but the one
scrawny horse before our arrival.

And the settlers! How shall I describe them as they crowded around us
inside the gate? Some stared at us with sallow faces and eyes brightened
by the fever, yet others had the red glow of health. Many of the men
wore rough beards, unkempt, and yellow, weather-worn hunting shirts,
often stained with blood. The barefooted women wore sunbonnets and loose
homespun gowns, some of linen made from nettles, while the children
swarmed here and there and everywhere in any costume that chance had
given them. All seemingly talking at once, they plied us with question
after question of the trace, the Watauga settlements, the news in the
Carolinys, and how the war went.

"A lad is it, this one," said an Irish voice near me, "and a woman!
The dear help us, and who'd 'ave thought to see a woman come over the
mountain this year! Where did ye find them, Bill Cowan?"

"Near the Crab Orchard, and the lad killed and sculped a six-foot
brave."

"The Saints save us! And what'll be his name?"

"Davy," said my friend.

"Is it Davy? Sure his namesake killed a giant, too."

"And is he come along, also?" said another. His shy blue eyes and stiff
blond hair gave him a strange appearance in a hunting shirt.

"Hist to him! Who will ye be talkin' about, Poulsson? Is it King David
ye mane?"

There was a roar of laughter, and this was my introduction to Terence
McCann and Swein Poulsson. The fort being crowded, we were put into a
cabin with Terence and Cowan and Cowan's wife--a tall, gaunt woman with
a sharp tongue and a kind heart--and her four brats, "All hugemsmug
together," as Cowan said. And that night we supped upon dried buffalo
meat and boiled nettle-tops, for of such was the fare in Harrodstown
that summer.

"Tom McChesney kept his faith." One other man was to keep his faith
with the little community--George Rogers Clark. And I soon learned that
trustworthiness is held in greater esteem in a border community than
anywhere else. Of course, the love of the frontier was in the grain of
these men. But what did they come back to? Day after day would the sun
rise over the forest and beat down upon the little enclosure in which we
were penned. The row of cabins leaning against the stockade marked the
boundaries of our diminutive world. Beyond them, invisible, lurked a
relentless foe. Within, the greater souls alone were calm, and a man's
worth was set down to a hair's breadth. Some were alwa