couldn't please her with
clothes, for she wouldn't look at the sun-bonnets and nettle-linen that
other gals wore. She must have a neat little bonnet and send to town for
pretty dresses.... The women couldn't abide her, for she had a high way
of looking at 'em and talking at 'em as if they was jest black trash.
But the men 'ud walk miles to see her on a Sunday.... I never could jest
understand why she took Abe Hanks. 'Twasn't for lack of better offers."

"I reckon that's women's ways," said Boone meditatively. "She must
ha' favoured Jim, though he wasn't partickler about his clothes.
Discontented, ye say she was?"

"Aye. Discontented. She was meant for a fine lady, I reckon. I dunno
what she wanted, but anyhow it was something that Abe Hanks ain't likely
to give her. I can't jest picture her in Kaintuck'!"

Squire Boone was asleep, and Daniel drew the flap of his buffalo robe
over his head and prepared to follow suit. His last act was to sniff the
air. "Please God the weather mends," he muttered. "I've got to find old
Jim."

Very early next morning there was a consultation. Lovelle had not
appeared and hunting was impossible on two shoots of powder. It was
arranged that two of them should keep camp that day by the limestone
cliff while Daniel Boone went in search of the missing man, for it was
possible that Jim Lovelle had gone to seek ammunition from friendly
Indians. If he did not turn up or if he returned without powder, there
would be nothing for it but to send a messenger back through the Gap for
supplies.

The dawn was blue and cloudless and the air had the freshness of
a second spring. The autumn colour glowed once more, only a little
tarnished; the gold was now copper, the scarlet and vermilion were
dulling to crimson. Boone took the road at the earliest light and made
for the place where the day before he had parted from Lovelle. When
alone he had the habit of talking to himself in an undertone. "Jim was
hunting down the west bank of that there crick, and I heard a shot about
noon beyond them big oaks, so I reckon he'd left the water and gotten on
the ridge." He picked up the trail and followed it with difficulty,
for the rain had flattened out the prints. At one point he halted and
considered. "That's queer," he muttered. "Jim was running here. It
wasn't game, neither, for there's no sign of their tracks." He pointed
to the zig-zag of moccasin prints in a patch of gravel. "That's the way
a man sets his fe