resently Polly Ann forgot her sorrows in the perils of the
trace. Choked by briers and grapevines, blocked by sliding stones and
earth, it rose and rose through the heat and burden of the day until
it lost itself in the open heights. As the sun was wearing down to the
western ridges the mischievous sorrel mare turned her pack on a sapling,
and one of the precious bags burst. In an instant we were on our knees
gathering the golden meal in our hands. Polly Ann baked journeycakes on
a hot stone from what we saved under the shiny ivy leaves, and scarce
had I spancelled the horses ere Tom returned with a fat turkey he had
shot.

"Was there ever sech a wedding journey!" said Polly Ann, as we sat about
the fire, for the mountain air was chill. "And Tom and Davy as grave as
parsons. Ye'd guess one of you was Rutherford himself, and the other Mr.
Boone."

No wonder he was grave. I little realized then the task he had set
himself, to pilot a woman and a lad into a country haunted by frenzied
savages, when single men feared to go this season. But now he smiled,
and patted Polly Ann's brown hand.

"It's one of yer own choosing, lass," said he.

"Of my own choosing!" cried she. "Come, Davy, we'll go back to Grandpa."

Tom grinned.

"I reckon the redskins won't bother us till we git by the Nollichucky
and Watauga settlements," he said.

"The redskins!" said Polly Ann, indignant; "I reckon if one of 'em did
git me he'd kiss me once in a while."

Whereupon Tom, looking more sheepish still, tried to kiss her, and
failed ignominiously, for she vanished into the dark woods.

"If a redskin got you here," said Tom, when she had slipped back, "he'd
fetch you to Nick-a-jack Cave."

"What's that?" she demanded.

"Where all the red and white and yellow scalawags over the mountains
is gathered," he answered. And he told of a deep gorge between towering
mountains where a great river cried angrily, of a black cave out of
which a black stream ran, where a man could paddle a dugout for miles
into the rock. The river was the Tennessee, and the place the resort
of the Chickamauga bandits, pirates of the mountains, outcasts of all
nations. And Dragging Canoe was their chief.

It was on the whole a merry journey, the first part of it, if a rough
one. Often Polly Ann would draw me to her and whisper: "We'll hold out,
Davy. He'll never now." When the truth was that the big fellow was
going at half his pace on our account. He told us there w