CHAPTER XIII
CONCLUSION
For a time the little settlement on the Kentucky grew and prospered without much notice from the Indians; but it was not long before the first rumblings of the Revolution were heard in that far-off place; it was learned, with alarm, that the colonies were rising in arms against England.
When the clash came and the colonists began to strike determinedly for their rights, the English agents in the northwest began operations which once more lighted the fires of border warfare. They bribed the savages with gifts, they supplied them with guns and ammunition and bid them wipe out the little settlements which courage and toil had built up in the wilderness.
Along the borders of the north and the west the terrible war-whoop once more rang out, and the tomahawk and scalping knife resumed their deadly work. But Boonesborough remained calm and unruffled; its settlers hunted and fished, cleared the land and planted scanty crops of corn.
In the winter of 1776 a man was killed by a swift-moving war party; not until the summer, about the very time when the Congress at Philadelphia was giving to the world its first great message of liberty, did the great war cast its first ominous shadow upon Boonesborough.
The July sun shone upon the bright waters of the Kentucky; the breeze stirred among the trees. A bark canoe, propelled by the handsome Betsey Collaway, daughter of a settler, her younger sister Frances, and a young daughter of Daniel Boone, was darting here and there like a bird. The girls had decked the little craft with wild flowers, gathered along the banks, and the ring of their laughter floated across the river in happy chorus.
Any one listening might have noticed that the joyous sound suddenly died away. For the canoe, as it drifted under a high bank, shoved its nose into the mud; and as the girls were about to push it off, they saw the bushes part almost beside them and a number of Indians, their fingers upon their lips calling for silence, step to the water’s edge.
Sheer fright kept the girls mute for an instant; and in the next it was too late to cry out, for the savages had entered the canoe, and were threatening them with their hatchets.
When they saw them huddled, overcome with terror, at one end of the canoe, they seized the paddles and drove the craft out into the river; night was falling and the passage was not noticed from the fort; and so the Indians gained the other shore. The girls were forced out of the boat and with the weapons of their merciless captors ever threatening them they were led away through the forest.
The girls were first missed by the women of their families; a search showed that they were not within the stockade. Instantly the news spread; men dropped their tasks and became alert and active.
Questions flew about; and Sandy Campbell, coming from a runlet where he had been fishing, caught the sense of them.
“Girls!” said he. “Why, I saw them up the river a little way, in a canoe.”
A half dozen bark crafts were in a very few moments being driven up and across the stream. The twilight was long and the July day still persisted, but nothing of the missing ones was to be seen. Long and loud the men in the canoes shouted; but no sound came in answer. Eph Taylor, from the craft in which were also Sandy and Oliver, spied something under a bank.
“A canoe!” he cried.
In a few moments the other searchers were at their sides; all made for the bank. It was the canoe used by the girls!
“Take care!” warned Boone. “Don’t anybody get ashore!”
From his own canoe the backwoodsman scanned the bank. The daylight was still strong enough for him to see the imprint of the moccasined feet in the soft ooze.
“Injuns!” said Boone.
A murmur went up from the settlers; the import of the signs was plain.
“They have made off into the woods!” cried one of the men, excitedly. “We must not waste a minute; we must take the trail at once!”
Boone pointed grimly at the sun, which was now well down upon the horizon line.
“In a quarter of an hour it will be dark,” he said. “And no trailer that ever stepped can follow an Injun track by torch-light. We’ll have to wait for morning.”
The night was spent in seeing to rifles and pistols and getting some snatches of sleep. At the first faint sign of dawn the trailing party, in which was Boone, Oliver and his two friends, took up the signs at the river brink and followed them off into the woods.
As cunning as foxes the Indians, knowing that they would be swiftly hunted by the whites, took pains to hide their trail from the very start. And the methods used threw off the trackers for a short time. Into a dense cane-brake led the tracks, and then they seemed to disappear. Keenly, eagerly the hunters sought here and there, but the wile of the savage baffled them.
“Lads,” said Boone, finally, wiping his brow, and leaning upon his long rifle, “there’s no use in wasting time. As soon as the varmints got into the cane they separated and slipped through it like ghosts. And we might hunt for hours and never pick up the trail.”
“Well?” asked one of the men. “What shall we do?”
Boone led the way to the point at which the footprints ceased.
“Here’s where they separate,” said he, “but the separation is not for good; they keep the same general direction. And that shows that they intend to meet somewhere further on when they think we’ve been thrown off the track completely.”
The woodsmen looked at the tracks once more and nodded their appreciation.
“Suppose we work on that,” proceeded Boone. “This bit of cane is a big one; let’s skirt it and run the chance of coming on the trail at the other side.”
At once this was decided on by the party; with the long, swinging stride of the hunter they journeyed around the cane; this forced them to cover some thirty miles, but at the end they found that Boone’s reasoning had been correct; the Indians had come together somewhere in the tangle and there lay their trail, plainly read by all.
Trained woodsmen all, with the exception of the three boys, and even these possessed no mean skill, the settlers looked to Boone for the word of command.
“From now on, lads,” said the backwoodsman, “we shall have less trouble. Look, the trail leads directly to a buffalo path; they think they’ve thrown us off, and they’ve grown careless.”
Softly, swiftly the trailers struck into the path; as Boone had said, the savages had grown careless; their trail was broad and deep and could have been followed by the least skilful.
The day was well advanced, and the hardy band had covered a full forty miles through the tangled wilderness. But they were trained to long journeys and did not tire.
“We’re gaining,” said Boone, after an hour or so of steady following on the heavy track. “They passed here no more than a half hour ago.”
The caution of the party increased; they knew the savage nature of the Indians. Let the latter get a whisper of pursuit and the lives of their captives would be snuffed out. The long shadows began to fall in the forest; the patches of sky to be seen through the tree tops grew gray. Suddenly Boone held up his hand.
“Here they are!” said he.
Through the dense growth he pointed to a party of Indians; a few of them were dressing freshly killed game; others were engaged in kindling a fire. Bound to trees near at hand were the three girls.
“Now,” said Boone, as he looked to his rifle, “make your shots count; and above all don’t allow any of them to get near the girls.”
At the word, the whites rushed forward. At the first crash among the underbrush the savages grasped their weapons; but the long rifles cracked before they could act. The conditions under which the “beads” were drawn made the shots of the trailers difficult; but in spite of this a number of the Indians were hit; and all fled away into the woods, leaving the greater part of their arms and all of their ammunition behind them.
There was the utmost rejoicing in Boonesborough the next day when the trailers returned bringing the three girls with them, frightened, but safe and sound.
This incident served as a warning to the settlers on the Kentucky; the war had finally made its way to their lonely fort. Day after day they found the tracks of scouting parties all about in the forests; hostile shots began to ring in the distance. And then began the fights and sieges for which the sturdy stockade built by Boone and his companions became famous. Encompassed many times by hundreds of savages, with the arrows and bullets flying thick as hail about it, the fort stood strong and untaken. And through it all went Oliver and Eph Taylor and Sandy Campbell, through it all went the heroic Boone, ever leading, ever daring the wilderness and its crafty savages, always strong under reverses, always wise in victory.
And when the great war was done and liberty was achieved by the colonies, the settlers came in greatly increased numbers, drawn by the wonder stories of Kentucky and the magic name of Boone.
And as the commonwealth grows strong, its wilderness falls before the axe of the pioneer, its broad farms smile where the Shawnee once roamed, the whistles of steamboats sound upon the streams which knew only the prow of the bark canoe, the thoughts of its sons and daughters go back to the old days; and they know that the greatness of Kentucky is founded upon the bold spirit and the long rifle of Daniel Boone.