whinnying for food in the lean-to.



CHAPTER II

WARS AND RUMORS OF WARS

And so our life went on the same, but yet not the same. For I had the
Land of Promise to dream of, and as I went about my tasks I conjured up
in my mind pictures of its beauty. You will forgive a backwoods
boy,--self-centred, for lack of wider interest, and with a little
imagination. Bear hunting with my father, and an occasional trip on the
white mare twelve miles to the Cross-Roads for salt and other
necessaries, were the only diversions to break the routine of my days.
But at the Cross-Roads, too, they were talking of Kaintuckee. For so the
Land was called, the Dark and Bloody Ground.

The next year came a war on the Frontier, waged by Lord Dunmore, Governor
of Virginia. Of this likewise I heard at the Cross-Roads, though few
from our part seemed to have gone to it. And I heard there, for rumors
spread over mountains, that men blazing in the new land were in danger,
and that my hero, Boone, was gone out to save them. But in the autumn
came tidings of a great battle far to the north, and of the Indians suing
for peace.

The next year came more tidings of a sort I did not understand. I
remember once bringing back from the Cross-Roads a crumpled newspaper,
which my father read again and again, and then folded up and put in his
pocket. He said nothing to me of these things. But the next time I went