, while advancing, Nathan seemed to deprecate the insults he evidently expected, spoke volumes of reproach to his spirit, and the half-formed smile faded from his countenance.

"Thar!" exclaimed Tom Bruce, slapping Stackpole on the shoulder, with great glee, "thar's the man that calls himself Dannger! At him, for the honour of Salt River; but take care of his forelegs, for, I tell you, he's the Pennsylvany war-horse!"

"And arn't I the ramping tiger of the Rolling Fork?" cried Captain Ralph; "and can't I eat him, hoss, dog, dirty jacket, and all? Hold me by the tail while I devour him!"

With that, he executed two or three escapades, demivoltes curvets, and
other antics of a truly equine character, an galloping up to the amazed
Nathan, saluted him with a neigh so shrill and hostile that even White
Dobbin pricked up his ears, and betrayed other symptoms of alarm.

"Surely, Colonel," said Roland, "you will not allow that mad ruffian to assail the poor man?"

"Oh," said Bruce, "Ralph won't hurt him; he's never vicious, except among
Injuns and horses. He's only for skearing the old feller."

"And who," said Forrester, "may the old fellow be? and why do you call him Bloody Nathan?"

"We call him Bloody Nathan," replied the commander, "because he's the only man in all Kentucky that won't fight! and thar's the way he beats us all hollow. Lord, Captain, you'd hardly believe it, but he's nothing more than a poor Pennsylvany Quaker; and what brought him out to Kentucky, whar thar's nar another creatur' of his tribe, thar's no knowing. Some say he war dishonest, and so had to cut loose from Pennsylvany; but I never heerd of his stealing anything in Kentucky; I reckon thar's too much of the chicken about him for that. Some say he is hunting rich lands; which war like enough for anybody that war not so poor and lazy. And some say his wits are unsettled, and I hold that that's the truth of the creatur'; for he does nothing but go wandering up and down the country, now h'yar and now thar, hunting for meat and skins; and that's pretty much the way he makes a living: and once I see'd the creatur' have a fit—a right up-and-down touch of the falling-sickness, with his mouth all of a foam. Thar's them that's good-natur'd that calls him Wandering Nathan, because of his being h'yar and thar, and every whar. He don't seem much afear'd of the Injuns; but, they say, the red brutes never disturbs the Pennsylvany Quakers. Howsomever, he makes himself useful; for sometimes he finds Injun sign whar thar's no Injuns thought of, and so he gives information; but he always does it, as he says, to save bloodshed, not to bring on a fight. He comes to me once, thar's more than three years ago, and instead of saying, 'Cunnel, thar's twenty Injuns lying on the road at the lower ford of Salt, whar you may nab them,' says he, says he, 'Friend Thomas, thee must keep the people from going nigh the ford, for thar's Injuns thar that will hurt them;' and then he takes himself off; whilst I rides down thar with twenty-five men and exterminates them, killing six, and driving the others the Lord knows whar. He has had but a hard time of it amongst us, poor creatur'; for it used to make us wrathy to find thar war so little fight in him that he wouldn't so much as kill a murdering Injun. I took his gun from him once; for why, he wouldn't attend muster when I had enrolled him. But I pitied the brute; for he war poor, and thar war but little corn in his cabin, and nothing to shoot meat with; and so I gave it back, and told him to take his own ways for an old fool."

While Colonel Bruce was thus delineating the character of Nathan Slaughter, the latter found himself surrounded by the young men of the Station, the butt of a thousand jests, and the victim of the insolence of the captain of horse-thieves. It is not to be supposed that Roaring Ralph was really the bully and madman that his extravagant freaks and expressions seemed to proclaim him. These, like any other "actions that a man might play," were assumed, partly because it suited his humour to be fantastic, and partly because the putting of his antic disposition on, was the only means which he, like many of his betters, possessed of attracting attention, and avoiding the neglect and contempt to which his low habits and appearance would have otherwise justly consigned him. There was, therefore, little really hostile in the feelings with which he approached the non-combatant; though it was more than probable, the disgust he, in common with the other warlike personages, entertained toward the peaceable Nathan, might have rendered him a little more malicious than usual.

"Nathan!" said he, as soon as he had concluded his neighing and curvetting, "if you ever said your prayers, now's the time. Down with your pack—for I can't stand deer's ha'r sticking in my swallow, no how!"

"Friend," said Nathan, meekly, "I beg thee will not disturb me. I am a man of peace and quiet."

And so saying, he endeavoured to pass onwards, but was prevented by Ralph, who, seizing his heavy bundle with one hand, applied his right foot to it with a dexterity that not only removed it from the poor man's back, but sent the dried skins scattering over the road. This feat was rewarded by the spectators with loud shouts, all which, as well as the insult itself, Nathan bore with exemplary patience.

"Friend," he said, "what does thee seek of me, that thee treats me thus?"

"A fight!" replied Captain Stackpole, uttering a war-whoop; "a fight, strannger, for the love of heaven!"

"Thee seeks it of the wrong person," said Nathan; "and I beg thee will get thee away,"

"What!" said Stackpole, "arn't thee the Pennsylvanny war-horse, the screamer of the meeting-house, the ba'r of Yea-Nay-and-Verily?"

"I am a man of peace," said the submissive Slaughter.

"Yea verily, verily and yea!" cried Ralph, snuffling through the nostrils, but assuming an air of extreme indignation: "Strannger, I've heerd of you! You're the man that holds it agin duty and conscience to kill Injuns, the redskin screamers—that refuses to defend the women, the splendiferous creatur's! and the little children, the squall-a-baby d'avs! And wharfo'? Bec'ause as how you're a man of peace and no fight, you superiferous, long-legged, no-souled crittur! But I'm the gentleman to make a man of you. So down with your gun, and 'tarnal death to me, I'll whip the cowardly devil out of you."

"Friend," said Nathan, his humility yielding to a feeling of contempt, "thee is theeself a cowardly person, or thee wouldn't seek a quarrel with one thee knows can't fight thee Thee would not be so ready with thee match."

With that, he stooped to gather up his skins, a proceeding that Stackpole, against whom the laugh was turned by this sally of Nathan's, resisted by catching him by the nape of the neck, twirling him round, and making as if he really would have beaten him.

Even this the peaceful Nathan bore without anger or murmuring; but his patience fled, when Stackpole, turning to the little dog, which was bristling its back and growling, expressed a half inclination to take up its master's quarrel, applied his foot to its ribs with a violence that sent it rolling some five or six yards down the hill, where it lay for a time yelping and whining with pain.

"Friend!" said Nathan, sternly, "thee is but a dog theeself, to harm the creature! What will thee have with me?"

"A fight! a fight, I tell thee!" replied Captain Ralph, "till I teach thy leatherified conscience the new doctrines of Kentucky."

"Fight thee I cannot and dare not," said Nathan; and then added, much to the surprise of Forrester, who, sharing, his indignation at the brutality of his tormentor, had approached to drive the fellow off,—"But if thee must have thee deserts, thee shall have them.—Thee prides theeself upon thee courage and strength—will thee adventure with me a friendly fall?"

"Hurrah for Nathan!" cried the young men, vastly delighted at his unwonted spirit, while Captain Ralph himself expressed his pleasure, by leaping into the air, crowing, and dashing off his hat, which he kicked down the hill with as much good will as he had previously bestowed upon the little dog.

"Off with your leather night-cap, and down with your rifle," he cried, giving his own weapon into the hands of a looker-on, "and scrape some of the grease off your jacket; for, 'tarnal death to me, I shall give you the Virginny lock, fling you head-fo'most, and you'll find yourself, in a twinkling, sticking fast right in the centre of the 'arth!"

"Thee may find theeself mistaken," said Nathan, giving up his gun to one of the young men, but instead of rejecting his hat, pulling it down tight over his brows. "There is locks taught among the mountains of Bedford that may be as good as them learned on the hills of Virginia.—I am ready for thee."

"Cock-a-doodle-doo!" cried Ralph Stackpole, springing towards his man, and clapping his hands, one on Nathan's left shoulder, the other on his right hip: "Are you ready?"

"I am," replied Nathan.

"Down, then, you go, war you a buffalo!" And with that the captain of the horse-thieves put forth his strength, which was very great, in an effort that appeared to Roland quite irresistible; though, as it happened, it scarce moved Nathan from his position.

"Thee is mistaken, friend!" he cried, exerting his strength in return, and with an effect that no one had anticipated. By magic, as it seemed, the heels of the captain of the horse-thieves were suddenly seen flying in the air, his head aiming at the earth, upon which it as suddenly descended with the violence of a bomb-shell; and there it would doubtless have burrowed, like the aforesaid implement of destruction, had the soil been soft enough for the purpose, or exploded into a thousand fragments, had not the shell been double the thickness of an ordinary skull.

"Huzza! Bloody Nathan for ever!" shouted the delighted villagers.

"He has killed the man," said Forrester; "but bear witness, all, the fellow provoked his fate."

"Thanks to you, strannger! but not so dead as you reckon," said Ralph, rising to his feet, and scratching his poll, with a stare of comical confusion. "I say, strannger, here's my shoulders,—but whar's my head?—Do you reckon I had the worst of it?"

"Huzza for Nathan Slaughter! He has whipped the ramping tiger of Salt
River!" cried the young men of the Station.

"Well, I reckon he has," said the magnanimous Captain Ralph, picking up his hat: then walking up to Nathan, who had taken his dog into his arms, to examine into the little animal's hurts, he cried, with much good-humoured energy,—"Thar's my fo'paw, in token I've had enough of you and want no mo'. But I say, Nathan Slaughter," he added, as he grasped the victor's hand, "it's no thing you can boast of, to be the strongest man in Kentucky, and the most sevagarous at a tussel,—h'yar among murdering Injuns and scalping runnegades,—and keep your fists off their top-knots. Thar's my idear: for I go for the doctrine that every able-bodied man should sarve his country and his neighbours, and fight their foes; and them that does is men and gentlemen, and them that don't is cowards and rascals, that's my idear. And so, fawwell."

Then, executing another demivolte or two, but with much less spirit than he had previously displayed, he returned to Colonel Bruce, saying, "Whar's that horse you promised me, cunnel? I'm a licked man, and I can't stay here no longer, no way no how. Lend me a hoss, cunnel, and trust to my honour."

"You shall have a beast," said Bruce, coolly; "but as to trusting your honour, I shall do no such thing, having something much better to rely on. Tom will show you a horse; and, remember, you are to leave him at Logan's. If you carry him a step further, captain, you'll never carry another. Judge Lynch is looking at you; and so bewar'."

Having uttered this hint, he left the captian of horse-thieves to digest it as he might, and stepped up to Nathan, who had seated himself on a stump, where, with his skins at his side, his little dog and his rifle betwixt his legs, he sat enduring a thousand sarcastic encomiums on his strength and spirit, with as many sharp denunciations of the peaceful principles that robbed the community of the services he had shown himself so well able to render. The doctrine, so eloquently avowed by Captain Ralph, that it was incumbent upon every able-bodied man to fight the enemies of their little state, the murderers of their wives and children, was a canon of belief imprinted on the heart of every man in the district; and Nathan's failure to do so, however caused by his conscientious aversion to bloodshed, no more excused him from contempt and persecution in the wilderness, than it did others of his persuasion in the Eastern republics, during the war of the revolution. His appearance, accordingly, at any Station, was usually the signal for reproach and abuse; the fear of which had driven him almost altogether from the society of his fellowmen, so that he was seldom seen among them, except when impelled by necessity, or when his wanderings in the woods had acquainted him with the proximity of the foes of his persecutors. His victory over the captain of horse-thieves exposed him, on this occasion, to ruder and angrier remonstrances than usual; which having sought in vain to avert, he sat down in despair, enduring all in silence, staring from one to another of his tormentors with lack-lustre eyes, and playing with the silken hair of his dog. The approach of the captain of the Station procured him an interval of peace, which he, however, employed only to communicate his troubles to the little cur, that, in his perplexity, he had addressed pretty much as he would have addressed a human friend and adviser: "Well, Peter," said he, abstractedly, and with a heavy sigh, "what does thee think of matters and things!" To which question, the ridiculousness of which somewhat mollified the anger of the young men, Peter replied by rubbing his nose against his master's hand, and by walking a step or two down the hill, as if advising an instant retreat from the inhospitable Station.

"Ay, Peter," muttered Nathan, "the sooner we go the better; for there are none that makes us welcome. But nevertheless, Peter, we must have our lead and our powder; and we must tell these poor people the news."

"And pray, Nathan," said Colonel Bruce, rousing him from his meditations, "what may your news for the poor people be? I reckon it will be much wiser to tell it to me than that 'ar brute dog. You have seen the Jibbenainosay, perhaps, or his mark thar-away on the Kentucky?"

"Nay," said Nathan. "But there is news from the Injun towns of a great gathering of Injuns with their men of war in the Miami villages, who design, the evil creatures, marching into the district of Kentucky with a greater army than was ever seen in the land before."

"Let them come, the brutes," said the Kentuckian, with a laugh of scorn; "it will save us the trouble of hunting them up in their own towns."

"Nay," said Nathan, "but perhaps they have come; for the prisoner who escaped, and who is bearing the news to friend Clark, the General at the Falls, says they were to march two days after he fled from them."

"And whar did you learn this precious news?"

"At the lower fort of Kentucky, and from the man himself," said Nathan.
"He had warned the settlers at Lexington—"

"That's piper's news," interrupted one of the young men. "Captain Ralph told us all about that; but he said thar war nobody at Lexington believed the story."

"Then," said Nathan, meekly, "it may be that the man was mistaken. Yet persons should have a care, for there is Injun sign all along the Kentucky. But that is my story. And now, friend Thomas, if thee will give me lead and powder for my skins, I will be gone, and trouble thee no longer."

"It's a sin and a shame to waste them on a man who only employs them to kill deer, b'ar, and turkey," said Bruce, "yet a man musn't starve, even whar he's a quaker. So go you along with my son Dick thar, to the store, and he'll give you the value of your plunder. A poor, miserable brute, thar's no denying," he continued, contemptuously, as Nathan, obeying the direction, followed Bruce's second son into the fortress. "The man has some spirit now and then; but whar's the use of it, while he's nothing but a no-fight quaker? I tried to reason him out of his notions; but thar war no use in trying, no how I could work it. I have an idea about these quakers—"

But here, luckily, the worthy Colonel's idea was suddenly put to flight by the appearance of Telie Doe, who came stealing through the throng, to summon him to his evening meal,—a call which neither he nor his guest was indisposed to obey; and taking Telie by the hand in a paternal manner, he ushered the young soldier back into the fort.

The girl, Roland observed, had changed her attire at the bidding of her protector, and now, though dressed with the greatest simplicity, appeared to more advantage than before. He thought her, indeed, quite handsome, and pitying her more than orphan condition, he endeavoured to show her such kindness as was in his power, by addressing to her some complimentary remarks, as he walked along at her side. His words, however, only revived the terror she seemed really to experience, whenever any one accosted her; seeing which, he desisted, doubting if she deserved the compliment the benevolent Bruce had so recently paid to her good sense.

CHAPTER V.

The evening meal being concluded, and a few brief moments devoted to conversation with her new friends, Edith was glad, when, at a hint from her kinsman as to the early hour appointed for setting out on the morrow, she was permitted to seek the rest of which she stood in need. Her chamber—and, by a rare exercise of hospitality, the merit of which she appreciated, since she was sensible it could not have been made without sacrifice, she occupied it alone—boasted few of the luxuries, few even of the comforts, to which she had been accustomed in her native land, and her father's house. But misfortune had taught her spirit humility; and the recollection of nights passed in the desert, with only a thin mattress betwixt her and the naked earth, and a little tent-cloth and the boughs of trees to protect her from inclement skies, caused her to regard her present retreat with such feelings of satisfaction as she might have indulged if in the chamber of a palace.

She was followed to the apartment by a bevy of the fair Bruces, all solicitous to render her such assistance as they could, and all, perhaps, equally anxious to indulge their admiration, for the second or third time, over the slender store of finery, which Edith good-naturedly opened to their inspection. In this way the time fled amain until Mrs. Bruce, more considerate than her daughters, and somewhat scandalised by the loud commendations which they passed on sundry articles of dress such as were never before seen in Kentucky, rushed into the chamber, and drove them manfully away.

"Poor, ignorant critturs!" said she, by way of apology, "they knows no better: thar's the mischief of being raised in the back-woods. They'll never l'arn to be genteel, thar's so many common persons comes out here with their daughters. I'm sure, I do my best to l'arn 'em."

With these words she tendered her own good offices to Edith, which the young lady declining with many thanks, she bade her good-night, and, to Edith's great relief, left her to herself. A few moments then sufficed to complete her preparations for slumber, which being effected, she threw herself on her knees, to implore the further favour of the orphan's Friend, who had conducted her so far in safety on her journey.

Whilst thus engaged, her mind absorbed in the solemn duty, she failed to note that another visitor had softly stolen into the apartment; and accordingly, when she rose from her devotions, and beheld a female figure standing in the distance, though regarding her with both reverence and timidity, she could not suppress an exclamation of alarm.

"Do not be afraid,—it is only Telie Doe," said the visitor, with a low and trembling voice: "I thought you would want some one to—to take the candle."

"You are very good," replied Edith, who, having scarcely before observed the humble and retiring maid, and supposing her to be one of her host's children, had little doubt she had stolen in to indulge her curiosity, like the others, although at so late a moment as to authorise a little cruelty on the part of the guest. "I am very tired and sleepy," she said, creeping into bed, hoping that the confession would be understood and accepted as an apology. She then, seeing that Telie did not act upon the hint, intimated that she had no further occasion for the light, and bade her good-night. But Telie, instead of departing, maintained her stand at the little rude table, where, besides the candle, were several articles of apparel that Edith had laid out in readiness for the morning, and upon which she thought the girl's eyes were fixed.

"If you had come a little earlier," said Edith, with unfailing good-nature, "I should have been glad to show you anything I have. But now, indeed, it is too late, and all my packages are made up—"

"It is not that," interrupted the maiden hastily, but with trepidation.
"No, I did not want to trouble you. But—"

"But what?" demanded Edith, with surprise, yet with kindness, for she observed the agitation of the speaker.

"Lady," said Telie, mustering resolution, and stepping to the bed-side, "if you will not be angry with me, I would, I would—"

"You would ask a favour, perhaps," said Edith, encouraging her with a smile.

"Yes, that is it," replied the girl, dropping on her knees, not so much, however, as it appeared, from abasement of spirit, as to bring her lips nearer to Edith's ear, that she might speak in a lower voice. "I know, from what they say, you are a great lady, and that you once had many people to wait upon you; and now you are in the wild woods, among strangers, and none about you but men." Edith replied with a sigh, and Telie, timorously grasping at the hand lying nearest her own, murmured eagerly, "If you would but take me with you, I am used to the woods, and I would be your servant."

"You!" exclaimed Edith, her surprise getting the better of her sadness. "Your mother would surely never consent to your being a servant?"

"My mother?" muttered Telie,—"I have no mother,—no relations."

"What! Mr. Bruce is not then your father?"

"No,—I have no father. Yes,—that is, I have a father; but he has,—he has turned Indian."

These words were whispered rather than spoken, yet whispered with a tone of grief and shame that touched Edith's feelings. Her pity was expressed in her countenance, and Telie, reading the gentle sympathy infused into every lovely feature, bent over the hand she had clasped, and touched it with her lips.

"I have told you the truth," she said, mournfully: "one like me should not be ashamed to be a servant. And so, lady, if you will take me, I will go with you and serve you; and poor and ignorant as I am, I can serve you,—yes, ma'am," she added, eagerly, "I can serve you more and better than you think,—indeed, indeed I can."

"Alas, poor child," said Edith, "I am one who must learn to do without attendance and service. I have no home to give you."

"I have heard it all," said Telie; "but I can live in the woods with you, till you have a house; and then I can work for you, and you'll never regret taking me,—no, indeed, for I know all that's to be done by a woman in a new land, and you don't; and, indeed, if you have none to help you, it would kill you, it would indeed: for it is a hard, hard time in the woods, for a woman that has been brought up tenderly."

"Alas, child," said Edith, perhaps a little pettishly, for she liked not to dwell upon such gloomy anticipations, "why should you be discontented with the home you have already? Surely, there are none here unkind to you?"

"No," replied the maiden, "they are very good to me, and Mr. Bruce has been a father to me. But then I am not his child, and it is wrong of me to live upon him, who has so many children of his own. And then my father—all talk of my father; all the people here hate him, though he has never done them harm, and I know,—yes, I know it well enough, though they won't believe it,—that he keeps the Indians from hurting them; but they hate him and curse him; and oh! I wish I was away, where I should never hear them speak of him more. Perhaps they don't know anything about him at the Falls, and then there will be nobody to call me the white Indian's daughter."

"And does Mr. Bruce, or his wife, know of your desire to leave him?"

"No," said Telie, her terrors reviving; "but if you should ask them for me, then they would agree to let me go. He told the Captain,—that's Captain Forrester,—he would do any thing for him; and indeed he would, for he is a good man, and he will do what he says."

"How strange, how improper, nay, how ungrateful then, if he be a good man," said Edith, "that you should wish to leave him and his kind family, to live among persons entirely unknown. Be content, my poor maid. You have little save imaginary evils to affect you. You are happier here than you can be among strangers."

Telie clasped her hands in despair: "I shall never be happy here, nor anywhere. But take me," she added eagerly, "take me for your own sake;—for it will be good for you to have me with you in the woods,—it will, indeed it will."

"It cannot be," said Edith, gently. But the maiden would scarce take a refusal. Her terrors had been dissipated by her having ventured so far on speech, and she now pursued her object with an imploring and passionate earnestness that both surprised and embarrassed Edith, while it increased her sympathy for the poor bereaved pleader. She endeavoured to convince her, if not of the utter folly of her desires, at least of the impossibility there was on her part of granting them. She succeeded, however, in producing conviction only on one point. Telie perceived that her suit was not to be granted; of when, as soon as she was satisfied, she left off entreaty, and rose to her feet with a saddened and humbled visage, and then, taking up the candle, she left the fair stranger to her repose.

In the meanwhile, Roland also was preparing for slumber; and finding, as indeed he could not avoid seeing, that the hospitality of his host had placed the males of the family under the necessity of taking their rest in the open air on the porch, he insisted upon passing the night in the same place in their company. In fact, the original habitation of the back-woodsman seldom boasted more than two rooms in all, and these none of the largest; and when emigrants arrived at a Station, there was little attempt made to find shelter for any save their women and children, to whom the men of the settlement readily gave up their own quarters, to share those of their male visitors under the blanket-tents which were spread before the doors. This, to men who had thus passed the nights for several weeks in succession, was anything but hardship; and when the weather was warm and dry, they could congratulate themselves on sleeping in greater comfort than, their sheltered companions. Of this Forrester was well aware, and he took an early period to communicate his resolution of rejecting the unmanly luxury of a bed, and sleeping like a soldier, wrapped in his cloak, with his saddle for a pillow. In this way, the night proving unexpectedly sultry, he succeeded in enjoying more delightful and refreshing slumbers than blessed his kinswoman in her bed of down. The song of the katydid and the cry of the whippoorwill came more sweetly to his ears from the adjacent woods; and the breeze that had stirred a thousand leagues of forest in its flight, whispered over his cheek with a more enchanting music than it made among the chinks and crannies of the wall by Edith's bed-side. A few idle dreams,—recollections of home, mingled with the anticipated scenes of the future, the deep forest, the wild beast, and the lurking Indian,—amused, without harassing, his sleeping mind; and it was not until the first gray of dawn that he experienced any interruption. He started up suddenly, his ears still tingling with the soft tones of an unknown voice, which had whispered in them, "Cross the river by the Lower Ford,—there is danger at the Upper." He stared around, but saw nothing all was silent around him, save the deep breathing of the sleepers at his side. "Who spoke?" he demanded in a whisper, but received no reply. "River,—Upper and Lower Ford,—danger?—" he muttered: "now I would have sworn some one spoke to me; and yet I must have dreamed it. Strange things, dreams,—thoughts in freedom, loosed from the chains of association,—temporary mad-fits, undoubtedly: marvellous impressions they produce on the organs of sense; see, hear, smell, taste, touch, more exquisitely without the organs than with them—What's the use of organs? There's the poser—I think—I—" but here he ceased thinking altogether, his philosophy having served the purpose such philosophy usually does, and wrapped him a second time in the arms of Morpheus. He opened his eyes almost immediately, as he thought; but his morning nap had lasted half an hour; the dawn was already purple and violet in the sky, his companions had left his side, and the hum of voices and the sound of footsteps in and around the Station, told him that his fellow-exiles were already preparing to resume their journey.

"A brave morrow to you, captain!" said the commander of the fortress, the thunder of whose footsteps, as he approached the house with uncommonly fierce strides, had perhaps broken his slumbers. A frown was on his brow, and the grasp of his hand, in which every finger seemed doing the duty of a boa-constrictor, spoke of a spirit up in arms, and wrestling with passion.

"What is the matter?" asked Roland.

"Matter that consarns you and me more than any other two persons in the etarnal world!" said Bruce, with such energy of utterance as nothing-but rage could supply. "Thar has been a black wolf in the pin-fold,—alias, as they used to say at the court-house, Captain Ralph Stackpole; and the end of it is, war I never to tell another truth in my life, that your blooded brown horse has absquatulated!"

"Absquatulated!" echoed Forrester, amazed as much at the word as at the fierce visage of his friend,—"what is that? Is the horse hurt?"

"Stolen away, sir, by the etarnal Old Scratch! Carried off by Roaring Ralph Stackpole, while I, like a brute, war sound a-sleeping! And h'yar's the knavery of the thing; sir! the unpronounceable rascality, sir!—I loaned the brute one of my own critturs, just to be rid of him, and have him out of harm's way; for I had a forewarning, the brute, that his mouth war a-watering after the Dew beasts in the pinfold, and after the brown horse in partickelar! And so I loaned him a horse, and sent him off to Logan's. Well, sir, and what does the brute do but ride off, for a make-believe, to set us easy; for he knew, the brute, if he war in sight of us, we should have had guards over the cattle all night long; well, sir, down he sot in ambush, till all were quiet; and then he stole back, and turning my own horse among the others, as if to say, 'Thar's the beast that I borrowed,'—it war a wonder the brute war so honest!—picked the best of the gathering, your blooded brown horse, sir! and all the while, I war sleeping like a brute, and leaving the guest in my own house to be robbed by Captain Ralph Stackpole, the villian!"

"If it be possible to follow the rascal," said Roland, giving way to wrath himself, "I must do so, and without a moment's delay. I would to heaven I had known this earlier."

"Whar war the use," said Bruce; "whar was the use of disturbing a tired man in his nap, and he a guest of mine too?"

"The advantage would have been," said Roland, a little testily, "that the pursuit could have been instantly begun."

"And war it not?" said the colonel. "Thar war not two minutes lost after the horse war missing, afore my son Tom and a dozen more of the best woodsmen war mounted on the fleetest horses in the settlement, and galloping after, right on the brute's trail."

"Thanks, my friend," said Roland, with a cordial grasp of the hand. "The horse will be recovered?"

"Thar's no denying it," said Bruce, "if a fresh leg can outrun a weary one; and besides, the brute war not content with the best horse, but he must have the second best too, that's Major Smalleye's two-y'ar-old pony. He has an eye for a horse, the etarnal skirmudgeon! but the pony will be the death of him; for he's skeary, and will keep Ralph slow in the path. No, sir; we'll have your brown horse before you can say Jack Robinson. But the intolerability of the thing, sir, is that Ralph Stackpole should steal my guest's horse, sir! But it's the end of his thieving, the brute, or thar's no snakes! I told him Lynch war out, the brute, and I told the boys to take car' I war not found lying; and I reckon they won't forget me! I like the crittur, thar's no denying, for he's a screamer among the Injuns; but thar's no standing a horse-thief! No, sir, thar's no standing a horse-thief!"

The only consequence of this accident which was apprehended, was that the march of the exiles must be delayed until the soldier's horse was recovered, or Roland himself left behind until the animal was brought in; unless, indeed, he chose to accept another freely offered him by his gallant host, and trust to having his own charger restored on some future occasion. He was himself unwilling that the progress of more than a hundred human beings towards the long sighed for land of promise should be delayed a moment on his account; and for this reason he exhorted his nominal superior to hasten the preparations for departure, without thinking of him. His first resolution in relation to his own course, was to proceed with the company, leaving his horse to be sent after him, when recovered. He was loath, however, to leave the highly-prized and long-tried charger behind; and Colonel Bruce, taking advantage of the feeling, and representing the openness and safety of the road, the shortness of the day's journey (for the next Station at which the exiles intended lodging was scarce twenty miles distant), and above all, promising, if he remained, to escort him thither with a band of his young men, to whom the excursion would be but an agreeable frolic, the soldier changed his mind, and, in an evil hour, as it afterwards appeared, consented to remain until Brown Briareus was brought in,—provided this should happen before mid-day; at which time, if the horse did not appear, it was agreed he should set out, trusting to his good fortune and the friendly zeal of his host, for the future recovery and restoration of his charger. Later than mid-day he was resolved not to remain; for however secure the road, it was wiser to pursue it in company than alone; nor would he have consented to remain a moment, had there appeared the least impediment to his joining the companions of his exile before nightfall.

His measures were taken accordingly. His baggage-horses, under the charge of the younger of the two negroes, were sent on with the band; the other, an old and faithful slave of his father, being retained as a useful appendage to a party containing his kinswoman, from whom he, of course, saw no reason to be separated. To Edith herself, the delay was far from being disagreable. It promised a gay and cheerful gallop through the forest, instead of the dull, plodding, funeral-like march to which she had been day after day monotonously accustomed. She assented, therefore, to the arrangement, and, like her kinsman, beheld, in the fresh light of sun-rise, without a sigh, without even a single foreboding of evil, the departure of the train of emigrants, with whom she had journeyed in safety so many long and weary leagues through the desert.

They set out in high spirits, after shaking hands with their hosts at the gates, and saluting them with cheers, which they repeated in honour of their young captain; and, in a few moments, the whole train had vanished, as if swallowed up by the dark forest.

CHAPTER VI.

Within an hour after the emigrants had set out, the sky, which had previously been clear and radiant, began to be overcast with clouds, dropping occasional rains, which Roland scarcely observed with regret, their effect on the sultry atmosphere being highly agreeable and refreshing. They continued thus to fall at intervals until nine o'clock; when Roland, as he sat on the porch debating with Bruce the probabilities of their continuance, was roused by a shout from the outer village; and looking up, he beheld, to his great delight, Richard Bruce, the second son of his host, a lad of sixteen, ride into the enclosure, leading in triumph his recovered charger.

"Thar's the brute, strannger!" said he, with uncommon glee: "he war too hard a horse for Ralph's riding; and, I reckon, if he hadn't been, you wouldn't have had him so easy, for he's a peeler at a run, trot, or gallop, he is, I tell you! It's bad luck for Stackpole to be flung by man and beast two days hand-running,—first by Bloody Nathan, then by a stolen crittur!"

"And whar is the brute, Stackpole? and what have you done with him?" demanded Bruce.

"Thar, father, you're too hard for me," replied the youth; "but I'll tell you all I know on it. You needn't look at his legs, Captain, for they're all as sound as hickory: the crittur's a bit worried with his morning's work; but that's nothing to speak on."

The lad's story was soon told. The track of the horse-thief had been followed through the woods; and it was soon seen, from its irregularity, that he had made an unlucky selection of beasts, both being so restive and rebellious, that, it was obvious, he had found it no easy matter to urge them along. A place was found where he appeared to have been thrown by the turbulent Briareus, which he seemed afterwards to have pursued, mounted on the pony, in the vain hope of retaking the mettlesome charger, until persuaded of his inability, or afraid, from the direction in which the animal had fled, of being led back again to the settlement. His track, after abandoning the chase, was as plain as that left by the war-horse, and was followed by the main body of pursuers, while Richard and two or three others, taking the latter, had the good fortune to find and recover the animal as he was solacing himself, after his morning adventures, in a grassy wood, scarce two miles from the Station. What had become of Stackpole the lad knew not, but had no doubt, as he added, with a knowing look, "that Lynch's boys would soon give a good account of him; for Major Smalleye war as mad as a beaten b'ar about the two-y'ar-old pony."

"Well," said the father, "I reckon the brute will deserve all he may come by; and thar's no use in mourning him. Thar's as good Injun-fighters as he, left in Kentucky, thar's the comfort; and thar's no denying, men will be much easier about their horses."

With this consoling assurance, in which Roland saw implied the visitation of the deadliest vengeance on the head of the offender, Bruce proceeded to congratulate him on the recovery of Brown Briareus, and to intimate his readiness, after the animal had been allowed a little rest, which it evidently needed, to marshal his band of young men, and conduct him on his way after the exiles. But fate willed that the friendly intention should never be put into execution, and that the young soldier should go forth on his pilgrimage unattended and unprotected.

Within the space of half an hour, the clouds, which seemed previously to have discharged all their moisture, collected into a dense canopy, darkening the whole heaven, and rumbling with thunder, that became every moment louder and heavier. Then came gusts of wind, groaning through the forest, rattling among the dead limbs of the girdled trees, and whistling over the palisades of the fort. These were succeeded by louder peals of thunder, and vivid flashes of lightning, which continued and increased, until the tempest, for such it was, burst in fury, discharging deluges of rain, that fell with unintermitting violence until an hour or more after mid-day.

This was a circumstance which, as it necessarily deferred the moment of his setting out, caused Forrester a little uneasiness; but he soon came to believe he had reason to congratulate himself on its occurrence, since it was scarce possible the band would continue their journey in such a storm; and, indeed, Bruce was of opinion that the day's march would be ended on the banks of the river,—one of the principal forks of the Salt,—but little more than ten miles from his Station; where, if the exiles were wise, they would pitch their camp, waiting for the subsidence of the waters. This was a point that Roland might be expected to reach in a ride of three or four hours at most; which consideration not only satisfied him under the delay, but almost made him resolve to defer his setting-out until the following morning, that his kinswoman might have the advantage of sleeping a second time under the shelter of a roof, rather than be compelled to exchange it for the chill and humid forest.

It was while he was balancing this thought in his mind, and watching with a gladdened eye the first flash of sunshine, breaking through the parted clouds, that a shout, louder than that which had proclaimed the recovery of his steed, but of a wild and mournful character, arose from the outer village, and a horseman, covered with mud, reeking with rain, and reeling in the saddle with fatigue and exhaustion, rode into the fort, followed by a crowd of men, women, and children, all testifying, by their looks and exclamations, that he was the bearer of alarming news. And such indeed he was, as was shown by the first words he answered in reply to Bruce's demand "what was the matter?"

"There are a thousand Indians," he said, "Shawnees, Delawares, Wyandots, Miamies,—all the tribes of the North,—laying siege to Bryant's Station, and perhaps at this moment they are burning and murdering at Lexington. Men, Colonel Bruce! send us all your men, without a moment's delay; and send off for Logan and his forces: despatch some one who can ride, for I can sit a horse no longer."

"Whar's Dick Bruce?" cried the Kentuckian; and the son answering, he continued, "Mount the roan Long-legs, you brute, and ride to St. Asaph's in no time. Tell Cunnel Logan what you h'ar; and add, that before he can draw girth, I shall be, with every fighting-man in my fort, on the north side of Kentucky. Ride, you brute, ride for your life; and do you take car' you come along with the Cunnel; for it's time you war trying your hand at an Injun top-knot. Ride, you brute, ride!"

"Wah—wah—wah—wah!" whooped the boy, like a young Indian, flying to obey the order, and exulting in the expectation of combat.

"Sound horn, you Samuel Sharp!" cried the father. "You, Ben Jones, and some more of you, ride out and rouse the settlement; and, some of you, hunt up Tom Bruce and the Regulators: it war a pity they hanged Ralph Stackpole; for he fights Injuns like a wolverine. Tell all them that ar'n't ready to start to follow at a hard gallop, and join me at the ford of Kentucky; and them that can't join me thar, let them follow to Lexington; and them that don't find me thar, let them follow to Bryant's, or to any-whar whar thar's Injuns! Hurrah, you brutes! whar's your guns and your horses? your knives and your tomahawks? If thar's a thousand Injuns, or the half of 'em, thar's meat for all of you. Whar's Ikey Jones, the fifer? Let's have Yankee-Doodle and the Rogue's March for, by the etarnal Old Scratch, all them white men that ar'n't a-horse-back in twenty-five minutes, are rogues worse than red Injuns!—Hurrah for Kentucky!"

The spirit of the worthy officer of militia infused animation into all bosoms; and, in an instant, the settlement, late so peaceful, resounded with the hum and uproar of warlike preparation. Horses were caught and saddled, rifles pulled from their perches, knives sharpened, ammunition-pouches and provender-bags filled, and every other step taken necessary to the simple equipment of a border army, called to action in an emergency so sudden and urgent.

In the meanwhile, the intelligence was not without its effects on Roland Forrester, who, seeing himself so unexpectedly deprived of the promised escort,—for he could scarce think, under such circumstances, of withdrawing a single man from the force called to a duty so important,—perceived the necessity of employing his own resources to effect escape from a position which he now felt to be embarrassing. He regretted, for the first time, his separation from the band of emigrants, and became doubly anxious to follow them: for, if it were true that so large a force of Indians was really in the District, there was every reason to suppose they would, according to their known system of warfare, divide into small parties, and scatter over the whole country, infesting every road and path; and he knew not how soon some of them might be found following on the heels of the messenger. He took advantage of the first symptom of returning serenity on the part of his host, to acquaint him with his resolution to set out immediately, the rains having ceased, and the clouds broken up and almost vanished.

"Lord, captain," said the Kentuckian, "I hoped you would have been for taking a brush with us; and it war my idea to send a messenger after your party, in hopes your men would join us in the rusty. Whar will they have such another chance? A thousand Injuns ready cut and dried for killing! Lord, what a fool I war for not setting more store by that tale of Nathan Slaughter's! I never knowed the brute to lie in such a case; for, as he is always ramping about the woods, he's as good as a paid scout. Howsomever, the crittur did'nt speak on his own knowledge; and that infarnal Stackpole was just ripe from the North side. But, I say, captain, if your men will fight, just tote 'em back, stow away the women behind the logs here, and march your guns after me; and, if thar's half the number of red niggurs they speak of to be found, you shall see an affa'r of a skrimmage that will be good for your wholesome,—you will, by the etarnal!"

"If the men are of that mind," said Roland, gallantly, "I am not the one to balk them. I will, at least, see whither their inclinations tend; and that the matter may the sooner be decided, I will set out without delay."

"And we who war to escort you, captain," said the Kentuckian, with some embarrassment: "you're a soldier, captain, and you see the case!"

"I do; I have no desire to weaken your force; and, I trust, no protection is needed."

"Not an iota; the road is as safe as the furrow of a Virginnee corn-field,—at least till you strike the lower Forks; and thar I've heard of no rampaging since last summer: I'll indamnify you against all loss and mischief,—I will, if it war on my salvation!"

"If you could but spare me a single guide," said Forrester.

"Whar's the use, captain? The road is as broad and el'ar as a turnpike in the Old Dominion; it leads you, chock up, right on the Upper Ford, whar thar's safe passage at any moment: but, I reckon, the rains will make it look a little wrathy a while, and so fetch your people to a stand-still. But it's a pot soon full and soon empty, and it will be low enough in the morning."

"The Upper Ford?" said Roland, his dream, for so he esteemed it, recurring to his mind: "is there then a Lower Ford?"

"Ay," replied Bruce; "but thar's no passing it in the freshes; and besides, the place has a bad name. It war thar old John Ashburn pitched his Station, in '78; but the savages made murdering work of him, taking every scalp in the company; and so it makes one sad-like to pass thar, and the more partickelarly that it's all natteral fine ground for an ambush. You'll see the road, when you're six mile deep in the forest, turning off to the right, under a shivered beech-tree. You are then four miles from the river, or tharabouts, and just that distance, I reckon, from your company. No, captain," he repeated, "the road is wide and open, and a guide war mere lumber on your hands."

This was a point, however, on which the young soldier, doubly solicitous on his kinswoman's account, to avoid mistake, was not so easily satisfied: seeing which, the Kentuckian yielded to his importunity,—perhaps somewhat ashamed of suffering his guests to depart entirely alone,—and began to cast about him for some suitable person who could be prevailed upon to exchange the privilege of fighting Indians for the inglorious duty of conducting wayfarers through the forest. This was no easy task, and it was not until he assumed his military authority, as commander of all the enrolled militia-men in his district, empowered to make such disposition of his forces as he thought fit, that he succeeded in compelling the service of one of his reluctant followers, under whose guidance Roland and his little party soon after set out. Their farewells were briefly said, the urgent nature of his duties leaving the hospitable Bruce little opportunity for superfluous speech. He followed them, however, to the bottom of the hill, grasped Roland by the hand; and doing the same thing by Edith, as if his conscience smote him for dismissing her with so little ceremony and such insufficient attendance, he swore that if any evil happened to her on the road, he would rest neither night nor day until he had repaired it, or lost his scalp in the effort.

With this characteristic and somewhat ominous farewell, he took his leave; and the cousins, with their guide and faithful servant, spurred onwards at a brisk pace, until the open fields of the settlement were exchanged for the deep and gloomy woodlands.

CHAPTER VII.

The sun shone out clearly and brilliantly, and the tree-tops, from which the winds had already shaken the rain, rustled freshly to the more moderate breezes that had succeeded them; and Roland, animated by the change, by the brisk pace at which he was riding, and by the hope of soon overtaking his fellow-exiles, met the joyous look of his kinswoman with a countenance no longer disturbed by care.

And yet there was a solemnity in the scene around them that might have called for other and more sombre feelings. The forest into which they had plunged, was of the grand and gloomy character which the fertility of the soil and the absence of the axe for a thousand years imprint on the western woodlands, especially in the vicinity of rivers. Oaks, elms, and walnuts, tulip-trees and beeches, with other monarchs of the wilderness, lifted their trunks like so many pillars, green with mosses and ivies, and swung their majestic arms, tufted with mistletoe, far over head, supporting a canopy,—a series of domes and arches without end,—that had for ages overshadowed the soil. Their roots, often concealed by a billowy undergrowth of shrubs and bushes, oftener by brakes of the gigantic and evergreen cane, forming fences as singular as they were, for the most part, impenetrable, were yet at times visible, where open glades stretched through the woods, broken only by buttressed trunks, and by the stems of colossal vines, hanging from the boughs like cables, or the arms of an oriental banyan; while their luxuriant tops rolled in union with the leafy roofs that supported them. The vague and shadowy prospects opened by these occasional glades stirred the imagination, and produced a feeling of solitude in the mind, greater perhaps than would have been felt had the view been continually bounded by a green wall of canes.

The road, if such it could be called, through this noble forest was, like that the emigrants had so long pursued through the wilderness, a mere path, designated, where the wood was open, by blazes, or axe-marks on the trees; and, where the undergrowth was dense, a narrow track cut through the canes and shrubs, scarce sufficient in many places to allow the passage of two horsemen abreast; though when, as was frequently the case, it followed the ancient routes of the bisons to fords and salt-licks, it presented, as Bruce had described, a wide and commodious highway, practicable even to wheeled carriages.

The gait of the little party over this road was at first rapid and cheery enough; but by and by, having penetrated deeper into the wood, where breezes and sunbeams were alike unknown, they found their progress impeded by a thousand pools and sloughs, the consequences of the storm, that stretched from brake to brake. These interruptions promised to make the evening journey longer than Roland had anticipated; but he caught, at intervals, the fresh foot-prints of his comrades in the soil where it was not exposed to the rains, and reflected with pleasure, that, travelling even at the slowest pace, he must reach the ford where he expected to find them encamped, long before dark. He felt, therefore, no uneasiness at the delay; nor did he think any of those obstacles to rapid progress a cause for regret that gave him the better opportunity to interchange ideas with his fair kinswoman.

His only concern arose from the conduct of his guide, a rough, dark-visaged man, who had betrayed, from the first moment of starting, a sullen countenance, indicative of his disinclination to the duty assigned him; which feeling evidently grew stronger the further he advanced, nowithstanding sundry efforts Forrester made to bring him to a better humour. He displayed no desire to enter into conversation with the soldier, replying to such questions as were directed at him with a brevity little short of rudeness; and his smothered exclamations of impatience, whenever his delicate followers slackened their pace at a bog or gully, which he had himself dashed through with a manly contempt of mud and mire, somewhat stirred the choler of the young captain.

They had, perhaps, followed him a distance of four miles into the forest, when the occurrence of a wider and deeper pool than ordinary producing a corresponding delay on the part of Roland, who was somewhat averse to plunging with Edith up to the saddle-girths in mire, drew from him a very unmannerly, though not the less hearty execration on the delicacy of "them thar persons who," as he expressed it, "stumped at a mud-hole as skearily as if every tadpole in it war a screeching Injun."

Of this explosion of ill-temper Roland took no notice, until he had, with the assistance of Emperor, the negro, effected a safe passage for Edith over the puddle; in the course of which he had leisure to observe that the path now struck into a wide buffalo-street, that swept away through a wilderness of wood and cane-brake, in nearly a straight line, for a considerable distance. He observed, also, that the road looked drier and less broken than usual; his satisfaction at which had the good effect of materially abating the rage into which he had been thrown by the uncivil bearing of the guide. Nevertheless, he had no sooner brought his kinswoman safely to land, than, leaving her in the charge of Emperor, he galloped up to the side of his conductor, and gave vent to his indignation in the following pithy query:—

"My friend," said he, "will you have the goodness to inform me whether you have ever lived in a land where courtesy to strangers and kindness and respect to women are ranked among the virtues of manhood?"

The man replied only by a fierce and angry stare; and plying the ribs of his horse with his heels, he dashed onwards. But Roland kept at his side, not doubting that a little more wholesome reproof would be of profit to the man, as well as advantageous to his own interests.

"I ask that question," he continued, "because a man from such a land, seeing strangers, and one of them a female, struggling in a bog, would, instead of standing upon dry land, making disrespectful remarks, have done his best to help them through it."

"Strannger," said the man, drawing up his horse, and looking, notwithstanding his anger, as if he felt the rebuke to be in a measure just, "I am neither hog nor dog, Injun nor outlandish niggur, but a man—a man, strannger! outside and inside, in flesh, blood, and spirit, jest as my Maker made me; though thar may be something of the scale-bark and parsimmon about me, I'll not deny; for I've heer'd on it before. I axes the lady's pardon, if I've offended: and thar's the eend on't."

"The end of it," said Forrester, "will be much more satisfactory, if you give no further occasion for complaint. But now," he continued, Edith drawing nigh, "let us ride on and as fast as you like; for the road seems both open and good."

"Strannger," said the guide, without budging an inch, "you have axed me a question; and, according to the fa'r rule of the woods, it's my right to ax you another."

"Very well," said Roland, assenting to the justice of the rule; "ask it, and he brief."

"What you war saying of the road is true; thar it goes, wide, open, cl'ar, and straight, with as good a fence on both sides of it to keep in stragglers, as war ever made of ash, oak, or chestnut rails,—though it's nothing but a natteral bank of cane-brake: and so it runs, jest as cl'ar and wide, all the way to the river."

"I am glad to hear it," was the soldier's reply; "but now for your question?"

"Hy'ar it is," said the man, flinging out his hand with angry energy; "I wants to ax of you, as a sodger, for I've heer'd you're of the reggelar sarvice, whether it's a wiser and more Christian affa'r, when thar's Injuns in the land a murdering of your neighbours' wives and children, and all the settlement's in a screech and a cry, to send an able-bodied man to fight them; or to tote him off, a day's journey thar and back ag'in, to track a road that a blind man on a blind horse could travel, without axing questions of anybody? Thar's my question," he added, somewhat vehemently; "and now let's have a sodger's answer!"

"My good friend," said Roland, a little offended, and yet more embarrassed, by the interrogatory, "none can tell better than yourself how much, or how little occasion I may have for a guide. Your question, therefore, I leave you to answer yourself. If you think your duty calls you to abandon a woman in the wild woods to such guidance as one wholly unacquainted with them can give, you can depart as soon as you think fit; for I cannot—"

The guide gave him no time to finish the sentence. "You're right, strannger," he cried; "thar is your road, as plain as the way up a hickory, b'aring to a camp of old friends and acquaintances,—and hy'ar is mine, running right slap among fighting Injuns!"

And with that he turned his horse's head, and flourishing his right hand, armed with the ever constant rifle, above his own, and uttering a whoop expressive of the wild pleasure he felt at being released from his ignoble duty, he dashed across the pool, and galloped in a moment out of sight, leaving Roland and his party confounded at the desertion.

"An outlandish niggur'!" muttered old Emperor, on whom this expression of the guide had produced no very favourable effect; "guess the gemman white man is a niggur himself, and a rogue, and a potater, or whatsomever you call 'em! Leab a lady and a gemman lost in the woods, and neither take 'em on nor take 'em back!—lor-a-massy!"

To this half-soliloquised expression of indignation the soldier felt inclined to add a few bitter invectives of his own; but Edith treating the matter lightly, and affecting to be better pleased at the rude man's absence than she had been with his company, he abated his own wrath, and acknowledged that the desertion afforded the best proof of the safety of the road; since he could not believe that the fellow, with all his roughness and inhumanity, would have been so base as to leave them while really surrounded by difficulties. He remembered enough of Bruce's description of the road, which he had taken care should be minute and exact, to feel persuaded that the principal obstructions were now over, and that, as the guide had said, there was no possibility of wandering from the path. They had already travelled nearly half the distance to the river, and to accomplish the remainder, they had yet four hours of day-light. He saw no reason why they should not proceed alone, trusting to their good fate for a fortunate issue to their enterprise. To return to the fort would be only to separate themselves further from their friends, without ensuring them a better guide, or, indeed, any guide at all, since it was highly probable they would find it only occupied by women and children. In a word, he satisfied himself that nothing remained for him but to continue his journey, and trust to his own sagacity to end it to advantage.

He set out accordingly, followed by Edith and Emperor, the latter bringing up the rear in true military style, and handling his rifle, as if almost desirous of finding an opportunity to use it in the service of his young mistress.

In this manner, they travelled onwards with but little interruption for more than a mile; and Roland was beginning anxiously to look for the path that led to the Lower Ford, when Emperor galloped to the van and brought the party to a halt by reporting that he heard the sound of hoofs following at a distance behind.

"Perhaps,—perhaps," said Edith, while the gleam of her eye, shining with sudden pleasure, indicated how little real satisfaction she had felt at the desertion of their conductor,—"perhaps it is the sour fellow, the guide, coming back, ashamed of his misconduct."

"We will soon see," said Roland, turning his horse to reconnoitre; a proceeding that was, however, rendered unnecessary by the hurried speed of the comer, who, dashing suddenly round a bend in the road, disclosed to his wondering eyes, not the tall frame and sullen aspect of the guide, but the lighter figure and fairer visage of the girl, Telie Doe. She was evidently arrayed for travel, having donned her best attire of blue cloth, with a little cap of the same colour on her head, under which her countenance, beaming with exercise and anxiety, looked, in both Roland's and Edith's eyes, extremely pretty; much more so, indeed, than either had deemed it to be; while, secured behind the cushion or pillion, on which she rode,—for not a jot of saddle had she,—was a little bundle containing such worldly comforts as were necessary to one seriously bent upon a journey. She was mounted upon a sprightly pony, which she managed with more address and courage than would have been augured from her former timorous demeanour; and it was plain that she had put him to his mettle through the woods, with but little regard to the sloughs and puddles which had so greatly embarrassed the fair Edith. Indeed, it appeared that the exercise which had infused animation into her countenance had bestowed a share also on her spirit: for, having checked her horse an instant, and looked a little abashed at the sudden sight of the strangers, she recovered herself in a moment, and riding boldly up, she proceeded, without waiting to be questioned, to explain the cause of her appearance. She had met the deserter, she said, returning to the Station, and thinking it was not right the stranger lady should be left without a guide in the woods, she had ridden after her to offer her services.

"It was at least somewhat surprising," Roland could not avoid saying, "that the fellow should have found you already equipt in the woods?"

At this innuendo, Telie was somewhat embarrassed, but more so, when, looking towards Edith, as if to address her reply to her, she caught the inquiring look of the latter, made still more expressive by the recollection which Edith retained of the earnest entreaty Telie had made the preceding night, to be taken into her service.

"I will not tell you a falsehood, ma'am," she said at last, with a firm voice; "I was not on the road by chance; I came to follow you. I knew the man you had to guide you was unwilling to go, and I thought he would leave you, as he has done. And, besides, the road is not so clear as it seems; it branches off to so many of the salt-licks, and the tracks are so washed away by the rains, that none but one that knows it can be sure of keeping it long."

"And how," inquired Edith, very pointedly,—for, in her heart, she suspected the little damsel was determined to enter her service, whether she would or not, and had actually run away from her friends for the purpose,—"how, after you have led us to our party, do you expect to return again to your friends?"

"If you will let me go with you as far as Jackson's Station" (the settlement at which it was originally determined the emigrants should pass the night), said the maiden humbly, "I will find friends there who will take me home; and perhaps our own people will come for me, for they are often visiting about among the Stations."

This declaration, made in a tone that convinced Edith the girl had given over all hopes of being received into her protection, unless she could remove opposition by the services she might render on the way, pointed out also an easy mode of getting rid of her when a separation should be advisable, and thus removed the only objection she felt to accept her proffered guidance. As for Roland, however, he expressed much natural reluctance to drag a young and inexperienced female so far from her home, leaving her afterwards to return as she might. But he perceived that her presence gave courage to his kinswoman; he felt that her acquaintance with the path was more to be relied upon than his own sagacity; and he knew not, if he even rejected her offered services altogether, how he could with any grace communicate the refusal, and leave her abandoned to her own discretion in the forest. He felt a little inclined, at first, to wonder at the interest she seemed to have taken in his cousin's welfare; but, by and by, he reflected that perhaps, after all, her motive lay in no better or deeper feeling than a mere girlish desire to make her way to the neighbouring station (twenty miles make but a neighbourly distance in the wilderness), to enjoy a frolic among her gadding acquaintance. This reflection ended the struggle in his mind; and turning to her with a smiling countenance, he said, "If you are so sure of getting home, my pretty maid, you may be as certain we will be glad of your company and guidance. But let us delay no longer."

The girl, starting at these words with alacrity, switched her pony and darted to the head of the little party, as if addressing herself to her duty in a business-like way; and there she maintained her position with great zeal, although Roland and Edith endeavoured, for kindness' sake, to make her sensible they desired her to ride with them as a companion, and not at a distance, like a pioneer. The faster they spurred, however, the more zealously she applied her switch, and her pony being both spirited and fresh, while their own horses were both not a little the worse for their long journey, she managed to keep in front, maintaining a gait that promised in a short time to bring them to the banks of the river.

They had ridden perhaps a mile in this manner, when a sudden opening in the cane-brake on the right hand, at a place where stood a beech-tree, riven by a thunderbolt in former years, but still spreading its shattered ruins in the air, convinced Roland that he had at last reached the road to the Lower Ford, which Bruce had so strictly cautioned him to avoid. What, therefore, was his surprise, when Telie, having reached the tree, turned at once into the by-road, leaving the direct path which they had so long pursued, and which still swept away before them, as spacious and uninterrupted, save by occasional pools, as ever.

"You are wrong," he cried, checking his steed.