rmur,
so ominous to the border, but they were ready to carry the message through
the wilderness to those to whom the warning meant the most.

* * * * *

The largest wagon train that had yet crossed the mountains into
_Kain-tuck-ee_ toiled slowly along the Wilderness Road among the
foothills, bearing steadily toward the Northwest. The line of canvas
covers stretched away more than a hundred in number, and contained five
hundred souls, of whom, perhaps, half were men and boys capable of bearing
arms, the rest women and children.

They looked upon mountain, hill and forest, river and brook, with much the
same eyes as those with which Henry and Paul had beheld them not so very
long before, but they were not seeking at random in the wilderness as the
Wareville people had done. No, they moved forward now to a certain mark.
They were to join their brethren at Wareville and Marlowe, and double the
strength of the settlements. Word had come to them over the mountains
that the little outposts in the vast wilderness lived and flourished, and
the country was good. Moreover, they and their strength were needed.
Wareville and Marlowe looked for them as eagerly as they looked for
Wareville and Marlowe.

Spring was deepening, and already had drawn its robe of green over all the
earth, but Daniel Poe, the commander of the wagon train, paid little
attention to its beauty. He was nearly sixty years of age, but in the very
prime of his strength--a great, square-shouldered man, his head and face
covered with thick, black beard. His eyes had their habitual look of
watchful care. They had seen no Indian sign as they crossed the mountains,
but he knew now that they were on the Dark and Bloody Ground, and the
lives of five hundred human beings were a heavy responsibility.

"You are sure the country is entirely safe?" he said to Dick Salter, one
of his guides.

"I don't know no reason to doubt it," replied Salter. "The savages don't
often get down here. The villages uv the northwestern tribes must be close
on to a thousand miles from here, an' besides they were beat off last
year, an' beat badly, when they tried to rush Wareville."

"That is so," said Daniel Poe thoughtfully; "we had word of it. But,
Dick, we can't afford to take all these people into danger here in the
woods. Look at the women and children."

They had just begun to stop for the night, and to draw the wagons into a
circle in a convenient,