[From _Simon Kenton; or, The Scout's Revenge_ (Philadelphia,
1852)]
By the side of the Sergeant [Duffe, in whose North Carolina home the
tale opens] sat a stout, powerfully framed, and wild-looking being,
whose visage, though none of the whitest (for it was very
unfashionably sunburnt), betokened an Anglo-Saxon; whilst his dress
and equipments went far to proclaim him a savage; and, had it not been
for his language (though none of the purest), it would have been
somewhat difficult to settle upon his race! In a court of justice,
especially in the South, where color is considered _prima facie_
evidence of slavery, we wouldn't have given much for his chance of
freedom. Simon Kenton, or Sharp-Eye, for such were the titles given
him by his parents, and by his border companions, and he answered
readily to them both, in his dress and appearance, presented a
striking picture of the daring half savage characters everywhere to be
found at that day (and, indeed, at the present time) upon our extreme
western frontier. A contemporary of Boone, and one of the most
skillful and determined scouts of Kentucky, or the "Cane-Land," as it
was then sometimes called, Kenton's dress, composed of a flowing
hunting-shirt of tanned buckskin, with pants, or rather leggins, of
the same material--a broad belt, buckled tight around his waist,
supporting a tomahawk and hunting-knife--a gay pair of worked
moccasins, with a capacious shot-pouch swung around his neck and
ornamented with long tufts of black hair, resembling very much, as in
truth they were, the scalp-locks of the western Indian, gave him a
decidedly savage appearance, and declared at once his very recent
return from a dangerous life upon the frontier. He had been a
fellow-soldier of Duffe during the Revolution; but, after the war,
being of an adventurous and daring disposition, had wandered out West,
where he had already become famous in the many bloody border frays
between the savage and early settler, and was considered second, in
skill and cool bravery, to no scout of the "Dark and Bloody Ground."
On a visit to the Old States, as they were called at that period to
distinguish them from the more recent settlements in the West, Kenton
was sojourning, for the time, with his old friend and companion in
arms, not without a hope that, by his glowing descriptions of the
flowing savannas beyond the Blue Ridge, and of the wild freedom of a
frontier life, he might induce the latter to bear him company upon his
return to Kentucky. Six feet two inches in his moccasins, with a
well-knit sinewy frame to match his great height, and with a broad,
full, and open face, tanned and swarthy, it is true, yet pleasant and
bright, with a quiet, good-humored smile and lighted up by a deep-blue
eye, and with heavy masses of auburn hair, and whiskers sweeping
carelessly around and about his countenance, Kenton exhibited in his
person, as he sat before the fire of the Sergeant, a splendid specimen
of the genuine borderer, and no wonder the Indian brave trembled at
the redoubted name of Sharp-Eye, and instinctively shrank from a
contest with so formidable a foe. Although, now surrounded by friends,
and in the house of an old comrade, the scout, as was natural with him
from long custom, still held grasped in his ready hand the barrel of
his trusty rifle, from which he never parted, not even when he slept,
and, at the same time, kept his ears wide awake to all suspicious
sounds, as if yet in the land of the enemy, and momentarily expecting
the wild yell of his accustomed foe. Notwithstanding he was well
skilled in every species of woodcraft, an adept at following the trail
of the wild beasts of the forest, and familiar with all the cunning
tricks of the wily savage; yet, strange as it may appear, he was the
most credulous of men, and as simple as a child in what is generally
termed the "ways of the world," or, in other words, the tortuous
windings of policy and hypocrisy, so often met with under the garb of
civilization. Indeed, it has been said of him "that his confidence in
man, and his credulity were such that the same man might cheat him
twenty times; and, if he professed friendship, he might cheat him
still!" At the feet of the scout lay the inseparable companion of all
his journeyings, his dog; and Bang, for such was the name of this
prime favorite, was as rough a specimen of the canine species as his
master's countenance was of the face divine! But Bang was,
nevertheless, a very knowing dog, and, ever and anon, now as his
master became excited in his descriptions of western scenes and
adventures, he would raise his head and look intelligently at the
narrator, and so wisely did he wag his shaggy tail, that more than
once the warm-hearted hunter, breaking off suddenly in his narrative,
would pat his trusty comrade upon the head, and swear, with a hearty
emphasis, "that Bang knew all about it!"