The Phantom of the River | Page 3

them in the cabin, prepared some time before for the occupancy of the Ashbridges. This was hardly done when Daniel Boone appeared at the clearing with disquieting news. He advised them, however, to stay, since their means of defence was good, but hardly was the decision reached when a runner came in with the news that an uprising among the surrounding tribes had already begun, and it would not do for the pioneers to remain another day. Nothing could save the lonely cabins and exposed dwellings except immediate flight to the nearest settlement or block-house.
Ten miles from the clearing, and standing on the northern bank of the Ohio, was the block-house in charge of Captain Bushwick. The Altmans and Ashbridges made the sad mistake of not fastening the flatboat to the bank and taking up their quarters at this frontier post until the full truth was learned about the dangers confronting them.
The first intention of Boone and his party was to escort the settlers back to the block-house. They had a brush with a company of Shawanoes, and defeated them. It was not the main body, however, under the leadership of The Panther. That remained to be heard from, and its whereabouts was unknown.
Mr. Altman, his wife, and daughter Agnes, and his negro servant, Jethro Juggens, Mr. Ashbridge and his wife, daughter Mabel, and their son George set out for the block-house on the Ohio side of the river.
Their plan was to keep along the Kentucky bank until opposite the post, when the means would be readily found for crossing. The two families were in charge of the rangers that Boone had brought with him for the purpose of acting as their escort. They were forced to leave behind them all their earthly possessions in the solitary cabin, with not the remotest prospect of ever seeing them or it again.
Although the day was well along when the start was made, yet the situation was so critical, because of the part The Panther was certain to play in the coming events, that Boone and Kenton took the advance, proceeding by parallel but separated lines, and on the guard against any stealthy approach from the Indians.
It was the hope that by preventing or, rather, averting any attack until nightfall, the prospects of the pioneers would be vastly improved. Though the forest possessed no available trail that could be used even in the daytime, the rangers, and especially Kenton and Boone, were so familiar with it, that they could guide their friends with unerring accuracy when the darkness was so profound that it was almost worthy of the old remark that a person could not see his hand before his face.
Accordingly, all yearned or prayed for the coming of darkness.
"Hark," whispered Kenton, turning to Boone, and raising his hand as a gesture for silence.
No need of that, for the elder had caught the sound--a faint and apparently distant cawing of a crow from some lofty tree-top.
Both had heard the same cry more than once that afternoon, and instead of its being the call of a crow, they knew it came from the throat of an Indian warrior, and therefore a relentless enemy.
CHAPTER II.
THE CAWING OF A CROW.
Three separate times previous to this that faint cawing signal had been heard, as it seemed, from the distant tree-tops. The most sensitive ear could not say of a certainty it was not made by one of those black-coated birds calling to its mate or the flock from which it had strayed. Neither Boone nor Kenton distinguished any difference between the tone and what they had heard times without number, and yet neither held a doubt that it was emitted by a dusky spy stealing through the woods, and that it bore a momentous message to others of his kith and kin.
The keen sense of hearing enabled the rangers to locate the signal at less than a quarter of a mile in front and quite close to the Ohio. From the first time it was heard, no more than half an hour before, it held the same relative distance from the river, but advanced at a pace so nearly equal to that of Boone and Kenton that it was impossible to decide whether it was further off or nearer than before.
There was no reply to the call, and it was uttered only three times in each instance. The oppressive stillness that held reign throughout the forest on that sultry summer afternoon enabled the two men to hear the cawing with unmistakable distinctness.
In short, our friends interpreted it as a notice from the dusky scout to his comrades that he was following the progress of the pioneers, which was therefore fully understood by the war party that was seeking to encompass their destruction.
When the signal sounded for the