d his moccasins to the blaze and sent thin rings of
smoke from his lips into the steam made by the falling rain.

He bitterly and compendiously cursed the weather. The little party had
some reason for ill-temper. There had been an accident in the creek with
the powder supply, and for the moment there were only two charges left
in the whole outfit. Hitherto they had been living on ample supplies of
meat, though they were on short rations of journey-cake, for their stock
of meal was low. But that night they had supped poorly, for one of them
had gone out to perch a turkey, since powder could not be wasted, and
had not come back.

"I reckon we're the first as ever concluded to winter in Kaintuckee," he
said between his puffs. "Howard and Salling went in in June, I've heerd.
And Finley? What about Finley, Dan'l?"

"He never stopped beyond the fall, though he was once near gripped by the
snow. But there ain't no reason why winter should be worse on the O-hio
than on the Yadkin. It's a good hunting time, and snow'll keep the
redskins quiet. What's bad for us is wuss for them, says I.... I won't
worry about winter nor redskins, if old Jim Lovelle 'ud fetch up. It
beats me whar the man has got to."

"Wandered, maybe?" suggested the first speaker, whose name was Neely.

"I reckon not. Ye'd as soon wander a painter. There ain't no sech hunter
as Jim ever came out of Virginny, no, nor out of Caroliny, neither. It
was him that fust telled me of Kaintuck'. 'The dark and bloody land, the
Shawnees calls it,' he says, speakin' in his eddicated way, and dark and
bloody it is, but that's man's doing and not the Almighty's. The land
flows with milk and honey, he says, clear water and miles of clover and
sweet grass, enough to feed all the herds of Basham, and mighty forests
with trees that thick ye could cut a hole in their trunks and drive a
waggon through, and sugar-maples and plums and cherries like you won't
see in no set orchard, and black soil fair crying for crops. And the
game, Jim says, wasn't to be told about without ye wanted to be called a
liar--big black-nosed buffaloes that packed together so the whole
placed seemed moving, and elk and deer and bar past counting.... Wal,
neighbours, ye've seen it with your own eyes and can jedge if Jim was a
true prophet. I'm Moses, he used to say, chosen to lead the Children
of Israel into a promised land, but I reckon I'll leave my old bones on
some Pisgah-top on the borders. He was a