. I looked
up, and my eyes were caught and held with a strange fascination by
fearless blue ones that gazed down into them. I give you but a poor
description of the owner of these blue eyes, for personal magnetism
springs not from one feature or another. He was a young man,--perhaps
five and twenty as I now know age,--woodsman-clad, square-built,
sun-reddened. His hair might have been orange in one light and
sand-colored in another. With a boy's sense of such things I knew that
the other woodsmen were waiting for him to speak, for they glanced at
him expectantly.

"You had a near call, McChesney," said he, at length; "fortunate for you
we were after this band,--shot some of it to pieces yesterday morning."
He paused, looking at Tom with that quality of tribute which comes
naturally to a leader of men. "By God," he said, "I didn't think you'd
try it."

"My word is good, Colonel Clark," answered Tom, simply.

Young Colonel Clark glanced at the lithe figure of Polly Ann. He seemed
a man of few words, for he did not add to his praise of Tom's achievement
by complimenting her as Captain Sevier had done. In fact, he said
nothing more, but leaped down the bank and strode into the water where
the body of Weldon lay, and dragged it out himself. We gathered around
it silently, and two great tears rolled down Polly Ann's cheeks as she
parted the hair with tenderness and loosened the clenched hands. Nor did
any of the tall woodsmen speak. Poor Weldon! The tragedy of his life
and death was the tragedy of Kentucky herself. They buried him by the
waterside, where he had fallen.

But there was little time for mourning on the border. The burial
finished, the Kentuckians splashed across the creek, and one of them,
stooping with a shout at the mouth of the run, lifted out of the brambles
a painted body with drooping head and feathers trailing.

"Ay, Mac," he cried, "here's a sculp for ye."

"It's Davy's," exclaimed Polly Ann from the top of the bank; "Davy shot
that one."

"Hooray for Davy," cried a huge, strapping backwoodsman who stood beside
her, and the others laughingly took up the shout. "Hooray for Davy.
Bring him over, Cowan." The giant threw me on his shoulder as though I
had been a fox, leaped down, and took the stream in two strides. I
little thought how often he was to carry me in days to come, but I felt a
great awe at the strength of him, as I stared into his rough features and
his veined and weathered skin. He stoo