The Young Trailers

o days, existing meanwhile on the deer meat, and early the morning afterwards, the clumsy craft, bearing the two navigators, was duly intrusted to the mercy of the unknown rive

fine little river, running in a deep channel, and Henry became more sure than ever that it was the one t

was in the shade. Henry enjoyed it. This was one of the things that his fancy had pictured. He was now floating down an unknown river, through unknown lands, and, like as not, his and Paul's were the first human eyes that had ever looked upon these hills and splendid forests. Reposing now after work and dang

able to judge the speed of the current. Paul fitted himself into a snug place on their queer craft and after a while

aw a thin dark line, lying like a thread, against the blue skies.

himself. "Maybe th

dreamless sleep. The water was silver in the shade and dim gold where the sunshine fell upon it, and the trees, a solid mass, touched already by the bro

not awaken him. He looked at the face of his comrade as he slumbered and noticed for the first time that it was thin and pale. The life in the

ank followed by the crash of

oatin' down the river in their own

he trees at the river's brink. Henry felt a great flush of joy when he saw them, and waved his hands. Paul,

of the long search for the two boys. He and Mr. Ware and Shif'less Sol and a half dozen others had never ceased to seek them. They feared at one time that they ha

that this sorrow had never been demonstrative. The mothers of the West were too much accustomed to great traged

of the smoke spire, where they were received, as two risen from the dead, in a welcome that was not noi

asked Mr. Ware of Henry, after t

eplied the boy. "If we'd only had our rifles 'twould have

of mighty oaks and saw the deer come down to drink. Mr. Ware noticed the expression on Henry's fac

d the height of human bliss. Both Ross and Shif'less Sol were present and with them, too, were Silas Pennypacker who could preach upon occasion for the settlement and did it, now and then, and John Upton, who next

en kinds of fish; but the great delicacy was buffalo hump cooked in a peculiar way-that is, served up in the hide of a buffalo from which the hair had been singed off, and baked in an earthen oven. Ross, who had learned it from the Indians, showed them how to do thi

whom Henry and Paul had seen, but Ross agreed with Henry that they were surely

e when thus he ranged through it and began to understand its ways. Familiarity did not breed contempt. The magnificent spaces and mighty silenc

and the brown grass stems fell lifeless to the earth. A long time they were without rain, and a dull

to sleep lightly, that is, to start up at the slightest sound, and one morning after the wilderness had been growing hotter and dryer than ever he was awakened b

uickly drank in the moisture. The wind grew and the drops fell faster. The heat fled away, driven by the waves of cool, fresh air that came out of the west. Washed by the rain the dry grass straightened up, and the dying leaves opened out, springin

id not last long, for then the frosts came, the air grew crisp and cool and the foliage of the forest turned to wonderful reds and yellows and browns. From the summit of the blockhouse tower Henry saw a great blaze of v

nting, pursuing it with the keen zest, born of a natural taste and the relaxation from heavy labors. Mr. Ware and a few others, anxious to test the qualities of the soil, were plowing up newly cleare

k and they laid rude traps for its builders, six of which they caught in the course of time. Ross and Sol showed them how to take off the pelts which would

aller animals were being jerked and dried at every house, and every larder was filled to the brim. There could be

f the wild turkey. Cloth was hard to obtain in the wilderness, as it might be a year before a pack train would come over the mountains from the east, and so the women made clothing of the softest and lightest of the dressed deer skin. There were hunting shirts for the men

e's bones, when even the wildest of men would be glad enough to leave the woods and hover over a big fire. But the settlers provided for this also by building great stacks of firewood beside each house. Th

in the leaves began to usurp the yellows and the reds. The air, crisp and cold, had a strange nectar in it and its very breath was l

The autumn broke up in a cold rain which soon turned to snow. The wind swept out of the northwest, b

f and the cold wind rattled the rude shutters, to sit

ins from the Eastern States and founded the great Western outpost of the nation in Kentucky were men of education and cultivation, with a knowledge of books and the world. They did not intend that their children should grow up mere i

scholar who could at once give the chapter and text of any verse in the Bible and had twice read through the ponderous history of the French gentleman, M. Rollin. It was said, too, that he had nearly twenty volumes of some famous r

lls and fever, and for the matter of that he was an expert hand with both ax and rifle. His uses in Wareville were not merely mental and spir

forest life, he was as large as an ordinary man and quite as strong. He thought he ought to have done with schools, a

ht well. He, too, had the feeling that these boys and girls were to be the men and women who would hold the future of the West in their hands, and he intended that they should be fit. There were statesmen and generals amon

. He could follow the devious lines of history when Henry would much rather have been following the devious trail of a deer. Ne