第33章 THE NOLLICHUCKY TRACE(6)

There was no need.For an instant Riley wavered, and then fled to the cane.

Polly Ann and I went to the man on the ground, and turned him over.His eyes slid upwards.There was a bloody froth on his lips.

``Davy!'' cried she, awestricken, ``Davy, ye've killed him!''

I grew dizzy and sick at the thought, but she caught me and held me to her.Presently we sat down on the door log, gazing at the corpse.Then I began to reflect, and took out my powder gourd and loaded the pistol.

``What are ye a-doing?'' she said.

``In case the other one comes back,'' said I.

``Pooh,'' said Polly Ann, ``he'll not come back.'' Which was true.I have never laid eyes on Riley to this day.

``I reckon we'd better fetch it out of the sun,'' said she, after a while.And so we dragged it under an oak, covered the face, and left it.

He was the first man I ever killed, and the business by no means came natural to me.And that day the journey-cakes which Polly Ann had made were untasted by us both.The afternoon dragged interminably.Try as we would, we could not get out of our minds the Thing that lay under the oak.

It was near sundown when Tom and Weldon appeared on the mountain side carrying a buck between them.

Tom glanced from one to the other of us keenly.He was very quick to divine.

``Whar be they?'' said he.

``Show him, Davy,'' said Polly Ann.

I took him over to the oak, and Polly Ann told him the story.He gave me one look, I remember, and there was more of gratitude in it than in a thousand words.Then he seized a piece of cold cake from the stone.

``Which trace did he take?'' he demanded of me.

But Polly Ann hung on his shoulder.

``Tom, Tom!'' she cried, ``you beant goin' to leave us again.Tom, he'll die in the wilderness, and we must git to Kaintuckee.''

** ** ***

The next vivid thing in my memory is the view of the last barrier Nature had reared between us and the delectable country.It stood like a lion at the gateway, and for some minutes we gazed at it in terror from Powell's Valley below.How many thousands have looked at it with sinking hearts! How many weaklings has its frown turned back! There seemed to be engraved upon it the dark history of the dark and bloody land beyond.Nothing in this life worth having is won for the asking; and the best is fought for, and bled for, and died for.Written, too, upon that towering wall of white rock, in the handwriting of God Himself, is the history of the indomitable Race to which we belong.

For fifty miles we travelled under it, towards the Gap, our eyes drawn to it by a resistless fascination.The sun went over it early in the day, as though glad to leave the place, and after that a dark scowl would settle there.

At night we felt its presence, like a curse.Even Polly Ann was silent.And she had need to be now.When it was necessary, we talked in low tones, and the bell-clappers on the horses were not loosed at night.It was here, but four years gone, that Daniel Boone's family was attacked, and his son killed by the Indians.

We passed, from time to time, deserted cabins and camps, and some places that might once have been called settlements: Elk Garden, where the pioneers of the last four years had been wont to lay in a simple supply of seed corn and Irish potatoes; and the spot where Henderson and his company had camped on the way to establish Boonesboro two years before.And at last we struck the trace that mounted upward to the Gateway itself.