On the Kentucky Frontier: A Story of the Fighting Pioneers of the West. Otis James
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she and I alone."
"What sent her down into this wilderness with no one but a lad like yourself?" he asked, speaking as if he was twice my age, when, unless all signs failed, he was no more than five years my elder.
"Father was with us when we came, last year. He was killed by the murdering savage sneaks nearly two months ago."
"Why did you hold on here?" the stranger asked, eying me curiously. "Surely the clearin' isn't so far along that it pays to risk your life for it."
"Mother would have packed off; but I couldn't leave."
"Why?"
"It's a poor kind of a son who won't at least try to wipe off such a score, and I'll hold on here till those who killed the poor old man have found out who I am!"
Tears of mingled rage, grief, and helplessness came into my eyes as I spoke thus hotly, and I wheeled around quickly lest this stranger, seeing them, should set me down for a younger lad than I really was.
"It's quite a job you've shouldered," he said after a pause. "The Injuns nearabout here ain't to be caught nappin' every hour in the day, and the chances are your mother may find herself alone on the clearin' before you have made any great headway in settlin' the score."
"Because you crept up on me, there is no reason why the red snakes can do the same thing!" I cried angrily, whereupon he nodded gravely as if agreeing with me, after which he asked:
"How old are you?"
"Must a fellow have seen so many years more or less before he can do the work of a man?" I demanded, giving proof by my petulance that I was yet little more than a child.
"It was not with anything of the kind in my mind that I asked the question. Perhaps I wondered if you'd had the experience that'll be needed before your work is done."
"I'm just turned sixteen," I replied, thoroughly ashamed of having displayed an ill-temper.
"Where did you come from?"
"Pennsylvania."
"Was your father a Tory?" he asked.
"Indeed he wasn't!" and now I grew hot again. "He believed we might better our condition by pushing into the wilderness, for when a man's land is overrun by two armies, as ours had been, farming is a poor trade."
Then he questioned me yet more closely until I had come to an end of my short story, which began with the day we set out from the colony founded by William Penn, and ended with that hour when I came across my poor father's mangled body scarce half a mile from our clearing, where the beasts in human form had tortured him.
All this I told the stranger as if he had been, an old friend, for there was something, in his voice and manner which won my heart at once, and when the sad tale was ended I came to understand he had not questioned me idly.
"My name is Simon Kenton," he said, after a time of silence, as if he was turning over in mind what I had told him. "The day I was sixteen I took to the wilderness because of – there is no reason why that part of it need be told. It was six years ago, an' in those years I've seen a good bit of life on the frontier, though perhaps it would have been better had I gone east an' taken a hand with those who are fightin' against the king. But a soldier's life would raffle my grain, I reckon, so I've held on out here, nearabout Fort Pitt, where there's been plenty to do."
"Fort Pitt!" I exclaimed. "Why, that's a long distance up the river!"
"Six hundred miles or so."
"Are you down here trapping?" I asked, now questioning him as he had me.
"I'm headin' for Corn Island?"
"Then you haven't much further to go. Its no more than a dozen miles down the river."
"So I guessed. I left my canoe over yonder, an' took to the shore partly to find somethin' in the way of meat, and partly to have a look around."
Then it was, and before I could question him further, he told me why he had come, the substance of which I have already set down in the language of another. At that time he did not give me the story complete as it was written by him whose words I quoted at the beginning of this tale; but I understood the settlers were making a move against the British and Indians, and it seemed to me a most noble undertaking, for, had not the king's officers incited the savages to bloody deeds, the frontier might have been a land of peace.
When he was come to an end of the story, and Simon Kenton was not one to use more words than were necessary, I proposed that he go with me to my home, for by this time it was near to noon, and I had suddenly lost all desire to continue the work of setting traps.
He agreed right willingly, as if it favored his plans to do so, and we two went back to the clearing, he moving through the thicket more like a shadow than a stoutly built man whose weight seemed against such stealthy traveling. Never had I seen such noiseless progress; a squirrel would have given more token of his presence, and I wondered not that he had been welcomed at Fort Pitt as a scout, spy, or whatever one may please to call his occupation.
My mother made the young man welcome, as she would have done any I might have brought in with me to our home in Pennsylvania, and out here in the wilderness, where we had not seen a strange, yet friendly, face since my poor father was murdered, she was rejoiced to meet one who might give us news of the outside world.
Simon Kenton was not a polished man such as would be met within the eastern colonies; but he gave every token of honest purpose, and it was impossible to remain long in his company without believing him to be one who would be a firm friend at all times.
We enjoyed his visit more than can be told, and then without warning he broached that subject which had a great bearing upon all my life from that moment.
"Why do you try to hold your mother here in the wilderness, Louis Nelson?" he asked suddenly. "Surely a lad like yourself cannot hope to make a clearing unaided, and it is but keeping her in great danger of a cruel death."
"What other can I do?" I asked in surprise, having no inkling as to his true meaning.
"Take her where she will at least be able to lie down at night without fear of being aroused by the gleam of the scalping knife, or the flames of her own dwelling," he replied decidedly.
"All we have in the world is here," my mother said half to herself.
"Then it will not be hard to leave it, for a boy of Louis' age should be able to provide you with as good almost anywhere else."
I looked at him in open-mouthed astonishment, whereupon he said in such a tone as forced one to believe he spoke only the truth:
"We have every reason to believe there will be bloody scenes hereabout before Major Clarke has finished his work. You cannot hope to hold out against the painted scoundrels who will roam up and down the river in search of white blood that can be spilled. Send your mother back to Fort Pitt by the boats that will soon be returnin', an' join me in this expedition. You can go to her in the fall with money enough to provide another home as good, or better, than this, an' what is of more account, you'll have the satisfaction of knowin' that ate is in safety."
There is no good reason why I should set down here all the arguments Simon Kenton used to persuade me to break up the home my father had established, although in poor shape, at the cost of his life, nor yet speak of his efforts to make my mother believe I would be in less danger with Major Clarke's force than if I remained there struggling to make headway against the encroachments of the wilderness, at the same time that I would be forced to remain on the alert lest a pitiless, savage foe take my life.
It is enough if I say that before the shadows of night began to lengthen both my mother and myself were convinced he had given good advice, and were ready to follow it as soon as a new day had dawned.
We decided to leave our poor belongings where they were, and set out with Kenton next morning. Mother should go to Fort Pitt where she would be protected, and I, with the consent of Major Clarke, was to enlist in the troop which it was believed would drive out of the country those unscrupulous British officers who were constantly striving to stir up the savages against such of the settlers as believed the colonists had good cause to rebel against the king.
Until