, 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 always to be found
squatting on their door-steps cursing the hour which had seen them depart
for this land; some wrestled and fought on the common, for a fist fight
with a fair field and no favor was a favorite amusement of the
backwoodsmen. My big friend, Cowan, was the champion of these, and often
of an evening the whole of the inhabitants would gather near the spring
to see him fight those who had the courage to stand up to him. His
muscles were like hickory wood, and I have known a man insensible for a
quarter of an hour after one of his blows. Strangely enough, he never
fought in anger, and was the first to the spring for a gourd of water
after the fight was over. But Tom McChesney was the best wrestler of the
lot, and could make a wider leap than any other man in Harrodstown.

Tom's reputation did not end there, for he became one of the two
bread-winners of the station. I would better have said meat-winners. Woe
be to the incautious who, lulled by a week of fancied security, ventured
out into the dishevelled field for a little food! In the early days of
the siege man after man had gone forth for game, never to return. Until
Tom came, one only had been successful,--that lad of seventeen, whose
achievements were the envy of my boyish soul, James Ray. He slept in the
cabin next to Cowan's, and long before the dawn had revealed the forest
line had been wont to steal out of the gates on the one scrawny horse the
Indians had left them, gain the Salt River, and make his way thence
through the water to some distant place where the listening savages could
not hear his shot. And now Tom took his turn. Often did I sit with
Polly Ann till midnight in the sentry's tower, straining my ears for the
owl's hoot that warned us of his coming. Sometimes he was empty-handed,
but sometimes a deer hung limp and black across his saddle, or a pair of
turkeys swung from his shoulder.

"Arrah, darlin'," said Terence to Polly Ann, "'tis yer husband and James
is the jools av the fort. Sure I niver l