Mr.Boone's visit lasted but a day.I was a great deal with Colonel Clark in the few weeks that followed before his departure for Virginia.He held himself a little aloof (as a leader should) from the captains in the station, without seeming to offend them.But he had a fancy for James Ray and for me, and he often took me into the woods with him by day, and talked with me of an evening.
``I'm going away to Virginia, Davy,'' he said; ``will you not go with me? We'll see Williamsburg, and come back in the spring, and I'll have you a little rifle made.''
My look must have been wistful.
``I can't leave Polly Ann and Tom,'' I answered.
``Well,'' he said, ``I like that.Faith to your friends is a big equipment for life.''
``But why are you going?'' I asked.
``Because I love Kentucky best of all things in the world,'' he answered, smiling.
``And what are you going to do?'' I insisted.
``Ah,'' he said, ``that I can't tell even to you.''
``To catch Hamilton?'' I ventured at random.
He looked at me queerly.
``Would you go along, Davy?'' said he, laughing now.
``Would you take Tom?''
``Among the first,'' answered Colonel Clark, heartily.
We were seated under the elm near the spring, and at that instant I saw Tom coming toward us.I jumped up, thinking to please him by this intelligence, when Colonel Clark pulled me down again.
``Davy,'' said he, almost roughly, I thought, ``remember that we have been joking.Do you understand?--joking.
You have a tongue in your mouth, but sense enough in your head, I believe, to hold it.'' He turned to Tom.
``McChesney, this is a queer lad you brought us,'' said he.
``He's a little deevil,'' agreed Tom, for that had become a formula with him.
It was all very mysterious to me, and I lay awake many a night with curiosity, trying to solve a puzzle that was none of my business.And one day, to cap the matter, two woodsmen arrived at Harrodstown with clothes frayed and bodies lean from a long journey.Not one of the hundred questions with which they were beset would they answer, nor say where they had been or why, save that they had carried out certain orders of Clark, who was locked up with them in a cabin for several hours.
The first of October, the day of Colonel Clark's departure, dawned crisp and clear.He was to take with him the disheartened and the cowed, the weaklings who loved neither work nor exposure nor danger.And before he set out of the gate he made a little speech to the assembled people.
``My friends,'' he said, ``you know me.I put the interests of Kentucky before my own.Last year when I left to represent her at Williamsburg there were some who said I would desert her.It was for her sake I made that journey, suffered the tortures of hell from scalded feet, was near to dying in the mountains.It was for her sake that I importuned the governor and council for powder and lead, and when they refused it I said to them, `Gentlemen, a country that is not worth defending is not worth claiming.' ''
At these words the settlers gave a great shout, waving their coonskin hats in the air.
``Ay, that ye did,'' cried Bill Cowan, ``and got the amminition.''
``I made that journey for her sake, I say,'' Colonel Clark continued, ``and even so I am making this one.
I pray you trust me, and God bless and keep you while I am gone.''
He did not forget to speak to me as he walked between our lines, and told me to be a good boy and that he would see me in the spring.Some of the women shed tears as he passed through the gate, and many of us climbed to sentry box and cabin roof that we might see the last of the little company wending its way across the fields.A motley company it was, the refuse of the station, headed by its cherished captain.So they started back over the weary road that led to that now far-away land of civilization and safety.
During the balmy Indian summer, when the sharper lines of nature are softened by the haze, some came to us from across the mountains to make up for the deserters.From time to time a little group would straggle to the gates of the station, weary and footsore, but overjoyed at the sight of white faces again: the fathers walking ahead with watchful eyes, the women and older children driving the horses, and the babies slung to the pack in hickory withes.
Nay, some of our best citizens came to Kentucky swinging to the tail of a patient animal.The Indians were still abroad, and in small war parties darted hither and thither with incredible swiftness.And at night we would gather at the fire around our new emigrants to listen to the stories they had to tell,--familiar stories to all of us.
Sometimes it had been the gobble of a wild turkey that had lured to danger, again a wood-owl had cried strangely in the night.
Winter came, and passed--somehow.I cannot dwell here on the tediousness of it, and the one bright spot it has left in my memory concerns Polly Ann.Did man, woman, or child fall sick, it was Polly Ann who nursed them.She had by nature the God-given gift of healing, knew by heart all the simple remedies that backwoods lore had inherited from the north of Ireland or borrowed from the Indians.Her sympathy and loving-kindness did more than these, her never tiring and ever cheerful watchfulness.She was deft, too, was Polly Ann, and spun from nettle bark many a cut of linen that could scarce be told from flax.Before the sap began to run again in the maples there was not a soul in Harrodstown who did not love her, and I truly believe that most of them would have risked their lives to do her bidding.
