ns or taverns, until we came into the valley of
another river. This I know now was the Catawba. My memories of that
ride are as misty as the spring weather in the mountains. But presently
the country began to open up into broad fields, some of these abandoned
to pines. And at last, splashing through the stiff red clay that was up
to the mare's fetlocks, we came to a place called Charlotte Town. What a
day that was for me! And how I gaped at the houses there, finer than any
I had ever dreamed of! That was my first sight of a town. And how I
listened open-mouthed to the gentlemen at the tavern! One I recall had
a fighting head with a lock awry, and a negro servant to wait on him, and
was the principal spokesman. He, too, was talking of war. The Cherokees
had risen on the western border. He was telling of the massacre of a
settlement, in no mild language.

"Sirs," he cried, "the British have stirred the redskins to this. Will
you sit here while women and children are scalped, and those devils" (he
called them worse names) "Stuart and Cameron go unpunished?"

My father got up from the corner where he sat, and stood beside the man.

"I ken Alec Cameron," said he.

The man looked at him with amazement.

"Ay?" said he, "I shouldn't think you'd own it. Damn him," he cried, "if
we catch him we'll skin him alive."

"I ken Cameron," my father repeated, "and I'll gang with you to skin him
alive."

The man seized his hand and wrung it.

"But first I must be in Charlestown," said my father.

The next morning we sold our pelts. And though the mare was tired, we
pushed southward, I behind the saddle. I had much to think about,
wondering what was to become of me while my father went to skin Cameron.
I had not the least doubt that he would do it. The world is a storybook
to a lad of nine, and the thought of Charlestown filled me with a delight
unspeakable. Perchance he would leave me in Charlestown.

At nightfall we came into a settlement called the Waxhaws. And there
being no tavern there, and the mare being very jaded and the roads heavy,
we cast about for a place to sleep. The sunlight slanting over the pine
forest glistened on the pools in the wet fields. And it so chanced that
splashing across these, swinging a milk-pail over his head, shouting at
the top of his voice, was a red-headed lad of my own age. My father
hailed him, and he came running towards us, still shouting, and vaulted
the rails. He stood before us, eying