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[21] 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[22] 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[23] 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.”