he Thing that lay under the
oak.

It was near sundown when Tom and Weldon appeared on the mountain side
carrying a buck between them. Tom glanced from one to the other of us
keenly. He was very quick to divine.

"Whar be they?" said he.

"Show him, Davy," said Polly Ann.

I took him over to the oak, and Polly Ann told him the story. He gave
me one look, I remember, and there was more of gratitude in it than in a
thousand words. Then he seized a piece of cold cake from the stone.

"Which trace did he take?" he demanded of me.

But Polly Ann hung on his shoulder.

"Tom, Tom!" she cried, "you beant goin' to leave us again. Tom, he'll
die in the wilderness, and we must git to Kaintuckee."

* * * * * * *

The next vivid thing in my memory is the view of the last barrier Nature
had reared between us and the delectable country. It stood like a lion
at the gateway, and for some minutes we gazed at it in terror from
Powell's Valley below. How many thousands have looked at it with sinking
hearts! How many weaklings has its frown turned back! There seemed to
be engraved upon it the dark history of the dark and bloody land beyond.
Nothing in this life worth having is won for the asking; and the best is
fought for, and bled for, and died for. Written, too, upon that towering
wall of white rock, in the handwriting of God Himself, is the history of
the indomitable Race to which we belong.

For fifty miles we travelled under it, towards the Gap, our eyes drawn
to it by a resistless fascination. The sun went over it early in the
day, as though glad to leave the place, and after that a dark scowl
would settle there. At night we felt its presence, like a curse. Even
Polly Ann was silent. And she had need to be now. When it was necessary,
we talked in low tones, and the bell-clappers on the horses were not
loosed at night. It was here, but four years gone, that Daniel Boone's
family was attacked, and his son killed by the Indians.

We passed, from time to time, deserted cabins and camps, and some places
that might once have been called settlements: Elk Garden, where the
pioneers of the last four years had been wont to lay in a simple supply
of seed corn and Irish potatoes; and the spot where Henderson and his
company had camped on the way to establish Boonesboro two years before.
And at last we struck the trace that mounted upward to the Gateway
itself.

CHAPTER IX. ON THE WILDERNESS TRAIL

And now we had ou