ame together for the purpose of
consultation. They had threaded their way along parallel lines,
separated by hardly a furlong, for a mile from their starting-point,
when the above interchange of views took place.

Boone had kept close to the Ohio while stealthily moving eastward, while
Kenton took the same course, gliding more deeply among the shadows of
the Kentucky forest until, disturbed by the evidence of danger, he
trended to the left and met Boone near the river.

The two sat down on a fallen tree, side by side, and, while talking in
low tones, did not for a moment forget their surroundings. They had
lived too long in the perilous wilderness to forget that there was never
a moment when a pioneer was absolutely safe from the fierce or stealthy
red man.

"Dan'l," said Kenton, in that low, musical voice which was one of his
most marked characteristics, "this 'ere bus'ness has took the qu'arest
shape of anything that you or me have been mixed up in."

"I haven't been mixed up in it, Simon," corrected Boone, turning his
somewhat narrow, but clean-shaven face upon the other, and smiling
gently in a way that brought the wrinkles around a pair of eyes as blue
as those of Kenton himself.

"Not yet, but you're powerful sartin to be afore them folks reach the
block-house."

Boone nodded his head to signify that he agreed with his friend.

"You wasn't at the block-house, Dan'l, when the flatboat stopped there?"

"No."

"Neither was I; I was tramping through the woods on my way to make a
call on Mr. Ashbridge."

"That's the man who put up the cabin a mile back down the river?"

"Yes; you see Norman Ashbridge or his son George--and the same is a
powerful likely younker--come down the Ohio last spring in their
flatboat, and stopped at the clearing a mile below us, where they put up
a tidy cabin. A few weeks ago the father started east to bring down his
family in another flatboat. George, the younker, got tired of waiting
and set out to meet 'em; him and me come together in the woods, and had
a scrimmage with the varmints afore we got on the boat with 'em. Things
were purty warm on the way down the river, for The Panther made matters
warm for us."

"The Panther!" repeated Boone, turning toward his friend; "I was afraid
he was mixed up in this."

"I should say he was--ruther," replied Kenton, with a grin over the
surprise of his older companion. "That chap sneaked onto the boat last
night, believing he had a chanc