Simon Kenton was the first to wake in the morning. Instead of
experiencing the usual feeling of chilliness which assails the
camper-out in the early hours by a dying fire, he was sensible of a
glowing and comfortable warmth at his feet, and his eyes opened on the
leaping white flames of a pleasant fire, the brands crackling merrily,
as if lately put on.
“By the holy poker, cunnel,” quoth the borderer, rubbing his eyes and
stretching, “you’re ahead of me this hyar mornin’. Wal, let’s get up
and make tracks.”
As he spoke, he yawned portentously, and sat up, only to fall back the
next moment with a loud exclamation of:
“Who in the Old Scratch _be_ you, anyhow?”
Boone lay fast asleep opposite, and by the fire, between them, sat a
_young girl_, looking intently at Kenton.
“I am Ruby Roland,” said one of the sweetest voices he had ever heard;
and the girl smiled in his face, fearlessly.
Simon Kenton slowly rose up to a sitting posture and stared at the
new-comer in utter amazement, just as Boone also awoke, and rolling
half over, fixed his steady gaze on the girl, but without exhibiting
the surprise displayed by Kenton.
The girl was a little creature of some seventeen summers, with a dark,
foreign-looking face, very pretty, lighted with black eyes, and set off
with black hair, arranged in two long plaits. She was attired in the
costume of an Indian chief’s daughter, of the richest materials in use
among the Shawnees, and carried with her a bow and arrows.
First Simon drew in his feet, and sat up in a more polite position,
then Daniel Boone slowly rose and sat looking at the strange maiden;
and then a deep silence fell on all three, which was first broken by
the girl who called herself Ruby Roland.
“You two are Simon Kenton and Colonel Boone, are you not?” she asked,
in her musical voice, slightly accented with a French intonation.
Boone himself answered her with great respect:
“We are, Miss. I am Colonel Daniel Boone, and this is Captain Simon
Kenton.”
The Kentucky borderers were always remarkably tenacious of their
military titles, and very proud of them. In reality they represented
deeds requiring courage and conduct of a kind such as few regular
soldiers could have boasted of.
Ruby Roland smiled graciously on the two Kentuckians.
“I suppose, then, you will not be afraid to run into danger on my
account, will you? I warn you that a deadly peril is round us all
three, which you can only escape by leaving me to face it alone. Will
you do that?”
“Simon Kenton will not, madam; I will answer for that,” said the quiet
voice of Boone.
“And Cunnel Boone ’ll let the red varmints chaw him up ter
fiddle-strings, afore he deserts a lady. I’ll go a house and farm on
that. So now,” was Kenton’s characteristic reply.
Ruby smiled at them both as she said:
“I knew I was not wrong. You have heard of Tabac, the Grand Door of the
Wabash. I am his daughter.”
Kenton looked more and more astonished. He scratched his head in a
dubious manner, and observed:
“Then, by the holy poker, Miss, all I kin say is that the Grand Door
opens into a very pretty place; but--”
Ruby smiled as he hesitated.
“But you wonder how I come to talk English so well, and how I come
here; is it not so?”
“Wal, Miss, I ain’t denyin’ that same,” said Kenton, frankly.
“I will tell you, then. The Grand Door is not my own father. No, alas!
_he_ died when I was a baby. But, I have been adopted by the chief
since then, and my mother reigned over all the tribes of the Wabash
till her death, last year. It was only six weeks ago when I escaped
from the Indian town by St. Vincent’s, and came here. Gentlemen, I want
to see Colonel George Rogers Clark.”
Both the scouts uttered an involuntary exclamation of wonder, the first
that had escaped the lips of Boone.
“Colonel Clark is at Harrodsburg, Miss,” said the elder hunter,
gravely; “and we shall find it difficult to penetrate there, for
Blackfish, the Shawnee chief, is round it with his band.”
Ruby Roland smiled with some little appearance of scorn.
“My father was a French officer, and I am the adopted child of the
first war-chief of the West,” she said. “I suppose you think you could
get into Harrodsburg, do you not?”
“I suppose so, Miss,” said Boone, quietly.
“Very well; then I will go with you,” said this little fragile-looking
girl, with equal calmness. “You are both good warriors and scouts, and
yet I fooled you both last night.”
“What! was it you, then, as was on this hyar island?” asked Kenton, in
amazement. “Why, whar in the Old Scratch did ye hide, Miss, ef it ain’t
axin’ too much?”
Ruby laughed, and pointed to a great tree that overhung the camp-fire
itself.
“Up there in a hollow, and heard every word you said. Had you been
Shawnees, as you made me think by your whoops, both would have been
dead long ere this. I made up this fire half an hour ago, and neither
of you waked.”
Boone and Kenton looked at each other in silence for several minutes.
The practiced woodmen had been outwitted by this quiet, modest little
girl, and both instinctively felt that she was no common personage.
Daniel Boone rose to his feet and shook himself, then looked to the
priming of his rifle and examined his weapons before he spoke. At last
he said:
“I am at your orders, Miss. What do you wish us to do?”
“I am very hungry,” said the girl, simply. “I want something to eat
first. The Shawnees are on my trail, and I must get to Harrodsburg in
some way. I have no rifle, and I am too weak to shoot well with the
bow. I want you to take me to see Colonel Clark.”
Boone made a sign to Kenton, and the latter disappeared among the
bushes on the shallow side of the river. As soon as he was gone, the
veteran hunter asked:
“How do you know the Shawnees are on your trail, Miss?”
“I saw them, only yesterday morning,” she answered. “I threw them out
by floating down the river on a log, and they are by this time ranging
up and down the river to find me.”
Boone frowned thoughtfully and remained silent for some minutes, when
he asked:
“How far off did you leave them, do you think?”
“About thirty-five miles up the stream,” was the quiet reply.
The old hunter looked with grave admiration at the girl.
“You are a brave girl!” he said. “I have known warriors not half as
brave and skillful. Simon and I did not find a single sign all of
yesterday, and we were on different tracks too. Do you think they will
follow you close?”
“I _know_ it,” said Ruby, quietly. “They will follow me to kill me,
till I am safe in Harrodsburg!”
Another man might have asked “why.” Boone had no idle curiosity; he
judged unerringly that the girl was telling the truth, and wished for
no reasons. She gave them herself a moment later.
“They know my errand to Colonel Clark, and Governor Hamilton has sent
them after me,” she said, meaningly.
Then Boone knew all. The great chief of the Wabash tribes had doubtless
sent his daughter to open negotiations with the Americans, and the
English Governor at Detroit had got wind of it in some manner, and was
resolved to intercept the fair messenger; for the Revolutionary War was
at its hight, and the British were reckless in subsidizing savages.
As he thought over the atrocious scheme, the old hunter’s lips
compressed themselves into an iron line, and he growled:
“If the dogs cross _my_ path to Harrodsburg, they must look to
themselves. You shall go there safe, Miss.”
The report of a rifle a short way off, was followed by the cheery shout
of Kenton, “A fat buck, and no Injun sign yet.”