other three hundred should not come. Yet he and Boone and
all the band knew that the watch that night must miss nothing. The
boats, as usual, were drawn up on the southern shore, too far away to be
reached by rifle shots from the northern banks. The men were camped on a
low wooded hill within a ring of at least fifty sentinels. The Licking,
a narrow but deep stream, was not more than five miles ahead. Clark
would have gone on to its mouth, had he not deemed it unwise to march at
night in such a dangerous country. The night itself was black with
heavy, low clouds, and the need to lie still in a strong position was
obvious.

Boone spread out his scouts in advance. The five, staying together as
usual, and now acting independently, advanced through the woods near the
Ohio. It was one of the hottest of July nights, and nature was restless
and uneasy. The low clouds increased in number, and continually grew
larger until they fused into one, and covered the heavens with a black
blanket from horizon to horizon. From a point far off in the southwest
came the low but menacing mutter of thunder. At distant intervals,
lightning would cut the sky in a swift, vivid stroke. The black woods
would stand out in every detail for a moment, and they would catch
glimpses of the river's surface turned to fiery red. Then the night
closed down again, thicker and darker than ever, and any object twenty
yards before them would become only a part of the black blur. A light
wind moaned among the trees, weirdly and without stopping.

"It's a bad night for Colonel Clark's army," said Shif'less Sol. "Thar
ain't any use o' our tryin' to hide the fact from one another, 'cause we
all know it."

"That's so, Sol," said Long Jim Hart, "but we've got to watch all the
better 'cause of it. I've knowed you a long time, Solomon Hyde, an'
you're a lazy, shiftless, ornery, contrary critter, but somehow or other
the bigger the danger the better you be, an' I think that's what's
happenin' now."

If it had not been so dark Long Jim would have seen Shif'less Sol's
pleased grin. Moreover the words of Jim Hart were true. The spirit of
the shiftless one, great borderer that he was, rose to the crisis, but
he said nothing. The little group continued to advance, keeping a couple
of hundred yards or so from the bank of the Ohio, and stopping every ten
or twelve minutes to listen. On such a night ears were of more use than
eyes.

The forest grew more dense as they adv