y. This confidential personage has charge of every thing that is
eaten or drank during the expedition. He parcels it out by rules of
rigid abstemiousness. Though each warrior carries on his back all his
travelling conveniences, and his food among the rest, yet, however keen
the appetite sharpened by hunger, however burning the thirst, no one
dares relieve his hunger or thirst, until his rations are dispensed to
him by the Etissu.

Boone had occasion to have all these rites most painfully impressed on
his memory; for he was obliged to conform to them with the rest. One
single thought occupied his mind--to seize the right occasion to escape.

It was sometime before it offered. At length a deer came in sight. He
had a portion of his unfinished breakfast in his hand. He expressed a
desire to pursue the deer. The party consented. As soon as he was out of
sight, he instantly turned his course towards Boonesborough. Aware that
he should be pursued by enemies as keen on the scent as bloodhounds, he
put forth his whole amount of backwoods skill, in doubling in his track,
walking in the water, and availing himself of every imaginable expedient
to throw them off his trail. His unfinished fragment of his breakfast
was his only food, except roots and berries, during this escape for his
life, through unknown forests and pathless swamps, and across numerous
rivers, spreading in an extent of more than two hundred miles. Every
forest sound must have struck his ear, as a harbinger of the approaching
Indians.

No spirit but such an one as his, could have sustained the apprehension
and fatigue. No mind but one guided by the intuition of instinctive
sagacity, could have so enabled him to conceal his trail, and find his
way. But he evaded their pursuit. He discovered his way. He found in
roots, in barks, and berries, together with what a single shot of his
rifle afforded, wherewith to sustain the cravings of nature. Travelling
night and day, in an incredible short space of time he was in the arms
of his friends at Boonesborough, experiencing a reception, after such a
long and hopeless absence, as words would in vain attempt to portray.

CHAPTER X.

Six hundred Indians attack Boonesborough--Boone and Captain Smith go out
to treat with the enemy under a flag of truce, and are extricated from a
treacherous attempt to detain them as prisoners--Defence of the
fort--The Indians defeated--Boone goes to North Carolina to bring bark
his fa